User talk:Rick Block/Archive2006

Eeek! Newbie seeks help :)

Ooops, well it took me an hour but I finally figured it out. Thanks for answering my previous question though :) Its nice that people are so willing to help us newbies :)

Hi (think I'm doing this right?) anyway, you very helpfully answered a help question I asked (re a template thing) and I went to the template page but still couldn't figure out what I needed to do.

If you've got a spare minute to help an incredibly uncertain newbie trying her best to figure the whole wikipedia thing out (!) would you mind emailing me? I'm finding this whole communicate-by-wiki thing a bit tricky and I don't mind the world knowing this email address: pageantupdate@gmail.com

Thanks! CarlyPalmer 08:10, 13 March 2006 (UTC)Carly

WP's getting scattered

Rick, I saw your comments at RfA: "IMO, voting in essentially any context within Wikipedia has become virtually meaningless." I've been getting pretty frazzled by all the hooting and hollering about userboxes. I feel overloaded. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to overhaul the categorization policies but am not getting much response. I think some general process guidelines for all of WP might help, but I don't have a clue these days how to make any suggestions that anyone would actually listen to.

So, back to Categorization. I'd like your help with clarifying the wording of the guidelines, and then I think it is time to call for consensus. Or should I just say that there is consensus and just post the policies, be done with it and see if anyone notices? My view of consensus (and the way I've tried to facilitate the cat proposal) is that consensus is a very slow process. You discuss, you have straw polls, you brainstorm ideas, and you listen to peoples concerns. Eventually you arrive at consensus and it is apparent. The only problem with that process here is that you don't know if anyone is listening. I'm thinking of posting something like this on the categorization talk page:

Call for consensus

Having spent over a year discussing these policies and getting a favorable response to the new policies, I'm calling for consensus. Unlike a vote, I am just asking if everyone can live with the proposed guidelines.

"In favor" means that you approve of the new policies, perhaps with some minor concerns that you can live with.

"Stand asside" means that you don't approve of the proposal, but you will not block it from being implemented. You can state your concerns with the proposal, and hopefully they can be taken into account if there is any future work on the guidelines.

"Block" means that you feel so strongly against the proposal that you want to block it. Blocking is not something to be taken lightly. Before blocking you should be very familiar with the entire history on the topic. You also must make a case for why you are blocking the proposal and be willing to debate it. Any blocks that do not show an understanding of the issues or do not present a clear case or do not respond to debate will be discounted.

What do you think? -- Samuel Wantman 09:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think rather than suggest a vote (in any sense) you might just propose to change the page (specifying the exact change) unless anyone objects within some time interval (like a week). I completely agree that consensus is very slow, perhaps excruciatingly slow. Note that in this case, I'm not sure user:Ashley Y will agree to anything except "if article X and category X both exist, X goes in category X and that's all". This rule doesn't reflect current practice, so perhaps the way to avoid this is to couch the change as a clarification intended to reflect, not change, current practice. Let me know where your proposed text is and I'll be happy to wordsmith (the latest one on the WP:CG talk page looks pretty good to me - it presumably replaces to the end of the first section of CG, starting with An article will often be in several categories.). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and I'm taking it a step further. I've created Wikipedia:Categorization/rewrite and I'm asking for help restructuring the page with the new guidelinse. Might as well make the process as open as possible. Please take a look. -- Samuel Wantman 08:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Some toughts about templates

Hi Rick. I've seen your conversations on Jamesday's talk. I think you would be the right person to write to.

Couldn't there something be done in the MediaWiki software to make some sort of special template which could be used on a larger scale without hurting the DB servers that much as high use templates do today?

Subst-ing is good for the servers but bad for editors as their input is "lost" (or we might say "downgraded") when they save. So subst-ing is not that popular among editors (at least not for some use cases).

I think it might be good if there were templates that are not immediately broadcasted to articles. The question is: when should an article receive an "update" of such a template?

One solution would be: when an editor edits an article. But that would be somewhat frightening as this might not been easily understood by editors (could look like a strange side-effect).

A luxory solution would be if an editor could see an indicator on the edit screen that for a specific template there is a new version. It would then be fine if the user could in a edit action say "yes, I want to upgrade onto the new version of template X" as part of an edit action. If editors then would deliberately choose not to do that, the article would just continue to use the old version of template X.

This would also enable a stable view on old versions of an article. Today, if I look on an old version of an article I do not see how that article was at that point in time. I always get the newest version of the template applied to that article revision. If that template changed its semantics in between (for example there was a change in the name of a parameter), chances are high that I see complete rubish when viewing an old revision of an articles.

Example: on article Bill Clinton, User:NetBot changed on this revision the parameters of the president box on the right side (diff). All revisions after that edit of that article now show a good president box on the right side. But all revision prior to that NetBot edit show a broken box (example: revision before that edit).

So, in fact the "you can always go back" promise that Wikipedia makes to editors cannot be upheld if templates are used that way. Adrian Buehlmann 00:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Adrian - I'm flattered that you want my opinion about this, but like I've mentioned in several places I'm not (and never have been) a mediawiki developer. My comments in various forums are based on general knowledge of how wikis work and my understanding of mediawiki from descriptions of its architecture, as well as considerable experience with software in general. Assuming you're still interested in what I have to say about this idea, I think it's reasonable but might be awkward to implement in a way that's easy to understand and use. You're basically talking about having the ability to reference a specific version of a template and, in this case, have the referring article cache the contents. I can't think of a technical reason this wouldn't work, it might not even be terribly difficult to implement. Coming up with an appropriate syntax for the reference might be challenging - perhaps something like {{template/oldid=version|args}}. Including some syntax to specify the "current version" that would be expanded on a submit (similar to how ~~~~ is handled) might be useful as well (perhaps {{template//|args}}). Avoiding the cache invalidation work when the template is changed would likely require adding something to the database record that stores references (used for whatlinkshere as well). Logically, this is simpy a bit that says "this is a reference that doesn't need to be invalidated on change". Then, the only issue is exactly where in the database record for the article itself to store the contents of the template. Back when Netscape was first pushing HTML email they came up with a mechanism to refer to an attachment from within the HTML body of an email (for inline gifs and whatnot) - seems like something like that should be able to be worked out fairly easily. Although anyone can submit code, Brion Vibber is the lead developer and he decides what changes get in which release.

