User talk:52 Pickup/Archive 2

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Contents

Welcome to WikiProject Germany

Welcome, 52 Pickup, to the WikiProject Germany! Please direct any questions about the project to its talk page. If you create new articles on Germany-related topics, please list them at our announcement page and tag their talk page with our project template {{WikiProject Germany}}. A few features that you might find helpful:

  • The project's Navigation box points to most of the pages in the project that might be of use to you.
  • Most of the important discussions related to the project take place on the project's main talk page; you may find it useful to watchlist it.
  • We've developed a number of guidelines for names, titles, and other things to standardize our articles and make interlinking easier that you may find useful.

Here are some tasks you can do:

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me or any of the more experienced members of the project, and we'll be very happy to help you. Again, welcome, and thank you for joining this project! -- Kusma (討論) 16:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Former Country

I was wondering if it is possible to give two differnt titles in the "deputy" field. I need to link to both the post of Governor General and Premier for the article Province of Canada, in addition to the Queen. Can this be done? Kevlar67 23:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That helps a lot. But now I have a problem with New France. New France was governed by the Sovereign Council of New France. It had three senior members, who were each responsible for different jobs in New France. The Govenor, the Bishop, and the Indentant. Would it be possible to list the King of France as the leader of New France and still have room to mention all three of these local positions? Or is it best to simply mention the Govenor, and mention the other positions in the body of the article? Kevlar67 19:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: New France -- Yeah, it could get crowded otherwise. I'll just stick with the governor.
Re: French States -- I figure we have the articles anyway, so it's not like I'm creating them. I'll just making sure they have the right info. I hope to start moving the boxes shortly if no one objects.
And thanks for the welcome! Kevlar67 20:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Languages and Infobox Former Country

You rock! Thanks so much. :-) Best regards, --Tkynerd 12:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox city update/upgrade

Hello 52,
Just to make you aware, I copied your User:52 Pickup/Template Sandbox2 and saved it to the Infobox city template. So if it is not on your watchlist you may want to put it on there for a few days. —MJCdetroit 03:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

History of Prussia

I noticed on your user page that you have an interest in Prussia. My brother just sent me Iron Kindgom ISBN 978-0674023857. It looks interesting. You might want to check it out. Thanks for your help with the town infobox. I also wanted to say that I like your user name. imars 14:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Do I understand correctly that once the info box is complete, I will be able to copy the info box from the German Wikipedia? That seems a little to hopeful to me.imars 17:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Cat problem

Hi, your User:52 Pickup/Drafts/SFRY page is showing up in the various categories listed at the bottom of that page. Can you disable this? General Idea 18:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Article merge

Hey 52 Pickup! Would you mind offering any input you might have at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Prussia#Article merge? Olessi 23:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Vijayanagara Empire

Hi. I recall you had helped me with the "Infobox Former Country" style of infobox for the Hoysala Empire. I am having a problem with the Vijayanagara Empire infobox. I am not able to get the preceeding and succeeding kingdoms to appear on the top. It seems to have slid to the bottom. How do I resolve this?thanks.Dineshkannambadi 02:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Project WikiAtlas

As you are a regular creator and uploader of maps to the commons, you might be interested to join the WikiProject Atlas at commons.wikimedia.org. I would like to invite you to join the project. Electionworld Talk? 08:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox City Location map

Hi 52 Pickup, since you requested this feature, you might like to comment on it here Template_talk:Infobox_City#Proposed_changes_to_support_the_Location_map_template (Caniago 12:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC))

World's Smallest Political Quiz userbox

You may be interested in User:Audacity/Userboxes/WSPQ, which is a replacement for the old Political Chart userbox. The new userbox takes the two variables (economic and personal freedom), calculates which political alignment they place you into (Statist, Libertarian, Liberal, Centrist, or Conservative), and links your userpage to the appropriate category.

Please reply to User talk:Audacity, as I will not be watching your talk page. Λυδαcιτγ 07:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Help in edit war

Can I ask your help in the poll to dirime this edit war at Castelseprio (see talk:Castelseprio)? I've stumbled in somebody with awful style layout, nad probably one of those guys getting stuck like children in their version of any article. Bye and good work. --Attilios 09:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks very much. Bye and good work. --Attilios 11:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Atlas

Thanks for joining commons:Commons:WikiProject Atlas. Could you please check/add your country of origine and add the tasks/responsibilities you want to take up in the atlas. Electionworld Talk? 12:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox German Bundesland

Hey. You might want to tag Infobox German Bundesland with {{db-author}} since it is a cross-namespace redirect you apparently created on accident. Thanks! --- RockMFR 18:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me. - 52 Pickup 18:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Userbox request

