Jump to content

Afrikaners and User talk:Phil Boswell: Difference between pages

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Difference between pages)
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
ABCD (talk | contribs)
11,256 edits
m Reverted edits by 207.157.146.66 to last version by 68.223.127.205
 
IMNSHO
 
Line 1: Line 1:
{| style="border:1px black solid;float:right;background-color:lilac;margin-left:3em;"
'''Afrikaners''' are white [[South Africa]]ns of predominantly [[Calvinist]] [[Netherlands|Dutch]], [[Germany|German]], [[France|French]] [[Huguenot]], [[Frisia|Friesian]] and [[Walloons|Walloon]] descent who speak [[Afrikaans]].
|+ Archives
|-
| [[User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2003|2003]]
|-
| [[User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2004|2004]]
|-
| [[User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2005|2005]]
|}
Hello Phil, [[Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers|welcome]] to Wikipedia. I answered your question at [[Wikipedia talk:How to log in]]. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;


*[[Wikipedia:How to edit a page|How to edit a page]]
Afrikaners are also sometimes referred to as ''Boers'', but many Afrikaners now view this as a derogatory term. Some settlers from other parts of Europe (e.g. [[Scandinavia]] and the [[British Isles]]) also joined the ranks of the Afrikaners. Non-Europeans (including [[Cape Malays|Malay]], [[India]]n, [[Khoi]] and [[Bantu]]) makeup around 5-7% of Afrikaner origins. The Afrikaans language evolved from the Dutch spoken by the first white settlers at the Cape. From the late 17th century, the form of Dutch spoken at the Cape developed differences in pronunciation and accidence and, to a lesser extent, in syntax and vocabulary, from that of Holland. Settlers who arrived speaking German and French soon converted to Dutch. The process of creolisation was influenced by the languages spoken by slaves, Khoikhoi and people of mixed descent, as well as by Cape Malay and Portuguese. While the Dutch of Holland remained the language of officialdom, the new creolized form, often known as Cape Dutch, developed into a separate language by the 19th century.
*[[Wikipedia:How to write a great article|How to write a great article]]
*[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions|Naming conventions]]
*[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style|Manual of Style]]


You can also ask questions at the [[Wikipedia:village pump|village pump]] or ask me on [[User_talk:Angela|my talk page]]. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a [[Wikipedia:Wikipedians|Wikipedian]]!
Afrikaners are principally descended from northwestern european settlers and religious refugees who occupied the [[Cape Colony|Cape of Good Hope]] during the period of administration ([[1652]]-[[1795]]) by the [[Dutch East India Company]] (''Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie'' or VOC) and the subsequent period of British rule. The original colony at the Cape, which was started as a refreshment station for the VOC, was first settled by the Dutch in 1652. The arrival in 1688 of a small group of French Huguenots who were fleeing religious persecution in France infused new blood and swelled the settlers' numbers.


[[User:Angela|Angela]] 17:04, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)
The term Afrikaner encompasses disparate communities of white Afrikaans speakers. Originally it distinguished those Dutch speakers who saw themselves as local, i.e. "African", from those who still primarily identified with Europe; it was later used to distinguish between Afrikaans speakers and English speakers among the white population. Its earliest use dates from [[1707]] but was not widely used until after the [[Anglo-Boer War]] of the early [[20th century]]. Prior to then, the various white Afrikaans speaking communities were known under different names. A significant number were known as Boers (farmers). The semi-nomadic/migrating farmers of the eastern frontier were known as Trekboers. Those who lived in the western Cape and did not trek eastward were known as the [[Cape Dutch]]. The isolated pioneers from the eastern Cape frontier who trekked / migrated into the interior en masse in a series of migrations later known as the [[Great Trek]] were known as [[Voortrekkers]]. A small number of Voortrekkers came from the western Cape as well.
{{CurrentLCOTW}}{{MusicCOTW}}{{CurrentEntertainmentCOTW}}{{COTWs}}


{{User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2003}}
In the [[1830s]] and [[1840s]] an estimated 12,000 Voortrekkers penetrated the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal provinces to put themselves beyond the reach of British authority, in order to escape relentless border wars, British colonialism and its Anglicization polices, as well as to ease pressure on an overcrowding frontier where land was becoming scarce. While some historians claim that this series of migrations, later known as the Great Trek, was caused because the Boers did not agree with the British restrictions on [[slavery]], most [[Trekboers]] did not own slaves, unlike the Cape Dutch, their more affluent cousins in the western Cape who did not trek eastward and migrate or participate in the Great Trek. The vast majority of Voortrekkers were Trekboers from the eastern Cape who engaged in pastoralism. Nevertheless, the British promulgation of Ordinance 50 in [[1828]], which guaranteed equal rights before the law to all "free persons of color", was indeed a factor in Boer discontent, as is well documented by numerous contemporary sources; the various republics founded by the Voortrekkers while prohibiting slavery itself would all enshrine inequality by race into their constitutions.
{{User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2004}}
{{User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2005}}
==LOL==
That didn't even occur to me when I was listing it. I should have put it in brackets. :) [[User:RickK|Rick]][[User talk:RickK|K]] 05:20, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)


== Road-stub in motorcycle articles ==
The Great Trek was mainly the result of the "bursting of the dam" of pent up population migration and population pressures, as Trekboer migrations eastward had come to a virtual stop for at least three decades (though some Trekboers did migrate beyond the Orange River prior to the Great Trek). During the ''Great Trek'' they fought with the [[Zulu]]s (after Voortrekker leaders [[Piet Retief]] and [[Gerhard Maritz]], along with almost half of their followers, were killed by King [[Dingane]] and his warriors after a cultural misunderstanding over a land treaty), who occupied the best land in some of the areas the Boers were attempting to trek into. Although in revenge the forces of [[Andries Wilhelmus Jacobus Pretorius|Andries Pretorius]] killed about 3,000 Zulus in the [[Battle of Blood River]] in a classic mismatch between guns and spears, Zulu resistance changed the direction of the Trek. The emphasis moved from occupying from the Zulu lands east of the [[Drakensberg]] mountains to the west of them and onto the high [[Transvaal]] which was occupied by peoples devastated by the [[Mfecane]].


Phil-
The Boers established independent states in what is now South Africa: the [[Natalia]] Republic, the [[Transvaal]] Republic (the [[South African Republic]]) and the [[Orange Free State]]. The British wish to appropriate the diamonds mines in the Boer areas led to the two [[Boer War]]s of [[1880]]-[[1881]] and [[1899]]-[[1902]], which ended with the inclusion of the Boer areas in the British colonies. Canada has participated in this war being requested by its motherland. First concentration camps were built for women, the elderly, and children of the Boers and their black allies. A large number of the prisonners died under the British administration of the camps. Following the British annexation of the Boer republics, the creation of the [[South Africa|Union of South Africa]] ([[1910]]) went some way towards blurring the division between British settler and Afrikaner. The black majority, however, was excluded from equal participation in the affairs of the State and country, except for the states which were self governed (Qwaqwa, Zululand, Ciskei, Transkei, Venda, Bophutswana) until [[1994]], owing first to the [[United Kingdom|British]] colonial policies and then later to an Afrikaner-led political party's policy of [[apartheid]], (the [[Afrikaans]] word for "aparthood" or "separation"), particularly under the [[National Party (South Africa)|National Party]] from [[1948]].
I don't think <nowiki>{{road-stub}}</nowiki> is the right stub for the Yamaha motorcyle articles. The [[:Category:Road stubs]] contains roads and highways, and not much else. What these articles really need is a motorcycle-stub&mdash;the regular stub should do just fine until that occurs. --[[User:Milkmandan|Milkmandan]] 16:49, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)


== Geo-stubs ==
In recent years there has been an attempt by some Afrikaners to encourage the mixed race "[[coloured]]" population of South Africa, most of whom speak Afrikaans as their first language, to consider themselves Afrikaners. This has seen some success despite the history of exclusion under apartheid. However, the Afrikaans coloureds feel they have a different culture to other Afrikaans speakers.


Hi Phil,
Recently, some liberal Afrikaans-speaking South Africans have started rejecting the label 'Afrikaner', because they see it as an embarrassing apartheid-era label that wrongly implies a conservative, religious and Afrikaner-nationalist background.


You wrote: ''You appear to be (sort of) following my fumbling attempts at sorting geo-stubs and refining them.Thank you for doing a good job. I seem to be working off [[Wikipedia:Stub categories#Place-related, by region|an out-of-date list]] of geo-stubs: do you know where there is a more up-to-date list?''
There is a significant number who have continued to refer to themselves as Boers as there were many who were not co-opted or assimilated into the emerging Cape based Afrikaner identity which began emerging after the Anglo-Boer War and the subsequent establishment of the South African State created by the British. The indigenous Boer identity was internationally recognized with the Sand River Convention (which created the Transvaal Republic), the Bloemfontein Convention (which created the Orange Free State), the Pretoria Convention (which re-established the independence of the Transvaal Republic), the London Convention (which granted the full independence of the Transvaal Republic) and the Vereeniging Peace Treaty which formally ended the Anglo-Boer War on May 31, 1902 culminating in the British conquest of the Boer Republics.
:Thanks for the kudos! There are two that I know of - at the top of [[:Category:Geography stubs]], and on one of my user pages ([[User:Grutness/Stubs]]), which lists all the stub categories. I'm hoping to get the latter completed and into the Wikipedia proper as soon as I can! As to "geo-stub fumblings", just adding geo-stub is a big help, although learning one or two of the most common geo-stubs (like UK-geo-stub and US-geo-stub) would help more :) [[User:Grutness| Grutness]]|<sup>[[User_talk:Grutness|hello?]]</sup> [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]] 07:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::''Those ones I can just about handle :-) I hate to feed the "systematic-bias" trolls, but it does seem that North America and Europe are very well-covered...''
:You're right, they are... there are considerably more articles from some of those places... but the systematic bias is at least in part because the English-language Wikipedia is bound to have more people from English-speaking countries. Go to the Japanese Wikipedia, say, and you'll probably find more Far East stubs. As to remembering which one is what, if in doubt try 'Countryname-geo-stub' and preview. If it doesn't work, then just leave it at geo-stub. That will still cut the workload down by a huge amount :). [[User:Grutness| Grutness]]|<sup>[[User_talk:Grutness|hello?]]</sup> [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]] 08:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)


The Afrikaner designation was used beginning in the 1930s as a means at "unifying" (politically at least) the white Afrikaans speakers of the Western Cape with their estranged Boer cousins of Trekboer and Voortrekker descent (whose ancestors began migrating eastward during the 1690s and throughout the 1700s and later northward during the Great Trek of the 1830s) in the north where the Boer Republics were established.


==ISO 3166-2==
These un-reconstructed Boers have tended to view the Afrikaner designation as an artificial political label which usurped their history and culture turning Boer achievements into "Afrikaner" achievements. The western Cape based Afrikaners &mdash; whose ancestors did not trek eastwards or northwards and ridiculed the Great Trek of the frontier Boers &mdash; took advantage of the Boers' destitution following the Anglo-Boer War and would later attempt to assimilate the Boers into a new politically based cultural label. A feature which distinguished the trekking Boers from those who remained in the Western Cape was the Boers' resistance to colonialism (both Dutch and later British) and their determination to be independent while the Cape Dutch (as they were called) tended to be loyal to the colonial powers.
Hi Phil,


nice that you do some work there and add sorted by name and so on. Do you think having it bold is a good idea? I do not like it, in other places we do not have bold codes neither regards ;-) [[User:Tobias Conradi|Tobias Conradi]] 18:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
==Notable Afrikaners==
:Ideally the '''key''' column ought to be bold, since that is the column you search on. So actually in the tables "sorted by name", the '''name''' column ought to be bold. That, however, can be sorted out later, in true wiki fashion. For now just constructing the tables and shoving the articles into the new category is enough to be getting on with. (BTW I'm going to continue putting them into [[:category:ISO 3166]]: I don't think we actually '''need''' to break that down further.) HTH HAND --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 10:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
* [[Breyten Breytenbach]] Poet (1938 - )
* [[Christiaan Barnard]] Heart Surgeon (1922 - 2001)
* [[Eugene Marais]] Poet and Scientist
* [[Jan Smuts]] Statesman (1870 - 1950)
* [[Ettienne leRoux]] Author (1922 - 1989)
* [[J.M. Coetzee]] Author, Booker and 2003 Nobel Prize (1940 - )
* [[Sarel Cilliers]] Voortrekker Leader
* [[Andries Pretorius]] Voortrekker Leader
* [[Piet Retief]] Voortrekker Leader
* [[Sailor Malan]] Ace War Pilot, (1910 - 1963)
* [[Laurens van der Post]] (1906-1996)
* [[Ernie Els]] Golfer (1969 - )
* [[Athol Fugard]] Playwright (1922 - )
* [[Olive Schreiner]] Author (1855 -1920)
* [[Beyers Naudé]] Cleric, theologian and anti-apartheid activist.
* [[Antjie Krog]] Author
* [[André P Brink]] Author
* [[Charlize Theron]] Actress (1975-)
* [[Arnold Vosloo]] Actor ([[The Mummy (1999 movie)|''The Mummy'']], [[24 (television)|''24'']])(1962-), naturalized U.S. citizen
* [[Alan Boesak]] (Coloured)
* Hundreds of Afrikaner South Africans have represented South Africa at rugby union. The most famous include original Springbok captain [[Paul Roos]], [[Boy Morkel]], [[Boy Louw]], [[Chris Koch]], [[Frik du Preez]], widely considered the greatest ever Springbok, [[Danie Craven]], South African rugby supremo, [[Morne du Plessis]], [[Naas Botha]], [[Francois Pienaar]], [[Joost van der Westhuizen]], [[Corne Krige]] and current Springbok captain [[John Smit]].


::I would like to have it in ISO 3166-2, because there are three parts of the standard and they have really diferent focus. Especially part 1 and 3 are different to part 2. The cat for part 1 (or the general) can include one day ISO 3166-1-derived standards, making this cat much bigger. To have extra cat for ISO 3166-2 therefor is not that bad?
==See also==
::ok, maybe bold is fine, even if I (currently) do not like it. But there shold be the html-tag for /code/ around it. Making it same lenght for xx-mm and xx-ii. Because no the stuff is centered and not really fast readable, because not aligned. best regards [[User:Tobias Conradi|Tobias Conradi]] 15:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
* [[Afrikaner Calvinism]]
* [[Culture of South Africa]]
* [[Orania]]


::''ISO 3166-2:DE is an [[ISO]] standard which defines [[geocode]]s: it is the subset of [[ISO 3166-2]] which applies to [[Germany]]. It covers the 16 states ([[States of Germany|Länder]]).''
==References==
::that is not true. If at all than ISO 3166-2 is the standard. This writing with :DE is just something I created some years ago.
::''The part of [[ISO]] [[ISO 3166-2|3166-2]] that applies to [[Germany]] provides [[code]]s for the names of the 16 [[states of Germany]] ([[länder]]).''
::is more correct. I changed it [[User:Tobias Conradi|Tobias Conradi]] 11:35, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)


== Barnstarpages ==
* Hermann Giliomee, ''The Afrikaners: Biography of a People'', University of Virginia Press, 2003


Heya Phil. I noticed that you merged [[Template:Barnstars]] and [[Template:Barnstarpages]]. That's very good, but the former template is getting very large, and the latter is quite small. The result is that is a page only wants to list around tha pages, and not the ever-increasing number of stars (such as the [[Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia]] pages) is forced to host a bunch of extra baggage. I rolled back the [[Template:Barnstarpages]], but that damn "template for deletion" banner is still there: can we agree to remove it, because [[Template:Barnstarpages]] isn't hurting anybody? Cheers! &ndash; [[User:ClockworkSoul|Clockwork]][[User talk:ClockworkSoul|'''Soul''']] 15:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
== External links ==
:The problem as I saw it was that both templates were being used on the same pages, and therefore duplicating effort. I therefore merged the small one into the big one on the grounds that the latter was being used everywhere the former one was already and no information would therefore be lost. The current situation is that [[Template:Barnstarpages]] is only being used [[Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia|in one place]] which is not a supportable situation for a template. Unless there are several more places where it might be needed which do ''not'' need the full list, it should be '''subst'''ituted into that page and retired.
:HTH HAND --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 16:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)


==Babylon 5 Widescreen==
*[http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/afriquesud.htm Boers]
*http://fr.encarta.msn.com/text_761557321___83/Afrique_du_Sud.html
*[http://www.geocities.com/history4may/history/h4may/h4may31.html Boer soldiers]
* [http://countrystudies.us/south-africa/11.htm British Policies and Afrikaner Discontent]
[[Category:Ethnic groups of Africa]]
[[Category:South Africa]]


I understand that contradicting JMS is tantamount to heresy in the eyes of Babylon 5 fans, however, his words on the widescreen subject are contradicted by the reality of the footage.
[[da:Boer]]

[[de:Afrikaaner]]
I would be doing a disservice to the presentation of fact, to wikipedia, and to the people looking up info here if I was to accept JMS' word over the reality that is staring me in the face.
[[et:Afrikandrid]]

[[fr:Afrikaner]]
If JMS said the sky was green, it would, in fact remain blue. Similarly, his words do not affect the reality of the widescreen issue.
[[he:&#1488;&#1508;&#1512;&#1497;&#1511;&#1488;&#1504;&#1512;]]

[[it:Afrikaner]]
Thanks for your thoughtful comments rather than just making an edit.
[[nl:Boeren]]

[[pl:Burowie (nowo&#380;ytni)]]
[[User:Ibuki|Ibuki]] 19:13, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[[pt:Afrikaner]]

== Gay Icon Project ==

I see your point about edit summaries, and I went back today and added to the talk page of every article I categorized an explanation of what I was doing. The list I was merging from seemed to be vandalized, but to what extent I couldn't determine, so except for some ridiculous entries (Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Thatcher), I just categorized EVERYONE on the list and left the work of fact-checking to the people maintaining the articles (who, presumably, know something about those people.) [[User:Philwelch|Philwelch]] 22:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

== Quarto by email ==

Hi Phil, a new mailing list has been set up to distribute news about the Wikimedia foundation, specifically at the moment to publicise Quarto. I saw your name on the quarto talk page requesting a copy by email, and I think this mailing list is how we're going to do it for the moment. It'll be a html email, which I've added to the Quarto talk page [[:m:Talk:WQ]]. Mailing list is called [http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-news-l Foundation-news-l] (We also need translators!) Cheers [[:w:User:Cormaggio]]

== [[Wikipedia:Official Wikipedia motto]] ==

The <nowiki>{{notpolicy}}</nowiki> template is supposed to add the category tag for you. There is an unfortunate edit war going on at [[Template:notpolicy]] that has resulted in the tag being removed. I believe the edit war will be resolved shortly. [[User:UninvitedCompany|The Uninvited]] Co., [[User_talk:UninvitedCompany|Inc.]] 15:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

: I believe you are correct, particularly given his recent preoccupation with so-called meta-templates. Of course, transclusion is but one of many features that promote organization, consensus, and uniformity of content which he has opposed. The Speedy/VFD process, and the custom of retaining talk page comments both come to mind immediately. [[User:UninvitedCompany|The Uninvited]] Co., [[User_talk:UninvitedCompany|Inc.]] 15:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

== Color info boxes ==

I thought I'd pop by and mention that your color info boxes are causing some disquiet, with me but others too. I really think the CMYK values in particular should be removed. There was existing talk on [[Talk:Purple]]; I also added to [[Talk:Cyan]].
:I am thoroughly aware of the problem, and indeed have noted it in several places. The best solution is not to shuffle the problem under the electronic carpet but to discuss it openly. I think the likely best solution is to agree on the appropriate range of values to use for Wikipedia articles, and also make sure we agree on the transformation algorithm. I know that some of the articles talk about values between 0 and 1, but I don't think this displays well; also in most places it is the '''ratio''' of values which is important, and the scaling is relatively trivial. HTH HAND --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure of the best place to have this discussion - so let's have it here. The ratios are not really the biggest deal, except that it serves to perpetuate the idea that colors are in the range 0 to 255, which is a world view that can handicap understanding any more detailed discussion. I see several other issues:
1. CMYK conversion. I cannot see anything good in this. I vote to remove CMYK in all cases. By including CMYK values it gives the impression that conversion from RGB to CMYK is some simple fixed function you can look up, rather than a function which needs to take into account the RGB and CMYK properties, printing conditions etc. More harm than good.
2. Color names. For purple, for instance, why THAT purple? Is it a standard? If so, that should be noted. If not, it should somehow indicate "typical" or "exampe". [[User:Notinasnaid|Notinasnaid]] 08:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

== Thanks! (My signature) ==

Thanks a bunch for pointing out the error in my signature. I appreciate it! [[User:Demi|Demi]] <sup>[[User_talk:Demi|T]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Demi|C]]</sub> 17:16, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)


==[[UN/LOCODE]]==
thx for help and fixing my mistakes :-) There is onw more but I do not knw how to solve. In the change-table I put "I" (capital i) but it should be like in the notes the pipe "|" . I do not know how to put "|" in a table. maybe you? [[User:Tobias Conradi|Tobias Conradi]] [[User_talk:Tobias Conradi|(Talk)]] 21:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

== PlaneShift Screenshots ==

Captions improved.

== Thanks ==

...for those town coordinates! [[User:Lupin|Lupin]] 16:52, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

==Stacking==
:<small>''Also answered on [[User talk:John Fader|talk page]].''</small>
Phil, did you intend for the images in [[Stirling]] to stack horizontally? Putting images adjacent to one another in the wikitext has them stack vertically for the ''monobook'' skin, but makes them stack horizontally in ''classic'' and ''cologne blue''. The only skin-neutral way I've found of making images stack nicely is to use a table - see [[Casa Batlló]] for a fairly minimal example. -- [[User:John Fader|John Fader]] ([[User talk:John Fader|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/John Fader|''contribs'']]) 15:32, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:No, I most certainly did not&mdash;<small>thwacks own head crossly</small>&mdash;sorry about that. There was a nasty gap in the text and I wanted that to close up. Do you think a [[wikipedia:gallery|gallery]] would be better, given that the locational image is occupying pride of place? --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 15:42, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

==Wikiproject Color==

Hi. I just ran across the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Color|Wikiproject Color]] page and I'm interested in participating (though I'll be slow as molasses getting anything done -- lack of time). I have started an [[User:CoyneT/Normalized_Color_Coordinate|article]] on the "wiki" standard coordinates, with usage notes and conversion tables; with the idea that the coordinate headers (such as on template "Infobox Color") would link to this article rather than to all the technical color articles. Do you think this article is worth pursuing? Suggestions very welcome (still kind of a newbie). [[User:CoyneT|CoyneT]] [[User_talk:CoyneT|<sup>talk</sup>]] 00:44, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I have raised a question [[Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Self-reference_in_infobox|here]]: you will see that my preference is to keep the individual [[color system]]s linked to their respective articles, but to link the '''Color Coordinates''' caption to an explanatory article, using your draft as a starting point. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 11:19, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

::Per your suggestion, I have moved my draft page under the project at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates]] (I saw no reason to make ''you'' move it). I also added a sub-section to the main project article which includes, among other things, how the modified infobox might look. See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Color#Infoboxes]]. (I haven't built a template yet; this just incorporates a stripped version of the infobox template source.) [[User:CoyneT|CoyneT]] [[User_talk:CoyneT|<sup>talk</sup>]] 03:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have you received any response at all to the Village Pump question? If not, is this a don't care? Also: What about, instead of changing the header, remove the "N" subscripts and change the bottom to read "About these coordinates" (mockup [[User:CoyneT/Infobox Color|here]]).

== Color coordination ==

Phil, why toss that out to [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)|the sharks?]] I've already learned you get no help that way -- as Toytoy has ably demonstrated.

You are right to think about the problem -- mirrors might, even ought, toss anything other than article mainspace, imagespace, and templatespace. We ought ''never'' link from mainspace to Wikipediaspace, except under highly special circumstances.

There are two solutions, either of which seem reasonable ''prima facie'':

1. Forbear to link to the Wikipediaspace page from within the swatch template.

2. Move [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates|the page on normalization]] to article mainspace and "encyclopedize" it.

I like the latter. Once color normalization is covered generally, then it is appropriate to note how normalization is handled "in ''this'' project" -- naming no names. A mirror that copies the normalization page will also copy the template itself, and ''all is well''.
:The reason I asked the question was to forestall any likely problem: let discussion ensue. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the egg is broken now. I only suggest you might want to float trial balloons quietly -- I have begun to fear the Pump. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

===Normalisation===
Now, I have to insist on some sort of reply on CMYK normalization. You will just never get me to accept 0-255; it must be 0-100%. Please trust me on this and don't make me rake up examples and references. Okay?
:I think some examples and references would be a good idea for the [[CMYK]] article. For example: there is almost nothing about how the color vectors are actually used. What format do they exist in? What software actually uses them? --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

CMYK isn't a computer software standard at all; it's a standard process in the larger and older world of printing real ink on real paper, generally with a four-color web offset press. Such printers -- people, not peripherals -- have long standardized hues, screens, and ink coverages; the latter invariably range from 0-100%. I can show that to you if you like. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

:I can go with that, although I think we need to explain it somewhere, if only to stop someone coming along later and blasting them all into [000-255]. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 16:14, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

: Now that's where your nifty [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates|color normalization page]] comes in. Does double duty as a general information page and something the color project points to as a basis for ''its'' normalization. Just clean it up, add some info, and slide it out to mainspace.

: If you're wondering how to deal with "self-reference", I've just got into a useful little tag: {{tl|project usage}}. Hope the sharks haven't eaten it by now. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]][[User:Xiong/Metatalk|<font color="#009900">*</font>]] 12:39, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

===Infobox===
As long as we're airing beefs: If you explain your normalization strategy in a mainspace page, there is no need for the annoying little notes right in the swatch template. I'd like to see the whole thing cut down a bit in size -- a smaller swatch (not too small) and a more compact rendering of the coordinates. Do you want me to work up an improvement?
:If you compare it to the average [[wikipedia:infobox|infobox]] it's a good size: whay's the point of scrunching it up in the corner? --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Gut feeling here only; the swatch itself just looks too big to my eye, and I run dual 20" monitors, so I'm hardly pressed for screen real estate. Not a point to argue over. The normalization notation below the swatch is distracting; better to use the space to list color coordinates alone, and let interested parties follow a link to an explanation of how and why we normalized. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

===Spelling===
Color vs colour etc.: My position on all such squabbles is, just ignore them. Use whichever spelling you like, don't go out of your way to change others' choices; if someone overhauls something and uses a different spelling, don't get mad. The matter is petty to me. Agreed?
:I don't think you'll find I've been having any problems with that: where do think I've been getting "mad"? --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Oh no, not at all; my apologies. This must be the part you want me to tone down. I did not mean to imply you were a party to such squabbles, but I've seen them elsewhere -- and the repeated use of "color" and "-ization" just brought the matter to my fingertips. I think you and I are on the same sheet of music here.

===WikiProject Color===
Now, on to a more '''substantial''' issue: I'm starting to have grave concerns about the whole direction of WikiColor. Toytoy, I have to admit, has a point -- he's got the wrong end of it, but he has a point.
:I see you have voiced your concerns on [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Color|the talk page]]: we can talk there further. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

===Too many pages===
What is starting to upset me is that the HTML color "lime" points to RGB 0,255,0. That is difficult, but it is a reality. I think we may have too many color pages -- [[Lime]] and [[Green]] should be merged, and so on down the line. I don't think it's helpful to have a distinct page for every shade in the rainbow.
:Check the articles again: [[lime]] and [[green]] are different, disctinct [[web color]]s, which have different RGB values: they should not be treated as the same. [[Wikipedia is not paper]]: there's more than one meaning to [[normalisation]]. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

This whole issue is fraught with difficulties. I'm not sure I have a solution, but I see a problem.

When a user looks for the article on "green", what does he seek? Can we be sure? Can ''he'' be sure? Should the "lime" link from {web colors} point to [[lime]] or to [[green]]? Look at that template; since you and I worked on it, it's very nice -- but clearly, each table column contains two different things: the word and the swatch. Should they be made to point to two different articles?

Lime is a ''kind'' of green; so is forest; navy is a ''kind'' of blue; so is teal. It would be possible -- easy, in fact -- to have literally hundreds of color articles, and each one could be defended on grounds that a shade of that name is notable. I think this is the wrong way to go. Neighboring colors are very closely related to one another, so much so that some people will use one word for this color, others for the next to the left.

I think it might be much better to have a fairly small number of individual color pages, with multiple swatches on each one. Note, for example, [[Orange (color)]], with swatches for safety orange and burnt orange. '''This is the right path.'''

Perhaps we should have a slew of color disambiguation pages, but they would really only be subsets of the one grand navigational color wheel -- q.v. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

===Navigation===
What do you think about a navigational color wheel? Never mind if we can do it or not; to the persistent, all things are possible. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 04:01, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)
:If you can cook one up, it should be used as a '''complement''' to the existing pages, rather than as a replacement. That would be a help, yes please. --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you imagine one could "replace" with a navigational color wheel. Ideally, the thing would be a template present on every color page and on [[Color]], etc. Since image maps are banned from the wiki, it will be something of a challenge -- but I imagine something basic can be cooked up. It would be easier, of course, with fewer color pages. Let me ruminate. &mdash; [[User:Xiong|Xiong]][[Special:Emailuser/Xiong|<font color="#997749">&#29066;</font>]][[User talk:Xiong|talk]] 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

== IMNSHO ==

[[IMNSHO]], naturally: sorry, I hadn't realised there was a link for it. HTH HAND --[[User:Phil Boswell|Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk]] 08:51, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

:TA. IJHA. TANNCTEASYHTLTUOG,WCT15MOS,YK? KOA;LT. :-) - [[User:Omegatron|Omegatron]] 13:47, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Revision as of 13:47, 4 May 2005

Archives
2003
2004
2005

Hello Phil, welcome to Wikipedia. I answered your question at Wikipedia talk:How to log in. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

You can also ask questions at the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 17:04, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Template:CurrentLCOTW

The Popular Music Collaboration of the Week is The Clash. Help improve this member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to featured-status. Vote on future collaborations here.

Template:CurrentEntertainmentCOTW

Collaborations
Articles
Science and technology
Miscellaneous


CompactTOC

Yes, the compact TOCs are great. I didn't know how to do them before, but I've watched and learnt! All the best Warofdreams 17:39, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Redirect project

Thanks for the fix. I don't think you need any special qualifications to work through the list. Just click on both the article and the broken link. See what the article is about. For the broken link, click on "What links here" and see what those articles wanted to link to, then decide if the two are the same or not. Daniel Quinlan 08:28, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Amersham

Hi Phil. Glad someone else from Amersham is involved. I've been thinking about hosting/maintaining a wiki for St. Mary's. Dunno if it would be too hard for the technophobes. Have a look at tiki wiki http://tikiwiki.org. Ramin 17:22, Nov 11, 2003

Teapot + Windows screensaver

Howdy. I think you're right about the teapot being in the screensaver, and I know you're right about its maddening infrequency (having stared at it for ten minutes and seen nothing). -- Finlay McWalter 14:30, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Application installation

Heh. All I want is a computer where simply having the application anywhere on disk is sufficient for using it. The Mac used to be like that. I shouldn't need to do this mysterious "installation process"... :-) Evercat 13:18, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sub-page links not working

If you're still having problems, I would try a shift/control reload (to get a fresh, non-cached copy), and if that doesn't work I would resave the article without changing anything. If that doesn't work, then it's probably a bug and I would post to either meta:MediaWiki feature requests and bug reports or leave a message to Brion VIBBER who is the main developer. Dori | Talk 16:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

(Can't remember)

No problem with fixing the typo. If anything, I appreciate it. -- Pakaran 19:13, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Fisherman's Friends

You're welcome. I didn't meddle with the different flavours though as I don't seem to know all of them. For example, Super String Mint might be Super Strong Mint, and Strong Salmiak sounds like a joke to me. Anyway, nice article! All the best, KF 16:16, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Search rubric

There's something funny with the rubric: it seems to be repeating the hint on where to find help. Phil 12:26, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)

What rubric? Where? Martin 23:18, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Soham murders

Hi Phil. Thanks for the congrats re Soham; they're a bit undeserved though as my main contributions have been removing POVs and inaccuracies, and my favourite activity of trying to make an article look as though it's not been designed by a committee. :-) I put my response on the Talk:Soham murders page as I thought others might be interested in it too. Spellbinder 16:45, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Hi Phil. I've replied in Talk:Soham murders again. Spellbinder 17:32, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Odd timestamp turns out to be deliberate

No, that's right. I have a time machine. I use it when people whinge on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress that their blocks expire too early and they can't do anything about it. Unfortunately the software doesn't have a method for changing the expiry time on a block-by-block basis. Setting the timestamp works, but it does tend to annoy people :) -- Tim Starling 12:07, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

(Can't remember)

January 13 looks fine to me. --User:Dcsohl

  • Cheers. Phil 16:42, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

html2wikipedia

You asked me about running html2wikipedia on Windows. I suspect html2wikipedia works on Windows if you run it using Cygwin. Services for Unix would probably work too. I haven't tested them, though. You'll need a working version of lex or flex. Email me at dwheeler (at) dwheeler dot com if you have problems/questions. -- Dwheeler 23:46, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

**It is going to happen!

Soon in a wiki near you! Thanks for the reminder, Muriel 12:10, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Todays security bulliten?

I really don't know what your refering to. I added everybody on that list to my IM's. If you don't like that, it's ok to block me, but I don't understand this security stuff. What is this bulliten you refer to? Where can I read a copy of it? I didn't have anything in particular to talk to you about up until now, I was just being social. What is the security danger from an IM (now you have me worried ;) ? Sam Spade 21:46, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Music to add page

You might want to disambiguate your entry for Rush. RedWolf 04:53, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

(Can't remember)

Message for you on User talk:Tim Starling -- Tim Starling 00:17, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Screen readers?

Phil, from your comment on Village Pump it sounds like you have some knowledge of screen readers (etc.). I don't suppose you know of a free/opensource one (a I've long preached the accessibility of my website without actually having tested it properly). Thanks. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:23, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

section headers

Done. (I hope I did it right. I'm fairly new here).

Wayland

Robbot

Thanks for the notification on the Robbot problems on Hungarian language. I (and Rob Hooft will have to look what is going on. Andre Engels 16:25, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

taxotables

Phil - we've updated the taxo-standard on Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. The biggest change is we are no longer linking the rank titles. I updated Amphisbaenia for that and other formatting issues. - UtherSRG 17:19, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looking for Hosers

(Copy of your question and my answer from Talk:List_of_web_comics#Looking for Hosers) I've recently started reading "GPF" and there was a cross-over between this and another comic named the "Hosers" in February 2000. However the latter appears to be unavailable (it used to live at http://www.hosers.org/ which is not responding): anyone know where to find it? Phil 12:29, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

Alphabets derived from the Latin

Thanks for your valuable input on Alphabets derived from the Latin. It's much more usable now. Jor (Darkelf) 14:35, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Aliens

Obviously that wasn't intentional. I must have just accidentally updated an ancient copy of the article by mistake. It's back to normal now. Sarge Baldy 12:50, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

HRs

Hi there, I noticed that you are using HRs to divide the stub message. HR's are generally considered ugly in the article namespace, and discouraged. Also, they go against the norm of not using them for this purpose, so please do not use them. Dori | Talk 17:07, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Precipitation

Hi. I didn't have a real problem with the tone of your message on the talk page. I guess though it didn't help to convince me of your position, although I understand where you are coming from. When one posts a topic for discussion, one must anticipate seeing other viewpoints. I have postponed implementation of my proposed change for now to see if someone else chimes in. Upon possible future reflection, I may just let it go — although I still think my way is the best way in this case! :-) . RedWolf 03:55, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Recent death

Thanks for liking it. Cheers, –Hajor

Dodgy browsers

I'm not sure how to phrase it really. It happens a lot on Meta, and I've never seen anyone told they are causing the problem. If you want to write something, I can try and reword it to sound polite, but I'm not sure how to explain the problem in order to write it myself. If that would be helpful, just put it in my sandbox or somewhere. Angela. 17:43, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

EasyTimeline discussion

Hi Phil, EasyTimeline accepts dates (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy) only from 1800 AD, this is a limitation of Ploticus, which probably, as often happens with software, stores date values as a number of seconds since a arbitrary chosen start date. But full years, no limitation. I checked [1], only years there, so should be no problem. Erik Zachte 00:04, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, you can copy the site if you want, but why would you want to? If you want to add it to the Wikipedia, it would mean double maintenance, which I'm not looking forward to. If I may make a suggestion: it would be really neat to have a tutorial where a chart is built from the ground up and intermediate results are displayed and commented. This would be really something to put on the wikipedia since people can add or alter it when some part of the explanation turns out to be unclear or ambiguous. You might use Middle Earth as a starting point, it will appeal to many. What do you think? Erik Zachte 17:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, you have a point there. The syntax description probably should be on meta. It will be a nontrivial task to convert it to wiki format though, since it is quite a lengthy document. Cheers, Erik Zachte 10:45, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, please, go ahead. Erik Zachte 12:17, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, thanks for your work on the EasyTimeline documentation. I made a different version of the chess timeline, horizontal layout seems more fit for a timeline with many long texts. Cheers, Erik Zachte 11:41, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

comprise

You're actually in the wrong here, but don't feel bad. The whole comprises the parts, not vice versa. correct usage. -- 68.161.160.230 14:44, 26 May 2004 (UTC) (a third party who noticed your comment)

Wikisophia

You are the only person on Wiki I note as being involved in this project - what came of it? How much had been developed? --Oldak Quill 14:15, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Got a note from you, Phil; sometime back in Feb. re: collaboration on WikiTeX.  Wikisophia is finally back up, and I'm back from sabbatical. Let's talk. Danenberg 11:51, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

REDIRECTs now disallow any extra text?

from the pump

I was trying to add a Category to a REDIRECT page (don't ask rude questions and I won't tell you where to stick them :-). However when I tried to save the change, not only did the Category not get saved, the Edit History wasn't even updated! I have just tested it in my Sandbox and it seems that whereas it used to be possible to append text to a REDIRECT, to explain why it was there, for example, such as "Common mis-spelling", this would seem now to have been forbidden. The edit seems to be simply ignored, but there is no message saying that this has occurred. Was this a planned feature of the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade? --Phil | Talk 14:57, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know why in this particular instance, but ISTM that to have a category on the redirect wouldn't work anyway as in the category page linking to it when you click that link you'd be redirected through to the actual target page anyway, thus it would be an unusable link. Categories should only be on target (valid) pages. --VampWillow 15:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know that now! (wishing I could recall from whence that is a quote). Well actually I had figured it all along but I wanted to see if it were possible or whether MediaWiki would tell me I was doing something unwise. When the edit was just silently rejected I dug a bit more. It turns out that something which is reasonable and was allowed before—i.e. adding extra explanatory text after a REDIRECT—has now been forbidden for no apparent reason and without any message to explain why MediaWiki is throwing the edit away. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I just created Abdul Rahman, Tuanku and it seems to work. There is some sort of char-conversion bug affecting them though. -- User:Docu

You used a template message and appended it to the end of the REDIRECT: if you put your extra text on a new line it gets wiped! A little testing in my Sandbox proves it, and also that the history totally fails to register even the attempt at editing. --Phil | Talk 17:25, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC) ... and just to add a little spice to the mix, putting the Category directive on the same line does allow you to specify a category for a REDIRECT (see Category:Test which has members if no actual text). Which has to make some kind of twisted sense if I can just twist my mind enough ... --Phil | Talk 17:34, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)


Book blurb

from the pump

Originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Fair use but garnered no response yet ... Is the blurb on the back of a paperback, or on the flyleaf of a hardback, fair game for inclusion in a Wikipedia article? It would seem intuitively obvious, since the purpose of the blurb is to garner publicity for the book, but is there any hard policy? I would of course assume that any such text would be clearly annotated as such. --Phil | Talk 13:05, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

IMO (though IANAL), any short quote, if properly attributed, can be used under fair use. older≠wiser 13:20, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Indeed, it should be fair use if it's quoted. Obviously, the blurb shouldn't be quoted entirely if it's too long, and the quote shouldn't be the most significant part of the article. Dori | Talk 14:52, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Miles Vorkosigan

Phil, I've split up the Miles Vorkosigan page into two separate pages: Miles Vorkosigan now discusses the character himself, and Vorkosigan Saga lists the books with a plot summary of each. I also fleshed out the descriptions of some books, especially Mirror Dance. Ekaterin 13:30, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

eh ! I am currently rerere-reading the whole serie :-) I love it :-) ant

Voldemort

(Hope you don't mind me asking this here, but it seemed the simplest way to get a quick & simple answer :-) If you were to treat the name Voldemort as a French word and translate it into English, would it be better to translate it as Flight of Death or Flight from Death? And just to check, should it be Flight or Thief for the translation of the Vol... segment? (Sorry for disturbing you, we return you to your usual program :-)

That is a good question :-) I never thought of what it would mean. Vol as flight or vol as theft... Funny... Actually, I just asked on the fr:irc and no one had never thought of it either. You just made me realise the traitor had a french name... My respect for the author just drop a bit :-) I think it is best not translated. Both interpretations are worth it. Probably meant to be :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing 16:46, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi Phil, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I had forgotten my submission and just saw it, and replied to you there. Any ideas? -- pne 11:02, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

unprotection of user pages

I believe the material on User talk:Dori that you are referring to is not vandalism, but a comment in some langauge other than English. I could be mistaken. In any case, it was User:Dori that I unprotected, not the talk page, and User:Dori has never been vandalized, ever, in fact having never been edited by anyone except Dori and a bot.

I did a database query a week or so ago to check for protected pages not listed at Wikipedia:Protected page and found quite a number. Many of them were user pages. I checked further and found that quite a number of user pages that are protected (including both those listed at Wikipedia:Protected page and those that are not listed there) have no history of vandalism at all.

I believe that protected pages, in general, are harmful and are detrimental to the spirit of the project.

I believe that user pages belonging to administrators and protected by their "owners", merely as a convenience to them, are particularly problematic because it comes off as a perk of adminship, since non-administrators can't do this. Non-admins can request that their user page be protected, and sometimes do so, but then they can't edit it themselves.

Most of the user pages I have unprotected have no history of vandalism at all, though some have non-vandlism edits that the user they "belong" to didn't like. A few may have had some vandalism a long time ago (over a year) since I didn't check the history back more than a year.

I believe that it is appropriate to protect user pages temporarily to stop repeat vandalism, just as is done with article pages. And there are a few user pages, like User:Hephaestos, that are targets of such frequent vandalism that it, regrettably, makes sense to leave them protected indefinitely. But in most cases, vandalism should just be reverted, as is done on article pages.

I have had my own user page vandalised. The vandalism was reverted. No big deal.

If the project, as a matter of policy, wishes to disallow editing of user pages except by the user they are attached to, that change should be made in the Mediawiki software so that it will apply uniformly to admins and non-admins.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if anything yet remains unclear.

Best regards

UninvitedCompany 16:28, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Intemperate Comments

I am posting this here, so that you will feel quite free to delete if you wish (and you will!)

Your comments on vampire watermelons were unconstructive and personally insulting.

"Restraining myself from reverting out of hand because I know that would just inflame things" - This is an arrogant assumption that your judgement is better than mine; you make zero attempt to support your views, and make a patronising suggestion as to the action you think I'll take (with no justification for your assumption). As it happens, you can revert all you wish; once I've made my point, I'm happy to let others (hopefully not just you, but whatever) to take next steps.

" ... mutter ... mutter " - Spit it out; if you have further insults, please feel free to express them in an adult fashion.

This is my last word; I also have no wish to inflame your short fuse; revert away. Heenan73 17:52, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vampiric proofreaders

m:Proofreading is underway! Check it out, spread the word, prepare to suck imperfections from the text of unsuspecting contributors. +sj+ 06:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Substub support

Thanks for your support. We need all the help that we can get. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike Storm (Talk)]] 17:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Enchanted Chocolate Pot

In an edit summary for Patricia Wrede, you say: "if you bother to check the author's website you will discover that the entire series is named after the subtitle of the first book". Where do I find this? I didn't see anything like this in a quick skim of the "official site" link from Patricia Wrede. There is a Caroline Stevermer web page, where the web page as a whole is named "The Enchanted Chocolate Pot"; but I don't really see an indication that that's supposed to be the name of the series (after all, A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics are discussed on the same page). Cwitty 17:01, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hieroglyphs

Thanks for that - I didn't know this - it might save me some considerable time - I have just added another half-dozen before catching up with your message. Regards --JohnArmagh 20:15, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for correcting my misspelling on the requests for page expansion. Can't believe I missed that. Chuckles Lyellin 14:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Adminship?

Are you a wikipedia administrator, and if not, would you like to be? I like your edits, and I'd gladly nominate you. You should probably read Wikipedia:Administrators before responding yes.

And, do you maintain some kind of reading diary? I'd love to see what you're reading, as it strikes me I would probably enjoy reading the same books. --Woggly 06:52, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another substub vote

I just wanted to let people know that there's another vote on substubs going on in Template talk:Substub#Survey. I know that this is a second vote, however, apparently it was originally intended to be only a vote about whether to keep the template message, but somehow evolved into a vote on the existence of substubs themselves. I know that you already voted in favor of substubs, so I wanted to get your support on this poll too. Thanks for your support! [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 23:33, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

List of web comics

Just wanted to explain the current policy on article-less entries in List of web comics. The problem is that the list is a magnet for WikiSpam, and we've been trying to discourage people from simply adding their comic's name and a link. Perhaps it would be better to just not allow external links in the list? — Gwalla | Talk 19:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invite

Howdy. I just got some more invites in - do you still want one? blankfaze | (беседа!) 05:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Birthday greetings

Happy Birthday Phil! Hope you are having a great day. Keep up the good work on Wikipedia. [[User:Yardcock|Yardcock | talk]] 16:30, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)


IMDB templates

Hello there. Just wanted to warn you about your use of the Template:imdb title on American Pie (movie) page. You used it the wrong way. On the id parameter, you should leave ONLY the numbers. Check my fixes if it helps Oh, and for furter instructions, see Template talk:imdb title

Thanks — Kieff | Talk 04:55, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Nosy question

Hi Phil, I didn't get your point at Angela's talk, which item are you interested in? Just have a look at www.wikispecies.org/, if you were interested in the logo. Best, Benedikt

Thanks

Thanks for cleaning up my Wildstorm article. When i wrapped up i was so beat i didn't have the inclination to go and hunt all the disrepancies and errors left from editing the old version and my own typing errors. I was already plannning to get to that, but i found it already taken care of. Thanks  :) --Asmodai 10:41, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)


Italian Images

Good idea, but I am useless with images, and can only just plonk them on the page and hope somebody else will sort them out. Pleas feel free to link any image I upload to anything, except a category of thick, dense Wikipedia Users Giano 12:19, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

re: Proposed new format for sub-pages

Good morning, Phil. Your proposed table for VfD discussions might be overkill for short discussions. We get a lot of pushback over the difficulty of the mechanics of nominating new articles. Pasting in a table would be yet another step for users to complain about. And Mike Snow has a very good point about instruction creep. The table would be very helpful for long complicated votes, though. My only recommended change would be to add a border to the table. Good thoughts. Thanks. Rossami 13:01, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Hmmmm. As I think about this more, perhaps there is a way to make the mechanics easier using the subst function. I'd also like to integrate some old thoughts about moving the discussion away from "mere voting" and more toward "policy arguments". I'm going to duplicate your template and play with it for a while. I'll put my musings at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/Proposed new format_v02. Rossami
  • In the meantime, you might be interested in some of Eloquence's thoughts at Wikipedia:Deletion requests. His idea never took hold but maybe the time is finally right. Rossami

parenthesis/-ses

I see, you corrected the spelling in my new list. Thank you for that. Am I right that "parenthesis" is singular and "parentheses" is plural? So the title Parenthesis is acceptable, isn't it? --SirJective 13:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's slightly more complicated than that. The singular word "parenthesis" can refer to a single round bracket of either orientation or to a phrase contained within parentheses (the latter word indeed being the plural of "parenthesis"). I'm afraid I might have got a little muddled up on your page: I probably should have changed all of them or none to stay consistent. I'll have a little think about it, and maybe try fixing it up; or maybe you might want to do it yourself? --Phil | Talk 14:20, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
I answered on my User talk:SirJective talk page, let's only talk there. --SirJective 14:29, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Table

