User talk:Ellmist/archive 1

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[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or drop me a line. Cheers! --maveric149

[edit] Wikify Text from Encyclopedia Britannica

Whoa! Slow down there partner! You should at least wikify 1911 text before importing it and place a simple disclaimer at the bottom of these articles. Please see Backwardation for an example. Thanx! --maveric149

Gotcha. I'm sure you are right. I'll do that. --Ellmist

[edit] Only Major Works on Year in Review

Ellmist, whilst Heinlein was undoubtedly a fine writer, is his work so significant that every book he wrote deserves mention on the individual year pages? Where brevity and selectivity is important (as it is in the year in review pages), we have to be very careful what we add. --Robert Merkel

Yeah, I agree with Robert Merkel. I could do the same thing with a few of my favourite writers and this could snowball completely out of control. My suggestion is that you only annotate the significant ones "that everybody knows" e.g Stranger in A Strange Land. sjc

All right. Makes sense to me. Only fairly popular books should be listed on the date pages. -- Ellmist

What criteria determines a popular book? Estimated number of readers, links on the 'pedia, awards, results on Google? -- Ellmist

Good question, and something I don't think we have a good answer to right now. I've just sent a mail to the wikipedia-l mailing list asking a more general question of how we decide what's significant enough to list on "year in review" pages. Hopefully we'll get some debate (everyone should contribute if they have an opinion on the matter) and maybe some kind of consensus will be put together. Hopefully somebody will come up with some guidelines, which might get posted at meta.wikipedia.com until they get solidified enough to be transferred to the main site as "official" Wikipedia policy (or as official as anything ever gets around here). --Robert Merkel

Well, I don't think there is any question that books that have won an award like a hugo, or was on the best seller list in the same year it was published or was the basis for a movie that grossed over a 100 million bucks shouldn't be on such year in review lists. It is the cult classics that have a small, yet fiercly loyal following and some other books that venture into the gray area. --maveric149

Thanks. That also reminds me that I need to sign up for Wikipedia-L so I won't make mistakes like this again. I'm glad I have people like you all to watch out for me. -- Ellmist

's cool. There's a learning curve with everything, and particularly writing for Wikipedia. Still learning, myself. Loads of stuff I did with English town names for example, we have merrily had to disambiguate, ditto English Kings, my formal training being that you didn't disambiguate in the case of an English monarch, but did in an overseas monarch. Fine in a national context but not so context apparent in an international encyclopaedia. sjc

[edit] More Detail on Book Pages

If you're going to create separate pages for Heinlein works, please write enough to tell the user something. That "The Lone Watch" is an sf short story is too minimal to be useful. A brief plot summary, maybe even some analysis. Vicki Rosenzweig, Saturday, June 29, 2002

[edit] Sidebar Date Link

Just so you know, the day link on the sidebar is not going to be a continued feature with the impending software upgrade (being replaced by a more sane link to current events) and all the day pages created will be merged into current events and deleted. --maveric149

Thanks. That saved me some of trouble. --Ellmist

[edit] Unsuccessful Searches

Hi! I note you're creating a whole lot of redirects from misspelled unsuccessful searches to the correctly-spelled article. I'd suggest sticking to only the more "common" misspellings; "Wormholes" is good, but unusual ones like "Other linguadges" are unlikely to be repeated all that often and probably aren't worth the bother. It's a nice gesture, though, so don't take this as a complaint! :) Bryan Derksen

[edit] Bypassing Disambiguation Pages

Just so you know, whoever makes a disambiguation page is responsible for fixing misdirected links that result. Please do so. --maveric149

Sure thing. I fixed all the ones I could, but a few were lists without any context. I assume that they should point to the disambiguation page? --Ellmist

[edit] The Simpsons Reorganization

Ellmist, thanks for taking over the heavy lifting on the reorganization of The Simpsons. And may I suggest that you check the little box marked "This is a minor edit", so as not to distract our good friend Danny? That would make him a little less grumpy :-) --Ed Poor

Thank you, Ellmist, for both your zeal to systematize and link articles relationg to The Simpsons, as well as your willingness to cooperate with curmudgeons like me and Lee. With the energy of newcomers like you and wisdom of old-timers like Lee, we can make a wonderful resource for the whole world to share. --Ed Poor

Eventually, I might possibly understand the Wikipedia. Thanks for your understanding. --Ellmist Friday, July 26th, 2002

[edit] Country Subpages

Ellmist, I see you're changing over the <country>/subpage Factbook pages to a Subpage of <country> format. Great work, this will save anyone making new templates the trouble. However, could you perhaps change the /Government subpages over to Politics of <country>, instead of Government of <country>, as per the WikiProject Countries template? -Scipius

Someone else just pointed that out to me. Thanks for the tip before I had too much to redo. --Ellmist Sunday, August 4th, 2002

Table for my reference:

  • Government > Politics of
  • People > Demography of
  • Communications > Communication in
  • Transportation > Transportation in
  • Transnational issues > Foreign relations of

Anything else is ______ of.