Please check out my answer and comment on it --The Dark Side 22:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

image:Map-DB-PrussiaProvs-1818.svg

Hi 52 Pickup

This is a very nice image but I am bit puzzled about why you have included Schleswig as a member of the German Confederation. Given the border of Luxembourg, the map looks like the pre-1839 situation to me, but until 1848 it was beyond doubt that Schleswig was not a member of this association. During the First Schleswig War (1848-51), the secessionist government of Schleswig-Holstein secured membership for Schl. in the Confederation but this was never recognized in Copenhagen and it was declared void when peace was concluded in 1851 and Danish rule returned to the provinces. My hunch would say that either the border of Luxembourg must be changed to the post-1839 situation + the image description must be updated; or, alternatively, the colouring of Schleswig must be changed. Just my thoughts and otherwise a very nice image. Happy editing. Valentinian T / C 19:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Much better. You probably made the mistake because the original image had it as well. I've seen that error many times before and I don't think it will be the last time :) If you're interested, the frontiers of Schleswig are (at least in Danish historiography) described a bit differently than on the map, see image:Kongerigske-Enklaver.png. The reason is that a few bits of what in geographical terms is part of Schleswig were transferred to the Kingdom during the reign of Queen Margrethe I (very long story). The situation was even worse during the early Middle Ages when all regions inhabited by the Frisians were treated the same way. It was not without reason that Lord Palmerston once stated that the history of Schleswig was so complicated that only three men ever understood it; one was Prince Albert, who was dead; the second, a professor, who had become insane; the third, himself, who had forgot. Anyway, the differences are so small that I doubt anyone will notice. The map looks fine to me now. Valentinian T / C 22:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Image:Map-AustroPrussianWar.svg

Hi - i just found this map as you placed it into de:Deutscher Krieg. Nice work! I think it took quite a while to make this map...

I can't tell exactly which of the small states were allies of Prussia and Austria. But for sure, the Free City of Frankfurt stayed neutral during the conflict (although it was occupied and annexed by the Prussians, however). So this small area should be green. I don't know about the other three city republics, in your map they are marked as prussian allies.

On the post-war map (Image:Map-AustroPrussianWar-annexed.svg), the tiny Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg northwest of Frankfurt must become blue (prussian). It fell to Hesse-Darmstadt in early 1866, after the war they passed it to Prussia in return for the spa town of Nauheim. Thus, the southwestern tip of Oberhessen (the northern portion of Hesse-Darmstadt) must become blue in your post-war map, and the small blue island within Oberhessen (Nauheim) must become pink.

Cheers --Magadan ?! 18:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Strange

Do you know what this user wants? --Der Eberswalder 18:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

No idea. By looking at this user's edit history, he only appears pre-occupied with the content on the Goslar page, and not on any of the other pages that use these navbars. His so-far refusal to elaborate on his claims (apart from comments on your talk-page, and that of Net-net) makes the whole thing very suspicious. - 52 Pickup 10:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Castelseprio

I would signal you the behaviour of user:Johnbod at Castelseprio: another personal attempt to put back the page at his will to a pre-Edir War version, when a large consensus had been reached to keep things as they were. He did an alleged splitting, but not the one discussed there. Bye and thanks --Attilios 01:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Maps

Hi 52 Pickup, I noticed you've made some maps, and I think they're quite good. How do you make them? Appleseed (Talk) 20:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. To make these maps, I used the blank maps available at http://www.ieg-maps.uni-mainz.de. Taking a high-resolution no-text PDF files available there, I converted it to a very-high resolution PNG image using GIMP. Then I imported this PNG image into Inkscape and converted it to SVG format. You need a very high-resolution PNG image in order for Inkscape to identify the border divisions correctly. - 52 Pickup 20:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Move

I think you'll be interested in this:Talk:Historical_Eastern_Germany#Requested_move. -- Hrödberäht (talk) 20:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

circles

it does seem problematic to have the circle templates on articles about modern political entities. This anon is clearly off his rocker, but it would seem sound to create specific articles about free cities to avoid this. john k 16:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Infobox city links

Hi - I noticed this edit, which adds an ifdef allowing leader names to be provided "plain" and automatically linked. I'm not sure this is worthwhile, and it seems like it might even introduce a problem. As it was, if you wanted to link the name you provided the linked name as the parameter. Now, you can do either (I initially thought your change might have broken cases where a link was currently provided, but thinking about it some more this is not the case). However, if there are disambiguation problems (say, the leader's name is John Smith but not one with a Wikipedia article) there is now no way to avoid the "automatic" link. Do you agree this might be a problem? -- Rick Block (talk) 15:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Historical Eastern Germany

Perhaps you'd be interested in this:Talk:Historical_Eastern_Germany#Requested_move. -- Hrödberäht (gespräch) 04:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