Oops, I thanked User:Everyking who's likely responsible for some extra links.... Anyway, thanks for the table. Do you know what page this table coding is explained on? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|(talk)]] 15:02, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes. let me have a look (start by clicking on the Editing help link down next to the "Preview" button, that's usually quite helpful…). Aha! m:Help:Table seems to be the place to look, and it's the pipe syntax you're after. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 15:45, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Roseanne

Since you were wondering why noone noticed the thinko in that article before... it's probably because I just added the list of major characters last night. And the fact that it was 3 or 4am or so also explains why I made the mistake in the first place, I guess. ^.^ -- Schnee 14:36, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Aha! I just assumed that the character list had been there from the start, since Roseanne is a very popular show. --Phil | Talk 14:51, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

The poll in Wikipedia talk:Sister projects has changed, due to intervnetion by Netoholic, of whom I'm growing less fond by the minute. As such, I took the liberty of removing your vote of support (the only other vote other than mine), thinking that it better to remove it than have you pledge your support for a modified poll. I would be much obliged if you were to cast your vote once more, now that the poll has changed. -- Itai 13:35, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Of course, what happened is that I first edited your signature out of Wikipedia talk:Sister projects, forgot to save the edit, and then added the above comment. :-) Luckily, I noticed that you got this message, are aware of the situation, and have not withdrawn your support. I'll try to get the poll listed somewhere, in order to get more votes cast. -- Itai 13:57, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I hate to bug you on this - I suppose you didn't know what you were getting yourself into when you added your support to my poll - but I could use your help at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Netoholic. You don't have to help if you don't feel comfortable with the subject. -- Itai 16:04, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'll take a look at it after the weekend. --Phil | Talk 16:56, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding Template:Template NETL, I've removed all instances of it from Wikipedia:Sister projects. -- Netoholic @ 17:22, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Catherine Asaro

Well...*laugh*...all I really did to that article was to add the piped surname, firstname to a category that was already on the article, so that it alphabetized under A instead of C. People do some weird things around this place sometimes, don't they? *grin* Bearcat 21:54, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • LOL they do indeed. Yeah i thought i might have a play and see whether i could put a few ppl in the lesbian category. Actually it started with some dickhead who put a vanity article on about himself, and i though how funny, when he comes back to update it, he'll have a nice little categorisation down the bottom: 'categories: gay, lesbian or bisexual people.' It made me laugh so i thought id weave a web of deceit, linking various people together with strange lesbian connections ;-) Catchas Wifki 04:26, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Danny's award picture

No probs with the pics. Yes, that is the Golden Nica award, which Wikipedia received this spring. Danny 11:36, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mov-stub

I don't see why you moved mov-stub to movie-stub. Is that really necessary? I was using the computer abbr. for movie for this stub name. Additionally Film-stub came after mov-stub, and I think keeping stub names short is much better than typing something really long. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 09:49, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

movie-stub seemed like the best idea with the least chance for confusion, and it's only an extra two letters, hardly an impossible effort. Given that the category is actually called movie stubs it seemed like a no-brainer. --Phil | Talk 09:56, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Abstract regular Polytopes...

Hi! I've added a picture in response to your comments on (the talk page of) Regular polytope. I haven't changed the text though. Does it help?? Thanks! --mike40033 07:27, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That is a brilliant picture which answers some questions and raises more: continued on the talk page. --Phil | Talk 08:03, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
I've added to the discussion... :-) --mike40033 07:21, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Soap opera cats

If you're going to split the EastEnders characters into their own subcat, do the rest for the other shows, please. In the spirit of completeness, at least. Mike H 17:38, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Give us a minute, I only just started :-) It might have to wait until tomorrow to finish, is that OK with you? --Phil | Talk 17:41, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, no rush. I'd do it but my birthday is coming up and I'm expecting company. Mike H 21:28, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Sister Fidelma

Thanks for editing the Sister Fidelma article... it was my first try apart from 'sandbox'-fooling Lectonar

No problem. I'm sure I read some of those books a while back and seeing it on Detective fiction intrigued me. Would you be able to define some of those Irish legal terms? --Phil | Talk 12:14, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed I could, but that will take a little time and research, especially as some of the legal terms are intertwined with the system of the celtic bards... Lectonar 13:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Go for it, sounds like we could get a whole set of articles (and there's no particular hurry :-) --Phil | Talk 13:32, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Temporal aliasing

I'm flattered... I had the same idea myself but wanted to do a bit more before unveiling it as an article, but this is fine.

Trying to find out whether the "stroboscope" invented in 1833, by the Simon Stampfer was, in fact, used by Stampfer to analyze rapid repetitive motion. All the quickly-Googled sources say only that it was virtually identical to the Phenakistoscope. It's odd that the word "stroboscopic light" which originally referred to the fact that the light flashed repetitively came to refer instead to the typical xenon-arc bulb that made the flash... and hence "strobe" came to mean a non-repetitive electronic flash... [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Howdy and many thanks for your work on that list of mis-punctuated links. The list's pretty much completed now - I'll be generating a new version of it in due course, taking all the lessons learned from the last one into account. In the meantime, if you enjoyed working through the list (or at least found it a worthwhile distraction), you may want to have a look at the similar list of plural discrepancies which highlights red-links that might be red because they (or the article they are aiming for) are improperly pluralised. Again, thanks for your efforts - award yourself a wikimedal for janitorial services if you haven't already got one! - TB 11:25, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Invite

Hi

I'm posting this to invite you to participate in WP:LCOTW , a project you may be interested in. Please consider nominating and/or voting for a suitable article there. Filiocht 12:37, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a look, but it looks a bit high-brow for me :-) I'm likely to nominate Category:Science fiction writers or even Category:Romantic fiction writers for a big push to completion. --Phil | Talk 14:05, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
High, low or middle brow: all welcome. Filiocht 15:44, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Mathematical symbol table

Hi Phil, have you lost interest in "rejigging" the Table of mathematical symbols? Paul August 22:17, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

No, I just get really easily distracted by other, more immediately-possible things. Sorry, I am coming back to that looking for my round tuit --Phil | Talk 08:04, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
Be careful what you write, I hate red links, I may have to write an article on "round tuit" now — and If I do I'm going to expect your vote to keep on VFD ;-) Paul August 13:13, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)
Fairy 'nuff, that's where I got the idea for wikiholiday after all :-) --Phil | Talk 13:33, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

WP:LCOTW

Template moved to top of page Filiocht 10:42, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for making the literature going-ons work properly. Filiocht 15:55, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Blockquote

You're right. I had misunderstood. Thanks for pointing out the difference between <blockquote> and :. Should I ever use a colon to to indent a quote, or are blockquote tags always preferable? Tim Ivorson 17:01, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My personal preference is to use BLOCKQUOTE every time. The point is that future versions of the Mediawiki software might decide to treat quotations differently, which is impossible if they're all labelled the same as ordinary indentation. In the same way as -- might be transformed into – and --- might be transformed into —, there might be a proper wiki-syntax for it. In fact, it's already possible to modify your personal CSS file so that BLOCKQUOTE shows up distinctly, if I could just figure out how to use it (see if you can figure out help:user style: apparently this should look different except that the Q tag is disabled :-) HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:25, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

re:jessica steen picture

you have recently listed on my talk page that a photograph i have uploaded onto this site may be in violation of copyright. you may be correct in this assesment, as i had not at the time read the wikipedia page regarding fair use policy. I have no objections to anyone removing this image from the site Autopilots 09:06, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah but...ok, if it's not a copyright violation, that's good -- but then it's just a puff piece that actually says nothing at all about why she's in any way notable or interesting; what has she written? What's interesting about her? Why would someone want to know who she is? It's kinda like the blurbs on book sleeves; if you're holding the book, you know the blurb is about the author, but otherwise you do need to be told that the author wrote that book (and likely others). I'll tell you what my teacher told me when I cribbed a bit too much from an encyclopedia: "You're a good writer. Put it in your own words." ... On general principal, publicity bios are only good as source material for Wikipedia; they're generally not encyclopedic. --jpgordon{gab} 16:13, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi Phil. I'd say it's best to let someone else remove the copyvio notice rather than doing it yourself. I've put a question at Talk:Sharon Lee about it. Angela. 17:23, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I've replied there: I sent them an email directing them to the GFDL so we'll see what arises. --Phil | Talk 17:42, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for fixing my Glen Gook picture. I'm planning on going in there and fleshing this entry out. There's hardly any info there at all, and some is too uncited for my tastes. Lists two books as forthcoming. I would love to know where this information was gleaned from. I'll probably go through the history. Funny the page has like 500 edits, but only a hundred (?) words. Of course you have people like me that didn't realize it was recording every save. I figured the final product would be the only thing of interest, but of course you;d need it set up the way it is for versioning.

Anyway, that was my first attempt. Should have tried something easier.

Christopher L. Jorgensen 03:51, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes subcategories

Thanks for beating me to moving all the Sherlock Holmes stories to subcategories. But is there a reason why Adrian Conan Doyle's pastiches are in the "short stories" category instead of the "pastiches" category? --Paul A 16:47, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, the ACD/JDC stories were not intended so much as pastiches as a serious exercise in response to the many stories alluded to by Dr. Watson scattered around the canon. YMMV. In any case, there is a cross-reference in ACD which should be added to The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:59, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

List of unseen characters

Regarding Henne in the List of unseen characters: Indeed, Kein Pardon doesn't have an article. This struck me hard because I hadn't even bothered to try and follow my own link, simply because the movie is/was quite popular in Germany.

Please refer to its main actor Hape Kerkeling's article, I just linked the movie from there. Reviews with quotes regarding Henne exist on IMDb. A Google search on kein pardon henne reveals more shopping pages than anything else; at least they provide quotes of Peter's mother mentioning Henne. --Demitsu 22:20, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Direct-to-video

Hi phil, seen your edits there, which I agree with all but one. The title "other markets in Japan" is, I feel, not correct. It implies a technical difference (as the previous heading is 'DVD market'), and does not effectively sum up the content. I would suggest "V-cinema and OVA in Japan" or something along those lines. Interested in your thoughts.Pseudosocrates 16:48, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do as you see fit: I was just awash in a sea of capitalisation and went a bit mad :-) --Phil | Talk 17:05, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
Hope that's better. --Phil | Talk 17:11, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)


Use of pics of genitals in articles

Hi. Phil, you write on the Village Pump, addressing Robert the Bruce:

No, what we see here is a rude jerk who can't stand his discussion being displayed anywhere else than in the most public place possible, regardless of how crowded that space might become. The pump is for general discussions: there's not room for everything. Only the most high-profile and high-volume discussions get their own articles, you nitwit, so stop complaining. You've got a whole brand-spanking-new article to use for your debate: stop your posturing and high thee gone.

Well I agree with you that Robert can be very rude, and the exchange between Robert and a number of other people seems to show him deliberately goading people to get an angry response, making very serious accusations of incompetence and suggesting that some people--who mostly, sometimes over a long period, have demonstrated intelligence and good judgement--should be supervised.

So it isn't too surprising that sometimes someone blows up and reacts in the way you did there. Now here's where I come in. I'm trying to dissuade Robert from the kind of rude behavior he has been engaging in. Politely pointing out where he has been overly personal in his comments, and so on, because in his exchanges where I have witnessed them I have found him to be rather rude; evidently he is the kind of person who doesn't quite get the point of being polite.

Now Robert comes to me and points out your attack on him--and it is a serious one. The Village Pump is a very public place, and as you know personal attacks do not belong anywhere on Wikipedia. So in fairness to Robert, I am making the same plea to you that I made to him. [2]

I would appreciate if you went back and, perhaps, overstruck the very hostile words and restated your opinion in a form that does not look like a naked personal attack.

Let's set a good example. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway Talk ]] 20:54, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Phil. I don't know whether Robert will appreciate this, but I do. I try to run flack for Theresa now and again, but as she's often engaged in the same articles Robert is she is an easy target for him. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 14:18, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • This last comment is a great disappointment. Sad to see your "civility" efforts are merely "running flak for Theresa" and not as you presented (and I accepted) for the good of Wikipedia. - Robert the Bruce 00:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Robert, I'm sorry that you feel that way. The problem is that you sometimes make posts that have the appearance of personal attacks on Theresa (and others). Such behavior is forbidden and also would have a deleterious effect on the environment if I did not occasionally speak up and voice an opposite view with factual rebuttals. Running flak in this way for a poster under personal attack is in the interests of wikipedia. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 04:30, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your wikifications in the List of mnemonics article. Uranographer 10:24, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Subpage for LinkBot suggestions

That could definitely work. I've actually been quite surprised that some people were annoyed about suggestions on the talk page (it's almost like there's a suspicion the whole aim was to annoy them, rather than try and help them!) - but there have been enough responses like this to make me think that some change in approach would be a good idea. Your subpage idea is the first constructive criticism that I've received that addresses this concern, whilst still being feasible, and having the benefits of using the talk page (and the whole purpose of the talk page is to discuss and suggest improvements to the article). I'll work on something like this - for the talk page, I'm thinking something like the current section header ("Suggest 36 possible wiki links and 21 possible backlinks for XYZ") + a bit of text that says "An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the XYZ article, and they have been placed on this subpage", and link on 'this subpage' (so you'd get just 2 lines of text added to the talk page). Then the actual subpage would be just like what was previously being added to the talk page. Does that sound better? All the best, -- Nickj 05:44, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've actually replied on your talk page already...actually I was thinking more along the lines of putting more into the sub-page and less into the "victim" talk page: just a heading and a transclusion should do it. I prefer a transclusion so that the link-list can be edited directly from the talk page so as to keep track of progress. We can refine the rubric further so if you do decide to include all of them into a master page, the repetition doesn't become too annoying. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 09:31, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)


Re: Added talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions page:

I like it :) This also means that if people say "why does nobody link to my page?", you can (sometimes) say "see talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions#Inward links".

"I prefer a transclusion so that the link-list can be edited directly from the talk page".

Well, the problem is that people sometimes get annoyed at an increase in the length of the talk page. To see more on this, see the negative feedback page, comment number 8, where you and Shane King both independently made somewhat similar suggestions at around the same time. Personally, suggestions on the talk page wouldn't annoy me, but it's undeniable that some people have disliked it, and (I'm hoping) they'll dislike it much less if it's mostly on a subpage, with the talk page just having a link to that subpage.

I've created that Master List.

Cool. One thing though - won't this page become absolutely huge? There are around 750,000 suggestions in total. Each could be suggested twice (once as a link, once as a backlink), so that's a page with a list of 1.5 million things :-(

To-do list.

The suggestions might not be inappropriate, so this may come under the "experimental ideas (these should be discussed first to reach a consensus)" clause of What a to-do list is not.

I do appreciate your comments, and thank you for making these example pages, it really helps. All the best, -- Nickj 03:54, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Hi Phil, I've had some further ideas on this. Is it OK if I run those past you, to see what you think?

  1. Placing all suggestion subpages under LinkBot's user space. E.g. User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abraham Lincoln. That way:
    • Suggestions are not in the article's namespace, they're in the user's namespace, and should hence be even less objectionable to people. (i.e. it's a psychological difference, rather than a technical one: Adding a subpage in the article space could be seem as potentially intrusive, whereas creating a page in your own user space and then inviting people to take a look should not be seen as intrusive).
    • If articles get deleted/moved, then there's less for admins to delete (because no subpages in the article space, and I'm not really worried about keeping LinkBot's user namespace clean).
    • I can automatically update the suggestions if I ever run it again (just replace the contents of the subpages, irrelevant of what was there before). This is part of the psychological difference - nobody should object to a user updating one of their own user pages, but they may very well object if subpages in the article space get wholesale updated (especially if they've added comments or crossed things off the list).
  2. In the article talk page note, can include a line that shows how to transclude pages, but leave it for the user to enable this (e.g. "Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abraham Lincoln}} to this page.")
  3. I've made the notes and feedback bits of the suggestion pages into transcludes, for easy updating (if needed).
  4. I'm wondering whether the quick note placed on the talk page, couldn't be a transclude too. E.g. perhaps transclude a page that says "An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Phil Boswell article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.
    Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Phil Boswell}} to this page."