The bottom line is I think this is a good idea and likely worth pursuing. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for having a look at this. I choose you due to your apparent knowledge of MediaWiki software. I didn't mean that you implement that for me (though I would not be unhappy if you would :). I need a knowledgeable "guinea pig"reviewer for my wild ideas :-). I've deposited a variant of this idea on wikitech-l: see this message. My intent is that an article specifies which exact version of a template is to be used for that article revison. That version of the template should then be included on all inclusions of that template in said article revision. My idea on wikitech-l hinted towards using something to put into the wiki source of the article. But that could be stored somewhere else as well, possibly in the database? I don't know. Today an article lists the templates it relies on when edited (though astonishingly not when it's protected). I assume this list is generated from the wiki source of the article. My proposal would now need that this list (stripped down to only the directly included templates) is deliberately stored somewhere (presumably outside the wiki source of the article) and linked with that revision of the article. Each entry in that list of templates would then need an attribute which specifies the exact version of the template to be used. BTW, I nearly have zero knowledge about the MediaWiki architecture. I'm a professional software developer (Windows applications in C++) and still a bloody Wikipedia newbie. Adrian Buehlmann 09:26, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit war

Hi - I'm having some trouble with an anon user at the USC Trojans football article; despite my numerous attempts, they have refused to work the dispute out at the talk pages either here or here (I'm guessing it's the same user, but since the complaints are always from anon accounts, and they don't sign their Talk posts, it's just a guess). I've proposed a couple of compromises there which I think present a balanced view, but they always revise the article text after simply dismissing my views. Any chance you could take a look and weigh in (particularly on my most recent suggested version)? MisfitToys 02:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Need some help

I couldn't figure out where to put this-- it doesn't belong at the help desk, or administrator's noticeboard, and certainly not RfC. There's an anon I spotted making rather silly changes, such as adding original research/attacks [1] and making Wikipedia Day distinctly uncheerful [2]. I told him to cut it out, and in response he registered an account and gave me a "barnstar" [3]. Now he's reverting my additions as "vandalism" and generally being nasty [4]. I fear I've gotten off on the wrong foot with him, and I'm no good at mending such things. Do you think you could calm him down? Ashibaka tock 04:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Try compromise. It seems likely to me that Firth's work has been criticized, so dig up a reference and quote it. "Some X think Y" invites arguments. "Roger Ebert said in his column in the Chicago Sun-Times dated 16-Jan-2006 that blah, blah, blah" is inarguable. Keep talking with the user as well, and find some truth you can acknowledge. For some tips, please see Wikipedia:Etiquette. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

categories vs. Flickr-style tags

I've only just logged back in, so I've responded to you at the pump. I'm confused by your, to my ears, techno babble slightly, but read my new thoughts and see what you think. It does seem a good idea, yeah, cheers, and I will take it up with a developer soonish. Steve block talk 15:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

State template

I filled the table that you made in from the netstate.com website. It looks it like was the only source available. I could not find a more offical site. The infobox has width and length in kilometers, but no source is cited for them as well.--MJCdetroit 19:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Question about AFD

Thanks for the reply. I used the auto AFD (a wonderful tool). Typed delete into the first box and boom I was straight back to the page and the link was red. No second step. When I attempted to finish it manually it looked as though an extra page had formed because at articles entry remained red but the entry was present on the articles for deletion page as it should be. It simply skipped the second step. Made me think there might an extra page which we don't need. I have used auto-afd quite a few times before with no problems. No one was in and I couldn't connect to IRC which is not unusual. On a hunch I cleared my browser and it solved the problem. It could be a bug. I appreciate your answer. Thank you again.--Dakota ~ ε 20:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Lost Images

Hi. Thanks for the link to this, but it doesn't appear that anyone is paying any attention to the entries that are being made there. What's the point of this list if there are no actions upon it please? --Rebroad 20:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Replied at User talk:Rebroad. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

USC Trojans football

Sorry about the extra revert on USC Trojans football; I posted an explanation, along with some concerns, following your comment on Kingturtle's talk page. Again, my apologies; I thought the extra revert was both correct and necessary, but in retrospect I suppose it may have been necessary for someone else to do it. MisfitToys 00:33, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Huge categories

With the creation of Category:Living people I've been wondering about a template for helping navigate through huge categories. There are some other administrative categories that would also benefit. Is there any way to have a template allow for user input (like the search box)? Or, how about a double TOC? The first TOC would bring you to the first letter, but the second one would be for the SECOND letter. I can't think of how to do this. Is there a way to set a variable that remains with the template? Is there a way to extract the information necessary from the global page information (i.e., is there anything that indicates that the page is starting its display with the letter J for example?) -- Samuel Wantman 09:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

We could do a double TOC fairly easily, but it would take up pretty much space, it might look something like:

Navagate to articles starting with:

a: aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az

b: ..

where each entry is a link of the form we use in template:categoryTOC. I played with infobox a bit and can't figure out a way to include the "from=" parameter. Infobox is code, so something could be added, so you'd enter something like "category:albums by artist/from=Beatles" to get you to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Albums_by_artist&from=Beatles (note that this would be case sensitive).

