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Re: Bot

The bot I use is MiszaBot, syntax is pretty easy. This page should have everything you need to get it set up, otherwise just give me a bell. I don't know if it runs on any other Wikis. — neuro(talk) 11:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Editnotice stuff

Sorry for not replying to your message about the editnotice – I'm afraid I completely missed it! I see Nuclear has replied and you have the notice up and running. :) Nice work. Apologies again. PeterSymonds (talk) 12:12, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

No worries. I just figured you were a busy guy, and that you were taking your time to answer the other part of my question:

It's my fault, really. I should have started that as an entirely new section instead of lumping it with an unrelated comment. I'd still appreciate a response. I'm disappointed that the user hasn't replied. Looks like it may have been a "dump and run" rather than a serious effort (if slightly misguided attempt) at writing something about which the person was familiar. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 12:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think {{npd}} is the same on Commons as it is on Wikipedia. Most functionary templates exist under the same name, but there are occasional anomalies. Generally you also find that new users are unresponsive even to kind talk page notices regarding image copyright. This is sometimes due to inactivity, sometimes due to lack of interest, and is sometimes done deliberately to avoid the issue and hope that it'd "go away" as it were. One reason for this is because they know they don't own the copyright and cannot justify the license under which they published it. I'm afraid only a fraction of people I've dealt with on Commons actually come back to fix the license, so I wouldn't hold your breath. ;) But yeah, occasionally they do, so it's worth waiting the full 7 days at times. Hope this helps you; let me know if it doesn't. Cheers, PeterSymonds (talk) 12:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok. I'll let my breath out now. ;-) I wasn't actually holding it anyway. I always hope for the best, but I also know the approximate statistics of reality, too.
{{npd}} isn't the problematic template. It's the template to use here to notify the user here that the image they uploaded to Commons is in danger of deletion. I couldn't find anything that made that easy. I think I finally came up with something that worked, but it took me a long time to figure it out, and we should make it easier for people, because most people won't go through the extra diligence to do all that. That's all I was trying to say about the template. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 12:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Ah! Sorry. Well take a look at Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Other (middle column marked "Images") for a complete list. One of those could probably be adapted to suit Commons notification at Wikipedia. My recommendation is just be bold (perhaps do it in userspace if you want to try it out first) and see how it goes. :) PeterSymonds (talk) 12:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

 Done - See below for examples of the output. See {{fdw-iw}} (aliased as {{fdw-commons}}) for the actual template. I decided to make it a bit more flexible by making it project-neutral. It defaults to Commons (for what should be obvious reasons), but all the Commons-specific stuff can be overridden to make it work with any project or language site. It may not be totally obvious how to use it, but there are so many possible variations on different projects, it's the best I could come up with. The most likely problem is if people leave out colons, slashes, etc. Without going overboard with parser functions, there's not much I can do. And since the image is not local, I can't even check to see if the image exists to trigger an error message. Oh well. It's still more helpful than what we had before. And it's pretty darn simple if you're just linking to a Commons image. What do you think? Is there anywhere else it should be promoted (like on Commons)? —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:10, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Image_or_Media_Name.jpg listed for deletion on Wikimedia Commons

An image or media file you uploaded to Wikimedia Commons or altered there, Image_or_Media_Name.jpg, has been listed at Commons Deletion requests. Please see the discussion to understand why this is (you may have to search for the title of the file to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Image_or_Media_Name.jpg listed for deletion on Wikimedia Commons

An image or media file you uploaded to Wikimedia Commons or altered there, Image_or_Media_Name.jpg, has been listed at Commons Deletion requests. Please see the discussion to understand why this is (you may have to search for the title of the file to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. There are copyright concerns. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

File:Image_or_Media_Name.jpg listed for deletion on Wikipédia en français

An image or media file you uploaded to Wikipédia en français or altered there, Image_or_Media_Name.jpg, has been listed at Wikipédia Images à supprimer.

