User talk:Dingo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I thought useful:

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be Bold!

Sam [Spade] 08:05, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Flag templates nominated for TfD

Several flag templates you recently created have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Andrwsc 21:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Your response on my talk page is puzzling. You claim that those templates were created using ISO 639-3 language codes. The convention established on Wikipedia:Inline templates linking countries is that we use ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes, FIFA team codes (which is where ENG, SCO, etc. come from), and IOC nation codes. There are no other templates in this series that are based on language instead of region. Of course, this makes perfect sense because {{ESP}} creates a wikilink to Spain, not to Spanish language. Using language codes to represent regions is obscure, to say the least.
Furthermore, the whole point of those templates is to provide shortcuts for widely-used flag icons. There is no point at all in creating new templates (based on codes that very few people will recognize) for single use transclusions. Better to write {{flag|Basque Country}}, which results in plainly understandable markup for subsequent editors. Regards, Andrwsc 22:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
I have no quarrel with the templates being deleted. Conventions are nice, but the problem to find unique three-letter codes for regional templates remains. Official national abbreviations cannot be used, as they are only unique on a national level. There is no official normalised code for regions under the national layer. FIFA "codes" are, to say the least, controversial, as the FIFA is no norming organisation. If you have other proposals for a basis of three-letter codes of regions, I would be most interested to hear it; still, I did not unthinkingly "invent" the codes.
I had a use of the codes in my touch-up of the European Parties articles, so I was "bold". I had no time to request the beginning of the Wikipedia Convention Normalisation process, but as I see, the work I began has since even be enhanced and the templates replaced by the appropriate flag templates.
The accusation of having "invented" the codes is however still false, and I defend against it. For the work I did, I deemed the templates necessary and I derived them from the most logical source I could find; since then, no one has made a better suggestion. You will see that the templates also did not point to the languages, but the regions in question.
I consider the accusation of having "invented" the codes for those regions however offensive.
Dingo 23:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
There is no problem with respect to finding three letter codes for regional flag templates, because they simply aren't needed. For "common" countries like the USA, Germany, France, etc., there are thousands of articles where flag templates are used, so there is an argument to be made for "shortcut" templates like {{USA}}, {{GER}}, and {{FRA}} respectively. However, there are relatively few instances where flag icons are used for Silesia, Cornwall, etc. There is no compelling reason to create "shortcut" templates — the standard {{flag}} template works perfectly well, with the added benefit of easier to read wiki markup. This argument is especially true in situations where there are no commonly used three letter codes for the region in question. It is counter-productive for us to force editors to look up "obscure" codes on some directory page, for example. If you can write [[Andalusia]] in an article, it is very easy to replace that with {{flag|Andalusia}} to attach the flag icon.
There is no reason to find offense in my nomination for template deletion. None was intended. Andrwsc 02:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Then this is probably a misunderstanding. I did not take offence in the nominations, as I stated previously, but in the claim of "inventing" codes. As I said, in the end, the work I started in the European Party section in the end was completed and improved; so obviously, it also works without three-letter codes (do they also work as substitutes using three brackets?). If you did not intend offence, I accept that. -- User:Dingo 08:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anonymous edits

Hi Dingo, why don't you just log in and make sandbox tests yourself? Why are you working anonymously lately? I would think it would be easier for you to make your own edits instead of asking someone else to do it for you. I'm still happy to oblige with things that help the community, but I'm curious why you are working this way. Thanks, Andrwsc 22:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't seen the imagemap extension before, but that looks awfully promising! I'll see what I can do. And please refrain from continuing to assume anything but good faith about my comments. Andrwsc 22:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I am currently working anonymously because my login data are on a computer that does currently not work, and on which one is also the eMail account that I am using for wikipedia - so currently, I just can't log in. :-(

Even if I had a working account, however, the only thing I could have done myself is the imagemap-experimenting, for all the other topics I am asking someone else to help are about protected pages. Neither am I an administrator, nor do I desire to become one, nor do I think it a good idea to change even as an administrator protected pages without prior discussion.

If the parser works and the imagemap gets used in flagicon (and even if it does not work yet, I think it is a probable improvement into the next MediaWiki-revision), you probably understand why I have reservations against uses like "Flag of the United Kingdom Northern Ireland", as this will then get confusing for users who take on the habit of clicking on the flag.

Let us begin again with a clean slate and assume each other's requests and answers to be reasonable and in good faith. Right now, the common flaming in the internet just has me probably kind of over-sensitive and burnt-out.

BTW, in the Korean-related stubs, the Unification Flag is also used (consistend with padraig's messages in the Country data discussion of using a iconised map himself). A map seems to be the most neutral way of symbolising a country where the conflicting parties cannot aggree on a common symbol yet. -- Dingo 07:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough! It seems like this all started with my "invented" comment on that TfD nomination, but I assure you, I intended no offense. If anything, it proves that language codes are really obscure and few people know them! I have been working with country codes and flag templates for many months, so I thought I knew 'em all...
Anyway, I sincerely work for this project in honest attempts to improve it. You'll see that the vast majority of my ~18,000 edits are "technical" related — reformatting tables, improving templates, etc. I have very little POV. My position is almost always with respect to logic and elegance of implementation more than content. Therefore, in this discussion, I hope you can see that I am not really taking sides on the NI flag debate. My observation is just that this flag is widely used as the de facto flag of NI in many different sporting contexts, and I want to help editors working on those pages with a consistent set of flag templates for their results tables etc. I am also sympathetic to editors who want to use the de jure Union flag to refer to NI in other contexts, so now they have the standard mechanism to make their changes.
I like your imagemap idea and will keep an eye on improvements to the MediaWiki software to see when we can roll it out.
As for the Korean flag, I think the biggest difference is that it is an actual flag, carried in the Opening Ceremony at recent Olympics, for example. But in both cases (NI and Koreas), I think map images are entirely appropriate for things like {{Korea-stub}} and {{NI-stub}}. I fully support that! They are also the best images for navigation boxes such as Template:Northern Ireland topics. However, in all of those cases, the image is not rendered in 22x20px icon form, so there is no need for the flag templates to support it. I think adding the Korean Unification Flag to those respective flag templates is appropriate to support instances where they had a joint team in sporting events, and that flag is desired in results tables, so that's why I think it is a different situation from NI.
Thanks for re-engaging in constructive discussion! I appreciate that. Andrwsc 17:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flags

Sorry it my personal policy to avoid NI issues (Gnevin 20:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC))