User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2006

Archives

2003

2004

2005

2006

Using Template:News reference

Hey Phil, this is a bit old, but I thought it never hurts to respond anyway. Awhile ago you posted this Template_talk:News_reference#Impersonal_authorship_required_for_Press_Releases. I think what you meant is that you didn't know who the author was, or it wasn't relevant, so you didn't want to include it. The 'author' attribute is actually optional, so you could have just left it out, which would be appropriate in this case I believe. The only attribute actually required is 'title'.

Anyway, you probably figured that out ages ago, but here goes nothing. cheers, pfctdayelise 14:10, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Please can you make also with your template to Transnistria. Thanks. Bonaparte talk 17:57, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clean-up

Thank you for fixing the grammar ans spelling mistakes in my comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Robertjkoenig. It is greatly appreciated. Movementarian 12:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

GRRR

[1]  :-) (don't ever touch my signature, you p*g!) --Ligulem 19:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

This above lousy statement by dumb me was absolutely and indeed meant in good humor. I wholehartedly apologize for any confusion this might have caused. Sorry Phil. --Ligulem 12:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The bug is fixed now _→AzaToth 22:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Yay! But {{tfd2}} hasn't changed: what did? —Phil | Talk 08:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

It was said to have been fixed. Please note that I wasn't angry at all. In fact I found it funny, especially Phil's edit summary on TfD :-). Have a nice day! --Ligulem 09:09, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Please help on book reference

Hi Phil. Please have a look at Template talk:Book reference#Rewrite due to WP:AUM. With lot's of help from Netoholic and CBD I prepared a proposal for a new version for book reference using the CSS trick of Neto. As you can see there, one Wikipedian has already started removing book references due to WP:AUM.

If we do nothing about that, we face the problem that the number of calls to book reference are decreased, something I think would be very regrettable. I think biting the bullet and taking Neto's trick for now until there is something better is less evil than just waiting until all calls to book reference are removed. Thanks. --Ligulem 23:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Citation templates

I've noticed you asking in several places why we need templates for citations because "they're not going to change". There are two answers to this:

1. There is every possibility that citation format might change, if consensus decides that this is desirable. I assume that you are aware that there are many "standard" formats for citation, and that we have arbitrarily picked just one.
2. It is desirable that users creating citations are able to do so without having to learn a complex set of rules governing italics and parentheses, with huge opportunities for error. It is also desirable to be able to update and improve a citation—adding an ISBN for example—without having to start again from scratch.

Consider the analogous situation with infoboxes: there are certain people who still think that these are an abomination, and that we should be coding the tables by hand each time, conforming to a carefully-crafted "Manual of Style". Yet I'm sure you will agree that there is a Wikipedia-wide consensus that infoboxes are helpful and useful.

If all the effort which has been put into the anti-meta-template ForestFire had been put into optimising the way MediaWiki handles template transclusion, I wonder if we'd be in a far better situation now than anybody might think.

HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 11:44, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment.

1. This is not a good reason for allowing high server strain. I know that there are many formats for citations, and all of them are acceptable for Wikipedia. We are not restricted to using the one on {{book reference}}. This is precisely because it was an arbitrary decision.
2. Easy enough. [2] - this can be extended if there's a desire for it.

But infoboxes are different in two main ways. The first is that they avoid having huge amounts of complicated code at the top of the article. I think a newcomer to Wikipedia will understand the plain text format considerably more easily than a template format. Infoboxes are definitely helpful; I don't think anyone doubts that. Book references (and citations in general) don't have the same use value.

As to your last point, I couldn't agree more. [[Sam Korn]] 12:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

But the whole point is that the preferred format might be changed at some point, and the effort of searching for each and every article and changing all those references by hand simply makes me want to weep.

Thank you for providing your tool. Can you extend it so that it can be pre-filled with fields from an existing reference?

Infoboxes are not mandatory by any guideline or policy: WP:CITE is a core policy upon which WP:V and WP:NPOV lean heavily. We should be making it easier for editors to provide citations to the required standard, and to refine them afterwards. I happen to think that this is best provided by supplying templates into which the appropriate components of a citation can be inserted.

There is a slight possibility that I will have Internet access from home in the near future, and thus be in a position to install MediaWiki on a machine over which I have actual control. All I will then need to do is to learn PHP sufficiently well to fix the transclusion system, and we're laughing .

HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:44, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't laugh until your code passes Brion. --Ligulem 14:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Is there any reason why it should be changed? Will there ever be a reason why every page should be changed? Just saying a weak "there might be" doesn't seem enough to me to justify the strain on the servers.

Yes, I am writing the regular expressions (==nightmare) at this very moment.

I think you misunderstand what I am saying about infoboxes and citations. Infoboxes have three things that are very different to citations: 1) they are at the top of the article; 2) they are prone to changing globally; 3) their templated coding is far easier to understand than the plain text coding.

Actually, the best situation would be to have a parser hook built in to generate citations. I'll see if I can work out how to do it. [[Sam Korn]] 14:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Take a serious look at m:Cite/Cite.php: I think you'll find that a good starting point, especially since it already does all the work of collecting the references together. FWIW, this extension has been enabled already here on :en:, so we can make a small start with the migration as soon as we like. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 15:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Book reference

also replied at your talk page:

Hi Phil. Couldn't we use the newest version of the CSS trick on template:book reference as a temporary solution until we have conditionals in MediWiki? If we do nothing I can't revert people removing book reference calls if they cite WP:AUM. You are indirectly supporting Netoholic eliminating template book reference if you do nothing here. I would propose to use User:Ligulem/work/b-ref/2 for book reference as a temporary solution if you agree. Thank you for your consideration. --Ligulem 10:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

As a stop-gap measure, this is certainly better than nothing. You have my endorsement for any change which will stop the anti-template rampage. In the meantime, can I suggest that you take a look at Sam Korn's reference-building tool and at Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason's citation tags: I wonder if it might ever be possible to combine the two? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Replied on my talk. --Ligulem 10:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Book reference Change Request

I think I got enough voices now to launch the temporary CSS thing to save our butts for now. So, dear admin Phil (please put your hat on :-)), would you please execute the consensus as to change template:book reference according to template talk:book reference#Summing up Request to Change voices. I think it is best if a book ref expert admin does this. Thanks. --Ligulem 14:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Due to the removal of the policy tag from WP:AUM by CTO Brion VIBBER (not even a guideline), there is now again consensus to use qif on the citation templates until we have conditionals in MediaWiki code as mentioned by Brion. Please revert that CSS trick which doesn't work on non-CSS browsers and older screen readers to the last qif variant. See also Template talk:Book reference#Request to switch back to using qif. Seems the first wave of the horror is over now. --Ligulem 08:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I have asked another admin to revert to the newest qif version, which he did. Sorry, but I see no point in waiting to revert to the qif variant. There was also clear consensus to do that (per talk page). So we are now where we left before that WP:AUM terror began (at least I'm now a CSS-hack and weeble code expert and know their drawbacks from first hand real experience :-). I think we have tried very hard to avoid qif but failed. So, at least I am now more confident to be shure to ask the right thing from the devs: conditionals in MediaWiki.

I took a look at your ChapterURL proposal and can't think of any reason why this should not be done. I have started a new section at Template talk:Book reference#New parameter ChapterURL on this. Best regards, --Ligulem 20:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Message on my talk page

You just fixed a template on my talk page. However, I originally thought you were going to add a 137th section to my talk page based on the "You have new messages" message I saw. Georgia guy 21:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Request for assistance: Please place this notice at the top of the Main Page:

Voting for the new Main Page has begun! There are several candidates to choose from. Voting ends January 28th. To see the candidates, CLICK HERE

Thank you. --Go for it! 23:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

IRC...

You mentioned on the mailing list that you can't access IRC from behind a firewall. One suggestion I have: Try connecting on odd ports, like port 7000. It worked for me at school, where they blocked the default ports. (That is, if you actually want to go on the cesspool that is IRC :P) Ral315 (talk) 01:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

TfD

Phil, what would you have me do? Experience has shown that if I defend my work I only provoke more meatpuppets to come attack it.

Why vote to "userfy" something I no longer use? I created those tools for general use. I never expected them to be popular; but if they're to be useful at all, they need to stay where they are -- and without the vandalism of the TfD tags.

I should be pleased that you made use of {{tfdnotice}} -- another tool I'm proud to have whelped. If you can tell me what I should do to aid the survival of {{helpbox}} and {{markups}}, I'll waive my standard grumpy demand that someone tell me why and I'll try to do as you ask. — Xiong熊talk* 14:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Response to starcraft Picture deletion

I think that instead of deleting them we should at least ask for permission to have them on the site if they refuse then we can delete them.--Trmptplyr 07 04:14, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Neto again

Netoholic is just pushing again his POV on WP:AUM towards policy against clear statement of Brion and consensus. He is starting again his slow revert war mode. Why can't we not simply block him? He is clearly disruptive for Wikipedia and resource hog in respect of editors-time. I would say a block of a week is in order now until we know more from the devs on this. --Ligulem 08:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The second wave has started. This time he is citing Brion as approving authority (last time it was Jamesday). How long will it take this time until we have the policy tag on WP:AUM... --Ligulem 15:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

VfD->AfD template change

Hey Phil, no big deal, but I noticed you changed the vfdfull template on the talk page for Encyclopedia Dramatica. The problem is that the article is at VfD, not AfD. I don't know if you've caught that, so I just wanted to give you a heads-up. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 17:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Replied at your talk page: thanks. —Phil | Talk 17:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

recover from blanking if

Hi Phil. You wrote on WP:AUM:

Didn't this already happen, when {{if}} was "blanked" back in December 2005? IIRC the time taken for the servers to recover from the hit caused by that was about 15 minutes. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:12, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Was it really 15 minutes? If correct, how did you get this number? --Ligulem 12:57, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

A database locking on the order of minutes seems to be very unlikely to me. If it's the update to articles time, then that does not bother much (the slower the better). Recently, there has been an avoidable edit on qif, which I failed to prevent. It would indeed be interesting to have a log of what happened due to these edits. --Ligulem 15:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Whoooooops!!. I was just playing around with a book and a web reference in my sandbox with AWB and saw a mess for a short time. I didn't think for a second this could be an edit on qif (my failure was to think that admins do not make errors). In fact I thought: oh no Brion has done it, he broke qif :-). Well done, thank you for reverting this! I have seen this newline trouble thing a lot now. Maybe we should create a policy :-) (Or a driver license for admins). --Ligulem 18:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Your change to {{qif}}