All the best, -- Nickj 04:58, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2
I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Sharon Lee

Hi. Have you ever heard back about GFDL permission of the text of the Sharon Lee article, as mentioned on 12 November? Please note on Talk:Sharon Lee, thanks. -- Infrogmation 06:40, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How much longer do you think we should give this? -- Infrogmation 06:23, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of that. Best wishes, -- Infrogmation 17:16, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirect plural template

Hi Phil, There's been some discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Creating_a_Wikipedia_Bot about using the new Template:R from plural for all applicable plural redirects. However, it seems that in large numbers that categories have big performance issues, whereas lists don't seem to. Is there some way that Template:R from plural can be modified to use lists instead of categories?

Also, LinkBot has done some runs using the new the scheme you suggested (suggestions on a different page, formatted as you suggested), and it seems to be working well (8 bits of positive feedback and no negative feedback for the last 200 suggestions). -- All the best, Nickj (t) 05:10, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Daughters pseudo-rant

Hi, Phil. :) I'm a bit behind in my talk page correspondence. You asked if the pseudo rant was quoted from something, the answer being not that I know. :) It was inspired by the discussions over at clitoris. func(talk) 19:00, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re :Haileybury College

In case you havent been answered yet, Yes, the Haileybury College in Melbourne is related to the one in England. Well it's related to 'a' Haileybury in England and since there's only one that i know of then I presume its that one that is listed in wikipedia. The one in Australia is like branched off from the england one I think. Perhaps the first principle was a former student of the england one or something. I've got no idea on the history on my own school.... However I think you'll find that both haileyburys have school songs that are the same. --AmpedLemon 05:57, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re: Haileybury College

Yeah, Vivat Haileyburia is one of the songs we have to sing.

vprotected

Two glyphs: /. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 04:23, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld

Spam message: Having noticed you have made some great additions to the Discworld articles I thought you might be interested in this new WikiProject. It's at a very early stage and needs quite a bit of work. violet/riga (t) 21:43, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


hp-stub (Harry Potter) stub

The abbr. hp can confuse people. Wouldn't it be better to use something like potter-stub? -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:26, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Or even harrypotter-stub. Doesn't really bother me, I was just going for a quick-and-dirty instant fix, rename it if you like. --Phil | Talk 16:20, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Beam Piper

Hi, I noticed your change to H. Beam Piper. I always thought it was Horace. Don't remember where I read that. There seem to be about ten times as many Google hits for Henry as for Horace. Do you know pretty definitely? Do you know where "Horace" came from? Thanks, Tualha 00:14, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Check out the various biographies reachable through the External links section. All of those that I could find said "Henry". I have no idea where "Horace" came from. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:49, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Malloreon/Mallorean

Geez, I feel like an idiot now. I did check the book talk pages for any discussion, but didn't think to check the David Eddings talk pages. I understand the testiness... I've dealt with newbie-type problems before, and I'd certainly be a lot more pissed than you if some newbie came along and did something that was already argued against a long time ago. Not only that, I just went over to check my books (certain it would be "A"), and I can't believe I didn't see the "O" there. It must be one of those optical illusions. Anyways, once again, I apologise. I was planning to "Be bold!" in these pages eventually, and doing something I didn't think was bold turned out to be a real idiotic thing. Once again, my apologies to all involved for acting like another dumb newbie, and I hope my future contributions to these pages won't be as idiotic. I would have been happy to undo the damage caused, but alas, I was sleeping when you guys fixed it. -- Deathphoenix 14:42, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That'll learn me for clicking "Replace All" instead of "Replace". :-P -- Deathphoenix 15:29, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for covering my lack of template savvy on the link Universe #Shape of the universe--Eddie | Talk 13:41, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I noticed your question on Wikipedia talk:Copyrights. For a picture to be usable on Wikipedia, it has to be in the public domain, fall under the GFDL or a Creative Commons license, or be justifiable under fair use. The author appears to be licensing it under a noncommercial use only license, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. If you have personal contact with her, ask her to license it under the GFDL or a CC license. --Slowking Man 04:43, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Great Googly Moogly

Thanks for the formatting fix on Great Googly Moogly. I knew there had to be a better way than what I had done. --RoySmith 19:42, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A las barricadas!

You're a brave, moderately suicidal man, Mr Boswell. Be that as it may, all help is appreciated. For my part, I tried before, and have tried again before resuming hostilities. Unfortunate, Netoholic does not agree to bring this to a proper closure, the greater community does not care, and I cannot allow him to win simply because he's stubborn. Democracy must prevail. In short, if you were to create a poll, I would be more than happy to participate. It is far more likely, however, that you are quietly unwatching all relevant pages as I speak. You've probably disconnected your computer from the internet as well, just in case. -- Itai 22:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Update: Netoholic has kindly started a vote on Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Sisterproject. As long as the vote's fair (that is, the template is not removed from all project templates), this seems like a good way to finish this. -- Itai 00:36, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)


If you want my point of view, Itai is really bad at thinking through his template creations. He's made dozens where one simple one would do. He doesn't think about narrowing choices to prevent m:instruction creep. -- Netoholic @ 10:08, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)

Part of what you offered at Wikipedia talk:Sister projects is now up for debate at Template_talk:Sisterproject#Survey. Please go there and vote. — Itai (f&t) 22:32, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Timelines

Hi Phil, of course I would welcome any added flexibility, but I think there is no easy solution here. Apparently mediawiki extensions are invoked after template replacement has been executed. I know nothing of MediaWiki internals, and doubt any developer who is, whould give this any priority. Thanks for pointing this out. Erik Zachte 23:48, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WikiUser RfC

Thought you may wish to know that WikiUser has called for your comments at his RfC to be deleted, thinking them to be an attack on him (as he thinks most things are) - Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/WikiUser. violet/riga (t) 23:09, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

unicode for empty set

Hi Phil, can you explain to me the difference between, and or the advantage of, using {{unicode|&empty;}} instead of &empty;. They both display the same thing for me (Safari, Firefox or IE, on Mac OSX). I know that IE on windows often (always?) fails to render &empty; will this fix that? Thanks in advance. Paul August ☎ 17:16, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

You hit the nail on the head: on my browser (IE6 on XP-Pro) &empty; displays as an empty box (“∅”), whilst {{unicode|&empty;}} displays as the empty set (“∅”).
You're probably lucky and both display the same.
--Phil | Talk 09:18, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Will this work for everyone using IE on windows? Or are there still font issues? I would dearly like to get rid of the ugly "{}" notation used in some places on WP, see: empty set and talk:empty set#The empty set symbol. Paul August ☎ 19:24, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Hugo Awards formatting as table

Got to say, I don't like the look of the current table. This may just be pride of authorship, but what's the advantage over the simple indented list? If you thought the winners weren't emphasized enough, how about just bolding them, or sticking <br/><br/> after them? —wwoods 17:49, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Logo contest foundation

Thanks Phil, I'm flattered.

Angela's response on her Talk page made me chuckle. I've given similar advice to newbies in other volunteer communities myself. "Someone should make a really cool XYZ." "Oh yeah? Make it yourself!"

I took a half-hearted stab at planning a contest but threw my hands up after viewing the labyrinthine structure over at News. Seems like there are three periods of a few weeks apiece - organizational discussions, nominations and voting?

So that means at least four pages to maintain:

  • messy nominations
  • edited nominations
  • messy voting
  • winner announcement/vote tallies

And a month-long commitment on my part of about 40 hours. Does that sound about right?

Discworld Template

Yeah, I get to be the 100th message! Anyway, I was wondering why you haven't changed the DW template over to your new version. I'd do it myself, but I'm sure you have a reason. -Litefantastic 00:31, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A combination of "lack of time" and cowardice :-) If you reckon there's sufficient agreement on my new format, I would have no trouble with you doing the switch yourself. If I remember later in the day (RL allowing) I'll have a go myself. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 09:42, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
Done! Great work there. violet/riga (t) 10:13, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. --Phil | Talk 10:22, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Robin McKinley

Hi Phil - thanks for the message - the article sounded interesting and then seemed to run straight out of puff after about 4 lines - just leaving a lot of bullet point/listy type stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of intereting stuff to be added - and I would like to read it. Not being a subject I know anythin about - I can't add anything myself. Kind regards Brookie 15:34, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

LOL

That didn't even occur to me when I was listing it. I should have put it in brackets.  :) RickK 05:20, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Road-stub in motorcycle articles

Phil- I don't think {{road-stub}} is the right stub for the Yamaha motorcyle articles. The Category:Road stubs contains roads and highways, and not much else. What these articles really need is a motorcycle-stub—the regular stub should do just fine until that occurs. --Milkmandan 16:49, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Geo-stubs

Hi Phil,

You wrote: You appear to be (sort of) following my fumbling attempts at sorting geo-stubs and refining them.Thank you for doing a good job. I seem to be working off an out-of-date list of geo-stubs: do you know where there is a more up-to-date list?

Thanks for the kudos! There are two that I know of - at the top of Category:Geography stubs, and on one of my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs), which lists all the stub categories. I'm hoping to get the latter completed and into the Wikipedia proper as soon as I can! As to "geo-stub fumblings", just adding geo-stub is a big help, although learning one or two of the most common geo-stubs (like UK-geo-stub and US-geo-stub) would help more :) Grutness|hello? 07:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Those ones I can just about handle :-) I hate to feed the "systematic-bias" trolls, but it does seem that North America and Europe are very well-covered...
You're right, they are... there are considerably more articles from some of those places... but the systematic bias is at least in part because the English-language Wikipedia is bound to have more people from English-speaking countries. Go to the Japanese Wikipedia, say, and you'll probably find more Far East stubs. As to remembering which one is what, if in doubt try 'Countryname-geo-stub' and preview. If it doesn't work, then just leave it at geo-stub. That will still cut the workload down by a huge amount :). Grutness|hello? 08:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)


ISO 3166-2

Hi Phil,

nice that you do some work there and add sorted by name and so on. Do you think having it bold is a good idea? I do not like it, in other places we do not have bold codes neither regards ;-) Tobias Conradi 18:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ideally the key column ought to be bold, since that is the column you search on. So actually in the tables "sorted by name", the name column ought to be bold. That, however, can be sorted out later, in true wiki fashion. For now just constructing the tables and shoving the articles into the new category is enough to be getting on with. (BTW I'm going to continue putting them into category:ISO 3166: I don't think we actually need to break that down further.) HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 10:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
I would like to have it in ISO 3166-2, because there are three parts of the standard and they have really diferent focus. Especially part 1 and 3 are different to part 2. The cat for part 1 (or the general) can include one day ISO 3166-1-derived standards, making this cat much bigger. To have extra cat for ISO 3166-2 therefor is not that bad?
ok, maybe bold is fine, even if I (currently) do not like it. But there shold be the html-tag for /code/ around it. Making it same lenght for xx-mm and xx-ii. Because no the stuff is centered and not really fast readable, because not aligned. best regards Tobias Conradi 15:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
ISO 3166-2:DE is an ISO standard which defines geocodes: it is the subset of ISO 3166-2 which applies to Germany. It covers the 16 states (Länder).
that is not true. If at all than ISO 3166-2 is the standard. This writing with :DE is just something I created some years ago.
The part of ISO 3166-2 that applies to Germany provides codes for the names of the 16 states of Germany (länder).
is more correct. I changed it Tobias Conradi 11:35, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Barnstarpages

Heya Phil. I noticed that you merged Template:Barnstars and Template:Barnstarpages. That's very good, but the former template is getting very large, and the latter is quite small. The result is that is a page only wants to list around tha pages, and not the ever-increasing number of stars (such as the Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia pages) is forced to host a bunch of extra baggage. I rolled back the Template:Barnstarpages, but that damn "template for deletion" banner is still there: can we agree to remove it, because Template:Barnstarpages isn't hurting anybody? Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 15:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem as I saw it was that both templates were being used on the same pages, and therefore duplicating effort. I therefore merged the small one into the big one on the grounds that the latter was being used everywhere the former one was already and no information would therefore be lost. The current situation is that Template:Barnstarpages is only being used in one place which is not a supportable situation for a template. Unless there are several more places where it might be needed which do not need the full list, it should be substituted into that page and retired.
HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Babylon 5 Widescreen

I understand that contradicting JMS is tantamount to heresy in the eyes of Babylon 5 fans, however, his words on the widescreen subject are contradicted by the reality of the footage.

I would be doing a disservice to the presentation of fact, to wikipedia, and to the people looking up info here if I was to accept JMS' word over the reality that is staring me in the face.

If JMS said the sky was green, it would, in fact remain blue. Similarly, his words do not affect the reality of the widescreen issue.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments rather than just making an edit.

Ibuki 19:13, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gay Icon Project

I see your point about edit summaries, and I went back today and added to the talk page of every article I categorized an explanation of what I was doing. The list I was merging from seemed to be vandalized, but to what extent I couldn't determine, so except for some ridiculous entries (Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Thatcher), I just categorized EVERYONE on the list and left the work of fact-checking to the people maintaining the articles (who, presumably, know something about those people.) Philwelch 22:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Quarto by email

Hi Phil, a new mailing list has been set up to distribute news about the Wikimedia foundation, specifically at the moment to publicise Quarto. I saw your name on the quarto talk page requesting a copy by email, and I think this mailing list is how we're going to do it for the moment. It'll be a html email, which I've added to the Quarto talk page m:Talk:WQ. Mailing list is called Foundation-news-l (We also need translators!) Cheers w:User:Cormaggio

Wikipedia:Official Wikipedia motto

The {{notpolicy}} template is supposed to add the category tag for you. There is an unfortunate edit war going on at Template:notpolicy that has resulted in the tag being removed. I believe the edit war will be resolved shortly. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe you are correct, particularly given his recent preoccupation with so-called meta-templates. Of course, transclusion is but one of many features that promote organization, consensus, and uniformity of content which he has opposed. The Speedy/VFD process, and the custom of retaining talk page comments both come to mind immediately. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Color info boxes

I thought I'd pop by and mention that your color info boxes are causing some disquiet, with me but others too. I really think the CMYK values in particular should be removed. There was existing talk on Talk:Purple; I also added to Talk:Cyan.

I am thoroughly aware of the problem, and indeed have noted it in several places. The best solution is not to shuffle the problem under the electronic carpet but to discuss it openly. I think the likely best solution is to agree on the appropriate range of values to use for Wikipedia articles, and also make sure we agree on the transformation algorithm. I know that some of the articles talk about values between 0 and 1, but I don't think this displays well; also in most places it is the ratio of values which is important, and the scaling is relatively trivial. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 07:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the best place to have this discussion - so let's have it here. The ratios are not really the biggest deal, except that it serves to perpetuate the idea that colors are in the range 0 to 255, which is a world view that can handicap understanding any more detailed discussion. I see several other issues: 1. CMYK conversion. I cannot see anything good in this. I vote to remove CMYK in all cases. By including CMYK values it gives the impression that conversion from RGB to CMYK is some simple fixed function you can look up, rather than a function which needs to take into account the RGB and CMYK properties, printing conditions etc. More harm than good. 2. Color names. For purple, for instance, why THAT purple? Is it a standard? If so, that should be noted. If not, it should somehow indicate "typical" or "exampe". Notinasnaid 08:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! (My signature)

Thanks a bunch for pointing out the error in my signature. I appreciate it! Demi T/C 17:16, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)


UN/LOCODE

thx for help and fixing my mistakes :-) There is onw more but I do not knw how to solve. In the change-table I put "I" (capital i) but it should be like in the notes the pipe "|" . I do not know how to put "|" in a table. maybe you? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PlaneShift Screenshots

Captions improved.

Thanks

...for those town coordinates! Lupin 16:52, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stacking

Also answered on talk page.

