User talk:Happy-melon/Archive 5

Infobox actor templates needing updating

Hi Happy-melon, I just came across the category Category:Infobox actor templates needing updating, and was just wondering what exactly needs updating. There are currently 8,748 pages in this category, but I wasn't sure exactly how to help out. Cheers, --BelovedFreak 15:52, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, and thanks for bringing this to my attention. I created and populated that category in response to this discussion; the outcome of which was inconclusive. There doesn't appear to be any pressing need to make the updates requested, so I've removed the populating code from {{Infobox Actor}} and deleted the category, so all loose ends are tidied up. Thanks for pointing out my untidiness! Happy‑melon 16:31, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Template:GNF_Protein_box

Thanks for updating that protected template. I posted a followup question on the talk page. Can we discuss a bit there? Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 00:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

... a second reply on the talk page, when you get a chance... Cheers, AndrewGNF (talk) 16:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProjectBannerShell

Hi Happy-melon. Not sure, but it appears that your recent edit to WikiProjectBannerShell, to center it, also broke the {{WPGUNS}} graphic, putting a Verizon Wireless graphic in place of the older graphic. I'm not sure how to fix this, so dropped you a line here so that you know. Thanks. Yaf (talk) 14:18, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

My immediate reaction is "WTF?", as I can't think of any possible reason my edits to {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} could affect {{WPGUNS}}; naturally I'm intrigued! Can you show me some examples of where the graphic is now incorrect so I can see for myself what the problem is? Happy‑melon 17:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Likewise. I am still puzzled over what happened. Check out the talk page here. There is a Verizon Networks graphic there, where there used to be a pistol, and the text for the {{WPGUNS}} template hasn't been changed in a long time. The problem was at a higher level, and only the WikiProjectBannerShell changed in the last few days. Looks like this edit is where the problem started. But, I am not sure why it could possibly have broken the lower level template, either. Thanks. Yaf (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I see the proper Image:HKUSPCOMPACT40.jpg image in the {{WPGUNS}} template there. Are you sure it's not a caching or corruption issue on your browser? Try purging your browser and/or server cache and viewing the page again. Happy‑melon 20:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Just purged and reloaded my browser. The short form of the WPGUNS line comes up if I purge and reload, as expected; so, I hit "show", and the wrong graphic then pops up. If I then hit the Verizon Networks logo, the correct HKUSPCOMPACT40.jpg page comes up. Most odd. Am running SeaMonkey under Linux, if that matters. Haven't tried other OS's or browsers. Yaf (talk) 20:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Try purging the image thumbnail (go to the image page and do whatever you need to do to purge (Ctrl+F5 in IE7)). Meanwhile I'm going to post at VPT, because I'm stumped! Happy‑melon 21:02, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I purged the image, and the correct image now comes up fine. This was a most odd glitch, especially as it seemed to have occurred almost precisely when the WikiProjectBannerShell was modified. Wonder if the stable version of SeaMonkey I'm running has a bug? May not know for sure on this one :-) Thanks for getting me straight on this! Yaf (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Pseudo-complete_wikiproject_list_updated

Have you seen this yet? – ClockworkSoul 17:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Minor detail regarding Template:Non-free NASA logo

When deleting the redirect left behind after page move, could I suggest leaving in the default deletion autosummary or otherwise making a note of the title the page was moved to? Checking the deletion history isn't much trouble for those of us who can see it, but some other, non-admin editors might appreciate being able to find out where the content actually went. Minor issue, I know, but it costs no effort and might just possibly save someone some trouble in the future if they need to sort out what happened to the page. (In this particular case, I just left a link to the new name at the TfD page; I think that should suffice well enough.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class introduction

Hi, and thanks for all your help on introducing C-Class, your contribution has been very valuable! I wanted to check that all the categories are in place, before we make the official announcement on Friday. This category certainly looks well populated, but just I wanted to make sure.

I have another request: Would you be willing to assess a set of 15 random articles for me, using pairwise comparisons? I would need to email you an Excel file containing a macro, which steps through all of the possible pairs to compare, then at the end it calculates a ranking for each article. It should take an hour or less. I'd like to get a bunch of these, so we can put them together and get a valid set of article assessments. Can you help? You can reply here, I'll check. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 03:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm very nearly finished with the category population - about 70 to go. I'm going to use the same script to clean up the other categories while I'm at it, so we can start from a clean slate. So I'm easily going to make a Friday deadline. And yes, I'd be more than happy to do some assessment for you: just show me the way! Happy‑melon 09:11, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Vogons

The invention of the late douglas adams would say death is too good for you - what you are doing to the template is obviously sense to you - but sheer idiocy from a taggers point of view - when i used to tag the category pages - it was nice and neat - tag class=cat and it would like nice and neat and no unnecesary mention of the importance irrelevence - now it stares out like a bloodshot drunks eyes from the template - please either revert or fix - as a category tagger it offends me greatly (all in good faith and humour of course but, hell did you really have to?)SatuSuro 09:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Did I have to reduce the template size by 70%?? Yes, I'd say I did :P. Now that I've created the necessary category, so the template doesn't throw redlinks all over the place, it doesn't look any less neat (IMO) than it did before. Note that you don't have to specify |importance=NA in the template code: it'll be filled in automatically - so there's no extra work for you. Happy‑melon 09:43, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Have been tryng to keep OZ project categories with class=cat, not class=NA :( SatuSuro 09:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC) aaarrggghh and a bit of nngggh on the side :| SatuSuro 09:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmn... but the template correctly categorises into Category:Category-Class Australia articles, and displays the orange {{Category-Class}} blob. What more do you want? :D Happy‑melon 09:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

And the previous format didnt even show the importance at all - do we as a project have to have an unused part of the category=cat staring out? ie that its importance is NA? SatuSuro 09:48, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I know it didn't before; that was very poor coding practice, because it spilled over onto articles that genuinely should have had importance ratings. The point of the banner is to display relevant information, and for completeness, all WPAUSTRALIA pages should be given an importance rating of some description. Remember that the grades you give your pages as part of the Australia project fit into a much wider assessment scheme that encompasses most of Wikipedia. Happy‑melon 09:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh well maybe you have already been inspired by Vogon poetry - I can think of too many projects that need your golden touch (in other words keep up the good work dont tke too much notice of taggers like me) - hope you survive long enough to do the whole rnge of WP projects - I might call on you sometime about the Indonesia project :0 SatuSuro 10:30, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Another thing...

When MelonBot redirected all the various db-* template talk pages to Template talk:Db-meta, shouldn't it also have archived any existing content on those pages? Some of them had quite extensive old discussions that someone might want to search for some day. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I really wasn't sure what to do with all those old discussions. Moving them to archives of Template talk:Db-meta didn't seem appropriate, but I thought they were just as likely to get lost as archives of the individual pages. In the end, I elected to just blank the pages in the knowledge that people who wanted to see what had been discussed would go to the histories first and foremost. Perhaps a note in the {{central}} template would be helpful, but given that the previous version of each redirect forms a nice static archive, I haven't lost any sleep over blanking them. Happy‑melon 12:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

How about moving each of them to titles like Template talk:Db-meta/archive/db-foo, and adding links to those pages at the top of Template talk:Db-meta? Agreed, it's not a major issue since it's all still in the history, but it would be nice to have the old discussions searchable. I guess I could just do that myself, since it's only about 40 pages. I really should be working on other, more important things right now, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:45, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Me too, which is why I don't think the minimal gain is worth the effort required. I will put a note at the top of Template talk:Db-meta though. Happy‑melon 15:44, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Copying from user space

