User talk:52 Pickup/Archive 2006

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Hello 52 Pickup! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. If you decide that you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some recommended guidelines to facilitate your involvement. Happy Editing! GilliamJF 11:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
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Template talk:Infobox Historical State

I've made a few suggestions over there. I advised, for continuity's sake, that the discussion stay over there. Hopefully, you have placed that on your watch list. —MJCdetroit 17:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"Iron Kingdom"

Hi 52 Pickup. FYI, you might be interested in a new book on Prussia: "Iron Kingdom," by Christopher Clark. Explains much in terms of how politics and geography were related.

For a review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/books/27grim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

PS: Is it a '52 Chevy pickup?

Sca 14:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't 52 Pickup the "game" of cards in which the deck is thrown into the air and allowed to fall? Someone then has to pick up the scattered playing cards.Lestrade 16:30, 2 November 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
Yep, that's the one: see 52 Pickup. It's always amazing that people still fall for that - 52 Pickup 16:37, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi there. Thanks for letting me know about this book. Definitely worth looking into.
No Chevy here, I'm afraid. My user name refers more to my canny card-playing ability — 52 Pickup 15:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Was just kidding about the Chevy. Sca 02:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I guess I've been away from home for so long that it has become 2nd nature to assume that anyone who speaks with you is being purely literal :) I think I need to go home for a holiday... - 52 Pickup 06:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the recommendation, Sca; I'll pick it up from Amazon. 52 Pickup, I can assist in working on expanding the info on Prussia. Olessi 18:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. The project page is a little bare at the moment, so feel free to use it as a central place to throw the articles around. - 52 Pickup 06:48, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Prussian provinces

I can understand your wishing to keep this subproject. However, if it were maintained as a separate project, it might still have the same problems it has before. If I might make a suggestion, you might consider adding one or more task forces to your parent project. Particularly with matters which are purely historical, I think we both hope that the projects would become inactive when the bulk of the work is concluded, and if they are work groups or task forces of your main project you are pretty much free to "absorb" them back into the parent project without even having to consult anyone else. I think you might prefer that option and hope that you at least consider it. My thanks and apologies for taking up your time like this. Badbilltucker 16:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Good point. I have taken your advice and reincorporated the Province project into the main project. The Provinces project can now be deleted. Now for a silly newbie question: is it possible to get the now-deleted other projects (Regierungsbezirke and Kreise) back temporarily? I misplaced my copies of the text from those projects and so I cannot reincorporate those projects any more. Thanks in advance - 52 Pickup 17:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I hate to say I honestly don't know. I tend to think the answer is "no", but you'd probably have to ask one of the admins or others who are in a position to know. Maybe Xoloz, who seems to do most of the closings, would know. Badbilltucker 17:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
No worries. I just found an old copy of the pages somewhere on my hard-drive so there's no problem now. Thanks anyway - 52 Pickup 05:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Minor map error

You are doing a nice job organizing these pages, but I noticed that your maps of 1867-1919 Prussia contain a small error. The island of Als (located on the eastern coast of Schleswig) is not coloured as Prussian, but it was part of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein from 1867 to 1920 (when it was reunited with Denmark). See e.g. Image:Map-Prussia-RhineProvince.png and Image:Map-DR-Prussia.png. I have fixed it on Image:Map-Prussia-SchleswigHolstein.png. Good luck with the Prussian material. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 21:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I completely missed that one. After having another look, I also missed colouring in the East Frisian Islands as part of Hanover (and therefore part of Prussia after the 1860s). I'll have that all taken care of in a couple of days. - 52 Pickup 17:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Former Country

Wonderful work! —Nightstallion (?) 15:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Domino theory also deserves some of the credit for integrating a heap of other handy features - 52 Pickup 15:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Prussia (region)

Hey, 52 Pickup (52P for short?). Could you offer your opinion at Talk:Prussia (region)#Province? about my suggestion for changing the article's content? Olessi 17:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Former German colonies

This category seems to duplicate Category:German colonies. Perhaps it should just be deleted (or the category renamed per WP:CFD). Happy editing, Kusma (討論) 12:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Which category would you keep? "Former German colonies" appears to be more accurate. If there were any German colonies today, then "German colonies" would be appropriate. What do you think? - 52 Pickup 20:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd keep "German colonies" because I'm lazy and because I know that Germany has no colonies any more so it must mean "former colonies", but I am not good at and not very interested in categorization, so you might want to ask someone else for help. If a rename is proposed via WP:CFD, you don't have to recategorize the pages by hand, because a bot will do it. Kusma (討論) 17:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of other "Former xxxx categories" that need to be cleared up, so I'm not sure what the final result will be, but I see that the category "British colonies" has been changed to "Former British colonies" - 52 Pickup 17:28, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


Federated Malay States

Hi, how do I asked for an assessment for the former countries project? Managed to update the article on FMS, just want to see where the article stands now and how much more I should put in it. Thanks!


