User talk:Fabartus/Archive04

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[edit] Top

 Gone!

The deletionists win and I'm voting with my feet.

re CSD criteria and non-policies on notification of interested parties

I've never had the time to fight their idiotic beliefs that less is more and better, save here and there, and I've two of my own to put through college. I see no reason to go on wasting time if some narrow interpretation of an unwise and misbegotten excuse for a guideline can be misconstrued to apply (and worse -- allow a speedy delete sans any notification of anything!!!) to a an article supporting dozens of others. My time is too valuable to go on throwing it away on such ill judged actions by the unwise few... and the hostile environment this creates is finally too much.

   I don't need the aggravations if this community can't be bothered to protect my time by at least requiring a tagging party to notify interested parties when they exercise their judgment. Seems only fair that actions to delete SHOULD AND OF A NECESSITY MUST COST THE APPLYING EDITOR AT LEAST SOME INCONVENIENCE AND PRECIOUS FREE TIME if they want to act in such a derogatory manner to the project's overall content! Never mind the disrespect any "judgment" that this should be deleted when exercised seems never to even pause a breath to consider the time it took others to put together. Instead the opposite attitude reigns—"Let's make it as easy as possible to cut material and damn the time of the many who struggled to put it together—their time is far less valuable than mine, after all. On this the communities continued behavior is pathetically and continually insensitive and childishly SELFISH! Granted it's convenient to those who most fervently believe that less is more. That doesn't make it either right or wise. FrankB 17:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Archived to here FrankB 20:59, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Cleaning up categories

Hey Fab,

As you might've noticed, I recently cleaned up most of 1632 series related cats. A good rule to remember is: an article should be in only one category (there are RARE exceptions). Thus if, for example, '1632 series' category is a subcategory of 'fictional universes' or 'series of books' category, there is no need to include those categories in the article. Also, categories should not be used as see also: for example, Bean's Bar may be related to 1632 series, but does not belong in the '1632 series category'. 1632 Tech, on the other hand, would. Note that I suggested moving the 1632 editorial board article - your comments would be appreciated. Last but not least: don't add categories to redirects. Either write stubs and add cats to them, or don't leave cats full of redirects. Take care, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


Piotr:

  • In general, I can't disagree more. Depends on whether you are looking at it from the reader/customer point of view or the editors. Editors view is yours, Mine is per WP:Btw — the more links the customer can navigate and scan the better.
But just between you and me, I really don't care save the extra categories allows one to get to similar stuff really easily. So in the future, please ask me first. I wouldn't mind save you aren't addressing CONTENT, and it crimps my needs at the moment.
This housekeeping crap really doesn't matter until things are ready for prime time—taking the extra cats (per your interpretation) out just handicaps me, the only one working the project. You youngsters are much better at typing urls, and remembering long names. I watch my sons and marvel... growing up with computers may not ever give you an appreciation for this, just trust me on it. And I've been writing salable software professionally on and off since the late '70's— there's just some canalized thought habits that I can't master like others. Perhaps it's AD/HD related—it's one area I tested poorly on during neurological testing for same we participated in TWO studies as a family with three generations.
It's one big reason I don't do a lot of software in my consulting anymore—my short term memory for such minutia is not good at all, so I have to cheat and organize myself to suit my 'brain wiring', shrug—so give all the links possible while I'm working it.
I'll never get this done without a little leniency—that stupid Arsenal of Democracy article has already cost me two man-weeks!!!
Once I get things in a satisfactory state I usually solicit input, as I did in that fiasco, so give me a bit more time.
  • Take a look at Honorverse which consumed my morning edit window. Also 1634: The Ram Rebellion#External_links Section. The rest of the article is in 'planned revision' state pending additional feedback from Eric and evolution of the Gazettes. I lost an edit, but have an email image I can reconstruct that from now that Eric will be able to clean up a few small inconsistancys in the history of how it all happened. If you hadn't noticed, there are three slightly different variations extant, which is why the lack of progress. He was pressing to finish the book he completed on the 26th, and I'm hoping to hear from him again tonight or tomarrow.
Most impressed with your site: http://www.wodzu.tonet.pl/republika_prokonsularna/En/163xCoTNRP.html! But where's the email contact me link??? How are you going to get input and requests for more info? <G>
I'm not going to ask you about copyrights!!!

Best! FrankB 22:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories spam,Interleaved

Regarding categories, consider - where should one draw the line? We can add useful subcategories almost ad absurdum, until we get to Top 10. I prefer the simple and esthetic rule: add the least number of categories, and let interested people click on the link and see relevant families there.
  • 0. Getting rid of the redundant 1632cats (were two, iirc), is all to the good, btw. If you have (I believe you and wwood can CsD them), tidy up the list in the project talk.
1. You need to 'dial in' that browsing is not a natural thought process to someone introduced to the web after we were jaded adults. Call it most people over thirty-three, give or take. My wife and I never think to look up something on the web FIRST, it's LAST... only after exhausting yellow pages, newspapers, or considering a trip to the library. We do more often NOW, but it's still unnatural—my teens who immediately type in a search topic if we ask some question— urgent or casual
e.g. Just last night while entertaining we watched a DVD, and I wondered aloud: Who is that player on the 2001 St. Louis Rams with number 87.
Why? He said: "Tonight a dynasty is born!" before superbowl XXXVI—He just was wrong about which team! <G> (Too much testosterone!)
2. It's an editorial judgement—somewhere between sparse and absurd of course—The criteria I try to apply is whether the category leads to other articles that are related or relavant in some way—but not necessarily obvious and not appropriate in 'See also' section. This is particularly useful in world history contexts, but also in science and technology articles.
e.g. 'David Weber books', 'Eric Flint Books', 'Books available as ebooks' 'could all be linked as see also's, but the system is already auto-collecting those, and NOT putting them in 'see also' in essence warns the reader he's not going to look at an article.
3. Last but not least, cats aren't all that visible to the 'customer' who is stuck with the default skin. I'm probably going to put together an RFC or VP post or something to scream that point one of these days. I was a user-customer for a couple of years, then an editor for over another before I ever saw them down off the page bottom. As articles get reference sections, that's only going to get more pronounced as a problem.
Regarding Honorverse Art Gallery, it was something I was doing a few years back. Now, 1) I lost access to that server and cannot update it and 2) I am slowly moving all content to The Honorverse Wiki. As for the copyrights, the site had been advertised on the bar several time and drew no complaints, and I've even talked to David Mattingly (whom I helped with his wikipedia entry), and he was ok with it. Legally speaking, I am assuming fair use but if anybody wants me to take anything down, I'll (except I have no control over the old site anymore - but I am pretty sure I could request it to be taken offline completly. When I am done with the move to the wiki, I'll do it anyway).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 05:55, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I was just tweaking your nose, BUT DIDN'T Say a word about the honorverse art gallery. where's the link? Reread my post— I was referring to the proper intro I gave the honorverse article per MOS. The link was 1632 webpage... I doubt that maps are 'fair use', however I won't tell if you don't.

[edit] Categories spam,Interleaved2

Guess you don't mind me posting 'blurbs' then in the Gazettes! Good to Know. FrankB 13:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Best! FrankB 10:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC) (Post to User_talk:Piotrus to see user_talk:fabartus#Categories spam,Interleaved)

Overall, regarding cats: I guess sometimes I am too strict. But, as (my) rule of thumb, cats should short names and fit in one line at the bottom of an article. Exceptions are ok if we there are not related, but if the articles should avoid having the same cats several times (in a subcat and then it's overcat, for example) unless we have a really, really good reason for it. And yes, cats are not as exposed as they should be, and personally I wish there was an easy way to expand cats into subcats.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:06, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Danged Browser hotkeys -- I just can't edit in Firefox - I just lost an answer when it was all but done! I hit CTRL instead of shift too often!
  • 'Well, Pilgrim', I did think removing 'Eric Flint books' and 'Books available as ebooks' was a bit over the top in your GG#4 edit. (Looks like you need to browse your Honorverse articles and add the DW books and ebooks cats therein as well.)
But I can certainly agree that the 'Series' and Sequences and milieu (Fictional Universes) probably really only belong in the Main articles, unless the pipe trick is used? If so, do they all appear as partof a single entry assuming pipe: '1632 series', or does each of the ten add to list?
One reason I was putting them everywhere was to explore that sortof little technicality. I'm really a tyro at Cats overall. You and I aren't really that far apart on 'logic'... we just have different working styles, and are at different places in the learning curve (like the above question--You probably already know--I have to test)
Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned all these articles are at the draft stage, somewhat beyond bare stubs, but in need of polish and cross-integration.
Hope to make a big dent in that effort today&mash;I haven't been to the bar in five or six months— so one place you can really help me if you have time is generating a firm list of works in the pipeline, with updates to the series talk. If you want, integrate with the new version of 1632 in section edit mode (The link is below the big article list). I'll be finishing that sometime today after I get the GG's all to 'first base' and reconstruct the 'TGGs' edit (lost w/o saving) I emailed Eric for feedback.
I was waiting a couple of weeks for someone to step back in , shall we say, then got bogged down with trying to reconstruct lost edits, life outside wiki, and that damn AoD article RHaywood pushed me on. If I'd have thought to create as a Sandbox page, that wouldn't have happened and would be a back burner project. But you live and learn, and getting burned like that is one of the best teaching tools, so to speak.
Anyway, this isn't getting anything 'Done'. Later! FrankB 13:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC) (w/See Post to User_talk:Piotrus to see user_talk:fabartus#Categories spam,Interleaved2)

Re:templates - I think it's ok - count the 's' letter.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories3

Hmm. As it is getting more and more likely that we are going to see a non-Flint 1632 book, I guess we can put EFb cat to the individual books, instead of a cat. But I wonder if we can classify GG's as 'his books'? He is only the editor, isn't he? Ebooks, on the other hand, are diffferent: aren't all 1632 available as ebooks and won't they in the future? Thus I think we can safely remove it from all articles and simply classify the entire series as ebooks. Sci-fi as a millieu is going to be deleted and merged (see cat page for the link to the discussion and voting). Fictional universe belongs in the As... Shard multiverse category (btw, on the cat deletions page it was suggested that this cat should be renamed Ring of Fire - you may want to comment there - agains see the various cats page for link to their relevant discssions (not all of them have them)). Take care, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, big fella! -- let me break this in pieces

  1. ...EFb cat to the individual books ... should be done for all authors IMHO, we as readers find one we like and again, remember WP:Btw. Where's there a conflict? One gives a list by author, the other by universe, etc. Show me a guideline, any guideline that says an article belongs in only one category. I agree that building a heirarchial tree inside the category pages themselves makes sense, but you're philosophy is handcuffing one of wikipedia's strongest features— one which sets it apart and way ahead of printed encyl. IMHO. Frankly, if it weren't for cross referenced linking I have better things to do with my time. The alternative is a lot of wasted space as See also sections, or F**** the customer-reader. Long See Also's are contra-indicated, and won't be half as strong as something which auto-lists these.
  2. Ebooks, on the other hand, are diffferent: aren't all 1632 available as ebooks and won't they in the future? — yeah, but only for Baen, and that's not to say he won't die tomarrow (He's sixtyish plus, iirc.) and someone running his estate won't change the policy some day.
    1. It also leaves out a whole shitload of works from other publishers such Flints two newest Alt-Hist's (which may or may not be eBooks someday--don't know, don't yet care, haven't read the first yet tho' have it, just know his website said he finished the second on the 26th.)
    2. But it also leaves out other ebook published works like the thousand or so on www.Fictionwise.com or www.Fiction.com, not to mention how many other publishers are following Baen's lead, or may soon.
    3. Thus THAT category is specific to allowing the reader to cross browse and read wikiarticles where there is an eBook that he might then go sample. It says nothing about 'Free'. Baen is just one mid-sized publisher, and not even in the top ten genre publishers.
  3. Sci-fi as a millieu is going to be deleted and merged (see cat page for the link to the discussion and voting). — that's radical... I'll check it out and scream as necessary.
  4. Fictional universe belongs in the As... Shard multiverse category (btw, on the cat deletions page it was suggested that this cat should be renamed Ring of Fire - you may want to comment there - agains see the various cats page for link to their relevant discssions (not all of them have them)). That would be premature... either -- Eric is reworking that and reconsidering his marketing as I pointed out how poorly his inconsistant series naming coverage has got to be hurting sales... and drew contrasts to Dave Webers Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Baen lock-step consistancy, even down to the sub-series names (Crown of Slaves, etc.) Can't say he'll choose 1632verse as I recommended (With ROF as 1st alternate), but he's got two other Assiti Shards Universes in the pipeline, I believe one of those is in production at Baen (Washington goes to Rome, iirc). Heirarchially, the 1632 series cat is but the first sub-cat of Assiti Shards, but all Assiti Shards aren't and won't be 1632verse articles. Until he picks a path, we'd be well advised to stand pat so as to not create extra work.
  5. I'll check out cats deletion pages... If I can find it. Can you drop the link here? This is not my day for articles apparently!

Grrrrrr FrankB 16:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)(w/note on Talk to see subsect 'user talk:fabartus#Categories3')

[edit] Turret_entry

Hi Fabartus! I saw your new entry on the Turret disambiguation page, but your entry redirects to the architecture turret article: it appears that there is no weapons turret article, or at least your entry didn't get there? I've reverted it for now, hoping you can redirect it to the article you were thinking of?

Sandy 19:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

oops, sorry Fabartus ... I now see that the one article (Turret) covers both the architectural meaning, and the weapons meaning (that's goofy), so I did not revert your edit, rather clarified it. I guess someone should sort the two out, but I don't know enough about either. Sandy 19:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, that WAS my attempt at clarifying it... the terms a derivative term adapted to the new technology... Splitting the article seems pretty silly since it's small, so disambiging in such a way so that people looking for a weapons turret instead of an archetectual feature seemed the best course. Your change looks fine though I liked mine better as being bold, as I'm a bold fellow.

Best wishes, FrankB 22:48, 1 May 2006 (UTC) (+See answer note to User talk:SandyGeorgia)

Thanks for the note ... yes, I see what you mean. The entire entry left me scratching my head, but the article is too short to worry about anymore :-) Sandy 22:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:GG

What? We don't need more then one article about each GG and one for the entire series. That's enough. I just merged two articles which were virtually the same. Fab, please, take it easy, read manual of style and try to understand we mean well but there are certain standards we all have to follow.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 05:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Np.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 05:40, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
They were the same as in identical, as the 'S' one is copy. I was editing the other, and had left it earlier in the day for other matters, but you redirected it. Confusion resulted. I'd just been about to insert the image.
The one ending in 'S' is the Main, the non-S is the first title 'as published'. Note on 1632 talk I left questions whether to leave as is or change to conform to the others. Adding Insult to injury, Baen and Eric both seem to have gone to western numbers and abandoned Roman Numerals. Shrug.
TTFN, I'm going to bed. FrankB 05:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commonwealth realm, etc.

I'm not absolutely sure that I've understood your question, so if this makes no sense, forgive me.

It's not currently possible to make redirects target specific sections. Links in articles should in any case be to articles rather than to redirects, and so links to redirects should always be changed when found.

Now, that probably misses your point; if it does, could ypou rephrase your question and I'll try again? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Well that's just ducky— and you are directly on point. Somebody merges an article, then you can't use a redirect name to reference the old contents in it's 'section' in the new place via the old redirect to it; so we all have to know the syntax of the particular new sub-section title and the merged into article title, and manually put them together with '#' and hope to connect remembering 'punctuation' and even spaces, et. al. plus do a pipe trick to display the syntactical name or term needed in the current article.
That is indeed what I've been seeing, and yet another reason to oppose the 'evil dark forces' of mergest bent. <G>+ Sigh!
Well, at least I wasn't doing anything wrong syntactically. Shrug. Me thinks I'll live.

Thanks for checking my six! FrankB 14:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC) (W/see answer on user talk:Mel Etitis 'here'.)

[edit] wikimania article

replied on my talk page .. Brassratgirl 07:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] eBook Categories

I've replied here. SeventyThree(Talk) 14:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commonwealth realm, etc.

I'm not absolutely sure that I've understood your question, so if this makes no sense, forgive me.

It's not currently possible to make redirects target specific sections. Links in articles should in any case be to articles rather than to redirects, and so links to redirects should always be changed when found.

Now, that probably misses your point; if it does, could ypou rephrase your question and I'll try again? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Well that's just ducky— and you are directly on point. Somebody merges an article, then you can't use a redirect name to reference the old contents in it's 'section' in the new place via the old redirect to it; so we all have to know the syntax of the particular new sub-section title and the merged into article title, and manually put them together with '#' and hope to connect remembering 'punctuation' and even spaces, et. al. plus do a pipe trick to display the syntactical name or term needed in the current article.
That is indeed what I've been seeing, and yet another reason to oppose the 'evil dark forces' of mergest bent. <G>+ Sigh!
Well, at least I wasn't doing anything wrong syntactically. Shrug. Me thinks I'll live.

Thanks for checking my six! FrankB 14:43, 2 May 2006 (UTC) (W/see answer on user talk:Mel Etitis 'here'.)

[edit] wikimania article

replied on my talk page .. Brassratgirl 07:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] eBook Categories

I've replied here. SeventyThree(Talk) 14:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Appalachian Plateau

You added the fact, expert, and disputed templates to Appalachian Plateau. Other than that add, there has only been one edit in the last seven months. Where's the fire? Anyway, please explain on the article talk page or here. GRBerry 20:44, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Requested 'in progress' post was 'finalized' and saved about the time this request was made. FrankB

[edit] I have good news

and I have bad news... I've managed to get one under the other but to make it work, I needed to remove the brown box. (and the blue line)..

If you want to move the box somewhere else the code is -

<div style="float:left"><div style="align:left; width: 54%; padding: 1em; border: 1px green solid; color: black; background-color: tan" ><font color="blue">Fra<font color="green">nkB <font color="blue">says:   <big> [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=fabartus&dbname=enwiki_p Hi! and WELCOME!]<br><br><font face="Charlesworth" color=brown><small>The current time is: '''{{CURRENTTIME}}'''(UTC) on {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}</font></small><br></font><br></big></big></big><center>If there is a need for speed, duplicate your post in an email<br> <font color="white"> (gives me an audible alarm even when I'm off Wikipedia) <font color="blue"><big>"fabartus–at–comcast.net"</big></center><br>'''[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Fabartus&action=edit&section=new <font color="green"><big>Click ''HERE'' To Bottom Post!</big>]'''<br>Please take a moment (if you are new visitor) and read about my prefered message conventions below! </div></font></div><br></span></center>

Hope this helps, I've never seen an html guide on WP. Cheers, Highway Rainbow Sneakers 08:31, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I can do without the quote 'more', but I'll work on it all in the sandbox — about time I made HTML a mastered tool instead of a vexation by most anyone's thinking. <G>
Thanks for the assist. Both of you.

FrankB 16:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] eBooks/ebooks/EBOOKS!

AFAICT, the ebook discussion hasn't been archived yet - so stay tuned. I added an extra 2¢ there just now. Good luck on the, ahem, camera thing...been there, done that, don't ever wanna again. And the fictional universe thing is just the reason why I became a librarian - some people do sudoku, I tinker with access points and categories (my "user contributions" attest to this...). Cheers, Her Pegship 21:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your message on Image problems

Questions on Mel's talk:

  1. All the sudden I can't get frame, or perhaps remember the 'proper syntax' for putting a frame around an image such as: Cheat_River just added. Any ideas? What's so nit-picky all the sudden? Was I just lucky before?
  2. By the same token had an image 'over stepping' the nearby text along the top border last night. Can they take a padding (Margin is inside, yes?) command and in particular one focused on specific problematic border like a '<div style="top-border"5px">' or is using that techique nesting the image 'the part of the solution' I need condsider in personal computer (2nd image, is left justified if you take a peek.)?
Hadn't thought of 'that' to try until just now!

Thanks, FrankB 20:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

His replys

I'm not sure why you had a problem with framing an image; I assume that you added "frame" to the image tag, and that should have done it. On the other hand, "frame" is generally not a good option, as it results in an outsize image; "thumb" is the better option (and preferably without then boosting the image size, which defeats the purpose of allowing the reader to decide whether to see the thumbnail or a larger image).

I'm not sure about the second problem (I couldn't see a problem with the image); perhaps Wikipedia:Extended image syntax has something that might help? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the 'Images 101'—I've been wondering if there was a guide somewhere. It turns out I now believe my 'picturesque' upload is on the wrong side of the mountain so my reasoning (and label and name) are probably off, but I'm going to confirm either way, and hopefully just upload the right picture. I'll phone the NFS office tomarrow to see what's what.
  • On the 'thumbs Vs. frame', I was assuming they weren't mutually exclusive and your answer clearly implies that they are. I think I was mis-remembering the effect the command had, thinking it only put a neat looking border around the graphic.
  • re: the second problem: It's 'now' straight for me today in even the five or six back versions, so I hypothesize it may have been a manifestation only in preview mode??? I was editing in Firefox (I just checked), and it's usually the better behaved graphically speaking. I'm pretty sure I didn't look it over after closing the edit, so we may never know. I suppose I can go test.
  • Really nice tidy job, kudos!—I think 7/8ths of your changes were because tech-jargon frequently uses the caps, and I tend to write that way as well after 30+ years of immersion. I really ought to look into taking a community college English course or two. They're cheap over here and I can use a good refresher on 'papers' standards in generic acedemialand. (Maybe you should just follow me around and 'Tidy Up' my expansions. <G> Want a new job? <BSEG>)
  • I like the History Title where you put it! I was a bit bothered that the 'Intro' had grown off to the side of the target article, but by 4 am the mental agility wasn't present anymore— especially after hitting the edit conflict with the vandal as I was trying to complete. Warn that SOB, OK? The prev had a juvenile naivety I had to put in perspective. I probably should have just added it to my To-Do and gone to bed—it took a lot longer than I'd figured when I started due to some collateral adds and edits the effort spun-off.
  • How do you do so many fix-ups so quick— are you using AWB to keep up with such and your immense watch list? Seems likely, I'll have to dust that off and take it for a spin.

Thanks again as always, 'Images 101' will undoubtably be a great reference! FrankB 00:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

There's a good picture tutorial :) -Quiddity 02:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Without checking, I'm prettyu sure that "frame" and "thumb" are mutually exclusive, yes.
  2. The moving of the "History" headign was, I must admit, prompted purely by considerations of where the ToC appeeared; when I looked to see how to rejig things, I just noticed that the previous two paragraphs were also historical. The section could probably do with a bit of a reorganisation, though, as my simplt sticking the two paragraphs at the beginning might not make perfect sense.
  3. I don't use AWB (tried it; didn't like it). It's just plain cmmon-or-garden obsessiveness... --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Color_Suggestions

I wanted to make a few suggestions, having wandered via a circuitous route to Talk:List of fictional universes, that you tone down the contrast, ornamentation, and amount, of div shading and typographical highlighting.

Using colors has a number of problems, not the least of which are colourblind users, but also older technologies that display things in a vastly different way from what most modern users see. Plus there are the subjective aesthetics ;) a proviso of which is that if one person starts doing it, everyone will, and you can see how that would be bad! The single principle colour theme, throughout wikipedia, eases clarity for everyone. (You are, of course!, utterly welcome to indulge a love of colourful nested boxes on your own userpages :)

ditto for using *list's and :indenting, but as applied to blind users with screenreaders, whose software might rely on depth of indenting for vocal context when following a thread. (or just normal users, who use the indenting subconsciously to help follow context.) And semantically it's better to only use *lists for actual lists.

See Wikipedia:Colours and Wikipedia:Accessibility for detailed information, and phrased better than I. :)

A final consideration, is that in the decades-long tradition of online discussion, bold or oversize or CAPITALIZED text, are all seen as methods of, quite literally, SHOUTING. And hence considered quite rude. Only shout in a discussion, if you would literally be shouting whilst having the same discussion in a coffeeshop :) (ie, not often hopefully!)

Basically, minimalism/simplicity is better.

I understand your desire to clarify text on long talk pages, and highlight your own contributions, but sensibly shuffling threads, and changing ===header=== levels, and adding double-blanklines for page-breaks, and similar, are methods that everyone can follow along with more easily.

(Eventually there will develop the next-generation mediawiki, and we'll have some kind of built in clarity-of-thread design, as in common forum software. Be patient!)

I hope all this helps. I've seen you around a lot, you work hard around here :) -Quiddity 02:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - sometimes it feels like most of it is talk to someone. I'll take all that in again when refreshed, looks like a couple of good links (and haven't a clue (yet!) on the 'coded' keywords above, and my talk and that talk:list of fictional universes are the only one's where I've used graphics... Seeing the scope of that and the lack of discusion made it seem good to 'freshen' the context in the new begining, as it were. My comments to Mel about the English 'lessons' above probably fall right in line with your other points. Part is probably AD/HD and coping with distractions... what others see as over-emphasis is sort of an outline of key themes that otherwise get lost in the verbiage—in my proof reading mind, at least— you might say it's an attempt to get everyone looking from the same perspective.
Didn't and don't know much about Accessibility issues, save at arms length, so thanks for the 'news' about indents changing contexts for those worse-off.
Before closing this, I cleaned that up some, see if it's better now using the black and killing centering.
Thanks for the input and compliment too. FrankB (w/post on user talk:Quiddity to see user talk:fabartus#Color_Suggestions)

[edit] Quiddity-2

The <code> code is just a subtle highlighting, meant semantically for code samples. See the 5th entry down at HTML element#Inline. It appears less drastic on normal white/light-blue pages ;-)

—Gotchya. But if you were here and female I'd be giving you a great big kiss. (Yes, that was a joyous shout!) Do you have any idea of how many people I've asked about a HTML guide on these pages or by email? Let's just say you'd have to be tripletts to count the number on your fingers and toes! Thanks for the link! I really have to get better with searching or something. Is there a list of lists alphabetically by page spaces? There 'ought to be one' generated by the DB software, if there's not! then one could apply the ole mark-one, Mod-2 eyeball when one can't find something. FrankB

I'd phrased it as softly as i could, to avoid giving the wrong impression, but i'd meant a more drastic reduction; I'll demonstrate at the fictional universes page.