Unintentionally I evaded the Special:NewPages and the new page patrol on Van Phillips (inventor) by creating it under my user page and moving it (rather than copying the contents) into the article space. This seems like a unintended behavior. Thoughts? Bongomatic (talk) 15:31, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

This is T5481. Wouldn't recommend too much discussion on this topic: it's a bit beansey. Happy‑melon 16:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I saw your comment on the (holy $shit!) 3-year old bug. Actually, I wonder if there's also an issue relating to name space. I don't think new articles in the user space show up on Special:NewPages anyway. Your comment discusses the retention of an entry, not the creation of one . . . the beans would seem to be equally nasally appealing in moves from user or article space. Bongomatic (talk) 16:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

NewPages is filtered by namespace, with ns:0 being the default. If you switch to see "user" pages, you'll find the page at its original title, which makes very little sense. Happy‑melon 17:03, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Hangon

I reverted your changes to this template because they broke the 'noinclude' syntax that prevented talk pages with the template on them from appearing in the deletion category. If I had known how to fix it without reverting, I would have.. but I'm afraid that syntax is a bit over my head. --Versageek 04:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up to Template:Portal edit request

Hi again. Thanks for implementing the above. I wonder if you could help with what I hope is the last outstanding issue when {{portal}} is used within {{template category}}: how do I make the table cell in which {{portal}} appears the same width (more or less) as the box {{portal}} creates? Is it by using width:inherit and/or width:auto somehow? Any help appreciated. Sardanaphalus (talk) 11:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

WP Australia

I've reverted your change to BannerMeta for WP:AUS. The change appeared to introduce problems with importance ratings. Looks like an interesting banner however if these problems can be fixed we'd be happy to look at using it. -- Longhair\^talk 21:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Er, dot dot dot? What problems, exactly, did the change cause? I'd be delighted to help fix any errors (given the length of the new code, it's probably just a trivial slip somewhere in the middle) but I can't help unless I know what went wrong. Happy‑melon 21:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I was working on the list of changes required... some I've found so far are: Check the log at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Australian crime articles by quality log. Note that many articles were removed from the project since your change to the template? It appears importance ratings are the problem. It also seems that articles not categorised into a subproject are not able to be rated for importance. Also, the template should check to ensure it's been posted to a talk page. Some users paste them into article space at times. The current template already performs this check. I hope this helps. I've only performed quick glances at your changes but will look into it more over my morning coffee :) -- Longhair\^talk 21:32, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Okey dokey, let's have a look... Looks like I forgot to set |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=yes, which means that the main project doesn't take importance values via |importance=. {{WPBannerMeta}} has a built-in namespace check so an error message will display in the mainspace. I'll need to look more closely at the Australian crime issue. Happy‑melon 11:40, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, found the problem - one more undefined parameter |ASSESSMENT_CAT=, causing all Australian crime articles to just be filed to Category:xx-importance. Are there any other taskforces which noticed problems? Happy‑melon 11:45, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

No other problems that I can find, however the crime project was the only project that had generated a log while your new template was in place. I suspect the problem that affected this subproject would affect them all? If you feel it's ready for another try, let's go. -- Longhair\^talk 22:01, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm reverting once again, see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Australian history articles by quality log. Again, major removals of articles from our project are occurring with the usage of your template. -- Longhair\^talk 09:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more - this time I'm a bit stumped. I've made up a sandbox version and an all-parameters-up testcase at Template:WP Australia/testcases. Every category should be expressed there, so if you wouldn't mind having a look at that monster block of categories and telling me if there are any that should be there that aren't, I'd be very grateful. In the meantime I'm going to write a wrapper to avoid having to put |BANNER_NAME= parameters everywhere, because that was quite ridiculous. Happy‑melon 10:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem appears to affect only articles where no importance parameter has been provided. Hope this helps. -- Longhair\^talk 10:04, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

A minor detail, but an important one nonetheless. Can you please comment out or remove the display of Image:Australian Aboriginal Flag.svg , used for providing an image for the Indigenous peoples of Australia WikiProject. As the image is licenced as fair use, we are unable to use the image for display purposes within the Australia banner. Cheers. -- Longhair\^talk 10:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Done - replaced with Image:Replace this image.svg. How does the testcase page look? Happy‑melon 11:19, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a thorough look over the testcases in the morning when I've got no distractions. Cheers. -- Longhair\^talk 12:02, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I've battered my way through a fair number of bugs already, and I think I've fixed everything I can see wrong (which was a fair bit! :D). I'll wait for your second pair of eyes-on before trying a third time - no rush, after all. Happy‑melon 13:40, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Try again. It's school holidays here, therefore distractions are somewhat few and far between :) I'll let you know if any bugs resurface. Cheers. -- Longhair\^talk 02:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Appears to be working ok for now. I'll keep an eye out for any bugs. -- Longhair\^talk 11:34, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Woo break out the champagne! In case everything works and you don't need to come running here again, thanks for your help error-checking this deployment - it would have made a real mess without you! Happy‑melon 11:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Not so fast with the champagne :) A minor issue with categorisation is evident. An example is available at Talk:List of Indigenous Australians in politics and public service. -- Longhair\^talk 11:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

 Fixed. The template was checking whether the parameter was defined... but then discarded the result and ploughed on regardless :D Happy‑melon 11:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

All looks well. Another minor issue... Would it be possible to automatically sort tagged categories into a NA assessment category? An example of what I refer to is at Category talk:Biota of South Australia where you'll note the category as being tagged as such by the relevant subproject, however an assessment rating isn't required but is expected. Nice work so far. -- Longhair\^talk 15:58, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmn... how wierd. That's certainly not expected behaviour. Bug-finder, attack!! Happy‑melon 16:10, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

This issue appears to affect importance values also. Thanks. -- Longhair\^talk 16:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I've reverted again - that's one's an absolute bitch. I've got ten code windows open on three computers, and I can't for the life of me work out what's happening. There seems to be a number of subtle errors which combine to make it almost impossible to assess anything in a taskforce - it's almost as if the code physically doesn't like taking orders from {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforce}}!! I need to set up a full sandbox with every page involved in the chain, and start mucking around. Grrrr..... Happy‑melon 16:34, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Chin up. Rome wasn't built in a day. Nor was our banner :) You'll get there. -- Longhair\^talk 16:34, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Found it - what a nasty little error: seems {{ucfirst:...}} doesn't do quite what you'd expect it to - it just makes sure the first letter is capitalised, wheras I was expecting it to also make the rest of the letters lowercase. Fourth time lucky... Happy‑melon 18:21, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

As you can see from Template:WP Australia/testcases, a huge number of the possible NA-Class, NA-importance and Category-Class categories don't exist when they should... but that's not the banner's fault (for a change!) :D Happy‑melon 18:26, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

All looks good this time around. As it's 4.30am here, I'm retiring for now. I'll fill in those category blanks in the morning. Well done on your efforts. Hopefully we'll progress along nicely from this point onwards. -- Longhair\^talk 18:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:PLANTS categories