For restarting the Wikipedia Project Prussia.I also have interests in geopolitics,and am lookin forward to finishing my geography degree.I'm from Florida and native speacker of English also.look me up,love to talk with ya.Natthegreat 14:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

flag, shield, coa, logo links

52 Pickup,

I hope you had a good time on vacation! I was waiting until you got back to ask if you were still interested in changing the flag, shield, COA, logo links at {{Infobox City}} so that they do not display broken links? Also, would it be possible to use AWB to find articles that transcluse to Infobox City and use the |city_logo = parameters and change them to blank fields? There are not too many that use logo so if we could somehow switch that to a blank symbol field that might be better for the future. —MJCdetroit 01:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. I did indeed have a great time! First truly relaxing holiday I've had for ages. I'm still interested in working on this coding problem. Not sure when I can get onto it, since things are getting pretty busy again. The template {{Infobox Former Country}} has a similar problem that I want to work on: when there is no link for Flag or CoA, this template links to Flag or Coat of arms, which is rather redundant. As for AWB, I've never used it, so I can't help you there. If there are not too many affected articles, perhaps instead you could set the template to assign any article that has anything in the city_logo field to a maintenance category. A maintenance category has proven useful for the former country infobox (Category:Former country articles requiring maintenance) so it might be worth setting one up for Infobox City. - 52 Pickup 17:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I will try to toy with the code a little when I get the chance and run it by you first. Vacation/Holiday, that's almost a foreign word to me. :( —MJCdetroit 00:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
P.S. If the table on {{Infobox City}} looks familiar to you— it is. I borrowed the code from {{Infobox Former Country}}. Hope that you don't mind. —MJCdetroit 00:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok double check this when you get a chance: Template:Infobox City/Test. Thanks, —MJCdetroit 05:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that looks like the way to go. - 52 Pickup 18:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, BTW, What's the deal with Berlin's infobox? I tried to install Infobox City and it was rejected by Lear21, I felt that a standard infobox would be easier for the average Joe to edit to than that manual concoction that is there. Is Template:Infobox German Location still in the development stages? Berlin maybe a good place to use it. Although, I am not sure with all those German names. I would complain but I seen your reasoning and that you plan to add the English names soon. Anyway, thanks and Berlin give it a look for your infobox. —MJCdetroit 05:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Lear21 appears to have claimed ownership of the Berlin page, reverting almost anything done by anyone else. Since Berlin is both a city and state of Germany (as is Hamburg), I made a state infobox for Berlin with this edit, but he swiftly reverted it as an "ugly joke". Honestly, I have no time for such childish behaviour. The German Location infobox is pretty much fully operational. English names for all the fields is still planned, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. The only other thing missing is auto-categorisation, but that is a minor thing. - 52 Pickup 09:53, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
WTF, it shouldn't be that way. Consistency and ease of use should over-rule someone's personal POV. I seen nothing wrong with your "ugly joke". Germany is not my thing, but if you ever reinstall your ugly joke I'll back you up on the edit. —MJCdetroit 14:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks :) His reasoning is that the EU is a country *shakes head again* (see Talk:Berlin/Archive_5#EU_has_country_status) and that Berlin is a major city (although Washington DC, Beijing London and Moscow all use standard infoboxes - go figure). I made the German state infoboxes as consistent as I could (all 16 are shown here), and they are kept everywhere except for at Berlin. Maybe I'll try again. - 52 Pickup 15:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

WPFC

Thank you for your welcome to the project. I've found that many of the pages concerned by WPFC contain unencyclopædiac wording and grammatical errors. I'll begin my work for the project by improving these. I am currently working on [Aro Confederacy]]. --Whytecypress 18:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC) I've also added Venice to our category, as having such a prestigious article under the category might attract new members, and categorized some other articles.--Whytecypress 19:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Germany project template

