User talk:Malyctenar

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Thanks for the modifications/additions. As a Czechoslovak on my mom's side, I allow =no one= to get away with calling Ujezd "just a street name." Welcome to WikiEN! Denni☯ 03:54, 2004 Jun 25 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Vladimír Špidla

On "OCT 4, 2004", User:Radoneme objected to my formulations as insufficiently NPOV; I moved the discussion to Talk:Vladimír Špidla. --Malyctenar 05:24, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

[edit] Usercat

You were listed in the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Czech Republic page as living in or being associated with Czech Republic. As part of the Wikipedia:User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Czech Republic for instructions.Rmky87 08:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Armenia

Please visit the Talk: Armenia and Talk: Armenians pages http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Armenia&action=edit&section=3 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Armenians&action=edit&section=36 please voice your view on the current discussion, there is a small minority that are promoting and point of view that Armenia is geographically in Europe and Armenians are a European people. It is best to serve the factual truth and your support is desperately needed.

[edit] User:J.smith/YT

Thanks for the grammar fixes! ---J.S (t|c) 15:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

Barnstar of Diligence The Barnstar of Diligence
I award you with the Barnstar of Diligence for your work on Wikipedia, or as the description says "in recognition of a combination of extraordinary scrutiny, precision and community service" Avala 18:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry about that

Hi Malyctenar, sorry about this revert, it was indeed careless not to notice your other edits, should have paid more attention there. With respect to the thumbnail size issue, I’m indeed utterly surprised that this recommendation is made on a policy page. Because it seems to forget our not logged in readers, see my reasoning here as well. --Van helsing 12:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John M. Ford

Malyctenar, thank you for your continuing contributions to John M. Ford, especially the personality summary in the opening. You'd mentioned, a while back, the need for something NPOV on that topic, and I think you've now met that need.

Thanks (and pleasure working with you all). I think it can still be improved (perhaps a sentence about "110 Stories" a la the necrologs, because it did bring him probably his widest renown outside the select circle within the genre and now it is just briefly mentioned in the end), but since it didn't materialise out of thin air, I had to do the first approximation myself and it wasn't found completely unworthy or muddled (so far nobody even demanded NPOVising/sourcing a la "most memorial accounts describe him as...").

One question on an addition much further down, here boldfaced to mark it out:

See The Final Reflection – Influence of the book and Burns's article linked below.

Are you aware that the linked section includes a summary of (and link to) Burns's article?

I think that makes this addition a bit redundant: if a reader does "see The Final Reflection – Influence of the book", that reader will not need to also "see Burns's article linked below".

I'm not going to undo your edit. If you still feel the addition should be there, I won't disagree. I just thought you might not have realized the duplication of information. – SAJordan talkcontribs 05:09, 29 Nov 2006 (UTC).

You're right, I wasn't aware the link is there - I think I saw the page some time ago and forgot details. But I would still say that the duplication, such as it is, is not redundant, let alone wrong: First of all, readers may not go and see the other page (they may be in a hurry - and Wikipedia's servers aren't too fast; or not that interested in Klingons; etc.) So if there already is an external link to the Burns article in the main JMF entry, it's worth mentioning its relevance when we're dealing with such a topic (just like with any other duplication of information in Wikipedia, where a overview page gives a brief summary of something that is detailed in a separate specialized entry). After all, even the Final Reflection page gives, as you say, just a summary and link: reading it certainly doesn't mean that one "will not need" to see the article; much of its content isn't summarised there, and even can't be as not encyclopedic in nature. That's the whole point of external linkss: to give readers access to relevant valuable material that an encyclopedia couldn't contain even if it were in an ideal state. --Malyctenar 10:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
<grin> What hass it gotss in itss external linkses, my preciousssss?
Again, I won't disagree. Not enough to undo that edit, anyway.
But I should clarify: I don't mean that by seeing the summary one won't need to read Burns's full article; I mean that by going to the influence-of-the-book section one will see the Burns article linked (and summarized) there, and will not also need to see it linked below. The link will already have been presented to the reader. The added "and" points to the same link a second time.
As to persuading a reader to follow the link, "below" gives less of an idea of what's at that link than the influence-of-the-book section does. If a reader passes up the opportunity to follow that link the first time, what additional reason does the second mention offer, to change that decision?
I think what I'm working toward is the suggestion that possibly the conjunction should be not "and" but "or". – SAJordan talkcontribs 15:39, 29 Nov 2006 (UTC).