Ups, I'm really sorry. I didn't know that this blank space will really affect. My reason is just to separate the category from the actual template making it a more clear syntax. I hope that's reverted. CG 18:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels

Hi seeing your interest in books and novels, and your useful revert on our project page, I was wondering if you might like to get envolved with our as yet small (revitalised) WikiProject. Being a small group currently there is plenty of scope for influencing things and making your contribution count. We are about establishing standards for Novel based articles and writing articles that meet our own and others high standards, and to improve Wikipedia's diet of articles on Fiction books, otherwise called Novels. Please be very welcome. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)} 17:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Referencing formatting

Bit belated, this. I was doing something to the Dog Soldiers page and noticed that last month you had converted the old references to use Cite.php. Thanks so much! I was told a while ago that if I wanted to have multiple references to a single source, I should start using this extension. But I didn't understand the instructions. Not even after a second coffee. When I looked at the before-and-after diff from your edit, it all fell into place. Now I can go and do it elsewhere. Hooray! So thanks a lot. --Telsa ((t)(c)) 10:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the copyedit. I'm no copyright lawyer, but I can't see your edit changing the meaning of the sentence at all. — Rebelguys2 ^talk 11:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

reply

OK, I haven't done this kind of thing for a while anyway. Also, is it worth it changing them? as last time I checked they were hardly used in any articles. Also if you were planning on merging the 3 templates as well I think that would be useful, no point in having duplication. thanks Martin 16:02, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Replied at your talk page. —Phil | Talk 16:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately not, well to be honest I haven't looked into it much more. It is definitely something that I should sort out though, but there is very little documentation on this type of thing, even the methods I have used for various things so far have all been worked out from scratch. I am sure there must be a more elegant solution, but am yet to find it. I'll ask in some c# forums, see what that produces. thanks Martin 16:35, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Phil, I fiddled about for a while, and have finally mastered how to call Javascript on a web page from an application, they don't make these things easy, in fact I found only a scrap of information on the web on how to do it in c#2. This means AWB will be able call the Javascript behind the "save", "preview" and "show changes" buttons, rather than the current method which is slightly problematic as you pointed out. The problem I have now is that I don't know what the Javascript is that I need to call, and I just can't work it out either, maybe you have more of an idea? I assumed I could just look at the HTML source, but it doesn't appear that simple. any thoughts? thanks Martin 23:53, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I've got ABCD's "Force Edit Summary" extension installed in my custom Javascript and it appears that the click button is accessed as document.forms.editform.wpSave. Is there a method on that which you can invoke which will click it? A quick search for "wpSave" came up with User:Poccil/Automation.js, which suggests that doc.editform.wpSave.click() might do the trick. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

No joy, I think it is along the right line though. I'll persevere. thanks Martin 20:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Something for gnoming

Hi there. If you're too bored :-) and are looking for something to gnome on: You might consider helping to migrate {{journal reference}} to {{cite journal}} (example). My current stettings.xml for AWB is at User:Ligulem/AWB/migrate to cite journal. Please carefully check each diff before saving. I'm currently working through the sorted what links here list of journal reference (I'm on COL2A1 right now). You might start on a later letter (H?). --Ligulem 08:45, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

(Entering settings by hand): oh my, that's really bad. Thanks for picking up my "work proposal"! Per the edit conflicts, we will see. I don't think this will be a big problem. I work on the sorted what links here list of journal reference. If you do the same, we could partition by initial letters of articles. My last one was at Dansgaard-Oeschger event. --Ligulem 12:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Your zip horror

Could it be that your unzip program modifies the exe when you extract it from the zip archive? One check: look in the zip archive and note the size of the exe (unpacked size). Then compare with the size of the extracted exe. Is it the same? Is there something that could modify the exe? Does it depend on the path in which the exe is (try different locations, possibly without any space in the path)? What kind of unzip/zip program do you use? Which version of windows do you use (XP has built-in extract zip support)? --Ligulem 15:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The cite journal orgy

See this diff from Race and intelligence (References). If we ever need test cases... :-). --Ligulem 21:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

PATCO line template

I was directed here by Bluemoose as I heard you were an expert on figuring out templates. Here is my original message:

(I dont know who else to go to this with but I trust you so... I have no idea what to do with the template Template:PATCO line. I have no clue how to read it or fill it in. For the artice I need a template for, Franklin Square (PATCO station), it has really been confusing me. I dont know if this is the place to birng it but like I said, I trust you so if you can help thanks in advance but if you are unable to, could you direct me to someone who could? Once again thank you. American Patriot 1776 04:39, 18 February 2006 (UTC))

Could you please see if you can help me understand this template as it is highly confusing. Thank you! American Patriot 1776 17:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, I was able to contact the original template writer to figure it out. Sorry for the incovienence. American Patriot 1776 22:23, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Book -> Cite

I had seen your robot changes for this, but couldn't remember which way they went when I wanted to use one of them. I looked for guidance on the templates themselves but couldn't find anything. Did I miss something obvious or should something put put on a talk page or something?. . .

Thanks, John (Jwy) 15:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately (well, not really), this is a Mac. And I must never have gotten through template:book to template:book reference to see the deprecation. Thanks for the info! John (Jwy) 16:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Semicolon-delimited coauthors on cite book

Also replied on your talk page:

Good spot with that site! I think introducing ten-colour notation to Wikipedia might be impractical, however.

I'm not sure where I stand on citation style, but I think introducing a new Wikipedian style would step on the toes of too many APA/Chicago/Harvard/MLA fans. There's probably a good case for sticking to different styles for different fields, too. —Serein 20:42, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing to stop us putting CSS classes on each component which would allow people to colour them as they wanted . Actually I wonder if it would short-circuit the arguments as to which style is better if we simply took the best bits of each and created a Wikipedia Citation Standard. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 21:58, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A single citation standard would make life easier here. But building a consensus for it sounds like too much work to me! —Serein 12:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

please be civil

Comments like "Nuke'em until they glow and shoot them in the dark. " do not engender civil discussion. You can simply state "keep deleted," "delete," "keep," and so on. There's no reason to incite dissent. Thanks. ... aa:talk 06:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes

Thanks for substituting some of the userboxes on my page. - File:Ottawa flag.png nathanrdotcom ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 18:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Second that. Also, I noticed you don't like Launchcast. I am a member, but I only rate music I listen to elsewhere, because the player doesn't work. I use [www.singingfool.com] as a source for music. There are quite a few music videos there, and I open a window for them and just listen to them (why watch music?).La Pizza11 22:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

PDF icons

I replied on MediaWiki_talk:Common.css#Similar_for_PDF_files.3F — Omegatron 05:19, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but as noted that method doesn't seem to work for me. —Phil | Talk 08:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Todo templates

Thank you for implementing Template:todo priority instead of the numbered todo templates ({{todo1}} to {{todo9}}. But don't you think it would be better if we replaced numbers with more explicit words, so we would have {{todo high}}, {{todo low}}, maybe also {{todo medium-high}} and {{medium low}}? CG 15:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Formatting note

Hi, thanks for migrating all those deprecated templates. One note: when you migrated {{web reference}} to {{cite web}} in the Albert Einstein article (diff [3]), you added spaces to an image's markup syntax. This prevented the image from displaying correctly. --Muchness 21:21, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Looking for articles to work on?

Hello, Phil Boswell. I'm SuggestBot, a Wikipedia bot that helps new members contribute to Wikipedia. You might like to edit these articles I picked for you based on things you've edited in the past. Check it out -- I hope you find it useful. -- SuggestBot 22:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

InterwikiLinkChecker

I experience the same problems (frames don't get loaded, just a single article displayed) you discribed from time to time using Opera 8.52. My personal workaround is using Firefox and occasionally to switch off Javascript. Maybe de:User:Flacus has more to say about it, let's see. Greetings from Hanover, --InterwikiLinksRule 11:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC) aka de:User:Mdangers

Kudos for closure

Just like to say "well done" for your masterly closure on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Artbox: if all closures were as detailed and indeed reasoned as that I suspect things would get happier all round. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! I find that many of the problems arise when people can't understand why the closer chose a certain action, that's why I started putting these notes on all the controversial or complicated closures I do. Hopefully the reasoning will help the decision to stand, aswell, although I wouldn't mind seeing this go to DRV, as it would be an excellent example to illustrate that AfD is about debating, not voting. --bainer (talk) 09:09, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Your actions regarding the Cyprus page (on Friday morning)

You never answered my email, so I will take this to your discussion page (either you haven't read it or you are just ignoring me). You blocked my editing for 24 hours on Friday due to "violations" of the Wiki 3-revert rule. When you did so, you failed to take action against a user who edits anonymously under an IP address. Interesting thing that you would PUNISH a Wikipedia user and not a foul-mouthed anonymous user who only logged on to one page of Wikipedia and consistently removed others' contributions while placing his own hatred and malicious edits on the page. He had reverted my edits at LEAST 10 times a day for weeks on end... did you check the history or summary? NO. You chose to punish a wiki user who - by the way - I make regular contributions regarding geography and maps. The anonymous user? Only malicious edits. Incidentally, he attacked my user page FOUR TIMES. I would like an explanation other than you blocked me because of a wiki rule... because you certainly took action without seeing the 'whole picture' with the anonymous user. I would like to know if this is a regular occurrence so we can address things.

Thank you Rarelibra

Template:to do

Also replied on your talk page:

I was recently looking into the to-do template and priorities and whatnot, when I noticed you had added the empty template to a few talk pages and left them there. I removed the ones I came across but was wondering if there was a reason for adding them? Maybe you were planning to come back to add content but you forgot? Regards, Mrtea (talk) 08:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If you check the history, I was actually replacing the old {{todo3}} and {{todo9}} templates (and their siblings) with {{todo priority}}. Whether the todo list actually had any entries was not within my remit: this is entirely up to the active contributors to any given page. At some stage, my intention is to replace all instances of {{todo}} with {{todo priority}}, and persuade somebody to create a bot which will update the priority according to the guidelines at Category:To do, by priority. Thank you for your contributions, which I note include creating a new todo list using my template, which is somewhat gratifying :-). HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

My RfA

	My RfA
	Thank you for supporting/opposing/commenting on my request of adminship, sadly the result was 54/20/7 an thus only 73% support votes, resulting in that the nomination failed. As many of you commenting that I have to few main-space edits, I'll try to better my self on that part. If you have any ideas on what kind of articles I could edit, pleas send me a line. :)	→AzaToth 09:43, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Subst of userboxes that still exist.

Thank you for your subst of userboxes on my page.