If you need any help, comments, or ideas with this, I'll be happy to help. I just don't want to assume any responsibility for the template code right now (I need to write some real world mathematics articles, which leaves time for casual Wikipedia editing, but not for any big projects). I have played a bit with the template in my userspace a couple of months ago, see User:Kusma/G, User:Kusma/G2 and User:Kusma/GTcats. Unfortunately I don't remember what the point of my changes was, but maybe it helps you a bit. Good luck, and thanks for volunteering! Kusma (talk) 12:23, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I am unsure whether we really need the subproject-specific importance flags (probably we don't; if they make it hard for you to write a good template, remove them). I basically introduced them to make the Munich people happy. The Mainz group is basically my personal testing project, and its importance ratings and "Potential B-class" etc. categories are not really necessary (and should be replaced by use of category intersection once we get the toolserver back anyway). Some of the projects use "class", others "Class"; I was to lazy to unify this. If you need help with that (deleting the redundant categories after a change) just give me the list and I'll delete them. We should probably streamline the subprojects (and get a WP1.0 list for Frankfurt) and found a couple more subprojects (that will benefit from a more focused worklist). One thing from the Former Countries template that you should not do is include the Todo list (a link is fine, though), as that poisons Special:Whatlinkshere by adding 15k+ irrelevant links to any page linked from the Todo list.
I really like the 5-point checklist, and hope we can get a big assessment drive going with these better-defined criteria, which might induce people to actually work on the problems identified. We probably need to improve the Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Assessment explanations page, too. Kusma (talk) 08:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd go with the idea, that the subproject importance is not really needed - but it was useful for non-obvious reasons at the time. Agathoclea 21:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice work so far! Some comments, though: The template still should be simplified a bit and the wording shortened, I think. Try to fully expand Template:WikiProject Germany/test-full (where I have tested the "small" option) and see. {{WPMILHIST}} looks a lot better when small; perhaps there is a compromise between our lengthy text and their short text. I also like the somewhat cleaner code of {{WPMILHIST}} thanks to the use of {{WPMILHIST/Task force categories}} and other subtemplates. About the "class" versus "Class" category names: Most of Category:Start-Class articles uses a capital C, so perhaps we should change to that. I hope that doesn't confuse the bot, but the worst that can happen is that every article appears to have been reassessed (if you are afraid to break things, ask Oleg). As to what should we hidden and what not, feel free to use your own judgement; I don't know how much the subprojects are currently active or trying to recruit members. The good thing is that most articles won't belong to more than two or three task forces right now. Kusma (talk) 09:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

What I don't get in other templates is why they display whether an article has been used on a portal. Why should I care? Kusma (talk) 09:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The "comments" feature is a standard part of the WP 1.0 assessment process. We do not have to include the text of the comment in the displayed template. However, I like the inclusion of these comments at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Germany articles by quality/1 (the bot needs (or at least used to need last time I checked) the "with comments" category to decide whether or not to include the comments on that page). About importance: I don't think it is necessary to display it in the banner; it is basically just a sorting feature. By avoiding to draw more attention to it, perhaps we can avoid silly edit wars over importance tags. Kusma (talk) 10:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

My only complaint left is the B- tests in the small version, which take up too much space. {{WPMILHIST}} manages to look a lot better in that area. Once you decide to go live with the template, please don't forget to update the instructions. Happy editing! Kusma (talk) 11:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Looks good so far; I hope it will work everywhere :-) After rollout, we'll have to update the instructions at the template page and explain the B stuff at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Germany/Assessment#Quality_scale. The additional parameters for nonexistent projects should probably be commented out or removed and not documented. Kusma (talk) 15:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! We just need to get a "B parameters assessment drive" going now. Perhaps we should write a project newsletter to our members, and activate them a bit more. If you have any ideas for this, let's discuss at WT:GER. Kusma (talk) 16:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Former Country

You've just done a load of work to Infobox Former Country and it seems to have changed the way the event_pre event is listed, listing only the date_pre, above the dashed list of events. Is there a reason you've changed it thus, or is that unintentional?

If you didn't mean to change that, could you restore it to look like the other events in that list and then uncomment the pre-event fields in Kingdom of Italy (medieval); if you did mean to, I'm curious as to why… :o)

Thanks! — OwenBlacker 20:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the problem with event_pre. The fault was a simple missing line break. There's always one more bug, isn't there?. The Kingdom of Italy entry is now working properly (and hopefully all the others too). - 52 Pickup 20:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, always one more bug. I totally know what you mean! Thanks for the quick fix.
Fwiw, I've restored the status_text, as the medieval kingdom of Italy wasn't really a state of the HRE in the usual sense, merely nominally. After the Investiture Controversy, the Empire controlled very little Italian territory. I've reworded it to make that clearer, though. — OwenBlacker 20:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Good point. I see that you just joined WPFC (Welcome!) but I don't know if you noticed the subproject that we have dedicated to the HRE. That's gone a little quiet lately, so if you have any thoughts on how to get it moving again, it would be much appreciated. - 52 Pickup 14:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks!  :o) I don't really know, tbh. At the moment, I'm just putting the infoboxes on places — mainly cos I think they're (a) really useful and (b) really attractive. I'll see if I can give it some thought.
To whit, I took a look but couldn't work out how to add some space between the predecessor / successor flags. Also, I took a look but decided I needed bed more urgently than to get my head round MediaWiki switch statements — could you get it to show Client of the First French Empire, when those are the status and empire variables, please?
Feel free to leave the latter for me to do tomorrow evening  ;o) — OwenBlacker 23:04, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
The client status for France is now added. If you see any errors, please let me know. As for spacing between the flags, that is a problem that has been bugging me for ages. So far I have been unable to come up with anything that provides a small amount of spacing, but not too much to make the box too big. Placing borders around the flags was another problem - the only solution that has worked so far is adding the grey background. - 52 Pickup 08:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I tried some ideas, but I couldn't work out anything for the flags either.
I also couldn't work out how better to format the currencies list on Union between Sweden and Norway, either. — OwenBlacker 13:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I had a go on the currency section. That was the most compact approach that I could think of. - 52 Pickup 19:05, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Bundesland Template / German Location

