User talk:Pigsonthewing

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[edit] Edgbaston

Noticed that you subdivided some sections on the Egdbaston page. I don't have any problems with this at all, I merged them yesterday as each section was ridiculously short by itself and looked rubbish. However I have expanded them so it doesn't look so bad now. The question I have is whether or not I should have merged them to begin with. Was it out of personal preference that you seperated them or a Wikipedia regulation? Thanks in advance for your answer! Cls14 11:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

There are no "regualations" ;-) I made the changes for stylistic reasons, and to facilitate links, from other web pages, to, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgbaston#Education Andy Mabbett 11:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for that. Cls14 12:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General Comment

Dear Andy

You have edited several pages of interest to me recently. With the exception of the issue of categorization on which I believe you won the day on the grounds of concensus your edits are helpful and improve the articles concerned. It is possible that I may have arrived at my first opinion of you rather hastily. Keep at it.

Yours Faithfully Martin Cordon 17:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] George Edward Lodge

I don't understand the footnote (1) on George Edward Lodge, referring to the seventh son of a seventh son. The footnote just says Savory, and does not look like a reference. Can you please explain, or fix the reference?--Cotinis 23:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

It refer to the work by Savory, cited earlier. Perhaps it should say "Savory, op. cit." ? Andy Mabbett 23:12, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see it now. For this short an article, I'm not sure footnotes really add that much--a reference section, I feel, suffices. However, I really do not understand Wikipedia reference conventions. When I've used specific references in the text, I've just used Harvard references (Jones et al. 1998, etc.), but that's because I can't understand the templates. No big deal at any rate. Cotinis 05:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Midland Metro Route Map template

Nice! I like it a lot.

How about this for a very early draft of the "fancy template" I was talking about on Template:West Midlands railway stations? Fingerpuppet 18:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good; what about Sandwell & Dudley and Show Hill/ Moor Street in the "main line" bit, though? Andy Mabbett 19:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've moved those mentioned from the "other" section into the "main line" section - though I'm not convinced by Snow Hill or (especially) Moor Street being thought of as "main line" in the same way as the others! Fingerpuppet 17:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Script help needed, please

How do I use User:Quarl/monobook.js ?

hi. You can find your own monobook at Special:Mypage/monobook.js. Just paste the content of the other monobook into your page and clear your browser cache, and that should do it! I hope that helps! -- lucasbfr ^talk 21:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but that doesn't seem to work, and doesn't look right. Andy Mabbett 22:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Go to User:Pigsonthewing/monobook.js, copy the text from Quarl's monobook to your monobook. And, empty your cache from your browser. Real96 23:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I did, See link, above. Andy Mabbett 23:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

If you are having any trouble installing scripts, go to installing scripts. Real96 23:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding to top or second of an also see list is poor form

Adding a link to your article at the top or second position of an also see, especially when there is a weak link, is poor form. Please place your additions at the end of the list next time, or on the talk page. - Davandron | Talk 17:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Andy Mabbett 17:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry; my mistake. We get lots of little brand-new articles who add their name in the top or second place position of Also See to boost visibility for their article. Thanks for restoring it to alphabetical. - Davandron | Talk 14:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hCard in people infoboxes

How would adding this information to infoboxes be helpful? The only fields that I see applying are fn, bday, and url. --PhantomS 19:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It would make them (more) parsable, indexable and searchable by machines. You may be right about three fields (actually, pictures, too), but that's still useful. Can you assist? Andy Mabbett 19:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

For machine parsing, we already have {{Persondata}}. I may assist if I can find "a best practices approach that gives at least as much as that template could. --PhantomS 19:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "a best practices approach", how can I help? I'm not sure how many user agents can access persondata, but uFs are beginning well established (see the Operator extension for Firefox, which is likely to be incorporated into the next build); and anything that adds semantic meaning (especially with relatively minimal effort or overhead) has to be good! Incidentally there are also proposals for adding 'Date of Death' to hCard. We also have the "nickname" attribute for Cary Grant/ Archibald Leach types; and a "note" field. Incidentally, hCard (and other microformats) are supposed, unlike persondata, to be for data visible on the page. Andy Mabbett 19:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

IMO, it needs birth name and death date attributes to be that useful. Birth and death places would also be beneficial. As for Cary Grant, the article is Cary Grant, while the birth name is Archibald Leach. Birth name is not always filled in because it doesn't always change for actors.--PhantomS