I think it should be "Communications in" Danny

Okay, I'll go back and change them. --Ellmist Sunday, August 4th, 2002

I've changed some of them, but, on second thought, shouldn't this fall under the avoid plurals naming convention? --Ellmist Tuesday, August 6th, 2002

[edit] Obfuscate Email Address

Ellmist, you may want to delete your e-mail addresses (or write them as mail dot me at this dot domain), to prevent (large) amounts of spam mail. Jeronimo

Fixed. --Ellmist Sunday, August 4th, 2002

[edit] Redirecting Redirects

Hi Ellmist, I saw you moved "Countries of the world" to "List of countries". While I applaud the move (better title), you should notice that there were several pages redirecting to "Countries of the world". Double redirecting does not work, so all these redirect are all broken. So next time you move an article, please check whether there are any redirects to the moved page. Thanks! Jeronimo 09:13 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

I understand the potential for loops, but this is still an issue that people shouldn't have to waste their time on things like this. Is a fix being considered? In the meantime, I am bypassing the redirects. --Ellmist Friday, August 9th, 2002

Another thought, if the software is going to keep this limitation, what do you think of having it automatically list everything that needs to be changed? --Ellmist Friday, August 9th, 2002

Thanks! Yes, the feature would indeed be useful. Maybe you can propose it as a feature request - hit Bug Reports on your left and then Feature Requests to add one. Jeronimo

Hi, Ellmist, I just came here to thank you for moving Wikipedia Announcements to Wikipedia:Announcements and to remind you to re-direct the redirects. I see that you're already talking about it. Yes, this would be a good feature to have for the move function. — Toby 21:57 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

[edit] Poker Page Renaming

Thanks for doing some of the cleanup of the old poker pages on Wikipedia. They were written a long time ago on the old Phase I software, so they have a lot cruft remaining from that.

I just wanted you to know, though, that I plan a major overhaul of those pages very soon with drawings and some new text, so you don't have to go out of your way to fix every link and typo. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that I wrote the Phase III software for Wikipedia mainly because I wasn't happy at how the poker pages came out and I wanted better software to support redoing them. --LDC

Okay. I'll leave the rest to you. --Ellmist Saturday, August 24th, 2002

[edit] Subpages for Alphabetical Lists

I can see moving the "Colleges and Universities" pages to titles with "List of..." since that's a useful convention here, but what's wrong with the "/A" instead of the awkward "starting with A"? We generally de-slash things like "Simpsons/Homer" because that title represents two separate subjects and enforces a hierarchy between them that the author might not want. But breaking up what is logically a single page with a single topic into pieces for purely size reasons seems like a natural thing to use a simple "/A" for. See, for example, List of rare diseases, which I think is a good set of pages. --LDC

I suppose my aversion to subpages has gone too far. Should I continue with the format I have so far (List of colleges and universities starting with *), revert back to the way it was before (Universities and colleges/*), or subpages of the new title (List of universities and colleges/*)? --Ellmist Saturday, August 24th, 2002

I probably would have put them at the same place. I'm all about removing all non-META subpages from the 'pedia, though I've yet to get them all (I work on it occasionally). --KQ

[edit] Move Feature

Thanks for moving Famous military writers to List of famous military writers. However, there is an easier and better way to do it: Look on side panel or the bottom of the page for a link called "Move this page". This is the administrative move feature which is being made available to all logged-in users on an experimental basis (which to my shock doesn't seem to have been abused much by the very green or ill of heart). Simply follow the instructions. Moving pages this way is better becuase it moves the history of the page as well -- otherwise the edits to that page are hidden at the history of the old page title. Be careful to follow wikipedia:naming conventions though. --mav

Well, it's back. It seems to me that it disappears occasionally. I'll do that from now on. --Ellmist Saturday, August 31st, 2002

It should be there whenever you are logged-in. If it isn't, then that's probably a bug. --mav

[edit] Larger Image Links

Neat trick: [[media:Tomatoes.jpg|larger image]] -> larger image This is the best way to link to larger images. (See tomato). -- mav

[edit] Disambiguating Glenn County

There is no need to disambiguate Glenn County because there is only one. The article should probably be deleted completely, since it's an orphan. Eclecticology 17:56 Sep 4, 2002 (PDT)