By and large, I think category:living people is a very bad solution to the problem Jimbo seems to want to address - I don't know exactly where such ideas are discussed but I think it would be helpful if the process were more open so there would be an opportunity for better solutions to get bounced around. This one in particular (libelous content added to articles about living people), seems like it would be addressed by the idea I sketched at Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#forking considered harmful. Fundamentally, libelous content isn't any different than any other crap that gets added - generically fixing the "crap issue" I think would also fix the libel issue. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you about Living people. However, there does seem to be some fairly large categories out there that might also benefit from this. I got thinking about it because of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. There seems to be general consensus that bigger categories would be good for browsing. Many categories are artificially divided into small subcategories that make them less usefull for browsing (like Category:Film directors). Radiant seems to think that the developers would like us to keep categories small, but I have not heard any mention of this other than from Radiant. There was discussion about templates in which the developers said that we really don't need to concern ourselves with performance. The consensus at the Categorization page seems to be that categories should be populated up to the lowest topic article level. For example, we have an article called Film directors but we don't have one called Polish film directors, thus the categories should be populated up to and including the level of Category:Film directors. If this happens, there may be many 4 figure categories. I can imagine that administrative categories would approach 6 figures. Above about 4000 articles, a better TOC would be helpful.

The way I'm thinking about the double TOC is that it would look like this:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

a: aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az

Whenever you clicked on the top line, the bottom line would change to that letter. This is the part I don't understand how to do. -- Samuel Wantman 20:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of a way to do this in wiki-syntax. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Finally responded to the discussion about tags.

I finally responded to your request for a comment here. -- Samuel Wantman 02:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Lazy man

Can't you write a short stub on that topic? --Candide, or Optimism 22:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Main problem, possibly discussed

Is that newbie editors who try and edit a "stable" version to fix a minor error and get the open version with: A: MAJOR changes, which totally disorients them, or B: the error fixed, which also disorients them, or makes them wonder if their cache is dicking around. Frankly this whole "stable articels" buissiness seems like more trouble then its worth unless someone comes up with a really simple way to do it that wont: A, confuse the newbies, or; B, dramatically increase workload, disk/memory/proc/bandwidth, or software or process complexity. 68.39.174.238 00:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Possibly worth trying, along your reasoning, is to incorporate a "delayed reaction" of, say 5 seconds (Someone usually reverts blatant vandalisms by then) (possibly only for articels that have it enabled, cf. partial protections), between submission recieved and main page update. The page can just take that long to load (Probably a bad idea) or display a countdown when the commit is taken and then redirect to the version of the page. If someone reverts in that length of time, they get redirected to the good version and see the futility of their vandalisms. If someone tries to edit the page in the mean time (During the 5 seconds), they'll get a page saying basically "Wait 5 seconds for a software issue (Read about it here) and you will be automatically sent to the page with this name." 68.39.174.238 06:53, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

yank the new list of what links here.

I liked your suggestion on the Help desk page about Alpha Phi Omega what links here, but I don't see how to yank the new list onto a subsidiary page. The what links here list can not be edited. Naraht 13:25, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I meant from the displayed list, not the edit. When selecting a displayed bullet list (like from what links here) I get just the entries (from both Safari and IE), and then I can put this into an edit window. The entries don't show up as links, but I suspect you don't really care about this. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Radiant!'s leaving

I'm very distressed to see the number of Admins who are taking extended breaks or leaving altogether. The most recent is Radiant!. While we often disagree on deleting categories, I find him to be one of the sanest voices around here (along with yours). I don't understand the recent agitation that seems to have overtaken the big controversies of late, Userboxes, Living people, Pedophiles; but it seems that some of this might be stress from the top. I'm reminded of the long discussion we had about biting newbies after the Rich Wannen affair. There was so much concern about how to project the best image from the long timers around here. I feel this slipping into away, and I feel for Radiant! I wish people could just relax a bit and not take all of this so seriously. Anyway, I have not seen you involved in any of these discussions, and I'm wondering if you, like me, are just watching from a distance in disbelief? -- Samuel Wantman 06:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been distracted with real life and not spending much time here lately. I had not seen Radiant's message, but had seen the beginnings of the pedophile user box ruckus. I think user boxes have gotten completely out of hand (and would support an outright ban on all of them). There seems to be a fairly large contingent of editors who apparently believe Wikipedia is fundamentally about the process, rather than the goal of creating a free encyclopedia. This seems to come to a head every now and then (and now seems to be one of those times). I'll try very hard to completely ignore it. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Katie Holmes

Greetings! You have edited the Katie Holmes page in the past. I've completely reworked the article and have posted it on WP:PR in the hopes of advancing it to WP:FAC. I would be grateful for your comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Katie Holmes/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 18:41, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Back

Hey! You're back! This may be very late, but I just came back. Anyway it was sad to see you go and very good to see you back. Howabout1 04:10, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Ummm, I've been a little less active than usual, but I haven't been gone. Is there some particular reason you thought I was gone? -- Rick Block (talk) 19:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• Hits head hard with hand!* Sorry, mistook the name with RickK. :) Howabout1 18:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Saving a Wiki page.

Hello, I am new at this; so if i am not supposed to do this, then i'd like to apologise in advance.

I wanted to know if there was a way to save a Wiki page exactly as i view it, ie: the Menu bar to the left (Main Page, Community Portal, Search box etc), the funny world jigsaw thingy, etc. When i save a page using File->Save in Firefox 1.0.7 the formatting is lost and it looks pretty yucky!

I've also tried using a MAF plugin however the results are the same, except that everything is now archived.

I've also tried saving wiki pages in IE with the same results.

Surely there should be a way to save wiki pages in a nice way. I've posted to the help desk, but havn't got a reply as yet.

    Just found a fantastic Firefox extension called Scrapbook!! It saves

the web page exactly as you see it!! Wish Wiki would fix this though. :) Wooo!

Denver, Collaboration of the week

I just wanted to comment to encourage your vote on U.S. collaboration of the week page for Denver. I have seen your really good contributions to the Denver page, and want to let you know that we can make the page even better if its selcted for this collaboration. To vote on the page just go here. And good job with your contributions to the Denver and related articles. Thanks, Vertigo700 00:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, OK, but it seems like peer review might be a more productive avenue from where it is now. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your vote, and I am definitely open to all avenues to make the page better. I thought that perhaps having a collaboration would help jump start some of the changes, but certainly a peer review could help as well. Vertigo700 20:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Goings on

Good to hear from you tonight. I've pulled back some myself, a compensatory pause perhaps. I've been somewhat involved with the Mainpage rewrite - lots of action there (600-700 votes so far) and also lots of action and casualties at the Userbox dustup. Our personal situation will allow me more WP time in the coming weeks (I hope). HighHopes is gone since December and Lucky 6.9 is boarderline gone. Glad you dropped by, I was kind of surprised when you popped in at MH tonight. :-) hydnjo talk 05:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey Rick, want to chime in re listing Monty Hall at WP:FARC prior to doing a major edit? --hydnjo talk 20:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

What's going on?

That seems to be the question I never seem to know how to answer. I get the sense the things have calmed down a bit. Perhaps I'm just not looking where the turmoil is. I guess I can't tell you what is going on, only what I've been doing.

I've continue to focus some of my energies on categorization. I just recently did a small overhaul of Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. I'm trying to refocus it as a place where people just announce what they are planning or doing with categories. So it would be more of a notice board than a project.

I've also started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion about creating and maintaining a list of precedents to help focus the discussions at CfD.

There's been some more discussion about duplications of categories. There seems to be a fair amount of support for duplicating categories up to the level of "topic articles". If a category does not have an eponymous article, it is likely that the members of a category also belong in the parent category. This is especially true with the fooian foo categories, many of which were only broken into categories by nationality because there was no TOC.

The problem with change at Wikipedia is that people discuss and try to implement change, and the rest of the population sees the change and thinks that anarchy has broken out and everything is going down the tubes.

So in other words, same old same old. -- Samuel Wantman 07:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Ons going

Hey, glad you're still around. Userboxes rumble endlessly on, with a new Arbitration case involving Guanaco and MarkSweep just accepted. (User:Mackensen has resigned the committee, btw.) This seems to be using up much of the community's disputatious energy, which is probably a perversely good thing as there's not been any other major shifting of the tides in recent weeks. WP:OFFICE was already established when you were less busy, but it's come in for some criticism (mainly because of a lack of ... charm ... on the Office's part. Technically, email confirmation has been switched on after Spamhaus thought the new email server was spamming and Captchas are being used at registration time on some of the other Wikimedia projects as well as when new external links are added to articles (not on enwiki). Apparently, there is something in the works (see the tech mailing list) about having multiple talk pages per page which is probably worth keeping an eye out for. Also, Wikimedia UK was incorporated. Oh, did you see the thing about Brian Peppers? Bit of a ruckus there, when UninvitedCo deleted it on receiving a request, purportedly from Peppers's family which it turned out was likely a hoax etc. It went through the usual procedures (del, un, del, un....protect...un...) until Jimbo stepped in and declared it deleted until next Feb. The talk page and the history of DRV will fill you in blow-by-blow, but I think it's finished with, for now. Hope things are ok with you. -Splash^talk 13:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Lol am I doing this right?

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the help. That's terrible that I didn't realise that message was from a user -- I thought it was just some sort of auto-generated welcome like you get from most email providers :P I'll scoot on over there and say hi back to him :)

Another thing, I created some pages two days ago (Haleigh Stidham) and they showed up under "search" straight away, but the pages I created yesterday aren't. Any ideas on that?

Anyway, thanks again :)

CarlyPalmer 19:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your help (re: writing my first article about FVDES). I'm new to Wiki writing, but as a politics and history teacher I'm looking forward to contributing more articles in the future.

Now, if I could just remember that html and wiki markup languages are different!

Cheers, Colin (aka grapeman)

Thank you for replying re:Dianetics

Appriciate your having said something at Talk:Dianetics. The situation seemed obvious to me but I was not able to communicate it to the other editors, thanks for an exterior point of view. Terryeo 17:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Featured Articels

Problem being that the nomination process involves creating pages, which excludes all IP addrs. 68.39.174.238 00:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

There's a single page (the nomination page), right? I'd be happy to help. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

About Categorising

Hi. I am an editor form the Macedonian Language Wikipedia and I am translating the List of cities in Germany form the English Language WIkipedia at the moment. It is a hard enough job already, but my main porblem is that I cannot categorise all of them separately as it will take me ages. A user informed me that you have a bot that could automatically categorise them. Part of them are in cyrillic and part still in english or german, but I can always rename them afterwars. Could you assist me in this if you are not to busy, or if yes, but not now could you tell me when? Many thanks and all best.--Bjankuloski06en 01:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Replied at User talk:Bjankuloski06en. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Featured content

Thanks for your considerate comments, they certainly did help me understand how Conrad did all that. In case you're not watching (which I doubt) I copied the thread from my talk over to WP:FC's talk and have added to the discussion at Conrad's talk. See you wherever, hydnjo talk 04:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course I'm watching. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I could feel it! --hydnjo talk 04:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry

Sorry about that, I seem to have clicked the wrong username :-) --Bjankuloski06en 02:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

RFA Thanks

Hi Rick. Thank you for your comments and support vote on my RFA. The final result was a successful request based on 111 support and 1 oppose. --CBDunkerson 17:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Monty Hall changes

Hi Rick, I have been watching your edits at MH. The 3Apr edit reword the three possibilities was a definite improvement, greater clarity with fewer words. Flipping the image was a good idea, I have no idea how you did that! Providing the actual Mueser and Granberg quote is probably a good idea but the bulleted paraphrase was a bit easier to follow. I agree with dropping Another way of getting the solution..., for some reason I always tended to skip over it while reading through. The edit Although ignoring the past... the elimination of the card counting reference is also a good idea, I find myself stumbling a bit towards the end of that paragraph but can't think how to improve it at this time. Ah, JethroElfman's edit helps with that.

On the talk page, Talk:Monty Hall problem#Article Rewrite, I agree with the anon's concern about the losing the Bayes' theorem and his argument for keeping it. Also, there will be no end to the long line of Double Thinks and I commend Antaeus' and your patience, this page will always be a target. hydnjo talk 14:24, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

E-mail

Hey Rick, thanks for the heads-up. I've been kind of out of the loop lately, as I haven't been very active. So, I wasn't aware of the new e-mail validation. I fixed it though. Thanks, and take care. Acetic Acid 03:29, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

United States Collaboration of the Week

You voted for Denver, Colorado as US Collaboration of the Week. Please help improve it to Featured Article Status.PDXblazers 01:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Edwin ushiro

Huh, yes. I agree. I find this on IMDb which says he has worked in the "art department" of one film. Maybe you could do the deed since I already talked to the editor? -Splash^talk 23:20, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleted Article

Hello, My article was deleted for being not substantial or whatever the term on the site is.In other words the music group I was attempting to place in the garage rock catagory was deleted by a user as being less than significant which is untrue when one looks at the facts regarding this genre which is covered on the site. My question about this issue would be, what is this persons expertise in regard to this genre of music? Can they just decide, eh this looks insignificant... lets delete it without knowing anything about this music?

I only began posting on the site as a result of every tom, dick and harry self serving reference I have found on the music pages. The band I was trying to enter is internationally known and every bit as valid from a reference source standpoint as most of the bands listed in the garage rock catagory.The records are very collectible and are on many folks want lists on the web. The band I referenced is also listed on the All Music Guide which is one site recommended by Wikipedia for substantiation of musical groups.

The problem is I'm a newcomer and I redily admit that I am fairly ignorant as far as the exact format. I'm finding it confusing to navigate the site and I seem to have even lost the deletion notes on the article I created.

To be honest, I started off on this site by deleting lines from an article which I found and know to be self serving and untrue. The person who entered the information was deliberately puffing up an image and had virtually no proof for their claims.I have legal contracts to prove the contrary ! My deletions were termed vandalism and reversed, so I added an additional statement at the end of the article with quoted sources rather than attempt to delete again and get blocked for vandalism.

I am not too satisfied with that solution as the false information still remains, but I have moved on as it seems this is an argument of "he said she said".

I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the proper direction for submission and what I may be doing wrong.

Thanks

---

Japanese prefecture template

Do you know how to fix the infobox title so that the Kanji and English transliteration always break onto the second line? E.g. see Ishikawa Prefecture; like other similar infoboxes it would look better and clearer if it showed as

Ishikawa Prefecture

(石川県 Ishikawa-ken)

I can't figure out how to make this happen with my extremely limited command of HTML... any thoughts? Seann 12:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I added a <span> tag that does the trick (at least in Safari). -- Rick Block (talk) 16:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Great! It looks perfect -- in Firefox as well as Safari. Many thanks! Seann 18:20, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops. I just checked out Aichi Prefecture and Akita Prefecture -- it seems the line break isn't there at all now... hmmm... further thoughts?Seann 18:23, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I see what you mean. I had originally thought it should always break to the following line, for consistency's sake, but upon further reflection I think your solution is a good one. Thanks! Seann 21:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Unsure of proper format for undeletion submission

Thank you for your patience with me on my deleted page issue. I am unsure as to whether I properly submitted this on the correct page for deletion review.

I understand that I am to notice the user who deleted it? Do I do that on that users talk page?

I didn't receive a follow up from the admin who deleted after I posted even more specific info regarding why the contents meet the standard for notability under several of the current requirements for notability.