Phil, did you intend for the images in Stirling to stack horizontally? Putting images adjacent to one another in the wikitext has them stack vertically for the monobook skin, but makes them stack horizontally in classic and cologne blue. The only skin-neutral way I've found of making images stack nicely is to use a table - see Casa Batlló for a fairly minimal example. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:32, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, I most certainly did not—thwacks own head crossly—sorry about that. There was a nasty gap in the text and I wanted that to close up. Do you think a gallery would be better, given that the locational image is occupying pride of place? --Phil | Talk 15:42, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject Color

Hi. I just ran across the Wikiproject Color page and I'm interested in participating (though I'll be slow as molasses getting anything done -- lack of time). I have started an article on the "wiki" standard coordinates, with usage notes and conversion tables; with the idea that the coordinate headers (such as on template "Infobox Color") would link to this article rather than to all the technical color articles. Do you think this article is worth pursuing? Suggestions very welcome (still kind of a newbie). CoyneT talk 00:44, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have raised a question here: you will see that my preference is to keep the individual color systems linked to their respective articles, but to link the Color Coordinates caption to an explanatory article, using your draft as a starting point. --Phil | Talk 11:19, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
Per your suggestion, I have moved my draft page under the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates (I saw no reason to make you move it). I also added a sub-section to the main project article which includes, among other things, how the modified infobox might look. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Color#Infoboxes. (I haven't built a template yet; this just incorporates a stripped version of the infobox template source.) CoyneT talk 03:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have you received any response at all to the Village Pump question? If not, is this a don't care? Also: What about, instead of changing the header, remove the "N" subscripts and change the bottom to read "About these coordinates" (mockup here).

Color coordination

Phil, why toss that out to the sharks? I've already learned you get no help that way -- as Toytoy has ably demonstrated.

You are right to think about the problem -- mirrors might, even ought, toss anything other than article mainspace, imagespace, and templatespace. We ought never link from mainspace to Wikipediaspace, except under highly special circumstances.

There are two solutions, either of which seem reasonable prima facie:

1. Forbear to link to the Wikipediaspace page from within the swatch template.

2. Move the page on normalization to article mainspace and "encyclopedize" it.

I like the latter. Once color normalization is covered generally, then it is appropriate to note how normalization is handled "in this project" -- naming no names. A mirror that copies the normalization page will also copy the template itself, and all is well.

The reason I asked the question was to forestall any likely problem: let discussion ensue. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the egg is broken now. I only suggest you might want to float trial balloons quietly -- I have begun to fear the Pump. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Normalisation

Now, I have to insist on some sort of reply on CMYK normalization. You will just never get me to accept 0-255; it must be 0-100%. Please trust me on this and don't make me rake up examples and references. Okay?

I think some examples and references would be a good idea for the CMYK article. For example: there is almost nothing about how the color vectors are actually used. What format do they exist in? What software actually uses them? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

CMYK isn't a computer software standard at all; it's a standard process in the larger and older world of printing real ink on real paper, generally with a four-color web offset press. Such printers -- people, not peripherals -- have long standardized hues, screens, and ink coverages; the latter invariably range from 0-100%. I can show that to you if you like. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

I can go with that, although I think we need to explain it somewhere, if only to stop someone coming along later and blasting them all into [000-255]. --Phil | Talk 16:14, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Now that's where your nifty color normalization page comes in. Does double duty as a general information page and something the color project points to as a basis for its normalization. Just clean it up, add some info, and slide it out to mainspace.
If you're wondering how to deal with "self-reference", I've just got into a useful little tag: {{project usage}}. Hope the sharks haven't eaten it by now. — Xiong熊talk* 12:39, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

Infobox

As long as we're airing beefs: If you explain your normalization strategy in a mainspace page, there is no need for the annoying little notes right in the swatch template. I'd like to see the whole thing cut down a bit in size -- a smaller swatch (not too small) and a more compact rendering of the coordinates. Do you want me to work up an improvement?

If you compare it to the average infobox it's a good size: whay's the point of scrunching it up in the corner? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Gut feeling here only; the swatch itself just looks too big to my eye, and I run dual 20" monitors, so I'm hardly pressed for screen real estate. Not a point to argue over. The normalization notation below the swatch is distracting; better to use the space to list color coordinates alone, and let interested parties follow a link to an explanation of how and why we normalized. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Spelling

Color vs colour etc.: My position on all such squabbles is, just ignore them. Use whichever spelling you like, don't go out of your way to change others' choices; if someone overhauls something and uses a different spelling, don't get mad. The matter is petty to me. Agreed?

I don't think you'll find I've been having any problems with that: where do think I've been getting "mad"? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Oh no, not at all; my apologies. This must be the part you want me to tone down. I did not mean to imply you were a party to such squabbles, but I've seen them elsewhere -- and the repeated use of "color" and "-ization" just brought the matter to my fingertips. I think you and I are on the same sheet of music here.

WikiProject Color

Now, on to a more substantial issue: I'm starting to have grave concerns about the whole direction of WikiColor. Toytoy, I have to admit, has a point -- he's got the wrong end of it, but he has a point.

I see you have voiced your concerns on the talk page: we can talk there further. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Too many pages

What is starting to upset me is that the HTML color "lime" points to RGB 0,255,0. That is difficult, but it is a reality. I think we may have too many color pages -- Lime and Green should be merged, and so on down the line. I don't think it's helpful to have a distinct page for every shade in the rainbow.

Check the articles again: lime and green are different, disctinct web colors, which have different RGB values: they should not be treated as the same. Wikipedia is not paper: there's more than one meaning to normalisation. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

This whole issue is fraught with difficulties. I'm not sure I have a solution, but I see a problem.

When a user looks for the article on "green", what does he seek? Can we be sure? Can he be sure? Should the "lime" link from {web colors} point to lime or to green? Look at that template; since you and I worked on it, it's very nice -- but clearly, each table column contains two different things: the word and the swatch. Should they be made to point to two different articles?

Lime is a kind of green; so is forest; navy is a kind of blue; so is teal. It would be possible -- easy, in fact -- to have literally hundreds of color articles, and each one could be defended on grounds that a shade of that name is notable. I think this is the wrong way to go. Neighboring colors are very closely related to one another, so much so that some people will use one word for this color, others for the next to the left.

I think it might be much better to have a fairly small number of individual color pages, with multiple swatches on each one. Note, for example, Orange (color), with swatches for safety orange and burnt orange. This is the right path.

Perhaps we should have a slew of color disambiguation pages, but they would really only be subsets of the one grand navigational color wheel -- q.v. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

What do you think about a navigational color wheel? Never mind if we can do it or not; to the persistent, all things are possible. — Xiong熊talk 04:01, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

If you can cook one up, it should be used as a complement to the existing pages, rather than as a replacement. That would be a help, yes please. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you imagine one could "replace" with a navigational color wheel. Ideally, the thing would be a template present on every color page and on Color, etc. Since image maps are banned from the wiki, it will be something of a challenge -- but I imagine something basic can be cooked up. It would be easier, of course, with fewer color pages. Let me ruminate. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

IMNSHO

IMNSHO, naturally: sorry, I hadn't realised there was a link for it. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:51, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

TA. IJHA. TANNCTEASYHTLTUOG,WCT15MOS,YK? KOA;LT.  :-) - Omegatron 13:47, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Mirror Image

Welcome to Wikipedia.

You should be aware that your choice of user-name might be regarded as offensive to many users: it appears to be a combination of filbert and asshole, neither of which is likely to endear you to many participants. Your use of the abbreviation HTH or Hit this Hungarian is not likely to mollify any offended parties.

Boswell Your list of contributions shows that you are not afraid to waste your life away: describing the reversion of POV edits as "hovering on the edges of honesty" is hovering on the edges of personal attack; your defense of the pejorative use of islamofascism in Wikipedia and reluctance to view zionism the same way looks to be your own sick POV or maybe just ignorance, or both; your comment about my comment on Talk:Timothy McVeigh could be taken to mean that you think the FBI is heroic for burning down a building with children in it at Waco.

I would warn you that Wikipedia has a long history of dealing with so-called "POV Warriors" and mechanisms are already in place to do so again. We have ways of getting rid of people we don't like. It's like a club. We control it. You are on the outside and I hope you stay there. "No Niggers Allowed" Please consider changing your user-name and moderating your tone. I don't like you.

I am not an administrator: I have no special powers. I am just trying to make this project reflect my own POV without having to deal with your opinion or anyone else's opinion that I don't like. --Spaz 22:27, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to see this Phil - not nice at all. Your concerns notified to Angela look well founded! Brookie:The grass on the hill 14:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Possible problem user

Hi. I think your tone was fine. rv pov isn't the sort of edit summary I'd expect from a new user. If they continue, mediation might be a useful step. Angela. 16:51, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Transit visibility table

Good job with the transit visibility table. I'll need to read up on how you defined it because I don't yet know. The good news is that the Transit of Venus page has become a featured page, the bad news is our work with the transit visibility table has been temporarily taken away due to vandalism so our recent work cannot be seen. Better luck next time! I plan to undo some of that damage in the next week if time permits. --  B.d.mills  (Talk) 13:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

disrupting wikipedia policy vote

You voted once for the policy at Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Despite a 75% support that vote was rejected by the minority. A new vote has been called with a two week limit at Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Please take a moment to participate. Thanks. - Tεxτurε 16:56, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Standard template style

While WP:TS is a good thing, we should not include a 'standard' template in every other template as this is an unreasonable server load. I've subst'ed it out in a number of occasions, and there's discussion on WP:TFD to ask what should be done with Template:STS. Yours, Radiant_* 11:40, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

VfD Template

Thanks for pointing me to this; had looked for such a thing a while back and didn't find one. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:46, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Harry Potter

Also replied on talk page

nice work with the Templates sub-page. EvilPhoenix 17:22, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

You're entirely welcome: I was a little worried I was being too bold :-). --Phil | Talk 17:35, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

{{imdb company}}

Thanks for fixes on the description page of the template. As concerns linking to the list of companies at the imdb, it seems, that one cannot get into the company page directly from there - if you click on the company's name in the list, just a search for films, produced by the company, is performed. I think, it should be some notice about this on the description page, however all candidates I've thought of, could at the same time cause some confusion. Have you any ideas? Cmapm 12:51, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OldVfd

Good morning. I noticed that you recently switched a VfD notice I made from text to the template:oldvfd. I am not convinced that was a good move. I am not yet comfortable with that template. I and others have expressed our misgivings on the template's Talk page. Those concerns have not yet been addressed to my satisfaction. Specifically:

  1. The template dynamically pulls the page name in order to create the link to the VfD discussion page. This will break under several conditions, causing the VfD discussion to become lost. Here are just a few of those conditions.
    • When the article is moved to a different name
    • When the talk page is archived
    • When the article is nominated a second time
    • When the VfD discussion page has a typo in the title so it didn't exactly match the page name
    • When the VfD discussion page was a consolidated entry (like Kanji articles)
  2. The use of the colored box draws greater attention to the VfD discussion than is necessary or appropriate. Old VfD discussions that result in a "keep" decision are no big thing. They are important at the time and should be preserved but it is not important that every future reader/editor look for or read the discussion. This is different from the other colored boxes that are in use. If an article is tagged for clean-up, every editor should read that. If the neutrality or fact-base of the article has been challenged, every current reader should see that. But those boxes come off when the problem is resolved. The oldvfd box will be preserved forever. It is a distraction to the reader.
  3. The template does not provide an indicator for the date of the discussion.
  4. The template does not easily allow the discussion-closer to sign the edit.
  5. If, despite all these concerns, you are still going to use the template, it should only be used as a "subst", never as a transclusion. (Subst, by the way, will solve some server-load problems but will not solve the naming problem in bullet 1 above.)

I'm not going to revert the change you made but I'm also not convinced that the template is ready for use. Rossami (talk) 13:56, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:FLC

Well spotted. Thanks. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS - sorry to be picky, but do you really need to tranclude your talk archives? It takes an age to load up to section 129! -- ALoan (Talk) 10:55, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

LOTR Infobox

Thanks for the tip, Phil! AreJay 16:47, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Howdy, Topbanana here, back after an extended absence. I've decided to round up a few of my more useful reports into a project with the goal of converting as many "red links" (links to non-existant articles) into "blue links" (links to real articles). As you've been active in fixing similar things in the past, I thought I'd let you know in case you're interested in joining up. If not, I won't be offended - we've all got lots todo here :) - TB 11:38, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

HTML entities vs. Unicode characters

Thanks for letting me know, and for giving me a cogent reason. The anon was just wholesale reverting the changes I made, claiming entities were "safer", and when I asked about it at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Use of unicode within articles I was told to go ahead and keep replacing entities with characters if I want. But if entities really are safer, I won't convert any more pages, and I won't undo the anon's reversions if he keeps it up. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 30 June 2005 15:17 (UTC)

Category:UK Wikipedians

Hi, just to let you know that the list of UK participants at the UK notice board was getting rather long, so I have replaced it with the above category which I have added to your user page. -- Francs2000 | Talk 30 June 2005 20:38 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for making the mathematical domain table. It is much appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guardian of Light (talk • contribs) 16:22, July 1, 2005

Moving fonts around in "Unicode fonts" template

Unicode fonts

I was just doing some work on Bulgarian language when, all of a sudden, I couldn’t see what I was doing anymore. When you moved the fonts around, the Cyrillic in, for example, the following sentence turned into blank boxes for me: "the letters yat (Ѣ, ѣ) and yus (Ѫ, ѫ)...." Was the previous order that worked so well causing a problem? —Stephen 7 July 2005 10:41 (UTC)

Invitation

Hi Phil, you showed clear interest in EasyTimeline in the past. I would like to invite you to read and comment on my project proposal for a Grand Unified Timeline of Human History. Cheers, Erik Zachte 8 July 2005 23:26 (UTC)

This is a killer proposal, btw. Everyone should go comment now.  :-) +sj + 16:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

"^" template

This was part of a set of templates associated with a short-lived "half-decent articles" concept. That project may be reintroduced someday when there are enough people to flesh it out... but it is currently deleted (check deletion history, if interested :), so the template should be too. Thanks for the heads-up. +sj + 16:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

WP:IDRIVE templates

I appreciate that you only made subtle changes to the templates. But I wish you had at least waited, given that they are not listed among "Included templates" at Wikipedia:Template standardisation and that I had asked at Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation for a pause in standardization for discussion. Maurreen 03:05, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. —Phil | Talk 07:17, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Robbot answer

also answered here

I answered your question at User talk:Robbot. I'm sending you this message because it was some time since you asked, and you might have stopped checking. - Andre Engels 09:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll pop over to that policy proposal you mentioned and see what's occurring. —Phil | Talk 09:10, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Also replied on talk page

You recently edited this article, for formatting. Please adhere to the standard Wiki-code when you edit pages. Using </br> and <blockquote> is not necessary, and referencing pages outside of Wikipedia is usually done by means of a reference-link, like so: [3].