However, as these userboxes are in fact not deleted, I'd prefer them on my page in their present form. Thanks anyway. — natha(?)nrdotcom ^{(T • C • W)} 23:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ook! programming language

Hi, you voted to keep this article on the grounds that it was nominated less than a month ago. You might not have noticed that this AfD ended in a "no result" with several people requesting it to be relisted (that AfD combined several articles and people wanted to vote on each of them seperatly.) Might I request that you reconsider your vote? I have given several reasons on why not to keep this article at User:R. Koot/Esoteric programming languages#Esoteric programming languages. Cheers, —Ruud 12:03, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Whaaa…?

This edit defies comprehension. What you up to, Pearle? (NB: I'm going to attach the new information you posted to the end of the article, so don't go slathering it all over again, y'hear?) —Phil | Talk 09:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that was me. The older, larger chunk of data is getting out of date, but the new listings are tuncated, because I ran out of hard drive space in the middle of the run. Sorry about the confusion; I have to upload them directly like that because of character encoding issues. -- Beland 12:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. I'm cruising through that page with AWB and it's painfully obvious that people have fixed stuff (even back-linking in their edit summary) without updating the page. So what is the plan for updates? Could you let me know when it happens so I can refresh my work-list? Thanks again…—Phil | Talk 12:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no plans to update the page in the near future, due to a lack of time to improve the report scripts to use less space, or port them to the toolserver. However, I have posted the source code for the generation script to Meta:Toolserver/Reports. It is possible that the User:Bluemoose/DataBaseSearchTool could borrow the regular expressions that I use to create a list to feed to your AWB. I don't use Windows, so someone else will have to figure that out. -- Beland 17:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

RFA Thanks

Hi Phil. Thank you for your support vote on my RFA. The final result was a successful request based on 111 support and 1 oppose. --CBDunkerson 14:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks

I'm most grateful to you for your support and continuing compliments. Hope you like my latest contributions. - Londoneye 14:03, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Neologisms

Hi there, a while ago you made an edit on the Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms guideline. I am proposing a revision to the guideline and I'm soliciting your comments. You can find the link to my rewrite at Wikipedia talk:Avoid neologisms -- cmh 01:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Todo and cryptography article

Hi, I see you entered Talk:Cryptography as "todo, priority 1", but there doesn't seem to be an actual todo list in the talk page. I'm one of several editors working on the article and of course it needs improvement, but it has no formal outstanding tasks. So I'm thinking of reverting the catogory. Also, I'm not sure the priority system makes sense, since it's based purely on popularity and not on the urgency of the actual todo items. A popular article with a few minor pending tasks would be priority 1 while a less popular article in urgent need of attention could be priority 4. Let me know what's up. Phr 02:50, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

dab page bolding

Well, it's a little late on this, but just so you know... I happened across Callirhoe, and it seems that on March 8, your AWB inserted bolding into several dab pages. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) actually asks us not to bold the individual entries. Cheers, Melchoir 07:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Re DOI

I come from a Math background where much is available in print and online. The whole Lecture Notes in Mathematics series from Springer is such an example. The online version is usually only available to institutional subscribers, i.e. from for instance for ips within my home university network. I (and probably many mathematicians) prefer online content to print, but not everybody has access to the online version. That's why I added the doi-field: to have the possibility to include both doi and ISBN.

Sorry if this addition is against etiquette, I just thought "Be bold." ;-) Tob 17:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Seen that. I thinks it's not that bad what Tob did. As we now have #if, I'm a bit more open for param piling :-). Asking first would have been nice though. Sidenote: handling {{doi}} inside cite book calls with AWB is a real pain, due to the additional level of }} (Regex is not prepared for that). --Ligulem 17:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

NJReportCard template

Thanks for fixing the template. I had been going berzerk trying to figure out why the link wasn't appearing in some cases, and finally narrowed it down to the recent change. Thanks again for chipping in! Alansohn 07:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

My reasoning for no longer adding Category:Templates using ParserFunctions

Hi Phil. Thanks for your message. I did no longer add that category because of the following reasoning: I created that cat and used it, while ParserFunctions was deemd to be in trial. Short after that people like freakofnurture went on a mass conversion rampage. Then came that premature MfD of qif.

I now must say I doubt the value of that category, and I apologise for having asked people to add the converted templates to it. That category isn't used by all converters anyway, as the conversion happens currently in a quite unordered fashion, caused by that premature release into the wild by Tim. I am very thankful for Tim having created ParserFunctions, but activating it on the en Wikipedia was just too early. I would have done it on a separate testwiki.

Ok. Now you would like to have the templates I converted added to this cat. If you believe this is needed, I will go through my contribs and add that cat. Do you want me to do that? You may reply here, as I watch this page. I'm awaiting your answer, before proceeding with converting. Thanks. --Ligulem 10:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please, go ahead and add the category. Until we get some sort of "What links here" facility for {{#if}} and {{#switch}} this is the only way we have of keeping track of usage. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:13, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok. One example of a person that does not add that cat either when converting is CBDunkerson. You might want to ask him to add that cat too. I will go through my contribs and add the cat as you requested. Cheers! --Ligulem 10:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I have finished fixing my contribs. I promise to add the cat to all additional conversions I do. --Ligulem 14:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

See also [4]. --Ligulem 18:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

#if and #switch

Thanks a lot for fixing the {{qif}}'s etcetera on user game. I use these a lopt and was wondering where you found out about their (assumedly) new creation. Thanks, -Xol 22:13, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Glad you like them. See m:ParserFunctions for more information. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 22:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! -Xol 23:20, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Colors in HP Template Box.

Ahh, Did you create a Color for representing from each character's Loyalty/Allegiance? For Example, Death Eaters is Black, Order of the Phoenix is Yellow, Ministry of Magic is Red etc.....I suddenly found that. That's the reason I visited your own page. Are you still working on Harry Potter Articles? or Stopped? Anyways, I hope you spent a good time with Wikipedia. You can send me message if you want.^^ Daniel5127, 05:02, 22 April 2006(UTC)

Statutory Instruments

Hi. I notice that you have previously voted or commented on the proposal to delete the List of Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom, 1996 page. The debate about the delete proposal ended with no consensus. This is just to let you know that I have started a discussion on how to go forward from here. I am currently trying to define what the problems with the page are so that we can try to find a fix for them that stops short of outright deletion. If you wish to take part in the discussion, the new debate can be found here. Thank you. Road Wizard 23:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

My (and everybody else's) User:GeorgeMoney/StatusDiv

Why did you make these edits [5] [6] [7] to people's User:USERNAME/StatusDiv? --GeorgeMoney^{Talk  Contribs} 00:14, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Citation meta templates

I've created a few meta templates for use in cite book at category:Citation meta templates. I'm wondering if you might agree to semi-protect these, before they are used in cite book. See also my proposal on the talk of cite book (under [8]). Many thanks for looking at this. --Ligulem 17:30, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

List of PS2 DVD9 Games

(Continued here from the Afd because It's cluttered enough already over there. I'll watch your page for replies)

Re: your latest comment. I suppose really what would be nice is one unified game database, which options to display/sort/etc by title, type, platform etc. But since many such databases already exist outside Wikipedia, I guess I'm back to my question of "what use is this in Wikipedia?". Any gamer looking for information about a game (or with a "what games are there for PS2?" question) would be better off looking at dedicated game sites (some which may have a DB like above, some not), where he'd probably get wallpapers and walkthroughs and reviews as a bonus. Any non-games are more likely only interested in general tidbits ("there are xxx games for PS2") or information about some controversial game they've heard about on the news ("GTA critized for turning kids into murderers" style thing) in which case it's an article on the game they would need, not a list of games.

So again, what's the use of a list like this? -- Hirudo 09:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Amelia Peabody

Greetings! I stumbled across a link to your "articles to add" page and I see Mrs. Emerson on it. Just to let you know, I created a navigational template for the Amelia Peabody series; you can add it to the bottom of a page by using {{AmeliaPeabody}}. I have started a few articles and added a List of characters in the Amelia Peabody series; please add as you will. Cheers, Her Pegship 17:35, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

User Page.

I just fixed the sentence "My wife is also craftsmen. Women who works in craft should be Craftswomen. There is nothing else changed in your own page. So, I just fixed Craftsmen into Craftswomen. Send me message about this. ok? Daniel5127, 20:08, 6 May 2006(UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Proof that 0.999... equals 1

I find your assumption of bad faith and attempt at personal attack by claiming I took the article to AfD to make a point and was disrupting wikipedia highly objectionable. You were violating WP:AGF and WP:NPA by making such a baseless claim. I DO consider that article to be unworthy of inclusion in the Wikipedia. In future I will appreciate it if you refrained from making such claims. Thank you. Loom91 06:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

On naming vote talk:ebook

Hi I'm spamming people on this talk page... a vote notice

I'd like to ask you to place a vote on the proper article names issue in this. There are several parallel names issues (e.g. ebook device), but the date driven category deletion process begun May 1st is begging this ebook article page title (eBook vs ebook) be stabilized as well, and apparently the article is off most watchlists. (see (currently partial note-while I 'spam') User_talk:Fabartus#For_Closing_Admin:eBooks as that vote is apparently deadlocked.) I'd just like to get back to content! Thanks FrankB 17:40, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

A simple question

Hi Phil,

I thought this was a very simple question for you to ask: do we have a template for citing newspaper articles, or entire issues? I find it hard to believe that we don't but... I can't find any :-/ --Gennaro Prota ^(talk) 19:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Color

Hi Phil, I saw your name on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Color. It looks like you actually spearheaded most of it, and possibly founded it. It seems to have been dormant for a while, even though there was a lot of great work and discussion already done. I'm looking to start it back up again. Care to join me? --Laura S 00:14, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikitext markup spec

Hi. I'm curious why, as you said on mw:Talk:Markup spec, you rather like the idea of Parser expression generator. Would you care to explain? Thanks. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

British Pregnancy Advisory Service merge with Ann Furedi

Also replied on your talk page:

Hi: you removed the merge tag from the Ann Furedi side. I'm sorry if I've used the wrong template for the tag, but I don't think it's such a good idea to just remove the tag, since then people reading that article won't know the merge is being proposed and therefore won't be able to contribute their views. If there's a better tag to use (I've seen the one I placed used on both sides of a merger), could you put it up? Or at least explain your actions on the talk page so people will know what's going on with the Merge talk? Thanks in advance.--Anchoress 09:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I fear you have misunderstood my action. Both articles were tagged with the {{mergefrom}} template, thus implying that each article would be merged into the other, which is not an applicable option (incidentally if the {{merge}} template had been used instead there would not have been this problem). I therefore checked the discussions and it seemed that they implied that the intended option was that the article for Ann Furedi, which is quite short, should be merged into that for BPAS which is rather longer. Maybe if you read this it will explain the situation better than I can. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

oh, no…you label everything or you label nothing…

Also replied on your talk page:

I saw your edit on May userbox policy poll. Could you explain what you meant by the comment above, I don't really understand it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by CharonX (talk • contribs)

For some interesting reason someone took it upon themselves to insert a line in the "oppose" section, and no other, showing where the "deadline" fell, thus ostensibly demarcating valid votes from invalid. If you cannot see the problem with attempting to discount opinion coming from only one side of the discussion, then I am afraid there is very little I can say to explain. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:12, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: Template:User intercal

Hi Phil -- were you involved in the speedy deletion of this userbox beyond what appears to be some administrative actions? If so, you may want to read my comment concerning its nomination for deletion. -- llywrch 15:44, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

As the original nominator, I would have to say that you made a serious mistake there. By deleting out of process like that, you have opened the template for introduction into the wikipolitical horror that is userbox Deletion reviews, where it will add fuel to the fire of the current debates. Please, restore or at least unprotect the page. --tjstrf 22:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The Hallowed Hunt

In December 2005 you added: "It follows The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, but is set some centuries earlier than those books." to the The Hallowed Hunt.