[edit] C. S. Lewis

Hi! Thanks for your recent edit to the C. S. Lewis article, but I'm just letting you know I've reverted it. The citation style had been discussed on the talk page and various other places, and been previously restored to the original Harvard style. In future, you might consider breaking such a large edit into a few smaller ones; as it was all done at once, it means we've lost your rather good copy editing. I'm not sure about some of the information you added though; Lewis turned 19 on the 29 November 1917, and if he arrived in France on this date, he could not have been injured at the Battle of Arras (9 April to 16 May 1917). Martin 23:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

In your version, the article also says
Having won a scholarship to University College, Oxford in 1916, Lewis enlisted the following year (i. e. 1917) in the British Army as World War I raged on (this could do with a copyedit as well), and was commissioned an officer
which makes it rather difficult for him to
arrive[] at the front line [...] on his eighteenth birthday
in November 1916. Detailed chronologies http://www.cslewis.org/resources/chronocsl.html http://cslewis.drzeus.net/bio/ and many other sources agree on 1918. Why am I not surprised?
As for the duration of the Battle of Arras (1917), perhaps those sources use some other definition than Wikipedia - which would be no wonder - or perhaps it was just off Arras, but during what is officially known as the First Battle of the Somme (note that there is also Battle of Arras (1918) redirecting to Second Battle of the Somme but it was in the autumn).
It should be possible to resolve this by a single look into any halfway decent paper biography; let's see how long it takes the esteemed Wiki-community of brilliant researchers out there to do.
But considering that even early this year the article at least roughly made sense (until somebody tried to disambiguate vague "Battle of Arras" appearing in many sources), and then it was you who added the 15 April 1917 date (even switching his army discharge from December 1918 to 1919, but at least that has been corrected after a mere month; the birthday remained longest, but was retrofitted down the memory hole 6 weeks ago) and you've reverted at least one previous attempt to correct it, relying only on the "Battle of Arras" bit and not any other evidence, let alone source, I don't hold my breath. --Malyctenar 15:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Is there any particular reason you're being so rude and combative? If you disagree about the dates, feel free to change them. As I believe I pointed out, the main reason I reverted your edit was because you changed the reference style. Thanks for your time. Martin 22:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not being rude, let alone combative, so there is no reason at all. --Malyctenar 14:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IMDb template

As someone who occasionally teaches formal computer classes and has long had to help co-workers learn how to use their computers, I can attest to the fact that there is no such thing as "dumbing down". It is never safe to assume that anyone sitting at the keyboard of a computer knows information that you may consider to be universally known or "common sense". I worked with a woman who had been using her computer for ten years and knew nothing about copy and paste until I explained it to her. She had been retyping everything. Dumb? Yes. Uncommon? Not really. Cause? No one had ever explained it to her before.—Chidom talk  02:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed new "Citizendium" article

Please feel free to copyedit (or even text edit) the proposed new CZ article on my userpage. Just to let you know, I will probably remove the material in the "policies and structure" section related to criticism of CZ (eventually there will likely be a full-blown WP article titled "Criticisms of Citizendium" just as there is one titled "Criticisms of Wikipedia"). Then I will attempt to expand that section with more detail on what CZ has done or is doing. But have a go at it yourself if you'd like. JFPerry 21:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Upozornění

Upozorňuji na cs:Wikipedie:Žádost o práva správce/Danny B. (potvrzení 2) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Upozornění (talk • contribs) 11:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Warning

Please see this ruling and this one. I will block you next time you add a link to a site that "outs" editors. Musical Linguist 10:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:James D. Nicoll

Excuse me? My assessment was done by hand. I had to manually select the rating. The script I use is officially endorsed by the WPBiography project. Now I rated it start because most of the sections are still stubs. They definitely need expanding, which leads me to believe there must be more material, so it couldn't be rated B-class, as that would mean most of the material was already present. It definitely isn't A-class, because for A-class a picture is needed, and a two paragraph lead is also considered minimum. Errabee 11:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, assigning A-class was my error, so I supposed from the summary "Assessed as "Start" for WPBiography via script" that this was a purely mechanical correction to the default level caused either by my not filling in the "Comments" subpage (which I was going to correct immediately afterwards), or assigning A-Class without going through the necessary process (as I realized after my first edit). So, please excuse me for implicit doubting your sentience.
Thus, the matter is just that our two by-hand assessments of the article's quality differ. My main point is that while the article could (as any always can) be expanded, all substantial content is already there, and in quality that doesn't require rewrite, but rather protection from edit creep. Yes, it's shorter than, say, Robert A. Heinlein's one, but I don't see any reason why it should be as long: after all, the subject is also a tad little less important.
But I suppose that this discussion should be better taken to the article talk page (or directly its Comments subpage?). --Malyctenar 12:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] June 2007