Hi there! I reverted all of your category moves for WP:PLANTS assessment categories. The move was incomplete (we were left with two List-class categories, one as List-class and one as List-Class) and you left many broken links all over the place to the lowercase categories (userpages, archived talk pages, etc.). Is there any substantial reason for moving them to the uppercase with the exception of the obvious (and in my opinion, unnecessary) conformity? The WP 1.0 bot still recognizes our categories and nothing's broken. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 21:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The reason for the move is, as you rightly surmised, conformity with all 13,000-some other Category:X-Class Foo articles, of which only two projects (Plants and carnivorous plants use lower case "c"lass. However, you are incorrect in believing that "nothing is broken" as a result of this non-conformity. The WP 1.0 bot does, as you note, handle a considerable range of wierd and wonderful category names because it actually ignores the category names entirely and just looks for subcategories of Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments and Category:B-Class articles, etc. Other bots and scripts which have no choice but to run on the category names, are not so lucky. I noticed these two projects whilst running my own script to populate Category:C-Class articles in preparation for the upcoming implementation of C-Class assessments. You'll notice that there are two fewer subcategories in Category:C-Class articles than there are in Category:B-Class articles?? Guess which two projects are now missing C-Class categories and will hence run into problems in the coming weeks. Of course in this case it would be easy to just create the categories manually and move on, but it is only because I was monitoring the script very closely that I even noticed that the plants category had been missed. What happens the next time a bot script is run on the categories, or the time after that? So rather than simply brush the problem under the carpet, I tried to actually fix it. So I'm sorry for leaving loose ends, but surely the more productive thing to have done would be to have informed me of that so I could finish the job, rather than just restoring the problem to its original state? I would, of course, have been more than happy to ensure that any changes I made were complete and did not cause problems for WPPLANTS - as I have said, the whole purpose of the exercise was to prevent a years-old accident from causing future problems. To echo your question, is there any substantial reason, other than the effort involved in moving the categories (which you have, of course, doubled :D), for not moving them? The majority of bot scripts which handle the assessment categories will not recognise your categories, and they are currently very much broken. Cheers, Happy‑melon 12:48, 3 July 2008 (UTC) :P

For my edification, what other bots and scripts have been running into this problem? Or is that simply a "it could happen in the future more often" statement? Are there other bots that utilize the WP:PLANTS assessment categories? Your changes to the category capitalization were abrupt without discussion for what I've been told is a server-hogging process. So you can understand, whether or not the changes were server-intensive, why I wanted to halt the migration of articles from one category to the next until I found out the specific reason for the move. A simple question left for WP:PLANTS on why we had our categories that way would have been appreciated, though I can understand how you were plowing through massive changes via a script like that and just wanted to steamroll over this, too.

I had also been monitoring the C-class implementation discussions and planned on doing it myself, against the general consensus so far in our discussion of the new class. Is this the future problem you were referring to, or are there more?

A question for you, then. I realize hard redirecting (not by using the category redirect template) categories is uncommon - do you think this would be an appropriate use? Or would a bot be able to alter all the talk page or user page instances of links to the old category name (mostly for Category:Unassessed-Class plant articles, but there could be another I'm missing). I'd gladly take care of this with User:BotanyBot and the category moves, too, and do a thorough job of it since I set them up, though I reserve the right to continue to gripe about the non-parallel capitalization e.g. A-Class; Low-importance ;-). Who's idea was that, anyway? Well, let me know and I'll go to it for both projects. Apologies for restoring before contacting. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 02:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I think communication is the watchword throughout here; I owe you and WPPlANTS a reciprocal apology for not dropping such a note. However, I thought it would be a quick and simple change to make.

For future reference, no, recaching of pages is not a particularly server-intensive process. When a template such as {{WikiProject Plants}} is modified, every page which is thereby changed is not recached immediately (as was once the case) but is put into a job queue to be updated asynchronously when the server is idle - a template with more transclusions simply takes longer to fully update, it's no more burden to the server than an ordinary edit. But that's by the by. In answer to your question, yes, I guess it is 'just' a "it could happen in the future" statement; the point is that it's disruption and issues that neither WPPLANTS nor bot operators want or need, and disruption that can be so easily avoided by a few simple edits. I need to run the C-Class initialisation script on the other xx-Class articles parent categories at some point (each master category has a slightly different number of subcategories!), and someone needs to do a run to sort out the sortkeys in Category:B-Class articles especially, or no one is going to be able to find anything in there. These are the sort of processes which use the Category:Articles by quality categories apart from WP 1.0 bot: scripts that are supposed to be helping projects; but which just tie themselves up in a knot and create more problems when they encounter little unexpected things like this.

I don't think hard redirects would be particularly useful; the number of links involved is quite small, so I would think it easier simply to update them all. As I said, I'd be more than happy to do the job properly, but if you already have a script in place, then do go ahead! No comment <stifles urge = to strangle someone> on said no-parallel capitalisation </stifle> :D

Thanks for staying communicative and rational... Happy‑melon 10:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation on the process behind category moves. I'll go ahead and restore the changes and make the necessary alterations for both projects sometime today. I'll also check to make sure our sortkeys are used properly. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 13:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

A-Class criteria

Happy-Melon, thank you so much for your help on the assessment scheme changes! It's been a superb contribution. I just made an edit to the A-Class "short" description, and I wanted to check that you're OK with the change I made since it's getting close to when we begin posting. The reasons were (a) I wanted to keep the description as brief as possible, while conveying the basic meaning, and (b) I was concerned that some WikiProjects may take offence if they are considered "disorganised" because they don't have a formal review scheme. Are you OK with my edit? I may tweak the criteria just a little, too. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 19:53, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

As I said in the edit summary of my next edit over yours, you've hit the nail on the head, especially since the same information is just a click away. Am I correct in that we're running (I feel like a journalist!) with the collapsed table then? Happy‑melon 19:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, we can run with that. I just went to paste over the top at {{Grading scheme}} and I see that there is a difference between your version and the version there - there is a lot of sophisticated code such as {{FA-Class|category=Category:FA-Class {{#if:{{{Project|}}}|{{{Project}}}}} articles}}, which I can't handle! I don't want to screw up any customisation that WikiProjects may have built into their systems. Can you fix this? I daren't! Walkerma (talk) 20:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. There are still a few things I want to play with on the C-Class and Start-Class descriptions. Happy‑melon 20:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Revert

Thanks for that, you beat me to it by seconds. I don't have a clue what that was about, but thanks for undoing it. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 20:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Main page

I reverted your changes, they seem to have broken things. BJ^Talk 09:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yar, thanks! It'll all make sense in an hour, trust me :D... doesn't look too good ATM though!! Happy‑melon 09:35, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

'Grats for borking the mainpage :)

linky *well mannered trout goes here* Q ^{T C} 09:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Gratz I have to say ^^. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 09:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I've seen the metabanner

However, it's protected, and I can't edit it.

And there's only one editor that commented on the ideas I'm trying to achieve, so it would be premature to change the meta-banner anyway. I've moved my effort to Template:Generic WikiProject Banner.Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 12:15, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, the meta-banner is not "permanent", and can be used unevenly on a WikiProject. This code is meant to be copied and modify for a specific Wikiproject, so that they get a solid, customizable, and permanent banner. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 12:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Wicked

Thanks for the reversion/semi-protection. I've left a message on the IP's talk page explaining why we don't want the cast lists... with luck he should see sense and leave it. Ta -- Dafyd (talk) 12:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Bringing out the axes

Hi Happy-melon, I'm not sure if asking people what section they want to axe is a very productive way to move forward on the redesign proposal. OTD, ITN, DYK and FA all have a lot of volunteers that work really hard on their sections, and so it actually seems to me to be basically a request for a giant fist fight. Why would we even start out at the very beginning of the proposals with the assumption that we should axe an entire section? --JayHenry (talk) 17:59, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