Hi Pickup ! Would be great to see a last effort to complete the Bundesland Template. There is also a small thing to fix in the German Location Template. The heading Coat of arms / Location appears not complete like the others. all the best Lear 21 21:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi P again! I changed the Bundesland Template. The 16 Länder look fine to me. Could you check the programming syntax, i´m not an expert in it. The Coat of arms should be made size adjustable - Bavaria is too small, Berlin too big. Some renaming could be done as well. Lear 21 20:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for the welcome message. It is my pleasure to be part of the project.--Albanian since Stone Age 21:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

WPFC

Hi 52 Pickup - I've finally added the above project to the script. As with most other projects, only "importance" and "class" are selectable right now, but the rest of the parameters you mentioned will be included when a new template is added. –Outriggr § 07:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

My apologies. I forgot to add "WPFC" to one of two places it needs to go in the script. Try it now. –Outriggr § 08:32, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Colonies as former countries

Hello. I noticed that Massachusetts Bay Colony has been tagged with the {{WPFC}} banner. I suppose that it could be argued that all of the thirteen original colonies were independent countries from the time of the Declaration of Independence until they were subsumed into the United States by either the Articles of Confederation or the US Constitution. I don't think most people would think of them as former countries, however, since there wasn't a discontinuity in governance. On the other hand, however, until the 1860s, many people did indeed consider their home state as their country- this is the very reason that Robert E. Lee fought for Virginia rather than for the Union. So what I guess I'm asking is whether or not you consider the thirteen American colonies as within the scope of the project and whether they should all be so tagged. Thanks! —Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 17:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Urban

Hi. You seem to be the prime mover behind {{Infobox German Location}}, so maybe you can help me solve a puzzle relating to it. All the articles that use this template with the parameter "kreis = urban" or "landkreis = urban" end up appearing on Special:Whatlinkshere/Urban, even though the template itself does not contain any link to Urban and, as far as I can tell, the resulting articles (such as Cologne or Darmstadt) do not contain any visible link to Urban. I can't tell where these "phantom" links are coming from; since you are more familiar with the template syntax, perhaps you may have some idea as to how to solve this puzzle. --Russ (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a total mystery to me. I have just re-coded that part of the template to see if it has any effect. If not, I'll have to try something else. Thanks for the heads-up. - 52 Pickup 08:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Former Country

I want to ask you why isn't the infobox displaying the banner on the Inca Empire article. thanks--Andersmusician 18:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I just fixed the Inca Empire article. The problem was that the image_flag field was given twice, with the second instance showing it blank. Your category suggestion is a good one - perhaps with "region=Andes". I'll give it a try when I have the time. - 52 Pickup 20:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments on my Talk: page. Yeah, with multiple "native names" for some territories, it just seemed to make sense to disambiguate them for non-readers of those languages. Wrt the note I added to the Members page, it just seemed like a good idea — I'd just been messing with the Userboxen on my User: page, which is why the idea came to me  :o) It looks better using the ISO codes, like you've edited it to, too, thanks!

Sure, I'm happy to help with running WPFC if you want a hand with stuff; my only problem is that I'm often somewhat time-limited, but I'm sure I can find the time, if you want a hand — just lemme know what kinda stuff you'd like me to help with… — OwenBlacker 10:12, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It's no problem; I'm sure I can help in those two areas. :o) — OwenBlacker 19:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Former Subdivision

Hi 52 Pickup. Would you mind taking a look at {{Infobox Former Subdivision}}. I've finally got around to make articles about the Danish successor entities to the Province of Schleswig-Holstein but the right-hand links aren't working properly. Any help would be appreciated. Happy editing. Valentinian T / C 19:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The right hand links work, the difference is that they are displayed at the bottom of the infobox. This happens when more than 4 predecessor/successor states are given - this is to prevent the top of the infobox getting too big and unwieldly. - 52 Pickup 20:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok that makes sense. Thanks for the help. Valentinian T / C 20:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Austrian Silesia

Would you mind lending your expertise to Austrian Silesia? The infobox there seems to be disrupting the introduction considerably. Olessi 21:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. I have no idea why the infobox behaved like that - but Infobox Country was used, and I don't know too much about that one. - 52 Pickup 07:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing it! Olessi 13:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

May 2007 edition of the WikiProject Germany newsletter

The Germany WikiProject Newsletter
Issue I - May 2007
From the editor

This is the first issue of WikiProject Germany's newsletter. The newsletter is intended to help all members of the project to keep up with new developments and coordinate new collaborative efforts.
Other areas where you can help
  • Assessment requests: Some open Requests for assessment need to be answered. To see new assessment requests as they come in, you can watchlist the assessment page.
  • More task forces and subprojects: As this WikiProject covers a very large topic area, it is helpful to add more task forces that focus on specific aspects of Germany. Currently, we have a Mainz task force, a Munich subproject and some joint task forces with other WikiProjects. Any project member is invited to start a new task force. Suggestions for possible topics:
    • Transportation in Germany
    • German politics (the political system of Germany and the biographies of its politicians)
    • German Democratic Republic

Be creative! If you have an idea, just suggest it on the project talk page (don't forget to watchlist it).