Welcome, and thank you for experimenting with the page Template:My Chemical Romance on Wikipedia. Your test worked, and it has been reverted or removed. Please take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. mcr616 Speak! 16:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding edits to Robot

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia, Malyctenar! However, your edit here was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove spam from Wikipedia. If you were trying to insert a good link, please accept my creator's apologies, but note that the link you added, matching rule \bsme\.org, is on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. Please read Wikipedia's external links guidelines for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! Shadowbot 12:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other edits to robot

Hi Malyctenar. I'm still not sure I understand some of your edits to robot:

  • Why the "colspan=2" in the table on one line, but not on others? (1920, 1942, 1956, 1981).
  • I realise now that it's called the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, but why not have a link to it?
  • It should be behaviours, not behaviour. It is specifically supposed to be plural, because Elsie and Elmer demonstrated more than one kind of behaviour. I will put this one edit back, and leave the rest.

Rocketmagnet 11:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

  1. Obviously, colspan=2 because I wanted to merge the Significance and Robot name column in that particular row: if you put "Early automaton, a mechanical duck that was able to eat grain, flap its wings, and excrete" into the former, it seems rather pointless to repeat that this invention consisted of a "mechanical duck". Such distinction makes sense in lower rows, but not here.
  2. In general I consider inline external links useless, and against the Manual of Style. CALD (or any other Cambridge dictionary) doesn't seem important enough to have its own entry, even if it had, it's certainly not directly tematically related to the concept of robots to link it; it is used just because of its one particular entry as a reference, and should anybody need to see the site's homepage, it's easily reachable from that individual page.
  3. I was under the impression that "behaviour" is, if not uncountable, wide enough to cover more than one kind of actions in its singular form. (I mean, frex in the Google "their behaviour" wins over "their behaviours" 6:1.) OK, I won't change it anymore (though I might Americanize the spelling to "behavior" to bypass the redirect; and the link "biological" goes to a disambiguation page and would need to be changed to something more useful - i guess organism would be best.
All the best, --Malyctenar 18:51, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tom Wolfe

Thanks for the fixes you just made to Template:Tom Wolfe! I didn't know about Template:Tnavbar-header so had been forced to improvise. I have a handful of templates that I need to go back to fix now! Is there a general standard that fiction should have year of publication, but non-fiction need not? Feel free to respond here, I'll watch your talk page. --JayHenry 15:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK there isn't - some Author navigational boxes have dates, some don't. I add them just where there aren't too many books altogether, both due to the template's clutteredness and the amount of effort it would take - I am certainly too lazy to add dates to all of Wolfe's prodigious nonfiction, and it also appears that the list was in head-down format, like Tom Wolfe #Bibliography is, so even more mechanical work copypasting: If you feel like it, you're welcome :-) --Malyctenar 15:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I'd been doing the same thing -- adding the years basically at my discretion. Just a minor detail, as far as I'm concerned, I just didn't want to be oblivious to a standard. Thanks again for your help! --JayHenry 16:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. At least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Template:My Chemical Romance, was not constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Please do not change the colors and font sizes without discussing it on the talk page. Thank You mcr616 Speak! 18:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Again, please do not change the color of the template without discussing it first on the talk page. Thank you. mcr616 Speak! 14:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:LGBTProject

Hi, Malyctenar!

