User talk:Plugwash/archive1

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I have a strong dislike for splitting up conversations if i have posted on your talkpage i WILL have it on my watchlist Plugwash 15:24, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] mains power plug

Is it a coincidence that your user name is Plugwash and I see you editing Mains power plug?  ;-) Chameleon 15:42, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

well no only in that i have always been interested in electrics

the name was a nickname i had a long time ago when i used to be in a resedential school and i had already gained the nickname pugwash for other reasons

then i decided to wash the socket end of a rather grubby extention reel ofc i forgot that the other end was still plugged in surprisingly it didn't hurt that much presumablly because the shutters made the contact area through the water very small

btw some of the anonymous edits to mains power plug were also me

[edit] Hi

Hi, Plugwash, and welcome to Wikipedia. I'm glad you have started to add information on mains wiring. We needed somebody like you who knows about this subject. It's particularly interesting to know how wiring practice differs from country to country. -- Heron 09:32, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

hi im british mnyself and don't really have a huge knowlage of how things are outside britan. I try to represent as neutral point of veiw as possible on the articles i edit but ofc on a subject with such great regional variation every editor is going to be pretty biased.

Yes, it will be difficult to write a fair overview of the whole world's wiring practices, but I live in hope. We started off with almost exclusively American information, so I'm glad that you are here to broaden the coverage a bit. Now I'm waiting for someone to explain how they manage earthing in desert countries where the soil is dry sand! Keep up the good work, --Heron 14:15, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Kontek

Yes, the line goes to the Zealand you thought it did. :) Btw, can you explain (perhaps link to) what an "oil cable" as mentioned on that page is? Thue | talk 07:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

nah i don't know about this high voltage stuff i was just reading (because i find this stuff interesting) and i corrected a few blatent errors as i found them

[edit] Power strip

Plugwash, in your recent changes to Power strip, you removed the alternative terminology. Put it back! You also need to use capital letters sometimes! Chameleon 23:57, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

sorry if i removed something by mistake i rewrote quite a bit in the process of trying to orgnaise the article "trailing socket" is not another word for powerstrip its similar but its not equivilent which is why i seperated its mention from the other mentions of alternative names "As such is can be considered a type of trailing socket though that term is more often used for single and double cable mounted sockets" but i can't see any other changes to mentions of alternative terminology can you be more specific?
Ah, I though there was more, but it seems that you only removed "trailing socket", and you've given a reason for that. You do need to use capitals though! Chameleon 02:18, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] it:

You're quite right in it:Discussione:Spina elettrica, the Italian language article (first translated when "Mains_power_plug", as was the former name for the original article was on en:wiki Main page) needs some more information about plug types. I'm going to translate some more in the future. Thank you, --M7it 20:36, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] User talk page

You put a user talk page for a user IP address that hasn't made a contribution since September. How could you memorize it?? Note that the IP address you wrote it on the User talk page of is one of those belonging to me, the Georgia Guy. 66.245.98.219 00:26, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

i found your edit on Talk:National Electrical Code (U.S.) why don't you have an account do you have something to hide (the Georgia Guy rings a bell and its not a good bell to me)
Before I can get a user account, here is a question:

Suppose I get a new computer that uses a different set of IP addresses AFTER I register and I try to log on with the same User name. Will it do anything?? (I just feel that I might get a new computer soon according to possible expectation, sometime several weeks from now.) 66.245.98.219 01:00, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

once you have an account then you can use it from anywhere (as long as you have the username and password of course)
this is the whole point of accounts to allow users to keep a permanent identity which can be contacted gain a reputation etc
an account is needed to become a real part of the community because without them its almost impossible to work out who people are or what they have been like in the past Plugwash 01:12, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That doesn't look like the answer to my question. My question is suppose I log in now, then after a while I get a new computer and I try to log in with the same User Name. Does anything happen?? 66.245.98.219 01:10, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

you will be able to log in fine provided you have the password (which you set when you first create the account) Plugwash 01:12, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] American circuit breaker

I think you wanted pictures of an American circuit breaker. I've taken some photos. Are any what you were looking for? I've put them all here, I can upload the "good" one(s) to Wikipedia. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 00:58, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

I also took some photos of American power strips (surge protectors). They're here. Cheers! --Dante Alighieri | Talk 01:15, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

what im really looking for is replacements for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Breakerpanel-mechroom136rp.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Breakerpanel-mechroom136rp.jpg
im trying to eliminate untagged images from pages on my watchlist Plugwash 08:53, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What's wrong with the photo you're linking too? The photographer pretty explicitly licenses it for use in Wikipedia. Sounds like we could safely tag it GNUFDL. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:32, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

He does however we accept imaegs for "use in wikipedia" that are not gfdl (cc fair use at one time even wikipedia specific was allowed) i have started a discussion on his user page and tried to start one on possiblly unfree images but we haven't had any response from him for a while. in the meantime i want to have possible replacements for his images in the articles i maintain availible.

Btw are there agreements on what the template:CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat tag can be used for this guy has used it one one of his images http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:One-of-three-phase-polemount-transformers-330dundas-d412closeup.jpg but im kind of unsure on the way he has used it?

[edit] Three Phase power change

You state that you don't see how 120 degrees is a maximum phase difference for a 3-phase system. 360/num_phases = max_difference. For 3 phase, 360/3 = 120, therefore 120 degrees is the maximum phase separation in a 3 phase system.

well no its perfectly possible to have 3 phases at say 0O 140O and 300O of course in reality they are always spaced equally making the 120O neither a minimum or a maximum just an exact figure. Plugwash 00:44, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, I agree. Siliconwafer 13:59, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] NZ power strip

You wrote: any chance of a picture of a AU/NZ power strip with a neon indicator to go against the Indication section?