I happened to see this remark, and have changed the page into a redirect.Andre Engels 12:22 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] Links to Images

Ellmist, great job on uploading and linking all those public domain images. However I don't see much point in linking the description page of a larger version of the same image when the images are from the same source. It just makes more sense for me to have a media link to the larger version instead on the description page. Not a big deal either way. But wording like "larger cow" is ambiguous and should be changed to "larger image". Taken literally, "larger cow" means a picture of a cow which is larger in real life. --mav

Are you asking me to change all the image links I have done so far or just do that from now on? --Ellmist Saturday, September 21st, 2002

Just from now on. --mav

[edit] British and American Spellings

Ellmist, is there any reason you're replacing British spellings with American in eg Big Dumb Object? --Brion 04:07 Sep 22, 2002 (UTC)

Brion, give him a break. I would have done the same thing if I saw "artefact". Before your mentioning it I had no idea that was valid British spelling. --mav

Then I'm happy to have dispelled a little cloud of ignorance from the both of you. :) --Brion

I will still probably mispell the word in both dialects. :) --mav

Why are you moving the naming convention pages? Please stop. --mav 23:14 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

I disagree with using parenthetical disambiguation when unnecessary. It makes free links break up running text and fails to describe the relationship between the main title and the parenthetical one. In this case, it looked like just a different way of writing subpages. Did I miss a discussion about this? --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

You can't just move around convention pages on your own whim. Now an Admin will have to manually delete all the parenthetical titles in order to move the pages back. --mav 23:19 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

I don't understand why anyone needs to move it back. I didn't stop people from linking to the pages as they did before. Since I didn't change any of the actual convention documentation, I don't see why whether I do it on a whim or not matters any more for these particular pages. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

Because these pages are watched by many people and 'watch this article' doesn't follow moves. These pages are also agreed-upon conventions and no major change to them should be made without discussing it first. Anything else is just plain rude -- esp. when those changes can only be undone by an Admin. And you should also always make a query on a talk page before making such large changes to a set of articles. I did this before moving all the Star Wars and Star Trek articles and this is just a way to show respect for what others might think of the move. --mav

I didn't think the title qualified as a major change to the actual article. But if it makes watching them stop working, I understand. In fact, this applies to any sort of page people might watch.

Having changes anyone can do only undoable by certain people could cause problems. This seems to undermine the wiki principle that even if people could easily vandalise, people could also easily undo the vandalism. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

Well it could be partly "undone" by anybody. But it would require a manual cut/paste/REDIRECT operation and it wouldn't carry over the old history. In the future please don't move large numbers of themed articles again without first asking about it in the talk page. You have already been asked this before if I recall. --mav

Actually, I think everyone on my talk page has praised renaming pages even about themed topics like The Simpsons, so far. Nevertheless, I agree with your reaction to all those watch list references to naming conventions breaking. However, I see not renaming pages or only renaming with much caution as only a temporary solution. In the long-term, the watch list feature should watch the new page when a page changes to a redirect or both. Do you agree that I should report this on SourceForge? When the developers do fix it, would you have any other objections to renamings such as these? --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

Yes 'watch this page' should follow moves. And I also agree with most of your moves. But what I do not agree with is the unilateral choice on your part on what to name some article/page groups. All I'm asking for is for you to do what everybody else does before making such large changes to the database; announce your intentions on an appropriate talk page, wait at least a week for comments and then do the moves based on the consensus of any comments you get. You are just one person and other people may have better ideas on what to name the articles or may have objections to a move at all. Talk pages are useful for working these things out before large changes are made. --mav

That sounds reasonable, at least until such time as anyone can revert the moves and the watch list understands them. I feel glad we have that conflict over with. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

Even if/when moves can be easily reversable it is still a very good idea to reach consensus on large changes first. Otherwise mistakes will be made that later have to be fixed which is wasted effort. --mav

I moved everyting back to where it was before. One thing I noticed is that you didn't move the talk pages for each of the naming conventions. Did you have "move talk page is applicable" checked? These talk pages are very important. But everything works as it should now that the pages are back at their original homes. --mav

I know I left that checkbox on. --Ellmist Sunday, October 13th, 2002

Must be an occasional bug. We should all be careful to check that talk pages are moved. --mav

[edit] Spelling corrections

very impressive work you are doing! my hat's off to you! dgd

Thanks! --Ellmist Saturday, October 19th, 2002

Please check your web browser for Unicode bugs. On Wiktionary:By language, the foreign words got replaced with question marks. -phma

Nothing links to Access method. Could you find some articles to point to it? Kingturtle 02:27 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

Changing the headings is fine but please do not turn repeated entries on the year pages into bullets - this is counter to the agreed-on format and makes it very easy to misplace entries under the wrong dates by insertion errors. --mav

I have to express my concern over the StarCraft pages you have been creating lately. Many of them are of limited use, and would rate perhaps a simple mention in the main Star Craft article (if anything). For instance, I really doubt anyone would come to the wikipedia to search on "missile turret" in order to find information about StarCraft.