I'm not sure what you meant by this change - can you clarify? Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 18:44, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, what it says in the summary - now I see I didn't list "simplifying the code and making it more effective" explicitly, but using DEFAULTSORT was a part of this. As mentioned there, when the template it was used with class=NA (or any other capitalization thereof), the code {{{{ucfirst:{{lc:{{{class}}}}}}}-Class}} created a call of Template:Na-Class which is a redirect, and anyway used parser functions pointlessly as it was contained within if uc(class)=NA branch. Or what in particular do you mean? --Malyctenar 10:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
There were so many changes in one edit, I got confused. And the edit summary didn't make sense to me. My bad. The thing that caught my eye was putting the DEFAULTSORT at the top. Usually (though it doesn't seem to be the case here) having anything before the initial table will mess up nesting by putting an an extra blank line inside the nested table. As I said, that doesn't seem to have happened here, so no problems.
I'm curious about that DEFAULTSORT, though. I'm not sure it makes any difference - either the way you've changed it or the way it was before. Talk:Alan Turing still shows up under "A" in the cats Category:GA-Class biography articles (which has the defaultsort) and Category:GA-Class Computer science articles (which doesn't).
Hm - maybe it's not necessary in WP banners? Anyway, thanks for the explanation. And thanks for simplifying :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:17, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I think that extra blank lines appear especially when there are extra lines before the table in the source, and - while I'm no expert at MediaWiki's innards, alas - it seems that the parser swallows the magic word whole and otherwise behaves as if it were not there at all. I guess it could be placed somewhere else, as long as it's before the first categorization, but hidden inside the table it seemed rather strange to me.
The difference I wanted to make was just to shorten the code and IMHO make it easier to read by saving repeated "|{PAGENAME}" calls. If there's no change in the behaviour, that's only well :-)
Should you want to be able to sort people by surname, it would be quite easy: add one more parameter (it seems that it is called "listas" where such thing is done, as "sortkey" started to be used for sortable tables), and use its value as primary for DEFAULTSORT. I tried to do that for WP Novels/Books, to be able to get rid of initial The/A; i thought that the other WP templates that I was editing aren't used that often - and it's quite possible that people are used to having people sorted by first name and changing this would only confuse them. That is, in the categories like the CS articles; in Biographies about half of the articles are sorted by surname and Turing isn't simply because listas isn't filled in his {WPBiography}. Anyway, mass correct sorting would require adding the parameter to lots of talk pages. --Malyctenar 16:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding edits to Template:Koreanname

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia, Malyctenar! You recent edits on Template:Koreanname were reverted due to the following reasons:

  1. The table is not wide. The revised romanization and McCune-Reischauer for Korean name are generally very long and width around 250px is appropriate. Consider the unit, I changed 250px to 20em, which is the most common width for infoboxes.
  2. The font size of the left column were set back to 0.95em to provide more space on the right column.
  3. A nested table was used, due to MSIE's colspan bug. Otherwise, it will appear like this.
  4. There is no need for using ELSEIF clause.
  5. Hanja field can be empty. The page should be added to Category:Wikipedia articles needing hanja only if hanja=!

Please discuss with me or leave message on WikiProject Korea discussion board before making changes. Thank you. eDenE 14:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'll take this to the template's talk page. --Malyctenar 02:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Iraq Operations

There are currently 3 Different lists of Iraq Operations; Iraqi coalition counter-insurgency operations(which is also somewhat POV), a chonological list and an alphabetical list. I have added a lot of operations to the alphabetical listing and have been updating it faithfully but I haven't updated the counter insurgency or the Chonological listing much. Before I do I recommend that we consider other methods. I figured out how to add a column sort function and added it to the Alphabetical listing. I recommend the other 2 articles be merged into the alphabetical listing and then we can rename the alphabetical listing to something more appropriate like Iraq Military Operations since 2003 perhaps. I added a blurb on the discussion page and recommended the merge for the chronological list and the counter insurgency operations page. You seem to do a lot with the Iraq war articles what do you think? --Kumioko 15:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

To be frank, I don't give a damn, I just try to correct the worst errors. Considering that even those links that aren't red are either to stubs or redirects to the list with barest data about the operation, I agree that the more will be deleted or merged, the better; especially the templates for operations by individual year duplicated by the huge template for all operations. --Malyctenar 02:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] William Gibson template