I'm afraid I'll have to say no to that one. None of my power strips have neon indicators (I use ones twith automatic overload cutouts). Also, since I still use a film camera (I scan my pics in for Wikipedia), it'd probably be easier to find someone who has a digital camera. Sorry! [[User:Grutness|Grutness talk ]] 23:59, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Analysis of resistive circuits diagram?

Hi Plugwash,

I noticed you added a comment to Analysis of resistive circuits, "this image needs layout changes but we need to wait for PUI to process it first". Could you explain what that means, please?

I was asked to redo that diagram (see the first comment on my talk page) because of its unknown copyright status. I have a new version, circuit equivalence.png that basically looks the same as the old version. But it would be terribly easy for me to lay it out differently. What do you have in mind? (Please reply here, I am watching.) Dbenbenn 03:16, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Its kind of the wrong shape for the main image on a page. Can you rearange it so the cuircuits are one above the other. Plugwash 12:12, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Done! Dbenbenn 04:11, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] My Bolivia maps

Heh, thanks for having an eagle eye. Robbot copied the commons:Image:Bolivia_departments.png, an older, GFDL version over to Commons when Commons first opened it seems; I have not made a VfD request for it, simply, because I expected to be made an admin over there, and that seems to be coming to pass. When that happens, I'll delete it myself.

commons:Image:Bolivia_departments_named.png, the newer, CC-by-SA version (I assume that if I made the original GFDL, I can change the license on my own work, especially when the former one is being deleted) is the newer version; note the much cleaner lines. I named it differently because I decided to move to a new naming format.

So, basically, the end to this story is, once I get admin over there, I'll go delete the older versions that I and Robbot uploaded there. :) Is there any problem with that that you see? --Golbez 03:58, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Really unused - tell the culprits...

Hi - i would like to suggest a template that tells people to put their images into galleries/categories, so we don't have to sort through thousands of uncategorized images again and again... My proposal is here: commons:Template:Please link images - what do you think? -- G. Gearloose (?!) 17:55, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please have a look at commons:Commons:Village pump#Avoiding unused/uncategorized images, i elaborated on the idea there. -- G. Gearloose (?!) 21:22, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] commons:Image:Heinrich-Friedrich-Karl-Freiherr-vom-und-zum-Stein-1757-1831.jpg

FYI: Heinrich Friedrich Karl, baron von und zum Stein -- G. Gearloose (?!) 19:59, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

the comments i make on commons:commons:really unused are NOT made because i care about the subjects. They are made as hints to others going through the list after i have done all the ones i can. Plugwash 20:04, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moving images from Wikipedia to Wikimedia Commons

Hi. I'm a little confused about how to correctly move images from here to the Commons, without losing information or violating the GFDL. I've started a discussion at Talk:Wikimedia Commons#Moving images to the Commons, and your input would be appreciated. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 19:52, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for all your help in answering two perfectly legitimate questions on Commons FAQ. Simply deleting them is a great contribution nl:Gebruiker:Jcwf

[edit] Image:AF insignia.png

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Image_sleuthing#RAF.2FRN_Sleeve_Insignia.2FRank_Images

[edit] BS1363/BS8110 mess

Thanks for sorting out the mess which someone left there - is there a magical way of undoing such moves while preserving the history etc? Or is this something that an Admin has to do? --Ali@gwc.org.uk 12:20, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

lukilly he had only done moves and no edits so by carefully taking advantage of the move over redirect with no edit history feature i was able to move it back in two steps. However if someone edits the redirect left by a move then the only option is for an admin to deal with it.Plugwash 13:45, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GB18030

Hi - I restored the paragraph you commented out from the GB18030 article and made some clarifications. The point is that if your internal character format is a fixed width 2-byte format, you can't support GB18030, and GB18030 is the first character set like this. I'll watch your talk page for a bit if you want to respond here. -- Rick Block 04:40, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

sure but you can't fully support utf-8 or utf-16 either and im sure those predate GB18030. I would consider GB18030 to be a unicode trasformation format rather than a legacy/national charset as it can represent every unicode code point. Plugwash 16:34, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly the point - GB18030 is BOTH a unicode transformation format and a (legally mandated) national charset. UTF-8, UTF-16, UCS-4 all predate it, but these are only UTFs, not national charsets (and generally not user interface or presentation charsets). You can claim to support UTF-8 on a UCS2 machine as long as the universe of machines you talk to don't use characters with ISO10646 code points outside the BMP. GB18030 is the first character set introducing such machines to the universe. IMO, this is a big deal. It forced Microsoft to switch from "UCS2 inside" to "UTF-16 inside".-- Rick Block 19:00, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

ok i've rewritten the paragraph to give some more detail on exactly why it is significiant. Plugwash 19:48, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About JMCoetzee.jpg

ko:그림:JMCoetzee.jpg's discription page says it copied from fr:Image:JMCoetzee.jpg.