Having just read The Hallowed Hunt, I'm wondering where the dating 'some centuries earlier' comes from. I may well have missed some obscure reference, but it seems to me that there isn't any temporal relationship specified. Perhaps you could enlighten me? Murray Langton 11:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

User talk:Sjakkalle/March, April and May 2006

Hi Phil! Is there some sort of bot you're using which keeps modifying the signature on my talkpage archive? In general, I prefer to leave my talk-archives untouched. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Bhadani has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Smile to others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk pages. Happy editing!

--Bhadani 15:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Your signature

Hey Phil, I was wondering if you might consider changing your signature. The "HTH HAND" makes it hard to determine where the actual comments ends and your signature begins. Thanks, and you don't have to change it if you don't want. Later, Chuck^(척뉴넘) 05:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't take this as my pushing you further about your signature, but I was just wondering...what does "HTH HAND" mean? I've seen HTH on someone else's sig and was curious. Later, Chuck^(contrib) 08:16, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, ok...it makes more sense now. Thanks, Chuck^(contrib) 08:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing images from sigs

I just noticed you using AWB to remove images from signatures within archived discussions. I personally find this to be a very bad idea and was wondering why you believe this to be okay to do... AmiDaniel (talk) 07:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to ask you kindly to refrain from doing this until there can be some consensus for what you are doing. I understand your reasoning per what you posted on WP:SIG's talk page; however, I find it completely unnecessary to be modifying archived discussions and modifying user's signatures without their consent. If the image is brought to IfD and deleted through that process, then you can remove the images from other pages if you're so inclined. I'm about ready to simply revert everyone of your recent edits. Please stop at once, and let's discuss this before acting upon it. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Forty-five minutes and no response. I'm ready to revert, just so you know: Image:RollbackBoswell.JPG. If you can justify serializing your edits without any prior discussion, then I can certainly justify undoing your edits through a similar means. Awaiting your response, AmiDaniel (talk) 08:25, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry for intervening, but...) AmiDaniel: could you please tone down a bit? There is consensus at WP:SIG not to have images in signatures. So, claiming this to be "without any prior discussion" is incorrect. --Ligulem 08:36, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

And I agree with the guideline that advises users to not use images in sigs--I agree entirely. In fact, I even agree with imposing technical limitations to prevent users from using images in their signatures in the future. What I don't agree with is citing this guideline to justify removing images from other users' sigs (and from archives nonetheless) without their consent and then further serializing these edits and remaining completely unresponsive for over an hour whilst still actively using semiautomation in a way that has not been agreed upon. All users of WP:AWB and anyone who has ever glanced over the bot policy should know full well that you should not serialize edits and remain completely unresponsive to inquiries on your talk page. There was no prior discussion as to removing images used in sigs from archives that I'm aware of--and others on WP:SIG's talk page were of a similar understanding. If he can point me to this discussion, or at least respond to my inquiry as is expected of AWB users, I will be able to calm down. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think I have maybe done one edit since you dropped your warning onto my talk-page, which is when I was notified. One of the reasons I use AWB is that I have actual work to do, and I simply click on AWB every now and again, so my response is not going to be immediate. If you want instant response, try email, or find me on IRC? HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

7 edits I'm on my way to IRC. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a disagreement with removing past sigs with images as well. If an image is redundant etc. it should be replaced with the new one IMHO. RN 07:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Join in the conversation at WT:SIG where current consensus seems to support my position. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 08:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Superseded images

Hi, I noticed you passing through changing some of the pentagram images to new SVG versions. Great work, apart from the fact that Image:Pentacle.svg is not really correctly named (see Pentacle) and Image:Green_pentagram.svg is really wonky — it's been auto-traced rather than just drawn as a simple pentagram, so none of the lines are quite straight. These images should be replaced with Image:Pentagram_circumscribed.svg (which also looks less anemic) and Image:Pentagram_green.svg respectively. Thanks, Fuzzypeg☻ 07:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:S-nob

Template:S-nob has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. JRawle (Talk) 14:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

In return for BITED...

...see Wikipedia:Don't give the developers ideas. robchurch | talk 01:12, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your time

Dear Phil Boswell/Archive2006,
Thank you very much for your contributions to my recent RfA. I am pleased to announce that it passed with a tally of 72/11/1, and I am now an administrator. Although you did not choose to support the request, I can assure you that I have taken your advice to heart and will be a better administrator for it. I'll be taking things slowly at first and getting used to the tools, but please let me know if there are any admin jobs I can do to help you, now or in the future. —Cuiviénen 02:24, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

NH Route images

Unless I missed one, they all exist. --SPUI (T - C) 21:50, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Unblock User

Phil, last night, you blocked a user from the Doctor Who Page. That would be me under a different IP. BookofJude also blocked me, and we've reached an understanding, and I've been unblocked. Please unblock me immediately. If you want to discuss the reasons for blocking, we can do that, once the playing field is even again. Until that time, I will have to regard this as bullying and below the belt and respond in kind. All I have is many IP's and lots of time.66.252.250.78 15:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Phil we can do this all day, and tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. OR you can stop the blocking. 66.252.249.65 15:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, threats go both ways Phil. Blocking is a last resort, not a first.66.252.251.84 16:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Your upseetting intervention on my user page

Try reading Wikipedia:Redirect, which as you might expect is our basic guideline for using, creating and deleting "redirects". Then read WP:AGF in great detail, and consider whether accusing somebody of not assuming good faith might in fact be a breach of that very policy in itself… HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 19:41, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It is entirely unreasonable to expect me to have read that in advance of taking a totally innocent good faith action. Once again an administrator sticks up for an administrator and shows little sense of fairness to a non-administrator. I find the way administrators treat other users is the worst thing about Wikipedia, much more of a problem than vandalism. CalJW 16:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Request for Help

I am asking you because:

1. you're and administrator &
2. you contributed to Lord Darcy

This morning (Australian time) I added stubs on the two Michael Kurland books set in the Lord Darcy universe. I used the red re-directs in the Lord Darcy article to start the two entries. However, I put one entry (A Study in Sorcery) in Lord Darcy Investigates. I've moved .....Sorcery to the right name but "...Investigates" is now of course a re-direct page. It should not be. It was a "blank" red-link name and should still be until someone writes it. Can you delete Lord Darcy Investigates to undo my error please?

Avalon 01:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Avalon 20:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Your Upsetting Intervention on My User Page

Look, I realize you're a Lord Administrator and I am but a Common Wikipedia Peon, but nonetheless, as a matter of basic courtesy from one human being to another I would appreciate it if you would communicate with me before blithely /m/e/s/s/i/n/g/ /a/r/o/u/n/d/ /w/i/t/h/ editing my User Page. The User Boxes I have there are strictly for self-identification, not for advocacy, and I have had the Devil's own time trying to keep them in the order I wanted them while multiple Lord Administrators change my layout, ruining hours of selection and alphabetization on my part as I try to get my page just right.

In the future, if there's a change you think I need to make, have the decency of writing to me beforehand and explaining to me what changes you want. Assume Good Faith -- I might even agree with you, if you'd give me the respect of consulting with me about my own damned User Page.

Davidkevin 18:46, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

User:UBX/Capitalist

I have just substituted it on all (~100) user pages, and replaced the template with the "German solution" message. - Mike Rosoft 13:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: image

I had not failed when i asked the user, eitehr way i cant be botherd to try anymore -- it seems people dont mind non-free images yet they do mind. Matthew Fenton (contribs) 17:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Stop

Stop editing my userpage. Jooler 10:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia awards committee

Check out my comments here, Wikipedia awards committee. Thanks! --evrik 17:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

your hand

[9]: What does "HTH HAND" mean? — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:15, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I've always wondered why you talk about hands so much. But wait, I still don't understand how that makes sense. If "HTH" means "happy to help" or "hope that helps", I can understand if you used it after answering someone's question, but I don't see how it makes sense when expressing an unsolicited critical opinion. In what way were you expecting it to help? Not that it really matters. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Not Narrow Userbox

Hi. From your edit, it seems I should explain what I am doing by deleting the userboxes in my user space. Basically, I'm trying to preserve the history of the page, because I intially created the userboxes as copies of those existing in template space. By deleting the copies I made, I am able to move the original userboxes into place, thus preserving the history. You just seem to have caught one of the userboxes in its in-between state, where I hadn't yet gotten around to moving the template box into user space. I hope the explains what I'm doing, and please feel free to leave me a note on my talk page if it doesn't, but I'd also like to ask you to refrain from performing edits of this nature. While I do not doubt this was done in good faith, it complicates the process. Thank you. —Mira 08:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, I understand. And if you do find some way to place a note on the page, please do let me know. It would be useful, although I hope to be done with the "mistake" userboxes soon. —Mira 09:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Mediation time on Kosovo

I don't think we're getting anywhere with the Kosovo introduction, particularly since Ferick has openly rejected WP:NPOV and is now refusing to discuss sources. Accordingly, I've submitted a request for mediation. Please indicate on that page whether you consent to having the matter mediated. -- ChrisO 09:37, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

A message

This is "a complimentary message about how brilliant you I think my your Babel-replacement templates are." ;) — FireFox 13:30, 11 July '06

User:Netsnipe/User Bureaucratic Fuck

Could you please respond to the comments and my position at User_talk:Netsnipe/User_Bureaucratic_Fuck.