—Ahh - well, it's not that I didn't notice exactly, but then there's the points below on 'stubborn' and 'guidelines' versus 'policy' below. If I wanted the notice to be overlooked, I wouldn't have tried to make it standout so hard. I'm not up on scripts or CSS or HTML, and that represents roughly twenty iterative attempts by trial and error. Nonetheless, after a week or so, I figured then it could become vaporware, save for the text. Some around here seem to have trouble with the concept of 'temporarily necessary', 'temporarily good', etcetera, as in a very rough stub being speedy deleted before I could close other edits and get back to it. No respect of anothers time, IMHO. Moreover, it takes time for summoned visitors to assemble and contribute, and since most I called on are admins of experience, they'd let me know how outré it was. I'll not disrespect their time by assuming a short turn around, the page needs help, if only in the ideas put forth there already. I can do the immature thing and ignore it, or do something to help it. I can't do much with it personally, so galvanizing some action and acting to bring it attention seem like a fair contribution. Like the help page change, I have no illusions on the longevity of anything on Wikipedia, but the practice of just changing something without discussing it with the person you differ with at all is a bit arrogant, guidelines are not inflexible rules. Frankly, the amazement for me comes when something doesn't have some niggling little change added or tweaked and changes stay with the top notation on the watch page for over a week. It doesn't happen often! Shrug. FrankB

The other example i had in mind was your colourful discussion, regarding this colourful addition a few weeks ago to Help:Contents

—Now this is splitting a hair, this is the same matter, and I have no regrets whatever. The proof is in your new talk page with the prominent help link. I'm supposed to feel regrets for a success? I'd already covered the germane issue from my POV on the template talk, so I copied that up. Perhaps I should have emphasized that with a couple of 'BIGs'? Or wasted even more time not adding content— which is the only reason, I hang out here.FrankB

Even more relevant than the previous 2 guidelines i linked, is Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Layout

—See <1> below.

Re: Your reply at my talk page regarding watchlists: My main wikipedia bookmark for access is my Watchlist. I have about 350 pages on it this week. I've changed my Prefences regarding watchlists to only display 1 day at a time by default, so only 42 diffs are listed currently, for the last 24 hrs. I clean about 40 links off it at the end of each week, and add about 50 over the course of each week. or thereabouts ;)
Keep replies here. Thanks :) -Quiddity 04:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FrankB-2

Some interleaved above (zero margin '—' as a prefix)
Oh, Piffle-- I knew you knew about THAT one (HelpPage), I dropped a dime and told you to look back in on it and teased you about reverting it. The whole idea was to make sure people noticed the caveat to think like the customer, in both places. Personally, since it wasn't vandalism per se, I think you were hasty in reverting it without waiting a few hours. Hell, I even agreed with HereToHelp's initiative that I triggered. But if you old hands want adult editors with experience, don't be surprised when we shake-up the corporate culture some because we're every bit as confident in ourselves as any one that's proved themselves in life's arena. And, dare I say truth, probably as stubborn at times!<G>
Some people beat you to death with arguing every little nuance, others sneak around behind your back. Me, I just speak 'Frank'ly<G>, clarify once, even twice, if necessary, and move on. People with an open mind will get the message. Those not disposed to listen (or See!) won't and don't. Those two posts were occasions where long pent up frustrations finally found their venue. The point was made as seemed appropriate in the circumstance. I just viewed your sandbox trial new Help, by a similarly circuitous route I trust, and the new Help page. Good Job overall, but why doesn't the FAQ link have the same prominence as the departments? (Rehetorical, but food for your thoughts.)
  • <1>Then there is 'guidelines' and 'policy'; I expect on occasion to exercise editorial judgement which discards 'guidelines' when it seems appropo; in the above case, people were 'loosing sight of the mission'(even a helping friend) and catering, IMHO, to their own selfish concerns. People volunteering to help newbies shouldn't try to hide their help venue. People doing categories need to keep in mind the customer's needs to cross-link to similar material of interest, not to put the least number of categories on a page as is possible. For an 'prosaic' editorial example, there was one disambig page that benefited greatly by a somewhat 'non-standard' presentation, the standard mixed too many things up. We have to keep in mind we're writing for the common man and not the acedemic, and that the scope of our materials span the gamet and don't always fit well with 'established general practices'. Topics with unique features need flexibility to be treated effectively. Putting square pegs into round holes is likely to result in splinters. Then there is the standard template disclaimer:
'This page is considered a guideline on Wikipedia. It illustrates standards of conduct that many editors agree with in principle. Although it may be advisable to follow it, it is not policy. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.'
It is rather difficult to discuss anything on a talk page no one is visiting, wouldn't you agree? My coloration effected encyclopedia content not-at-all, just as the 'shake-up' link on the Help page is not the sacred encyclopedia content. But as long as we have open editting with no editorial vettng process, a lot of pages are going to turn into junk by inexpert or inexperienced, and most often, by POV editors. The admins notice board is filled with such incidents. Is a little temporary editorial license off the sacred path really going to cost you sleep? I hope not! (Apparently, it is me, it's 2:35!)
  • If I had my way, every matured article herein would be locked down once it's stable. I'll be proposing some how that can be done once I stop falling behind my expectations. And then there's this crap: I may have just begun a edit war myself just now with my 'seventh absolute revert' on Many Worlds Interpretation— four of those were me saving a partial edit being unable to complete, and reverting to an unchanged version. The other two were a partial like that one just finished with content edit. (There were three more for obvious vandalism, but I don't categorize them as 'voluntary reverts', just common sense.) I loath and abhor reverts. The alledged 'gentleman' tossed out two=plus hours of painstaking adds specifically written to make the article comprehensible to a layperson, not change the meaning, not loose anything and fully introduce the topic per WP:MOS on introductions and he just tossed it out without a criticism of errors, or any attempt to correct them had I made one. Now I've got to go get firm with that owner and square him away. But I hereby solemly promise you I won't use color!— no matter how colorful my language in my thoughts!<G> (One does learn how to swear in the Navy, very well!)

Best regards, FrankB 06:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quiddity-3

Re: your post at meta:Help talk:Contents.
In the sidebar on every page, in the "toolbox", 2nd from bottom, is the link "Printable version". The page itself is a mess because it is due for an overhaul. Everything is though, constantly! There are only so many hours in a day...
Re: your comment: "'META-WIKI' (jargon- why not something in English?)".
Well, it's a complicated endeavour, with proviso's and ramifications/implications/permutations for everything. Hence a lot of acronyms/terminology/vocabulary as with any complex subject; it makes it harder for lay-people to understand, but a lot easier for those with the background to communicate. Also, perhaps you're not familiar with the term Meta? It's very common as a prefix in many technical disciplines.
Re: forum software eg Baen. Not my dept. I just know it's coming sooner-or-later (probably at least a year away).
Re: the notice box at "list of fictional universes". Those colours (orange and red) literally hurt my eyes to look at! Very very vivid glaring blaring bright. Perhaps your monitor is not set as bright as mine? The benefit of minimalistic design, is that even small differences stand out, without overwhelming; hence after my changing the notice to a subtle thin black-bordered box, it is still very noticably highlighted.
Re: your comment above: "niggling little changes".
See Wikipedia:Criticisms#Jason Scott. But without all the niggling changes, the Wikipedia would be a seething mass of different styles and conventions, spelling/punctuation errors, and greatly lacking in content. See also Wikipedia:About#Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in Wikipedia.
Re: your comment above: "It is rather difficult to discuss anything on a talk page no one is visiting, wouldn't you agree?"
Yes. But, it's also frustrating trying to goad others into working at a uniform pace. Some people edit once a week for 2 hours, some people 5 hours a day. Thousands (literally) of good ideas get mentioned at the Village Pumps, but the appropriate people dont see them, or dont have time to implement them, so they fall into archives. (This is just one of many unsolved problems. see "strengths and weaknesses" link above. It's a ramification of having 1,100,000+ article pages... (plus talk pages, plus all the wikipedia-namespace pages, etc). Wikipedia is overwhelming and fascinating, hence part of the allure!
There are good reasons behind all of the guidelines/policies, but it sometimes takes a little puzzling or deduction or asking to determine what they are. Try Wikipedia:Help Desk for that.
Re: your comment above: "Putting square pegs into round holes is likely to result in splinters."
I've always figured it would just leave semi-circle gaps at the four sides, to be filled with gravel/spackle. ;)
Re: Many-worlds interpretation article changes.
I'm afraid i agree with the reverters. Your changes made the lead section very long, when it is supposed to be a concise summation/introduction. Your edit summary of "revise intro so a layperson has half a chance at glimpsing meaning in the jargon" is idealistic but unrealistic. A layperson wouldnt know what a single one of those "jargon" terms meant; that's why they're links! There is no complex subject in the world that doesnt have an associated vocabulary. and we're writing this site for everyone, laypersons AND experts (and children and foreigners and translators and educators and...)
Re: your comment above: "If I had my way, every matured article herein would be locked down once it's stable."
Now this is problematic, and you need to read points #2 and #3 at User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles. Also, perhaps you havent seen Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (and it's large "Related pages" section at the bottom, eg Wikipedia:Stable versions)?
Nothing is ever lost here, one of Wikipedias most profound provisos. So my advice is to just keep working on things you are interested in, and try not to get frustrated when other editors don't conform to your expectations. The site is both very new (5 years! 1 million articles! biggest online community ever! 14th most popular site on the 'net!) and very old (in internet years. "Everything has been said before, but it's in an archive now..." and those who discussed it the first time are liable to get kranky if forced to reiterate/reargue identical points (which is frustrating for us newbies, but understandable). Assumptions and miscommunications and traditions and general mayhem. It's not perfect, and never will be (humans arent), but it's fun playing along...
There. And i'm usually the concise one! I prefer point form conversations, but those are reliant upon shared assumptions ;) -Quiddity 18:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FrankB-3

I think you need to be advised a typical edit, per the edit counter takes me on the order of two to three hours. I've been around a long while relative to simply tallying up edit counts. I'd guess I'd be up nearer 10,000 than 2,000 had I saved when many others would.

  1. So from that datum's perspective, you've gone from being ultra-cautious to somewhat patronizing. IMHO, Wiki-Foundation Policies will have to evolve from 'Jimbo's Ideals', or it will continue to loose disgusted experienced admins nearly as soon as they are trained up. There are very few modern organizations that don't realize retaining good qualified workers has to be a primary goal or the other struggles it faces will fail in the long run. But that's for another day, as is Now this is problematic, and you need to read points #2 and #3 at User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles. Also, perhaps you havent seen Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (and it's large "Related pages" section at the bottom, eg Wikipedia:Stable versions)?.
  2. I'll not deal with the above point by point now, but surely you realize people have different styles. 'Meta' is used so often these days, it's ceased to have specific meaning— so you may infer part of my personal style is that of one who has had some succcess shaking people up by occasional 'obviousities'.
    Meta: "Meta (Greek: "about," "beyond"), is a common English prefix, used to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to analyze the latter."
    Meta-Wikipedia, is therefore, the wiki wherein people discuss issues that affect all of WikiMedia's numerous child projects. -Quiddity 22:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  3. MWI is a yet another case of that, we opened this discussion with a few others, and so is the below section if you want to join in that.
  4. MWI intro length is irrelevant to need. It is either going to be essentially a useless article to the masses of readers, or be constructed so that one can get a sense of it's coverage. Much of my work here has been toning such 'over-tech' pieces down to the level of lay-readers insofar as the introductions are concerned. The body can be as thesis like as the subject matter warrants (that one being an excellent example of arcana that is so far over the head of most readers that they haven't a clue as to content— which is my arguement for writing English in such an introduction before switching to jargonish.), but in my experience, stretching out such intros into more spoonfed bites is the key. So length is irrelevant to the mission. Q.E.D.
  5. I'm not surprised I may have made an error of fact or two, but I was trying to point the way, and maintain the points in the order originally presented as it's been reverted back to being. I've half-a-dozen books in my many bookshelves at the least which discuss the matter in part. I'll have to read up again, but there is no need for the current obfusticatory presentation— the matter can be discussed in reasonable English in terms of familiar analogy, or so I believe. The trick is of course to get the worthies with the expertise' to see the outsiders point of view. Thus, you and I, are right back to here, full circle– at least if you follow the link to template talk space. Even disruption can be a creative and benificial force.
  6. I've been through a number of major flame-wars as a mediator, vice particpant in the Japan Vs. Korea Wars Theater, so I know the culture pretty well now. I understand the guidelines vs. policies all too well including the massive proposed policy lists, et. al.— so I'm optimistically betting that someday Jimbo and the Foundation Board will realize they need to assert policies that will protect content, sometime in the next year or two. If they don't, the bleeding will go on, and I'll be part of the exodus. The damage to wikipedias reputation will be fairly permanent, and IMHO, it's already nearly too late to save significant further errosion. When it falls to laughing-stock, how will Jimbo and the foundation attract the great numbers of new capable editors it needs now just to maintain itself against vandals and cranks? It won't, so my crystal ball (with all it's cracks and occlusions) says the time to act is soon. Just look at the admins list. The inactives, the somnolent. It's all a disgrace and shamefully cynical in the way the current foundation treats well intentioned volunteer time because of some idealistic impracticle overweening liberal idiotic attempt to make a true democracy work. It's never happened outside a small hamlet context, and never will. Republicism has a chance. Better yet a benevolent dictator that acts decisively—Jimbo is essentially a dictator, the wrong ways. He's letting ideals be confused with the mission.

I've done nothing here today save talk and read, and still haven't finished beginning my post on talk:Many-worlds interpretation, so if you'll excuse me, I need to table purusing the rest of your last for now. I'd suggest we take this thread to email. Mine is up top, and Wikimedia is too cumbersome for these lengthy rambling discussions. Best wishes, FrankB 20:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


Re: "I'm optimistically betting that someday Jimbo and the Foundation Board...".
As you've openly admitted in the past, you have a stubborn streak. But every single one of the 1,000,000 other registered users individual perspectives, are just as valid as yours, and many of the millions of unregistered users.
Please actually read, all of the words in Jimbo Wales' statement. Think of it as our declaration of independance. (or maybe think of it as our declaration of human rights, as you're a republican...) (see, i have a "low" sense of humour too!)
You're not going to get anywhere if you keep trying to enact change by complaining to specific editors about individual actions, and writing manifestos to each of us. The place to enact change is in the various mailing lists that discuss the Meta-aspects of wikipedia(et al.) That's where the real decision makers discuss things. You're just screaming into the wind telling me and us, about how you think things ought to work.
And you're not going to convince anyone of anything, until you stop insulting people right off the bat (AGF), and Realize that your vitriol is not welcome (see this comment from your archives:
"If I seem vitrolic, you might see the normal tenor of my remarks to others, and take the hint as to how far out of line your bias towards out of hand deletionism is. Now stop bugging me, I'm trying to add to the project, as you should be doing, and I have no time for a lightweight like yourself."
the above two lines needs counterpoint

If you're going to take 'one line' out of two different threads (the first (link) is A Right Thing, by the way, alá Wales use; User:Katefan0/Talk6#Personal_Computer_Industry_deletion is the second you are obfusticating with a 'mere italicised quote out of context', (which I clearly appologized for afterwards)), aren't you being disingenuous to the point of underhandedness? AGF doesn't really apply to either matter if you follow the whole thread —the issue was respecting anothers time, the same boundary YOU crossed, content and editorial matters don't excite me herein (yet!, I may slip up someday.) — Why not include this result and give a full picture?


Apparently you only read part, or only want to present the openings or perhaps 'spin things' (like a democrat, perhaps? <g>) to suit your style and denigrate mine whilst ignoring my results. A little clash isn't going to hurt someone sure they're acting properly, OTOH, it may keep them from hasty actions in the future, the hoped for effect. More to the point, I'm sure you'll still be the same overweaning arrogant you tomarrow, and I'll still be the same 'old fashioned self-righteous bore' when someone disrespects my time. And two or three minor incidents (or four counting the help+template postings) don't make me all that hard to deal with. Oh, I can be curt, but I've never been headstrong to the point of cutting off movement in a dialog. We just see a little different is how some have to be started. MOST ALL of my talks are much, much more convivial and most of those are fairly humble requests along informational lines.


No doubt, you'll pick someone else 'to be your hobby' in the future. You need to spend some time in the trenches of a good flame war on these pages to get some perspective; archives 1&2 of Tsushima Island, for example—the whole region's articles really— you'll find plenty of real vitriole to put that comment in context. Look through Mel Etitis's archive pages and see all the slings and arrows therein, or those on others actually doing content adds; there are a lot of bears in these woods, and I'm hardly brusque with anyone unless and until they start taking my time through their willful or negligent behavior, as I see it.


Like yourself, the Lady provoked me with carelessness towards my time, or so it seemed: User_talk:fabartus/Archive03#Thanks_Valantinian, shows clearly I was in the process of moving into that deleted stub when I noticed it'd gone missing. There simply wasn't time before that (very short interval, as these things usually go) to get back in and improve it and dealing with her killed the urge to do any re-start from scratch. Someone could have and should have made an inquiry at least about when I'd planned the work. Seeing it was only two hours from creation and making a check with the originator is not going to harm wikipedia! Also, like yourself and 'J-777' she acted so on a day after I'd gone short on sleep on behalf of wikipedia. It's not an excuse, but it is a fact.


So do you think one should stub that article out and get back to it ASAP, or do you prefer the now: it's gone until and unless I clear my To-Do list's all the way down into to the back-burner — with my AD/HD, that is unlikely to ever happen, so pray for devine intervention, as it's liklier than an near-empty To-DO. Wikipedia clearly lost (for now) because of undue haste plus her refusal to revert the same action when asked. I didn't really get tough with here until she stood on self-righteousness if you read every word of the record. (Do you appreciate how condescending that is now? Harumph!) It had that one single chance 'from me', the window has now closed.


Judgesurreal777[1] was entirely appropriate by my lights, and I can add Mr Tan— who I tried mightily to mentor for weeks of effort, and this amazing mess have all been over time when I have been anything resembling uncivil. Add in the now somewhat tabled matter you torpedoed in MWI, which was certainly on point with respect to time. The pattern is rather clear, n'est pas?


You flagged my revert summary (only one of very few) as belligerent, but you fail to appreciate some people (like you, perhaps) need their toes stepped on until they apologize. That summary is called an attention getter, and it's needed with some people, and mostly harmless as it puts people on notice that there is an unresolved issue—one which is unresolved still because you yourself have delayed it by sticking your oar in these waters so deeply.


Unlike yourself, when I cooled down, she and J777 got an apology, and subsequent relations are fine. Ditto Mr Tan, who instead needs to apologize to hundreds, yet is still allowed to run amuck here in wikipedia because of JIMBO's misguided now outdated ideals. You, I think need to consider an apology here. I've left one below, and there was another for your talk, but I fear it's fallen as vaporware into the bit bucket. This browser almost didn't give me back this page. (Aside: So Firefox does poorer that way than IE6 -- those windows I've closed, but not had an edit disappear before I could back down the links to it again.)


The thing you fail to notice in citing 1,000,000 articles, (or the absurd one million editors) is that sucess requires changing the paradigm — virtually always... the old policies are becoming, have long been toxic and causing morale issues right and left among the worker-bees — just look at inactive and somnolent admins — tack on the low number of edits by everyone else 'registered'. If it weren't for students and their excess energy, there simply wouldn't be a wikipedia, as of now, they have the energy to keep it propped up with bailing wire and chewing gum. The statistics and mortality rates should be frightening to Jimbo, yet we still have to put up with anarchy and a lack of oversight on matured articles. WP:AN/I is filled daily with the cancers.


I'm curious, I have to admit. Do you really live a life so unused to minor clashes? Are you some kind of rich playboy without the experience of living among the masses? Or are you and acedemic? Must not do much significant in the real world, save sit in questionable judgement, and have copious time to burn. I'd love to know who is hiding behind what clearly has to be an alias... your overall lack of contribs speak volumes[2], yet 'you' propose to tell me how to interact with others when your experiences are so uncommon? I think you're so far out of the real world that you're on a different planet.


In these matters, KatefanO was really 'just hasty' and also doing her job— J777 was careless or thoughtless —an excuse for your busibody behavior is? Ah, strike that. There is none. You've taken three very unrelated matters, discounting 'time' during an interval when I quadrupled my edit count and made slander out of them. I'm sitting here answering an email you caused by your obsessions to another with whom I had a similar but more typical 'start', and now long a friend and ally. It works for me. Your methods aren't the only solutions. I don't have your time budget for starters. Do try and be more careful in your researches going forward!


Your conclusions are really over the top. If you want to discuss article content, you're welcome back. You want to get polemic, save it for the forums. I do appreciate the little answers for others, and the good links. I honestly like you to an extent, as surprising as that is to realize today. I apologize you were warned, as I'd solicited advice and clearly stated I didn't want a warning, as you are too enigmatic a person with too much 'savvy' to take lightly, but neither do I have to buy into Jimbo's every misthought ideal to contribute here.


You may worship the ground at his feet, as an engineer I have to stay with reality — IMHO, we've outgrown many of them, they need to go — he needs to set up editorial policies which work. If not, this thing will die. He's hurting too many people far too often by stealing their time forcing them to shovel the tide with a fork. With a 'million' editors, where are the tens of thousands of one's with edit counts above my paltry achievement?


'They've left, for good reasons. Remember Disraelli's: "There are liers, Damned liers, and statisticians," even worse, there are misanalyzed statistics sans the evidence that should be there to support the claim. Think about THAT little un-ignorable statistical fact, and bend some of your free time 'to mine' some of the farewell messages left on the inactive admin's talk pages. Radiant! for one. I should start a list of good people now disgusted with wikiAmuck, but I think there's one around that I've seen. God, I wish Jimbo would do the same.


On —You're not going to get anywhere if you keep trying to enact change by complaining to specific editors about individual actions, and writing manifestos to each of us. Send me an email, I'm curious to know where I've been complaining about much save the help matter. We do seem to use words some different ways.


And on my authority (below) , I have the same right to stand up for my beliefs as everyone else... that's all pretty well covered in the whole thread (link above) for the rest. And where do you get the idea I spend a lot of time screaming into the wind Never mind— no need to wind you up again, yesterday was more than enough! Obviously: resorting to conflict and its metaphors so quickly is contrary to productive discussion, is not the same as being unproductive, save when one gets beaten to death by someone like yourself. Thanks, but no, thanks. My way is far more efficient for the time I have, with your copius time budget I might think yours was worth a try. But mine works well enough.


Best, but cautious regards, your self-righteousness is a dangerous weight to carry. FrankB 20:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to help you not waste your time screaming into the wind, and not spend so much time fighting (Stop that! resorting to conflict and its metaphors so quickly is contrary to productive discussion.) with others instead of adding content.
Just because You are stubborn, doesnt mean any of Us are going adapt to you. And your attempts to exert authority over others are futile as you have none in the context of wikipedia. That's as clear as i can render it. -Quiddity 22:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Email

As for the email i just received from you, that was far beyond civil. I will refrain from stooping to posting it here, and embarrassing you. I didn't say a single rude thing to you in any of this mornings threads. I was trying to be as helpful and patient and friendly as i could with you. It took me 2 hours to write that first reply, and 2 hours to write this one, because i'm trying not to phrase it in a way that you just ignore, as you are currently doing.
But i will respond to this one point:
"Get yourself something to do besides give unsolicited advice. I learned long ago that no one ever listens to such."
Practice what you preach, sir. -Quiddity 22:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Stoop, is it. How do you characterize cluttering up a users page with a barrage of unwelcome unsolicited advice?

No you just preached and pattered at me all day long and kept me constantly interrupted with what is essentially badgering over not much of any consequence, save perhaps to those with nothing else but titter and giggle over conversations of others. How are you proposing to 'compensate me' for the free time I have essentially lost forever because you have some bug up your rear over some trivial style crap and chose to condescend to me in a lecture mode every single time I got back on track interrupting me anew. Not to mention the job time I stole to answer your prattles, or for the late night I'll probably pull trying to turn back the backlog?

Are you for real? How insensative can you be? You've kept me from dozens of main space edits planned for today 'trying to be polite' to your interfering ways. I'm fifty-one, not eleven, you're forty years too late in trying to raise me like a child, as I said in the email. It'll be blatantly obvious above in all the little snide condescending notes 'do this', 'don't do that', 'have you read this', 'you need to read that'. Well, you crossed the line buster. When I want your advice (and it'll be a cold day in hell before I do) I'll ask for it. Dig? Or is this too complicated to understand?