So you personally feel strongly that none of the sections should go - I suggest that you make a post to that effect. However, as you can see from the discussion, a number of people have strong feelings in the other direction, and since we have very deliberately put the entire page up for grabs, not just its formatting, they are just as entitled to wish those sections gone as you are to like them present. The purpose of the discussion is just that: to discuss (it's actually also to try and persuade the designers to be a bit more radical than just changing some fonts and colours). It's not a reality TV vote to 'evict' a section. Obviously if one of the final designs does ommit a section, then what happens to the infrastructure and participants behind that area will, of course, have to be considered. But the Main Page is without a doubt the most inert page on-wiki (inevitably so), so when we finally do open it up for change, we should have a genuine free-for-all. Happy‑melon 18:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying. I understand you're thinking about a sort of creative destruction but I think it's highly unlikely the volunteers of the sections people support destroying are going to be happy about it. Not only is it likely to be demoralizing for those volunteers, but once people slip into turf-battle mode I can pretty much guarantee you that the page will remain inert. --JayHenry (talk) 18:15, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course they won't be happy about it. However, if there is strong support for a design that doesn't include their section, then they'll just have to lump it - that's what consensus is all about. I repeat: the discussion is not based on a presumption that one or more sections will or have to go in my or any other design; it is, as the title says, market research. But I think that making the assumption that any design that removes a section is certain to fail is underoptimistic - and in this discussion phase, no holds should be barred. Happy‑melon 18:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's almost ludicrous to phrase a question like that and call it market research. It's asking the wrong question and doing it in vaguely jingoistic language (axing?). If the question you're trying to get at is "What are the weaknesses of the Main Page?" then figure out a way to ask that. Your entire set up does beg the question. Again, I don't disagree with your end goal, I'm quibbling with the means you're using to get there. I also didn't say that removing a section is certain to fail, I said starting a turf war is certain to fail. I'm not defending sacred cows for the sake of defending sacred cows, but no matter--I've said my peace, and apparently failed to do so clearly. Good luck. --JayHenry (talk) 19:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

A discussion

A discussion on Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ? is open here . We welcome you to participate and give your valuable opinions. You are receiving this note as you are a member of WikiProject Council -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 12:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink bannering system

Hey, thanks for the offer on the template. I had modified the WPFood template with the tf_1, tf_2... tf_8 switches. Your edit sorta changed that.

You can see what examples at WikiPedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Banners, with the template at {{WikiProject Food and drink}}.

I would love help getting this all put together.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 16:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 17:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Nesting

Do you know if the FTHOOKS template supports nesting? There is a link on its sub-page that states there is a separate template for that. Any ideas?

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 03:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

The {{WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforces}} hook doesn't support anything in the nested display; you need a separate hook ({{WPBannerMeta/hooks/tfnested}}) for that, which I have just written. Not thoroughly tested as-yet, but stable, so feel free to use, and let me know if you spot any bugs. If you need a hand with anything, just let me know. Happy‑melon 10:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Two banners with one tag

{{WikiProject Hinduism}}

This banner has a series of switches that creates a banner for child WikiProjects that is placed above the main project banner. Is there any way this can be incorporate into the WPBannerMeta template? Or could it be added to the Food and Drink template separately? I think this could do everything I was looking to do and make the other projects happy as well.

If you could set it as a hook like TFHooks, that would be ideal. You could call it CWPHOOKS.

The example is here

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 02:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

page protection on Views of Lyndon LaRouche

Hi Happy-melon -

I'm contacting you since you are the protecting admin on the Views of Lyndon LaRouche page. I've been doing some research on long-term page protection policy (in general, not about that page in particular) and noticed that page has been protected since April 9.

It looks like there's been no discussion there since then so I wonder if maybe the protection is no longer needed and you might like to unprotect it.

I am not familiar with what led up to the protection. If you'd rather keep it protected that's fine with me. I don't edit that page, so this is not a personal request, just something that came up related to the research I've been doing.

Thanks and have a good day... --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

This particular page has been under full protection for a very long time; long enough for most people to have given up on it IMO. I found it whilst answering an editprotected request; when I realised how long it had been under lock, I unprotected, triggering some compliant. I reprotected and started an AN thread, now archived, which died leaving the situation unchanged. I'm not particularly happy with the indef protection, but nothing much seems to have come of efforts to change it. Happy‑melon 10:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation and the link to the AN report you posted. After reading that and the earlier AN/I report, I see that page has a much longer problem history than I was aware of before. It's unfortunate for a page to stay protected for a long time, but with this one there seems to be no clear solution. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 16:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign

Hi Happy-melon (*awesome* username =]). I really liked some of the ideas you had on the main page redesign discussion, and was hoping you might have the time to have a look at my current submission and offer me some advice on improving it? Many thanksMy submission » Pretzels^chatters 15:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello. I like the idea of changing the main page as well. I don't have the time to create a design at the moment, but I've put my thoughts in the talk page at #71 if they are any use to you.Meddlin' Pedant (talk) 23:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Quick question

I noticed in assessment categories from Template:WP Australia - eg Category:WikiProject_Western_Australia_articles - that all the assessed articles are going in with a first character of }. Any idea what would be causing this? Orderinchaos 10:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes I do, and it's now  Fixed. Just give it a few hours to work through the job queue. Thanks for noticing this! Happy‑melon 11:08, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

No worries! :) Thanks for that. Orderinchaos 11:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Boldness

While I applaud boldness, in the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, we're now in the third phase – discussion. I've reverted your change to Common.css. As TheDJ pointed out on the talk page, adding even more code to an already-huge page for 1 out of 13 million pages is debatable. (And in my view and the view of others, simply silly to do.) I have no problem with people wanting to implement change around here, but when things like the Main Page are suddenly broken due to a hastily implemented change to the links (/cough/ /cough/), it becomes a bit of a bigger deal. Change is good, but only after a reasonable level of discussion has taken place for big changes where people can point out issues or object outright. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

To be irritated and snide first: you are fully aware that the two actions you mention (me breaking the main page and this edit to CSS) are entirely unconnected, so it does you no service to draw one into the other. Polite abuse is entirely expected when someone screws up like that, and I naturally got my fair share for an entirely stupid accident. But the whole point of the trout is to recognise honest mistakes and rely on embarassment to make people not make them again. You know that the CSS change is a completely different kettle of fish, so keep the two apart - you can't use one to make the other "a bigger deal" just because they are both tangentially connected to the Main Page, and you can't even say that they demonstrate a chain of stupid mistakes because only one actually broke anything.

Having got that off my chest, and please don't take more than a few minutes offence (yes, I am bitching at you, but my general respect for you as an editor is undiminished); to business. While there has been general comment several times at Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal about skinning the Main Page (or a future version thereof) I agree that there are concerns to be addressed, and it is not a clear-cut cost/benefit analysis. The only question is where to have said discussion: there are a number of people on that talk page who would be very interested in participating; shall I attract their attention to MediaWiki talk:Common.css or should the discussion there move to the redesign page? I'd personally advocate the former for a more balanced discussion. Cheers, Happy‑melon 21:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Heh. It's always interesting to find replies days later. It brings an entirely different perspective to the situation, I've found. The topic I was bringing up (which I aptly made the header for the discussion) was boldness, more than anything else. While the Main Page edits were mistakes, they could've been avoided. As could have the edits to Common.css. Which I believe was discussed on the respective talk pages. I think one point that wasn't made on the Common.css talk page already is that if for some reason the CSS page fails to load, in-line style citations act as a safety net. Though without Common.css, I suppose the entire site would look like shit anyway...