I would suggest that all of these articles seem to be missing the point about the wiki to a large degree. This is not a videogame manual site, there are plenty of them out there on the net already. Articles on videogames would best be limited to historical and basic gameplay descriptions, which someone might actually want to find out about in five years, long after the game is no longer being played.

User:Maury Markowitz

When you get a chance, can you upload a new version of the Safari (web browser) icon? The first image didn't upload correctly and is nine bytes. Thanks. -- Notheruser 21:01 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have succeeded in making it correctly. I'll fiddle with it some more.--Ellmist Tuesday, May 13th, 02003

It looks like you fixed it, thanks. -- Notheruser 23:22 17 May 2003 (UTC)~

I couldn't get the PNG (Image:Safari web browser icon.png) to work, so I tried JPEG (Image:Safari web browser icon.jpg). --Ellmist Saturday, May 17th, 02003

I deleted the png image (it only took two tries :) ). -- Notheruser 23:31 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Well, I only uploaded a few of the tries. --Ellmist Saturday, May 17th, 02003

Just checking out some of the images you've uploaded recently of Angus cattle. What software are you using to create these JPGs? They seem too high-quality, resulting in excessively large files. Most of them are more than 300K, when one of comparable quality (at 75% quality, for instance) are only about 50K. It's good that you're using thumbnails to link to these, but is there a particular reason they need to be so high-quality? -- Wapcaplet 18:17 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Nevermind. I just noticed that you apparently took them straight from the USDA site without any additional compression. You may want to consider running them through any shareware/freeware web graphics software (or GIMP or Photoshop, if you have either of those), saving them out with the default JPG compression settings. That'll probably reduce their size by at least 75%. At the very least, you may want to consider doing it with any future images you upload. Check out Wikipedia:How to keep image file sizes as small as possible for additional pointers on this subject. Thanks -- Wapcaplet 18:31 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Good work on the USDA photos! They look great, and are much smaller now. -- Wapcaplet 22:49 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms). Four letter acronyms are generally fine as article titles especially if they are mostly known by those initials. --mav 05:50 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)---

I agree. If you think I have made a mistake by moving an ETLA page to its spelled out form, feel free to reverse it, or let me know. --Ellmist Friday, July 18th, 02003

I don't have a problem with that one - just with the ISBN move. --mav

Please see Image talk:Apple 17 inch PowerBook opened.png. --mav

I have read and replied. Thank you for pointing this out. --Ellmist Saturday, 02003 July 19th


Hi, you cast a vote in the TEMP5 debate. The Temp5 proposal was voted down by 61.3% to 38.6%. We seem to be going around in circles on the whole issue of the main page. A new vote is now taking place to clarify what exactly we want, namely

  1. Do we actually want to have a new page?
  2. If so when (immediately, after a pause, timed to the press release, etc)?
  3. What do people want on the front page and what do they want excluded?

As of now, the whole issue seems surrounded by complete confusion. This way, finally and definitively, we will know what we want and when we want it. So do please express your opinions. The vote is on the same page as the previous votes. FearÉIREANN 20:31, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi Ellmist, please can you stop bringing all that stuff out of the village pump archives. I don't see why you are doing this. Someone asking for a page to be unprotected last March hardly needs to placed on a talk page now. The issue has been dealt with, so it can be left in the archive. A simple request like the one you moved to Wikipedia talk:Protected page has no value and simply clutters up a talk page, which may need to be archived again. If you see something that is particularly important in an archive, all you need to do is provide a link to it rather than pasting it onto a page. The point of moving things from village pump to a talk page is because it might prove useful to others with the same problem. For this reason, moving a question on where the Deletion management redesign page is to the m:Deletion management redesign page isn't useful. If they found the question, they would know where the page is! ;) You also need to careful about seeing if someone has already asked that a section be moved to a specific place. For example, the spam section had written under it that it was to be moved to User talk:Cardshark. This does not need to be done now as I have e-mailed the user about it, but in future please make sure you look out for these instructions. Thanks for clearing all that stuff though! Angela 20:16, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I just thought you should know someone has listed the pinto bean article you wrote on VfD. Angela

Thank you for pointing that out. It looks like I didn't put any text in the article at all! Thanks to Michael Shields for fixing it. --Ellmist 22:32, 9 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

[edit] Wikiproject Series of Novels?