And save the horse-pucky threats, the email is right here. I don't embarrass all that easily, but you couldn't take the hint. Try revisiting my earliest reply. THAT'S PRETTY PLAIN! I do practice what I preach, and I'm preaching you crossed the line on reasonable interference and civility long ago. There is nothing in my contract with Wikipedia that says I have to endure someone obsessed with nit-picks!!! Get a life, and stop polluting my user page because you have nothing better to do save amuse yourself with badgering. Better yet, try adding some content instead of polluting talk space with opinion. FrankB 00:49, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There is no contract with wikipedia, you are volunteering your time.
I'm trying to point out the easily fixed problems in your behaviour patterns that are inhibiting your productivity, and aggravating a lot of other users. All i asked was that you indent threads in the same manner as everyone else, so that threads are clearer to read. You had used a semi-colon to indent at one point, which created a title-element, which is semantically wrong, and probably not what you had intended anyway.
Like this
If you would take the time to read my other comments, and reply to them (at my talk page, or here), then i will answer any confusion/misunderstanding you have about those too.-Quiddity 01:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
cross post to user talk:Quiddity
Good for them, all one of you. Since I see the indent styles vary all over these pages, I'm hardly going to worry about 'their' angst, or your opinion, even if it 'really' is important to someone else so as to spend an entire day on something so annal, besides for you that is. Do I have to draw big pictures and use very very very small words. Go away. Bug someone else. You're a pest. You've worn out your welcome. You've taken too much of my time. I can't take you seriously anymore. Get lost! Grow up. Last warning. FrankB 01:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Re: Your latest at my talk: "Get lost! Grow up. I'm done humoring you. Last warning." I'm not asking you to humour me, i'm asking you to read what i write. Just as you expect in all the diatribes you address at others.
You keep using your age as an excuse/rationale, when it isnt. You are expected to be just as respectful, and stick by the spirit of the rules just as much, as any young adult is.
Re: your comment above: "It's all a disgrace and shamefully cynical in the way the current foundation treats well intentioned volunteer time because of some idealistic impracticle overweening liberal idiotic attempt to make a true democracy work. It's never happened outside a small hamlet context, and never will. Republicism has a chance. Better yet a benevolent dictator that acts decisively—Jimbo is essentially a dictator, the wrong ways. He's letting ideals be confused with the mission."
read meta:Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies. Stop being so arrogant. The first step of wisdom is grasping how little a single person can know in one lifetime. Otherwise known as humility. -Quiddity 01:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
So now I'm not entitled to hold my own independent opinions? You are a piece of work. Do continue the harrassment. I've been more than reasonable. FrankB 02:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not harassing you in any way. I'm replying to each of your statements. You are more than welcome to ask anyone who's opinion you respect, to comment upon these threads.
You are also completely free to believe any opinions you desire, but you have to respect other people's opinions as much as you expect them to respect yours, and you have to respect the majority opinions, one of which is declared in the guideline i had already linked, even more. Ignoring guidelines just because you can't be bothered to follow them, is not a good rationale.
Seriously, read the links i've hunted down, and reread to check, and posted above, before continuing disagree with me. I'll relist them below.
3 pages, 2 sections. It's not much. -Quiddity 02:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Quiddity, Fabartus does not want to engage in a discussion with you. At this point, I'd suggest just leaving him alone. Continuing to try to talk to him is being seen by him as stalking whether it really is or not. --Woohookitty(meow) 05:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please Crossposted

Copied over from User Talk:Quiddity per promise

Quiddity, Fabartus does not want to engage in a discussion with you. At this point, I'd suggest just leaving him alone. Continuing to try to talk to him is being seen by him as stalking whether it really is or not. --Woohookitty(meow) 05:18, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing.
But he really does need to learn to adapt to others, learn from mistakes, and accept criticism. Especially as he doles it out so freely, and at such length. It implies authority which he doesnt actually deserve here yet.
I wrote to the extent that I did because i have seen the wake of disruption and frustration he often leaves in article and user talk pages, but respect the breadth of his contributions enough to want to try to suggest improvments in his online-communication habits, rather than just trying to ignore him. I'd appreciate it if you read through the thread at his talk page, and confirm for him (or correct for me) what i have said. I made a determined effort to remain completely polite/formal/friendly/civil, until the reply in section FrankB-3, with the subtle republican jibe, but i was still writing that when he sent me this email.
He is beyond uncivil, and frequently, as both I AND He point out! (see "vitriol" quote) I'm surprised he hasnt had an RfC already.
I shouldn't have posted a response to his query at User_talk:Pegship#Seems_to_me_Milieu_was_Hi-Jacked. I was trying to show him that I can be helpful. Silly in hindsight. Although i don't think he groks how watchlists are used.
Keep me posted. -Quiddity 07:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
(Preface: I grok fine, but have no time to switch to them. If there's a trick to split your eyes and attention, I'm all ears!)
  • I'll post this section on my talk as well, and your 'judgements' are, to say the least, unsupported. Moreover, with all the time you spent, and your opinion that such a 'mild' rebuke as I put in that email considering the days history as a provocation, you've got to be some Ivory Tower type sans real world experience. So you clearly don't travel much in troubled waters with busy admins. My language is mild, despite the fact you had me swearing like a sailor.
I've stood within and more often outside more offices where managers were throwing 'purple prose' back and forth at each other than I can count—I've seen it in law offices, accountants offices, real estate offices, etc. —so your experience is lacking perspective. Add in the list I just left on my talk. You should have fun mining Mel's! Some of the diatribes make me look like a devote nun.
Nor have I read anything that appointed you to some high office so that you would or should make me nor my behavior a project. At best, your 'good intentions' were overweeningly arrogant. At worst, and the dumbest, you ignored the point to take it off line for your own unfathomable reasons. That invitation is still open.
You've certainly made the last 30+ hours 'interesting', however frustrating it was to edit and do work, but who's style has caused that and the losses to wikipedia? My rare 'punctuated' points (with grumpiness or not), or your long winded never ending discourse? I should have been clearer sooner, and my apologies on that. I'll remember if I ever meet another as curious as you. Apologies again for the warning, such was not my request. I sought only advice.

Best wishes, FrankB 21:10, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

End Crosspost --------------------------- FrankB 05
49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
Howdy,
Re: "the issue was respecting anothers time, the same boundary YOU crossed"
I think the misunderstanding over my turning you into "a project" comes from the fact that i replied to you at a rapid pace. That's easy because i use watchlists to combat vandalism at many pages, so end up refreshing the list every 10 minutes or so, whenever i'm in front of a monitor, which is a lot.
I'm trying hard to write clearly, so that nothing is miscommunicated across cultural barriers (i'm a Brit...(certainly not a Dem) ;), so perhaps it was coming across in the wrong tone, depending on what intonations/implications you give each phrase as you read them.
I enjoy privacy. Hence the alias and not emailing you in reply. (Primarily because i dont want to revert the "wrong" vandal someday and have a hacker-kiddie add me to spam lists and worse. And identify theft is rampant.)
I'd started off just trying to explain why changing talk page styling, so drastically, was considered harmful. And then as you seemed potentially interested in usability matters, went on to bring up your fairly unique, prolific, and inconsistent use of the 3 indenting techniques (colon, semicolon, asterisk).
You replied, i replied and clarified, you replied, i replied, and it all fell to bits! Darned politics and guidelines were raised, and you suggested that your methods of intro writing (in MWI) made the "lead section" guidelines ignorable, which raised my hackles, because, as you realize, i'm more interested in background matters that affect multiple pages (like stylistic or categorical or usability concerns) than with individual articles, which others, like yourself, are better at developing. A red flag to a bull-like academic, indeed!
I've been online since '96, and dabbling since 93 (ahh, compuserve) so have seen a fair few actual flame wars before ;-)
Anyway, this all would have gone a lot smoother, if i just hadnt replied as rapidly (once a day instead of once an hour), or been trying to match your own verbose style ;) So, as you say, back to business...
Apology accepted and offered back in return.  :) -Quiddity 22:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Final friendly reply :)

Re: "Since your central to this, and beside being queer as a two headed dog, I find I actually kind of like you. That you're from across the big pond explains some things. I didn't quite follow the meaning of your reference to acedemia - did I finally break through?"
I like you too, your eloquent writing style reminds me of Twain a good deal :)
And yes, introverted/cynical/idealistic/etc academic here (per user:page categories).
Re:"It's also patently clear you have no concept in wikietiquette how violently you've raped my user talk page."
As above, i think i replied too rapidly. (But i abhor the use of the word rape as a metaphor. (just a pet peeve, i fully realize it's just a loaded word, in more current usage today than it should be))
You could have moved the threads to a subpage and requested we talk there, or just not answered as rapidly as i was doing (as you mentioned in the email fwds) :-) (and you're welcome to archive this whole thread whenever you wish)
Re:"and oh, do try to think in terms of outcomes more than process."
We'll have to differ there, sounds too much like "The ends define the means" to me... <G> (rhetorical response ;)
Re:"So back it up, or apologize for the slander."
I was originally just looking for your response to Judgesurreal777 in your archives, because i wanted to point out the (minor) character attacks you made in the course of trying to educate him in your first contact (disregarding that there was a misunderstanding and amicable outcome), wherein you implied he was a "clown", a "yahoo", and a useless-minor-edit fiddler. (There are thousands of users who do nothing but go through pages fixing a single spelling error (teh -> the) or unit-standard (8cm -> 8 cm), using AutoWikiBrowser, which is more useful than you seem to think ;) I'd linked to meta:Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies because I find it truly fascinating, and thought you might too, as well as appreciating the perspective of us small-edit-fiddlers(WikiGnomes) a little more). Then i saw that quote about vitriol, and jumped to the conclusion that it was a regular pattern of dealing with those you dont understand. That was a big big mistake, and i do indeed strongly apologize.
I hope that clears up most of the pertinent misunderstandings. (I live in Canada, hence the "howdy" ;) I'm sorry this got so much bigger than i had intended (I like to ramble/tangent too: "So an enigma wrapped in a mystery." wrapped in a riddle? Excellent, i'm a philosophical turducken! :).
Best regards to you too, and see you around for sure :) -Quiddity 18:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Am I off base?

Set up section on the hi-jacking of milieu for discussion. FrankB 17:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC) Discussion invitees will be asked to post on Talk:Milieu#Am_I_off_base.3F instead. FrankB 18:48, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Table spam on this:

I just had a 'disruptive' experience. Please see This and discuss/vote!

I can also use a little help in Many Worlds Interpretation (See reverts) on dumbing down intro, but my talk edit is under this one. So give me an hour more.

Thanks!

Seems to me Milieu was Hi-Jacked

Too many threads open FrankB 19:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

As you can see from the history of the article, milieu has been a redirect since February 2004. I don't understand why you consider it "hi-jacked"; please try not to view changes as battles or conflicts unnecessarily. Mentioning that the editor who made the change is a math-grad also does nothing to further your point; discuss the change, not the person, otherwise you're on a thin edge of Ad-hominem arguments.
Milieu is a word used in many different contexts, hence a disambig page is the most appropriate place for it as far as i can see.
2 hints: Please only use colons for indenting. and use blank lines to create paragraph breaks. Thanks. -Quiddity 19:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

What am I, you're hobby today? See the email! FrankB 21:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional universes

Hello! Sorry, I don't think I'll get a chance to make a meaningful response here, as I'm tied up with something else at the moment. Maybe later! --HappyCamper 20:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


Archived to Here
Sunday May 14th; 23:30 hrs (UTC)

[edit] Fiction example

Howdy F! There are two projects, WikiProject Novels and a WikiProject Books, that have good guidelines on writing an article about a book, including an infobox template. If you want naming conventions, take a look at Book naming conventions. In what context are you using "milieu"? I admit to some annoyance about that disambig page; it's really too big to be a disambig. I hope someone else tackles it because I try to stay out of anything argumentative unless I really, REALLY care about it. Meanwhile, what the heck is a lofu?? Her Pegship 15:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Can a misfiled image be 'moved'

Hi, I'm afraid there is no way to move/rename images (or categories) at the moment. The current procedure is to upload the image again with the correct name and have the old deleted as redundant by putting {{redundant image|new image here.jpg}} on it. You could also upload a new image over the old one, but it's better to have a clean slate, especialy if the images come from different sources etc. --Sherool (talk) 21:01, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Grantville Gazette II

Floats are a notoriously tricky element to use, because of the differences between major browser implementations. They all play the tetris game in a different way, making it hard to predict with non-symetrical layouts.

I'm stumped on this one. (I'm running into the same problem elsewhere, at the community bulletin board redesign effort). I'd suggest moving the 2nd image further down the article (it's nice aesthetically to have images scattered throughout too..), maybe to the "list of gazettes" section. Or we could bookend it, which i left as a 2nd edit demonstration. revert if disliked :)

I made a number of small changes in a 1st edit whilst i was reading it through. Cleared up the external links box problem, and the see also links. I'll take a look at your talk page boxes next :) -Quiddity 02:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks 'Q'! (When do I get the Aston-Martin special delivery?<g>) I'll look at the arty now, occurs to me that maybe the TOC can go right? I have no attachment to the box in this whatever, I just couldn't get the text to wrap.

Best! FrankB 03:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I made another change, to demo having the 2nd image in the "List of Gazettes" section. Use whichever revision you prefer. It's the 2 floating images on the right, right underneath each other, that makes the problems :) -Quiddity 03:20, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Caught that in 'about' real time! I added a small edit change (vertical whitespace) and the second picture 'disappeared' <G>. Then figured what happened. I've been off doing email, so just saw this. Glad I don't use graphics much, having you fix this kind of problem could be habit forming. <G> Thanks again. FrankB 05:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
What do you think of the yellow with the green boxes. (I suck at interior decorating too!) FrankB 05:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I like the light yellow background for the main discussion area a lot. Much easier to read :)
There's a small selection at WP:COLOUR that i need to expand still.
Here are a couple of neat webapps for generating palettes. color scheme and colour blender. To get the lighter pastel colours, like at wp:colour, turn the Saturation down to about 15% (HSV mode). No prob :)
Oh, and as Q, i basically deliver a Caterham Super Seven (wmv video 4mb) ;)--Quiddity 06:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Now THAT's my idea of a go Kart! Good Driver— almost as good as me<g>!
We need to get to effing Bed! Cool tips my man. I have a couple of True Color charts (256 colors guaranteed to display the same) or so the author claims, system to system that I dig out now and again. . It doesn't extend to aesthetics tho'! I asked my son the 16 y.o. 'web page designer guru' how the boxes you fixed looked against the yellow, and he just told me he doesn't care for teel and greens ever. Lot's of help there! ;-(
He put me on to these: http://www.w3schools.com/ (Coding, most), http://lynda.com/hex.asp# (This is the source of the two non-dithering palettes— just paste the image into an email, and save it or save as a graphics file. Took a while to find it--wrong browser's bookmarks!) I'm gonna wrap up and get some shut-eye. FrankB 06:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
refactored up 2 sections
to improve below related threads FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Ebooks move (renaming)

Maybe You should write a nice message to the closing admins (User:TexasAndroid) talk page, explaining the issue? Then there would be full consensus (You changing vote) on deleting Category:Books available as ebooks feydey 08:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] For_Closing_Admin:eBooks

For User Talk:TexasAndroid or other correct party:

I'm given to understand by the below circuitous route that you are the closing Admin for eBooks_renaming proposal of 1 May 2006:
This note is advisory that I'm willing to change vote if the matter is deadlocked as per (1. below),— Feyday's query of HerPeghsip) suspecting such a state.

Note also following discussion on way to resolve the ebook vs. eBook naming, with Pegs endorsement. FrankB

re:  Key Links

1. user talk:Pegship#Please_take_a_look,_it's_about_books — Several notes on point just yesterday, including two or three priors above the section title line, over several days. But all mainly showing interest in whether the matter was resolved yet and the outcome.
2. User_talk:Feydey#Ebooks_move_.28renaming.29      — My offer to change vote if 'renaming' is deadlocked, mistaking Feyday for the closing admin. This included an offer to help rename book links into the new category whatever the outcome. (Only fair, I put most of them there!)
3. The above major Section heading, so I'm bringing this full circle to clutter my page on this matter, as the originator of the current name, and a party willing to change my vote if such obtains closure.
4. Talk:Ebook — move_(renaming) collateral discussion, which has weight in the category voting patterns. It also strike me that rather than move precipitously on the 'final official' category name, we can hopefully quickly poll a number of interested parties (e.g. Linkspamremover, Piotr Petronious, the person who raised the names question therein w/o voting, and especially the various editors of those articles impacted etc.).

That is the collateral article name discussion on talk:ebook seems to need parallel resolution (possible successive impacts) on ebook device... and several others.

5. With that in mind, I just posted this or the equivilent on the user talk page of everyone who'd made any post on talk:ebook. No others have been approached pending your answer on this and your desires as closing admin. (Hey! I'm nearly always happy with no extra work! Ask my wife and kids! <G> Besides, I originated the long category name no one else is happy with.)
Hi I'm spamming people who posted on this talk page... a vote notice
I'd like to ask you to place a vote on the proper article names issue in this. There are several parallel names issues (e.g. ebook device), but the date driven category deletion process begun May 1st is begging this ebook article page title (eBook vs ebook) be stabilized as well, and apparently the article is off most watchlists. (see (currently partial note-while I 'spam') User_talk:Fabartus#For_Closing_Admin:eBooks as that vote is apparently deadlocked.) I'd just like to get back to content! Thanks FrankB <times>, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
6. I'd think if the article naming issue has weight with you toward the category names issue, we should at least perform a similar spamming for those who have made changes to the article. OTOH, the vote on [talk:ebook]] is apparenty 'unofficial', but at least now there is some non-trivial discussion. Bottom line: any article renaming by us to conform with the diverse web name set, is going to cause work, not save any.

So let me know where you stand, and I'll help in any way you like. Best regards to all, FrankB 18:21, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] discussion_on_eMail,_eBooks,_and_naming

Thanks for the note. I disagree about the page move issue (and I'll come on to why), but I think that that is a secondary issue to the one of arriving at some sort of a standard for the eb/Eb/eB/EB/e-b/E-b/e-B/E-B usage. Once the naming issue is sorted, maybe the move issue will drop out.
I am torn between the need for consistency within Wikipedia, and the need to retain flexibility for new and current authors. It would be really nice if all the articles that are for things with the 'e' prefix followed the same convention, so that people don't get confused. To start with, we'd need to identify what that set of articles was - Wikiwax could be a way to do that. 'e-a' gives 'E-Administration' and 'E-assessment'. I've started a new article - e (prefix) - to serve as a focus. Knowing me, I'll lose interest pretty quickly, and just leave it as a mess for other people to clean up. Hey ho.
Following the gathering of information, a global edit-fest might bring the wrath of millions bearing down, so this would need to be raised as a formal policy under Wikipedia:Naming conventions. (Once the policy is agreed, the page move can be reconsidered.) In support of this, I think there would need to be some research on the etymology of the usage: e-business says that was coined by Lou Gerstner: how did he spell it? Thoughts? Noisy | Talk 19:09, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
reply to Noisy(T)'s post

Hi! If you'll take an old reprobates word, eMail and e-Mail were the first usernet name convention wars, so the precedent is of that form. The small e prefix is thus the standard convention, some apparently diehards, still use the hyphen. The problem is the precident doesn't transfer well into wikipedia's Caps-first naming conventions, which is of course a stubborn programming convention it would take years to change in META-Wiki evolution. So is contraindicated.

I don't know we need another 'policy proposal', as there are so many as to be ridiculous. I'll be glad to spam notify everyone that's ever posted edits in the various ebook articles, so as to get a good 'statistical population sample' for a consensus. We can also tag all the articles with a notice to join the debate on talk:ebook to make it formal and uniform for all articles. A list of all those needs developed first. As your suspended changes indicate, this is holding up Clean-up work, Category work, etc., so measures to expedite it seem reasonable within the spirit of the guidelines, as opposed to blindly following them literally. We can ask a couple of disinterested power-admins (SlimVirgin, for example) to oversee an expedited official vote of this type.

Did you see the Talk:ebook post I added today after seeing your bottom post 'sans bolding'. It's the 'google Directory' page which is pretty solidly 'lower-case', 'upper-case', albeit, some with hypenation. (Look above the Category naming notice in that section.) My inclination is to (be lazy <g> and) leave all the names (I found, incomplete check however) all lowercase per current naming on wikipedia — I'd researched all back to the originals as I noted there in talk:ebook, which are all apparently of that form as it's 'less work' — however that clashes strongly with my other pet peeve to have 'historical names and terms' used in the massive printed literature be consistant on wikipedia. Most of the time that involves redirects, to my chagrin and dislike. But that's progress—languages are just not stable, and neither is convention. <g>

So, what do you all think of 'expedite' that concept? A formal vote by all interested parties now seems reasonable since you've added your dissent (and muddied the waters! <g> Of course, changing your vote is OK! <G>). FrankB 19:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Does anyone have an MLA style guide or the OED? those would be definitive sources for the case issue, but I'm at home. I can look when I get back to work on Monday. Meanwhile, I left a note on the Talk:ebook page per my druthers, but I would just like to get it resolved. Let me know what else I can do. Cheers, Her Pegship 05:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] eBooks category debate

I'm sorry. Even if you change your expressed opinion, I still do not see a consensus. You have three people agreeing in general to the result. You however still have one person (the original submitter) who I see nowhere agreeing to the result, and you have two people wanting the category deleted totally. So only 1/2 of the people who expressed an opinion have accepted the same resulting name. This just is not a consensous in my eyes.

Do note that since it was closed as "No Consensous", there is really no reason you could not start another rename vote today. Especially if you think you have a better chance this time on getting an agreement on the final name. In general there's little reason to be in a rush about these things, and I don't see this as earth shattering if the rename waits another few days. - TexasAndroid 18:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey! Don't be SORRY! The original name was mine, and I think has the virtue of being most 'accurate' in conveying the categorys' mission statement. I can live with the shorter, as a sometimes software engineer, I'm just used to longish and less error-prone naming—I've worked some stuff where some function names take up three quarters of a screen line. I can probably get Piotr (the nominator) to change and overtly support if that helps. That leaves the two 'deletes' versus the four 'moves'. Would that do for consensus? It's at least a solid majority like that.
My sole interest in 'hurry' is I was going to browse books and add articles in times when my brain shouldn't be editing significant content; which action I've suspended pending resolution as it would add more work for renaming all the newly tied in articles. Making extra work seems foolish!
Also seems the greater 'ebook' versus 'eBook' question ought be settled. Did you see the above section discussing such? FrankB 18:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
Following the posts by Mel Etitis and Pegship on talk:ebook, I'm closing this discussion HERE (since the category name is not pushing things any longer) and any further ebooks discussion should be on that page. Thanks all.
Please post all further ebook/eBook/e-book naming
comunications on talk:ebook FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old Saxony1 in western empire 843.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Old Saxony1 in western empire 843.jpg. Wikipedia gets hundreds of images uploaded every day, and in order to verify that the images can be legally used on Wikipedia, the source and copyright status must be indicated. Images need to have an image tag applied to the image description page indicating the copyright status of the image. This uniform and easy-to-understand method of indicating the license status allows potential re-users of the images to know what they are allowed to do with the images.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. 06:06, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The below post bears on the above
Following the next link (below) says it's dealt with! FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wonder if you can find this

Xpost copyed fm user talk:Pegship

Seeing you've got a library and all at hand to reference, please follow and see if you can identify this original author (Freeman), and if possible, have some reference indexing (TOC) what ole JB has in the 3rd Ed. Also, same question on wikisource! Have a great day! Best, FrankB 16:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ans: Freeman's Historical Geography

I'm guessing what you're citing is an atlas that went with this title:

The historical geography of Europe, by Edward A. Freeman (Freeman, Edward Augustus, 1823-1892). 3d ed., edited by J. B. Bury. (Bury, J. B. (John Bagnell), 1861-1927, ed.) London, New York [etc.] Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903. Description: iii, 611 p. and atlas of LXV maps on 29 pl. 23 cm. LC Control Number 04018595.