Am I correct in also assuming that I am now prevented from ever rewriting this article with additional verifiable sources quoted?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Hamilton Styden 21:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Re: your comment at User talk:Beland

I overheard your comment on Beland's talk page regarding bots and the cfd backlog. I had been working on it myself until this happened. I hope to continue when the matter is put to rest. — Apr. 18, '06 [07:42] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

1313 Mockingbird Lane

Rick, as I said to the author of 1313 Mockingbird Lane, you've been nothing but helpful, courteous, and accurate in your assessment of Wiki policies, IMO. Thank you for your assistance. Truly, JDoorjam Talk 13:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject Japan

I've noticed that you've done a lot of Japan-related edits, so I thought you might be interested in joining WikiProject Japan and combining your efforts with those of us there. (^_^) --日本穣 Nihonjoe 21:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've been active on the Japanese municipality articles for quite a long time, so sure. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Great! Welcome to the project. I've been working on sorting stubs in Japan-related categories (specifically those related to specific prefectures), and I recently created four new geo stubs: {{Kanagawa-geo-stub}}, {{Miyagi-geo-stub}}, {{Nara-geo-stub}}, {{Wakayama-geo-stub}}. You can see more about the stubs we are aware of here. Any help is appreciated. (^_^) --日本穣 Nihonjoe 23:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Deletion Review

Hello Rick,

I haven't noticed any movement on my entry on the deletion review page and am not sure how it works from here. There appear to be two votes to keep deleted. The one vote from Zoe does contain misinformation(the All Music Guide lists the band but the listing is deficient and only contains a few of the many releases) and I followed up with a link showing a complete discography w/photos and catalog numbers etc. including the two required full length releases on well known idie labels.

I haven't heard back from Jdoorjam on any of my last responses and am unsure what he meant by this statement about this band: "If the 1313 Mockingbird Lane drummer played with Link Wray, as the WP:MUSIC criteria suggest, there should be a redirect from the drummer's name to the Link Wray article." How could I do this if the band article doesn't exist? I was hoping to work on this article but can't find instructions on how to keep a "working version" on my page. I made a request for help further down on the deletion review page but didn't receive any response.

Jdoorjam did delete the other band "Mockingbird Lane"(no connection) that I mentioned in my response on the deletion review page.

Is this the end of the line for this article for me or do I have any other options of appeal?

I would be most grateful for any insight on this. Your past guidance has been greatly appreciated !

Best Regards,

Hamilton Styden 06:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Wapasha and other requests

Seems like a made a mistake removing the request for the Wapasha article. Alot that I have removed have any relevant material covered in other articles, or were overly specific or POV titles. It's good to see that someone's keeping an eye on my deletions, some may be slightly over enthusiastic. Feel free to re-add any requests, I won't remove them again. -- Tompsci 12:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Monty Hall

Howdy! Thanks for the message. I think that the way it is worded now is the best. Without the prefatory language that I added, some people (who happen to be both intelligent and mathematically-trained) found the three possibilities confusing. The language "Switching wins the car." does not make it explicit enough, and the three possibilities that are listed do not explicitly handle the player not switching his choice. Therefore, the three possibilities listed do assume that the player will switch.

I originally even bothered to read this article when a friend brought it up yesterday afternoon and another friend was confused by it. The confused friend said that the changes I made cleared things up perfectly for him. Therefore, I think that it was a valuable change.

Valuable or not, I am all for reducing unnecessary redundancy within a single paragraph (because of the nature of the problem itself, the redundant explanations are "necessary" to a sufficient degree to keep them in). However, I do not feel that it is unnecessarily redundant to have both the prefatory language that I added and the language at the end of each bullet point.

It may be possible to word it better, but I think that it is best to keep it around. On a side note, thank you for polishing up the other paragraph that I added. I did it in a hurry and it is easier to read now. Ari 14:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Rick,

I must say this has all been an exercise in patience,but a postive one at that. I again thank you for your time and concern for pointing me in the right direction. I really like the idea of this project and what a valuable source of information it can be. I am still somewhat unsure as to all of the hoops an article should pass before being deemed a good article. I am reading as I go and hopefully, one of these days, I will get it. One thing that I did notice in my travels that I found puzzling was the page on the group "Flamin Groovies". There was a pink flag saying it needed a little clean up. It seemed not too bad, although I didn't comb it with a fine tooth comb. I would be interested to know just what about it wasn't so good.

Best Regards

Hamilton Styden 21:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Like pretty much everything else around here, tagging articles as needing cleanup is done on some individual's iniitiative. The Flamin Groovies was tagged by user:Fsiler. Looking at this user's contributions, s/he doesn't seem to be too active at the moment but might respond to a message on his/her talk page. The general guidelines about adding cleanup tags are at Wikipedia:Cleanup process, but without asking the specific user why an article was tagged it's sometimes not terribly obvious. Everything everyone does is recorded and available through the article's history, so if you're ever wondering about some change the direct approach is to ask whoever made the change. As I say, I'm glad you're not leaving in a huff (having your first article deleted tends to have that effect ;) ). -- Rick Block (talk) 22:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

THANK YOU!!!

Hi Rick,

I just want to offer a huge thank you for fixing my template issue (User talk:PageantUpdater#template request from WP:HD). Its working perfectly - much appreciated :) PageantUpdater 14:01, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Ooops, one last thing... how do you get it so that it centers automatically like a succession box? Thanks :) PageantUpdater 14:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I added a "style" parameter to the table that does this. Is there some particular reason you want to override the default background color for the first line? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Active/inactive admins

Hi, I left Wikipedia on 18 March and marked myself as inactive on WP:LA [5]. Apparently, you'd changed me back to active a few days later [6] for some reason...? - ulayiti (talk) 16:37, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I update WP:LA with a script that determines active/semi-active/inactive based on recent contribution history (30th most recent contribution more recent than 2 months ago counts as active, any contribution in the past two months counts as semi-active). Most admins don't bother to update their own activity status (although this does seem like a good thing to do). Sorry I overwrote your update - I'll try to be more careful about this. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Highest point in State Infoboxes

Looks Good! Better than the way I was doing it. Thanks —MJCdetroit 23:30, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

1313 Mockingbird Lane

Hi Rick, I think I'm getting closer to finishing this article(although I could be wrong !) and would appreciate it if you could take a peak whenever you have an extra minute or so. Thanks, Hamilton Styden 03:44, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Again,