Because I have poor english ,so,I wrote very short. :)--User:gofeel

[edit] Commons discussion about rescaling of PNG images

Hi, could you help me at commons:Commons:Village_pump#How_to_let_MediaWiki_rescale_Image:Stumpf-Chronik-Zug.png. Thanks in advance. --Baikonur 14:33, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commons:Mosque

You reverted from my version where I list each continent with a == header and each country with a ===. This is the logical setup and we should adhere to it because the article will grow even if it does not yet have enough images to fill out each section. At least use <gallery> gren 04:06, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

the way you had arranged the article it was MUCH harder to browse through the images. Lets not screw up what we have now in anticipation of future images. As for the gallery syntax im in two minds about it. on the one hand it makes the pages easier to maintain. On the other hand it gives you no flexibility whatsover (especially when it comes to awkward shaped images have you tried putting a panorama in a gallery?!) and it renders the images incrediblly small. Plugwash 12:27, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commons:Really unused

Hi - I have just asked Andre Engels to create an updated list of really unused images. What do you think? Any suggestions for the next round? -- G. Gearloose (?!) 17:10, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

we really need some kind of maintainance bot there to remove entrys that are no longer required and add new entrys whilst preserving any comments attached to existing entrys and archiving comments associated with entries it removes. Plugwash 19:33, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have a fresh list of really unused images on my box now, nearly 9000 entries. I have put up a test page showing entries up to the letter D here: commons:User:Duesentrieb/really_unused - please have a look and tell me what you think on my commons talk page. I have sorted the images by uploaded, because i feel we should try to get people to clean up their mess. I hope you'll help me with this. If you have an idea how to get more people involved - please tell me. Thanks! -- G. Gearloose (?!) 19:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

nice list just a couple of questions
  • how exactly did you make it
  • do you have any ideas for merging it with the comments on the existing really unused list? Plugwash 10:35, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
ok just taken a closer look and have a couple more questions
  • could you somehow make the markup more friendly to adding comments
  • why are there duplicates in the list.
Hi, thanks for you comments. I made the list from the current (two day old) dumpü, using the following query:
SELECT G.img_name, G.img_user_text
    FROM (((cur AS I LEFT JOIN categorylinks AS L ON I.cur_id = L.cl_from) 
        LEFT JOIN imagelinks AS P ON I.cur_title = P.il_to)
            INNER JOIN image AS G ON I.cur_title = G.img_name)
    WHERE I.cur_namespace = 6 AND L.cl_from IS NULL AND P.il_to IS NULL
    ORDER BY G.img_user_text;
As to merging - I have no idea how to do this, as it would involve parsing wiki-text, which can get quite complicated. Also, the old list was sorted by image title, the new list ist sorted by uploader.
About making the markup more freindly... I don't really know. What would you suggest? I could create it as a simple list insead of a table - maybe that would be OK if I changed the order, taking the name of the uploader to the front... I'll think about it. Anyway, adding a comment to the table is not very hard, just add a new line starting with "|".
About the dublicates - i have no idea. I noticed them too... (aktually, Image:Gordon_Brown_Chancellor_of_the_Exchequer.jpg seems to be the only one), but from how I understand SQL, that should not be possible, unless there are dublicates in the database already. I could eliminate them using "group by", i guess.
Oh, another caveat is that the list contains images that are categorized using a template. Which is good in a way, because it takes care of the copyright categories - but it does give us some false positives, most notably all the weather/temperature maps. But those can be deleted en-block.
Thanks for your suggestions... -- G. Gearloose (?!) 12:52, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
ok it seems you didn't screw up on the charset issue (unlike the person who made the previous list) but we still need to do this in a way that can be easilly worked on by both humans and bots (i visulise a program being run every month or so that updates the list without destorying existing comments)
as for extracting comments from the old list that should be fairly easy the wikitext of that page is EXTREMELY simple.
i'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to database stuff can you please explain exactly how you ran the query and how you processed its output. Plugwash 14:22, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As to processing the existing page - i'll have to think about that some more. Collecting the data using a bot is not a good idea - it takes a long time and puts considerable strain on the server. The bot has to visit every image page, that is more than 50000 pages. Running the database query OTOH took less than a minute. But maybe I can think of a way to merge a new list nicely with an existing, commented one.
As to running the query: I did all that on a local installation of the dump, using the instructions provided on meta:Importing a Wikipedia database dump into MediaWiki. I then ran the query i posted above - the result is a list with two entries per line (image name and user name), separated by a TAB (i.e. a CSV file). I converted the names to wiki-links using perl (perl -pe 's!([\S]+)\s+([\S]+)![[:Image:\1]]\t[[User:\2]] <small>([[User talk:\2|talk]])</small>!'), an then ran all that through http://area23.brightbyte.de/csv2wp.php to create a wiki table (but i could just as well use perl to create a simple list). I hope that clarifies it a little...
BTW: i'm on IRC quite often, usually on #de.wikipedia, #mediawiki and #wikimedia. If you like, we can chat there. -- G. Gearloose (?!) 14:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I have proposed to change Special:Unusedimages for the commons so that it only lists "really" unused images - have a look here: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1849 -- G. Gearloose (?!) 15:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
when i get home i plan to add the following comment to that bug report (i don't have my mediazilla login handy here)
up until now we have been using a normal page generated from the dumps to

acheive this

this had the big advantage over special:unsusedimages of allowing comments to be

made to assist others vieing the page (ie indicating what language descriptions are in or routes of investigation that have already been tried)

how hard would it be to add the ability to add some form of comment alongside

the images on special:unusedimages?

[edit] File Allocation Table

About your edits. Firstly please leave comments on the Talk page instead of inside article content. Anyway, what specifically does the Windows 98 Resource Kit say? Is it possible the person that mentioned Windows NT 64K cluster sizes meant it wasn't compatible with other FAT implementations of that time (pre-1998)? With Windows 98 later adding compatibility when it came out? AlistairMcMillan 00:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

generally i use html comments for quick fixme type comments whilst using the talk page for actual discussion. Sometimes i misjudge it a bit though.
iirc the windows 98 says that windows 98 can read and write 4GB fat16 partitions created by windows NT safely but its tools cannot be used to create or maintain them and there may be errors in space reporting. It does not mention if this is a new feature in windows 98 or not though.