--Bukhrin 18:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Drafts/Grand Duchy of Frankfurt

I placed : in front of categories in the draft. This way the draft page won't show up in category listings. Pavel Vozenilek 04:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I completely forgot about fixing that up. - 52 Pickup 21:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

About the infobox again

Hello. I approached User:Domino theory and asked him about some of his edits, but he seems to be rather unpleasant person to talk to, so I thought you might explain to me why is he so pissed at me. I'd like you to take a look at what I wrote here: [1] and do what he should have done: tell me what did I do wrong... And, yes, of course I read through Template_talk:Infobox_Former_Country#Usage. :-) --Dijxtra 14:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

First off, thanks for introducing the infobox to these and other entries. After having a look at these two articles, I can see where the problems are. Many of them concern the categories that the infobox supports (see list of supported categories). Considering the Independent State of Croatia article:
  • common_name is a very important variable, and the correct entry here is "Croatia". This variable is not meant to be historically factual, it is purely a supporting variable for the infobox (it is never visible) and has a number of important uses:
  1. The entries discussing the flag and coat of arms of this state are "Flag/Coat of arms of Croatia", which discuss the history of the flag/heraldry of Croatia over its history. By saying "common_name=Croatia", the text underneath automatically links to these entries. By saying "common_name=Independent State of Croatia", the text links to simply "Flag" and "Coat of arms" because there is no "Flag/Coat of arms of (the) Independent State of Croatia" article.
  2. The common_name variable determines how the entry is indexed within the categories that the infobox generates. Independent State of Croatia should be indexed under C (Croatia, Independent State of), not I. Setting "common_name=Croatia" solves this problem.
  • empire - This is a tricky one in this case. Again, the value given here is important in determining what categories to place the article. Perhaps instead of saying "Germany" or "Italy" for this entry, perhaps something like "Axis" is needed (as correctly displayed in status_text) - BUT at the moment there is no category set up to support this. Domino theory is the main one responsible for setting up new categories, so I imagine that he has a good reason for saying "Germany" in this case. Even though Italy is more historically correct as you say, I would ask that you give Domino theory the benefit of the doubt and leave "Germany" as is for the moment.
  • country - This variable is not as powerful as the others. Within the usage of it that is in place at the moment, it is better to simply give one country: the one that presently covers most of the territory involved.
  • Invasion of Yugoslavia - it is not necessary to say [[Invasion of Yugoslavia]] with the brackets since it will automatically link to the article. The only reason I can think of why [[Invasion of Yugoslavia|Invasion]] is better is that it is shorter. At lower resolutions, longer text may make the infobox look a bit messy with longer text. But personally, I would have gone with the full version: "Invasion of Yugoslavia".
  • "10 April" or "April 10"? - I'm surprised that this was disputed. By choosing the right settings under *"Date and time" in "my Preferences", it will always show the format you want to see, since these dates are set to be wikilinked. To me, no matter which one is chosen, I see "10 April".
Looking at the "State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs" entry, a lot of what I have said above applies here too, but there are some extra points:
  • era= End of World War I - if the entry for era does not match any in the list here, the entry is listed in the infobox's maintenance category. Saying "era=World War I" does not apply to just states during the war, but short-lived ones that arose in the war's aftermath. So "World War I" is the correct value here.
  • s1=Kingdom of ?? - Another tricky one. At the moment, "Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs" is a redirect to "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" but I would tend to link to the earlier name as you have done. Then, within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia article, state the name change as an intermediate event (eg. event1)
  • Leader/deputy titles - the displayed title should be as short as possible (eg. King, Emperor, President, Chairman, Prime Minister), linking to the relevant article if one exists. If more needs to be said to explain the situation, footnotes are the best way to so this rather than a lengthy title.

The text in the Usage section is still rather limited and does not explicitly say a lot of what I have just said. I'm working on a more complete set of instructions. I hope this all helps. - 52 Pickup 21:36, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

About the Former subdiv infobox

Re: Template:Infobox Former Subdivision

Hey, Hi again. I was just wondering if u have any page that is currently using this template? Cause I found some that used the Template:Infobox Historical Province (for east prussia) and the article I want to start is not exactly about a province (it's a state in a former federation). Thanks.

--Bukhrin 07:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


Infobox Former Subdivision

Hi again

Nice work on this template. It looks very nice, but could I possibly persuade you to check a bit of the code again? I just noticed that the page on Schleswig-Holstein ignores four of the five links to the "successor states", but I don't know why. Happy editing. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 20:30, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I checked a bit further. It looks like the template hides these entries if the relevant article pages don't already exist. I'm not sure if this was your intention or not. Regards. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 22:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Fine by me. When I get the time to create a few stub articles on the old counties, I'll update the box accordingly. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 09:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Ping!