Yes, I agree although I think this clearly also qualifies under Music Notability bullet 4(two full length releases on well known or notable indies) and Bullet 6(at least one member is documented as being part of a notable group). I'm sure I can track down more documentation, but I feel there is enough here for now(but I may be wrong !). Thanks ! Hamilton Styden 19:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

go vs. search

Hey Rick, thanks for the update at HD about how CK fixed the CAPs sensitivity, that's one I'll definitely remember for redirecting multi-worded article titles. About indexing, It seems that it's probably time for WP to consider a "crawler" for updating rather than the current scheme of a "bulk" indexing event "now and then". If you noticed my comments somewhere then, good. I've commented here and there at every opportunity (the one at the VP received zero attention) and I had no clue about Brion being the "decider". So, as there seems to be some unease about how infrequently WP gets indexed by WP, I'm glad that you've brought the subject up with Brion. And, thanks for keeping me informed. hydnjo talk 19:46, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Infiniti G20 infobox help

Thank you for the help.

User talk:Jimbo Wales

Do you know who Jimbo Wales is?—G.He 00:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Which is what prompts my question. I know he's not a newbie. I know he knows plenty of ways to test table features. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, whatever the reason, I'm sure the co-founder of Wikipedia won't intentionally do something disruptive to an organization he founded.—G.He 00:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

It was probably convenient for him at that time to use that template.—G.He 00:22, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Or necessary according to the discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales.—G.He 00:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not accusing him of doing anything bad, it just seemed highly curious. Rather than wonder, I thought I'd ask. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's always good to be curious. :) By the way, do you think there's a better way for a Sandbox Reset now that the old cgi script is malfunctioning? I've created an alternative a while back, but I'm also wondering if there's a better way. (See WP:SB)—G.He 00:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd think any of the periodic bots could do it, perhaps User:LDBot. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

My Revised Article

Hi Rick,

I left a polite message with Jdoorjam about possibly taking a look at my revised article. I have received no response, but then again this is not the first time I received no response on follow ups regarding this situation.

Is there anything more I can do about this article at this point? There was another person (brenneman(?) on my user page who offered to take a look and I sent him a message but also got no response.

I have looked around and have found many articles that I think I can spruce up, but don't want to proceed until I can get a true feel about whether or not I can submit an article without getting blown off the Wiki map.

Any help would be great...Thanks in advance

Hamilton Styden 04:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I've reminded them you're looking for feedback, and got another opinion (see user talk:Leithp#resurrecting an indie band article). It's really not supposed to be this hard. Let's give them another day or two before deciding what to do next. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:04, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Hamilton Styden, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, etc.

Thanks for the reminder; the past couple weeks have been hectic and it slipped my mind. I've left a message on his talk page saying his current version looks good to go to the article space. JDoorjam Talk 15:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: CSS question

Hi - I'm no CSS expert, but I've recently updated template:Infobox U.S. state so that the "grouped" rows are actual rows but without row borders (but with vertical cell separators). Doing this in a specific template seems a little ugly (and, sigh, border-top doesn't seem to work with IE in a TR). Do you think toprow and mergedrow styles might be generally useful additions to common.css (like borderless)? If you could easily do this (or can think of other alternatives), I'd appreciate it. I also asked user:Ed g2s who apparently added the boderless infobox style (no response yet). Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:15, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

They might be useful additions if they are used in several templates (instead of just a couple of them). For them to be added, they should to be discussed first at both MediaWiki talk:Common.css and the Village Pump. --cesarb 20:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Any idea why no one has commented at MediaWiki talk:Common.css about this? Isn't "virtual rows" (with embedded <br>s) a really bad idea? I'm not overly concerned about this, just slightly curious. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

That's normal. You should expect either opposition or utter silence (with perhaps one or two passer-bys saying "Good idea. --~~~~"). If, after some time, nobody answers, feel free to go ahead (if you think three days is enough, just ask and I can copy the code to the CSS). --cesarb 04:51, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I've now commented there, breaking the "utter silence". Thanks, Rick, for your useful comments on my proposal — and thanks also to cesarb for that guidance. Cheers, CWC(talk) 15:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Template for links

Oh....well, I created Template:linkless to solve the problem, and I've already added it to the cleanup template page. It looks like this:

Of course, it needs to be reworded, but it's better than nothing.--The ikiroid (talk)^{(Help Me Improve)} 14:24, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, thank you very much for the "Special:" link. That'll give me something to do!--The ikiroid (talk)^{(Help Me Improve)} 14:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Smile :)

—G.He 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!

—G.He 23:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

FA list

I wrote and got History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America) to FA status but I don't show up on your list. Then I added myself and saw I should notify you. Rlevse 16:12, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Category talk:Storms

Hi there. You closed the CfD debate here, and I've started a discussion about this at Category_talk:Storms. Any comments would be welcomed. Carcharoth 11:57, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Miyazaki prefectures

Would you want to help me fix articles about Miyazaki prefectures? It is on Category:Miyazaki geography stubs. Thanks! Englishfun (talk)

I'm not sure what help you're looking for. I've been trying to update the Japanese city/town/village articles because of Gappei, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Gappei. I'm currently up to Kochi Prefecture and will eventually get to Miyzaki (probably in a month or two). Is this what you're thinking about, or something different? I'm happy to help in nearly any way I can, but I'm not Japanese, don't speak or read Japanese, and basically don't know anything about Japan (other than what I've picked up on doing this gappei project). Please let me know what help you're looking for. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I will stop the links.