As I said previously, I applaud the boldness. I left a note here not to admonish you as much as I simply wanted to tell you that I had reverted you (as a courtesy) and explain my rationale. This avoids you seeing the change in your watchlist and going, "what the hell?" The idea of skinning the Main Page seems to be a pretty good one, but undoubtedly others may want to weigh in. And, until we know exactly what will be on the Main Page going forward, we may want to hold off on adding anything to the CSS page. On a side note, personally, I want to murder that trout meme with my bare hands, but, oh well. ; - ) Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, and I hadn't thought about the 'safety net' idea at all. It sounds from the talk on MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Skinning the main page that we can leave the inline styles and allow it to be overridden with personal CSS anyway - as someone there pointed out, there really isn't much point in adding all the code to common just for the main page if it's easy to avoid it. It would be a fascinating experiment to try and write a personal CSS to 'cancel' the site CSS - as you say, I expect most of our pages would look pretty awful... As for the trout, well.... :D Happy‑melon 08:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Request for advice

Hi; as a random admin can I ask your advice on a dispute I'm in? Arcayne (talk · contribs · logs · block log) decided that the word story, when used to describe the overall plotline of a two-part serial, actually implied "a printed medium". Interestingly, Arcayne claims to have two Oxford University degrees and have published multiple books, including at least one work of fiction, but that's by-the-by - does seem strange that he has such strange definitions of words. He also thought that penultimate meant "the climax of the story", rather than what it actually means, which is obviously, "second-to-last". He then became quite offensive and then even more offensive in his edit-summary.
Anyway, when I posted on his page to disabuse him of the idea, he rapidly removed it, but what I take offence to is this: "Please stay the hell away from me; you have nothing to say I find of any value." How was my comment not of any value?
This happens to me right across my editing. Arcayne has a lot of very, very, very wacky ideas (like that cast-lists shouldn't list the characters, only the actors' names - making it hard for readers to work out who played who) which he defends against consensus, but pointedly ignores my comments - it's not a workable situation. So, what do you suggst? :-) ╟─Treasury§Tag►contribs─╢ 06:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that's wacky ol' me. I seem to take offense when I ask someone to stay away from my user talk page - someone who has in pint of fact banned me from theirs. offered not on but two ANI's about how I am just the worst person in the whole wide world and apparently play parcheesi with the debbil and whatnot.

The advice TT was given at each of the (failed) ANI's was to avoid my edits. Period. And still, he chooses to post to my edits in the snarkiest way possible. I choose to ignore them instead of getting bated into his disruptive, never-ending arguments. Apparently, not paying attention to him really kicks his goat. Frankly, I don't really care one way or the other about whatever drama TT wants; I just dont want to play.

The discussion regarding story versus episode was one I was having with the user U-MOS in his usertalk page. TT butted in, thinking he had something I wanted to hear. AGF doesn't mean ignoring bad behavior. The snide little asides about my education were lifted almost verbatim from an IP troll who was subsequently blocked for making the exact same allegations.

Advise how you will, Happy-Melon. This particular user's drama isn't worth my time, as they have clearly shown that my contributions aren't worth his. He refuses DR, which I have approached him with on two prior occasions. He has nothing to say that I remotely want to hear. I won't clutter up your user space with further comments. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell})08:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, where do I begin? Probably by noting that there are two very distinct issues here, which need not be confused. I'm not going to make any comment on the content issues, both because they appear to be largely resolved and because it is not an appropriate use of administrator status for me to do so. I would, however, like to take the opportunity to commend everyone who's worked on Journey's End (Doctor Who) and The Stolen Earth for doing a thoroughly good job - they both made very enlightening reading for someone who does not follow the series. There is, however, clearly also a significant problem with interaction between the pair of you. I haven't read all the background at ANI, your talkpages, etc (I spend three hours last night reading the entirety ofWikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee so I'm in no mood to do any serious reading today :D), but from what I have seen, you seem incapable of working constructively together. This is not uncommon: there are two editors, regrettably only one of which is still editing, with whom I have a tacit agreement that we just Don't Like Each Other. This has not, as far as I'm aware, prejudiced our ability to build the encyclopedia, even when we've been working on the same bits (although we rarely do overlap).

There are two ways of handling an serious division between two editors. The first is to avoid one another. This is not nearly as difficult on a website with 14 million pages as it might at first appear. It is complicated slightly by your interest in editing the same series of articles, but this is not necessarily a problem. If you intend to avoid each other, simply avoid commenting on the other's actions in any way, no matter what you might think of them. If the other starts a talkpage discussion about an issue, ignore it and go work somewhere else. If they make an edit you think is against policy, let someone else deal with it and go work on another article. 'Banning' another editor from your talk page is both silly, POINTy and contrary to policy; but if you have a tacit understanding between you that neither will listen to the other's comments and hence there is no point interacting, the same effect can be obtained with considerably less aggravation. There is plenty of wiki out there for you to both work productively and peacefully, without ever having to come into contact.

The alternative, of course, is to attempt to resolve the dispute. Whatever means of moderation you might choose (Mediation committee, mediation cabal, dispute resolution, whatever), it will only work if both parties agree to be fully involved. As I've said, I haven't read the full history of this dispute and so do not feel capable of making findings-of-fact, but I would be very surprised to learn that either of you was entirely innocent of contributing to the tension here. If you want to resolve this dispute, you will both need to change your attitudes and approaches to some degree. If you're both prepared to make that effort, then you will get much more satisfaction from a full resolution than you will from simply making the problem go away. But unless both sides are prepared to go that extra mile, I would recommend that you continue with what you're already doing, but do it properly. TT, that ambox at the top of your talk page is certainly not helping matters, I would recommend that you remove it (or at least the big purple message from the top of it), as I would expect Arcayne has got the message. If you are going to ignore each other, do it everywhere, not just in User talk:. Try to avoid any situation where you might want to post on one another's talk page, and it won't matter whether or not you're 'banned' from it.

There are only two other comments I'd make. Arcayne: remember Essjay; no one cares whether or where you went to university, even if we could verify it. And TT, your signature is still affecting linespacing slightly on IE7 :D. Happy‑melon 12:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I still maintain that I do have to say things of value, and since Arcayne persistently makes wacky changes which require the entire rest of WP:WHO to fight against them (because Arcayne Is Right), it is awkward that I am expected to bow out of such project-wide issues. ╟─Treasury§Tag►contribs─╢ 13:27, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

If you are keen to keep interacting with Arcayne, then I encourage you to start or participate in some form of dispute resolution. Arcayne has claimed above that he has offered such mediation before and you have declined; not having researched the full background I do not know if this is the case (and do not particularly care), but I would encourage you to approach WP:DR or WP:MEDCAB. If Arcayne genuinely is at odds with an entire WikiProject then I am surprised that his block log is not longer than it already is. Happy‑melon 13:33, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I am by no means keen to continue interacting; I just have to choose between communicating with him (difficult, when he falsely maintains that I am a waste of space) or boycotting "my" WikiProject - something it is unreasonable of him and/or you to expect me to do. ╟─Treasury§Tag►contribs─╢ 14:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

That's not what I'm asking you to do at all; there is plenty of room in a project of 1,400 articles for you and he to never be on the same page at the same time. However, if you don't feel that that is possible, then you need to be proactive in starting and participating in some form of dispute resolution; so I'd encourage you to take the lead and investigate those processes without delay. Happy‑melon 14:25, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

You offer some good advice about how to not interact with the other editor. I've mostly done that, except when poked with a sharp stick by TT. I do not make a big deal out of my education (though I am proud of it); it has come up when explaining that I actually went to secondary school, when something basic comes up. I know all about Essjay, and I wouldn't make a false claim. If I did, I'd claim something far more interesting, like having slept with Maxim's Top 10...at the same time (Nudge nudge, say no more).