I got this from the Library of Congress catalog (http://catalog.loc.gov/webvoy.htm), which is where I get most of my cataloging info. Unfortunately, as with many books this old, a TOC isn't listed. If you need any of the cryptic abbreviations translated let me know. I also deduce you downloaded the map from the UT Austin Perry-Castaneda public domain collection online; can you just cite that? Hope this helps - Her Pegship 17:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

0) I was more interested in trying to track down more of Freeman's authorative works, vice using him as a cite in this case. I agree, the link I gave is enough; plus I annoted Freeman, Freeman's books, and J.B. Bury too. FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Xpost fm user talk
Pagship:
1) Many thanks — exactly what I was looking for. My researching skills need a severe upgrade. I can find my way around a library floor, but all too often don't even think to look on the web until someone hits me over the head with it! Sad, as I was an early PC pioneer from pre-IBMPCs up through the early internet days... but tired of it all by the time WYSYWIG became common. Shrug+sigh!
2) See the 3 numbers on Saxony. Would you interpret those as dates? Iirc, such would be well after the Angles-Saxon-Jutes set up shop in Brittania, but also after Charlemange split his Empire between his three sons. So, as dates they ring no bells for me. Any ideas? I suppose the real question is whether there has ever been any authoritative work tracking Germanic tribes and their evolution over time, from the onset of the Dark Ages (now, I guess, in the early middle-ages0 onwards. I've become interested in the various Saxonies thanks to the Duchy of Saxony vs. Old Saxony vs Tacitus' 'Saxony', versus todays... sort of like an itch I can't scratch.<g> I need some better maps, for sarters, one where I can see the rivers because it isn't so busy! FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
3) Also see Talk:ebook again. I have some adds. FrankB 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LOC and Shepherd

Good morning! If you go to LOC's Basic Search and select Author/Creator Browse, you can enter Shepherd, William R and find him. The LOC lists him under "Shepherd, William R[obert], 1871-1934." As for the map dates, Encarta Academic says: "Charlemagne subdued [the Saxons] after a series of fierce wars lasting from 772 to 804 and forced them to accept Christianity. In the course of the 9th century, a great Saxon duchy came into existence under Frankish sovereignty, and its rulers established a dynasty of German kings in the 10th century." So I'm guessing the dates refer to some of these fierce wars. Good luck! Her Pegship 15:21, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks fer to be holdin' me hands again! The dates were all later 800's, which is why I am puzzled by them! Thanks // FrankB 18:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ebook vote

Hi Frank - have you posted a link to this at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)? Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 19:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Cryptic post! YAWG!!! I gather you just found it yourself, and why forsooth, need I be the one to post it? I'm trying to get SlimVirgin to mediate the matter and do a formal vote! I presume you refer to 'This is a naming conventions guideline for the naming of wikipedia articles about books, which includes printed books and e-books.' (In which the 'academic flavored' 'e-book' jumps right out, does a dance, hits one in the eye, plays the tuba and the drums concurrently, and casually beats one around one's head and shoulders with baseball bats, N'est pas?)
Having given it a quick read, I see little else that has any bearing on the issue at hand at talk:ebook, or am I missing something blatant and obvious in all the verbage?
In sum, what 'this' were you referencing? (btw- like the heart graphic thingy in your new signature! But why no Talk link too?<g>)
Puzzled //FrankB 19:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Um, oops...I was looking at Ebook vote question and assuming everyone else in the world was held spellbound by it as well...Tuba and drums?! Reminds me of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins... Haven't spent time on the talk link yet, but I notice I have Made The Big Time as a link on your userpage. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, if that's your idea of the 'big time', I should have met you when I was single, poor and less lazy<g>. (Where I come from, that's called a cheat sheet.)
With as much as I've got on my watch list, I'm lucky to check such talks every third day. But it's polling mode, not 'interupt driven', if you grok the computerese.
Seriously, if you think the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) should be on that debate, please add it. My presence is already too prevelant, and when all is said and done, I just want it settled and to move along to something else. I'll drop a notice in the Talk:WP:NC, and I guess the Village Pump, considering the 'weeks' delay requested. Fair division of labor? //FrankB 01:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair...but dang, I guess I made that post last week and plumb forgot about it. Mommy Brain strikes again. Catch you later... ♥ Her Pegship♥ 02:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Could be worse! At least you aren't putting extra letters into short words like 'category'
FYI: Post on WP:AN just completed:

[edit] Expediting

Xpost: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Request_Formal_Vote_Oversight

Back in the various flamewars on Talk:Tsushima Island, SlimVirgin oversaw a binding formal vote for that devisive renaming controversy. Currently, whether Wikipedia articles are 'ebook, eBook, or e-book', while not as devisive, are fundamentally costing producivity pending an outcome. Guidelines1, Policy2, are singularly unhelpful. We've been progressing slowly and steadily, but it would be good to have this made into a binding vote as it is clear our world itself (See 2.) is unsettled on this issue. But we have an encyclopedia to write. I've pumped for increased traffic. All we need is meet guidlines under YOUR(?) guidance. Can you lend a hand? Best regards, // FrankB 03:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Rookie Questions

Fabartus, you recently visited my user page and added some useful information for getting started as an editor (thanks for that, much appreciated), I'd just like to clarify an articles "life-line" if you will. I would find it beneficial if I new what journey an article took from creation to featured article status, this way I'd have a structured framework by which I could view an articles progress. I'll have a guess myself and if you could fill in the blanks/completely rewrite it would be much appreciated.

  1. Article creation
  2. Stub
  3. Expansion
  4. Wikification
  5. Peer review
  6. Good article candidate
  7. Good article
  8. Featured article candidate
  9. Featured article

I appreciate that this appears to simplify the whole process and I am well aware of the very small majority of articles that make it to Featured article status; however I do believe that editors should aspire to such heights, as even if their efforts may not warrant such an accolade, subsequent editors may develop what they have done to the benefit of the article and everyone.

I have been using and "snooping" Wikipedia for some time and feel I have attained the basic editing skills required to produce the bulk of an article. On the other hand I am aware of the major short comings of my advanced editing skills when it comes to such things as templates and frames etc. Is the newcomers help page the best place to get such help?

I have plans to completely re-write, extend and wikify an article on Geotextiles (you may have noticed the article on my talk page), however this is a relatively neglected article, as such I do not think that the number of visiting editors will be sufficient to produce a decent collaboration. Is the Peer review intended for such a purpose, to review and collaborate on articles that may otherwise be neglected? Basically I'm looking for some way to get my article inspected and hopefully improved when it is "completed," any suggestions? Also do you know of any experienced editors that have an interest in Civil Engineering, especially Geotechnical engineering?

I appreciate your help and think it is an honourable and most worthy effort helping rookie editors into the fold, such efforts will go further to develop Wikipedia than any amount of copious editing in my opinion.

Regards Grahams Child 10:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

For answers, see User_talk:Fabartus/TUP#THE_USUAL_PLACE. // FrankB 20:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiksource

I have just recently had a time to respond to you remarks at Wikisource. I believe you do not fully understand the decision regarding reference material. Wikisoure will still contain the sort of reference books you would find in a library. We have simply decided to exclude stand-alone reference material. There was disscusion on it worth reading. The main issue was that such random tables, mathmatical constants, and source code were impractical to maintain. There was no paper source to proofread against and vandalism edits were indistinguable from the corrections to the current adminstrators. That being said this material could be re-introduced as part of a valid text. For example a public domain math textbook might contain some mathmatical constants in the appendices. These appendices would be welcome along with the rest of the extbook. I hope this clears up any questions you had ove the inclusion guidelines at Wikisource. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 19:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for the post on my talk. I'm intrigued by your user page links! (e.g. I just navigated into Wheel Warring proposal)

I'm out of wikiTime for the moment, RL intrudes, but I'll check back and give things a closer read later this evening.

Thanks again, // FrankB 20:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I wadded through that, and even suggested to a few that they may want to look in... including a librarian friend who has been a great comfort and resource. Thanks and Best regards // FrankB 18:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I am certainly open to suggestions and would willing re-evalute any specific topics. But honestly if you look at the pages marked for exclusion most of it is error prone, incomplete, or just not of much use at all. We actually have two active projects on adding "reference material" under the broadest sense of the term(s:Wikisource:WikiProject NSRW and s:Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica). On Wikisource we were using the term "reference material" to distinguish from "reference texts."--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiGrins

Image:Face-grin.svgHere ya go. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On_deletion_of_Booting_(computer slang)

On 22 May 2006, after being unable to verify the information in Booting (computer slang), you requested that it be speedily deleted because it was "patent nonsense."

  1. Only random noise or gibberish is patent nonsense. See Wikipedia:Patent nonsense. An unverifiable article is not patent nonsense and is not subject to speedy deletion.
  2. There are many references to the use of booting to mean disconnection (malicious or otherwise) of a user from a chat room. See e.g. [3], [4], and many other places.

I have removed the article from the deletion list. Spacepotato 09:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

So sorry -- I'd googled the term, and didn't see any hits that looked relevant. The term is mainline in Computer Science and Engineering, so I guess language creep is striking again. Obviously, if it were expanded past the two or three lines, and had some External Links like those you cited, then it should stay pending WikiP slang standards, et. al. Notability is another factor, but I really leave that sort of minutia to the regulars on the AfD patrol. Best regards. FrankB 15:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template request

Please see the response to your request at Wikipedia:Requested_templates#Indent_Port_from_WikiSource --CBDunkerson 19:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seeking help with a format problem on my User Page

Yo, FrankB, this is one of your newbies squeaking up :-) Am having difficulty getting some elements on my User Page to line up nicely, and I'm hoping you can advise me. (This is described on my Talk page, if you'd like to take a look...)

Also (while we're at it), I'm still feeling clumsy and bewildered about the whole communications setup within WP (e.g. Talk pages, e-mailing, non-reciprocal watching, etc.). Please advise me as to how to proceed. Thanks! (And by the way, I'm located at GMT+3 but stay up late and get up early... :-) Deborahjay 20:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. -- I'd be only too pleased to oblige with the "bottom posting" to which you refer -- but frankly, my dear, I don't understand what it's about (crossposting alerts for communications?) and how to perform it!  :-/ Deborahjay 21:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your help, come see my response on S-Video page

FrankB, Thanks for your notes on my talk page. I have responded to your comment on :this (Talk:S-video)page, and would love to get your input. I am trying to learn the correct protocol for discussions and edits, hopefully I'll be better after doing some reading.

Joeyhagedorn (talk) May 29, 2006, 21:23 (UTC)

[edit] User:JYolkowski

I regret to say that the greeting you saw was dated 2005, and JY still has not returned. NoSeptember talk 15:47, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea if he's coming back. He was actively involved in a dispute about the policy dealing with the deletion of fair use images (specifically magazine covers) right before he left. NoSeptember talk 16:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Okay -- Thanks # two. Looks like another good man down. FrankB 17:18, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Template help

Thank you very much! I thought I'd hit a dead end with the template, your response was a beacon in the dark.-- The ikiroid  23:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NCH and other tales

Org post on his talk

I'm wondering whether your edit: here not long ago might not be better redirected to here, or perhaps even better, deleted altogether; I've set up the shortcut WP:NCH, as WP:CN was pre-empted for civility. Also see new: WP:WC, which ties together all the welcoming I've been doing. <g> FrankB 19:56, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

re: I really have no idea what you are talking about. --Commander Keane 06:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Calrification from his talk
I've been welcoming a while now, and cleaned up some errata and oversights (like listing WP:NOOB, the Welcoming committee et. al. in the list of shortcuts) when I found this old uncool (not 'P.C.') name for today's 'Wikipedia:New contributors' help page' (which you patrol regularly, and I do occasionally).
Since newbies are unlikely to use such an insensitive name for themselves, it struck me that the redirect @[Wikipedia:Clueless newbies], might be better used to redirect into the special page 'listing newbie article edits' vice it's current 'relatively useless' purpose. (What Links Here is essentially a trivial handful of mostly archieved pages). Alternatively, perhaps it should just be deleted, now that 'NCH' has both Help page and welcome template visibility?
So NBD, but since I believe you were a party to the discussions over at Meta, and perhaps the above redirect you created (in the first link I dropped above) was in fact the 'Page Move' to the new title, you seemed like the right person to ask for reaction to my thought since the redirect has little utilityb from what I can see. Folks have had time now to 'adjust' to the new page title, and seems to me one of those would be a better choice. Best regards // FrankB 12:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commonwealth English 'OR' lack-of-debate

You might like to take a look at: Template:Primarysources#Template:Primarysources as some think it is OK to 'shotgun' it on the whole article. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I fail to see how this is significantly different than unref/unreferenced, save I guess to drive home the point that references need to be acceptably credible.

Do you follow the VP, meta discussions or the many proposed 'new guidelines'? Has there been any discussion on how to manage these better? Most of this 'See Also' list strikes me as having the same problems... no way to enforce time stamping, fix responsibility, et. al. and especially no clear way to ajudge whether the issue(s) have been 'cleared' satisfactorily so they can be removed.

I wish I had a fiver for every article I've tumbled onto with poor self-documentation of these credibility-self-defeating 'make-the-editor-feel-good band-aids'*. Better, wish I had a fiver for every minute spent chasing one down through history pages to the person inflicting same! The worst of it is many seem to hang around for months, rather than generating the 'undocumented' fixes the hanging editor desires. (I've cleared a few in the nine months plus age range!) There's No accountability or time limits! At least user:JackLumber stuck around on the talk on that article!

One persons POV suddenly makes all of us look bad to the 'customers', and they rarely stick around to follow the resulting hub-bub, or check back to see if it's worthy of removing same. (I generally only affix them to Talk pages). It can be even worse with merge=to/merge-from... three-quarters of the time there is no rationale posted to the talk nor initiation of a talk section dedicated to the merge proposed. Some of those just linger sans comments by anyone for months. These at least, need some datestamped auto-expiration, imho.

Best regards // FrankB 05:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

replied at large ;) -Quiddity 07:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and make it easier to understand, this article or section may require cleanup.
This article or section may be confusing for some readers, and should be edited to be clearer or more simplified.
Please improve the article, or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Huh? Maybe It'll come to me in the morning! // FrankB 07:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Replied again at my talk, Re: knights who say ni. and maddogs and englishmen. (muaha) --Quiddity 04:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Hail Code Savant!

Do you have me confused with someone else? Highway Rainbow Sneakers 19:06, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's okay. And he's a guy. ;) Highway Rainbow Sneakers 16:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm doing just great... at putting both feet in me mouth! FrankB 16:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Mistaken identity

Okay, I have no idea whatsoever what you're on about - what do you want me to do? Oh well, wouldn't be the first time. Regards, --Celestianpower háblame 18:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

#templates {db} and {db-because} seem to be broken. They certainly aren't taking 'pipe-trick reason' argument to give a 'because'; One is a redirect of the other, iirc. #Test function repair in Catgegory:Early Middle Ages (Note the extra 'G'), then speedy delete that or leave for someone else once the template is working.

Never mind - I fixed it. Thanks, FrankB 04:32, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings, friend!

Still here - touched that you thought I was gone... I've just shifted a bit! ;-) BD2412 T 13:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

Please see my response to your question about dates in templates on my talk page. --CBDunkerson 12:59, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formal Vote Oversight

Well, if you want a formal vote and disagree with the no binding decisions policy, I'll simply point you to WP:IAR (Ignore All Rules, also official policy) but don't be surprised if the vote fails to do anything, someone will point out m:Voting is evil -Mask 20:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I didn't say I agreed either -- I likee the IAR link. <g> I'm beginning to think you can find a contradictory guideline for anything and everything here! Voting is evil is good too... otoh, someone tried bold action, and got caught and rolled back if you look up in the history of the ebook debate. I just want it resolved so we can deal with renaming the category hanging in particular, and other articles sharing the name, natch.
Hey! I'm a little slow! You dodged the question! Sigh! Best regards // FrankB 20:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spacing

See User:CBDunkerson/Sandbox6. Some examples (edit to view code);

I think this may cover what you are looking for. Basically just uses alternating methods of generating a space to get around various glitchy behaviours templates have with homogenous blocks of 'blank space'. --CBDunkerson 00:19, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


Thanks! Hope you're right... I noticed (see prior version using 'indent' which is our 'space' for the moment here pending your fix (I had faith!) that this and Template:History_of_Europe were behaving entirely differently when I ported the modified version back to en.wikiP! I'll let you know if I have a bug there too! This HTML psuedo-implementation (not to mention browser issues, esp. with IE6!) must keep you guys busy.

Also, pass the word that I've created Category:Historical Period Templates which should be added to any template bearing on matters historical... Should cut down redundant template creation in the long run, not to mention let editors survey what's already out there. Are there any other template categories, such as perhaps a Category: template categories to give people a head start on doing such poking around? (I guess I'm into categories lately! <g> Some big diffs on the Commons and here that need ironed out!)

Thanks again muchly! // FrankB 00:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Templates

Sorry, no, not my area. Or a good time for me to attempt decryption. Wine and bocce were had :-) -Quiddity 06:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Well Dude, that's more fun than this! Wish I were there. I've been known to play bocce and drink!
Thanks anyway. It seemed worth a try. Think I have it under control. // FrankB 06:22, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries for vandalism reversions / my removal of 130.126.143.59's comments

Thank you for the information about edit summaries for vandalism reversions. To provide some context for my removal of 130.126.143.59's edit to my talk page, my interaction with 130.126.143.59 began when I reverted his vandalism to User:Zsinj/Wdefcon 5. He proceeded to blank the vandalism warning I posted on his talk page, and posted a statement on my talk page mischaracterizing my warning as a "threat." 130.126.143.59's edits were described as vandalism by other users as well, including one administrator. The policy which you quote references "Actively erasing non-harassing personal messages... [to which] a reply would be appropriate or polite...". In my opinion, 130.126.143.59's edit may not be properly characterized as either "non-harassing" or a "message... [to which] a reply would be appropriate or polite". Indeed, 130.126.143.59's posting of an admonishment to the talk page of the very editor who just reverted his vandalism appears to constitute trolling via misplaced criticism. Therefore, I suggest that the entire section "No threats Y-T" be removed from my talk page, primarily to avoid encouraging future vandals to litter my talk page with absurd criticism as 130.126.143.59 did. John254 00:06, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional universes comments

Howdy; thanks for the note. I've responded on my talk page. Mike Christie 10:09, 10 June 2006 (UTC) Replied at User_talk:Mike_Christie // FrankB 10:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template

Hi Frank. I made some changes to commons:Template:WikiPcat2. I'm not sure if they are what you were looking for, but they should give you some idea of how boolean and other conditional logic works. See m:ParserFunctions for full details on these features. The simplest form is {{#if: {{{1|}}}|<result if '1' is set>|<result if '1' not set>}}.

The cross-project category system you are setting up looks good. Just keep playing with the templates - it's definitely the best way to learn.

On the maintenance templates with a built in date - the method of making it work is definitely a bit roundabout, but not as bad as you were thinking. I'll set up a few examples to get it started and so you can see how it'll work. --CBDunkerson 20:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion

Hello! I noticed that you have been a contributor to articles on Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion. You may be interested in checking out a new WikiProject - WikiProject Anglicanism. Please consider signing up and participating in this collaborative effort to improve and expand Anglican-related articles! Cheers! Fishhead64 22:17, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Xpost to User Talk:Fishhead64
... but I'm afraid my input was one of clarification and iirc, a request for expert attention to clarify something that seemed a tad logically self-contradictory... but that was across several articles. IIRC, I was there because of related historical edits concerning the Protestant Reformation in general and the Counter-reformation. So I don't really think I can add much, being a fair to middlin' Roman Catholic. <g>
But thanks for asking. If you need a RC viewpoint on something in particular, feel free to ask! Best wishes! // FrankB 04:25, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks a lot, Fab!

For the proliferation of my grey hairs. You know what I mean. <g> ♥ Her Pegship♥ 23:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

My Pleasure! (I'll be away much of the week, so catch yer breath!) Is this anyway to treat a handsome guy who gives you flowers??? <g>

Actually, I married a handsome guy who gives me flowers, so you'll have to take a number. <g>♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
OTOH, I thought this was plenty clear! Perhaps I was wrong on the 'technical definition' back 'then'??? I was looking for you to confirm and keep us all straight, as I thought the article was suspect, not the category I'd thought straightened out in that exchange. I MUST RUN NOW!!! Best! // FrankB 12:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I puzzled over it for a while, but I think starting over with list formats would work better for the category. As for the article, I try to stay out of "how to define something" arguments as I have had my Wiki-Behind kicked for it before. grr. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: I'd like your take on this

I'm sorry it took me so long to reply. Thanks for asking for my opinion, but I don't think I have anything to contribute to the discussion. The whole thing is a trivial matter, and I think some of you are getting a little too worked up over it. I hope you can resolve the problems quickly and satisfy everyone's concerns. Good luck and thanks again. --TantalumTelluride 05:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Naw -- Jest me! On further mature reflection, I wish a) I'd not made the post, b) Really studied some of the articles I thought were problems before putting my foot in my mouth in my haste c) wish I hadn't bothered you guys (I lean on now and then for input) with it at all. But that's what haste will do for you, and RL was calling hard. I do have a bug over the categories being hidden on the default skin, but the templates (now that I'm getting more familiar with there programming) can be adjusted here and there when there are problems as I've found over the commons the last couple of weeks. My focus was which other venues to publicize it on, so it's just as well I didn't go that step too! Thanks, // FrankB 05:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
It's alright. Don't hesitate to ask me for input if you need it in the future. I might not be much help, but it doesn't hurt to ask. --TantalumTelluride 19:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: On image moves

Nope, no automatic moving to commons bot that I know of. There is a tool that can assist with the process a little, but you still have to do the move (semi) manualy for each image. --Sherool (talk) 20:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks... seems like a sensible idea. I think I'll inquire to see if it's feasible. Best // FrankB 14:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] JYolkowski

Given our chat above just over two weeks ago, I thought I'd mention that JYolkowski has started contributing again recently :-). NoSeptember 03:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to the Military history WikiProject!

Hi, and welcome to the Military history WikiProject! As you may have guessed, we're a group of editors working to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to military history.

A few features that you might find helpful:

There are a variety of interesting things to do within the project; you're free to participate however much—or little—you like:

  • Starting some new articles? Our article structure guidelines outline some things to include.
  • Interested in working on a more complete article? The military history peer review and collaboration departments would welcome your help!
  • Interested in a particular area of military history? We have a number of task forces that focus on specific nations or periods.
  • Want to know how good our articles are? The assessment department is working on rating the quality of every military history article in Wikipedia.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask one of the project coordinators, or any experienced member of the project, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome! We look forward to seeing you around! Kirill Lokshin 22:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Various Maps Categories

I just restored the maps categories that you mentioned on my talk. These were not on CFD because they were Speedy Delete candidates under WP:CSD#C1, relating to categories that have no items whatsoever in them. These categories were tagged by another editor (See histories) with {{Db-catempty}} or similiar deletion templates, and I caught them while working speedy deletion candidates. If the categories remain empty, they are likely to be nominated for deletion again, and deleted again. Items deleted under the empty category speedy deletion criteria are absolutely without prejudice for them getting recreated at a later time when populated. Although a little bit of overhead, a method to keep them populated would be to categorize a wikiproject page (hopefully relating to maps cleanup) to these pages. Generally editors nominating empty cats for deletion are doing so in good faith, thinking the pages are no longer needed (as is often the case). — xaosflux Talk 23:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Polish Question

I am sure we can have such a cats eventually - but at the moment we don't have enough articles for them, apparently, and we need the C:PA for a parent cat anyway.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cat move

I've killed Category:Old Maps of Europe, and recated it's sub cat to Category:Old maps of Europe. If you get more list them on WP:CFDS, a bunch of us sysops try to keep it up to date. — xaosflux Talk 02:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks much and pardon my typos! // FrankB 04:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please join in

Wikipedia:Locations in fiction, fictional locations, and settings is a proposed policy on how to list fictional locations and to differentiate between a physical place and a setting (ie. universe or world). Please join in and give your thoughts. Bring some friends!
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 05:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: System under attack

Actualy I kinda agree with getting rid of the user subpage category. Just use Special:Prefixindex/User:Fabartus and Special:Prefixindex/User talk:Fabartus, either directly, or to compile a "index" page of selected subpages. I agree your project categories serve a usefull purpose and should be kept for now though. You seem to already have convinced peopel to keep the template. --Sherool (talk) 08:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I shrugged on that one meself--it's new, and it's not like I'm addicted to it. Just seemed like a good idea at the time, and didn't know about the special prefix tricks... have to wonder now what else I don't know on db access minutia! The only problem with that is one brower's 'lame' on pulling up bookmarks, and that's the one I edit in most of the time as it doesn't loose the back-stack like Firefox. Thanks for the moral support, at least! // FrankB 03:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Just wanted to say thanks for the welcome back message. I'm actually on dialup too, it's just that I'm sufficiently lazy not to archive my talk page too much (-: Of course, one could always create a direct link to editing a new section on my talk page to skip the initial load. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 02:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Cats rename in interwiki templates

The bot is actually run by User:Cyde. Tim! 21:07, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] words

I thought smarm meant "slightly condescending, and prone to hyperbole/melodrama", but apparently not.