You can read and participate in the deletion discussion if you are interested or do not wish the file to be deleted. You may have to search for the title of the file to find its entry. Thank you. NW557Bot (talk) 09:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

God doesn't exist

Hello Willscrlt/Archives,

I would like to point out that God doesn't exist. Religion is a dangerous delusion, responsible for fueling conflicts that have killed many millions of people. So, help to make the world a peaceful place by converting yourself and your friends to atheism. Count Iblis (talk) 17:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Um. Thank you for warning me about the danger, but I'm not particularly interested in converting from believing in something greater than what I see and know, to believing that this is all there is. My faith gives me peace, and I already try to make the world a better and more peaceful place. If you are happy with your convictions and belief in atheism, then I am happy you have found happiness. Have a great day! (P.S. If you are going to leave me a "personal message" like this, at least have the courtesy of subst:ing my {{BASEPAGENAME}} so it looks personal.) —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 17:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Your post about this matter at WP:WQA has been removed, as it was also posted at WP:ANI and this user received a block to stop his disruptive behavior. Normally if something is serious enough for ANI it should just be posted there, as WQA does not have the power to block, we just try to educate about civility. This user has been here long enough that he already had to know what he was doing was well beyond the line of acceptable behavior, so it's unlikely WQA could have helped anyway. If this disruptive behavior recurs, I would again report it to ANI, and he'll get a nice long block for his trouble. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks. It's been a long time since I last posted anything to WP:AN/I, and I wasn't sure how best to go about it. I asked the admin who blocked him, A Man In Black if I had done it correctly. No response yet. Anyway, I don't remember hearing of WP:WQA prior to this, so I wasn't sure what its response time was. It actually was from "reading the rules" (Removed WQA entry - please read the instructions before posting) that led me to cross-post in both areas, because otherwise I wouldn't have known about WQA, and I'd have only posted to AN/I. I guess that teaches me not to read the rules from here on out. (Note: My sarcastic humor-mode was "on" when I typed that.) Anyway, sorry for the hiccup in procedure, and I know better for next time. Thanks again! —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 18:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: comment about "reading the rules" in WP:ANI

Likewise, I appreciate the work you do on the project. Yes, I know you were feeling rushed, otherwise you would've found a post on your talk page like that in my edit summary. ;) In those circumstances you've noted, I would've switched my note at ANI to "take more care to comply with the rules". I'm not sure if that's any less offensive though. I'm open if you have a better suggestion in conveying a message to that effect - please let me know if you do. :) Cheers and enjoy your day, Ncmvocalist (talk) 18:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

tables in show/hide boxes

Well thank you young man! (Where were you when I needed you? (rhetorical);-) When I've absorbed the significance of your advice, I will no doubt return and grovel at your feet with gratitude. Many thanks! Pdfpdf (talk) 13:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

  • Sorry that I wasn't there sooner for you. Groveling is unnecessary, but your signs of sincere appreciation is… appreciated. :-)
Changing subject: About a week ago, good old M$ upgraded me to IE8 when I wasn't paying sufficient attention to say "No Way Jose!", and between my own "mutterings" about it, I'm receiving constant abuse from my children about how I have "done something". I don't know if that is the reason for me not being able to access your web site, but FYI, when I type in your website address, I get "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" and
This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including:
  • Internet connectivity has been lost.
  • The website is temporarily unavailable.
  • The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable.
  • The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain.
  • There might be a typing error in the address.
  • If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click Tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section.
(What a load of rubbish! Except, perhaps "The website is temporarily unavailable.")
Is it at all likely that "The website is temporarily unavailable"?
Or is it yet-another-IE8-bug? Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I find the generic error messages, or "Friendly error messages" as they call them, on nearly every browser to be pretty much useless. Give me an old fashioned error code and a quick Google search, and I am happy.
  • The site is available mostly, but there is some bug in the .htaccess file on my server (something I did, I'm sure) that seems to cause some pages to be very slow to load, and sometimes not load at all. It's kind of intermittent, and very annoying. But if it is blocking people, then I guess I'd better fix it. *sigh* More for my to-do list.

(Oh, by-the-way: I hate M$.)

  • To me, that's about as logical a statement as "I hate the government." Ok. But we are kind of stuck with them. And there are a lot of good things about MS software that I like. There's much that I don't. One thing I do like is that their stuff breaks down and people pay me to fix it for them. If everyone had Linux, I'd be doing about the same. Linux is nice, but still suffers from random quirkiness like MS. If everyone had Macs, I'd probably have to go into a different line of work. They take the best of BSD and combine a rock-solid user interface. I'm speaking in generalities though, because every OS has good and bad things about it. You have to decide according to your own needs and interests. I agree that it sucked that MS foisted IE8 onto a lot of unsuspecting people last month. That was a bad decision to me.
  • FYI, I use Google Chrome as my primary web browser, Firefox as my secondary, IE7 on my desktop computer and IE8 on my laptop as tertiary, and also keep Opera, Safari, and a few outdated browsers, like Netscape Navigator, around for testing. It's always interesting to see how the different browsers behave differently to the same code.