[edit] Rose image on commons

Hi, I'm trying to figure what you is with Image:Rosa Town Crier 1.jpg on commons - "fixed using jpegcrop" is not very informative about what was wrong. (You'll see from the history I accidentally reverted and then re-reverted.) Stan 13:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

the image was refusing to show on the image description page or in articles. I assumed it was currupt (i have had problems with the scaling system in mediawiki not dealing with slightly currupt/dodgy image files before) and i loaded it into jpegcrop and re-saved it without actually cropping (which should re-build the file but not have the quailty loss of a decode and reencode). and the image appeared fine so i went on blindly doing this to any images that were suffering from the issue.
later someone (in #mediawiki on freenode) commented that it may be a server issue of some sort and it was the re-upload that was fixing it and so i tried re-uploading an image that was suffering from the problem and it started displaying.
finally we managed to get the attention of brion and he discovered the problem was caused by incorrect "not found" entries in the image metadata cache put there by a broken maintinace script. He has purged all the image metadata caches but it will still be nessacery to purge pages that were rendered using the incorrect missing images info. Plugwash 21:49, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh what fun... Stan 21:56, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keiki

Hello, Plugwash, I found your notice in Commons:Phalaenopsis:Keiki. The pictures of this article "keiki" were placed on the site of Category:Phalaenopsis. I tried, to give them a new place under Phalaenopsis/sub Keiki.

I suppose, the author of the pictures would show his way, that "Keiki" en:Keiki is a possibilty and kind of reproduction of Phalaenopsis. Just I saw the article es:Keikis in the spanish Wikipedia.

If you want, please give the pictures a good place. Greetings (from Commons). Orchi 08:21, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] special characters in filesnames

hi - I was told by the developers (esp. brion) that we should use such filenames and that we should report all problems with them imidiately. The en:wp will be converted to UTF-8 when we switch to 1.5 - until then filenames with special characters have to be written with HTML-escapes here. -- commons:User:Duesentrieb 22:08, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

i've yet to see a convincing reason why we should use them. They just make life more awkward for everyone and offer no real benifits. given that they are supported by the software though bugs should indeed by reported Plugwash 22:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Brazilian socket types.jpg

Hi Plugwash, you've added a comment in this picture I upload a few weeks ago (commons:Image:Brazilian socket types.jpg) on commons, well, I'm taking the discussion here, ok? Here it is:


Plugs

Sockets
any more information on the socket on the right? it sort of looks like it was designed to take both europlugs and unearthed american plugs but it also looks like it might fit an earthed american plug (which woulld be very dangerous if that was a live contact. Plugwash 13:29, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The right one can take most European and American plugs, but American earthed plugs are normally used on special socket types (I could take a picture for you but I would need to disconnect my computer to do so) and to tell you the truth, and I don't remember how they look like, but I think they look just like American Type B sockets. You can try to plug an American earthed plug, but is not recommended and dangerous. Both accept American Type A (2-pin). They also can accept European Type C (CEE 7/16 and CEE 7/17), but CEE 7/17 is the most common version (look at the plugs image, the right plug), French Type E, German Type F, CEE 7/7. The socket system in Brazil is actually a mix of American and European standards. But those are the types of plugs that most sockets can handle here in Brazil - not necessarily the types that Brazilian electronics factories add to their plugs. American Type A and CEE 7/17 are the ones they add in Brazilian products. But the computer industry uses mostly American Type B earthed plugs. I think that's it! Sorry for taking so long to answer you. --Ikescs 23:47, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
the plug on the right (in the plugs image) looks kind of like a CEE 7/16 (in terms of body shape) but its got solid pins. Is it some brazil specific variant and is it defined in any standard? Plugwash 21:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] commons:Image:SusoR.jpg

now it is OK.--Rafaelji 17:39, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

cheers Plugwash 21:55, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Non-free images

Hi Plugwash. Saw your note in Jimbo's talk page.

There are many fair-use images where it is not practicable to get a free image. These can be roughly divided into three categories:

  • Photos where there is no public access to the subject.
  • Photos of historical events where a copyright-free image cannot be found.
  • Photos whose purpose is to portray copyrighted creative works, such as logos or the covers of magazines, LPs, CDs, and other media.

Many non-free images have a fair use rationale, and can be saved, at least for the time being.

Those that do not are generally those of a generic, illustrative nature. As such, the large and growing body of free images can be utilized to find replacements, or the Wikiphotographers can be turned loose.

I expect that after a round or two of deleting non-free images, there will be a crackdown on fair use images. That will be good. At this point in the project, if there is the possibility of getting a free image, we should be using that, and in the interim are better off without an image than with one that hinders redistribution.

When the free images are reviewed, ultimately, I believe that the goal will be to remove those images that are likely to no longer be free use in commercialized content.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Let's rebel against the system! Screw copyright, lawyers, and all that other beaurocratic crap! We can move the servers to China, where they don't have copyright. → JarlaxleArtemis 00:34, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright info for Image:BRD Cluj small.gif

Thanks for checking into that on the Romanian wiki. Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 07:11, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] about zh:塔

thank you for your advic in the zh:塔。but zh:塔 does not noly include en:pagoda,tower and stupa. the links you added is all about stupa,I have add them to zh:窣堵坡 which is stupa in Chinese. --Smartneddy 03:59, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

cheers i just updated the stupa articles on the other wikipedias to point at zh:窣堵坡 i still think its odd to have multiple interwikis from the same page to the same target wikipedia though. Plugwash 11:39, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] whitespace is good

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhitespaceIsGood :-) - Omegatron 21:13, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

hehe some whitespace isn't a problem but in some articles it gets kinda excessive. especially when trying to control a large number of images/tables around a small amount of body text (as so often seems to happen the raw facts are easy to get brilliant prose it not ;) ) are there any particular articles where you think my whitespace removal was excessive? Plugwash 21:17, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oh I didn't realize you were doing it to lots of articles. See my changes to Binary prefix. Yes, of course whitespace like this






is bad. :-) I don't understand why it even allows that. Didn't it used to collapse multiple blank lines into one? - Omegatron 21:27, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
that kind of whitespace is easy to fix. The problem is balancing the issue of keeping images with the correct sections with the issue of keeping whitespace in the body text to a reasonable level especially with wider screens.