As for spring-cleaning, i guess i was suggesting you move your notepad-function of your userpage to a subpage, and use your userpage just for quicklinks to things like templates and bookmarks. But self-organization is completely subjective; and as I'm a professional procrastinator you should ignore me freely :) -Quiddity 19:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, I do the latter WELL Indeedy! <g>
So apparently he's saying I'm not blunt enough and too polite? 'Best regards', etc.??? I certainly don't bootlick! Ah, well. Impressions ARE anothers reality, after all. And here I was prepared to take it as constructive criticism, assuming I could understand the message! <chuckle> // FrankB 19:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] e-book cleanup

Oh yeah, the e-book thing! Where shall I begin? And wasn't that fun stirring up the Novel sequences hornets' nest? </joke> I can only plead Mommy Brain once more, but do let me know what particular part of the redirect cleanup I can take on. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:39, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Small World

Yikes! I'm very sorry... my lack of experience with commons makes me unsure whether there is anything I failed to notice in examining the category page that might have kept me from doing the unfortunate deed. Since I suspect there are other admins like me, I think the text warning you have suggested is an excellent idea. I'll add this to my long list of follies. :) Best wishes, Xoloz 16:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mephistopheles

Dear Fabartus,

I have rewritten the article to add my two cents and am eliminating all that would confuse the reader both in the article and the discussion. See what you think of the new article. Yours, Rich Dengrove —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdengrove (talk • contribs) 00:43, 28 June 2006

[edit] On Category:Move to Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately, this category is resolved by manually moving the images, reuploading them to commons and and then listing the replaced ones on Wikipedia for deletion. The category is populated by tagging pages with {{Move to Wikimedia Commons}}. It would be great if you could assist in clearing out the category (or can devise a bot), as it currently has a large backlog. Particularly, all the image galleries that are tagged there mean that there are really a lot more there than it looks like. Dmcdevit·t 04:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. As I feared. ;{
Silly considering (based on behavior) the dbases have at least cross loaded images in thumbnails form from the commons to the local servers. Silly to put us slow human's in the middle too. I don't write scripts, but I'll see if I can prod someone who does. We may need an 'vetted' category to indicate an image is fully ready for transfer, s.a. 'Vetted for move to Wikimedia Commons' indicating it's fully prepepared and recategorized per commons categorization. The same cat when it lists on the commons can be used as a 'checkover' list there to verify the editors judgements from here, at least with respect to proper categorization and copyright needs. // FrankB 11:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if you already know about this, but one page that is useful in making the manual moves go quicker is [5]. Fortunately, with only about 50 images tagged in that category, it is by far the smallest of the transwiki categories. Dmcdevit·t 05:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re Have any idea on why

Hi Frank,

I'm seeing this sort of varying content shift when looking back at things? I definitely saw maps combining on the en.wikipedia page when moving stuff ten days back. Now things no longer seem to be an 'AND' list here, so to speak. Puzzling! // FrankB 12:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Per your thoughts here, you're uncovering the bottleneck currently between the Commons and its sister Wikimedia projects. No simple action to suggest save your asking someone like Duesentrieb (Daniel Kinzler, mentioned in the Wikimedia Commons article linked above) and/or other Commons admins/bureaucrats (I use method mentioned here to identify them). Regards, David Kernow 19:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
PS Am currently sidetracked on a miniproject to classify as many subnational terms according to roughly-corresponding NUTS/LAU level as possible, ultimately for the sake of Commons:Category:Locator maps' immediate subcategories.

Dave,
Just a heads up and that I'm checking in for messages on diverse matters. Will probably be inactive on maps, etc. through at least the end of the coming weekend. Also need to put some time into prior projects. If I do anything, will be to cat some stuff into the middle ages categories to ensure all have some content to counter the deletionist tendencies on en.wikipedia.
RU doing anything to formalize a wikiproject and if so, what can I do to help? Considering the same deletionists tendencies, that would seem to be a moderately high priority given the waste of things being deleted, undeleted, etc.! // FrankB 13:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your contact; asking after you was on my to-do list but my attention has also been needed elsewhere. As regards maps and categories etc I've been looking into country subdivision methods (for the sake of classifying locator maps) and found an open can of worms, but one I believe may be sealed acceptably. At present I'm awaiting information from a Branch Chief of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)'s Political Geography Division!
I'm not doing anything to formalize a Wikiproject as I don't want people to come across it and start thinking I'm responsible for it; I'm happy, however, to support and contribute to one. Once I return to the maps on the Commons, any overview information I'd add would probably be in the form of a "Commons:Map categories" page or the like.
Hope all well beyond Wikipedia, David 14:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Tis! Thanks. (Aside from having a new teenaged driver in the family, anyway. <g>) Just summertime needs and family priorities. I'll bend some thought to writing something up in a project draft, then. Don't understand the 'responsibility' angle or concern. You've already taken that on overtly with all the restructuring and consequent edits! With Wikimedia Commons being 'The Common' link to all language wiki's, the overall 'self-consistant' heirarchy to me seems a no-brainer. I'm a bit uncomfortable with Commons policies yet, but I can't see anyone giving much grief over systematizing things consistantly across all the sister-projects. Best bang for the foundation's bucks and all that. Unfortunately, this is the worst time of year for me in terms of discretionary wikiPtime, but I'll see what I can do to work it in if I can find the time. It may be a while. I don't see major time availability until the middle of August at the earliest! // FrankB 15:27, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject Newsletter - Issue IV - June 2006

The June 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. Kirill Lokshin 05:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Murphy's

I was just checking up on the Books based on ebooks cat & sorting a few articles (I'm OC about alpha order & have a userbox to prove it). Oddly, I thought it sounded like something you'd be interested in! As for e-books and Baen, I do agree that some reference in the e-book article is appropriate, but a mention and a "see also" would do to keep the article trim. Cheers! ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Truth is the book and the serialized article is stretched to fit the category. The article's about 80% of the book, or perhaps more. I should go through my contribs and figure out how I stumbled into the original edits on ML (Take THAT, for "OC", whatever that means![6] sheds no clue! Our page is even less help, LOL!), but something was wrong. (Finangle's, Sod's and Murph's were all more or less equated... they're more distinct now, but most of the examples's listed in ML should be in Sod's. But I'm not here... a figament of your imagination in truth! [At least not 'working'.]<g>) Surprised you didn't hang a Clean on Nick T. Spark, you violent person (Jes my ego talkin')! Now what was I about to check a reference on... FrankB 22:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
You know librarians; we're ruthless. And mostly OC, but not from OC. I didn't continue on to deal with Mr. Spark because I had already been sidetracked from my original drudge work and was just taking a break. Now, back to my Films based on books project...zzzz... ♥ Her Pegship♥ 23:12, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Being OC on alpha-numeric sorts, how does This, this, and this sit with you. (Hint: Grantville Gazettes and the 'magic' series number.) // FrankB 05:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll look at those later after I've recovered from your brilliant message. You are one sick puppy. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 22:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I give gifts, and am called 'sick' and 'puppy'. Shudder! "Old Dawg!", Madam, "Not Puppy!, Forsooth!" <g> btw-figured out how I got to 'Murphy's Law'... was that newbie looking for help on FAUST and Mephistopheles, etc. // FrankB 12:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'Template:Novelinfoboxneeded' shortcoming

Thread Begins; Original Message(1), Transposed from User Talk:Kevinalewis

How about a reference to the infobox template in this one? One must not assume your background knowledge or wikiproject experience. Just embed some usage notes in noinclude block for the next unfortunatge sod to come along with too little time, or a link or two in this template.

I disarmed the templates you left behind in talk:1634: The Ram Rebellion, since it's an anthology. If the infobox works, I wouldn't mind using it. About half this series is anthology, so advise me on what you've got and where to find it since you are deep into the novels project. Best regards // FrankB 05:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1634: The Ram Rebellion

My talk (R(1))

See you point about this, bit of a difficult series in that not all are really novels. We need consider how we deal with such series. They are however few and far between, rather individual set of work. Thanks for the extra documentation be the way. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 07:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My reply(2), his talk

I've probably been at it too long. (Strike 'Probably'!) re: Thanks for the extra documentation be the way.... Huh!??? In any event, I'll assume you like the idea of embedded usage. Two examples simple to more complex: {{main}} and {{commonscat4}}. I'm going to bed! // FrankB 07:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
My talk (R(2))
Ah, "Thanks for the extra documentation be the way" that was my mistake, miss read you and thought you had done it. Now I look at Template:Novelinfoboxneeded I can see no change. In fact as I read it there is usage information in the lead paragraph of the template include so I'm not quite sure what you mean. I will however reiterate some of that in the template itself. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My reply(3), his talk

I lied. Had to get in one more edit. I saw the link after posting, but it's confusing in-and-of-itself as what it links says it's the model for a template. My point is if you're going to post a 'Hey this is missing' template, why not have that warning thing, at least say what to use in usage notes, if not overtly. I'm personally big on saving people extra-clicks, so I'd just '{tl|mytemplate}' with the apropo 'mytemplate' into the 'bitching' template so that it's self-documenting the fix, as it were. G'night for real! // FrankB 08:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
My talk (R(3))
done something - does that suit! ???? :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:23, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My reply(4), his talk

Yeah fine -- assuming there is no template instead (Don't know what I read to hallucinate THAT!). If you always transclude the source, that works too. Now even newbies can figure out what to do. G'night3! // FrankB 08:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Plus an added note(4)
One caution: I'm told that some templates malfunction if the noinclude is not on the same line as the end of the code of the template. I think I'd make sure of that detail, if you haven't. I was looking at the diff, so it seemed to be on a seperate line. Best! // FrankB 08:31, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Chuck_Marean

Don't take it personally, but ol' Chuck took it upon himself to eviscerate your remarks. He does this to everyone who says anything remotely critical. Avogadro 14:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

w/Xpost to Avogadro
Thanks for the heads up, but how could I take it personally, all things considered? I've no issue with him of fact. I'm amused he's termed such vanilla language as 'personal attacks'. He certainly seems to use a different dictionary from the rest of us, which is why I put on me 'mediator's hat' and took the time. Well, at least that's consistant with the track record that made me decide to attempt to get through to him by providing a mirror as a disinterested party on the WP:WC. May help if it comes down to an RFC from people with real clashes. All I can do is offer help, but it still takes two to tango. See ya // FrankB 14:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am much obliged to you. Avogadro 14:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archived to here

12:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC) // FrankB 12:47, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Partial Archive_3

Xfer material 06
47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Dup User:Chuck_Marean

Don't take it personally, but ol' Chuck took it upon himself to eviscerate your remarks. He does this to everyone who says anything remotely critical. Avogadro 14:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

w/Xpost to Avogadro
Thanks for the heads up, but how could I take it personally, all things considered? I've no issue with him of fact. I'm amused he's termed such vanilla language as 'personal attacks'. He certainly seems to use a different dictionary from the rest of us, which is why I put on me 'mediator's hat' and took the time. Well, at least that's consistant with the track record that made me decide to attempt to get through to him by providing a mirror as a disinterested party on the WP:WC. May help if it comes down to an RFC from people with real clashes. All I can do is offer help, but it still takes two to tango. See ya // FrankB 14:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I am much obliged to you. Avogadro 14:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archived to here (in Archive04)

12:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC) // FrankB 12:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Various & sundry

Just trying to keep up with you...

Image:Cokebottles.jpg
Things go better with Coke...so have one on me.
1 There's a Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional series which could use reviving if you're interested in using it for your own (or Honorverse, or any others') nefarious ends.
In a pinch, I consume VAST amounts of the Diet version. But Thanks, the sentiment is appreciated and needed since I'm without A/C up here in me attic office!
2 I'm studiously avoiding the issue of how to code (or not code) ISBN-13's, because I have enough headaches with them at work.
Well, then you owe me one. What I did in GG-II works. Just id={{ISBN}} to your hearts content. (May not need the template call at all, but it expanded inside 'cite book', and the link works, so that's one load off your mind and list.
OTOH, 'doi=' failed to find the particular book... don't know if our downstream logic in 'cite book' or Baen has a disconnect with the organization or what. I'll advise after trying a few more. I have an error email open to them to add data I accumulate. (T'would be nice if you 'at least' enabled your 'user protected' email via wikipedia on your preferences! These talks require leaving too many edits hanging!!!)
3 Um, I actually like infoboxes, so good luck griping to me about 'em. They're like little catalog records with "just the facts, ma'am".
Yeah, but you're probably also into B&D and S&M too. (Just kidding), My problem is you project people have loaded them up with so much that they dominate the first screen or more in most articles where a project has imposed them. I'm really referring to history and related articles. Frequently there is not enough room to format nice apropo pics and maps into such without dancing around the room standing on me head so so speak. And God forbid I should try for an infobox and something like a 'four up' pics set (?The Grantville Gazettes??? well here's two-up, at least The Grantville Gazette which an info box will play hell with!) together on the same page. But I've a big heart, and won't hold your narrow-minded championship of ... "facts, and just the facts Maaam" agin youse! <g>
4 There is a category for Category:Book templates; anything else I need I collect on my Frequently Used Markup sub-page.
LOL! Lot o'good your sub-page does the newbie, or reluctant (holding me nose out of loyalty) fiction article editor on your sub-page. Perhaps you can ask Kevinlewis to update things like {{cite book}}, and {{ISBN}} so they know about that cat, and (more importantly) it knows about them! (Hell, I can't even find half of my own sub-pages now the cats gone... I need to change browsers and use the shortcut Quiddity dropped into that discussion!) ... Yeah, Hopeless, youse agrees wid de wife!
I just looked that over and modified our series templates... BUT, Not quite 'exactly apropo' but I can live with Category:Book templates; (I use pipesort '!' for templates) if you OCD types can handle it.I see you beat me to the page!). I was refering to something like Category:Navigational templates, Are there wikiprojects categories??? Some projects use a Wikiproject Cat tag in their templates. (see (no guarantees): Wikiprojects New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, etc. I've seen quite a few here and there, sans a lot of 'consistancy'. List of Wikiprojects Shrug!) I'd guess, however, 'Books' topics will draw more diverse and fan-atic editors than some stuffy old geo-political demographic project. Hence, you in the project need to help others make your job easier. Nuff said!

Now go outside and play. I'll be in Rochester, NY next week so will be sharing your hot muggy weather (as opposed to our hot dry weather). Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Should have... too late now. The wife was even 'reasonably nice' about it! Amazing, that! // FrankB 22:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing novels.

Nice catch :) unfortunatly, the current lists do 3 specific things.

  1. look for books that should be novels (by searching category by category
  2. look for books without infoboxes, agian by searching category by category. (i.e. if I don't search the category, it does not get listed :) 1632 series is an example, I have not searched it yet :).
  3. looks in the "what links here" of Template:Infobox book. (this is the only list I can say looks at every article with a template on it :). It's job is to look for incomplete infoboxes.

If you want more infomation please ask me :) Eagle talk 22:45, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Eagle, If you're a admin, unlock {{cite book}} and properly categorize. I couldn't cause I'm not (like Peg). Cheers! // FrankB 22:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oh so confused...

I thought I understood.... now I am lost... can please elaborate on my mistake.... (I know I am not perfect :), and want to improve) Eagle talk 23:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

oh and I am not an admin... but if you tell me what you need I can get you one in oh... 30 seconds :) Eagle talk 23:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, please realize that I was not tying to "twit" you. I was really offering you help! (I thought you needed to sort articles out of a category... and as you see with the lists that I have generated, I know how to do that!! ) Agian sorry if I came out the wrong way... (still very confused :))

Forget being confused... I was refering to Pegships talk note.. where I left a short rejoiner some time back. Don't know you made any mistakes (other than talking to me! <g>).

The admin need: template:Cite book should have whatever category should hold book templates (Category:Book templates ). OTOH, it strikes me that your project templates' parrallel, if not duplicate the {{cite book}} template, which MAY BE miss-used (I'm CCing another editor in using it for Publishers info. See Grantville Gazette II, section by that name.).

I'm still on a learning curve on that, Fiction standards in general, and your project templates, etc. So these are snap shots trials... not 'guideline' I'm firm about knowing cold. In sum, If Cite books is not usually used in 'Publishers Info' sections, then there is no admin needed to place Category:Book templates into it. Still, strikes me as a Right Thing since books and book categories ought to be introduced to one another... // FrankB 23:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, with the learning curve :) please respond on my talk page... (then I get a nice "you have new messages" when I navigate to a page... then I can respond faster :)
Each wikiproject has it's own template (if it is a novel or a book we use the {{Infobox book}} template. If we are citing a book we use the {{Cite book}}. (i.e. someone said this in a book they wrote... see WP:CITE for more infomation) If you have any questions feel free to ask me on my talk page :) Eagle talk 23:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] citation templates

All citation templates start with the word "cite" followed by what you are citing. {{cite book}}'s layout makes 100% sense to me. When I use it I know I am citing a book:) If you fear that new users may get confused by it, all they have to do is read WP:CITE or ask someone! Also, for your questions with citations have a look at WP:CITET -- this is a list of all the templates used for citations. Eagle talk 01:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Fine, but off my point. If one is in template categories, one still must know that shortcut, unless one also has a link to apropo templates inside said cats. So I'm talking finding by Right Thing category, while you're focused on use. NBD, we're hung up on one template, not the list of book related templates I was initially discussing. Different modes of thought. Me wife and I do it all the time. // FrankB 01:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
If you put a reference to a book category in the template, it will show up on science articles, or math, ect. (the math article would get put in with Harry Potter and the like.)
If someone does not know about it... all they need to do is go to WP:CITE or just ask someone how to cite an article. I have answeared quite a few when responding to {{helpme}}'s. If I am off the mark {agian...) can you paraphrase your argument... thanks! Eagle talk 02:40, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Meanwhile, I snuck over to the talk page at {{cite book}} and asked someone to add it to Cat:Book templates, and lo, it is done. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 03:08, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
That works... frankly you all had me confused... I got it now, but alas too late :) Eagle talk 03:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
My Heroine... Again! LOL (I'll have to find some new flowers to clutter up yer talk page, darlin'!) //FrankB 03:25, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sortkeys

As opposed to portkeys...Just out of curiosity, where did the convention for the - and ! sortkeys come from? Did I miss a discussion? So far I've only seen comments about using spaces and asterisks. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 23:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

No discussion-me own 'invention'. 'Tis ezactly why I raised the point, darlin' on zee talk page. Once upon a time, long, long ago I were an able machine language programmer in zee daze before WYSIWYG op systems. So some smattering of ASCII and ASCII code ordering still perambulates out unto the the real world in zee occasional task. Zis is one such. Onez day I wanted a code that put the templates up out of zee way, so to speak. Mostly used in zee commons, but In zat same 'far away galaxy, I was once in zis heavy duty software job where me and zom others hads to know waht zort of zings zee others were doing, so we hazd zum standardz mush lik zee WP:MOS, and zee Naming Conventions, zee? So, zuch sneaks in too, and zo I like lots of cross documentation, self-documentation (see: {{commonscat4}} for example), zo as to get gentle reminders of waht is waht zfor me feeble brainz when Iz be in zee middle of ten tings at once (Zee ADD, you know, can't rewire the ole noggin', but only cope with organizational strategizees zat work). Zat way it alzo helpz zee newcomers get involved and fit into zee scheme of zings sooner and wiz less errorz. N'est pas? Anyways, zats zee sad tale. Zeye hopes youz enjoyzd zit! <g> // FrankB 03:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
The reason I ask is that over here in plain old Wikipedia, folks use the spaces & asterisks, so you might get some elevated eyebrows over your system, specially if you haven't posted your intentions or rationale anywhere, such as Meta-Wiki Help or Talk:Categorization. Mildly, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 16:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

End Partial_3: 06:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC) // FrankB 15:33, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archived 13 Dec 2006, upto 28 November 2006

[edit] WPP:Novels

xpost

Seen you have added this - when there are two already WP:NOVEL, WP:NOVELS what is the rationale for another. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 07:52, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Not categorized, so unknown to this writer at the time of creation. Complex, huh! I'm not good at quickly assimulating new terms... a short term memory thing common to ADHD. The ones I wrote are case reflective of their proper names... so easier (for me at least) to remember. Nothing more. In further defense, no one had used {{shortcut}} on any of the pages I tagged, so the visibility was poor, so to speak.
One thought I had logging in a while back was whether there was a book templates catalog page... Something along the lines of the usage I wrote in {{commonscat4}} where each template is displayed and discussed for ease of reference. Strikes me as a good idea. (I'm big on 'self-documentation' and ease of use things... we all have limited time volunteering our services, and anything which speeds assimulation or spreads know-how to newcomers is good and Right Things to do, IMHO.) From a project management perspective, such should attract more people to become regulars in the overall project as they'd quickly gain a comfort level with the sub-community and it's tools and practices.
I'd submit that either WPP:Novels/tags and/or WPP:Books/standards name-types be considered. The page itself would be the full expanded form, not these 'shortcut' formats. (On further mature reflection, reserving 'standards' sub-article page might be better employed for some sort of checklist guideline.) // FrankB 16:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi guys - I recently rooted through the templates category and assembled a bunch of useful templates in the Cat:Book templates. If you think a sub-page for either the Novels or Books WikiProject would be useful, I'd be happy to create an annotated list. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 18:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kevin joins in

Just for the record the shortcuts were mentioned in the conventional fashion at the top of the main WikiProject Novels page in the little box (middle top). This is common on WikiProject pages. Next we can't mention everything everywhere making all things available wherever people navigate. We must divide up and place things in a subdivided or categorised fashion. Having said that I have no objectin ot the estblishment of a tag / template page to record and advertise the various options. Either your self of "Pegship" are free to set such a thing up. Name it either Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Tags or Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Templates and we can see about format / layout etc when we have a start. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 07:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Kevin
I think Pegships' gone on vacation. Where are you from. I'm still at it at 4:00 am coming up fast! Obviously, Peg and I have a 'history', and have been working together on and off closely on some matters for three months now. Frankly, I really don't want to be doing 'Fiction' things, but there's this nagging sense of responsibility that sort of sucks me into need-vaccuums that I find hard to ignore. Put the two together, and don't take this the wrong way. Conventional projects fashion is something of a null statement to me. Haven't been involved in ANY wikiProjects until two weeks back, and that was just a courtesy sign in for future need. I do a lot of fiddle-faddle edits on their pages, so I thought I should join (Military History). Ditto Books and Novels, since I've taken on the responsibility for the 1632 series... which has led to taking some responsibility for the WPP:series.
To add insult to injury, I've been deeply involved in the (so far Unofficial) InterwikiProject to equalize categories between Wikimedia Commons and here as well as occasionally dabble with matters at wikisource and meta. Add in trying to keep up with Tfd and Cfd plus article edits, and I'm a very busy guy here. And those 'commons' guys want me to take the lead at putting 'that' together as a official project. So forgive me if I'm a little dense at times. I see something that seems to need done, and I do it... like the shortcuts. Like half a dozen templates developed in the last week. Hell just take a look at the inter-Project connections I did up through 24 hrs ago. I dig in and accelerate until things work or look right... or at least good enough for now. e.g. Did you see the prototype Project tag I put on Peg's page? Reaction???
You might need to explain a little bit more - not sure I'm grasping the purpose. You want to Model a project tag on {{WikiProject Novels}} which I don't think exists, or {{NovelsWikiProject}} which does. The other aspect of this tends to suggest to me you want the Novels project tag to add all novels to the WikiProject Books. I can see that is logical, but workload wise surely Books project will have enough to handle with everything in literature "other" that Novels. I can see a specific value in the project for co-ordinating the work of all other Book related projects. Otherwise the tendency will be for Books to take over and the "monsterous" scope of such a project may sink it. May be it's me that is miss understanding so bear with me. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
What I'm proposing is a tag on the pertinent category pages with a four-fold purpose:
  1. Advertise the Project(s) — keep putting the message out there that there is a project or three
  2. Auto-tag the category to WikiProject Category, pipesorted however
  3. Link back to both the Talk and Project Page... as in 'Duhhh, I have a question on catting such and such'... which should again serve to attract talent to the projects.
  4. Lastly, having 'Spammed' the book universe of editors with our presence, it serves to remind them they may have some standards to at least look at and should probably consider.
  • All of which I opine, should cut the work in the long run, and renew the talent pool with newer enthusiastic editors (at least for a while). Yeah, it's cynical, but it's also pragmatic and forward looking... my stock in trade!
See Category:Fantasy, Category:Honorverse, and Category:1632 series, all of which I made a foray into last morning. (Yee Gads! It's light out again!) There may have been a few others, but that's the best I can recollect now. <g> The redlink will expand to the three projects boxes as I described on Pegs talk 1-2-3 (I hope). The novels template (Not series related) will just have the two. The odd other book (I count anthologies more as novels, so sequential novels, cookbooks, how to, whatever isn't fiction, just get the one.) Clear now? // FrankB 09:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Least I leave room for confusion, there is and will only be one template placed per category page... the auto-categorization and display will be performed by the one template per page. Less work that way. I'm basically lazy! <g> // FrankB 09:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
If the Older ones (Shortcuts) were listed somewhere on the busy project page, well, I'm a great believer in redundancy being an engineer. The world would stop without it, and repetition is the root of all learning. Hence, an extra redirect or an use of {{shortcut}} to highlight the presence isn't going to hurt, and may help someone else see what you think was obvious, or perhaps you don't. Be assured of one thing... if I do something, it makes sense to me and I've got some kind of reason. All you got to do is cross check my contribs here and on the commons and you'll see I'm putting in 110%. But that doesn't make me eidetic, nor necessarily grasp something the first time, nor see something conventional to those used to that aspect of wikiculture. So do be patient. I'll spin up to speed on what you all have going soon—and I'll probably stubb my toes a few more times while cranking things out. So just nudge me in the right direction. I'm not going to make a stink. Gotta get back to some edits. This late night crap is murder at my age! Best regards. // FrankB 08:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Btw - what the hell is a desk??? And how do you use it? What for, etc. Cheers! // FrankB 08:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
It's is an idea I saw on a few other people pages - I think originally related to work on cleanup tagged articles. However I thought it a neat idea. Basic is the notion on an electronic desk on which you can place vertual "post its". I.e. mini projects for someone (or self) to remember to work on. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:33, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmmmm! Makes sense. I've been mostly working out a home office this last decade and I forgot about that aspect of the cubical culture in shared work places. Not a bad idea. Thanks. // FrankB 08:37, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I give up... with this history, how are you doing anything with it, on it, or whatever???