Looking at person data, if there was an alternative names attribute, that part might work. However, I don't see any field for death. --PhantomS 19:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at here; yes, there are some fields in persondata not in hCard; but vice versa also. It doesn't matter whether the article is called CG or AL; I was merely pointing out that there are fields for both in hCard. As I said, there are *proposals* to add date-of-death. Andy Mabbett 20:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

After thinking it over, I was actually just about to remove my two previous posts and simply state that it needs to have a death date property to be useful. If you could give me the markup to use, including the proposed death date markup, I'll see what I can do with it. --PhantomS 20:11, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

(Outdent)

Thank you. The markup is listed at [1]. Since the infobox is resented as a table, it makes sense to mark up . For birthday, class="bday"needs to be in the format yyyymmdd , so that's usually <abbr class="bday" title="19661225">25 December 1965</abbr>, but I know that WikiMedia strips abbr tags. I might be best to put the ISO format below the "human" format, and hide it with CSS? There for date of death nothing is decided, so I suggest you mirror "bday" and use "dday". It can always be changed later. Use <img class="photo">for the picture. Cheers, Andy Mabbett20:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinates and hCard miroformat on Infobox UK station

Hi, please see my comments at Template talk:Infobox UK station. Regards. Adambro 20:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Something for a bored moment

Andy, Whitemoor Haye (of Woolly Rhino fame) is in your part of the world, isn't it? I've created the stubbiest of stubs about the place - do you know anything else that's worth adding? I seem to remember that it is quite birdy though not sure of specifics. Cheers SP-KP 17:53, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Bored? Me? Happy to oblige. Well worth a visit! Andy Mabbett 18:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] EBCC atlas

We're clunking into each other a bit, aren't we? :-) Hopefully I've managed to keep all of your additions, and vice versa. I'm off to get some food now, so you can have it to yourself for a bit. Cheers SP-KP 19:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought we were just collaborating. Sorry if I caused you edit conflicts - I saw none. I'm looking forward to ornithological atlas and grid-square distribution maps ;-) Andy Mabbett 19:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

No probs - I've checked the edit history and I'm pretty sure all of your additions & mine have made it into the current version. I've fair-use-ified the image page btw. SP-KP 19:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - how did you do that? Is there a template? Andy Mabbett 20:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I just copied it from Image:HANZAB V5 cover.jpg SP-KP 20:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Horizontal lists

Is there a "wiki" method to mark-up horizontal lists, like that at A34 road#Former route, so that they're rendered as an HTML list, styled horizontally? Andy Mabbett 17:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. A limited subset of HTML is accepted here, so you could try writing the HTML for it to see if it works; otherwise, there probably isn't a way. Hope that helps! --ais523 17:57, 26 March 2007 (U T C)

Thank you. It's not a matter of HTML, but CSS, but I have no idea how to apply that to a list, or to a template for a list, in WikiCode. Where can I ask for further advice? Andy Mabbett 12:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

You can try WP:VPT or #wikipedia/#wikimedia-tech on irc.freenode.net. Xiner (talk, email) 13:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Will try VPT. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 13:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UK stations infobox

Hi, would you mind taking a look at my suggestion here? Thanks, --RFBailey 19:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pete Townshend - "soft-ban" on fixated editors

I am hereby banning SqueakBox (talk • contribs), Davidpatrick (talk • contribs) and Pigsonthewing (talk • contribs) from editing this article; I am implementing here a "soft-ban" - as the article history shows the edit war exists only between these three participants, and thus the article may be unprotected in the event of these users being banned from editing. Upon the event of these users violating this soft-ban, administrators may, at their discretion, implement blocks from editing Wikipedia in enforcement of this. This is made in line with ArbCom precedent that editors who perform fixated edit warring upon an article may be banned from editing that article, such as in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Regarding The Bogdanov Affair. Should anyone have any questions or concerns relating to this, please do contact me. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 01:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to Template:Chase Line

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. In the future, it is recommended that you use the preview button before you save; this helps you find any errors you have made, and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history. Thanks again. – Tivedshambo (talk) 22:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

You can remove minor edits from how you see both article histories and "recent changes" in your "my preferences" dialogue. Andy Mabbett 23:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Species microformat

I've left some comments on it already, but I'm no taxonomist really. Thanks. —Pengo 16:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reverts