As far as DR, the most recent attempt was here and quickly deleted/dismissed here. Before that was either in article discussion space or in one of the failed AN/I's the fellow offered up, but it was indeed offered prior. While I hold out hope for just about everyone, someone who posts a specific attack at the top of their user talk page gets little in the way of rhythm from me. Ignoring him seems the best way to proceed, or ANI when he goes on the attack. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 14:25, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign - Pretzels

Hey! I took your comments into account and here's what my proposal now looks like. Notes on the discussion page. Any more hints or tips to offer? =] My submission » Pretzels^chatters 16:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

main page redesign proposal

Hi, I saw your comments over on main page redesign proposal and was hoping that you could take a look at my proposal and give me some feedback.--88wolfmaster (talk) 21:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Non-admins and the mediawiki namespace

Hey, just saw your comment at abuse filter regarding a non-admin editing the MW: namespace... Just wanted to let you know, that it hasn't always been limited to admins... See, The list I generated of edits to the MW: namespace by non-admins for instance... There are of course, plenty of former admins in there, but, also a bunch of IP's (fwiw it's a *complete* list)... Anyhow, didn't know if you knew :) SQL^{Query me!} 18:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It is also posible for non admins to rack up edits to the mediawiki namespace by editing outside and then haveing the edits moved in.Geni 14:42, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Toolserveraccount

Hello Happy-melon,
please send your real-name, your wikiname, your prefered login-name and the public part of your ssh-key to . We plan to create your account soon then. --DaB. 14:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Possibly unfree Image:Delete-reason-field-2.PNG

An image that you uploaded or altered, Image:Delete-reason-field-2.PNG, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the image description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. OsamaK 10:46, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

WP banner help

I am trying to revitalize WP:WikiProject New Jersey and bring it up to date with tools and bots that can make things work more smoothly. I've been following some of the conversations about WPBannerMeta and think WPNJ could do with the change. There is not much activity going on in the WP right now, so I am going ahead to do some improvements before trying to get people re-involved. We have a non-standard banner name (template:Project New Jersey) with redirects from WPNJ and WikiProject New Jersey. In order to use some bots, and automated tools, I would like to standardize the banner. I have not seen articles with comments, and many of our older lists use type= instead of List-Class, etc. Could you take a look and see if you could update the banner, and maybe we can switch the redirect so the WikiProject banner is not a redirect? Thanks. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me | Review me} 19:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, t'was fairly easy to straighten out. I've made some bot edits to your templates, categories and lists to straighten the syntax out, and implemented WPBannerMeta. Let me know if anything looks wrong or things aren't categorising as they should. Happy‑melon 21:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks great. Now I just need to get people to look at it. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me | Review me} 16:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Your edits to Template:Chemistry

Hi, I saw you updated the Template:Chemistry to a new format. It seems to work all fine, except for this. That article is now categorised in Category:Unassessed chemistry articles and Category:NA-importance chemistry articles because it is defined as 'class=NA'. In the old format, the categorisation was completely ignored for articles which are in that 'class' (as they did not have to be categorised as such). Could you have a look at that? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:53, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Template question

Hi, you seem to know a lot about templates (meta:User:Happy-melon/Templates is a great page :-). Do you know if there is any way for a template to automatically detect unknown parameter names from within a template? E.g. if someone misspells one of the parameter names, etc. Thanks, Mollerup (talk) 09:22, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Only by building an exhaustive list of possible mistakes into the template. For instance, if your template used the parameter |foo=, you could include code like:

{{#if:
  {{{Foo|}}}{{{FOo|}}}{{{FOO|}}}{{{fOO|}}}{{{fooo|}}}{{{Fooo|}}}{{{fOoo|}}}{{{foooo|}}}
 |[[:Category:Templates with misspelled parameters]]
}}

But that is incredibly inelegant, bulky, and rather ineffective. Alternatively, you could insist on having all parameters defined, even if they aren't used, throwing errors if the parameter is left undefined. So if you had a template:

{{#ifeq:{{{foo|μ}}}|μ|ERROR!| {{#if:{{{foo}}}|Hello world!|We can still do parser functions}} }}

Then calling it with {{mytemplate|foo=yes}} → "Hello world!", and {{mtemplate|foo=}} → "We can still do parser functions", but {{mytemplate|fooooo=yes}} → "ERROR!". This is also very messy and adds a lot to the code size and preprocessor node count. So in short, no, not easily. Happy‑melon 09:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick reply! I guess there is no easy solution :-) --Mollerup (talk) 09:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Question about User:Happy-melon/sandbox1

What are your plans at User:Happy-melon/sandbox1? Adding all the WikiProject banners is messing up the assessment counts for the projects. I was going to remove some of the ones for projects I do assessment for, but if there is a grand experiment going on here...I'll wait. :) Nikki311 20:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

There was indeed a grand experiment going on (to see which project banners had C-Class support) but it's over now, so I've blanked the page. Thanks for pointing that out! Happy‑melon 20:12, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Disputed non-free use rationale for Image:Snapejinxingbroom.jpg

Thank you for uploading Image:Snapejinxingbroom.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this image on Wikipedia may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the image description page and add or clarify the reason why the image qualifies under this policy. Adding and completing one of the templates available from Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. Please be aware that a non-free use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for images used under the non-free content policy require both a copyright tag and a non-free use rationale.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under the non-free content policy, it might be deleted by an administrator within a few days in accordance with our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stifle (talk) 11:28, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

24 project banner

Hi, I saw you update this template, however the issue I now see is there is an importance scale, and we never had one, as the importance of an article varies from person to person. Can we have the old template back? Steve Public (talk) 12:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, for some reason I thought you'd previously been using one. Enabling or disabling it is as simple as setting |IMPORTANCE_SCALE= in the template: |IMPORTANCE_SCALE=yes means it's enabled, leaving it blank disables it. Have a read of Template:WPBannerMeta for more details on the range of functionality available from the metatemplate. Thanks for pointing this out! Happy‑melon 12:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• Marvellous, thanks. I actually re-wrote the original 24 project template, but I wasn't aware of the meta template :). Thanks again. Steve Crossin (talk) (contact page) 12:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Why did you redirect Template:GaelicGamesProjectCategory?

Why did you redirect {{GaelicGamesProjectCategory}} and others? Gnevin (talk) 00:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Because it was possible to do so. I have been spring-cleaning CAT:WPB, decategorising sandboxes, ensuring that all templates accept the |nested= parameter, fixing whitespace issues, and removing redundancy. In the case of these templates, I realised that with a very minor alteration to {{GaelicGamesProject}}, it could precisely duplicate the functionality of the other three templates, making them entirely redundant. Why should the Gaelic Games project have to maintain four templates when one would suffice? The quickest and easiest (and also as you have demonstrated, most reversible) way to achieve this end was to redirect the other templates to your main banner after making the necessary changes such that the appearance and functionality of the template remained the same everywhere. So let me ask you: why did you revert my changes? Happy‑melon 11:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Because it was a) not discussed and b) totally unclear as edit summaries such as tweak and redirect aren't exactly clear and c) you changes don't to the same as separate templates Gnevin (talk) 17:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, let's just say A) and leave it at that. If every change to every page or even every template needed to be extensively discussed, wikipedia would be even more inert than it already is. Perhaps a clearer edit summary than "tweak" should have been provided (although I would maintain that "redirect" is fairly self-explanatory!), but the changes I made should have been self-explanatory to anyone with a reasonable grasp of template code. Your last point, however, concerns me, because I was very careful to ensure that there was no change in functionality or appearance. If I failed to achieve that, I want to know about it. Please can you explain in what way the functionality of any of the templates was changed by the merge? Happy‑melon 13:24, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:Bold has limits and effecting over 2,500 pages which would need to be updated is really pushing Bold unless you intended to add the necessary tags. In which case you should of added the tags to the pages first and then changed the template. The text for categories reads This category is part of WikiProject Gaelic games your changes meant every page read This article is part of WikiProject Gaelic games Gnevin (talk) 13:43, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I am aware of the extent of WP:BOLD; however the definition of "heavily-used template", the cutoff for unilateral changes, is far above the few thousand this template boasts. But that's by-the-by, there is very little point in arguing over whether or not the changes should have been made. We are now at the discuss phase, so let's discuss. My tests demonstrate that the error you mention simply did not occur - that was the whole point of the edits to the first part of the template. However, my tests just now did reveal that the change I made to that first "article" should have, and were not, copied to the two other instances of "article" in the text; not doing that meant that the text on category pages read "This category is part of WikiProject Gaelic games, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Gaelic games. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page...", when of course all those bolded words should have said "category". My mistake, my apologies. As I've said, it is easily rectified by implementing the same change to the other two words. Is there any reason, therefore, why we should not make that change and redirect the templates? Happy‑melon 14:09, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Will your proposed changed required a bot run to add the correct indicator tag so the correct text/category shows ? Gnevin (talk) 19:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

