User talk:Jordan Brown

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Contents 1 Thanks re ASCII 2 MoS (fiction) 3 Dragnet 4 Xyzzy 5 AIV 209.68.98.234 6 Re: Jolly Roger TV series 7 Worldcon/WSFS 8 About infobox fixing 9 Fixing my copy mistake 10 noTOCsection 11 Lawry's

[edit] Thanks re ASCII

Thanks for your edit to ASCII. You are completely right about Control-N and Control-O remaining in use: ISO/IEC 2022 uses them. (My excuse for not spotting that mistake myself is that I loathe ISO-2022 and try hard never to think about it. Yay for Unicode!)

I did make one small change to your work: I think that DEC operating systems used CR and LF separately because they were designed for use with teletypes. In fact, I have used PDP-11s (running RT-11) and a PDP-15 via a teletype. (I've also written programs for DEC's version of TECO. In fact, I once got a good job by writing some TECO code during the job interview. (I'm showing my age here, aren't I?).

Anyway, thanks again for that excellent edit. I've added a belated welcome package above, even though you seem to be doing very well without it. I also suggest you create a user page; seeing redlinks for usernames does tend to arouse concern. If you don't want to say anything about yourself, you could just insert {{subst:userpage}} there, which creates a "This is a Wikipedia user page" box like the one at the top of my user page.

Cheers, CWC(talk) 15:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the kinds words and for catching that typo. I don't mind the CRLF change at all; that tidbit was a holdover from the previous text and I agree with you.

Some of my early experience (in high school) was on a PDP-8 with an ASR-33... I wrote a bit of TECO in my time, too. (In fact, I just added some text to the TECO page showing that simple uses aren't *that* obscure.)

I've added a minimal user page.

Jordan Brown 04:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MoS (fiction)

I don't think anything about the current manual is set in stone: it is more opinion than fact and, as such, can be argued with. I agree with you that in universe information and perspective are not inherently evil.

I'm proposing an alternative manual- Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)/draft revision. Any comments are welcome. Dr Aaron 02:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I took a brief look. I'm not sure if I agree with you on all points, but it does seem to be an improvement. I'll see if I can do a more detailed review in the next few days.

I'm not sure, but I think I'd like to see that split between the real world and the fictional one that I mentioned. I'm not sure if it's a page-level split or a section-level split, but I think you should be able to look primarily at the real-world information, with cross-references into the fictional, or primarily at the fictional information, with cross-references to the factual. Fictional material would, aside from a "this is fiction" header, be presented exactly as factual material, with the references being to the book, movie, or whatever. Think of it as documenting a real person or event based on a set of disjoint, incomplete, and mutually contradictory references. The factual sections and the "this is fiction" header should satisfy those people who are interested only in the real world, while the fictional sections would satisfy those who are trying to catch up on a story, refresh their memory, or whatever.

Jordan Brown 02:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I considered introducing a "this is fiction" box, but I think having an article's introduction make clear that it deals with a fiction subject is a good start. Also, having more rules & boxes in Wikipedia isn't necessarily a step forward.

Really, if sections are entited "Plot Synopsis", "Story", or "Character Biography", it should be clear that they refer to fictional events or individuals. Espcially if the intro is clear.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm thinking I will post my proposed page on the MoS (fiction) talk page for more general comments. I expect a lot of negative feedback - mainly from the vocal minority who are deletionist & anti-fiction. Dr Aaron 05:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

When I say "a 'this is fiction' header", I don't necessarily mean a box. "Joe is a fictional character in ..." would qualify.

Take a look at Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and its friends. These are Wikipedia "featured articles", "identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community"... yet they contain substantial in-universe prose. (And, gasp, it's not explicitly labelled as fiction! :-) Jordan Brown 06:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dragnet

(moved from User:Jordan Brown -- jb)

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia.

You may want to edit/delete this page : User:Jordan Brown/Dragnet (series) since it appears to have been saved as a separate page by mistake. You're also editing the Dragnet (series) page, which gave me the impression this wasn't meant to be saved.

Mapcat 06:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Jordan Brown/Dragnet (series) is an experiment using a prototype for a new television infobox. See User:Jordan Brown/Infobox media and Template talk:Infobox Television#Reimplement in modular form?. Dragnet is of particular interest because it has appeared in so many forms - radio, television (several times), film. Thanks for the concern. Jordan Brown 07:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Xyzzy

Heh, should have checked WP instead of trying to work from memory! Stan 20:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AIV 209.68.98.234

You removed my WP:AIV entry

• 209.68.98.234 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • RBLs • block user • block log) vandalism after temporary block -- Jordan Brown 19:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

with the comment

1 not blocked (only one edit since last block and it was almost 2 hours ago - pointless). NOT MT

Could you elaborate? This is my first time recommending AIV, and I'd like to understand how my recommendation was inappropriate. In particular, what does "NOT MT" mean? Thanks.