Yo, I'd be interested to see your thoughts on the direction of the Gibsonian template. At present, it lists en masse every article whose subject is predominantly derived from Gibson's work. Is this too much? Does <smalling> the text solve length issues or make them worse? Should the template structure be alter to reflect the new demands? If you're interested, please reply at the talkpage. Regards, Skomorokh incite 18:29, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Just dropping by to thank you for your recent edits to William Gibson, and apologize for amending many of them - they were on balance a great improvement to the article. Skomorokh incite 19:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
No problem; I, too, prefer working out a mutually satisfactory formulation in flurry of (constructive) edits with explanations in summary, rather than being drawn to a long debate in the talk pages; so when my first approximation doesn't meet with success, I either let it go (though I still think that footnotes for the music are pointless) or try another approach and might start talk after the third iteration. Thanks to you for improving the article by cites (though you might save a little less frequently :-) --Malyctenar 08:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I like your style. What do you mean by save less frequently? Many articles use the footnotes system, often separate from reference in the same manner as footnotes/bibliography might be separated in an academic essay. The rationale for the footnotes is that, strictly speaking, they are not references - I couldn't find reliable sources that said "Musician X was influenced by William Gibson", so the best I could do was note as sources unreliable websites or track titles that seemed intuitively to reference Gibson's work. If the information in the footnotes is challenged, it will have to go, but it is the best I have found so far. Skomorokh incite 11:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Yo, I've just nominated William Gibson for featured article status; I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you were interested in voicing them. RegardsSkomorokh incite 21:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] damn those DIVs

Please excuse these - they look alright on my browser and and I was only continuing their use as I found them on other similar templates. I didn't meant it to be so much of a problem, as I say "problem not invented here" just unfortunately "extended here". Sorry. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

No problem, it was just general explanation what I'm doing and not an expression of particular annoyance; I wasn't even looking into the history so didn't know you were involved. On FF, they make the header column's text very misaligned. I've seen them used where each item in the list is on a separate line (for better readability of source, or what?) because without them, the (damn) MediaWiki parser enters linebreaks/paragraphs in inappropriate places, but as this was not used here, there was absolutely no need of them. --Malyctenar 09:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please help with a WikiProject template

Hi, I've noticed you recently updated the {{WikiProject Russian history}}. Could you please upgrade the {{WikiProject Soviet Union}} to current standards? thank you, `'Míkka 00:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:The Fortunate Fall.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:The Fortunate Fall.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 04:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Fortunate Fall (novel)

Restored as requested on WP:PROD. Neil ム 10:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Note

Left a note for you at Template talk:WPBiography#Displaying priority etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] template: Infobox Settlement

Thanks for improving the template code, but I think there's one problem: you are using:

{{{name|{{{official_name}}}}}}

to mean "name if defined, else official name". The problem is that this template is often instanced by copying the syntax from the documentation page and filling in the relevant parameters, leaving the others defined, but empty. And the documentation says that either name or official_name can be filled in; therefore one of them might be left empty. Hence we might get a situation with

|name =
|official_name = Something

and this will now break the code, since

{{{name|{{{official_name}}}}}}

will evaluate to the empty string. I don't know if this actually happens in any article (the name parameter is quite a new thing), but theoretically it might.--Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've been thinking on the same lines and you are right: I used this simplification for some titles of flag, seal etc. pictures to somewhat cut through the code mess, where it can't do much harm even if the above happens, but it might be troublesome in the header (why not use caption, actually?). OK, I'll return this back; anyway I've realised that "if (number of defined parameters from a list) = (some number)" can be simplified even more without any resorting to calc. Thanks, --Malyctenar (talk) 10:51, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error

There is an error somewhere in the code that was a result of your changes. Please see Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement#Something.27s_not_quite_right for the details. Regards, MJCdetroit (talk) 23:17, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry but I had to revert your changes. It seems like your version in the sandbox was working but with over 40,000 pages using the template I figured I'd play it safe and just revert to the changes before your edits. Please fully test (this page may help:Template:Infobox Settlement/testcases) and try again. Regards, MJCdetroit (talk) 04:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Start U.S. Supreme Court composition

I would like to discuss the following change to Template:Start U.S. Supreme Court composition. I made the changes I did (which you have reverted) for the the following reason: it messes up the tables of justices who sat on multiple courts. Just look at the table at the bottom of Joseph Story, and note how the bar for the Taney court goes across the entire table, while the bar for the Marshall Court does not. This just looks bad! I'd like to change it back, but I figure I'd discuss with you first since we seem to disagree. Is there a better wat to do this that makes us both happy? Foofighter20x (talk) 11:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

When you said "messes up", I was afraid of something serious; this doesn't even seem particularly bad-looking to my sensibility, except for both "X court" being centered differently, depending on whether there's the seal on the left, but there is a way to fix that. As for finding a compromise to satisfy us both (what I disliked is having the "Supreme Court of the United States" header made so high by the round seal), I'm not sure there's one that wouldn't require a radical rehaul of the templates' usage on all pages - even moving the seal within the table's body is rather difficult since we never know in advance how many lines there are going to be. But what about simply making the second ("Taney") header narrower, too? That's easy, and certainly symmetrical... --Malyctenar (talk) 13:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Supreme Court of the United States
The Marshall Court
1812–1823: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story
1823–1826: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson
The Taney Court
1836–1837: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour
1837–1838: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour | J. Catron
...