Please be very careful with reverting as you did here. If you need help, try looking into Help:Reverting. A complete revert was not only unnecessary, it could have swayed the discussion by removing important information - this is not acceptable. A partial revert would have been the solution here, keeping in the supporting information and explanation I added. The changes I made came about due to a Edit conflict. Please, familiarise yourself with reverting and in the future, maybe you ought to assume better faith. Good day. L.J.Skinnerwot|I did 14:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, you over-writing of pre-existing votes was unacceptable. Andy Mabbett 14:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Helpme tag

Please do not keep re-adding the {{helpme}} tag on to an article talk page as you keep doing with Talk:Walsall St Pauls bus station, it is to be used on User talk Pages and should not be used on article talk pages, again I have removed the template for these reasons. Thank you - [User:Tellyaddict|Telly]]addict 15:04, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Birds Page Editing

Pigsonthewing, don't delete the links that are not spam, please. You're deleting birds.allaboutthese.org saying that is spam, when that is not spam and is very relevant to who want to know more about birds and love them. JonixK 00:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, the help page says a site cannot be relevant to wikipedia if is all propose is to be commercial or wrapped in ads. The link you are deleting is not the case and is very relevant to the birds page. JonixK 01:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] flatlist

Hi Pigsonthewing,

the Template:flatlist template that you have created causes problems in that the vertical bar splits up multi-word items when the item wraps on to the next line. Looking at the Warwickshire article Mary Arden's House wraps to

| Mary Arden's |
House |

with the vertical bar appearing mid item.

Keith D 12:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Not here, on three different browsers (Firefox, IE7, Opera, under WinXp. What are you using (it seems to be broken!)? Discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#CSS for horizontal lists, BTW - the template only applies the CSS style referred to there.

Andy Mabbett 12:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I am using IE6 on WinXP. I have not seen the discussions on the subject.

Keith D 12:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Geolinks

Wouldn't it be straightforward to edit Geolinks-start (on which nearly all of the Geolinks templates rely) to include the new template and then the problem wouldn't be a problem?

--Scotthatton 14:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Possibly; I have no idea. Suggest you raise it on template talk:Coord. Andy Mabbett 14:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:SatyrBot/Current project

I've set some stuff up on the bot's current project page. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Science and Innovation associated with Birmingham

Hello, thanks for your comments here science and invention in Birmingham. I have made a suggestion on the talk page, thank you. Nick Boulevard 09:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Locate me templates

I have changed these to use "date=" syntax which is the way cleanup tempaltes are going. Any labelled with the old syntax will be picked up and changed by SB, so no worries. Rich Farmbrough, 10:50 3 April 2007 (GMT).

Thank you. Andy Mabbett 10:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Input requested

Hi. I'm planning to spend a bit of time in the next couple of weeks or so trying to improve Slender-billed Curlew, with the aim of bringing it up to GA status. Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated at the article's talk page. Thanks SP-KP 22:36, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll see what I can come up with. Meanwhile, please try to find me one, so I can do some OR! Andy Mabbett 22:45, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AN

FYI: discussion on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#LocateMe_bot. Tyrenius 00:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Is it really NPA to suggest you're enthusiastic & in good faith ;) --Tagishsimon (talk)

<sigh>

Let me know if this gets resolved. If I an help, I will. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:07, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion invitation

I've created a new discussion page at Template talk:West Midlands railway stations/Layout discussion in order to discuss which of the suggested layouts should be used for this template. Please feel free to voice your opinions. – Tivedshambo (talk) 08:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of Western Australia

The issue is a projecct one - not just any one geographical feature - and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Western_Australia is the best place for it, your signature name is enough to inspire many attempts at jokes - but I have restrained myself, and invite you to place your comment at the project page - the actual list talk page is a very low traffic location.... Satu Suro 10:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Hesperian is one of the more experienced admins in the west australian project - there might be other responses later - but he is a good judge of what has happened with the lists, cheers Satu Suro 14:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coord

...but!!! I'd just made an edit to the protected category, and saw the template change request.