And thanks for your advice on tables.

  • Why certainly. Templates are about my favorite wiki activity, and learning to work with tables inside of them is something you have to learn pretty quickly if you want things to work correctly. But that doesn't mean they are always easy even today. So many times my debugging activities are tracking down unescaped pipes and missing (or extra) braces somewhere. Ugh! I'm glad that I could ease your frustration with these fascinating, yet frustrating, tools. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

FYI

Regarding this edit, I don't think it quite did what you wanted. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 14:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

  • I was attempting to display the list of current RfX's somewhere on my user or talk page that was not visually unappealing on my already cluttered pages, and keep it hidden until I wanted to look at it. It seems to be doing the job, unless it looks wrong in IE8 or something. (I haven't looked yet with that browser). Perhaps you thought I was trying to nominate myself for admin again? I may someday, but I think it's still not the right time for me. I want to be sure that I am able to commit myself to the tasks before I accept that responsibility. Have a good day! —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Jazz

Hi! Looks like a very special kind of userbox you're making. I'm probably not the ultimate Wikipedia jazz guru (those people can most likely be found in the revision history of Jazz and related articles), but here's what I think: if you want a list in a chronological order you'd probably need something like Dixieland, swing jazz, big band, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, free jazz, jazz fusion (or maybe jazz-rock and jazz-funk), smooth jazz. Of course, depending on who you ask, not everyone considers all of those "jazz" :-) By the way, there's a good listing of the different styles in Template:Jazzbox (although it's in alphabetical order). You might want to add bossa nova (which isn't strictly jazz) and ragtime (which predates jazz), if they're not included under some other category in your listing. I kind of disagree you grouping the blues under "R&B" (since the blues is a much older musical form than what is nowadays called R&B), but I admit that these things can get pretty hard to categorize. I hope this helps! Jafeluv (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

CBPA

The user recreated it. It was deleted at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=CBPA/ Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I imagine they could muck around like that if they wanted to.  :) Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 07:46, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Haha. Thanks again. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 07:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Response

I have responded to you on Everyking's RfA. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I replied. I appreciate being notified of your comments so I could respond, but as also questioned by Robster2001 in the discussion, it also seems borderline trollish, like you might be trying to stir up contention rather than allowing consensus for or against the nominee naturally. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 15:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
RfA, like all of Wiki, is a discussion and not a vote. If you cast support or oppose at an RfA, you have to be willing to discuss or your vote can be discounted. So, if people complain about having others challenge their votes, then they probably shouldn't risk posting at RfA. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Oh, a note - the Raul comment wasn't about Raul as an Admin but Raul as FA director (there are non-admin working FA, like SandyGeorgia). Raul started the FA ball, along with DYK and some others, and he is there because he is willing to put forth a lot of the effort. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm quite willing to review my earlier decision in light of more information. I don't want to support someone I don't trust. But I feel that he is trustworthy enough to handle the tools based on ArbCom findings, contributions, and his demeanor on-site. Offsite, he appears frustrated, but that jives with his personal history here. I think things could/should have been handled better, but that is with hindsight. I'm sure that those involved at the time did the best they could. I don't think he should be penalized for being human. I weigh his past admin activities and recent on-wiki activities as being more reliable predictors of his future performance than his venting on off-wiki discussion boards. Obviously, we disagree, and that's fine. I believe in Wikipedia's processes, and I will stand by whatever the consensus decision determines. Also, thank you for clarifying that Raul is not an admin. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 16:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Ack, no, Raul is an admin, but he is not acting in an admin role as FA director. That is a whole different bag of power. Everyking doesn't seem to attack adminship, just the Foundation, ArbCom, and the FA process. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe he would enjoy being part of the Foundation or ArbCom for a while and deal with the inevitable frustration he would face as a member of such a group. I wonder how quickly it would take for him to realize that you can't please all the people all the time? He might have a little more sympathy for those who are forced to make tough decisions and try to reconcile all the conflicting demands and issues that the WMF and ArbCom must consider with every decision. Note, I'm not recommending he do that (whole different matter), but rather pondering a "shoe on a different foot" scenario. It still doesn't change my support for him becoming a regular admin though. Thanks for your comments and clarifications, but I don't really think there is much need to continue this conversation. We can simply agree to disagree about supporting/opposing Everyking in RfA, while agreeing that Wikipedia is a great place to edit and do good work. Ciao! —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 17:24, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Redirects to dabs

Intentional links to base-name dabs are handled with redirects through things like Luna (disambiguation). See WP:INTDABLINK. Cheers! -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for pointing that out. I see it done so rarely that way that it didn't seem proper. And how that is described on the DAB page is about as clear as muddy water. I did look at information on redirects prior to tagging that, but I didn't find anything useful. I didn't think of looking at the DAB page. Maybe something should be added to WP:REDIR (or made more clear if it is there) and also improve the readability/comprehension level of WP:INTDABLINK. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 22:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Rambo's Revenge's RfA

He answered the questions. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I was happy to switch to support after reading his answers. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 22:27, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Revert of Postal Code

Hi, I see that you did indeed realise your mistake after reverting my revert on Postal Code, however your macro/bot still pasted a message on my talk page accusing me of vandalism. I appreciate the mistake, but wouldn't mind the issue being cleared up on my talk page quickly. Thanks. Taelus (talk) 12:43, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

RFA thank you

My RFA passed today at 75/2/1 so I wanted to thank you for your participation in it. Special thanks go to GlassCobra and FlyingToaster for their nomination and support. Cheers! --Rosiestep (talk) 02:55, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Your commons geograph migration guide

I just found this and thought I would point out that the info about downloading the highest resolution image is confusing. As far as I have seen on Geograph (so by all means correct me if I'm wrong), unlike on say Flickr, there is never any higher resolution image available over and above the displayed image on the photo page, their 'download' link is rather redundant, you get the same size image just by right click saving the displayed image. This rather small size appears to be a Geograph wide limit - the only advice I ever received was to possibly contact the uploader for a higher res image. MickMacNee (talk) 17:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback

 Unfortunately, my RFA was closed today with a final tally of 75½/38/10. Though it didn't succeed, I wanted to thank you for your participation in it. I intend to review the support, oppose, and neutral !votes and see what I can do to address those concerns. Special thanks go to Schmidt, MICHAEL Q., TomStar81, and henrik for their co-nominations and support. — BQZip01 — talk 20:15, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

In need of mentorship

Hi,

I saw your name over at WP:ADOPT.

I need the advice of an experienced Wikipedian.

I'm currently coordinating development of Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge, which has grown to around 500 pages, and I am having trouble recruiting editors to help build and improve it. I need some mentorship here.

I also need advice on the guidelines I've been writing for the Outline of Knowledge at User:The Transhumanist/Outline of knowledge. Is it good enough? Did I miss anything important?

My latest effort to recruit help on the outlines is a proposal for a contest between all of the country WikiProjects on Wikipedia (about 200 of them). Each country has an outline devoted to it, and so I figured these fall within the scope of the corresponding WikiProjects. This will be a very big event, and I'm not sure I'm going about it in the best way.

So you see, I've taken on a lot, and I need as much advice as I can get.

I look forward to your reply on my talk page.

The Transhumanist 19:55, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


Help for template

Hello, I've seen your name on the project template and I permis myself to ask you help: I've just created a new portal Portal:Lyon and I would like to create the templates for the subways, trams, bus. They already exist on the french wikipedia of Lyon metro for example. would you accept to help me ? Thank you Lulu97417 (talk) 16:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Category supression

Hey Will, could you add category suppression capabilities to the stub templates for food and drink? they are here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/stub templates.