Hmm... I see what you tried to do there, but it still looks completely awkward with the dates hanging out to the left like that. I can't show you how I'd try to fix it without messing with the code, but...

A) Can we maybe move the seal back up, make it slightly smaller, and then break up the the name as The Supreme Court <--break--> of the <--break--> United States? or...
B) find a way to insert a colspan on the column with the seal--on its own in either the left or right column--which centers it between the top and bottom of the table, all rows inclusive; and have the purple-ish bars extend back over the date? Foofighter20x (talk) 07:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe like so...

Seal of the U.S. Supreme Court Supreme Court of the United States
The {{{CJ}}} Court
1812–1823: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story
1823–1826: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson
The Taney Court
1836–1837: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour
1837–1838: J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne | P.P. Barbour | J. Catron
...

The Taney one is messed up, but you get the idea... All that would need to be changed: for the cell with the seal properties, simply put in an indefinite number like 1000 for rowspan. Then, for the Supreme Court header, give it a colspan of 2, and then go into the start {{{court}}} comp headers and give them all a colspan of 2 also.

Maybe, too, make the Supreme Court header that Blue/purple color and all the start court comps grey?

Thoughts? Foofighter20x (talk) 08:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the simpler it is: instead of using a rowspan=1000, simply make it one cell, then the next cell would have an embedded table. The only question is whether you'd want the seal on the left or right. If left, then the seal needs to be in the Start USSC template; if right, then the End USSC template. Foofighter20x (talk) 08:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Aviation lists

Hi. Re http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AAviation_lists&diff=193921088&oldid=192898658, you don't think that lengthy group name looks out of place beside the others? (It also eats into the template, especially so on smaller screens/resolutions/windows...) Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:FebruaryCalendar2008Source

Your recent update to Template:FebruaryCalendar2008Source made it break when the endnote parameter is not used. See February 2008 in rail transport for an example of it displaying incorrectly. Thanks. Slambo (Speak) 16:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, looks much better now. Slambo (Speak) 16:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] {{nowrap begin}} etc

I reverted your edits of {{nowrap begin}} and {{nowrap end}}. See Template talk:Nowrap begin#Noinclude tags etc for my explanation why I reverted your edits. Anyway, happy hacking!

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chess Diagram Template

Since the recent change when viewing two diagrams, Firefox only shows 1 and half(Left board shown fully, other board only showing three columns (a, b and c)

Image:chess zhor 26.png
Image:chess zver 26.png a8 b8 c8 d8 e8 f8 g8 h8 Image:chess zver 26.png
a7 b7 c7 d7 e7 f7 g7 rl h7 pd
a6 rd b6 c6 d6 e6 f6 nd g6 h6
a5 b5 c5 d5 e5 f5 g5 h5
a4 pl b4 c4 nd d4 kd e4 f4 g4 h4
a3 b3 c3 d3 e3 f3 g3 h3
a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 f2 g2 pl h2 pl
a1 b1 c1 d1 e1 f1 rl g1 kl h1
Image:chess zhor 26.png
Korchnoi-Karpov: "a position it seemed impossible to lose"
Image:chess zhor 26.png
Image:chess zver 26.png a8 b8 c8 d8 e8 f8 g8 h8 Image:chess zver 26.png
a7 b7 c7 d7 e7 f7 g7 h7 rl
a6 b6 c6 rd d6 e6 f6 g6 h6
a5 b5 c5 d5 e5 f5 g5 h5
a4 pl b4 c4 d4 e4 nd f4 g4 h4
a3 b3 c3 d3 e3 f3 nd g3 h3
a2 b2 c2 d2 e2 kd f2 g2 pl h2 pl
a1 rl b1 c1 d1 e1 f1 g1 kl h1
Image:chess zhor 26.png
Position after 39...Nf3+!!