Many admins responding to protected page edit requests know little or nothing about templates, so I've found you're best off giving them clear cut 'Cut and Paste' code to change... including a before and after at times.
I can't figure out what you want done from your request, and I daresay, I do know a few things about templates. If my best GUESS is correct, you seem to want them to replace the code of {{Main_coordinates_templates}} with the other. Why? Put the other in place (easy on the database) with the BOT, and eventually, if Main_coordinates_templates is indeed superceded, then it can be deleted or redirected at need.
This discussed somewhere? And which BOT is doing the replacement? Why can't the BOT replace the current template calls without affecting Template:Main_coordinates_templates (edit talk links history) current server loading? Which is to say, can't you write your changes to transisition things easier on the server without risking a lock up of the system?
All in all, any complicated change like that ought be placed in the hands of a template guru admin like CBD or David Kernow, etc. etc. ad infinitum. It's not like WP lacks for such talented people.
Oh- and the reason such pages are protected is because they affect loads and lots of other pages, so should best be done when en.wp is quiet... say 02-04:00 Hrs EDST when such won't lock up the system update que. // FrankB 15:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we're at cross purposes, but I've replied to your comment at Template talk:Main coordinates templates. Andy Mabbett 15:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, your request needed the context of the use of that template to be clear... and make it clear it was really a minor thing. I had much better things to do, trust me! I added links to the references so that others will be able to see your desire to help web crawlers and spammers. <g> Seems silly to me, if looked at that way, but I'm sure you perceive more posative benefits than that interpretation... which is what boils out of your original proposal paragraph! <sorry> Jargon speak will do that! I'm an engineer not a Computer scientist, and most of that discussion made little sense to someone with my background and I've been writing software since '76! Pity the poor lay-reader! <g>

re: I'm not a "kid" and I regard FrankB's closing comment as ill-informed and thus unwarranted. Sorry if you take that badly. Not trying for blood there, but I'm weary of many unnecessary changes fixing things which aren't broken in TFD or CFD, most of which seem driven by eager youngsters reinventing the wheel. One reason I started WP:TSP... we're always impacting each others time negatively when we change the status quo ante. So nothing personal.

re: Oh, and mid-day in which time zone? I stated a specific time window, when en.wp is pretty quiet... 2-4 am EDST, which is East Coast USA when Europe is not yet 'fully awake and in wiki-gear', the USA West Coast is going to bed, and points west of that have lesser English writing editors slowing such big changes down. If you edit into such a time window, preview submissions are amazingly faster... the servers aren't busy.

It would be nice to have a plain English statement about the benefits you guys are shooting for... say which the average librarian might be able to understand. The one person you might want to ask specifically for feedback in user:Patrick, who has written a number of complicated templates in that genre. He's usually at Meta, but occasionally slums here. Best wishes and regards. // FrankB 16:16, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not at all happy about your changes to List of highest mountains. See Spireguy. Viewfinder 22:10, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] {{LocateMeBot}}

Hi, Andy. Glad the tag is working like you thought it would. But there's no need to keep me updated with diffs of when it is. Remember, I was on your side :) You may want to show Tyrenius and Tagishsimon — they're the ones who had a problem with it. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I wasn't so much updating you, as anyone watching that page. Andy Mabbett 08:08, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

For the taxobox fix. Cheers. Shyamal 09:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DEFAULTSORT

Hi Pigsonthewing, I have noticed you have been adding the DEFAULTSORT template to articles recently. Just to let you know that this feature is a magic word and not a template, and the correct construction is {{DEFAULTSORT:Sortkey}} rather than {{DEFAULTSORT|Sortkey}}, using ":" instead of "|". The template was created to prevent confusion and shouldn't be used if possible. Thanks, matt br 11:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Point about ":" taken, but what do you mean by "The template was created to prevent confusion and shouldn't be used if possible" ?

Why not get Smackbot to check for cases using the pipe, and change them? Andy Mabbett 11:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Because the magic word looks almost identical to a template, when it was first introduced people saw it and used a template construction to replicate it, resulting in a red link to a non-existent template. The template was created so people didn't see the red link and not understand why it didn't work. It (the template) shouldn't be used because it is creating a dependence on a template for a software feature (magic words), but please do use the magic word. It's a bit of an insignificant edit to do by itself (there is no direct benefit), so they are being changed with other changes (spelling fixes, categorisation etc) to reduce the dependence on the template. I hope that helps, there's more at Template talk:DEFAULTSORT but let me know if you have any more questions. Thanks, matt br 11:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Andy Mabbett 09:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinates

How do you find the coordinates of an area and then link them to Wikipedia? Simply south 11:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:GEO. Andy Mabbett 11:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WA lists

I note the discussion at WP:WA on the length of lists in Western Australia. I can not see where any consensus was reached. Was the discussion finished elsewhere? Fred 04:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The only person who's objected indicated his withdrawal, so I was bold. Besides, the changes were essential, both for technical and usability reasons. Andy Mabbett 08:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

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