(cur) (last) 15:02, 4 April 2006 Kevinalewis (Talk | contribs) (add this page as the first Other) (cur) (last) 14:51, 4 April 2006 Kevinalewis (Talk | contribs) m (subst) (cur) (last) 12:42, 4 April 2006 Kevinalewis (Talk | contribs) (New Desk) What's the secret? // FrankB 08:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BOOKS box

About the box for WP:BOOKS...I don't think boxes are permitted anywhere except userspace, so I don't know if you could attach them to templates without a major policy change. (See WP:UBX.) My only other comment is that there's a typo ("its" not "it's" daughter projects) and there was a missing <noinclude> tag that made the NOTE: appear where it should not. See User:Pegship/My sandbox for a couple of color samples. Cheers, ♥ Her Pegship♥ 20:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Not a user box, but a Project box. I've seen them somewhere. I'm figuring mostly on Cat pages (which is where I've seen a few)... ties the projects categories together for the editors via the project category page.
Could you be thinking of the Portal logos?

Your box's look nice, but won't go across the page top 1-2-3 as I was shootng for. We're using templates in categories already as part of interwiki project links, etc. See Category:Middle Ages (All of these in fact), and interlinks between daughters are coming too, see Category: Maps_showing_11th-century_history; note the 'uplink', and 'sister-links' using {{succession}} (or {{succession box}}, IDRE which one.

Interwiki yes; but can you show me an example of use within a wiki? I just want to see the concept in action. Thanks for being patient with me; I am on the verge of (a) leaving on vacation and (b) a nervous breakdown...♥ Her Pegship♥ 21:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Also see Category:History of the United States (Play the cool Animated map sequence!) Most Navigation templates on the Wikimedia Commons are inter-category links like these. They're also interlinking images (click on one of the images in that last example. Back to the salt mine // FrankB 20:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

re: Interwiki yes; but can you show me an example of use within a wiki?

Category:History of the United States doesn't work for that? Or are you asking specifically about a project template? (I can't really check that right now, I'm browser full with debugging an if statement. And Yeah, I've seen the Portal (in Category:Speculative fiction, iirc))
OTOH, One bit of advice I was given by several admins when 'empty equivilent categories' were speedy deleted was to get a project up for same and tag so they wouldn't vanish... happened to four, I think. (Someone had added db-empty, despite the fact they were displaying commons pics here... showed zero pages on en.wikipedia, as does any cat that contains only cats, for example.) I've 'worked around THAT (so far, and keep fingers crossed!)' by posting a note on WP:AN and prodded the only other guy I know re-catting in both sister's to do a project here... he declined on not wanting the visibility. Shrug. (But one reason when you suggested revitalizing WP:WFs that I was interested. The only other project experience I've got is Military History, and I'd just joined that!) A lot of this is evolving. Go relax on vaction, nothing on wikipedia is worth worrying about... there are far too many fingers in the pie. How long will I be without you to lean on? If I find one other example later, I'll drop a note. OK? // FrankB 21:34, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1632 and alt. history

Greetings! Sorry I couldn't respond immediately, I am currently busy helping polish the ISFDB before we re-enable submissions and I haven't had almost any time for WP since May :(

Good job on 1632, there is quite a bit of useful data in that article and it shows promise. If you want to stop by the ISFDB and take a look at Eric Flint's bibliography or the very incomplete Assiti Shards biblio and the even more incomplete Grantville Gazette biblio, you are more than welcome! We can always use another victim, er, I mean helpful editor :) Ahasuerus 15:23, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See your one...

and raise you three!
  1. I'll check out the ISFDB soon.
  2. We're reactivating the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional series (aka shortcut: WPP:series), which will impact you and yours, as it should, so be advised. Mostly I need a braintrust of others that have shared similar issues. The plethora of short fiction in 1632-verse is an awkward fact of life... Have to deal with it since it's canon.
  3. I cheat with Eric... We email when I need a specific datum. I'm actually delinquent about a month putting up the completely updated bibliography he sent me on all books, though not the between covers writers in the GG's.
  4. But then I took a small wikiBreak, and will be doing so again come month's end. In between there's RL to contend with.
  5. I'd really appreciate you nagging all and sundry to sign up for the main three books wikiprojects. WPP:Books, WPP:Novels, and most importantly (LOL), WPP:series. I'll leave you to figure out whether you should sign on to a specific sub-project like Honorverse, 1632 series, or what-not.

Right now I need to finish some stuff over on the commons. See you in a far galaxy soon. // FrankB 18:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Internal link templates

I eventually found the offending template, once I did that I added the missing nowiki tags, which seemed to clear out those afd pages. Petros471 20:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Good work! Sounds like a rough one. I figured it was something like that... but I have no idea what 'processing' you guys add to lock down and close Afd, Tfd, and Cfd matters.
I just lost about half-a-dozen (call it six hours work) interlinked and related edits, most nearly done. All because of a Thunderstorm causing a momentary power outage... I couldn't back down the chain of edits fast enough. So my day was worse. Nannny-nnannny-boo-hoo! <g> Cheers! Take 430 points for Griffindor or 215 Atta-Boyz as you prefer. I'm sure someone will appreciate it if it 'tis only I! I'd give you a Barnstar but I haven't seen that guideline anywhere as to how to do so! Best regards, // FrankB 21:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Nah, not too rough- took a bit of time, but quite fun doing a bit of detective work (I ended up taking one of the page, doing copy into a text editor, search for the cat (no link) then search for "{{" to find transclusions, and took it from there.) Sorry to hear you loosing work- never had storm problems, but my internet connection can get very dodgy at times! Oh and three awards in one evening might make me too big headed, but so you know for future reference see Wikipedia:Awards for an overview of the options (including barnstars). Petros471 22:03, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I Needed that link. I really need to browse more! // FrankB 16:31, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UT

Hey Frank. I made a small change to {{Ut}} for what I think you were trying to do. --CBD 22:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

as per email -- thanks. I figured it was something 'parsing rules oriented' like that. The devil is knowing when to use which technique! Thanks again. // FrankB 19:12, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AMA Roll Call

There is currently an AMA Roll Call going on. Please visit the page and sign your name to indicate whether or not you're still active. :-) אמר Steve Caruso (desk/poll) 18:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Murphy's law poster

Post on his talk: You added this: Image:Murphys_Law_Poster.jpg a few days back. My concern is that the graphics image is much too small and doesn't expand into readability. Are you taking steps to get a larger image? Also, you cite no source for the image, only that it's popular. I'm not sure that will stand up, though it has the virtue of being on point for the article. The question is whether it comes from a copyrighted source. If so, the link ought to be given at least crediting the originator. Best regards // FrankB 13:37, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I forgot where it came from exactly (several sites have it) but I think http://artfiles.art.com/images/PRODUCTS/large/10001000/10001840.jpg is correct. As for readability, I was under the impression that it had to be a low-resolution version to be "fair use" poster on Wikipedia. Would I need to type out the text (I have the poster as well) to make everything kosher? Thanks. Rompe 00:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The resolution Vs Copyright is 'above my pay grade' (expertise). I'll refer the query to three that may know. The attribution ought to be completed regardless. Just navigate to the image and edit to update that. Cheers to all! // FrankB 16:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about the delay, RL stuff happening all weekend... Anyway yeah fair use images should be low resolution, however they still need to be big enough for our use (otherwise why use it), if it is importnat to read the text it need to be big enough to see the text. However I doubht that image can be said to be fair use in this context at all. Most of the funny one liners have very little to do with Murphy's law, and there are plenty of exampels in the article already. It seems to be there purely for decoration, at least I have a hard time seeing how it meets the "critical commentary" criterea, it doesn't rely help anyone gain more insight into the topic. Beeing funny and vaguely related is not the best rationale for fair use IMHO. --Sherool (talk) 09:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
OK - Thanks. I suppose it fills up the article with a graphic as is, but if it's otherwise not fair use because of all the other maxims, it should be deleted or just left as is, I guess. Much appreciate it!
Btw--Do we have anything here that coresponds to a commons image gallery? I haven't seen many images here that are categorized at all as a rule. // FrankB 18:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re Bummed Out!

Hi Frank,

I just lost about six hours of stacked edits in a momentary outage...
Had a diversion to see what Flammerade was up to (M.I.A. 30 daze)...
...Just thought I'd say hi.

Thanks for keeping in touch. Wish I could do more than just commiserate re your lost work... you probably know the "if you think you don't need to save yet, it's time to save" mantra better than I can recall, spilt milk and crying though it may still be. Maybe there's a program that detects if you're editing in an application without an autosave function and then autosaves for you.

I recently concluded an educational email correspondence with a member of staff from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) which, in short, has confirmed my suspicion that sorting out some kind of regular structure for subnational divisions across the world (from states through districts to communes, etc.) is... hard. All because I wanted to sort out how to structure the various categories of locator maps on the Commons. There's a guy here on Wikipedia, Tobias Conradi, who seems well-versed in it all, so I hope with his help a breakthrough might be made. Otherwise maybe it's best simply to group all "Category:Locator maps for Xs" – where X is any of who knows how many kinds of subnational division – in the one undivided "Category:Locator maps" on the Commons (in the Commons?).

So I've been away from the Commons for a while too, though am disappointed to hear that Flammerande seems to've gone. Perhaps he was able to combat the onset of wiki-addiction, or maybe he burned-out sorting through so many maps...

Suddenly feel thirsty. Best wishes for now, David Kernow 03:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Edit on commons

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have tagged it as a minor edit, a tweak to a major template isn't minor, even if an alteration similar to that one on an article clearly would be. As for how I found the template and my rationale for that change, if you check out my Commons contributions, I'm in the process of updating a ton of tropical cyclone tracks (after WikiProject discusson on that issue). They use a commons template to fill out the image summaries, I also altered that template to make it more flexible. That template uses the commons w, which is how I found it.

As for why I altered it, I noticed in the summaries on the image pages that the links to Wikipedia had a space between the end of the sentence and the full stop. I removed that space from the template to make that formatting issue correct. I should have probably checked things out more carefully before making that change. I notice {{w2c}} has the same issue, look at the last sentence in the previous paragraph… The reason I only changed that one template was that was the only one whose existence I was aware of at that time. Hope that explains what I did.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

See post (talk) : You may be amused I had to make similar corrections ... ' // FrankB 20:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Glad that helped (a little). I suppose now you are going to have a thing against whitespace in templates. No problem!--Nilfanion (talk) 00:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstars, categories - input needed

Since its at least partially connected to picture categories and commons, I though you may be interested in Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/major overhaul.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:13, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I just asked someone yesterday how that worked. So now I get to look at even more gab, oh how truly good! But thanks none-the-less. // FrankB 05:38, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1632 series

Hello, just to let you know I have deleted all prefaces and other copyrighted stuff you had posted in yellow boxes, and here are the reasons:

  • They were copyrighted. Even if you got permission to post it on WP, it does not work. It needs to be licensed under GFDL or other "free" license. That means Flint and publisher should agree that every other person could use the material freely. Obviously it's not a case.
  • They are not enecyclopedic. WP does not post directly quotes or excerpts of primary sources. Such things should go un WikiSource, but, again, they are copyrighted and do not belong there.

I hope you see my point, and great work overall! Renata 01:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cohesive Merge Talk gone awry

Hi! You seem to have applied the {{mergedisputed}} (Nom'd for Tfd currently, btw) tag on First Civil War and Wars of Religion, but each leads to a different talk.

  1. It's not clear which was mergefrom and mergeto either. In any event, these things need to have some initializing prose explaining the purpose of the merge, or in this case the merge dispute, even if it's just administrative 'auto-categorization' on your part and not your pov/editorial judgement.
  2. I usually just initialize a section '==Merge Proposal==' and recap what into which, so others have a clue months later. That because I spent the last half hour parsing the history file finding the original very old edit that added them in the first place. One was over 15 months old! Yikes and Grrrrrr!
  3. Some of these things linger for well over a year, and we badly need a time limit put inside the templates. Since you're a CS type (I've been out of coding for a long while), CBDunkerson and I kicked that around about a month back, and he says it can be done with the math templates. Perhaps you could do all of us a favor and see if you can get something that works up and debugged.
  4. If so, I'll support a change in policy that applies a 'sunset limit' on these ugly in-your-face things. 90 days should be more than enough time to talk about such.

What do you think? // FrankB 06:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

These were on the "oldest longest eldest merges" list which I did about 50 to 100. I remember this article, read the discussions. An indication of consensus was not shown in either direction, and the discussion clearly showed both recent continuing comments as well as no consensus:

I started at the top of the list (oldest merges) and just clicked my way along. Per that specific article, I haven't the knowledge to be anything but unbiased. :) (ignorance has its merits). For any of the merges that I performed, I looked at both discussions as one, and if any particular user was speaking in both then I considered that as one opinion in the collective conversation. I am pretty sure that leaving the various templates does attract the attention of various groups. Which groups those are, I haven't the foggiest, but I am sure that people that have been here a lot longer that pay attention to such things are tickled into response, perhaps even such as your own.

Per doing any template work, I haven't delved into that much, but it doesn't look to me like it's a very difficult "language" of any sort. I'd be glad to help but am sure there are plenty of people that are more expert on templates; i.e. it looks to me as a new comer to be a rather "neato kewl" thing that various folk consider an artform. :) I've even seen comments from one group of X template-people saying to Y template-people that a more elegant way to do something would be {{example}}.

Please don't misconstrue the above to mean I wouldn't be interested in templates. It's just that you are probably looking for someone with experience in that area. I'd be happy to gain the experience, but to be fair, you should have that info at your disposal for consideration. Thanks. I'll put this section on my watchlist for a reply. (I have picked up a case of stalktrolleritis) Ste4k 06:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I consider it proper editorial descretion when checking those danged things to take them out when nothing has happened for months, so you might say I was working your list from the other direction--the causal stimuli. I do carefully annote each of the talks that such and such to so and so was deleted at this time due to apathy. As far as I know, none of the dozen or so I happened upon has been re-proposed. If so, the talks have a start. It is far more common to find NO ANNOTATION WHATEVER on the talks months after placement. That's part of what gripes me. At least the installing editor should initialize a talk section and annote his/her reasoning. Not common, but should be policy!
I've just gotten to first base myself on templates... so I was trying to pawn off my work on your obvious talent at coding (I'd seen your coded algorithmn on Pascal.Tesson and tried to find the archive where he might have replied to you about it.)
Have to say your unorthadox archiving was a pain to try to navigate... especially with the history record giving no info until very recently. Just a neutral observation. I even use succession boxes to connect mine so it's easy for folks to find a needed reference. These (talks) are after all 'corporate records'.
Thanks for the quick reply... I wouldn't have seen the article save I was trying to see how the template was used since it's on the chopping block on the Tfd (17ths list). Perhaps you need to chime in. You can follow my contribs link... I'm going to bed and it should be recent. Best regards // FrankB 07:13, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
OH THAT ONE! ROFL... I thought you meant this one! About the records, I plan to make them of easier avail after the current problems have been resolved. I really don't see anything forthcoming about that, however, at this time. Ste4k 08:38, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
By the way, before I chime in, and just confirming... does that template put the articles attached into a category that is seen on a regular maintenance basis? Ste4k 09:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] please see

please see: Talk:Sculpture_of_Ancient_Greece#Redirect_to_Greek_Statue. Thanks. Ste4k 12:30, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Late Me thimks

  • Sorry your note to check 1 was at a 'WikiPlull'... RL still calls. Looks like you got the help you needed. Your note wasn't too specific, but the process seems to have worked.
    • If you are being stalked, then WP:AN/I would be a option. I'm going to be mostly missing the next week, but checking in now and again. Until mid-August really, as have vaction starting the 2nd just after. I'm not sure what if anything I'm actually going to move forward until I get back circa Aug 15th. If I put up proposals, I won't be here to discuss same. Shrug. Things are rarely 'urgent', unless someone is deleting something! ttfn, Keep up the good work! // FrankB 15:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just surfacing

Yes, I'm on vacation, loving the company & hating the weather...and hopping online ever so briefly to check up on things. I'll be back home Friday for extended conversation. I shoulda known I couldn't sneak past you! Where did the cruise go? Chat w you soon...♥ Her Pegship♥ 00:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Peg, see above 2nd para! Enjoy hating the vacation weather -- try that unusual and rate activity for parents -- sex early and often! <g> ttfn /// FrankB 15:18, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

TMI, TMI! ♥ Her Pegship♥ 19:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opinions and such

Hi there! My apologies - I have been away for a while, and I haven't had the time to respond to your questions. If there's anything I can help you with at the moment, feel free to come by! --HappyCamper 02:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

As you can see from the above, summer needs are demanding my time in real life now too! Thanks. I expect to 'move' on WikiProject only after vacation... anything else is unmanagable before then due to incompatibilities with RL.

[edit] {{1632-stub}} up for deletion

The 1632-stub category you created has come up on WP:SFD, and looks very likely to be deleted. The recommended size for splitting off a stub category is 60 articles, yours has only 5. And since the parent category only has 33 articles, your category seems unlikely to reach that number. I thought I'd give you a heads-up, in case you didn't see it on your watchlist. But if you're really taking a wikibreak, it'll probably be deleted before you have a chance to join the debate. --Groggy Dice 23:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sailing Wiki

Hi Fabartus,

My name is johnsee and I'm trying to track down people keen on both sailing and wiki's to help with a new collborative sailing wiki. It's CC licensed, and a community project (mostly of sailing bloggers) and completely non profit. If I could interest you in helping out the wiki is here. If not, I apologise for stealing a few lines of room on your talk page :)

Answer on Johnsee // FrankB 14:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hi

Hi Frank,
Just to wish you well in your (surely well-deserved and hopefully sanity-restoring) vacation and let you know that I may've now completed more than half of my research into country subdivisions. A few lists and tables have been and are being produced along the way. I think I can see a way of categorizing the Commons' locator maps and the like without having too few or too many categories and without trying some "original research". Now forget everything you've just read and enjoy. Best wishes, David Kernow 04:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Yah, ha! Me be running around trying to figure out what to do with a cult on the commons that seems to like reinventing the wheel... w/o bothering to tie into our categories with their templates, or even use whatever everyone else is doing ({{commonscat}})... see my contribs and places they added {{Sisterlinkswp}} (Which has got to be as bad as any 'WikiPxxx' name I came up with! In any event, Dusentrieb much too belatedly finally gave me a reference which led me there very indirectly. I ported all their silly segmented banner sister templates first (See CAT:CAT) first, to give it a fair test. Then realized that was a waste too. SO Don't know what to do. Just fix up the names and use on maps perhaps. At least mine gives some cats with administrative potential; not to mention cross links to main articles.
Problem I've got with their scheme is that the best database set of translation names are here on en.wp, not on the commons... which means if something is to be made to work to really link all the sister's semi-automatically, it'll have to use the db here! They're organizing it around the commons Template talk:Sisterlinks... and haven't bothered to make it a formal project at all, at all!
This one really sticks in my craw... I could have been doing tons of other things, and Brianna's been a real pain on a few category matters! See you around mid-month... I'm running out of days to finish my 'Honey-Do' lists before the trip. Anyway, g'night! // FrankB 07:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject Newsletter - Issue V - July 2006

The July 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot.

[edit] Arbitration Request Filed

I have asked for abrbitration involving User:Nscheffey. See here. Please post any comments you desire to add. Ste4k 08:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history Coordinator Elections!

The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is starting. We are looking to elect seven coordinators to serve for the next six months; if you are interested in running, please sign up here by August 11!

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot - 18:34, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About TfD

With regard to your comment I despise bullies and backstabbers and arm chair sea-lawyers that beat up on something and someone without even trying to improve it, I would like to ask you to remember to assume good faith and make no personal attacks.

I calls it like I sees it. I don't consider stating a frankly formed opinion a personal attack. Particularly, when I went out of my way to make it known to you directly on your talk.

Then to the templates. This has not been an editing dispute. The original article that both were used in was deleted at July 19 (see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Public transport connecting to The Hague), to be recreated (identically, but with a template substituted instead of included) and speedy deleted on July 20.

Nominated by yourself, and then seconded by a whopping two whole others. That's the sort of multi-level attack which got my dander up. What about the appeals period? Do you really think such parliamentary crap speaks well of you? At least allow for things to settle.

So at the time I posted the two TfDs (July 19), they were not used. My main objection to Template:mapeuc and hence the other template which consists for 50% of several mapeuc inclusions is that is disturbs the layout of articles in which they are used.

I won't dignify the percentages, because he didn't bother to categorize them or others would have applied them, improved them, etc. but I will note that Patrick seems to have lacked a bit of presentation common sense in the matter, and in using categories overall. Also, I'm more than a little tired of making tools, then having no time to apply such, have someone come along and nominate same for deletion because I haven't had time to get back to wikipedia myself, or was hung up on other business over on the commons, etc. So 'unused' is not an argument I can swallow easily in any case... it still spits on a good faith effort by someone, that may catch on or receive wide usage down the road. In the case of these three, I'm willing to predict at least one will become fairly popular, at least as a fad given a seed of say twenty articles minimum for a start.
Jumping to the below: "Your Nom" covered above... I just now catted both those variants, and that's the seventh or eighth I did such today for him, including the three I nominated for Tfd. Why (for Pete's sake) didn't you mention 'Template:mapeuc vs. Template:mapeu' in your nomination? (I'm also redoing all these notes, since the browser decided not to save the prior unpreviewed edit buffer! God, what I would do for a WYSIWIG editor for wikipedia. This is so seventies in so many ways!

For an example (that I also mentioned in the TfD), see this [7] old version of Railway_stations_in_the_Netherlands, under the letter D. Your first alternative solves this problems largely, but such a template already exists: Template:Mapeu. The second alternative you suggest makes the disturbation of articles only worse because it is broader and higher than the original, interfering even more with the body of the text of articles. With regard to your suggestion of a subpage, such a thing no longer exists (WP:SP).

That link is also a smoking gun showing your action in removing the suddenly unused template, which, iirc, is something Patrick also noted on the Tfd, but which I saw independently. You have to own that your


       A) nominating the article for Afd,
       B) removing the template,
       C) followed by nominating it for being unused
       D) all looks suspicious when taken together.

       Perhaps you need to hurry less quickly to 'clean things up'? There was no urgency I can see. Put subsequent actions on a to-do list for action a few weeks off, would make you look a whole lot better! So, I'm sorry if I mis-read such a concatenation of circumstances, but they do look suspicious from my shoes! Besides, and Afd nomination is kind of the ultimate slap in the face, wouldn't you agree? How can that not be an editorial dispute?

[edit] Box trys

My second was a two minute one-pass trial... and my comments I thought made it plain that such should be developed into a 2X narrow template of two or three rows (working google maps and google.earth into it, if possible) and be presented as a table with borders and 'window pane dividers', as it were. Envision as a drawing of three rows of two children's blocks stacked side by side three high rendered in two dimensions, the 'source' occupying a centered place of honor as a heading of sorts.
Some data1 Some data2
Some data3 Some data4

or something along the lines of the below, with inside div style= statements defining a border so you see the block image I tried to describe. If that's not clear, ask, and I'll dig up an example. (and no, I don't know why the second example is compressed... no time now! <g>)

Some data1 Some data2
Some data3 Some data4

Where the second data set in each column is in the box, and each limited to their half having a vertical dividing line too. (I'm rushed at the moment, so must close.)

On subpages, the truth is History_of_India/Vedic_Civ_test (Just created) still works fine. While the practice was discouraged, 'real breakage' (Unintended consequences) and real editorial need kept the feature, so the guideline is in need of revision of said error... They are by no means disabled as it bluntly states. I'll have to db-author that demo in a bit, but I'm necessarily going to use a number of them in one project, where main articles are not warranted, yet need exists in a dozen other pages for the same detail, should the reader want to follow the link.