--Jeremy (blah blah) 19:21, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Jeremy (blah blah) 05:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
You're welcome. Actually, I'm not finished. You (and many other people) are using a meta template now for stubs. That template is protected, so I can't edit it directly. Since it is a meta template, I want to incorporate multiple methods of supporting category suppression in it. That got me to looking at the overall CatSup issue and how it had changed since 2007 when I first added the feature to several templates and documented the process. I've re-written my original documentation (now more of a proposed guideline) and have decided to switch to using nocat=true instead of categories=no (it's more logical to set a value to true to enable a feature [category suppression] than to false). I am still trying to work out some sticky issues with the logic in the meta template, and then I am going to have to figure out the proper way to request the template be updated by an admin. I suppose I will also have to develop some consensus from others who rely upon that template to get it approved. Once that's done, I will go back through all the stubs and change them to support the nocat=true suppression method. I hope that doesn't mess you and your work up in the meantime. I took a short break on the whole thing after getting frustrated with the logic issue and the protected template issue. Do you have experience getting changes made (especially large-scale changes) to protected templates? Thanks! —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 05:27, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
Try talking to User:Happy-melon. He is heavily into meta I believe. And, no the changes are not a problem - my main concern was my template that I created to display stubs, {{stublist}}. The food and drink page list (above) is listed as being a stub of all 35+ stub templates, and your changes are helping prevent this. Also, I haven't gotten to the pictures of glassware yet, real life has been in the way. --Jeremy (blah blah) 05:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
Gosh, that sounds like some kind of designer drug... :S
That's a nice doc page there, Will, but remember that policies and guidelines describe current practice, not mandate future behaviour. I would put money on the most widely-used method of category suppression on wikipedia today being |category=anything, which barely features. Dismissing it as "not recommended" is a blocker to any desired guideline status.
In terms of developing protected templates, just use /sandbox subpages of the affected template: copy the code from the main banner, play with it to your heart's content, and then put an {{editprotected}} tag on the talk page of the main template asking an admin to copy over your changes from the sandbox to the main template once you're happy everything works ok.
Hope this helps! Happy‑melon 14:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
|category=anything? Did you mean |categories=no which is quite common? I've mostly seen |category=anything used to add categories to things, not used in suppression. The funny thing is that I "invented" |categories=no and am now the one wanting to switch the the other version because it is more logical. It's probably too late to eliminate either method at this point, but it sure would be nice to have just one as a standard. It sure would make it a lot easier to implement category suppression in meta templates that way! That's what actually got me looking back at my original documentation page (which only discussed |categories=no) written nearly 3 years ago. Templates have changed a lot in that time. Oh well. Thanks for the input! —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 14:43, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
No, I most definitely mean |category=, although I guess the specific =anything is not so widespread. As you note, |category=[[Category:Foo]] is commonly used to replace the default categories with specific ones; |category=&lt!--NOTHING--> of course adds nothing, thereby suppressing categories altogether. {{WPBannerMeta}}, and its 1200 descendents, all use specifically |category=anything-other-than-¬ to suppress categories; there the parameter does not act as a replacement but purely as a suppressant. Happy‑melon 15:10, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Lyon portal

You can help if you want. Bernstein2291 (talk) 03:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