[edit] fusebox

Hi. I've noticed that you've identified my flat's fusebox! Image:FuseBoxforWikipedia.jpg. Thanks. I'll retake it as it's blury. I also have some fuse wire that i'll take as well. Glad it was useful. Secretlondon 07:00, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

yup that is most definately a wylex standard seems a little on the large side for a flat mind you Plugwash 12:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC).


[edit] Dog breed infoboxes

Thanks for your effort in cleaning up the infoboxes, but everyone seems to have his/her/its own idea of what "cleaned up" is. The dog breeds project has recently agreed to the adjusted format at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dog_breeds#Breed-table_template (agreement by lack of disagreement, you know how that goes... and used on only a couple of tables so far), so if you're inclined to do more cleanup, that would be the template to use. Or propose changes on the project talk page for feedback. Just FYI. Elf | Talk 22:08, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hmm that box looks more or less like what i was doing. i will admit that i think that white boarders round images in tables look pretty shitty and i also notice you did the caption in full size text (using small text is kinda a habit i picked up doing taxoboxes). either is far nicer than the horrible mess of a thumbnain box inside a table that was there before ;) Plugwash 22:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I always liked the thumbnails because (a) there was an obvious icon that people can click to get an enlargement--without a thumbnail, it's not obvious to the casual observer that they can click the image. And (b) I liked the way the captions appeared; "small" is way too small (I can't read small text half the time: I have to do Edit this page to see what the text is) and IMHO the caption format in the current template on the project page isn't quite so obviously a caption. But I have no suggestions on a better fmt for the caption and I have no suggestions on removing the white space around the image, which would be fine by me & I suspect no one else will care about that part. Elf | Talk 22:42, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC) "

[edit] Welcome

On your Dutch userpage was just a welcome message :) Waerth 01:56, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pi

Has there been enough talk about the article's title for there to be a poll for how it should be titled?? Georgia guy 28 June 2005 21:36 (UTC)

Well we can't use the lower case π on its own as an article title due to uppercasing. In any case surely the article title should be the english name of a symbol not the symbol itself. I was worried this kind of issue would happen as people got carried away with the newfound freedom brought by utf-8. Plugwash 28 June 2005 21:39 (UTC)

[edit] Niteroi Flag.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Niteroi Flag.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in its not being deleted. Thank you. —MetsBot 18:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC) Zscout370 (Sound Off) 30 June 2005 04:38 (UTC)


[edit] an idea

heres a novel idea, try it some time, how about instead of DELETING everything i say, try modifying it a little.?? Gabrielsimon 6 July 2005 23:55 (UTC)

kind of a sneaky trick of yours thats already seen partial success. make additions in a way that you know is unacceptable in the hope of getting them kept in a toned down way. However it seems that since the first round the editors have seen through it and aren't letting you get any more in even converted to a gaurded form. the page was protected just after my revert so you won't be doing it again. Plugwash 7 July 2005 00:07 (UTC)

no, i just do not bleieve your wholeasale deletions are warrented. everyone around here seems to view my honest attempts at adding to this place with either distain or disrespect, yourself included. frankly im getting tired of it. Gabrielsimon 7 July 2005 00:09 (UTC)

[edit] e-mail intro

Hi - I don't think the distinction is so much closed (vs. open?), but rather e-mail as a workgroup/enterprise application vs. Internet e-mail. Pretty much every enterprise system has an internet connector, so in that sense they're all "open". I've been thinking about trying to push this article to feature status, and noticed it exclusively focuses on the internet e-mail side of things. I've been looking for a suitable source for historical info about workgroup/enterprise apps - do you happen to know of any? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:54, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Heya

Thanks Plugwash - the Microsoft Data Access Components table should look somewhat like this table, though in the security issues MS02-06 should span 2.6, 2.6 SP1 and 2.6 SP2. - Ta bu shi da yu 00:25, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

looks like someone else already fixed it. tables using rowspan can certainly be quite a pain to edit though. Plugwash 00:39, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The 'U' in UTF

i've NEVER seen it written as UCS transformation format

It wasn't my edit you were commenting on, but thought I'd respond just the same… The 'U' in UTF most certainly did stand for UCS exclusively until very recently. At some point in between the publication of Unicode 3.0 and Unicode 4.0 (you'll have to do some digging to find out when exactly), The Unicode Standard went from saying that UTF means UCS Transformation format [1] to saying that it means Unicode or UCS Transformation Format. It's possible that ISO/IEC 10646 has made this concession too, but I don't know; you'll have to check.

"UCS transformation format" is mentioned twice in RFC 3629 / STD 63, and multiple times in the older versions: RFC 2279 and RFC 2044. These RFCs are essentially just the IETF's stamp of approval on the original UTF-8 spec, ISO/IEC 10646 (UCS) amendment 2 [2], which naturally makes no mention of Unicode at all. Given that the RFCs only say "UCS transformation format" and given that Google reports a roughly equal number of citations of "ucs transformation format" and "unicode transformation format", it seems unlikely that you've really only seen it written the latter way.