I hope to have clarified my reasons for TfD in these cases and please understand that I have no personal grudge against you or Patrick (who is far from an inexperienced editor btw). Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 20:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, but mind such combinations of actions can seem to be an assault. I can see from the complexity of some of his templates, he's not a total tyro, but the lack of categorization is at best improper, and the lack of follow through on placing such on more pages really suggests a great distractibility... Perhaps, he's AD/HD like myself? Please forgive the harsh thoughts, but the track record, esp. with you as the nominee brought up an unpleasant memory of being on the receiving end of such an attack... whether is it was meant as one or not, the aroma stinks, N'est pas? I don't know anything about either of you, but once in a while, I get on my 'suit of shining armor' based on what I've seen, and tilt at a windmill or three. Apparently, I was in error in this case, as Patrick is using template space as he should user/subpages. Best regards, // FrankB 22:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Cross posted to User Talk:Reinoutr on creation. // FrankB 22:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Counterpoints

Although I really do appreciate your explanation and apologies, there are some things that I would like to state:
1. I still find it very hard to see how your were frank and not attacking me, given that you called me a bully, a backstabber, an arm chair sea-lawyer, accusing me of beating up something, saying your are digusted by my edits [8], calling me a bigshot, accusing me of having lack of judgement and being without a conscience [9] all within two edits. I would like to give you some advice (which you will recognize as a slightly adjusted adive you gave to me): Put emotional edits on a to-do list for action a few hours off, would make you look a whole lot better!.
  • OK, agreed, it was an attack made in good faith... Windmills, et. al. <g>, I should have revised my answer top half instead of playing with infoboxes when rushed by RL. 'Our' mutual advice is on point as well... but I hate visiting the Afd/Tfd/Cfd pages on any day, and when the next task (A note to Patrick) led me immediately back, to see the second Tfd nomination, I blew my cool—part of that was the subtle name difference, and confusion over the article names... and more of my time when already pressed. I can only beg forgiveness for what was an emotional outburst with less merit than I original perceived. But such was my perception, and the following tougher verbiage followed as a result. (Is it a surprise that there is at least one 'Frank' who speaks 'Frankly'? <g>) I've been (nagging? trying?) teaching my teens for years that 'perceptions are another's reality', which is not an easy lesson to learn for most, I suspect—it really didn't gel for me until my mid-thirties, but it's very pithy if you can grasp it at all.
       I will own I've had more diplomatic and more professional moments, but I'd already invested a big time block on the prior post to the tfd. And that added onto the time I spent cleaning up and untangling the undocumented nature and use of six of Patrick's other inventions, and recommending anything, much less half of those, for deletion is an emotional struggle for me.
       As I note below, I'm neither philosophically disposed to deleting things that may be evolved (my normal action would be to request the user to put up an improvement, or delete same themselves. Note my suggestion to Patrick that he 'tidy up' by applying {db-author} to the three I'd just tagged, and the deliberately goading section title ('Picking up your dirty laundry') I made to him. I'm not just 'frank' with alleged bullies <g>.
       Moreover, if I had my way, no deletion could ever be nominated until there was a dialog requesting an improvement, and an answer back or demonstration that a time period hadn't produced a defense or discussion on the items talk page... all starting with a notice to the user's talk plus an email parallel notice that such was discussed. Such is very basic mutual respect and courtesy to my worldview. No one should ever find out days later that something has been tagged for deletion without a notice at a minimum.
Secondly, on my initial sally's word choices:
   using such emotive descriptors 'bigshot', 'academic', 'sea-lawyer' will hopefully cause you to consider such concatenative agglomerations of actions in the future, so having decided to tilt with you at all, in for a penny, in for a dollar applies.
   Such 'hitting' is the only really effective 'attention getter' I know of in cyberworld where two-by-fours don't manifest physically to get that danged mules attention.
   Manipulative? Yep. Such 'Butt-kicking' or 'Ass-chewing' isn't common in academia, I know, but not all that uncommon in the business world internal to machinations and needs inside the big corporations, organizations, etc.—Hollywood doesn't really make such things up, nor do novelists and screenwriters—that's the common reality in most large organizations when one is enslaved by the corporate payroll.
   This is the wikipedia analog to the corporate conference room. Need I really say more?


  • re: (below) "You assumed bad faith on my side"
       OK, agreed, again... but sufficiently explained I think. Taken as a group, your actions together looked bad. So I plead indignity fired impulsive act of selfless defense of another, evaluated it as a situation where a bully was seen operating and confronted the bastard. That he is not, can't change the past evaluation made at on the facts perceived in the moment. If you know how to do such time-fix-ups, please share the secret—with my big mouth, and two large feet-in-mouth— I can use the technique badly!<g>
  • Give me credit for at least being direct with you with no axe to grind of my own. I don't give a darn about any article, or single editorial action... but there was that smoking gun combination, and alas, people, certainly not I, don't have time to parse fine things such as the timeline built immediately below. I was admittedly, butting in, but circumstantially, 'it seemed like a good idea at the time'. Some people, after all, need defenders. It's not my general habit, save for isolated bouts of 'momentary insanity'. Mostly, it's worked okay for me in fifty years experience. Several of my better wikicontact/friends were initially recipients of similar sallies and attempts to make amends. If nothing else, such incidents do give us the chance to talk at length and find common ground. I would like that time machine though, even finding out you are a nice guy won't heal the two shrubs I left without new holes in the hot sun whilst pursuing wikimatters yesterday.<g>
2. You assumed bad faith on my side, based on a wrong timeline of the events that happened:
  1. 11 July, 15:28: I clean up the article Railway stations in the Netherlands to remove the transcluded template Template:Railway stations in The Hague, because it disrupted the article. [10]
  2. 13 July, 11:00: By editing the article above, I found the template was also used in Public transport connecting to The Hague, which was a badly formatted article that contained no additional, encyclopedic, which was the reason I put it up for AfD [11].
  3. 19 July, 09:45: The article gets deleted (not many votes, I agree to that).
  4. 19 July, 10:31: I put up Template:Railway stations in The Hague for deletion because it is (now) unused and contains information that should be in the main space. [12]
  5. 19 July, 10:37: I put up Template:Mapeuc for deletion because is (now) unused and disturbs formatting of an article when it is used. [13]
  6. 20 July  : Public transport connecting to The Hague is recreated (identically, but with a substituted template, which was only a minor issue in the AfD [14] and is speedy deleted, according to policy (please note that I was not the one who choose for speedy deletion [15]). If the newly created article had been different and more encyclopedic I would not have put it up for deletion again.
3. With regard to your suggestions for the template, I still feel that templates such as these add little information and greatly can disturb an article. Why do we need 10 links for 4 map-sites each? Why not choose one or two sites and give links to 2 or 3 different zoom levels? That would keep the template much smaller and much less disturbing. Everyone on Wikipedia has different things they feel are important here, which is good because everybody than adds different things. I feel it is important that articles are formatted neatly, because it makes Wikipedia look more professional.
Can't really fault your tastes! OTOH, there is something 'neat' to click and be there, but I agree that this one is way overdone... or rather 'rough and unpolished whilst being over populated and unclear' —a matter for editorial compromise in the template talk, should it be used more widely. I don't ascribe with the deletionist point of view that if it's unused today, kill it.
   It's disrespectful of another's time and good faith efforts. These to me, clearly show potential for a lot of improvement. I suggest referring the matter to the template talk page, and see who might improve it in wondrous ways. Or let those experts decide such have no merit. Having at times sworn at the local mass transit systems penchant for stylized graphically pleasing map forms over a clear surface map of more familiar form and utility, I do submit that having a handy map reference to such a transit system has it's meritorious uses and would be a 'nice resource' adding to wikipedia's overall utility and ascendancy. But do agree that it needs to be understandable, neat in presentation, and well behaved. I independently suggested to Patrick he look at {{MBTA}} which has a more suitable form. (Yeah, I'm trying to stay out of direct involvement—right in one! <g> My wikipTo-Do list is way too long with two weeks vacation scheduled and I'm about to disappear!)
4. Subpages really do not exist any longer in the main space (they do exist in all other spaces) (see WP:SP), you can use the character / in article names, but this does not create a subpage, it simply creates an article with the character / in its name. An article like History of India/Vedic Civ test should be in User Space. A direct quote from WP:SP: Do not write drafts of major article revisions, e.g Example Article/Temp in the main namespace.. Before starting to make a lot of subpages, I would strongly recommend you take a look at WP:SP.
  • Browsing some on Meta last night, I gather that was originally a technical issue dealing with the fact that most operating systems use a slash to separate directories. I do believe you're correct, speaking 'technically', but confess I don't know the full ins-and-outs of the whole matter. I've seen such here and there, and like all wikiguidelines, there are exceptional cases when one might apply an editorial judgment contrary to general practice. The case I have in mind has an illustration of just that—see the External links section of 1632 series. That table is 'not standard', but inside the article set, should be templatized eventually, as it is on most of the related pages.
I hope this clears things up a little, happy editing! Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subpage use

  • My current concept of use for subpages, or at least pages prefixed by '1632 series/' is the widely diverse character set, grouped initially, by the introductory storyline, which is to say by short fiction title. A 'List of 1632 series characters' will probably develop as well, with links back to those slashed pages. Unusual in fiction, the short fiction in the multiverse currently outweighs the longer fiction by a huge margin since it's an internet collaborative fiction in the main for such shorter fiction, i.e. the non-sub-series canononical The Grantville Gazettes.
       While admittedly a fan (mostly of the history revealed) in the series premise, frankly, I'd rather be focused on the ships, military history or interwiki category connection wikiprojects or my normal haunts in history and science/technology... but it's a dirty job that needed done, and the best I can do is work it in turn occassionally and hope some folks will step up and take over.
       I stubbed in a sub-section title 'Subpage use' if you have any suggestions on the matter. I'm open to such always, particularly when my sense of duty drags me into things I'd rather avoid, save for such moral imperatives conflicts! <g>

But enough chit-chat. Humble apologies for being, well 'me', in a moment of misunderstanding. Frankly, I missed the distinction between the two articles mistaking the names difference for the title switch mentioned in the give and take. The matter of deletion philosophy is one we can respectfully agree is manageable, I hope! <g> I 'db-authored' the India page example already. Gotta tend other fires. Best regards and wishes, // FrankB 14:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your (again elaborate) answer on my concerns. As is often the case, it looks like we agree more on matters than initially appeared to be the case. With regard to subpages, the more common way to deal with this currently is in a format like this: Mike Stearns (1632 series characters). In the article, I think it would be best to have a boxed template that gives information about the character (from which storyline, which Gazette etc.. the person came from). But maybe it would be best to start with separate articles on the short stories themselves, for example: Steps in the Dance (1632 series) and have those articles later link to the character pages, all with templates explaining the relation between the topics. If you insist on using subpage like article titles, you are free to do so (WP:SP is only a guideline), but I am afraid that it will attrack the attention people more involved in Wikipedia politics as you called it. Although I know nothing about the series, I'd be glad to give any advice or comments when you start making the articles. Happy editing! Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks again—that's good advice I think. I shall copy it to the series talk as a starting point. There has been a few making small efforts besides my own build of the complex of main articles. I've been trying to revive WPP:series as one result. Writing about Fiction is not my wikiambition! But it all helps. That danged sense of duty again!<g> (I do hope you're less piratical than your namesake!)<G> // FrankB 15:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Withdrawn one nomination

Just to let you now that I have withdrawn the nomination of Template:Mapeuc. I still feel it should be used with a lot of care though, because it can severly limit the readability of an article in which it is used. The other template can never server useful purposes in main space (how often does the number of trainstations in The Hague change that we need a template for information like this?) and as a subst template it has a better place in user space. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 14:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Good action, I think. Sorry for the various over-reactions, but I hate wikipolitics, and occasionally get set off! Best regards, // FrankB 14:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template talk:Groundbreaking submarines

Greetings. You've added a few subs to the template which I feel are unrelated, so I'd appreciate if you come and discuss which subs should be there. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 20:36, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for coming. Just a small procedural question: don't you mind if I split the discussion and reply right inside your post, just to avoid quoting? CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 23:23, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
LOL! As much as I interleave? Nah. Go fer broke. I trust your good faith. // FrankB 23:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
So, I've refactored it a bit and replies. Just in case, don't take it as an attack, I just find the template more useful when it's small. CP/M (Wikipedia Neutrality Project) 01:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{cite book}}

I tried to clarify the instructions - let me know what you think --Trödel 18:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I added some examples - I'll think I'll delete the quick instructions and put them in my user area or somewhere else - as I created them as a quick reference for myself and other editors - but I think they confuse editors who haven't used the citation templates before :)

Ok, but change that to 'inexperienced with it', I'm hardly new anymore. I just haven't cited books in years until recently! :-{
Best and Thanks! // FrankB 19:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template usage

I should also mention that putting the instructions on the template page <noinclude>inside these tags</noinclude> has lost consensus as of late - and I don't care enough to oppose it. --Trödel 19:21, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Xpost to Trödel
  • CBDunkerson (my template guru cum problem go-to guy) has told me via email it's devolved to no clear consensus and so is up to the individual template creator, as much as anything. Some people must have remarkably good memories to oppose such commonsense! I don't follow template talk, so don't have and idea on the politics of it all, but both fashions seem to be around. I don't have anything more than that and life's experience to go by. Such leaves the talks for talking about the template, changes, and applications, which seems much more logical. Not making someone click to yet another page to get information. Shrug. 'If I were the Emperor of the Universe I'd ...' <g> Thanks // FrankB 19:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
LOL - exactly - I should have have clarified that using them on the Wikipedia:Citation templates has lost concensus - there was some discussion of it there. --Trödel 19:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC) ps thx for the cleanup
I don't do much foriegn language stuff - but I speak French fluently (la Acadian Québécois parlent au Nouveau Brunswick, la). Point me in the right direction and I'll see what I can do tomorrow --Trödel 20:11, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reporting in, belatedly and in brief...

...because you've been so kind as to accompany my early steps here, and I've been remiss in touching base -- and now we're unexpectedly in our third week under fire from over the Lebanese border. (See my updated "Away" tag on my User page.) I can hardly express how much I want to resume my Wikipedia activities, but Internet access is terribly limited, mainly reduced to keeping up with correspondence, and household priorities and logistics are uppermost until further notice. Meanwhile, hope all's well with you in the Free World! -- Best regards, Deborahjay 15:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


LOL - and thanks, I think!
Gee! When did I get promoted to squad leader! <g>. (Thought I'd left the Military behind when I retired in '04 after doing 30.)
So 'Hi Back!' Keep safe! // FrankB 18:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unclear CR status

Org message from Sherool

Hi: re: Image:CountBasie.jpg following the link it's attributed as: Edward Dixon ©Stars and Stripes, but I'm not sure whether that qualifies it as PD-US-GOV as tagged, or whether it's a Copy-vio. Experience lacking alas! From Category:United States military images... do you know the commons equivilent 'PDwhatever' cat equivilent? If so, change the {commonscatNo} to {Commoscat1R|Their category name}. Thanks! // FrankB 22:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Reply posted on User talk:Fabartus. --Sherool (talk) 22:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I listed Image:CountBasie.jpg on WP:PUI, acording to Stars and Stripes reprint notice theyr content is copyrighted, so the PD-military tag seems dodgy.


Not quite sure what you mean with the last part, do you mean tag Category:United States Air Force images ↔ commons:Category:PD US Air Force and such? The templates you mentioned does not seem to exist though. --Sherool (talk) 22:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Answer Xpost to both
Preping clarification on the links now, answer there (I'm stealing the thread now! <g>) Think I'd found and tagged the cat with '1R' after initial tagging of 'No' version.
Yep - Sorry - I'm not good at predicing the future when leaving a message! <g> 'category:PD US Military' is linked when you look... Both ways now. (The interwiki box on the right side.)
Think that's all you needed clarified. The caps may have made you miss it, or you saw the '1R' I'd already installed shortly later. Whichever, I think we're done.
If you want to match up other image cats you visit or know with some other interwiki tagging, use {{commonscat1R}} or {{commonscat1Ra}} (with it's link to a main article) from this side, and template:WikiPcat1 from over on the commons.
   (The 'R' suffixed versions will likely get renamed, but anything tagged can have that fixed by BOT from the auto-category.)
   The 'usage and system notes' are on {{commonscat4}}, but don't worry about the even numbered one's yet... were still working out when to judge those proper to apply as 'equalized' versus 'matching' (see the auto-category names if that isn't clear. '1' means matching, not equalized, even numbers tag the latter, in brief.).
   We're working now to fixup the commons tag's name and to get things to work in other language wikipedias, so your tagging will help me help you and a lot of others.
Thanks. // FrankB 01:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1632-stub

I'm afraid that on a second look I'm still not keen. Stub types really need to have a substantial number of stubs existing before they're worthwhile, and since there are only about 32 articles in total in the 1632 series category, it's pretty clear there aren't. A more general alternative- history stub might be worth considering, though, to cover everything from Harry Turtledove's books to Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy - would that be a reasonable compromise? I'll suggest it at the SFD discussion anyway (BTW, if you enjoy the 1632 series, I hope you also know and enjoy the Flashman books!).

As to my IP, yes, it can be a pain. My email address is a slingshot.co.nz one, and the IPs related to that are by area rather than individual to one subscriber (I'm actually at the same IP as another member of the stub-sorting Wikiproject, which is a bit odd!) It can be a problem when another slingshot user turns vandal *hence the note at the top of my user talk page about blocking). Grutness...wha? 06:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Greetings Fabartus. I voted for deletion of this template since is simply way too small according to WP:WSS standards, this is all. WP:WSS sees tons of templates that are only used on 1-5 articles, so they're pretty automatically deleted. WP:WSS operates with a standard size guideline of 60+ existing stub articles for a new template (or 30+ if it is the primary template of a Wikiproject.) Regarding its name, I have to admit that when I first saw the name I immediately thought of the Thirty Years' War and the Battle of Lützen, so {{1632verse-stub}} would probably have been a better name. I have no problem in supporting Grutness' suggestion of a broader template for alternative history. That one would have no problems regarding size. Regards. Valentinian (talk) 08:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't question that we must have enough material for a broader template. The only problems Grutness and I have with the original template are its name and that we can't see it being applied to 60 existing articles. I'd be very surprised if this debate doesn't end with Grutness' proposed solution, since WP:SFD is normally more interested in the contents of the posts rather than just counting the number of yes / no votes, so proposed compromises are normally followed. As long as a new broader template is named using the standard format, I see no problems with it. Since Alai and Grutness are the experts in this field, I've left my last post open in that respect. Happy editing. Valentinian (talk) 16:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underlining

Please do not use underlining, many people use it to indicate links.--Patrick 08:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

xpost to Patrick
See also: Template talk:Mapeuc
So sorry to disappoint you, but a link will take you somewhere, and when you hover over it, the where shows up in the status bar. Why not capitulate to the blue underlined links that the rest of the world suffers with (and most all browsers use as a default) instead of asking a virtual stranger to take care of you as if you were a child?
Many more people dislike bold, and caps, claiming they are shouting, so that would give me only inferior and hard to see italics which people might miss and I otherwise need for block quoting, etcetera (i.e. they're already overworked), so I don't think I can accommodate you since it took someone half a day to convince me to stop using those.
But when (and if) you stop using template space as your private pages, and demonstrate you've learned to categorize such creations, for at least six months, and I'll think about it as a special favor. Especially if you develop some sense of how to present things with some sense of beauty so people aren't feuding over your more grandiose and overdone work outputs. Enthusiasm is a grand thing, but do try and bridle the beast, as most will not share your momentary infatuations.
I went to bat for you on principle, not because I believe you took adequate care or demonstrated good care in that task, and may even use {{mapeuc}} now that I know about it. But templates are for common and widespread needs, not whims of the moment. If you fix it up proper, you should publicize such so others can use in other articles as well.
   Do peruse this timesink on your behalf before thinking me unkind.
   In sum, I've spent way too much time picking up your dirty socks already to toss away such a useful tool. Sorry. I need all the tools I can get in my toolbox if this society so much more near universally dislikes the other forms of emphasis. Personally, it seems awfully 'sixties' to me, back in the days of manual typewriters, not modern WYSIWIG. Shrug. None of us can determine another's tastes, likes and dislikes.
   Thanks very much for {{fs}} and {{cod}} btw. They will be especially handy in tables, and now that they've been categorized, perhaps even used somewhere significant.
   In return, may I present you {{s}} and {{i}} which will aid you in prettifying such stuff as {{mapeuc}} other tables hereafter.
   Best wishes, nonetheless. I just can't accommodate this request. // FrankB 06:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving

There's nothing wrong with archiving your Talk page, so long as you leave a link on the residual page letting people know where the archive is. This user moved it to a non-intuitive place, deleted the redirect, then had his accomplice/sockpuppet overwrite it. User:Zoe|(talk) 19:07, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Seems like a better way so as to 'minimize' the main history folder. // FrankB 18:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:United States Armed Forces

Hi Fabartus (terribly sorry for the late reply, I thought I had answered this one already.) Unfortunately, I'm not much of a help here, since this looks like a merge job, and this requires the tools of an admin. I have posted a note on WP:AN so hopefully someone will take a look at this one. Regards. Valentinian (talk) 21:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject coordinator election - vote phase!

The Military history WikiProject coordinator election has begun. We will select seven coordinators to serve for the next six months from a pool of eleven candidates. Please vote here by August 26!

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot - 11:36, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] in re: User:Ste4k/VER

Thanks for your note regarding this, but I think it's possible you meant it for User:Graham87, not me? I don't recall being involved in any such discussion. --Grahamtalk/mail/E 05:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrong number!
Thanks, didn't know about two of you with near identical signatures! // FrankB 14:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Halp!

I'm in need of expert advice, and because of this I decided to pick on you! (Must be your lucky day! <g>)
   re:

  1. {{unicode}}, incorporated into {{space}} whilst I was on vacation.
  2. So while cleaning up some commons category disconnects I used {{s}} which is 'space' defaulted to 3 (or 5?) characters... but got a squarebox (undef'd char, presumably) on MSIE-6 while using the commons version.
  3. Since one re-cat needed on the commons was for both 's' and 'space', I followed the {WikiPtmp} link to en.wikipedia's 'space' to see if there was a diff, found there is ... tons of unicodes added by Patrick as noted above,
  4. so decided to port the MSIE fixup templates, beginning with {unicode} to the commons...
  5. whereupon I find you tagged one {{Unicode fonts}} as deprecated... which seems to do nothing anyway,

So what the hell do I really need! (This cross-porting is usually simple, add a {{Commonstmp}} here, a {WikiPtmp} there, fix up any text, maybe do the same for a couple of other templates... and done.

The crux is I'm an old programmer with firm belief in self-documentation, and so Commons:template:unicode wants this do nothing template {{unicode fonts}}. So why isn't it showing it's 'talk contents' on our pages if it does anything at all, at all? Or was it's whole purpose to list the font sets in the order accessed? (This isn't editing, it's techy stuff I edit to get away from! <g>)

  1. In sum, did I just port something that won't work in the commons, if I equalize 'space' to Patricks version and if not, why not?
  2. What the hell is MediaWiki:Common.css anyway? (I hate scripts!!!)
  3. How does your deprecating something which seems to have done nothing get around the notice: 'Any changes to Monobook.css or Common.css should be first proposed to Wikipedia:Village Pump' embedded in said script of MediaWiki:Common.css.
  4. What happened to not confusing the editors per the talk in template talk:unicode?

So HALP! Which category:MSIE font fix templates have a half-life over two or more months!
    (seems reasonably necessary! <g>) regards // FrankB 00:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, first let me explain MediaWiki:Common.css. Each of the several MediaWiki skins has some Cascading Style Sheets, which control their appearance. In the case of styles to be applied within the content area (for instance, the infobox one), this caused duplication (since the styles would have to be added to each of the skin's editable stylesheets separately), and in several cases the required styles would be added only to the most popular of the skins (on MediaWiki:Monobook.css). To end this duplication, I created MediaWiki:Common.css, made all the skins include it (using CSS's @import), and moved all the duplicated styles (and some styles which should have been duplicated but weren't) to it. This was so successful that the developers added support to it directly to the software, removing the need to do the @import by hand.

Now, {{unicode}} and {{unicode fonts}}. MSIE is the only "modern" browser (in fact, it's the least modern of them) which cannot use characters from a font other than the current one. All other modern browsers search other fonts for a character if it isn't found in the current one. This is not a problem for common characters, which can be found in almost all fonts; when a unusual character is needed, however, you must force MSIE (and only MSIE) to use a font which is known to have the required character. To do so, a CSS hack needs to be used (in this particular case, font-family /**/:inherit, which all browsers but MSIE interpret as a override to the previous declaration setting the fonts). For easier editing, the list of fonts (used to set the font-family just before the hack) was moved to a separate template, {{unicode fonts}}.

Some time ago, however, a security fix was made to MediaWiki, which removes the blank comment required by the hack (which could also be used to bypass the filters and execute some JavaScript when the browser being used was MSIE, leading to a cross-site scripting vulnerability). This change caused the templates to break (it also affected the similar {{IPA}} and {{Polytonic}}). A fix was quickly made by moving the font-family rules (both the one with the fonts and the one with the hack) to MediaWiki:Common.css, which is not filtered by the sanitizer (and in fact not filtered at all; however, it's only editable by administrators, which reduces the potential security issues). Since templates aren't parsed on that message (some messages on the MediaWiki: namespace use normal wiki coding and thus allow template transclusion; some allow raw code but as a side effect do not allow template transclusion), the list of fonts was moved to it, deprecating {{unicode fonts}} and {{IPA fonts}}. Both templates still remain since they have the history of the changes to the list of fonts, together with (on the talk page) the related rationale; they can also be used by hand in these rare situations where you want to force the fonts even on non-MSIE browsers.

The requirement of announcing changes to these important interface files to the Village Pump is much more recent, and is aimed at reducing live experimenting and ill-thought interface changes, after a period of controversial changes (including things like reducing the size of the list of references to 90%, for instance) had to be reverted after complaints.

The only thing needed to make {{unicode}} work on Commons is to add the required classes to commons:MediaWiki:Common.css; however, this has already been done (looks like someone copied the whole page from here), so it should already work. There's no need to copy {{unicode fonts}}, since its main purpose is historical. I believe that just copying {{space}} from here to there should work (and if it doesn't work, it won't be the fault of {{unicode}}).

The main cause of the confusion is not the lack of documentation, but the amount of incomplete and obsolete documentation; some of what's discussed does not apply anymore, and changes are only documented in a obscure comment in a related talk page, or in the huge history of the technical part of the Village Pump, or even outside the wiki (on both the mailing list and the IRC channels). Sadly, I don't see that documentation problem changing anytime soon.