As far as I can tell you were the originator of the Wikiproject Novels page. I wonder if you have any thoughts about a standard format for Series also? Phil 17:38, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not sure quite why you're moving everything in the Wikipedia namespace. Naming conventions for articles are not the same as those in other namespaces (ie- sub pages are allowed etc), so I think that unless you are going to fix the links afterwards, this is a really bad idea. For example, Wikipedia:Wikipedian with most edits is now a broken redirect. Angela 23:45, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If you link to the naming conventions for the Wikipedia: namespace, I'll try to follow them or discuss them if I really disagree with them. I attempted to fix all the double-redirects I made, but you seem to have found one I missed. I'll double-check that none remain. --Ellmist 23:51, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Funnily enough, when you reversed one of my moves, you created a double-redirect at WP:MW. I have fixed this for you. --Ellmist 00:03, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hello. It seems that you are an extremely valuable contributer to Wikipedia, but I have not made your acquaintence yet. I would like to introduce myself to you and wish you the best. Sincerly, Alexandros 04:15, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You're too kind. Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits has some valuable contributors, though number of edits is an over-simplification of value. I wish you the best as well. --Ellmist 02:01, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Instant Messaging Wikipedians

Bleh. Wikipedia: page titles should be short and handy for purposes of easy linking without having to know acronyms. "List of Instant Messaging Wikipedians" is neither grammatically nor stylistically useful (the "Instant Messaging" in "Instant Messaging Wikipedians" is both a verb and a noun). I have therefore moved the page back to its old title.—Eloquence 05:03, Nov 29, 2003 (UTC)

That title sounds fine, especially with your explanation. I vote to keep redirects from the titles I made. --Ellmist 00:17, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] History of the United States National Security Council

Maybe if you have some time, you could go back and spot edit and wikify History of the United States National Security Council and its subpages. Have a nice day :) Kingturtle 23:27, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] image on ifd

Your image, Image:Apple Preview 2.0.1 v201 screenshot thumbnail.jpg, has been listed on Wikipedia:Images for deletion. It has been obsoleted by Image:Apple Preview 2.0.1 v201 screenshot.jpg. Grendelkhan 07:15, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Same for Image:Citrus fruits thumbnail.jpg - obsoleted by Image:Citrus fruits.jpg, and Image:Gypsy moth caterpillar thumbnail.jpg - obsoleted by Image:Gypsy moth caterpillar.jpg. Grendelkhan 08:00, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

[edit] Ammunition

Hi! Just thought I'd point out, in case you hadn't noticed, that your creation Ammunition for infantry is under discussion, with a merger request. Not a field I'm much interested in, but I noticed it when checking a firearm link. Robin Patterson 21:55, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Macintosh software

This category makes as much sense to me as a Category:PC software or a List of programs that run on Windows 3.11 on an Intel 80486. I mean, aren't almost all cross-platform programs automatically members of the Macintosh software category? A program that is cross-platform should mention that its own article.

Personally, I'd rather use the category for programs that were exclusive to Macintosh systems (though Lord knows with 89 articles in the category, changing things won't be easy.) And even then, we might find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of notable programs that have been written for Macs. --Ardonik.talk() 04:35, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

You have a good point. There are exceptions, of course. StarOffice is "Multi-platform running on Linux, Solaris OS and Windows." However, No StarOffice planned for Mac OS X. What would you think of Category:Cross-platform software and Category:Mac-only software and Category:Windows-only software? --Ellmist 04:47, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You might also want to mention something to User:Sverdrup since he made the category. --Ellmist 04:51, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I'm tempted to say "list Category:Macintosh software on CfD" since, just as for VfD, the most spirited debate about categorization takes place over there. But I'd rather see the category moved and reworked than depopulated and deleted entirely, but moved to where I don't know.
I'll post a question over at Wikipedia talk:Categorization and see what everyone else thinks. Personally, I think having a category for cross-platform software is a good idea so long as it doesn't get overwhelming. --Ardonik.talk() 05:27, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
Messaged Sverdrup as well. --Ardonik.talk() 06:03, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Windows software?

Do you really think such a category is necessary? My arguments against this are mostly the same as above, I don't think a category that lists all software that runs under windows is helpful to anyone. To be even more precise we could start categories on all different windows systems (95, XP, ..), but I strongly doubt that this will be very useful. Have a look at Wikipedia:Categorization#When to use categories: "Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?" is a question that should be answered with "yes" to start such a category, and software is rarely known for running only under one operating system. --Conti|✉ 13:47, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

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