Have undid for now, but if you could look at again, that would be great. ChessCreator (talk) 23:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Turing test

Thanks for helping clean up the Turing test article - I've been hoping to get it up to GA standard, as I was surprised that it wasn't already, but it is a slow process. :) - Bilby (talk) 00:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Heat engines (and maybe elsewhere)

Hi again.

Does this mean the occasional rightside collision problem with {{·}} has been solved? If so, sorry to've missed the news; please point me toward it. Thanks. Sardanaphalus (talk) 03:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am not quite aware of what the problem is. That is, I do have problems in Firefox with things like Template:Shortdick; but I haven't been able to replicate these with the current state of Template:Heat engines - that behaves OK no matter how narrow the window. I guess this might be because it combines ONLY links (in a .nowraplinks environment) with bullets, without any further content like dates, country names etc. Anyway, extra-short lines like "One · Two · Four · Six", "Piston · Jet · Rocket" and "Tschudi · Twingle" can't encounter such a problem pretty much by definition, so certainly don't need special precautions for case of linewrapping. All the best, --Malyctenar (talk) 08:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It looks like it's a Firefox bug, according to this current related discussion. Hopefully, therefore, it'll be history in a couple of years or so. In the meantime, however, since its effect depends on widths, something that can vary from template to template and browser window to browser window, I've begun using (<div>) {{nowrap begin}}--{{·w}}--{{nowrap end}} (</div>) regardless of how likely linewrapping within a template may seem. If/when the bug is ironed out and most Firefox users have upgraded, a bot or bots could be tasked to replace this formatting with the preferred {{·}}s. Thanks for your reply. Sardanaphalus (talk) 14:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A note from the Culture

Why did you do this? I am not sure I agree with it but want first to see if this was a consensus-driven change, or just your own idea. My biggest quibble with it is that Inversions is not really a Culture book as such, and The State of the Art only deals with the Culture in three of its stories. I'd be grateful for your thoughts. --John (talk) 04:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Women in Czech Politics

Hi, seeing as you made substantial additions to Politics of the Czech Republic, would you be able to help with the Czech section of List of the first female holders of political offices --Rye1967 (talk) 12:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Linux (and perhaps elsewhere)

Hi again. Please see/respond to the most recent post in #Template:Heat engines (and maybe elsewhere) above as regards this (and that) template. (Or has Mozilla now fixed the Firefox linewrap bug?) Sardanaphalus (talk) 23:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Just seen another one: Template:GNU. Unless you have news regarding the Firefox linewrap bug, please leave the {{nowrap begin}}...{{·w}}...{{nowrap end}}s intact, per Wikipedia:Line break handling#Nowraplinks shortcomings. Sardanaphalus (talk) 23:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, my is watchlist is becoming unusable. Let me repeat: The bug described above is NOT the case of these two templates which don't use years but just separated links, for which {{·}} suffice perfectly. --Malyctenar (talk) 09:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