Please see here with particular reference to the section describing the uses of the BLOCKQUOTE tag. As you will no doubt have discovered, the functionality of the BLOCKQUOTE tag is just as different from the standard wiki-syntax COLON markup (which uses a bastardised form of the DD tag) as is the semantic import. (Sorry to be blunt but you have caught me on the down-side of a splitting headache at the end of a bad day :-) HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:46, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

----

Also replied there

Template talk:----? — Xiong熊talk* 22:24, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

You're quite correct. Since I now cannot recall why I created this, you might as well nuke it—I can't, I'm not an admin. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:00, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Should you be? I could nominate you on WP:RfA. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
That would be kind. I would be interested to see if anyone even recognises my handle :-) Being an admin is "No big deal", it just makes some things easier to deal with. Thanks, let's see what occurs… —Phil | Talk 14:14, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Done. Please signify acceptance of the nomination on WP:RfA. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations! It's my pleasure to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful. Cheers! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 16:15, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Well done! Not a bad result for my first nomination at WP:RFA, if I do say so myself. Enjoy using the Infinite Cosmic Powers (TM). -- ALoan (Talk) 16:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
logging in from Dorset Thank you very much. I look forward to returning from holiday. Phil | Talk 14:31, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Happy birthday

Happy birthday Phil! =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:23, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. Phil | Talk 06:45, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

User:Jenmoa/birthday --User:Jenmoa 03:58, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

SuperShadow VfD

Greetings: pawing through the SuperShadow edit history, I noticed you've edited the page in question before. I thought you'd want to know it is now the subject of a Vote for Deletion, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SuperShadow. If you want, you could stop in there and cast a vote. --Maru 22:09, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Popups tool

Congratulations on being made an admin! I thought you might like to know of a javascript tool that may help in your editing by giving easy access to many admin features. It's described at Wikipedia:Tools#Navigation_popups. The quick version of the installation procedure for admins is paste the following into User:Phil Boswell/monobook.js: 

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]] - please include this line 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

popupAdminLinks=true;

Give it a try and let me know if you find any glitches or have suggestions for improvements! Lupin 01:54, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks, APH 09:27, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I noticed that these articles:

that you worked on in the past are now are up for deletion. Would you vote in favor of keeping these articles? They show the history of the advancement of video game graphics over time and are useful as a source of images for graphics for video game articles. --ShaunMacPherson 20:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I looked at the history for these articles and I appear nowhere. I'm not certain why you thought I would be interested. You do understand that it is not the images themselves which are up for deletion, but simply the gallery articles which are displaying them in a manner not appropriate for fair use? —Phil | Talk 07:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
It's maybe slightly embarrasing (:0)) for you that say you 'appear nowhere' but do in fact appear in the history of Gallery of Super Nintendo Entertainment System screenshots (second on the list): 15:59, 21 March 2005 Phil Boswell m (Fix table or curly braces - Please return the favour by clicking here to fix someone else's Wiki syntax), thus I contacted you.
I have more on my own talk page about the copyright issue. Since it's up on the copyvio deletion list that is where most of the talk is taking place. I would hope that people push for fair use rights rather than surrendering them, especially when the works appear to me, and I gave arguements, that the screen shots, even in a gallery, fall well within fair use in the United States. --ShaunMacPherson 18:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

<includeonly>

Also answered on your talk page: I was wondering what the effect of the <includeonly> tag was? I saw you add it to Template:Todo, and was just curious! — Matt Crypto 16:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The effect is that stuff inside the tag is only displayed when the template is transcluded. So whilst there is a Category in the wikicode for {{Todo}}, the template itself does not appear in that Category. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 16:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, that's quite useful. Thanks for the explanation. — Matt Crypto 16:47, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Old deletion discussions

Oh my, that shouldn't have been deleted. Anyway, I've restored it. I did try to skip deleting pages that were discussions on deletion, but I supposed its inevitable that there were some mistakes when going over thousands of talk pages. If you find any more similar deleted pages, just restore them. (Though, to be frank, the discussions are so old hardly anyone would really notice either way) Coffee 13:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: ISBN template

Yeah, I know about Special:Booksources, that's where I found the link. I just though it was a nifty service and figured it would be usefull to add directly to the bibliography next to whatever ISBN number was used in order to save time and clicks. I'll agree that it didn't look too great though, too bad there is no way to add a title tag to the links, if there where it could have been just a numbered link with a toolip explaning what it was, but alas, that didn't work so I had to spell it out... Oh well I'll just TFD the template then, it servers no purpose without that link to xISBN as it takes longer to type than a plain ISBN link. --Sherool 13:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

David Mertz

I notice you've made some edits to the article about me, presumably following having seen the AfD on it. Thanks for the work on it. Since you've expanded the specific titles of several older philosophy articles I've written, I think the article would also benefit from mentioning the probably more notable recent papers I've done on electronic voting systems and associated computer security issues. Either the Google scholar link on the AfD, or the talk page to the article give you citation information.

Obviously, it's up to you, I'll defer to your editorial judgement. But the newer things are more related to my actual reasons for noteriety. Thanks. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 16:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

AFD List

Thank you for providing this service: it's very useful. Would it be possible to add a link to the relevant log page when creating a new section? If I were to start the ball rolling by adding a link to this article to the top of this section and so on, would this screw up the bot, and/or would the bot remove the links? —Phil | Talk 06:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

The bot would remove the links. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry... run that by me again? You want me to link each sectional date to the appropriate date log? If you were asking for that, it already does that. Or are you asking me to place a link to the AFD List on each log page for all the 7 days? --AllyUnion (talk) 08:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't mind me, I'm just working out how to humiliate myself by asking the most stupid question with the most obvious answer. Need more coffee! Quiet! back to work! Sorry to bother you, I'll be hiding under the desk...although your new suggestion—which arrived whilst I was adding this—sounds good. —Phil | Talk 09:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Me and my big mouth... --AllyUnion (talk) 09:20, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Per your comment, I'm removing Template:Album from Wikipedia:Templates with red links/2005-09-09.1-2 - the purpose of the project is to provide a list of templates that can be completed by the removal of red links, which Template:Album can never be. Thanks for pointing it out! Cheers,  BD2412 talk 17:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

A sunflower for {{IPA}}-ing and {{unicode}}-ing Yoruba language. Thanks! I'll try to remember to use those more consistently when I'm expanding the article. Cheers, — mark ✎ 11:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, thanks for doing the reference template cleanup work that you're doing. Jkelly 16:44, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Re:Please rephrase your comment

Yes, well, my comment was a bit too harsh when I look at it now :( About rephrasing it... hem I'm not sure if that would be really OK, I'm not really fond of deleting (of messing with) posts on talk pages... it can lead to censorship and other nasty stuff.

I have another idea.. let's verify if this person really works at the Philosophy faculty in Belgrade, or not. It could easily be checked.. only yesterday I visited building of this faculty (and since I live in Belgrade, I can go there again), and this kind of information probably is open for public.

If it appears that Aleksandra Selakovich is an employee of this institution (and that it is the same person that works on Wikipedia), I will give my deepest and most sincere apology because of my unfair attack. If however she doesn't work there, then it is true that she is a notorious liar, and my comment should stay, so other contributors and visitors can be aware that everything that comes from this person (who is ready for an identity fraud) should be checked twice.

The fact is that this contributors only actions up to now were in order to create a hoax. To say that Zlatiborian language exist would be similar to the statement that there is a such thing as Bexley language for example. -- Obradović Goran (talk 12:30, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

bot request

Your bot request will finish over night, hope it helps! regards Martin 23:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Déjà vu, can you confirm this is what you wanted to be done. thanks Martin 17:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

OK it seemed fine so I did it, there are a handful left, I assume they have some kind of problem. Martin 20:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for both of those: that seems to have worked a treat :-) —Phil | Talk 08:04, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure thing, Bluebot is always ready for action! Martin 11:44, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Book reference template

Thanks for the tip about noinclude - I didn't realise it existed. Hope you agree that some sort of helpful comment in the source is required though - the template is now monstrously complicated! Pcb21| Pete 15:42, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Also replied on your talk page:
Personally I think the best advice is don't fiddle :-) —Phil | Talk 15:46, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually I was talking about using the template, not even dreaming of seriously editing it! Am I sure I am not alone in looking at template source to figure out how to use them. This is becoming steadily less useful as conditional templates become popular. Instead we need to write documentation on how to use a template on its talk page. (Or, now that I know that noinclude exists, the documentation could even go on the template page itself, which would be quite neat). Pcb21| Pete 16:24, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
There is extensive documentation on the talk page: this might actually be one of the best-documented templates around. Maybe the comment should include a pointer there: what do you think? —Phil | Talk 16:32, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh I agree that the documentation is good - I will be using it as an example to foster documentation on other templates. A pointer from the actual page would be fine. The point is that people are not currently in the habit of checking the talk page for documentation (because it is not normally there!) - so we have to make a pointer. noinclude allows us the option to put documentation on the main page instead if we wanted to but I don't demand this. Pcb21| Pete 17:35, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Guardians of Time

I updated the project page to show the changes (project banner in discussion page)

One of my images is still marked orphaned fair-use (Image:The_Key.jpg linked on The Key) (I already fixed the project banner on that page)

Should there be a disambig article on The Dark now since there are 3 different references? (The Dark, Fightball and The Dark (novel))

--Htl2001 15:09, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

HTH HAND Phil | Talk 15:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Love those tables

Thanks for tablifying Names of the Jewish people. Looks so much better now! ←Humus sapiens←ну? 00:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Template wizardry

Hi, Phil. From {{book reference}} I gather that you are an initiate of the dark art of template syntax. At {{language}} (see it in action at Nafaanra language), we have had a discussion some time ago about the 'ranking' component of the language box. This ranking is only relevant for the about hundred or so most widely spoken languages, so many editors don't like it for smaller languages. Now, I did not know that if clauses existed in template syntax until I came across the optional parameters of Book reference. Would it be possible for you to apply the if-wizardry to the 'ranking' component of the {{language}} box? Please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance, — mark ✎ 08:23, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Phil, I should have checked out {{language}} myself first. Apparently, it has fallen from my watchlist and I just didn't notice that another wizard had fixed the problem already. Kudos for your great work at Book reference, anyway! — mark ✎ 08:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello Phil - I would like to create a navigational template, but it will need to be able to branch depending on the name of the article it is in. I know the "toccolours" class causes the template to vary its behavior this way. What I would like to do is have a "title" in the template which jumps you up the heirarchy, and a list of topics one level down from the title, of which the article you are in is one. It should be in black, indicating "this article" but then for this article only, I would like a list of subtopics to appear. So the logic would be like "if this article is named "xxx" then display the following list of subtopics". Is there a way to do this? Thanks for any help - PAR 22:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot ...

... for your message about my font colours. It's awfully nice of you to try and find a solution to my signature problems. I'm in a hurry now, but I'll try out your suggestion ASAP. I used to have it the way you describe it, but at Wikipedia:How to fix your signature it explicitely says: "It's also a good idea to put the tags outside the link if possible." So that's what I did. All the best, <KF> 09:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

ISO 3166-1

Feel free to add your support to get the ISO 3166-1 nominated in the featured lists: click here. Bart l 18:20, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Booleans

I susspect you know a lot of such things, please take a look at Category talk:Boolean Templates, and give a comment. :) --AzaToth talk 15:23, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Ping!

let me know if you want any more bot work done. Martin 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

BING-BONG! Martin 14:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Unicode templates

The first batch of these that you nominated has been (or is being) deleted. I have left the second list you mentioned at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Unicode chart…default fonts, as I presume you plan to nominate them soon. If you don't, it might be appropriate to userfy them. -Splashtalk 01:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Nominated. Thanks for the heads-up. —Phil | Talk 09:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Switch

Made a switch statement (rather trivial now when I see it) {{switch}} AzaToth talk 04:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Unicode thanks!

Thanks for your contributions at Níðhöggr. You're doing good work with that unicode template. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 12:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

arXiv template

Also answered on your talk page.

I think your template is brilliant. One suggestion: to make it quicker to use, perhaps it could be set up to work as follows { { arXiv | hep-th/1234567 } } ? Why is the redundant archive = and id = notation necessary? –Joke137 16:36, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

The idea of using a template for links to external sites like this is to future-proof the linking. If arXiv decided to change the format of their URLs, we can simply alter a single template and every link which uses that template changes to suit. The reason for explicitly separating out the archive and id components is to allow them to be combined together any way we like. Another reason is that it would, at a later date, be possible to search all uses of the template for links to a particular archive. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:12, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. I was just looking for excuses to be lazy and avoid some extra typing when using your template. –Joke137 17:27, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Measurement problem problem

Also on your talk page: Hi, Phil,

I saw the change you made to the references section to the Measurement Problem article. I'm glad you're doing this, but I wonder whether there may not be some way of fixing things so that the links do not appear as a jumbled set of incomprehensible abbreviations (?).

I'm assuming that you refer to the DOI ("doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.76.1267") and arXiv ("arXiv:quant-ph/0312059") links. Unfortunately the abbreviations used are the standard nomenclature: those are the actual labels used in the relevant conventions. We provide the links to the DOI and arXiv article to explain what is going on, but it would be pointless simply duplicating the title of the paper in each link.
My current role is converting as many "references" as possible to use the standard templates: this allows more consistent formatting and makes it possible to catch inconsistencies between entries that should be identical.

Are you a physicist? There are a few articles that could really use help from someone who (1) is well grounded in physics, and (2) is willing to try to make the articles accessible to other than physics majors. There are several articles that might attract the attention of bright high school students trying to get information that goes beyond pap being fed to them, but they come nowhere near the standard of Greene's writings on deep issues for the non-expert, and I see no reason why they have to be written only for people who would be better advised to pick up one of their fourth year physics texts for a refresher anyway. P0M 19:13, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my physics is a good few years out of date. I might be able to get back into the stride of things with a good run-up, but I suspect you'll find a good many people much better qualified than me :-) —Phil | Talk 09:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

touch request/hebrew letters

Hi Phil, those templates don't have much linking to them, so touching didnt really do anything.

Also, in regard to the hebrew letters substing, there are lots of templates inside other templates, I have substed quite a few, but many remain, I assume it is the right thing to do to subst: them all? and then subst: all the template occurances in articles. Martin 10:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Bluebot's capabilities

Hi Phil, at the moment Bluebot runs a plain old pywikibot, so its functionality it limited. However (by coincidence) last night I uploaded the first development version of my new AutoWikiBrowser which should ultimatly be able to help. At the moment it may be able to help a bit, as you could semi-automatically iterate through all the articles in a category (and soon on a "what links here") and make any necessary changes (be that by hand or by a find and replace, or both). It can also do other stuff, and in the future a lot more stuff. thanks Martin 12:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

No its not an installer, you will need the .Net framework version 2 for it to run, I am working on getting "what links here" articles as we speak. let me know if there are any problems. Martin 12:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

hydroxide template

Hi - just noted your formula templates in serpentine and benitoite and there is a problem with the hydroxide - {{Hydroxide|4}} puts the subsc. inside the parens. which is incorrect, should read (OH)4. Please fix. Vsmith 13:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Have an idea, instead of using if, you could create a gereric element template containing: 

{{{3{{{3|}}}|(}}}[[{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}]]{{{3{{{3|}}}|)<sub>{{{3}}}</sub>}}}

and call like this (all params must be defined):

→AzaToth 13:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Another template specialist

Hi Phil. In case you haven't seen him already: I think I have scouted an additional template specialist: user:Patrick. More beautiful template woodoo :-). It's interesting (no pun intended). I'm still puzzeling. See m:template:Equal. Our template:booleq - used in book reference, but is not affected - has a bug when parameter 2 has value 2 [4]. I'm watching what Patrick is doing. Maybe he can fix template:booleq (as he seems to have been inspired by it). Or I copy what he's done in MediaWiki (when I'm finished puzzeling :-). – Adrian | Talk 20:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

156.63.87.28 blocked indefinetly

You were among the people who this anon tried to change the password of. So you know, I've blocked the user permanently. I'll likely unblock the IP later, once I thing they're full discouraged. -- user:zanimum

Your involvement in the Harry Potter Project?

Howdy, I was hoping you might have a look at User:Reagle/HPP_Questions -Reagle 16:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

UK-actor-stub

Hi. Thanks for sorting the stub out. --Whouk (talk) 15:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

WP:AUM violation

By changing Template:See also to use meta-templates, and then "migrating" articles to that, you are directly failing to abide by the request from our developers to not use templates in that particular way. Please stop, and indeed reverse, your efforts. -- Netoholic @ 14:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Even if you are not satisfied that the AUM discussion is final, you should be willing to stop and back off your recent changes for the time being. Openly defying a guideline is not the way to handle this. -- Netoholic @ 16:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Police: see5 template

You asked on my talk page:

Regarding your edit, please note that see5 is not migratable to see, since it's designed to take more than one (five, to be precise) argument. Shinobu 15:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, well…I had just updated {{see}} to handle up to 9 arguments. Unfortunately there is a certain editor who has a bee in his bonnet about particular usage of templates and we ran foul of his latest mini-crusade. I am in the process of lodging complaints in the appropriate places: I might even be found to be occupying the moral high ground (not necessarily my usual stamping ground ;-)). In the meantime, it should be possible to undo your reversion unless he strikes again. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:46, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! And a virtual twinkie for the new template! I've reverted my reversion, so it's okay now. Shinobu 16:01, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Netoholic

The ban is, I believe, still operative, although I do not expect that to remain the case, nor do I really support it remaining the case. Raul654 has specifically asked for leniance in enforcing the ban as well, and the matter is before the arbcom as an appeal. As for AUM, Netoholic remains completely correct about this, as it is a guideline stemming not from the community, but from the developers, who the community has no right and never has had a right to overturn. Phil Sandifer 16:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is the above as well. I have no personal opinion on it, and chose not to press the issue when Raul654 made this post in response to my block announcement on WP:AN/I. Ral315 (talk) 16:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Kåd

Further information: m:User:AzaToth/Logic

touch request

I'll start touching all those articles soon then, but it may take a long time! Also, I found the root of the problem you highlighted here. thanks Martin 12:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

These templates have been touched, but probably still contain template:if

could you check them out, as this will make the touching more effective. Martin 11:33, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I've struck out the ones I've checked so far: busy touching their clients now… HTH HAND Phil | Talk 12:45, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, it's going right now, initially >15000, now there are ~7800. should be done by this evening. Martin 14:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Put on TfD. Thanks to Martin for the bot work and to Phil for finishing what I had begun. – Adrian | Talk 09:53, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry Phil

You litle edit on my links page does not work ,the empty line must be present there so the title is not intterped as code :) →AzaToth 15:17, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

qif without qif

Please have a look at what MrWeeble did at {{Infobox TV channel}} (talk). There is hope for book reference... Adrian Buehlmann 22:05, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I mean this version. Adrian Buehlmann 06:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry for having shocked you. I understand I probably drove you to that "so brain-wrenchingly stupid as to cause spontaneous cerebral hemmoraging" state which snowspinner coined in this edit ;-). But I must say as long as book reference or web reference do call qif boolor et al. we are strictly speaking no longer allowed to add book- or web references to articles, due to WP:AUM. Neto's opinion (as I know so far) is that book reference must not be used anyway. So as soon as he removes qif from book reference, we have to quickly remove book reference from articles. We cannot revert him due to WP:AUM. Neto has been quite successfull with his CSS trick (which breaks lynx), but it is not as versatile as qif. So there is a small chance that we can do something similiar with book reference, but I fear at the cost of a massive cut down on features. Adrian Buehlmann 10:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

See [5][6]. Adrian Buehlmann 10:40, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You wrote "Nuf said: I rest my case". Sorry my english is too bad to grasp enough of the finer points of that. Could you write that for a disabled one like me :-)?