No alteration to the pages where the template is transcluded will be required. The code that I added to {{GaelicGamesProject}} means that, if no parameter is given in the template call, a default is selected based on the namespace where the template is being displayed; effectively it says "assume 'category' in the Category talk: namespace unless told otherwise". You could still pass |class=Template if you wanted and get it to say "template" in the Category talk: namespace, but naturally you wouldn't want to do that. So all it will require is edits to the templates. Happy‑melon 19:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok that's fine and next time consider a little more informative edit summary ;) Gnevin (talk) 20:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

 Done, I will. Thanks for a calm, professional discussion! Happy‑melon 20:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries , thanks for your useful and helpful change to the template Gnevin (talk) 20:15, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

help template progress?

if your revision of the help template going anywhere? I've been tempted to go ahead and merge the current versions (possibly with subpages, or by moving some of the excess over to the Advanced templates page), but I can't figure out what the current consensus is. I mean, the whole merge conversation seems a little lukewarm...  :-) where do you think it stands? --Ludwigs2 06:52, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:RFBOT

Two of your recent bot approvals requests (MelonBot 8 and MelonBot 9) have both been approved. Please see the request pages for details. – Quadell ^(talk) 13:39, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Double woot, thanks!! Happy‑melon 13:43, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Template documentation on {{Tmbox}} was removed

I noticed in your recent update to the template {{Tmbox}} that the documentation information was removed and is now missing. Please check the template's talk page for more information. Thanks. Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 15:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

You may also want to protect the Tmbox/core template as well since Tmbox is protected. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point! Happy‑melon 15:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Article assessment color CSS classes

I notice you removed the assessment color CSS classes in MediaWiki:Common.js. Could you please put those back? Removing them broke my metadata script that uses them, and they may be used elsewhere as well. Also, even if they're not universally adopted, having them there at all will help to standardize color schemes for article assessment. Besides, it doesn't do any harm to leave them there. Thanks, Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 01:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Chicago A-Class review

At User_talk:Kirill_Lokshin#Chicago_A-Class_review, your name came up as someone who could answer some questions about a meta-template. Can you respond there so we can figure out our next step.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 15:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts on the peer review feature? I have been watching Kiril's page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 01:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Would you like me to ask someone else?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 17:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for deleting Template:BibleAsFact. Days before I started questioning it. I would have voted to delete it, but I was busy these past couple of days. --Oh no! it's Alien joe!(Talk) 14:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox#Edit request

Hi again. Before I lose sight of it, any futher advice about the above would be appreciated. Sardanaphalus (talk) 18:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for your reply. Here is where I've compiled a version of {{Infobox Pretenders}} that uses {{Infobox}} followed by one that uses {{Infobox/sandbox}} -- with cellspacing set to 0 for maximum effect -- but see no difference between them. (I'd expect the lines in the latter to sit closer together.) I hope I'm not overlooking something obvious. Any further help much appreciated. Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Tmbox spacing.png

Thanks for uploading Image:Tmbox spacing.png. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

Thank you for your cooperation. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 20:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

2-dimensional referencing

Hi, thanks for your help with references at the Village Pump. Uou mentioned "2-dimensional referencing" - what is that? I assume from the context that is is some improvement on the (frankly counter-productive) Harvard-style seen in the article in question. DuncanHill (talk) 14:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is essentially what it is. Currently each reference can only refer to one specific source object (for a book, the specific page). So when we have a number of different references that refer to different pages in the same book, we have to either write a separate complete reference for each one (see most of the references in Mahdist war, for instance), or do Harvard-style. Each reference is 1-dimensional - each object is entirely separate. With a 2-dimensional reference structure, each reference object can, if desired, be broken into two parts. If both parts are the same for two references, then they are obviously the same, but if only one part of the object (the book title, eg) then the references can share part of their content. The wikicode might look a bit like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.<ref name="ref1" name2="page214">Page 214</ref> Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor.<ref name="ref1" name2="page123">Page 123</ref> Aenean massa.<ref name="ref1" name2="page214" /> Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.<ref name="ref2">You can still use normal references if you want to</ref> Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.<ref name="ref2"/> Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo.
<ref name="ref1">Ref tags with no name2 value wouldn't display inline if another ref tag with a name2 value exists, so you'd put stuff like the book title here.</ref>

But the reference section would display something like this:

1. Ref tags with no name2 value wouldn't display inline if another ref tag with a name2 value exists, so you'd put stuff like the book title here.
   1. Page123
   2. Page214
2. You can still use normal references if you want to

I hope that gives some idea of how it would work. It would be a considerable improvement on the unordered Harvard style currently in use, anyway. Happy‑melon 14:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It would be a vast improvement, thanks for the explanation. DuncanHill (talk) 14:16, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:Countries

As our resident fix-templates-to-work-for-C-Class person, can you have a go at fixing {{WPCountries}}? Funnily enough this is doing the opposite of most templates, it's increasing the number of C-Class (at the moment)! If you look at the wiki code, it says class=B, yet it displays C and puts the article into a C-Class category. Can you see what's wrong? It's too complex for me to fix it myself. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 06:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The template has enabled the B-Class checklist, which prevents the article from being listed as B-Class unless, in addition to setting |class=B, all the B-Class checklist parameters are marked as 'yes' or 'pass' (|b1=yes, |b2=yes... |b6=yes). Unless that is done, articles will be marked as C-Class even if |class=B is set. If this is not desired in this banner, simply remove the |B_CHECKLIST=yes from the metatemplate code. But I'd say this sort of rigour ought to be encouraged as long as the attached project is actually going to complete the B-Checklist assessments. Happy‑melon 20:06, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been working on a replacement for Template:Newdelrev...

at User:Lifebaka/Sandbox/newdelrev, and I was wondering if you would mind taking a look at it and making sure it works. I've tested it for all the different namespace groups I built it for (article, article talk, non-article, non-article talk), but I'll bet there's a bug or two in there I haven't forseen.

I'd also like to substitute a lot of the parser code away. When I tried it on my previous code (last edit on August 14) it broke the template, so I haven't tried it yet on this version, but it'd make it cleaner on the DRV log pages.