Interestingly, The Unicode Standard currently defines UTF in the glossary as "An ambiguous synonym for either Unicode encoding form or Unicode encoding scheme The latter terms are now preferred." which almost makes it sound like UTF is deprecated, regardless of what the U stands for [3]).

So I believe you should, at the very least, make UCS Transformation Format a redirect to Unicode Transformation Format, and consider adding some detail to that article to explain the history of the term. — mjb 00:22, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

i've only skim read the utf-8 rfc searching for particular points to clarify. I find it amazing how much bullshit rfc writers can wrap something as simple as UTF-8 in. How do they ever expect people to implement things from them when there is so much BS arround the actual important information? I don't ever remember seeing it written as UCS transformation format but i haven't been looking for it explicitly either. I do admit that i am very skeptical of most anon edits as i find anons are generally hard if not impossible to contact for justification so with anons if it looks dubious i tend to just revert. Plugwash 00:34, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
Agreed on all points :) — mjb 01:09, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Answer

I answered your questions at User talk:Robbot. - Andre Engels 09:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Type-E Electric plug.jpg

With "common signs" I think the match is: CC-NC-SA. fr:user_talk:DC2#Image:Type-E_Electric_plug.jpg

[edit] Polarized

I think Wiki is supposed to be (try to become) a reference, and this is to become silly: the problem for me with polarized is not just the liking or not of it. I do think it's a mistake. Maybe currently said by people, but still an electrical mistake ! If you say in English "polarized" do not means a polarity bases (+/-) then ok, I have nothing to answer. But I think it has a polarity signification and, then, it's wrong and we must change the way of saying. So does polarity means polarity in English ? The "locating" is used technical vocabulary.

Polarised is the normal term and i can't think of anything that is both consise and lacks issues of its own. Locating pin to me at least implies a pin specifically for polarisation, locating neutral sounds like unclear gibberish. The use of the term is explained in the earlier sections of the article i think its better to just use the normal term after that rather than trying to re-explain it briefly again and again. Plugwash 15:43, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
btw you seem to have been educated that connection polarity doesn't matter in AC systems. Whilst it is true that it won't stop a single phase AC system functioning, it may well be important to correct operation of fuses and breakers in the event of a fault to earth and also to reduce the chance of touching live with some designs of edison screw lampholder. In both the UK and the USA maintaining correct polarity is considered very important in building wiring, from the sounds of some comments i've seen this is not the case in france. Plugwash 16:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
No, what I "have been educated" is the word "polarité" only concerns "+/-" question, never anything else (no L/N question). It's only a language issue, not electricity learning. Of course L and N means something. But since no one can guaranty Neutral is at ground potential, in security we do treat it as if it was live (at the user's level; plug and after plugs. We do have less and less fuses and breakers must cut both pins). That's what I said. Of course, before the plug, electricians do wire Live and Neutral the proper way (RCD, breakers). Whatever. I'm very surprise the English language do not make difference between the shape (symetrical or not) of the plug and the current (physics) inside. As you do, we do learn about N and L and also about AC and DC. Then, for us, we can not use the word "polarity" with AC ! And when I open my english dictionnary the translation of "polarized" is only our french "polarisé" word (I may assume the linguist do not know about electricty and technical details). What about data ? How do you call the difference between an output and an input pin ? (is it still called "polarization" in English ?) And then, still learning English, what is the difference to you between "location pin" and "polarized" if any ?
I read your comment, so I had not changed in the article the "polarised" word. But please I ask you to understand your article is the source taken in other countries before translation and this word may really brings more misunderstandings than you seem to think. We may call that word a "false friend". But since the article is big, one may read the end before the beginning: since I added only non-visible comment, I think it's better to keep it each time inside. This will make no difference to you but will to me and maybe some others. Thanks.

[edit] Non-compliant browsers

Cynical’s browser screwed up a page today.[4] Is the fix live yet or did it slip through the net? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 16:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

i've just tested with firefoxes user agent switcher and the fix is indeed live. lemme discuss this with him. Plugwash 17:44, 1 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Resistance of a conductor

Can you explain why you are concerned about completely 'covering the ends' of a hypothetical resistance before measuring it with a hypothetical ohm meter? We are not talking about real resistors here but about the concept of resistance so the method of measurement really does not come into it. Would you like to reconsider your edit? RegardsLight current 04:15, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

the size shape and position of the connections with an object affect the resistance. That simple forumulae is only valid if the connections completely cover the ends and nothing else so that the current flow is evenly distributed.Plugwash 11:43, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
THe shape and size etc of the connections to an object WILL affect the measured reading with an ohm meter, BUT we are not talking about a practical measurement here where measurement techniques are important. The method of measurement does not, and cannot alter the intrinsic resistance or the object. This article is about the intrinsic property called 'resistance' not about how you do the measurement. Your comments would be better suited on another page dealing with practical resistance/ conducatance measurement techniques. Would you please like to reconsider your edit in light af the above??Light current 16:32, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
an object doesn't have an "intrinsic resistance" the material has a resistivity but the resistance depends entirely on the path through the object Plugwash 17:02, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Character sets

Remember that Wiki is an encyclopedia of everything, not just of computing. So, for most people, the character set of a language is a list of the characters it uses, not of their binary representations. So I've suffixed "(computing)" to your article on Western Latin Character Sets. --Red King 20:27, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] American Standard Code for Unformation Interchange (or US ASCII, as Canadians like to say)