Yours sincerely,  Netsnipe  ^(Talk)  16:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

migrating UBs incompletely moved under WP:GUS using AWB

Thank you for your contributions. Myrtone

Yes - thankyou for cleaning up the mess. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Beer & brewery notability criteria discusion document

A discussion document has been opened up. Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer/Notability Criteria. Please put in your views either on the main page or on the attached talk page. SilkTork 16:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

MWB manual

See m:User:Ligulem/MWB. I hope this decreases some confusion ;) --Ligulem 13:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for tweak

Hi Phil,
Thanks for this tweak – it's been a while since I scrolled down the page. Maybe a good sign, maybe not... Regards, David Kernow 15:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Babel migration

Also replied on your talk page:

Erm... hello. Apparently you made some sort of change to a couple of templates on my user page - the comment said it was a migration from Babel-X to Babel, using AWB. What does this mean? --Nicholas Jackson 23:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

{{Babel-X}} is a redirect to {{Babel}} which contains your userboxes: redirecting templates is wasteful and since this was caused by moving {{Babel-X}} to {{Babel}} I'm short-circuiting the redirects. AWB is a tool which is helpful for making uniform changes to many pages in succession: it is particularly useful because it requires the user to visually confirm each edit and therefore avoids the problems which can occur when a bot performs mass-changes blindly. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 17:11, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for showing me the Babelbox code for Monty Python

Thank you for showing me the Babelbox code for the Monty Python user template. I have integrated it into the usage information on that template with each message. I have also used it for the Doctor Who Doctor user template and Star Trek series user template. This adds a whole new facet to how easy templates are to merge and makes it easier to use them if the copy-n-paste information is there for the users. Thanks for helping me help my fellow users!
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 01:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes consolidation support

What's on the slab Do not use these templates yet

You have recently either supported my userbox consolidation efforts or at least applauded them. Currently, I am putting together another larger batch of userbox deletions which will have master templates. (The master templates are not "live" yet.) Would you be willing to support me in this and any future consolidations? There will probably be a lot of resistance at first to this, so having a group of people supporting me would be greatly appreciated.

At the moment, 5 master userboxes are in the works to replace 72. That may increase significantly if I can get the sixth one to work as I would like. Some of the templates to be replaced are widely used, but with the consolidated templates there is more funcitionability.

Please let me know, you can click [edit] above as this conversation is transcluded to all.

Sent to: Aeon1006, Andrew c, BigDT, Billpg, Brian Olsen, Cyde, Gperrow, Khaosworks, Luna Santin, Marcus-e, MiraLuka, NKSCF, Pegasus1138, Phil Boswell, Plange, RedZebra, Rfrisbie, Riana dzasta, Stefanmg, and Tuspm
—Lady Aleena talk/contribs 22:02, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, that's an interesting use of transclusion. :) Can't promise I'll always vote to support, but I imagine that in many cases I will. Feel free to let me know when you post them (I tend not to watch TfD too often), and as always I'll be more than willing to lend what technical advice I can. Luna Santin 22:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Lady Aleena, as noted in an earlier discussion with you, I think consolidation is fine for thematically related userboxes. However, I also support diversity through mass customization, so I'm more inclined to support consolidations that maintain display differences in images, colors and especially wordings. That's easy enough to do with parser functions. I wish you all the best. Regards, Rfrisbie^talk 22:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

As per the two posts above, I might very likely support it but I'll determine it on a case by case basis. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 22:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't overly care too terribly much. I will say that I think having generic userboxes is a good thing from one standpoint - it helps newbies learn Wikicode. If you can't just add {{User Hokie}} to your page but instead have optional parameters like {{User Hokie|year=2001|border=maroon|major=CS}}, that's definitely a good thing. BigDT 22:21, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Same here - case by case. I only voted on the Doctor Who box because it was part of the Wikiproject, anyway. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 22:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Just let me know when you need my support LA, Most od th eboxes I use are aprt of a wikiproject anyways or made myself Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 23:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't use userboxes, I only got into this because of the Doctor Who project. But I'd take a look on a case by case basis, certainly. --Brian Olsen 02:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with BigDT. Userboxes with optional parameters taught me how to use Wikicode. A master template isn't a bad idea... hell, it should be like that for most userboxes. — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • 02:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I do like this use of transclusion. I think I'll vote on a case by case basis, but I do like and support the idea as a whole. —Mira 02:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd also take a look on a case-by-base basis. --Gperrow 17:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I have appreciated your efforts so far and will extend my support to similar "consolidation" projects. RedZebra 13:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

If you know of anyone who may be interested in this, just transclude this to their talk page as it is transcluded to yours. - LA @ 06:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thumbs up! Stefanmg 11:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Whoa ... time travel! ;) BigDT 12:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry... I always copy some of previous posts. It's easier... I just forgot to change the date Stefanmg 17:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

So Far I like what you have done! See your Talk page to find out How much! Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 20:05, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

One concern I have about this form of communication on a topic that admittedly might be controversial is the potential for accusations of recruiting for votestacking. What are others' views on this? Rfrisbie^talk 21:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I had wondered about this, but unless I am mistaken, this is an uncontroversial tidy up operation. Stephen B Streater 21:33, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

As a lot of you have said, you will take my recommendations on a case by case basis. That tells me that you are ready, willing, and able to tell me when I have crossed the line. - LA @ 21:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

This is just anticipating a potential issue so you can prepare for it. If anyone ever puts up a stink, you might want to disclose this page is here. But then again, it might never come up. :-) Rfrisbie^talk 21:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Since we don't vote on Wikipedia it should not be an issue hopefully. Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 00:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Other consolidations

Myers-Briggs

• ENFJ: 26
• ENFP: 48
• ENTJ: 30
• ENTP: 46
• ESFJ: 15
• ESFP: 7
• ESTJ: 19
• ESTP: 8
• INFJ: 43
• INFP: 80
• INTJ: 135
• INTJ2: 45
• INTP: 151
• INTP2: 34
• ISFJ: 13
• ISFP: 13
• ISTJ: 69
• ISTP: 42

Rfrisbie...have you thought about getting your Myers-Briggs templates deleted in favor of the combined one that Thadman created? That would be another 18 deleted. I did a survey of how many people were using each...

Some people have more than one of these on their user pages, so some of those are duplicates. I know that some look like a lot of people use them, but once we get people migrating from individual templates to master templates, it will get easier and easier to consolidate them. Hopefully we can keep user templates in Template space if we can show that we can police them. - LA @ 22:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi LA, of course, we all know they're not “my” templates. I just moved some to userspace as part of the effort to find a userbox compromise most people could live with. I wasn’t kidding when I said I support diversity in userboxes. Although I think Thadman’s userbox {{User:The Thadman/Userbox/MBTI}} is cool, it displays differently than the others – only one color scheme with a set of profile scores – and it doesn’t use categories . I don’t have any problem with it or another template designed to consolidate the existing features of the other boxes for “elegance” reasons, as long as no features are lost. However, I do not see a “need” to do it. On a web site that went from 1 million articles to over 1.25 million in about four months, I really consider the number of userbox pages to be a non-issue. I’m also not aware of any material debates on keeping userboxes in templatespace if someone polices them. Maybe you can show me a link or two on that. In this particular case, it’s even more superfluous because all personality boxes already are in userspace (User:Rfrisbie/Userboxes/Personality) and the Wikipedia directory page was deleted. [10] Rfrisbie^talk 02:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

See my comments on GUS on the WikiProject Userboxes talk page. - LA @ 11:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. What that shows me is that you are very well-intentioned in your efforts, your rationale for this process as a means to keep userboxes in template space is not supported by consensus, and the specific case of the Myers-Briggs templates does not apply, since they already are ugly in userspace. Sorry, I'm still not convinced of the need or consensus to do this. However, if you're still interested in combining the boxes for "efficiency," without changing the displays or categories, it's fine with me. Rfrisbie^talk 12:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have only gotten one reply to my initial statement. I wish that more people would comment for I really want to keep user templates in the template space. I will never use a user template in user space. - LA @ 22:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that LA I have been dealing with other issues, I agree with what your doing it should make things a lot simpler. Aeon ^{Insane Ward} 17:40, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

LOTR

I've found a few more that may be worth consolidating: the LOTR userboxes. Luna Santin 02:54, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I was looking at those, however the merged template would have to have standardized wording. I will give it a good think. - LA @ 04:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Live master user templates

I have made four of those master templates live. I will not start the TfD process on the ones they are replacing for at least a week. I want to see how well they catch on without a TfD first. However, do you think that I could slip a little note onto the to be TfDd templates noting the new master without too much censure. The message would be in the box appearing on the user pages like a TfD, but not as obtrusive. - LA @ 06:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Might be a good idea. What do the others think? Æon ^{Insane Ward} 06:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Go for it. — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • 11:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Some of the card game user templates have been marked with a message about the master template. The ones which are of different design are not marked as of yet. - LA @ 22:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Templates for deletion in progress

Here are the TfDs in progress...

August 7

User chess variants

Card game user templates

Idol series user templates

Newspaper types user templates

August 11

Prison Break

Law & Order series

Go take a look and tell the community what you think. - LA @ 07:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Checked them out, went delete on all. Great Job LA! Æon ^{Insane Ward} 20:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Lady Aleena's userbox consolidation desk

If you find a group of userboxes which you think could be merged, place them on my userbox desk. Please alphabetalize them over the Edit section with NEW in the section name so it stands out a bit. I currently have 6 projects there. - LA @ 00:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

More user template deletions

To those who are still watching this, please see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 August 25/User templates and give your opinion. - LA @ 08:14, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tidy

[11], I hope it was automated and wasn't a chore. I have a technical question about this process. If the case is heard and an evidence page provided, will I be able to add more evidence at that time? I will scan this page for your reply. Thanks again. Ste4k 13:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as I understand the arbitration process, yes: at this time you are only supposed to be setting out your basic case. You appear to have missed the rubric:

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 13:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

ouch. I had read that, actually. The links were all condensed to keep the message short. The essay about these cases explained that they are not accepted unless they are serious and that presentation of evidence is important in that regard. In order to show the amount of time this has been continuing and also in what regard (the two thirds) to substantiate my statement, I included what was there. If an evidence page is provided only after a case is accepted to be heard, how is it normally handled to substantiate such a statement? Is it possible to have an evidence page before a case is accepted to be heard? Ste4k 13:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Normally what happens is that a brief statement is made by each side, with just a smattering of links to show that the case is not frivolous. If the case is accepted, the opening statements are moved to a newly-created sub-page of WP:RFAR and used as the "front page" for the case. An "Evidence" page is created as a sub-page of that, which provides the opportunity for extending your lists of links. In this case, should it be accepted, it is possible that your evidence already presented will be moved straight to the Evidence page, but this is all within the discretion of the Clerks, of which I am not one (I'm just a humble janitor, mopping the place up). HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

OH! My apologies. I thought you were a clerk. I didn't know that it was allowed to modify such things unless one was a clerk(I'm still new). In order to show that it is not frivilous, but also since we are talking about many, many jabs and small attacks, listing only a few would probably get the same response that has caused this to continue for so long. Listing it the way it is now, looks like I am trying to be overpowering. It is something that the other party actually tries to prove. Would you mind changing it back please? Ste4k 15:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to thank you for a tidy. Jkelly 18:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please stop messing with my user page and user talk page

Your abuse of the tool AWB is not appreciated. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 07:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

WP:GUS Userbox fixing

Hi Phil, I noticed your WP:GUS Userbox fixing script and wondered how it was working. I use a find/replace table with more variations (see User talk:Xaosflux#Fluxbot partial GUS substitutions) than I see in you script. I do have to watch out for false positives, but I also get close to a 100% hit rate on "What links here". About the only boxes I miss on a given pass are redirects with different names (e.g., "atheist" → "atheism"). I have noticed many UBX redirects have only been partially bypassed, making it difficult to complete their userfying. Do you think your script would help with clearing out Category:Wikipedia GUS userboxes? Regards, Rfrisbie^talk 17:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

User_Pope

Comment withdrawn, apologetically. Misread the history of a deleted userbox. MrZaius^talk 18:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for helping out with my user page. I'm just curious, what is the Babel_X function for?Bakaman%% 15:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki Syntax Highlighting

Syntax Highlighting using GeSHi works VERY well. (ext from wiki.ciscavate.org)

BetacommandBot

thanks for the input o will exclude all A-class cats. thanks for finding the typo i will fix that. Betacommand 16:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Good adminning

Thanks for being a voice of reason and good faith on WP:ANI and IRC. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Could use your help with a vandal

An account-less person keeps spamming Talk:A Feast for Crows, no matter how many times we revert it. I left a message on the talk page for his IP (at User_talk:84.3.169.239), but he ignored that. Could you take a look at the matter (see the history of that page) and block him if you consider it sufficient reason? Thank you. Paul Willocx 20:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

RfA Analysis

Hey Phil, thank you for your message. I've noticed the problem too, and I'm working to rewrite the Analysis Library so I can straighten out all the bugs. Cheers, Tangotango 16:37, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, much of the rewrite is complete; the new version is much faster, leaner, and supports a wider range of RfA formats than ever before. Please tell me again if anything is amiss. Cheers, Tangotango 13:44, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

TransLink templates

Also replied on your talk page:

Thank you for your help on this score. There are a few problems though. The exceptions to the general formatting seem to not be working properly. E.g. at Brookside, the routes 598 and 599 should both be in dark blue and operated by 'BT', not turqoise and LCBS, because although they fall into the turqoise range (540-599), they are considered to be part of the special dark blue range (Brisbane Central). Something in the templates didn't work quite smoothly here. The various other exceptions were all included in each array template and are still there after your changes, not sure what's happened. It only seems to be a problem for the text and not table entries. Im no expert, so could you please see what's up? Cheers. SM247^{My Talk} 00:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops! Yes…sorry about that. It's to do with a difference between how the {{#switch}} function works and how template parameters work: with the former, the first hit takes precedence, with the latter it's the last. I've fixed {{TL Region Name}}: if there are any more, let me know…or even do it yourself if you like. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 06:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

vandalism

Why aren't you bothered by this? It is vandalism. --tickle me 09:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for your useful corrections. Re-locating information and trying to design my page as good as I can are my priorities, however, sometimes I miss to check that everything is in order. Greetings, --Gustavo86 21:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

What changes do I need to make to my user:drboisclair user page

Also replied on your talk page:

Your changes to my user page have again caused it to appear messed up in the worst way. Why can't it be left the way I fixed it?--Drboisclair 22:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Since I replaced a redirect with the template to which it points, I can assure you that my change had as near to no effect on the way your user-page as is possible. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 22:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that you made a necessary change, so I guess I will have to delete the user boxes altogether in order for the page to look neat. I am sorry if I have misformatted the user boxes. I guess they will not work out on my user page.--Drboisclair 22:15, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Removing the "6" from the Wikibabel template accomplishes what needs to be accomplished. I hope that what I have done now with my user page falls within correct formatting for the user boxes and the WikiBabel.--Drboisclair 22:27, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

STOP vandalising my user page

it is rude and it is inappropriate. and if you do it again, i will report you. dgl 15:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for updating my Babel entry regarding the "German Wikipedia Solution for Mass User Confusion". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dontbeakakke (talk • contribs) 11:05, August 13, 2006

Likewise from me : thanks for updating my Babel link &c. I copied mine from Jeff3000 earlier today so perhaps you could pass by his site as well to give him a hand too? Iainsona 12:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem, I expect he'll be on my list somewhere ;-) but it won't necessarily be today. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 12:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Quick Acknowledgement On Changes Made In Accordance to WP:GUS

Hey, Phil! Thanks for the move and everything; I've been out of the Wiki for a bit and noticed what you've done with some of the userboxes. Just a quick note on that move, though — I'm actually Muslim, as opposed to just merely interested in Islam. Made the changes myself, but thanks for everything else! — T-Boy: (complain bitterly) (laugh contemptuously) 05:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

"This user does not believe in astrology"

RE: Template:User_-astrology

• May I ask why this userbox was not only deleted, but also banned from creation? It wasn't offensive, it's more informational than many other userboxes, and had no graphic (as I recall) that would have been a copyvio. I don't understand and I can't seem to find anywhere the reason or rationale. IF I read the info right, you were the one to delete it; if that is correct, why? and if I made a mistake (i.e. you didn't delete it), I'm sorry to bother you (but perhaps you know better than I where/how to figure it out?). VigilancePrime 07:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Enterprise 2.0

Phil, I was one of the participants in the AFD discussion on WP's 'Enterprise 2.0' article, advocating that it be kept. So I was glad to learn of the keep outcome, and to read your explanation of why this decision was reached. Subsequent to the announcement of the keep decision, Sj redirected the term 'Enterprise 2.0,' first to a section of the 'Social Computing' article and then (after I left a message on his Talk page asking him to respect the keep decision) to a new article called 'Enterprise Social Computing,' the term he advocated during the AFD process. The history and dissussion pages of the pre-existing 'Enterprise 2.0' article are not part of the new 'Enterprise Social Computing' article. As a Wikipedia neophyte, I'm confused by these actions. They don't seem to be to be in keeping with the letter or spirit of the keep decision, and they seem to be ignoring the points you made when explaining that decision. So I'm hoping you can help restore the most recent version of the 'Enterprise 2.0' article along with its history and discussion pages, or help me understand why this is not the appropriate course of action given the outcome of that article's AFD process. Thanks much for your involvement with this article; I appreciate it. Amcafee 11:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Cite web

Thanks for the citation edit on Kayah Li. I used that format for a citation at Vai script... but how do I add the names of two other authors to that? Evertype 20:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Help needed

Hello Phil, I noticed that you wrote a message on EnglishGarden's talk page and reverted changes that he made to my userpage and I've come for help. EnglishGarden has continuously mentioned personal information about my family in the Tahirih Justice Center talk page and I have continuously asked him not to. I was wondering if this is grounds for a block as this user has repeatedly done this and shows no signs of stopping. Thank you for your help.UberCryxic 21:21, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello again Phil. He keeps on mentioning my family in our discussion. I have repeatedly told him to stop as it is irrelevant material regarding the article. Can you please give him another warning? Sorry to have you bother with this. Hopefully he'll listen this time.UberCryxic 00:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Also, he's using the article's talk page as a soapbox. He keeps asking people personally if they agree with a particular law under discussion, which is not relevant to the article at all. A warning about that would also be appreicated. Thanks!UberCryxic 00:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Babel

Why are you doing it all by hand? Wouldn't it be easier for a bot to do it? I'm going to let MetsBot do Babel-3. —Mets501 (talk) 05:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I see. Would you rather if MetsBot didn't do Babel-3? —Mets501 (talk) 14:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Happy Birthday

The Wikipedia Birthday Committee wishes you a very happy birthday! Enjoy your special day.

Have a good one :) -Ladybirdintheuk 09:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Your removal of an "unnecessary template"

Gidday. Sir, with all do respect, was your edit not based on a POV? What right do you have to remove a template with the simple and unsubstatiated claim it is unnecessary? Was there a vote, sir? Were there complaints? Why weren't those who were responsible for the template notified beforehand? Where is the protocol, sir? Where is the respect and honor? Where is the good faith and Wikiquette? Where, sir? Where? ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 18:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Asiatic cheetah

Thanks, I see your edits on Asiatic Cheetah. I'm doing a total overhaul of it because it's a complete mess right now. Thanks. Ben 10:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

AFD

Hi, I want to resolve this amicably. I apologize for calling your argument "silly" on Talk:AFD. Like most people I'm not a idealogical inclusionist or exclusionist.. I've just made a judgement on this case and I assume everyone else has done the same. Freak was rude and personal from the very beginning but I really have nothing against you. I'm sorry I helped make you cross, and I am not going to revert you. It is debatable whether there is a consensus for removing April fools day or not, but by my count a majority of talk page contributors favour its removal (pro:Seidenstud,Wangi,srleffler,thomasB,mikka,Thatcher131,me(7), anti:SB,you,freak,Snowfire(4). Are you interested in getting mediation? What do you think is the future for this page? Zargulon 15:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

AfD Nomination: Katie Jackson

An article that you have been involved in editing, Katie Jackson, has been listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Katie Jackson. Please look there to see why this is, if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

-- Malber (talk • contribs) 16:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

AfD Nomination: Billy Jackson

An article that you have been involved in editing, Billy Jackson, has been listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Billy Jackson. Please look there to see why this is, if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

-- Malber (talk • contribs) 17:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

DRV on Izzy Young

Hi,

I don't think your speedy closure of this was entirely fair to the deleter. He gave A7 as his first reason for deletion; while G4 doesn't apply to content that has only been speedied, A7 does apply. I won't reopen the thing, because it clear there is a much better draft at the title now, but I will edit your wording on the closure for precision and conciseness. HTH HANDTYTIA :) (to you too in advance) Best wishes, Xoloz 18:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

AWB edits

migrate {{Babel-X}} and related redirects to {{Babel}}, and migrate GUS userboxes where appropriate, using AWB - Please mark all these edits as minor, otherwise RC patrollers have no way of filtering them out of the recent changes. Thanks.--Andeh 16:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Please.--Andeh 11:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Why???