Hope this helps. --cesarb 02:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: sig

Ah sorry for the confusion. I've copied the formatting off your signature (they say immitation is the highest form of flattery?) I don't want a fancy signature at all - just one that is functional and allows people to get to my user and user talk pages. I hope it looks OK - it reads sensibly with JAWS, with the 87 linking to my talk page. As for your original comment, thanks for placing the explanation on the user page as well; I was a little afraid of doing that because it's a major change to a page in userspace, but since she was indefinitely blocked I probably should've applied WP:BOLD! Thanks, Graham87 09:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'and correct' is incorrect!

perhaps you'd prefer 'a correct' to 'an correct', but such trifles pale in comparison to what 'and correct' does to the meaning in that sentence. Please fix! (I don't revert)

Oops. It does indeed mangle the meaning of the sentence. I've fixed it now. My apologies!

Haven't ever seen 'et-cetera' in 45 years of avid reading either. Hmmmm, apparently we're both correct, but that's an odd form of it and hence you shouldn't be changing something you also know to be an alternative and correct formulation to some other you prefer. If someone writes behaviour (behavior), or other words commonly spelt (spelled) differently it's impolite to force your prejudices upon the other parts of the English speaking world. There is and never has been a standardized (standardised) spelling—outside of elementary school, where alas, many teachers mistakenly believe there is such—'tis but a myth in the minds of the uninformed!

Absolutely. I agree that there are many many English words that have multiple correct spellings, and I've no problem with that (as long as it's consistent: it annoys me to see mixed American and British spellings within an article for example). It's just that I know the etymology of the word/phrase, and it (incorrectly) led me to belive that 'et cetera', or 'et-cetera' was the correct spelling. Thanks for pointing that out to me though; I've learned something new today! Cheers, CmdrObot 13:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah, Grasshopper, but
'No day is wasted when one learns something new' —Polgara
On the Commonwealth vs North American English spellings...
   If we all go around fiddling with sections, such alternating or at least dis-synchronous spellings will inevitably creep in. Since I've read a ton of British writers of history and SF over the years, I frankly have trouble knowing whether my usage is one or the other origination unless I really think on it... which makes no sense as the message matters, not the form, so I just use whatever I put down without typo's.
Better for the stress, and the productivity.
   (My health-nut brother, a researcher in aging matters, in top physical shape, just had an emergency heart procedure despite innumerable lectures and his own exemplary example of things like commuting to work 3X a week by bicycle (over the short 38 miles of commute!). If all that exercise and healthy diet didn't help him, the rest of us should by rights be doomed! But stress...)
   The job stress is a trump card. This is a real eye-opener to me and a shock to everyone that knows him at all! Moral: reduce stress always!
Have you seen one of the so called 'Manglish' (Mangled English) humor emails that circulate from time to time where the letters are really switched around in the words, yet the paragraph's are entirely understandable? If that works (scientific fact, not just a trick joke in some carefully contrived text) in the brain to extract the comprehension, I'm sure not gonna waste my time worrying about an 's' vs. a 'z', and extra vowel, etc.
   Maybe once we get WYSIWIG editing we'll all have the same spell checkers. I rarely resort to one, so I'm sure my composition behaviours includes many commonwealth English spellings. Some days I'm lucky to get the syntax in links correct! Shrug!
('See this' msg post to CmdrObot)
Cheers! // FrankB 16:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Response and now an update

Hi Frank,
Just to let you know I had responded to and have now updated Whaaatszzzz UP? at the Commons. Best wishes, David Kernow 12:40, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

xpost Dave,
I've at least partially responded, and altered your fine Barnstar quality work as I'm sure you've noticed by now, but alas, I believe one answer or post to you is still deep in a chain of edits stack that is resisting mightily my desire to back down to save your answer... just know that it involves nine wiki's and I'll get back to it ASAP! // FrankB 17:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:State route naming conventions poll

You voted under 'Votes in support of Principle II' but your comments seem to say that you support 'Principle I'. Am I misreading your comments or did you really intend to support 'Principle I'? Principle I has the state name first. Vegaswikian 23:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Maybe I could have phrased things better... that was a long read... so was in a hurry. I've been all over the place between five sister projects doing interwiki connections, and ran into a code bug that's killed my progress.
       If I had it right, the common name starts the article title, so requires the parenthetical disambig [assuming there are collisions], and also assuming one does not use additional articles like '... of ...'.
       I'd favor that, but it's hair-splitting versus '... (Massachusetts)'. A one char difference in length.
  • All due respect to all the participants, but this kind of debate only goes on because someone won't compromise, so I'm not going to get too excited by someone being emotional and acting out over nits. Redirects handle how many ever permutations one can envision... End story, time to edit somewhere else.
  • If I have the logic wrong, let me know, ASAP, and I'll fix my vote, but II seems to comply best with NAMCON conventions overall, and putting the object early in the title makes the best sense for searching readers.

Hope that helps. Best regards // FrankB 23:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC) (xpost to Vegaswikian .

    • Well, if you are voting to support the object being first then Principal II is the correct way to vote. Your comments just confused me. I'll watch this page for a while so I'll see any of your replies here. No need to xpost. Enjoy. Vegaswikian 00:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Perhaps I should just keep my big foot out of me mouth! At least I seem to have picked the category consistant with my reasoning! <G> I guess I'll revisit to see what seems vauge and contradictory! Best! (Happy watching!) // FrankB 00:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About that Mann

Could it be World history : the story of Mankind from prehistory to the present by Hugh Thomas? The first edition was published in 1979 and titled History of the World; it was also published in 1979 under the title An unfinished history of the world, in 1982 as A History of the World, and again in 1996 under the first title I listed.

  • A History of the World, Harper & Row, 1979
  • A History of the World, HarperCollins, 1982, ISBN 0060142812
  • An Unfinished History of the World, Papermac, 3d rev. ed., 1995, ISBN 0333627997
  • World history : the story of Mankind from prehistory to the present, HarperCollins, Rev. ed., 1996, ISBN 0060174773 - See the Amazon description for a review from Library Journal (of course!) which leads me to believe this is a 1996 edition of your long-lost 1979 volume.
  • Unfinished History of the World, Gardners Books, 2003, ISBN 0333712684

Cheers! ♥ Her Pegship♥ 04:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Xpost Pegship + Flowers!
re:Could it be World history : the story of Mankind from prehistory to the present by Hugh Thomas? The first edition was published in 1979 and titled History of the World; it was also published in 1979 under the title An unfinished history of the world,...

   Me thimks I'd give you a kiss if in reach... though the twin-title's in '79 are fairly confusing.
How I got to [A. Thomas Mann] from Hugh Thomas is one for the neuroscientist's to take note of...

   Hmmm, maybe you transposed something to '79 or I just misunderstood?
   A History of the World (1979)
   Armed Truce (1986)
   Ever Closer Union (1991)
   Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994)
   World History, The Story of Mankind from Prehistory to the Present (1996)

   I loved that book, the 'the story of Mankind from prehistory to the present' subtitle is a very strong indicator you got it targeted dead on right. You just made my frustrating night (I've been stuck over in Wiktionary with misbehaving templates)!

   I don't know if you've ever read Connections or Works of Man, but this is sort of a combination history of society as impacted by the desemination of ideas (and hence technology), as well as a lot of side discussions of things like public health impacts (plauge can ruin your whole tech base!), attitudes, and of course, politcal developments.
    it totally by-passes the typical history means of connecting by events, and focuses more often at a ground-eye-view on life by the common man. Things like when the fork was adopted by the nobles, then the lower classes, the horsecollar and agriculture (enabled the renesaince!), the evidence of when chimney's finally came about (Lost tech in the fall of Rome!) and loads of other facinating tidbits. SO THANKYOU VERY MUCH, Maam!
I'll track that down post haste! Even if I have to pay through the nose. (I really can't recall who I loaned it to, which means I've had to hold a 'good mad' very in for a long while! GrrrrEAT NEWS! // FrankB 05:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Wikipedia email - An answer of sorts to your post

A reply has been posted to both User talk:Edward Z. Yang and Template talk:Indent. Please direct further queries to those pages. — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 01:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Military history WikiProject Newsletter - Issue VI - August 2006

The August 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot -- 12:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sandbox

I have moved Interwikitmp-grps see also to User:Fabartus/sandbox. I have no idea what it was but it did not seem to belong in the (Main) namespace. -- RHaworth 06:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I have moved Wikquote:template:SP to User:Fabartus/sandbox. Ditto. -- RHaworth 07:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Xpost w/Thanks on User_talk:RHaworth // FrankB 17:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Re your latest above, thanks for your suggestions here; they've been absorbed or pruned in the week since you left them, not least the TOC which I've had to remove and create a DIY in its place – see August 23/24 in the edit history for rationale. Apart from finalizing the notes at the top of the page, another issue awaiting resolution is the page's name; specifically, whether to use "divisions" or "subdivisions". If you have a moment, you may wish to add something here. Best wishes, David Kernow 14:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Also

Thanks!  The list is a natural spin-off from the table – both now use "contemporary" rather than "current" to take the edge off needing to be very up-to-date. Re your email "Magnus Manske's Push for Commons", thanks for forwarding and your glowing first paragraph; that's what means far more to me than barnstars or the like!
Re the map categories at CfD/Speedy, I'm not sure if they qualify as speedy, but I should spot them if they are moved into the main discussion area and vote accordingly. Thanks for the alert. Yours, David 01:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] regarding dynamic pulldown box

Quoted from Exodio: "Cool job that, Kudos!... wondering why is subpage and not in template space. If there are other sister projects (?Wikisource?) where is used, there are link-tagging-templates available for all sister's. Cheers! // FrankB 02:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)"

Thanks - I stole that from the general list, and is my first attempt at adapting a pulldown box. It makes sense now to me to do as a Template - if i get a chance I will alter that. I will look into the link tagging item. Cheers --Exodio 04:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Military history Newsletter - Issue VII - September 2006

The September 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by Grafikbot - 19:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Imminent deletion of Wikiquote templates

I'm posting a note here about this issue because you don't seem to be monitoring your en:Wikiquote account or any of your template creations there. Several dozen of your templates have been nominated for deletion. Their purpose is not adequately explained, a casual inspection doesn't make clear what need there is for them, and their creator's entire Wikiquote activity seems to be copying this material from other projects. That combination of unused infrastructure creation and lack of general quote activity usually begs deletion on Wikiquote. I admit I'm reluctant to spend the time I suspect is necessary to analyze these templates without any support from their creator. Could you at least supply us with some rationale for their existence, and pointers to where this cross-project effort is being discussed? Thank you for your assistance. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm totally swamped in RL so any and all wiki's, and even email are going unlooked at the moment. Do what you will. However, the benefit of cross-linking the newer sister's and bringing in common tools and some common 'tool' categories is and should be self-evident—it empowers the greater pool of editors in the large 800# sister to make meaningful contribs with minimal learning curves if familiar tools are available.

Admittedly, many tools in some of the wiki's are less important— when category and template analysis and management are small side tasks (Wikinews and Wikiquote being most applicable there), but the infrastructrure and interwiki linking is hardly adversely affecting anything. When in doubt, if something seems 'broken', import the new version from en.wikipedia. I'd planned on completing the evolution and documenting the newer simpler system the end of last month, and BAM, life intruded.

When I next have time to wrap my head about the problem(s) [it is a system after all], I'll be writing it up on Meta-Wiki, as I've also been asked to bring it up to the communications committee there for possible interlanguage adaption, I presume. Adverse reactions have been nil, save for a capitalization clash on wiktionary—their naming conventions favor the lowercase form.

Any examination of the merits of the system templates themselves should be to look at the Wikipedia versions, as I'm certain the versions off Wikipedia are (mostly) a version behind—there was a major revision/upgrade last time I worked them. System elements are identified in [[:Category: Interwiki utility templates]] by being offset/sorted under '!'.

If you'd be so kind, drop me a status report if things get torn up. I don't have the time now to do wikitalk infighting. Thanks for the heads up! (Crosspost: Jeffq + 'here' on his T-page).

Thanks // FrankB 15:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I also apologize for my delay in responding to your last message. (I have been on a partial wiki-break for the past few weeks after an exhausting session of Wikiquote maintenance.) I'm afraid we did delete the listed templates (although two with obvious merit were restored later), and we also discussed a related template, {{lps}}, which did not achieve consensus due to a lack of participation. See q:Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive/Template:WikiPtmp and 36 others and q:Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive/Template:Lps for the deletion discussions. I was rather withering in my comments in the latter because I quickly and easily discovered a {{links}} template that does a much better job of the many separate L*s templates that you have been promulgating across projects. I have little patience for folks who get excited about a technology and try to spread it around without first discovering if it's already been done, and done better.
Your stated goal of making editing easier for Wikipedia editors makes some assumptions that you don't justify. First, it assumes that all these editors will follow your lead. The ones who are already experienced usually (A) already have ways to make their work quicker without making editing cryptic for less experienced editors; (B) know to look for, and how to find, existing, well-used templates before they start creating oodles of complicated, cross-linked, inadequately tested or documented templates; and [hopefully] (C) realize that each new template requires one or more responsible editors to provide ongoing maintenance to its users, not just plaster them across projects to see if they stick. Second, it assumes that there will be some effort in the various projects to communicate and explain the use of these templates, which is manifestly not the case here. Third, it assumes that one should make work easier for Wikipedians at the expense of clarity of function for less-wiki-experienced editors from other projects, when just the opposite should be the case: that all Wikimedia projects should put the burden of complexity on those most able to handle it — the experienced editors, not the newbies. Fourth, it assumes that the sister projects will agree with your goals. While I'm sure they all would like some measure of cross-project synchronization, there is a disturbing blindness of too many experienced Wikipedians to the fact that all sister projects are much less complicated and much less populated, so adding cumbersome complexity does active harm to both the editors and the maintainers of these projects.
Your goals are laudable, but I don't believe you realize the work you are creating for others in mass-copying these creations. I also caught you in a misuse of one of these templates, so you yourself demonstrated why these templates are ill-advised. (See my "P.S. to deletion" comment in the WikiPtmp deletion discussion to see how your understanding of {{Meta}} is inaccurate). I would ask that you do quite a bit more research before proceeding with this ambitious project. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] digital book scanning technology

You made a note suggesting renaming the digital books page to the above. I'm about to merge that page, which is clearly the consensus , but I'll keep it if you have any content ready--I'm not happy leaving it empty altogether--pls answer on the e-Book talk page. DGG 08:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Xpost fm DGG

Sort of! <g> I've been wiki-absent with RL and am on a sick morning—I've even been ignoring email for up to a week! <boo-hiss!> But then again, librarians are some of my favorite people.

Don't see what you did in e-books or with the merge needs anything from me, but wanted to acknowledge your post in mutual return of your courtesy on the heads up. I'd be inclined to leave the Baen paragraph, but I'm admittedly partial—I added it in the first place when I first learned of the differences in the philosophy's of the ebook publishers. The only one that is making significant money at it is Baen, as you can read in the 'Prime Palaver' archives (no longer an active feature) of the Baen Free Library. Do try to remember that being digital, the dead-tree standards of not repeating info DON'T APPLY to our milieu... and repetition is the mother of learning. (Ask any teacher!) <g>

You might want introduce yourself to your collegue Pegship to check it over. The text of the lengthy debate on e-book vs. e-book naming, pretty much should suggest the standard for all e- stuff, or so I would opine... the point was raised during the debate and an attempt was made to pull in a lot of outside input from posts on divers literary related talk pages, so it got a good hearing from a wide body of editors. Best regards // FrankB 16:02, 13 October 2006 (UTC) (cough, cough!)

I've known her since I started, and we do discuss a lot. She, in fact, earlier suggested removing the Baen paragraph (and I excerpted and kept some of it.)
Deciding between e-whatever or ewhatever is a recurring problem, and usually outside use is evenly divided, and if relevant, the producers of the material generally use different forms. The form without the hyphen makes for easier searching, here or elsewhere; reading is a more individual thing, but personally I recognize terms faster with the hyphen, screen or print. I'd think it better to have consistent use throughout WP, but there will inevitably be a few exceptions with fixed forms.
You are right about the dead-tree standard in one sense: there is no penalty for repetition. I don't think you are right altogether: less-immediately relevant material in a long article makes it longer, and less likely to be read through. Being able to put it separately has been one key virtue of all hypertext.

Glad to get to know you DGG 20:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional list

Howdy :) I seem to recall you helping save the List of fictional universes article, or something related(?), and was wondering if you might have any comments on or interest in list of fictional books which is at AfD. ttfn :) --Quiddity 18:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Howdy back... I'm time tight and overdue in real life (I've been MIA this month), but will check into it tonight. Almost posted yer talk, til recalled how good you are at the watch list! <g>. TTFN // FrankB 18:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Have a nice cup of tea and a sit down

Good to hear from you again. I see you've been taking my name in vain...<g>. Cheers! Her Pegship 17:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Burroughs

That seems to be the case. I have reversed the two pages. >Radiant< 11:33, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding Association of Members' Advocates

Hi, you are receiving this message because you have listed yourself as an active member of WP:AMA. If you aren't currently accepting inquiries for AMA, or if you have resigned, please de-list yourself from Wikipedia:AMA Members. If you are still active, please consider tending to any new requests that may appear on Category:AMA Requests for Assistance. We're going to put AMA on wheels. :) Sorry for the template spamming - we're just trying to update our records, after we had a huge backlog earlier in the week (if you've been taking cases, then sorry, and please ignore this :)). Again, sorry, and thanks! Martinp23 20:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

OK - no problem. About the sig - I keep meaning to get round to it, but forget. Thanks for reminding me - I'll try to do it later! Martinp23 17:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Done it :) Martinp23 21:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue VIII - October 2006

The October 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 21:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On Advocacy request

My problem Panarjedde has been harassing and following my edits. He's always reverting something. As far as I'm concerned, he gaming the system and I can't assume good faith with him anymore. As far as the joke, it was their long before the advocacy request. (You know I didn't bring the Advocacy request up?) Kingjeff 18:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


All I would like to see is some good faith edits from. He currently is looking for a technicality to delete Image:Ottl ima 010805.jpg. If this was a good faith nomination, I might not have even put up an arguement. Kingjeff 18:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image tagging for Image:EuropeNationsByReligion_1097_Shepard's_europe_mediterranean_1097.jpg

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Pertinent post on abu badali
Seems to be a petty act because of comments I made on the image (in a press pack!) about the soccer player. See section above and next section too.
The source on this was very obvious. Try adding things to the project, not just wasting other's time.
*EuropeNationsByReligion_1097_Shepard's_europe_mediterranean_1097.jpg (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_shepherd_1923.html)
   --> Specifically: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/europe_mediterranean_1097.jpg
This is really picyune and petty action on your part—and 'Oh-so-transparent' inthat I tramped on your strict anal interpretation on the Fair use Images for deletion yesterday— proud of yourself? Don't be! Try figuring out why we do or care about somethings—it may help you make informed judgements and decisions instead of blindly applying a guideline. Like that soccer player image, this is fine in the USA hosted en.wp where both are in full conformance with US law.
   Thing I wonder, is whether your heart is in providing information or in being a rules mechanic. If the latter, try studying law and let the rest of us get on with the project. Sheesh! // FrankB 20:28, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion for review

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 November 9. I've put this photo up for review. Kingjeff 16:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: You need to get a life AND Personal edit summaries

The source on this was very obvious. Try adding things to the project, not just wasting other's time.

This is really picyune and petty action on your part—and 'Oh-so-transparent' inthat I tramped on your strict anal interpretation on the Fair use Images for deletion yesterday— proud of yourself? Don't be! Try figuring out why we do or care about somethings—it may help you make informed judgements and decisions instead of blindly applying a guideline. Like that soccer player image, this is fine in the USA hosted en.wp where both are in full conformance with US law.
   Thing I wonder, is whether your heart is in providing information or in being a rules mechanic. If the latter, try studying law and let the rest of us get on with the project. Sheesh! // FrankB 20:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Being ok with US Law is far for enough for an unfree image to be used on Wikipedia. It must be ok with Wikipedia's policy on unfree material: WP:FUC. I don't know exactly which image you're talking about, but "soccer player images" usually fail the very first item of this policy, that says that unfree images can only be used when a free alternative can't be created. --Abu Badali 21:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, try to avoid edit summaries like this.
Best regards, --Abu Badali 21:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
  • In reply, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Admin_Act_seems_questionable. That first paragraph is being interpreted way too broadly. If you truly believe that to be a right and proper interpretation of the implied 'reasonable amount of time' that should be in there, then the inmates are truly taking over the asylum, and wikipedia will definitely soon be seeing the last of me as an editor. I don't have time to bicker and quarrel over legal acts that benefit the project made in good faith. Any other action which diminishes that result by you is intolerable... including being a sea-lawyer or rules mechanic over trivial minor matters—perhaps in particular such acts.
        And do keep in mind that guidelines are NOT POLICY. I'm interested in a class product, and so should you be. See my comments on User_talk:Carnildo#Missing_information. Who in the hell has time for this picyune crap? And my edit summary was calculated to call it as I see it so do take a look in the mirror I provided you with that, and think about how your acts here impact other's time. Don't be a time stealer, but someone that adds value. As it is, I traded emails, including one at length with KingJeff on getting GNU or PD images to replace that one so that everyone can be 'happy', if that applies in this juvenile exercise of ill-judgement and ill-will. In the iterim, the article is now going to be missing a photo that is defacto in the public domain for all intents and purposes. Doesn't that strike you a bit wrong that you can maintain an strict rules oriented action based on a rule which never had an existance as a rule, but is one guideline among many—many of which are in conflict? If you care so little for your own time, try feeling guilty about wasting mine. I have far too little free time for this nonsense. // FrankB 21:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Thought added while xposing above on Abu badali

On the way to cross-post this, I rescanned WP:FUC... Someone has really taken things to a ridiculous level with that first sentence or two. I don't and won't ever give a fart whether any other languge's encyclopedia can freely translate ours... which is all that the mission statement (the intro as is were) boils down to in pratical terms. Let those working the other languages take care of themselves. We have enough to do worrying about getting the English version right. Removing content is not right, but self-defeating. // FrankB 21:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Humble pie

Gave Jimbo an 'earful' by email last night when I rechecked the language following the WP:AN exchanges... The template for POLICY, as this IS and I noticed FINALLY is too damn similar to the guidelines template. After three years, I don't look much in graphics boxes like this. In any event, maintain you either allow Fair Use or disallow all. KISS Principle and saves time for all. // FrankB 15:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images and stuff

Ok, fair enough I undeleted Image:N05-1635 The Cannon Law-(HC).jpg as it was just a mishap during the merge. We generaly just look for file links to see if images are in use, guess that was not sufficient this time (though there are no actual links to the image from the page where it was actualy supposed to be used), sorry bout the mishap, but we generaly want fair use images to actualy be used inline in an article. Flying too fast? Well maybe a little, though situations like this are extremely rare (either that or people just don't bother to tell me), out of the 10.000++ orphaned fair use images I must have deleted in my time I only recall 2-3 other cases where simmilar things have happened, and it's easy enough to undo.

As for attribution for Image:The Galileo Affair Cover.jpg I'd say that's good enough. It defenently won't hurt to throw an ISBN and name of publisher in there, but personaly I consider the name of the book to be "good enough" as a source for book covers. --Sherool (talk) 09:01, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, Thanks. I figured I could count on you. When did Jimbo grow a spine and actually promongulate this new Fair Use policy? (I've been much too busy in RL since August--all but missing here!)

   Nice to see him doing something firm and managerial that helps cut down the decision cycle and time demands. There may be hope yet for the project--sometimes I wonder why we do it at all -- despite the inconsistency in this allowing one kind, but not another (Pub Pics--See thread--amazingly he even returned my email in less than a month! <g>) class of fair use (and hard to get) images.

   Enough chit-chat, RL calls! Thanks again. // FrankB 15:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not rightly sure when (if you refeer to the orphanded fair use thing I believe that was back around May 2005 when "non-commercial" and "permission" images where banned, shortly followed by the call to arms to get rid of all unsourced and untaged images), but it has been a long time coming, like this mail from 2004 suggest he's never been too happy with the fair use situation. The "crackdown" on replacable images are fairly recent (late September or early October I think) though the policy text have long said that fair use should only be used when no alternatives are available (wich was recently "sharpened" to "no free alternative can be created" (see IRC log posted at Wikipedia talk:Fair use#The first three paragraphs). --Sherool (talk) 16:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image tagging for Image:German1_shepherd_German_States_Before_and_since_the_French_Revolution_I_Baden_.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:German1_shepherd_German_States_Before_and_since_the_French_Revolution_I_Baden_.jpg. The image has been identified as not specifying the source and creator of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. If you don't indicate the source and creator of the image on the image's description page, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided source information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

This is an automated notice by OrphanBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. 09:45, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Image:163xN03-1634- The Galileo Affair-cover-0743488156.jpg

"Fair use" images should not be in the template namespace in any case so I would have ignored that.Geni 13:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

From what I remeber when I deleted it the the image was not in an article or in the portal namespace. Apearences in other namespaces don't matter since "fair use" images should not be there. If the reason for this non appearence was vandalism them I can bring the image back. I don't check what links here for "fair use" images because again it doesn't matter. The question is "Has it been included in an article in the last week?" if no then it should be deleted. Linking to it is not enough to merit inclusion in wikipedia. It needs to be included in an article.Geni 14:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] WikiProject Munich

{{WP Munich Invitation}} Kingjeff 15:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Jeff-- too many projects now, and no time at all, at all! Best regards // FrankB 23:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)