It's not worth arguing about in Western Latin Character Sets (computing), but the original "american english" was shorthand for "spanish-american english". Although white americans casually ignore accents in spanish place names, they seem to accept the need for ñ rather than substitute ny. I suppose 7-bit ASCII is a bit of an historical curiousity nowadays. Curiously, I've come across articles in places that should know better, that say "ASCII" when they obviously mean ISO Latin-1. --Red King 13:04, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure i'd call US-ASCII a historical curiosity, its STILL the only thing that is constant accross basically every platform and localisation. Sure almost everything uses some form of extention but without knowing what extention your target will be using you can only assume US-ASCII.
Also you say places say ASCII when they mean ISO-8859-1 (ISO Latin 1) but i think the reality is more like people say ASCII and ISO-8859-1 when they really mean WINDOWS-1252 ;) Plugwash 14:47, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keyboards with AltGr

US keyboards just have two Alt keys. They are popular in Holland, apparently - and also with programmers in some Continental countries because some localisations replace the {}#~ keys with a pre-accented characters. --Red King 19:48, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

right but that note was also marked against the uk section..... Plugwash 20:23, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] HTML entities to Unicode conversion bot

I have written this bot (actually, I thought of the idea independently and only just now saw the post at Wikipedia:Bot requests#HTML Entities to Unicode conversion). See User:Curpsbot-unicodify. -- Curps 09:38, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Louis Epstein and Lynx

Louis Epstein’s browser is still causing problems. [5] There is some information about Lynx at meta:Browser issues with MediaWiki#Character_encoding, and in German at de:Wikipedia:Browser-FAQ#Lynx. It should be pointed out to him that he doesn’t have to be fed entities, which he hates, if he does this; I don’t think he’ll listen to me. While I am loath to apply technical solutions to a social problem (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/12.144.5.2) and his contributions have to be edited anyway, most notoriously for his refusal to put spaces after punctuation, this needs some attention. Susvolans ⇔ 12:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

i need to do some research on if there is any way to detect if lynx is in utf-8 mode. if not then i'm afraid its likely it will need to be added to the bad browsers list. Plugwash 16:23, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reuploaded image of Capercaillie on commons

Hi. I reuploaded the Image:Black grouse01.jpg with a new name which is Image:Capercaillie Lomvi 2004.jpg as you requested. I hope this filename is now correct. If you want to respond, you can do so here and I will monitor your page. Fred-Chess 13:37, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commons categories

Why did you uncategorize Image:ALC orig.png, etc.? It needs to be in one of them. — Omegatron 14:53, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

my understanding of mixed system was that we were useing categories and pages interchangablly depending on what was there already and/or our level of laziness ;), not createing them to duplicate each other. Sorry i forgot to fill in an edit reason for those edits though. Plugwash 16:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
My understanding of mixed system was:
  1. Use both categories and articles until the software merges them into the same thing.
  2. Don't change from one to the other until then
I don't have any problem with you removing it from category:diagrams to unclutter, but you've orphaned the image; it's not in any category now. Should probably stay in the audio or sound one (though I think those two need to be merged/split.) — Omegatron 18:28, September 7, 2005 (UTC)
the official proposal is "Images can be both on normal pages and in categories; some can be both, but only images that are neither are considered 'defective'.". I read that as it being acceptable to move an image from overpopulated categories to pages in those categories if its a page rather than a subcategory that exists for the topic in question or i'm creating a new one. Plugwash 18:38, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Miskin's browser

Hi,

His browser is introducing some Unicode corruption. See for instance [6]. I've left a note on his talk page, can you get in touch with him as soon as possible to find out what his browser is and adjust the Mediawiki software accordingly? Thanks. -- Curps 16:18, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Interestingly, his browser (whatever it is) is sending numeric character references (&<number>;) instead of Unicode for creating new characters, and corrupting the already existing ones. See the Saint Cyril edit above. -- Curps 16:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Entities for new characters are probablly just the way the user is using his browser/thinks things should be done. Especially if the charinsert box isn't availible to him because of his browser setup. The concern is what his browser is doing to existing unicode text. Plugwash 21:33, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] FAT

moved to talk:file allocation table#Infobox comments

[edit] Button: Subset of Switch?

Hi there,

I wandered across Button (control) today, and I thought it was pretty short. Some people seem to consider buttons a subset of switches, so I thought maybe they could be merged. You seem to have been active on the Switch article so I thought I'd see what you think: Are pushbuttons a subset of switches?

Cheers.

Mike1024 (talk/contribs) 16:11, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

While most modern buttons do indeed activate a momentry electrical switch its perfectly possible to have a button that mechanically does something that doesn't involve switching at all. For example some types of bell have a button that mechanically causes them to ring or typewriter keys. That article could sure as hell do with a rewrite though.

[edit] A proposed workaround for Arabic/Hebrew bidirectional issues

Please see Village pump (technical)#Arabic.2FHebrew: a proposed solution to Unicode bidirectional algorithm woes in the text editor

In a nutshell, Unicode left-to-right mark can be simulated with an HTML comment of the form <!--L--> (where L is a single Latin letter), and a Unicode right-to-left mark can be simulated with an HTML comment of the form <!--A--> (where A is a single Arabic or Hebrew letter).

-- Curps 11:59, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Miskin; also, templates for Unicode charts

Hi,

Two things:

  1. Miskin (talk • contribs) has once again made some Unicode-garbling edits with his non-standard browser, and I've sent him another request to get in touch with you.
  2. I've announced the Unicode chart templates used at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft) at Village pump (technical)#Unicode chart templates.