 

Template formatting question

Hello 52,
Do you know how to make/force images to wrap in an infobox? There has to be a way and I sure that it is simple, so I was hoping a fresh set of eyes could help. I am working a problem for someone for the city infobox where as some cities have different types of emblems (coat of arms, flag...) and need to be displayed as such. Long story short—I am thinking that if someone enters all four parameters (which is unlikly but could happen) that all four images will not show up in a line thereby widening the infobox. I would like to have it so that there are two images then it wraps and the other two are below them. My template sandbox is here and the example is displayed here. Like I said, I figure a fresh set of eyes would be great. Let me know what you think? Thanks. —MJCdetroit 01:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

THANKS, looks better. Since you replied over on my talk page, I have continued the discussion over there. —MJCdetroit 14:14, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

History maps

Hi, thanks about the maps. nice compliment coming from you - your german state maps are amazing!. by the way you might want to load them onto the commons so they can be used in other language wikipedias as well

sorry I dont have any higher resolution versions..a couple of them came from maps already on wp, the rest were made just from Image:BlankMap-World.png. I would like to make more of these blank maps, perhaps I will use a higher resolution map in future. Cheers, --Astrokey44 23:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

You could still put them on the commons. Size is probably less of an issue there than it is here anyway - I have seen 10MB files there.
I think it is better to show Africa on its own for those location maps - the new image is greatly improved over the old one. By the way if you notice anything wrong with the blank maps - especially the 19th century ones it would be good to point it out. Borders are shown differently in different atlases, especially the further back you go, so I am not entirely sure of some of them. --Astrokey44 13:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Image:Map-AustroPrussianWar-annexed.svg

Hi 52 Pickup. I uploaded this map and this map to the commons, too. I hope you don't mind. Thanks. Bonás 23:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I will comply. Bonás 13:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Extra spaces in the infobox city template

Hello 52,

We are having a minor problem with the Template:Infobox City and I was wondering if you could give it a look. Ligulem and Rick Block are also looking at it. I detailed the problem on my talk page and have some sandboxes set-up too. For the sake of a continous discussion could you please reply over there. Thanks, —MJCdetroit 13:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

So what do you think? Move it to production? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:13, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Border on pre_flag - Infobox former country

Hullo, The new infobox is cool yeh. But I reckon it'd be nice if you can set borders for the preceding/succeeding entities flags, cause it looks all jumbled up there, what with the flags that have whites stripes at the tops and bottoms. Thanks

--Bukhrin 14:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Representative feature

Cool! exactly what I was looking for as the title of the colony leaders, as they changed over the years. However, if you'd noticed I put the status in Portuguese Malacca as Protectorate, this was because when I put 'colony' there the box just put a blank instead. Dutch Malacca is also having the same problem, to date I left it as Protectorate. Hope you can help me with that. And for government_type is it possible to just put it as colony ? Cheers

--Bukhrin 16:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks man. It works. --Bukhrin 08:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Duchy of Parma

I added the template to Duchy of Parma, but something went wrong as for the government type. Also, as more than one flag existed, is there a possibilty to show some of them? Bye. --Attilios 10:46, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

hoysala

While their history starts from 950, it becomes much clearer to historians from 1026 from when more and more info becomes available. I have no problem adding other earlier kings, except not much is known about them as they were more tribal chieftains than kings. Also, you removed the image from the box. Keeping it inside was a requirement of a reviewer. thanks.Dineshkannambadi 19:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I updated the box to show start of kingdom from 1026. Now even the "first records" has changed to 1026 (but should be 950). Can you please help correct this problem.thanks.Dineshkannambadi 20:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Never mind. I just reverted my own edit.thanks.Dineshkannambadi 20:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Looks fine now. Since their history becomes clear from 1026, there is nothing wrong in keeping that date and making a mention of earliest record from 950. It expalins everything well. I have see some sources use 1004 as starting date and somewhere else 1100 etc. So the early history is a bit unclear.If I come across something more definitive, then I will change start date. thanks.Dineshkannambadi 12:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Your maps to commons

I am planing to upload a lot of your maps (esp. former German provinces) to the commons. I would like to suggest you to upload your maps in future directly to commons. You might be interested in visting commons:Atlas of Germany, which will include part of your maps in a gallery. I would be interested in seeing a native speaker of German adding an German description to the maps in that entry. Electionworld Talk? 11:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, i did upload many of your maps, but not the maps of the provinces. I have made a hidden part of the article to enable a gallery of the province maps when yiu have adopted them and uploaded them. IF you change amap tothe SVG format, please change the link in the Atlas of Germany. Electionworld Talk? 23:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
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