If there're any ideas you have for slimming the code, I'd appreciate those too. What I've got works, but I've got a feeling there should be a better way of doing things. Cheers, and thanks. lifebaka++ 02:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I can have a look, but I'm not entirely sure where the template is supposed to be employed. Can you give me an example of the current template 'in the wild'? Happy‑melon 12:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 August 14, top of any unclosed section. Basically, it gives links which are useful in deletion reviews, much like {{afd2}} does in AfDs. But the current code makes use of {{la}} only, even though there are DRVs for pages in all namespaces (the 14th has an image on it, there were some user: pages a few days ago, and we get a category every now and again). Let me know if there's anything else you need or want to know. Cheers. lifebaka++ 12:44, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I see. In that case my recommendation would be to place the links in a transcluded template, like {{tfdlinks}} achieves for all recent TfD discussions. There's no requirement for that code to be substituted into the discussion - it just clutters up the top of the edit window. Having a separate template also makes it much easier to 'block list' multiple pages for discussion at the same time when they are logically connected, allowing the same links to be made easily available for each page under discussion. Making a separate template like this also removes much of the requirement for clean code. I'm not sure why you abandoned using <includeonly>subst:</includeonly> - it would have done what you expected it to and cleaned up the DRV discussion - don't be freaked out by the way it screws up when the template is transcluded instead of substituted. Happy‑melon 12:56, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that's a great idea. Thanks. lifebaka++ 13:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

"csd --> prod --> afd"

Er, that's not quite true. CSD can be applied at any time in the process, so long as the article meets the criteria. A prod does not preclude a speedy tag (neither does an AFD, for that matter). In fact, a speedy can be running at the same time as an AFD/PROD tag...I only removed the prod because it was contested. --UsaSatsui (talk) 20:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC) Also, the user who made those articles has been creating other hoax articles. They're clearly vandalism. I would appreciate you self-reverting, unless you disagree on more than technical grounds. --UsaSatsui (talk) 21:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I am aware of the subtletites, but they're a bit too involved to fit into an edit summary! Suffice to say that the article would not, IMO, have qualified for CSD whether it has previously been prodded or not. Please consider me to have been acting in an admin capacity in removing that CSD tag (I was working CAT:CSD at the time!). Happy‑melon 21:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Very well, they are AFD'd. I didn't notice you were an admin (and if I did, it wouldn't have change d my response), but just so you know, similar articles were deleted under similar circumstances earlier by another admin...I believe the reason he didn't get those two then is because he wanted to clarify the user's actions with some other people. --UsaSatsui (talk) 21:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they are deleted or even snowballed, especially if what you say about the creator's other articles is true. However there is no reason not to give them the opportunity to defend themselves if they are by any chance defensible content (if they were verifiable, I think they would be acceptable articles). Happy‑melon 21:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

A little help on a template

I have created a template for WikiProject pages in the Food and Drink family, which all use the same format for their Project home page.

The template is {{Food wikimedia}}.

What I want to do is an a variable to adapt the template to the particular project but am having trouble getting it to work right. Could you help.

Thanks allot.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 21:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 08:24, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Red border

Hi, could you remove the newly added red border at Template:Stubclass? It's a bit jarring. Thank you, Badagnani (talk) 05:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The border is a feature of the new {{tmbox}} template, and the associated styles that have been agreed for talkspace messageboxes (similar to the ambox, imbox, etc styles for the other namespaces). If you read the discussions at Template talk:Tmbox and particularly Template talk:Tmbox/styles, you'll see that I've been campaigning for some time to ommit these thick coloured borders, as I agree with you entirely that they are extremely distracting. However, consensus has worked against me... if you are prepared to begin a new discussion there, you would have my full support. However, this particular template very clearly falls into the 'content' type, so it would be inappropriate to reclassify it as another type just to avoid the coloured border. Happy‑melon 12:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem with {{WP Australia}}?

Can I ask you to please look into why the banner used for the Australia WikiProject is displaying strange output. An example is available at Talk:Darryn Lyons, and every other Australia-related article for that matter. Cheers. -- Longhair\^talk 19:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

 Fixed Someone managed to add whitespace (and unwanted extra bytes) to a key subpage. Should be fixed now. Happy‑melon 20:38, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Problem with {{album}}

The template of the Album wikipoject doesn`t display the rate of the article, just found out, a few minutes ago; Just check any article with the template. Could you do something about it, please. Zidane tribal (talk) 20:03, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Probably the same problem as above (let me know if it isn't). Happy‑melon 20:38, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Redirect-Class AFC pages

Hi, I am wondering why you deleted Category:Redirect-Class AFC pages, with CSD C1 as it certainly was/is not empty. Thanks LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 21:50, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitely "was" in that choice statement! The thing with categories is, their membership can multiply or divide in minutes if they are populated from a widely-used template - in this case, {{WPAFC}}. I had altered that template to, among other things, categorise redirects into Category:Redirect-Class AFC articles rather than ...AFC pages. I had physically sat there and watched the category empty before my eyes, and then deleted it (yes it should technically have been empty for four days, but waiting the prescribed time period would only have increased the chances of me forgetting it, with no benefit as the category was not going to repopulate itself). Yesterday, my changes to the banner template were reverted, which caused the category to fill back up again, and so for Msjg to recreate it. Happy‑melon 09:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Template deletion

How soon until I can nominate Template:MySpace for deletion again? Ctjf83Talk 21:51, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

It is not a question of "how long can I wait". If you have a look at Template talk:MySpace, you'll see that this template has been TfDd no less than four times, and it has never been deleted. This should give you a suggestion of how the majority of editors feel about it. Happy‑melon 09:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I suppose Ctjf83Talk 11:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Bot request

Hi, I'd just like to, perhaps remind, you of the bot request on the template {{Infobox rugby league biography}}. I know you've been on wikibreak for a while, but that dosen't concern me, its just I would like this done evetually. I don't mean to rush but just to remind you.

The request has moved to the 21st archive of the Bot Requests, for further information, and I'm reachable on my talk page and quite happy to help.  The Windler talk  06:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It's still needed, the ongoing consensus at WP:RL is about the type of content that will go in the infobox. It was decided months ago that the infobox would change. The content the bot changes is just the information from one parameter to various others. We are talking about content (eg. Should we have a nick name section. But that can be dealt with later) Not being a programmer, I don't know what the problems are. But may I suggest making smaller bots which do one task and then follow it up with another.

I'm still happy to help.  The Windler talk  21:56, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Those two infobox related requests are fine, just ignore them. I don't have much time at the moment, so I ca't bother with the "new=yes" attempt. I tried but failed. I do that tonight (Aust time) if no-one Ive asked hasn't done it.

I do hope you are going to test this bot on a few players before all of them. But I'm sure you've got them sorted.

Thankyou for your time, it probably hasn't been easy. It is much appreciated. I'll contact you when that last item is done. Thanks  The Windler talk  21:31, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Ready

Sorry for the delay, the template is ready, and it is alright if the "dateofbirth" and "dateofdeath" is transferred over to the new template with no change at all. I do ask that the "repupdate" parameter is simply deleted. And for "pcupdate" to be changed to the parameter name "updated".

Thankyou again, and I will help you if need be in the test stage.  The Windler talk  09:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't mean to be rude, but I would like some feedback on the progress of this project. It has been a long time, and while I am patient, I do like to know where you stand. You can reply here, I have your page watched. Thanks again.  The Windler talk  09:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Where I stand is, unfortunately, somewhat distracted! Please accept my apologies; this has for various reasons been dragging on for far too long. I have some time today, so I'll try to get the final wheels turning. Happy‑melon 11:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thats alright, I don't mind, but I just prefer to know whats happening than being in the dark.  The Windler talk  21:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have some test edits for your inspection. Please have a look at these five alterations and let me know if there's anything amiss. Happy‑melon 20:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I've replied on the bot request page here. If you don't mind either, I will reply there from now. But I can here if you like.  The Windler talk  00:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, this is in relation to the rugby league biography infobox. The issue of squad numbers is one that is necessary for European Super League players, and as such belongs in the infobox. Could it be arranged that before further players are shifted over to the new infobox that the line is added. Many thanks.Londo06 08:20, 21 August 2008 (UTC)