  • Categorization: Uncategorized Germany stubs need to be categorized
Project news
  • Criteria for B-Class status: The assessment criteria for B-Class have been changed. {{WikiProject Germany}} template now has 5 switches, B-Class-1 through B-Class-5 that correspond to 5 easily checked criteria that an article should meet to be assessed as B-Class. The advantage of this system is that now there is a clear boundary between Start-Class and B-Class articles. Authors of articles that were assessed as Start-Class now get more direct feedback what they should improve to attain a B-Class rating.

All of our B-Class, Start-Class and Stub-Class articles now need to be checked whether they meet any of the B-Class criteria. This is a major effort, and we need your help! If you want to help, but don't know how, please post at the project talkpage.

  • Cities and municipalities task force

A task force dedicated to creating and improving articles on all German cities and municipalities has been started and is looking for help.

This newsletter was delivered by Kusma using AWB to all members of WikiProject Germany. If you do not want to receive this newsletter in the future, please leave a note at the talk page of the Outreach department so we can come up with a better spamlist solution. Thank you, Kusma 11:45, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Template problems are still unsolved

Hi Pickup! The Bundesland problems remain unsolved. a) Hamburg doesnt have a flag. b) All state flags are tagged uncorrectly as civil flags (see German article) c) civil flags are not representing the state and have to be removed from infobox (compare U.S states flag/left coat of arms/right) Please consider to solve these problems as you are the creator of the Template. Thanks in advance. Lear 21 16:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

b) in the engl. Wikipedia 'Land' is translated to 'state', the current translation is wrong and misleading. c) there is a reason why the German article infobox presents only the Landesflagge /State flag because this is the most relevant one and represents the state. All other flags are of minor relevance and lower priority for the infobox. Wikipedia is not a place of keeping everybody happy. The issue of other flags can be addressed in the article but not in the Bundesland template. Lear 21 13:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

All Bundesland articles translate Bundesland to State. The Landesflagge is therefore a state flag. This problem could be solved when Landesdienstflagge is removed. It has politically minor relevance and should be explained in a seperate section. Compare German article and US states for Template design. I´m going to reintroduce the old Bundesland manual tommorrow. Lear 21 14:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Now the Bundesland Template has achieved international standards. Many thanks for the improvements. One thing: The 'Location' Header lacks a line and the certain width like the others, and the standard map size could be slightly expanded... Lear 21 16:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Colors

Re: Template:Infobox Former Country and These drab boxes... Yuck! <g> I kinda liked the Gold, but I know most yellow based colors don't render well (e.g. my talk) on my laptop, and it makes azure look white too, which is replicated on my two kids and wife's laptops... so colors are a roll of the dice no matter what.

On behalf of those of us with good graphics cards though, I was trying to promote that template:TextColors for such spicey spots of spring as it were... perhaps you should put it back with a few params to override like I did for width. Then someone can select a national color or two for that header... err, ex-national, in this case I guess! (Hell, even Milt-Hist boxes have more color!)

Lastly, 290px is fine. Both are smaller than that screwy 24.5em command. At least pixels doesn't overrun the screen for those of us who use larger fonts and stick with a 1024w or 1284w display mode. I picked the 315 as that's what Miltary History Project's boxes are set for, and until I took cognizance of this one, that was the biggest I'd seen.

Cheers, I've run across some of your work before, but it's nice to meetchya finally! // FrankB 23:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Former Country colours

Thanks for coming up with a non-div solution to that alignment problem. That's been bugging me for ages. No problem with the width - this template was previously that wide. Unfortunately, the colours that you proposed didn't render all that well on my computer (and my graphics card is rather good).

At the moment, the former country infobox design is meant to resemble Infobox Country, hence the lack of colour. It has a few differences - the most noticeable being the flag-navigation section at the top. It was necessary to use a gray background for this section because I was unable to place borders around the flag images without messing up the layout, and some sort of background was needed to provide the necessary contrast for the many flags that contain a lot of white - and pale gray is the only (as far as I know) colour that does not feature on (m)any flags.