But the Firefox bug thing is general, i.e. applies to any list of links (using dividers) that wraps, not just those using years. Sorry if I'm still misunderstanding something..? Sardanaphalus (talk) 15:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think we are still talking at cross purposes. I am aware of and acquianted with the FF bug manifesting when you use nbsp to "glue" together longer strings of plain text which then stick outside the box - like in the example you give, dates in parentheses to the main links. However, in the templates I edited, there are only links (which may have some importance due to .nowraplinks class, or not - I don't understand it that deep) followed by {{·}}, i. e. nbsp and a bold middot. Then an ordinary breakable space follows, and the cycle repeats. Taken together (perhaps with the .navbox default padding), this means that I can't produce any buggy behaviour in FF (2.0 under WinNT) no matter how I resize the window: the lines always wrap properly after the divider, before the box border. Are you experiencing any problems there? --Malyctenar (talk) 16:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Nothing recent I can point to, but I haven't been working with or looking out for templates with wrapping problems. I thought the implication of this Firefox bug was that {{nowrap begin}}...{{·w}}...{{nowrap end}} should (ideally) be used in all navbox templates, but you're suggesting that's not true...? I've asked User:Davidgothberg to leave a comment here, as he understands this topic better than I. Sardanaphalus (talk) 00:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Malyctenar and Sardanaphalus.
Yes, I heard the Firefox bug is fixed in Firefox 3.0 beta although I have not seen it with my own eyes. But I have seen the bugzilla reports (and commented on them) over at mozilla.org so they are aware of the bug. But they have been aware of that bug for many years now without fixing it, so I won't trust that it is fixed until I see it myself. However, lots of users will still be using Firefox 2.x for some years to come, so we still need to handle the bug.
I have already explained this in detail over at Wikipedia talk:Line break handling#Firefox bug but here is the short version:
Yes, "[[link]]{{·}}" does cause the bug. That is the "{{·}}" = "&nbsp;·" will go outside the text area. However since they are just two pretty thin characters they usually fit within the text padding area, so they just touch the border and don't go outside the border. So it is pretty much a matter of taste if such a minor problem is worth fixing or not. (And the best fix is to apply {{nowrap begin}}+{{·w}}+{{nowrap end}}, but there are also other more messy ways to fix it.)
However, if you are adding more characters than just those two around a link (really around a nowrap area), then you need to apply the fix since then they will expand outside the box enough to be clearly visible.
--David Göthberg (talk) 01:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, David. This is what I understand as a result of Wikipedia:Line break handling and Wikipedia talk:Line break handling#Firefox bug. And here, Malyctenar, is an example: Imagine (or create) a list of links that include links with long names, e.g. ......{{·}} [[African literature|Literature]] ([[List of African writers by country|Writers by country]]){{·}} .... Since the links aren't wrapped (nowraplinks) and there can be more than one between dividers, examples such as this will extend beyond a template's righthand side unless the browser window (and hence the template) just happens to be the right width. So, {{nowrap begin}}...{{·w}}...{{nowrap end}} it is until this bug is fixed (and then enough time has gone by for most people to upgrade). Sardanaphalus (talk) 03:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
No Sardanaphalus, you are kind of misunderstanding Malyctenar and me. In the {{Linux}} case the problem is so minor that it only is visible if you really know what you are looking for. So normal Wikipedia readers probably will not notice it. Thus in that case it doesn't matter much if you fix it or not.
That is, I would not bother to add the fix. But since it does look slightly better with the fix I certainly would not remove the fix if someone else had added it. (So I find Malyctenar's revert to be a waste of a good, albeit not necessary, fix.) But again, this is such a minor difference that it is just a matter of personal preference.
--David Göthberg (talk) 03:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay. I think, though, it's still worth using {{nowrap begin}} etc in any and all navbox templates as it's always possible for a link in brackets like the above (or in some other format) to be added to a list, revealing the bug. What do you think, Malyctenar? Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
...No thoughts, Malyctenar? Sardanaphalus (talk) 14:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
If you insist (sorry, I'm always pressed for time): I agree with David Göthberg that for the simple link + divider format, the fix with wrappers is not worth adding - and I still think that the increase in brevity and simplicity justifies my removing it. But I have been now thoroughly acquainted with the consensus and best practices, and promise to hold myself back next time - I may switch to "sidebar" navboxes that still aren't standardized much. (And would you believe what I just saw at Template:Future History - nowraps used even for simple commas. [Though I had to keep them around short stories because they were within quote marks...]) Best, --Malyctenar (talk) 15:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I just wanted to feel confident we weren't going to work against or misunderstand each other. I agree that because it's more complex, another downside of {{nowrap begin}} etc is that people can misapply it (in good faith), but, until this Firefox bug is sorted out and most users have upgraded, I feel it's worthwhile maintaining. But I guess you knew that already. Sardanaphalus (talk) 15:26, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
PS I think your other template code simplification work I happen to've seen is a boon.

[edit] Inclusions of ellipsis in partial quotes (Mark Steyn)

Thanks for your NPOV contribution to Mark Steyn page. I note that you removed ellipses from quotes. An ellipsis is a common mark to indicate that words are left out of the source quotation so, IMO, is valuable. Do you disagree? Interactbiz (Norm, Vancouver Canada) (talk) 21:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course I agree; however the ellipses I removed were at the beginning of the quotes (like he spoke about "...the gooks in Vietnam."), where they are quite pointless and even retarding: from the context and the quoted bit itself it is obvious that just a fragment of the whole sentence is quoted. This seems to be in agreement with WP:ELLIPSES and ellipsis. Best, --Malyctenar (talk) 08:24, 3 June 2008 (UTC)