-- Curps 00:13, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


User:Miskin reports that his browser string was

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

which doesn't seem to make sense as far as explaining the Unicode-garbling damage. He said it's a "specific browser in a public place"... perhaps an Internet cafe or kiosk that's spoofing. I'm not sure how that can be handled. -- Curps 12:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

its probablly some kind of spyware doing it or a browser spoofing, like with the issue of people copypasting to broken text editors all we can really do is speak to the users in question and/or provide a method to manually enable safe mode editing. Plugwash 13:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

There's also another anon user who is causing the same kind of Unicode garbling: 152.3.40.9 (talk • contribs), see edits to Pete Sampras. ARIN shows that this is a Duke University IP. I have left messages on his talk page, but so far no response. I really hope we can pin this down. I kind of doubt this is spyware. -- Curps 18:59, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Even if we can pin it down it doesn't help much unless we can identify it by user agent string or similar. I can quite easilly see how badly written spyware could garble unicode. Do you know of any tools for turning real unicode text in the clipboard into a sequence of code points to see if that gives us any clues as to what is going on? Plugwash 19:10, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by that last sentence, can you give more detail? -- Curps 07:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
you mean http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pete_Sampras&diff=prev&oldid=23361535, yes its strange that its doing the exact same garbling, also i've noticed when its changing a character it always seems to change it to something relatively close in code point terms. Maybe we should contact the university network admins and find out if this is some kind of public terminal and if so what its running Plugwash 19:53, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
I wasn't able to get any reply from the anon IP user, he might have moved on to a different IP. I'd rather get an answer from a user than try to contact network administrators. In one of the earlier garblings, I think I noticed an illegal Unicode character (the reserved character that would correspond to a Greek capital sigma-final). I might download a database dump at some point and look for articles containing reserved literal Unicode characters. I wonder if possibly some users are using a non-Unicode-compliant text editor to make edits instead of the browser's edit window. -- Curps 07:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conversation moved

I moved your question from User:Mjb/Character_encoding to User talk:Mjb, and answered it there. — mjb 22:24, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Boolean algebra -> Boolean logic

Hi. I saw your comments on the need to write a more basic version of the material under Boolean algebra. I'm in the process of writing just such an article, which is currently under Boolean logic. Would you care to take a look and let me know what else you think is needed to make in understandable by non-PhDs ? StuRat 19:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sandbox vandalism demo

Hi Plugwash, just wanted to thank you for your quick response to my revert demo request. Your immediate reversion was duly noted! --Deathphoenix 18:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re:bandwith theft

I used my judgement since as well as the keep votes and the redirect votes there were several votes to merge and at least one to disambig. the page and I figured that the way I closed it the remaining content could be easily merged if needed with the already placed redirect, speaking of which I'll add a note to talk:Inline linking regarding that. Jtkiefer T | @ | C ----- 23:27, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Drini text-mode browser garbles Unicode

See User talk:Drini#Your signature: why not use literal Unicode characters. I've asked him to check the browser string and get in touch with you.

By the way, I keep notifying you because I assume you're the guy who can add a new browser string to the Mediawiki software... are you? If not, who should I be bothering instead? -- Curps 07:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Would it be technically possible to detect non-Unicode-safeness at login time, by adding a small edit window pre-populated with Unicode characters to the login screen? Maybe that field could even have "hidden" set. If the Unicode characters come back garbled, then a non-Unicode-safe flag could be set as a cookie (or even better, this information could be incorporated as part of the wpEditToken). -- Curps 18:55, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Another Unicode-garbling edit: [7] I'm getting worried. Is this problem really solved? -- Curps 19:08, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah one problem is i'm not that experianced with the mediawiki codebase, I wan't to add an option to allow users to force safe mode editing on and off but SpecialPreferences.php is pretty damn horrid. Plugwash 19:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, could we quickly, maybe even urgently, just add Lynx to the browser list regardless. I'm worried that undetected Unicode-garbling edits are happening and undoing each one is very, very time-consuming if other editors have made further changes without noticing. -- Curps 19:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Good edit

I like that improvement to the guidelines. [8] 205.217.105.2 18:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Changeover push button switch

I've just noticed your addition: "Changeover push button switches do exist but are even less common"

What exactly do you mean by "changeover push button switches"? -- Smjg 15:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I mean what i say, a pushbutton switch with changeover contacts. What part of that do you have trouble understanding? Plugwash 18:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Oops ... should've read the article and thought a bit more. So it's a switch that makes one contact when released and another contact when pressed. -- Smjg 18:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Please stop messing

Please stop messing up my edits. If you think something needs to be cleaned up, then do so consistently, not one exception here and one there. And please do NOT revert to earlier incorrect versions. You've done so a number of times now. Sorry, but I find that disruptive and upsetting. User:Keka, 2005-10-01.

and i find it rather disruptive when a newbie walks in and starts major restructuring and creation of very redundant articles without afcaict mentioning it anywhere. I admit that i haven't had chance to chase down and check out your other edits yet though i will try to do so soon. In that particular case Plugwash 22:02, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
To begin with, they are not redundant. And yes, I do know what I'm writing about. Since you've been reverting corrections I've made, you apparently do not. Sorry for being harsh, but how else am I to encourage you to stop reverting back to erroneous versions. It's quite annoying to have to rerevert your uninformed reversions.

[edit] XHTML

Regarding a revert of yours, perhaps you would like to check the results of the validation of a page that claims to be XHTML and uses <br> instead of <br />. After you see that, may I revert the page back? Or have I mistaken your intention? --logixoul 17:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

yes in html afaict either <br> or <br/> are acceptable (though in practice everyone uses br) but in xhtml only <br/> is allowed (and the w3c validator agrees). That would correspond with xml being a more restrictive subset as the article currently says. Plugwash 18:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
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