Allowing users to modify the colours of each entry is a nice idea, but unfortunately I can see two major problems: 1) Consistency issues, and - perhaps more importantly - 2) POV issues. Various entries using the Former Country infobox are sometimes subject to heated debate, normally of a historical or even nationalistic nature. Allowing these people to modify the colours of the infobox could escalate the situation. To reduce this, it is necessary to maintain a certain level of neutrality in the presentation of this particular infobox.

It's great to spice things up a bit, so I'm not against changing the colours, but the format has to be something that can suit the wide range of entries that use this template. This infobox is used by entries from the Han Dynasty to Serbia and Montenegro, so there are a lot of different people to keep happy. I'll see what can be done. Thanks for bringing it up! - 52 Pickup 09:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Darn funny you should start by saying THAT... see from Happy2me 1st to now... here -- I've been non-stop on an overlarge nesting nightmare on Ronald Reagan -- but I brought it on myself; I foolishly decided I needed one more pic, found many and added (?) six! In the middle, I kicked someone's pov apparently. <g> ((incidently, I added left side capability to that template, so it'll go both ways now! (Kinky! <g>)
  • See Template:Commonscat1A (edit talk links history) boxes around images... that may be a solution for your flags. I really don't give a rats butt, but a little color is nice. Let the users squabble over the color choices... their maturity is not OUR problem unless we're directly involved. If you dig out or specify a default color (<g> errr... colour -- you limeys have such Colorful spelling! <BSEG>) you can default within the NestTextColors or TextColors templates with a few dozen extra characters. On the default, have you tried 'clear' and 'transparent'? See for example Template:Interwikitmp-grp (edit talk links history) and the blue in {{WPTSP}} as some thoughts. Bear in mind you can intermingle HTML and wikimarkup coding so there's another way to segregate the display effects needed, and the markup both from the parser function logic.

    On the nationalism side, I had a belly full of such between Japan and Korea a couple of years back, so I commiserate sincerely! One thing that really struck me strangely was the English 'conventional' name is below the foreign language's... on the English Wikipedia? See Austria-Hungary (edit talk links history) which was the edit that got me into your baliwick. Then I did the edit before a [this edit] as a sort of pacifier to keep the tribe at bay, then rethunk the standard position... so moved it as the diff shows. Anyhow. Good Morning! (I've been up ALL F***ing Night... and haven't yet started what I intended to edit yesterday when I sat down. Wiki hijacks a lot of time at times! Cheers // FrankB 10:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Just saw your welcome to wikiproject Germany up top... are you A) in Europe B) speak the lingo? C) better yet local to Germany? // FrankB 10:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC) (I've evil semi-personal reasons for asking! <g>)

Austria-Hungary

Who's a limey? I'm an Aussie (see user page), which gives me the right to pick whatever I like from UK and US English. :)

It appears to be standard to place the native names first (see Switzerland), not only here but on other wikis (eg. de:USA). For multiple languages, we have started placing a small, unobtrusive link next to each different name, giving the language. For the Austria-Hungary article, I like that you have taken the verrrrry long official names and placed them in a separate box, but I that last edit of yours has resulted in some broken code. I'll see what can be done.

I'm not familiar with the templates that you have mentioned. Thanks, I'll have a look at them.

And A) yes, B) not exactly fluent - but close, and C) yes - 52 Pickup 13:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Aha! A priviledged person indeed. Sorry for casting aspersions on your noble upside down character, or whatever. (Does this mean I should call you Kiwi? <g>) I hope to take a long vaction down-under some day. Event thought of immigrating there a new marriage (and two teens now driving) ago! [a lifetime!]
A) re: this change... Didn't care for the lang boxes or were they indeed breaking stuff? I hadn't seen it, and I check most graphics adjustments on several browsers... but maybe I slipped up? But since the 'solution' using {{FixHTML}} is brand squeeky new, if there is a problem, I want to be straight on what kind, and what fixed it. Unless it be unrelated, such as your edit just made looks to be.
B) on A, B, C, etc. Would you consider emailing me. I need some 'eyes on' shopping of pricey items. My addy is on my talk page greeting banner/header.
C) I like the user name, btw. 'Minds me of one I took for sportstalk... NFL Football, "A454Magnum" which makes no sense until you know that:
a) the site wouldn't let a subscriber name begin with a number (strange) and
b) A "454 Magnum" is the Mercruiser designation of the brute motor I was pulling at the time for an overhaul from my "Go Fast" boat. Maybe I ought to air-ship it down there and go hopping around the coral heads!