ThankSpam

Re: LessHeard vanU's "RecFA"
My RfA

Thank you for participating in my "RecFA", which passed with a final tally of 153/39/22. There were issues raised regarding my adminship that I intend to cogitate upon, but I am grateful for the very many supportive comments I received and for the efforts of certain editors (Ceoil, Noroton and Lar especially) in responding to some issues. I wish to note how humbled I was when I read Buster7's support comment, although a fair majority gave me great pleasure. I would also note those whose opposes or neutral were based in process concerns and who otherwise commented kindly in regard to my record.
I recognise that the process itself was unusual, and the format was generally considered questionable - and I accept that I was mistaken in my perception of how it would be received - but I am particularly grateful for those whose opposes and neutrals were based in perceptions of how I was not performing to the standards expected of an administrator. As much as the support I received, those comments are hopefully going to allow me to be a better contributor to the project. Thank you. Very much. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

~~~~~

Well, back to the office it is...

Hot air ballooning

Thanks for adding all those Hot air ballooning userboxes to Wikipedia:Userboxes/Aviation! - Ahunt (talk) 12:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

That is great - the boxes add some needed colour to the page and hopefully to some user pages, once people find them! - Ahunt (talk) 12:38, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Luke Smalley

Updated DYK query On May 28, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Luke Smalley, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 02:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

de:Kategorie:Benutzer:Willscrlt

Hi, on the german wikipedia we do not have special user categories, like your categorie de:Kategorie:Benutzer:Willscrlt. So could you please remove the categories from your user sides. Thank yuo in advance. --Obkt (talk) 07:26, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Done — Replied on w:de:Benutzer Diskussion:Obkt. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 10:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

{{bartending-stub}}

The template is up for deletion on stubs for deletion. Please feel free to comment here. --Jeremy (blah blah) 04:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I did not nominate the template for deletion. Jerem43 left a message on my talk page asking me to reinstate it, then someone else reinstated it without bringing it up for discussion at wp:sfd. I posted it there in order to promote discussion, and later voiced my preference for keeping it but upmerging until it is used on 30+ articles. Since Jerem43 is a member of the bartending project, it seemed logical that he would mention it there (indeed, it turns out he left the same message asking for reinstatement on several other editors' pages), thus I did not think that extra step would be necessary, particularly since I did not have the time to leave messages on the pages of every editor who created or edited said template. Silly me. To reiterate: I have not proposed or supported deletion of the template, just begun the dialogue. Cheers, Pegship (talk) 07:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
Thank you for your gracious reply. Cheers, Pegship (talk) 07:21, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Re:{[tl|Bartending-stub}}/{{Water-stub}}

Hi Willscrlt, and thanks for trying to help sort out the potential mess around these stub types.

First things first - yes, the bartending template was deleted, back in October 2007. It was re-created three days ago, which is why it turned up at SFD.

With reference to your comments, you have the situation with stubs and stub-class assessments pretty much right, but not totally. As I understood it, the stub identifier in an article is added to articles that meet certain requirements of length (primarily) and to a lesser extent, apparent degree of completeness of the article. The second only really applies if there is just so little to be said about a topic that an article is unlikely to ever be more than a stub, yet somehow manages to be notable and verifiable (and such are rare). Thus, length is the most common criteria. Article assessment is more subjective (though there are guidelines, and WikiProjects seem to have more latitude in developing those than they do in stub sorting guidelines). This isn't strictly true - in fact i have a fairly widely-referred to essay which explains why length isn't in itself the best arbitrator of stubbiness (see User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs). However, some of whst you say is pretty much on the money. WikiProject Stub sorting's members can't be expected to know everything about every stub they encounter, so there is a level of arbitrariness about what is regarded as a stub and what isn't. Individual WikiProjects, of course, have a more precise knowledge of their specific area of interest, and as such usually have a more refined idea of how to assess particular articles relating to it. As such, something marked as a stub by srtub sorters may not be regarded as a stub by a specific project, and vice versa. Sadly, when assessment templates were brought in, the term "Stub-Class" was used for the lowest quality assessment, causing endless confusion among WikiProjects as to why both Assessment as Stub-Class and sorting as a stub are both used, and whether they are the same. Basically, stub templates are a rough guide across the entirety of Wikipedia, for the aid of all editors. Stub-Class assessment is specifically for use by one WikiProject for its editors.

Since stub templates are all used by stub sorters in roughly the same way, we don't have /doc files for them. WP:STUB explains their use and is already linked in the text of the template, so a /doc file is unnecessary. If any specific documentation is needed, such as specific usage of a template or a WikiProject link, then this is usually placed in whatever category is linked to by the template.

I note, looking through the archives, a couple of the discussions you refer to. According to this, {{Mixed-drinks-stub}} was proposed and created, and this, {{cocktail-stub}} was converted into a redirect to it. However, this says it was kept and cleaned up. Hence the confusion (and yes, I was involved in at least one of the discussions). There's no sign that bartending-stub was ever discussed at WP:WSS.

I can understand the reasoning why bartending-stub would be useful, but I still wonder whether a specific banner assessment template for your WikiProject would be more useful, for the reasons I expressed at SFD. It wouold be far more versatile, as it could mark all your project's articles, not just stubs - and it wwould enable you to use specific criteria for deciding when an article was no longer Stub-Class (which seems to be the reasoning behind the /doc file on the stub template).

As to Nopetro, I also get the feeling that English is not Nopetro's first language, but I'd also say from conversation with him that he understands the language fairly well. He seems willing to help with any re-sorting of articles which may be needed if water-stub is changed or deleted, which I'm grateful for.

The main problem with the template he made is that it's so vaguely defined that it wouldn't be of much use to editors looking for articles - it contains things relating to water, sure, but that covers a lot of different fields, most of which already have specific stub types, and it's unlikely that any one editor would be looking for such diverse stubs as Adam T. Bower Memorial Dam, Steamboats of the Cowlitz River, Technical management, National Cargo Bureau, and Inert gas generator. It wouldn't have been so bad if the previous stub templates (for the accepted categories) had been left on these articles, but they've been removed - so Weweantic River is no longer marked as a Massachusetts geography stub, for instance, even though it's far more likely to be looked for by ediotors working on Massachusetts geography articles than on ones looking for articles on water.

Anyway, sorry this is such a long rambling reply, but hopefully it helps explain a few things. I'll propose cocktail-stub be turned into a redirect at WP:SFD - hopefully that will at least solve one problem. Grutness...wha? 08:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, as far as stub category sizes are concerned, the first essay on this page explains why we have the thresholds we do. I think that if you have 25 articles, then it should be pretty straightforward to find another five, so hopefully it won't be a problem from that point of view. Grutness...wha? 09:29, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that every additional stub found increases the likelihood, especially since it's a well-defined topic. As the water-stub situation shows, even having a large number of stubs is no guarantee if the subject's vague or has other problems, but in this case I think that anything over 30 would really help the case. BTW, I've listed cocktail-stub for redirection at WP:SFD, if you'd like to add your 2c. Grutness...wha? 09:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
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