Jordan Brown 21:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, no problem (now that you repeat what I wrote, it sounds a little abrupt - sorry about that). First, "NOT MT" is just shorthand for "not empty" meaning the AIV list. It's just a signal for administrators so they know if there are any entries left to investigate - nothing you need to worry about. As far as not blocking in that case, most vandals on weekdays are school kids so, if you don't block them within an hour of their last edit, you probably blocked no one - or, worse yet, you blocked the next person who sat at the public computer and stopped them from making good edits. Unless I think the vandal might still be at the computer or I see a clear long-term pattern, I will decline to block. Blocking can only be bad if you don't block the actual vandal. Anyway, let me know if you have any questions and keep up the good counter-vandalism work! —Wknight94 (talk) 21:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I suppose. If you look at the contrib log for that address, it's 100% vandalism, all but one in the last week. WHOIS *does* indicate that it's a school of some sort. I would have thought that one of the shared-IP-address blocks (e.g. {{schoolblock}}) might be appropriate. Not really trying to argue, just trying to understand appropriate responses. Jordan Brown 22:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Jolly Roger TV series

Um.... no.... but I'm sure you'll see a few copies on Ebay really soon. Yeah, yeah, the DVD cover looks a bit dodgy, but it's totally legit! No photoshop here, no sir! (maniac grin) Quack 688 04:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Worldcon/WSFS

Jordan - as the originator of the proposal to merge WSFS into Worldcon, will you take action to actually do the merge? (Have to confess I'm not expert enough to do so myself!) I'm happy to contribute text to the new Governance/WSFS section within Worldcon if that will help. (My past as two-time Worldcon-chair finally proving useful. :-)) I'm also going to update the general text about Worldcon as it is a bit sparse, especially around the status of the GoHs (have you seen the proposal to delete the GoH category?) VJDocherty 14:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, that was dumb of me :-) I thought I'd picked up somebody else's idea and commented on it, but no, I was the idiot that actually put in the mergefrom and mergeto tags. Anyhow, technically it's easy - just merge the text and replace one page with a redirect. What the heck, I'll be WP:BOLD and go ahead and do it. (And no, didn't see anything about the GOH category... didn't even know there was one.) Jordan Brown 22:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About infobox fixing

Hey, keep up the good work! I'm going away, so leave some for me :P Gracenotes^T § 21:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm about to get the backlog below 200, and that'll be the end for the day. Don't know when I'll next find time. Jordan Brown 22:00, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to do something with the website parameter, I could write a function using JavaScript and regexes to make the process semi-automated. Gracenotes^T § 00:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't decided what I want to attack next. Probably the top of my list would be infobox proliferation, which could certainly use automated help. I'm a pretty good programmer, but I don't have any experience with writing such a script for Wikipedia. If you have a script handy that makes semi-automated edits to article pages, I'd be interested in stealing it for one of those projects. Thanks. Jordan Brown 14:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fixing my copy mistake

Thanks for correcting my link. I didn't notice I had missed the WP bit. Also, thanks for the information on that user, I have given him or her a welcome and directed him or her to the assessment list so that any confusion may be rectified. Once again, thanks! Adam McCormick 05:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. (I was a little nervous about it because of the general prohibition on changing other people's comments, but it seemed to fall into the "fixing formating errors" exception.) Jordan Brown 05:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] noTOCsection

Hello, I saw your comment at wikimedia regarding TOC sections - I've got a similar problem at the moment - I'd like to divide my article into sections, but not have all of them show up in the TOC - does your template have a variant I can use for heading level h3, h4, and h5? Regards --Joopercoopers 15:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's a blast from the past. I never got a reply to that comment, and never found a complete solution on my own, so never pursued the matter. You're certainly welcome to steal the template and tweak it however you need. Jordan Brown 16:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lawry's

Your point about the names of the restaurants in cats is a good one. However, the logic behind it is simple. If these categories were used to list every location, the list of categories on the page could be longer then the article. Also, wikipedia is not a travel guide. There are other wikis for that purpose. Vegaswikian 19:40, 21 March 2007 (UTC)