Ok. thanks. Adrian Buehlmann 11:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

LOL

That didn't even occur to me when I was listing it. I should have put it in brackets.  :) RickK 05:20, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Road-stub in motorcycle articles

Phil- I don't think {{road-stub}} is the right stub for the Yamaha motorcyle articles. The Category:Road stubs contains roads and highways, and not much else. What these articles really need is a motorcycle-stub—the regular stub should do just fine until that occurs. --Milkmandan 16:49, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Geo-stubs

Hi Phil,

You wrote: You appear to be (sort of) following my fumbling attempts at sorting geo-stubs and refining them.Thank you for doing a good job. I seem to be working off an out-of-date list of geo-stubs: do you know where there is a more up-to-date list?

Thanks for the kudos! There are two that I know of - at the top of Category:Geography stubs, and on one of my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs), which lists all the stub categories. I'm hoping to get the latter completed and into the Wikipedia proper as soon as I can! As to "geo-stub fumblings", just adding geo-stub is a big help, although learning one or two of the most common geo-stubs (like UK-geo-stub and US-geo-stub) would help more :) Grutness|hello? 07:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Those ones I can just about handle :-) I hate to feed the "systematic-bias" trolls, but it does seem that North America and Europe are very well-covered...
You're right, they are... there are considerably more articles from some of those places... but the systematic bias is at least in part because the English-language Wikipedia is bound to have more people from English-speaking countries. Go to the Japanese Wikipedia, say, and you'll probably find more Far East stubs. As to remembering which one is what, if in doubt try 'Countryname-geo-stub' and preview. If it doesn't work, then just leave it at geo-stub. That will still cut the workload down by a huge amount :). Grutness|hello? 08:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)


ISO 3166-2

Hi Phil,

nice that you do some work there and add sorted by name and so on. Do you think having it bold is a good idea? I do not like it, in other places we do not have bold codes neither regards ;-) Tobias Conradi 18:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ideally the key column ought to be bold, since that is the column you search on. So actually in the tables "sorted by name", the name column ought to be bold. That, however, can be sorted out later, in true wiki fashion. For now just constructing the tables and shoving the articles into the new category is enough to be getting on with. (BTW I'm going to continue putting them into category:ISO 3166: I don't think we actually need to break that down further.) HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 10:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
I would like to have it in ISO 3166-2, because there are three parts of the standard and they have really diferent focus. Especially part 1 and 3 are different to part 2. The cat for part 1 (or the general) can include one day ISO 3166-1-derived standards, making this cat much bigger. To have extra cat for ISO 3166-2 therefor is not that bad?
ok, maybe bold is fine, even if I (currently) do not like it. But there shold be the html-tag for /code/ around it. Making it same lenght for xx-mm and xx-ii. Because no the stuff is centered and not really fast readable, because not aligned. best regards Tobias Conradi 15:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
ISO 3166-2:DE is an ISO standard which defines geocodes: it is the subset of ISO 3166-2 which applies to Germany. It covers the 16 states (Länder).
that is not true. If at all than ISO 3166-2 is the standard. This writing with :DE is just something I created some years ago.
The part of ISO 3166-2 that applies to Germany provides codes for the names of the 16 states of Germany (länder).
is more correct. I changed it Tobias Conradi 11:35, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Barnstarpages

Heya Phil. I noticed that you merged Template:Barnstars and Template:Barnstarpages. That's very good, but the former template is getting very large, and the latter is quite small. The result is that is a page only wants to list around tha pages, and not the ever-increasing number of stars (such as the Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia pages) is forced to host a bunch of extra baggage. I rolled back the Template:Barnstarpages, but that damn "template for deletion" banner is still there: can we agree to remove it, because Template:Barnstarpages isn't hurting anybody? Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 15:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem as I saw it was that both templates were being used on the same pages, and therefore duplicating effort. I therefore merged the small one into the big one on the grounds that the latter was being used everywhere the former one was already and no information would therefore be lost. The current situation is that Template:Barnstarpages is only being used in one place which is not a supportable situation for a template. Unless there are several more places where it might be needed which do not need the full list, it should be substituted into that page and retired.
HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Babylon 5 Widescreen

I understand that contradicting JMS is tantamount to heresy in the eyes of Babylon 5 fans, however, his words on the widescreen subject are contradicted by the reality of the footage.

I would be doing a disservice to the presentation of fact, to wikipedia, and to the people looking up info here if I was to accept JMS' word over the reality that is staring me in the face.

If JMS said the sky was green, it would, in fact remain blue. Similarly, his words do not affect the reality of the widescreen issue.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments rather than just making an edit.

Ibuki 19:13, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gay Icon Project

I see your point about edit summaries, and I went back today and added to the talk page of every article I categorized an explanation of what I was doing. The list I was merging from seemed to be vandalized, but to what extent I couldn't determine, so except for some ridiculous entries (Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Thatcher), I just categorized EVERYONE on the list and left the work of fact-checking to the people maintaining the articles (who, presumably, know something about those people.) Philwelch 22:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Quarto by email

Hi Phil, a new mailing list has been set up to distribute news about the Wikimedia foundation, specifically at the moment to publicise Quarto. I saw your name on the quarto talk page requesting a copy by email, and I think this mailing list is how we're going to do it for the moment. It'll be a html email, which I've added to the Quarto talk page m:Talk:WQ. Mailing list is called Foundation-news-l (We also need translators!) Cheers w:User:Cormaggio

Wikipedia:Official Wikipedia motto

The {{notpolicy}} template is supposed to add the category tag for you. There is an unfortunate edit war going on at Template:notpolicy that has resulted in the tag being removed. I believe the edit war will be resolved shortly. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe you are correct, particularly given his recent preoccupation with so-called meta-templates. Of course, transclusion is but one of many features that promote organization, consensus, and uniformity of content which he has opposed. The Speedy/VFD process, and the custom of retaining talk page comments both come to mind immediately. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Color info boxes

I thought I'd pop by and mention that your color info boxes are causing some disquiet, with me but others too. I really think the CMYK values in particular should be removed. There was existing talk on Talk:Purple; I also added to Talk:Cyan.

I am thoroughly aware of the problem, and indeed have noted it in several places. The best solution is not to shuffle the problem under the electronic carpet but to discuss it openly. I think the likely best solution is to agree on the appropriate range of values to use for Wikipedia articles, and also make sure we agree on the transformation algorithm. I know that some of the articles talk about values between 0 and 1, but I don't think this displays well; also in most places it is the ratio of values which is important, and the scaling is relatively trivial. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 07:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the best place to have this discussion - so let's have it here. The ratios are not really the biggest deal, except that it serves to perpetuate the idea that colors are in the range 0 to 255, which is a world view that can handicap understanding any more detailed discussion. I see several other issues: 1. CMYK conversion. I cannot see anything good in this. I vote to remove CMYK in all cases. By including CMYK values it gives the impression that conversion from RGB to CMYK is some simple fixed function you can look up, rather than a function which needs to take into account the RGB and CMYK properties, printing conditions etc. More harm than good. 2. Color names. For purple, for instance, why THAT purple? Is it a standard? If so, that should be noted. If not, it should somehow indicate "typical" or "exampe". Notinasnaid 08:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! (My signature)

Thanks a bunch for pointing out the error in my signature. I appreciate it! Demi T/C 17:16, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)


UN/LOCODE

thx for help and fixing my mistakes :-) There is onw more but I do not knw how to solve. In the change-table I put "I" (capital i) but it should be like in the notes the pipe "|" . I do not know how to put "|" in a table. maybe you? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PlaneShift Screenshots

Captions improved.

Thanks

...for those town coordinates! Lupin 16:52, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stacking

Also answered on talk page.

Phil, did you intend for the images in Stirling to stack horizontally? Putting images adjacent to one another in the wikitext has them stack vertically for the monobook skin, but makes them stack horizontally in classic and cologne blue. The only skin-neutral way I've found of making images stack nicely is to use a table - see Casa Batlló for a fairly minimal example. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:32, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, I most certainly did not—thwacks own head crossly—sorry about that. There was a nasty gap in the text and I wanted that to close up. Do you think a gallery would be better, given that the locational image is occupying pride of place? --Phil | Talk 15:42, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject Color

Hi. I just ran across the Wikiproject Color page and I'm interested in participating (though I'll be slow as molasses getting anything done -- lack of time). I have started an article on the "wiki" standard coordinates, with usage notes and conversion tables; with the idea that the coordinate headers (such as on template "Infobox Color") would link to this article rather than to all the technical color articles. Do you think this article is worth pursuing? Suggestions very welcome (still kind of a newbie). CoyneT talk 00:44, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have raised a question here: you will see that my preference is to keep the individual color systems linked to their respective articles, but to link the Color Coordinates caption to an explanatory article, using your draft as a starting point. --Phil | Talk 11:19, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
Per your suggestion, I have moved my draft page under the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Color/Normalized Color Coordinates (I saw no reason to make you move it). I also added a sub-section to the main project article which includes, among other things, how the modified infobox might look. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Color#Infoboxes. (I haven't built a template yet; this just incorporates a stripped version of the infobox template source.) CoyneT talk 03:48, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Have you received any response at all to the Village Pump question? If not, is this a don't care? Also: What about, instead of changing the header, remove the "N" subscripts and change the bottom to read "About these coordinates" (mockup here).

Color coordination

Phil, why toss that out to the sharks? I've already learned you get no help that way -- as Toytoy has ably demonstrated.

You are right to think about the problem -- mirrors might, even ought, toss anything other than article mainspace, imagespace, and templatespace. We ought never link from mainspace to Wikipediaspace, except under highly special circumstances.

There are two solutions, either of which seem reasonable prima facie:

1. Forbear to link to the Wikipediaspace page from within the swatch template.

2. Move the page on normalization to article mainspace and "encyclopedize" it.

I like the latter. Once color normalization is covered generally, then it is appropriate to note how normalization is handled "in this project" -- naming no names. A mirror that copies the normalization page will also copy the template itself, and all is well.

The reason I asked the question was to forestall any likely problem: let discussion ensue. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, the egg is broken now. I only suggest you might want to float trial balloons quietly -- I have begun to fear the Pump. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Normalisation

Now, I have to insist on some sort of reply on CMYK normalization. You will just never get me to accept 0-255; it must be 0-100%. Please trust me on this and don't make me rake up examples and references. Okay?

I think some examples and references would be a good idea for the CMYK article. For example: there is almost nothing about how the color vectors are actually used. What format do they exist in? What software actually uses them? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

CMYK isn't a computer software standard at all; it's a standard process in the larger and older world of printing real ink on real paper, generally with a four-color web offset press. Such printers -- people, not peripherals -- have long standardized hues, screens, and ink coverages; the latter invariably range from 0-100%. I can show that to you if you like. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

I can go with that, although I think we need to explain it somewhere, if only to stop someone coming along later and blasting them all into [000-255]. --Phil | Talk 16:14, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Now that's where your nifty color normalization page comes in. Does double duty as a general information page and something the color project points to as a basis for its normalization. Just clean it up, add some info, and slide it out to mainspace.
If you're wondering how to deal with "self-reference", I've just got into a useful little tag: {{project usage}}. Hope the sharks haven't eaten it by now. — Xiong熊talk* 12:39, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

Infobox

As long as we're airing beefs: If you explain your normalization strategy in a mainspace page, there is no need for the annoying little notes right in the swatch template. I'd like to see the whole thing cut down a bit in size -- a smaller swatch (not too small) and a more compact rendering of the coordinates. Do you want me to work up an improvement?

If you compare it to the average infobox it's a good size: whay's the point of scrunching it up in the corner? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Gut feeling here only; the swatch itself just looks too big to my eye, and I run dual 20" monitors, so I'm hardly pressed for screen real estate. Not a point to argue over. The normalization notation below the swatch is distracting; better to use the space to list color coordinates alone, and let interested parties follow a link to an explanation of how and why we normalized. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Spelling

Color vs colour etc.: My position on all such squabbles is, just ignore them. Use whichever spelling you like, don't go out of your way to change others' choices; if someone overhauls something and uses a different spelling, don't get mad. The matter is petty to me. Agreed?

I don't think you'll find I've been having any problems with that: where do think I've been getting "mad"? --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Oh no, not at all; my apologies. This must be the part you want me to tone down. I did not mean to imply you were a party to such squabbles, but I've seen them elsewhere -- and the repeated use of "color" and "-ization" just brought the matter to my fingertips. I think you and I are on the same sheet of music here.

WikiProject Color

Now, on to a more substantial issue: I'm starting to have grave concerns about the whole direction of WikiColor. Toytoy, I have to admit, has a point -- he's got the wrong end of it, but he has a point.

I see you have voiced your concerns on the talk page: we can talk there further. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

Too many pages

What is starting to upset me is that the HTML color "lime" points to RGB 0,255,0. That is difficult, but it is a reality. I think we may have too many color pages -- Lime and Green should be merged, and so on down the line. I don't think it's helpful to have a distinct page for every shade in the rainbow.

Check the articles again: lime and green are different, disctinct web colors, which have different RGB values: they should not be treated as the same. Wikipedia is not paper: there's more than one meaning to normalisation. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

This whole issue is fraught with difficulties. I'm not sure I have a solution, but I see a problem.

When a user looks for the article on "green", what does he seek? Can we be sure? Can he be sure? Should the "lime" link from {web colors} point to lime or to green? Look at that template; since you and I worked on it, it's very nice -- but clearly, each table column contains two different things: the word and the swatch. Should they be made to point to two different articles?

Lime is a kind of green; so is forest; navy is a kind of blue; so is teal. It would be possible -- easy, in fact -- to have literally hundreds of color articles, and each one could be defended on grounds that a shade of that name is notable. I think this is the wrong way to go. Neighboring colors are very closely related to one another, so much so that some people will use one word for this color, others for the next to the left.

I think it might be much better to have a fairly small number of individual color pages, with multiple swatches on each one. Note, for example, Orange (color), with swatches for safety orange and burnt orange. This is the right path.

Perhaps we should have a slew of color disambiguation pages, but they would really only be subsets of the one grand navigational color wheel -- q.v. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

What do you think about a navigational color wheel? Never mind if we can do it or not; to the persistent, all things are possible. — Xiong熊talk 04:01, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

If you can cook one up, it should be used as a complement to the existing pages, rather than as a replacement. That would be a help, yes please. --Phil | Talk 07:17, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you imagine one could "replace" with a navigational color wheel. Ideally, the thing would be a template present on every color page and on Color, etc. Since image maps are banned from the wiki, it will be something of a challenge -- but I imagine something basic can be cooked up. It would be easier, of course, with fewer color pages. Let me ruminate. — Xiong熊talk 08:09, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

IMNSHO

IMNSHO, naturally: sorry, I hadn't realised there was a link for it. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:51, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

TA. IJHA. TANNCTEASYHTLTUOG,WCT15MOS,YK? KOA;LT.  :-) - Omegatron 13:47, May 4, 2005 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afrikaners&oldid=13238083"