You messed with my user page, and now my Miscellaneous Interests userbox that I spent so much time trying to figure out, says "This user cannot read or write any languages. Assistance is required." What's up with that? I certainly don't know how to fix it, becuase I never thought anyone would cause that problem on my own user page. --BennyD 16:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

RfA Analysis

Hi, it appears to be an Internet Explorer-specific problem. Adding "white-space:nowrap" to all the date cells seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks for pointing it out! Cheers, Tangotango 04:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

JimButcher.jpg

FYI, be advised that re WP:FU#Non-compliance the image fails tests #1 and #8 and is liable to removal on those grounds. A totally free image should be obtained to replace the image. --AlisonW 17:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Cool Cat/In many languages...

Thank you for the tweaks --Cat out 15:11, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

User:Ile-de-re

Moin, moin, dear Phil!

Thank you for helping to fix my page and kind regards from Hamburg.--Ile-de-re 08:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

MedCab case

Following your recent edits to Alberto Fujimori, would you be interested in joining the mediation on the Talk:Alberto Fujimori/Mediation page? If so, could you add your name to the list. Thanks, Addhoc 12:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Do not blindly revert templates *you* do not understand

If you do not understand how templates work, do not blindly revert them because it confuses *you*. Perhaps *you* should read and understand the technical guidelines before vandalising other people's work. — Dunc|☺ 17:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Help needed again

Hello Phil, you did a great job at helping me with User:EnglishGarden and now I humbly request that you take a look at a user who is acting in such an absurd pathological manner that it's gotten quite irritating. Let me just give you some short background so you can better understand the situation. A few days ago, on September 16, I responded to an RFC request for the article Stormfront, which is about a Neo-Nazi website. There was an edit dispute between User:Stick to the Facts and User:Poison sf about neutrality and tone. At first, I and User:Alecmconroy were the ones mostly involved in the RFC, but eventually other editors came.

Anyway, editing disputes continued even after we came. Stick to the Facts was banned for 24 hours after a 3RR violation. In the meantime the rest of us worked on neutralizing the tone, but after Stick's ban expired, he began acting in a very bizarre fashion. He started flagrantly accusing people of vandalism when there was just an edit dispute. He accused me personally of vandalism no less than 3 times; just check the bottom of my talk page. He accused about 4 or 5 well-meaning editors of vandalism and continued to undo our edits on the Stormfront article under the guise of Wikipedia's vandalism policy, which of course does not apply here at all. Furthermore, his edits almost always went against the consensus that was reached on the talk page. The user behaved very unilaterally. After checking Stick's edit history since first registering on September 1, 2006, I found that his edits on Wikipedia were almost exclusively confined to the article.

But, it goes on. Yesterday, Stick opened a RFCU on Poison and accused him of having no less than 6 sockpuppets. One of those sockpuppets was me apparently (and I've been here since January, made thousands of edits, and written four featured articles, so Poison sure used me well), but also several other people that are obviously experienced Wikipedia editors who are clearly not sockpuppets. Stick's main premise is that we started to edit the article at around the same time that the edit dispute got hot, so we're somehow involved with Poison in a conspiratorial way. He accused me of lying about coming in when I saw the RFC, suggesting I came before (he even completely fabricated a time about my first edit in the article; you can see that in the RFCU). Yet if you look at the article's history, the first edit I made was on 17:49 September 16 whereas the RFC for the article was opened by Poison at 15:59 on the same day (see the RFC here).

He's made wild charges like this for several days now and is actually annoying a number of well-meaning editors. User:ExplicitImplicity wrote this in the RFCU page: "I am unsure if i should laugh or cry." He's just generally behaving in an odd way and lying pathologically. More depressing, however, he is hiding behind his faulty understanding of Wikipedia policies, which apparently he's a master at after having been here for a grand total of three weeks, to undertake what is nothing less than a campaign of slander and article domination. Beyond the first 3RR and continuing incivility, I don't think there is actually anything that makes his offenses blockable. After all, we don't block people on Wikipedia if they're weird. I was just wondering if you could please give him a very strong message to stop acting erratically. I and many other users have done this already on his talk page, but you can probably see what the difference would be if an administrator did it.

Finally, I am very sorry to take up so much of your time, but this is a pressing matter. I believe users like him, who are here only to subvert the policies of Wikipedia, are even more dangerous than casual vandals. I would really like your opinion on this matter and hopefully a warning against Stick. Thank you very much and, again, sorry for bothering you with this.UberCryxic 22:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

UberCryxic has been engaging in massive forum shopping by contacting admins directly. If you would like to see the controversy at hand please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Poison_sf. Contrary to what he has told you above, the allegations involve both meat and sock puppetry. Please help keep wikipedia objective by discouraging UberCryxic from contacting admins directly. Thank you, Stick to the Facts 08:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Seeking advice on language box

Hello Phil-- I hope you don't mind me contacting you out of the blue on this. I gathered from a couple posts I saw on talk pages that you know the ins and outs of implementing a user language box pretty well. I just discovered the Babel template recently and got the impression somewhere that there might be a better/more proper way to do it than what I've done.

• First, I put one on both my user and talk pages, then noticed it seems no one puts them on their talk pages-- is the etiquette to have it on the user page only?
• Second, did I see some mention that a Babel template can be implemented in one place in such a way that the language box appears on any of that user's (sub)pages? (Not confident in my terminology in that last sentence, hope I'm making sense.) Thanks in advance. --Eric 19:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC) ^talk

Redirect Template Changes

I see that you have been using AWB to modify the alternate redirect templates to alternative. I'd suggest you hold off as this is being discussed at this CFD nomination. It's possible the old wording will be restored. You may wish to join the conversation there. Thanks. -- JLaTondre 11:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Change on User Page

I notice that a slight edit has been made to my UserPage, may I ask wht this change was needed? --pjb007 21:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Foley

May I ask why you semi-protected? Everyone seems to be insisting on semi-protecting and this hardly seems necessary at the moment. If we get severe vandalism we can always semi-prot then. JoshuaZ 21:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi JoshuaZ. Phil went to bed but I'm one person in his timezone who witnessed the discussion over this on the admin channel. I would suggest that you exercise your own judgement on this; pre-emptive semiprotection is a little controversial but it seemed to me like a sensible move in view of the allegations about this politician, because we're not a news site or a blog. I won't object if you unprotect as long as you are sure that any vandalism or other activity inimical to Wikipedia would be reverted very quickly. Ideally this means that you or trustworthy people known to you have undertaken to watch that article closely in the next day or two. --Tony Sidaway 22:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Just in case

... you need a break in babeling and want do some more hairy stuff: User:Ligulem/work/templates using hiddenStructure (nothing for AWB though). Cheers. --Ligulem 13:54, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Volleyball infobox

Thanks for cleaning up the infobox. Next time I'm in need of such an infobox/template I will contact you right away. Cheers, SportsAddicted 20:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

A complete and utter failure of Natural Justice

Your treatment of me was horribly unfair, unjust, and contradicted all principles of fair dealing. You have failed to adhere to the principles of Natural Justice; in particular, the principle audi alteram partem.

My reasonable comments, manifestly factual and fair, for which I was preventented by you from providing further justification and explanation, were attacked by you without any, or any reasonable, explanation.

Please provide me with all relevant details so that a full and fair hearing of your actions can be adjudicated forthwith and without delay.--Lance ^talk 03:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Black hole

Black hole is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 16:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Clean up

Will you please clean up after your recent move, and fix the sort keys? Gene Nygaard 10:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Your deliberate messing up of sort key

See also this point about your deliberately wrong sort key at Chanoz-Châtenay. Will you please fix that one, also? Gene Nygaard 12:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Second request. Please fix your deliberate misindexing of Chanoz-Châtenay. Gene Nygaard 23:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Third request, following your deliberate keeping of the same messed up indexing, deliberately cahnging nothing in this edit. Please index in accordance with Wikipedia:Categorization#Category sorting. Gene Nygaard 14:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Your demands above, Gene, appear to assume bad faith (Characterizing the edits as deliberately messing them up). If there's something broken, you're more than welcome to fix it yourself, but if you need Phil_Boswell's assistance because you don't know how, then I advise you to be WP:CIVIL and ask appropriately. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It does nothing of the sort. Phil's change was deliberate. He also knows quite well that the "default sort key" (his terminology) is the article's name, so that his removing of the exact article's name as a sort key was no change whatsoever. What his intentions were, I don't know. All I know is that he has not fixed it as requested, and the only reasonable conclusion is that this was intentional. Gene Nygaard 14:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The quality of the logic you've employed exceeds my ability to interpret. It must be very, very advanced. I'm unable to reach the same conclusions that you have based on the information you've provided, and I encourage you to rephrase your comment in the form of english. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I fail to see how the presence of an accent will completely destroy that category. It still falls in the same place in the category that it otherwise would, unless I am missing something. --Sable232 15:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Since you checked that much out, Sable232, why did you do so with your eyes only half-open? Why didn't you notice all the others that are out of place in that category? If you and Phil and others make it a routine practice to do it right in all cases, then Château-Gaillard, Ain Lélex wouldn't be misindexed either, would they? Would you like to fix all of them in Category:Communes of Ain that are incorrectly indexed? Then take on about a zillion similar categories? Gene Nygaard 15:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Muchas gracias

Hey Phil, thanks a lot for supporting me in my recent RfA. It succeeded, and I am very grateful to all of you. If you ever need help with anything, please don't hesitate to ask. Also, feel free point out any mistakes I make! Thanks again, —Khoikhoi 04:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

{{markups}}

Hi, I found this gem when rummaging through departed User:Xiong's stuff. I used it a few times and even fixed a small mistake. I agree it needs work but it's useful. Why was it deleted? I see you left a notice on talk but the link doesn't point to any discussion of this. John Reid 15:04, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I was at a loss for a while as to what you thought this had to do with me, but I managed to find this.

Basically, notifying Xiong and voting to "userfy" the template was the extent of my involvement.

You will note that it was eventually userfied. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link; I've had a look at it. Doesn't seem as if this template started a war; I'm not sure why anybody wanted it gone. It's a useful tool, although I didn't understand the {{helpbox}} at first. That latter gadget is nonstandard; {{tnavbar-mini}} &c. are the standard tools for that function.