I once had a truck too. Ugliest damn thing on the road-- two toned colourwise-- Dark Green and rust, no extra charge for all the dents and scratches. But it could haul a heck of a load. Double rear axle, lift gate equipped, with a flathead-6 Ford "real truck" engine; a flatbed "stake truck"-- don't recall the year for sure, ('63?) but that seems right. [That same lifetime ago, I fear!] // FrankB 22:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
A) At the time that I made the edit, there was a lot of broken code that I thought I had cleaned up by moving the box of long names below the infobox (i didn't remove the box that you made - i thought that was a good idea - just moved it. the text "Full names" in the infobox now directly links to it). But after looking at the pre-edit version a few days later, the broken code was all gone. So I'm not sure exactly what I actually fixed, if anything.
B) Done.
C) Coming up with a new username can be a real trial. For something that is not really all that important in the big scheme of things, it's amazing how much time it can sometimes take.
D) Unfortunately, I don't get the chance to go home anywhere near as often as I would like. Sometimes my time there feels like a lifetime ago, too. - 52 Pickup 20:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Königreich Württemberg

Es wäre sehr nett, wenn du für den Artikel de:Königreich Württemberg eine ordentliche Karte zur Lage im Deutschen Reich machen könntest. Danke. -- 84.56.133.26 12:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Getan. Hier ist sie: Map-DR-Wuerttemberg.svg. Es gibt auch Map-WR-Wuerttemberg.svg für den folgende Freistaat. - 52 Pickup 13:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Vielen Dank - Thank you very much. -- 84.56.133.26 16:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Infobox needed

There is discussion about deleting the Infoboxneeded template. I thought you might want to chime in. Timneu22 00:21, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Former Country

You recently made changes to {{Infobox Former Country}}, removing the wikilinking for many date fields. This has presented a number of problems. The first one is that by removing the wikilinking from dates, the presentation of dates no longer displays in the right user-specific way ("16 May"/"May 16"). Another problem is that it has affected the consistency of the infobox presentation - for various fields it has become procedure to add wikilinks to any dates given, but now some links have been removed leaving others behind. All date-related wikilinking done here is in line with that done in {{Infobox Country}}, so I do not understand why these changes were made. Sorry, but I may have to revert some or all of this. - 52 Pickup 07:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to here. I understand what you are saying about user date preferences. My intention was merely to remove links to date fragments such as year-only ('1981'). I thought that I understood the infobox code well enough, apparently I did not. Sorry if my edits did more than I intended.
I hope that you understand what I was trying to do. If you can make it so that date fragments such as year-only are not linked (in one or both infoboxes), I would be grateful. Otherwise feel free to revert my edits as you think best. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Keep up the good work. Regards Editore99 12:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Ah, now I understand. No problem: I'll see what I can do about the date fragments. There are quite a few in different places, so it will take some time. - 52 Pickup 12:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Kellogg's.svg

Hello, 52 Pickup. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Kellogg's.svg) was found at the following location: User:52 Pickup/Sandbox. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 16:16, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edit to Schleswig-Holstein (diff) was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept my humble creator's apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // MartinBot 16:43, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Help.

Hallo. I have got a huge problem. Someone has redirected my user talk page to another page. It is a user called User:Efstyle10 who has done this, and this user also edits under the name User talk:84.9.15.240. Please revert all the odd edits they have done to my talkpage, and stop them from doing this. Thankyou, in advance Breakfast100 12:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC).

This is definately not the first time this user has graffitied, but it is the first time they have done it while ligged in Breakfast100 12:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I've undone his pagemove. MaxSem 14:20, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
For future reference, WP:AN/I is the place to raise this sort of thing. THF 14:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Stuttgart ticker

I got the times from the ticker on the VfB Stuttgart website. These look correct. I'm assuming that Stuttgart would have correct stats from their own game. Kingjeff 19:52, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessments: WPFC

Greetings. Thank you for the introduction. As it appears you and a few of your colleagues have originated much of the project's structure, I'll direct this question here rather than break up the current topics in the WP's discussion thread. I briefly reviewed the Assessment page, is there any reason we have yet to add an "importance" component to the table, and would there be any objection to my modifying that page a little further to match that of some of the other projects I've worked on (i.e. Architecture)? I can bring up the importance examples on the discussion before finalizing that on the page itself. Also, if we do go forward with that, can the importance classification be placed on all tagged articles at once or is a more manual approach required? Thanks. Internazionale 17:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

(Follow-up)

Thanks for your reply regarding the above topic. I can understand the sensitivity of an "importance" component vis-a-vis several particular examples of FCs, that's a rational response. I will have a look and see what I can do to assist the process as time allows. More questions sure to follow. Regards, Internazionale 15:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

West Germany national football team

This article is being put up for deletion. You can come [Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Germany national football team|here]] to join the discussion. Kingjeff 14:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Masashi Kishimoto

Did you take a moment to look at the history of this article before nominating it for speedy deletion for copy violation? Someone dumped an online biography onto a longstanding and perfectly decent article which you could easily have reverted to. Please look at it again. Nick mallory 12:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)