Can we bring this tool back to templatespace? Yes, I suppose we can always use it from userspace but that could be said for any template. There was very little discussion on the deletion. I'm not going to argue for undeletion on grounds of improper process but it does look as though the main reason this got deleted was that Xiong pissed people off, got pissed off, or both. I'd like to rewrite it to replace the objectionable "helpbox" with "tnavbar-foo", maybe clean it up a bit; but it will be substantially the same tool. Can we salvage this? John Reid 14:15, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Say Phil, that wasn't a rhetorical question. Can we salvage this tool? I'd like your opinion. It's useful, especially for template writers. John Reid ° 18:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Akita (Group)

I found no relevance in keeping it, so you can delete it if you want. Robert Moore 17:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Your recent AWB edits

...are leaving behind undesirable results. I have seen several instances where previous editors used the {{ref}} and {{note}} templates for explanatory footnotes, which you have blindly moved into the "References" section of the page. The resultant References section looks terrible, with a mixture of bullet points and HTML reference links. My guess is that the original editor would have preferred a "Notes" section to complement the existing References section, instead of your merged result. Please preview the end results of your changes before you hit AWB's save key. Thanks, Andrwsc 23:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Template:User etc

Hi Phil,

(subst:'ing, Replaced: {{·}} → {{subst:·}} using AWB)

Curious to understand your rationale for the above; thanks!  David Kernow (talk) 12:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm substituting this template for two reasons:

1. It's not actually much saving over typing the character in by hand; in fact · is probably easier to type.

The primary rationale for {{·}} is linewrap management, so it replaces (say)  · – somthing I hope you'll agree is even more ungainly (and perhaps daunting/confusing, therefore, to non-programmers);

2. It's used in so many places that it is a massive vector for vandalism of a subtle and annoying nature...

Hence {{protected template}}... Hope I'm not missing something obvious!

Yours, David (talk) 13:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

...As its code isn't currently optimz/sed for subst:ing, please stop continuing to subst: {{·}}, at least for the time being. Instead, what are your thoughts re the above...?  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

...Hello, Phil...?  Please read and respond to the above; I may otherwise need to consider a temporary block...
(I hope Wikipedia's messaging system isn't malfunctioning...)  David (talk) 16:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

---

...Thanks for stopping your subst: edits. I can imagine the above seems less than pleasant and I acknowledge that a different course of action may've been more constructive. I didn't want to start reverting your edits in lieu of further response from you. (I guess I try to follow as much of a zero-revert policy as possible!)  So, I apologiz/se for any upset caused.

I hope you are able to understand my concern and puzzlement as to your lack of response after 13:05. I've added a little further explanation to the {{·}} documentation in the hope it might make its raison-d'être more apparent. I'd appreciate your resuming the discussion above so I may understand your response to my rationale for the template. Thanks – with recognition of your Wikipedia work – David (talk) 19:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

---

Hi Phil: Did you receive my email...?  Regards, David (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Image:Trudi Canavan.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Trudi Canavan.jpg. I notice the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed image could reasonably be found or created. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:

1. Go to the image description page and edit it to add {{Replaceable fair use disputed}}, without deleting the original Replaceable fair use template.
2. On the image discussion page, write the reason why this image is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace the fair use image by finding a freely licensed image of its subject or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our fair use criteria. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that any fair use images which are replaceable by free-licensed alternatives will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. --Chowbok ☠ 22:04, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Merging Template:Oceania in topic

Hi - I see that you mentioned a possible merger with Template:Oceania. I'd also been thinking about merging the "in topic" templates with the main continental ones, and I'm sure that we can get it to work smoothly. As there are some other current proposals for renaming the templates, I wonder if you might like to propose something centrally at Wikipedia talk:Template:Continent in topic guidelines? thanks, Warofdreams talk 17:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Stop AWB (quickly.. please..)!

Hello. I notice you are going around subst'ing: {{·}} - in the process you are reformatting my signature (removing several of my user wikilinks), please revert your changes to my sig as I have not authorized it, examples: [12][13] MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 15:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

My signature subst:s a xyz (talk · contribs) template which you converted from a subst the other day if you look at my present sig, either way I have not authorized you to doctor my messages in such a manner, revert, thank you. MatthewFenton (talk) 16:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

If you were actually using {{user}}, I would be very short of legs to stand on. Since you are in fact obviously using {{user5}}, my supply of legs is substantially increased. As I requested, fix it or be fixed. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 16:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I never specified which one I was using.. notice the letter "a"; also its pretty apparent it isn't User5. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 17:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern, Template:·

Hi Phil,

I initially had commented to David Kernow (talk · contribs) on his talk page wondering whether it was actually necessary to protect Template:·/doc, but he responded with a conservation between him and you that included your concerns about whether the the pattern actually works. I noticed that you posted some concerns to Wikipedia talk:Template doc page pattern, but later removed that thread. So I'm wondering whether you still have concerns over the doc page pattern.

As for the issue whether {{·}} should be subst'ed, I generally prefer not to subst "utility" templates like that, within reason, but I usually don't oppose if other people see the need to do so, particularly for short templates like this. So keep subst'ing away if you want. (Side note: I prefer {{nobr}} for controlling line breaks; I've found that, even with judicious use of  , MSIE will annoyingly break on certain other characters — parentheses, for example.) — TKD::Talk 11:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, it'd probably be good to add {{·}} to WP:SUBST. — TKD::Talk 12:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Have initiated this thread on WP:SUBST's talk page. Re clarification, see User talk:TKD. David Kernow (talk) 23:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
PS Have yet to receive a return receipt for the email I sent four or so days ago; is your email okay, Phil...?

{{Navigation}}

Hi Phil, which navigation boxes where broken by my changes to {{navigation}}? —Ruud 23:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Your fix [14] seems work when I test it in my userspace (User:R. Koot/Sandbox11, User:R. Koot/Algeria and User:R._Koot/Countries_of_Africa). Are you sure things still catastrophically broke after that edit? —Ruud 00:56, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Question regarding Cadillac Catera image - FYI

The original image was issued freely as a promotional image by General Motors in conjunction with the launch of the Cadillac Catera - it was obtained from the CateraOwners Web site with permission, as the source without a link to the image, the link to the site was on the page. Thank you for at least having the courtesy not to immediately mark the image as a CSD. I'll add information to the image page to clarify. Tvccs 12:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Tvccs"

Pardon me for being stupid enough to assume any courtesy - I see the image was simply removed.Tvccs

The image was removed by User:Abu badali as part of an CSD attack on practically every image I've uploaded to Wikipedia regardless of tagging or information including such common items as CD covers - If you review my other image contributions I believe they are all or nearly all in compliance with the required information - I clarified the information on the image question in regards to the issue you raised, notified you, and simply requested that you restore the image to the page if you found the revised information to be sufficient. Whether you choose to do so is entirely your prerogative. Thank you. Tvccs 12:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I just wanted to add that a similar thing happened to me. I'm on what he must consider the "wrong side" of the promophoto debate, so User:Abu badali ripped through all of my contributions to Wikipedia, including pages that had no connection to the current dispute. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I do understand what Tvccs is going through, and I just wanted you to know that he's not alone. Jenolen 17:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hiya Phil. I am on a public computer and hence cannot come to IRC. I want you to have a look here, once again – and perhaps reconsider your stance. Best wishes. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{L} 05:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Illustrated Wikipedia

Hi Phil. Thanks for all your help with the WikiWorld templates, etc. One question about the templates in articles: When someone clicks on the hyperlink, they're taken to the uploaded version of the comic - but, to see a larger and more legible version, they need to click through two more levels. Maybe there's no way around it, but I figured it was worth asking whether the template could link directly to that largest image instead. Any chance? --Greg Williams 20:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

AWB Question/Request

Hi, I'm trying to use AWB to change IMDb and MySpace URLs into Templates, basically converting http://www.myspace.com/theband to {{template|theband}} - I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me how to do this with AWB. Best Wishes and Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 22:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Solar System/Moon footers

Hi Phil -

Could you fix the Solar system and Moon footers so that the margins correspond to the width of the included text and images, and not the width of the page itself? Thanks Lunokhod 08:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Mimi

My condoleances. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Condolences on your loss. May she always shine in your memory. -- Davidkevin 04:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It always sucks when things die, but who is Mimi? ★MESSEDROCKER★ 12:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to rearrange it again. Mimi was my cat who died after suffering from kidney failure. She'd had hyperthyroidism from when we got her, and was just seeming to have turned the corner when disaster struck and it threw me for a complete loop for some days. —Phil | Talk

Thank you for everybody who has expressed sympathy, here and elsewhere. —Phil | Talk 12:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

SmackBot and ISBNs

Hi Phil, Your name seems familiar... Hm, no problem fixing these stangenesses, I've just started another run so should get 95% with luck. My previous ISBN fixer is published on the AWB scripts page, the only bit that's missing is the checksum bit. I will publish that at some point, the principles are there in the ISSN script. Rich Farmbrough, 19:53 14 December 2006 (GMT).

Yes, do anything reasonable with the bad isbn page. I'll not be updating it- see my talk. Rich Farmbrough, 20:02 14 December 2006 (GMT).

Ah, placed you. ang:wiki! Rich Farmbrough, 09:49 15 December 2006 (GMT).

Husnock

Phil, I have unblocked Husnock's account following his de-sysoping. As the block was placed to prevent possible mis-use of the admin abilities by another person I'm hoping this is ok with you. Also, just prior to the de-sysoping I had opened an arbitration request which you may be interested in commenting on... though the de-sysoping may have made it moot. --CBD 16:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee,—— Eagle 101 ^{(Need help?)} 04:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

ISFDB is now open for outside editing

Hi, Phil!

Just to let you know that the ISDFB (http://www.isfdb.org/) has entered the beta phase (http://isfdb.tamu.edu/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Beta_recruitment) and outside submissions have been enabled. Since you are a registered ISFDB user, we thought we'd let you know :)

Best, Ahasuerus 20:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Change to Common.css

Per recent discussions, the way in which Persondata is viewed by Wikipedia editors has changed. In order to continue viewing Persondata in Wikipedia articles, please edit your user CSS file to display table.persondata rather than table.metadata. More specific instructions can be found on the Persondata page. --ShakingSpirit^talk on behalf of Kaldari 01:42, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Harry Potter

RHB(AWB) 23:19, 30 December 2006 (UTC), on behalf of WPHarry Potter