I thought they were appropriate given the subject matter.Solveforce 02:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your speedy response to my query at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Links_to_pages_containing_no_original_content. It is much appreciated, although not by the owner of the site who keeps adding his spurious link. - Stevecov 11:42, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Admin indeed!

Hey Rick. Let me start by acknowledging that your suggestion about our having admin status is flattering at the least but more importantly an overwhelming vote of confidence in us. The duality of Heidi's and my presence under one combined username is something that we do for almost all signature opportunities and I'm glad that you mentioned it. More to the point about your observation about our activity level, it's true that my enthusiasm with this project waned lately. I've not given up interest but rather find myself in a more observational mode perhaps to assess the goings on here from a more neutral (not involved) position. It does bother me some that so many good proposals are met with opposition, sometimes it seems only for the sake of opposing and that is frustrating. But, the reward of getting something done in spite of the sometimes frivolous opposition is tremendously gratifying. Your helping hand with some of our ventures is more in keeping with what I'd like to see more of. Folks like yourself have extended yourselves and have had a major influence in our own confidence in our contributions. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be controversy, only that I've lost some of my patience with some of it, and I'm certainly not bored.

At this time I don't have the "fire in the belly" to be an admin. I'm flattered that you in particular see us as candidate for that and for that I'll sleep with a bigger smile on my face tonight. You have no idea how much Heidi and I appreciate your confidence in us. Please stay in touch, -- Heidi and Joe.

Infobox City

Rick. Sounds like your suggestion for the infobox changes is a good idea. Do you mind if I make a couple of edits to your demo template? If you take a look at User:Harpchad/ofallon I have several test infoboxes that I've been using during the rewrite. I think some of the errors that are showing up are related to some things I fixed in Infobox City earlier today (probably after you took your working copy). harpchad 02:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I added the changes from earlier today, it fixed the same issues (looks like those were my bugs :) ). One thing I notice is the way the population note is displaying, the shading isn't consistant. I'll play with that a little too. Let me know if anything I changed causes any accessibility problems. harpchad 02:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I think I got the population shading (after a few attempts). Yeah, the br between in the city area can go so that it'll match the rest of the rows. I just spotted another change from earlier today too, the Urban and Metro tags don't match between the area and population sections (I dropped the area part from the original template to make them match, i.e. just 'Urban' and 'Metro' rather than 'Urban area' and 'Metro area'. harpchad 03:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any more issues, how's it look to you now? Hope my changes didn't break anything you we're trying to do. harpchad 03:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I slightly prefer the boderless style, but the accessibility seems more important. I think what you have now is good enough to replace the existing infobox, if we figure out how to do borderless later we can always replace it then. harpchad 03:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on it. I'll be on later tonight so I can try to get to the quick fixes then. harpchad 23:41, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

User:Who

He responded to my email. Based on the content, I wasn't sure what, if anything he wanted me to reveal. I asked him if he wanted me to post something on his userpage, but he went ahead and did it himself. From what I gathered, he probably won't be back. Situations may change, of course, but if I were a betting man... --Kbdank71 13:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello

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 16:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Nothing in particular prompted my friendly smile - but, there is a point. Apart from building the Project, we are also part of the most active virtual community oof the digital world. So, I just wanted to say you hello in this way. Helloooo friend. --Bhadani 09:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Semi-active discussion

I posted a few things at the discussion on semi-active status' you may want to look at. Cheers! The King of Kings 04:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

My list

Nah, 'salright. :) --Golbez 18:39, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you tweak my infobox?

I have been working on trying to include more optional government officals into the Infobox city. I have been messing with adding city counsel members and MP's (for a future Canadian option). But I have been having some problems. My experimental infobox city is at User:MJCdetroit/Template Sandbox2 and it displays Windsor, Ontario at User:MJCdetroit/Sandbox3. Problems as best as I can convey: I would like the City Counsel title to span all colums, not just the first cell. I would like the first name if counsel president to be center across the columns under that. All other names to be in two columns (two per row) under that. I think that the MP section needs to have virtual row eliminated, but I am not sure how. Can you take a look at this and let me know if there is anything that can be done?—MJCdetroit 02:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, there's no rush. MJCdetroit 03:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Needs a second look

Just prior to your infobox ubdate for Afghanistan, the page had been vandalized.(an Anon keeps replacing valid info with Taliban data) I was not familiar enough with the new parameters of the updated infobox to do a proper fix. All I could do was restore the last correct box - 1 edit previous to the Anons. Perhaps if you have a minute you could backtrack to that article and update the box with the new parameters....hopefully the correct information will still be intact. Cheers and take care! Anger22 23:25, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem, glad I could help. Take care! Anger22 23:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

The Afghanistan article has been under persistant attack by an anon IP(range 87.123.##.##) who keeps putting Taliban data into the country's infobox. No warnings have been issued and no reports to AiV as the user has a dynamic IP and is different each time. I have never come across this sort of attack before. What is the Wiki-procedure to handle this type of vandalism? Thanks, cheers and take care! Anger22 21:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. Hopefully they'll tire of their agenda and move on. Take care! Anger22 21:34, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

For fixing Súmate ... much appreciated! Sandy 02:00, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Me troubling you again about Súmate, to see if you can lend your expertise. I tried, and don't know why I can't make the three boxes go across the page in chronological order (98, 99, 00)? Putting them in vertical order in the article doesn't do the trick, so there must be a secret ring I don't have. Are you able to help? TIA, Sandy

Thanks, Rick. Since it didn't work for me, and I couldn't make the centering work right, the only thing I can figure is that I must be moving the wrong sections of code/text, not knowing what is the beginning/end of the template? I really don't know, though ... it's Greek to me. Thanks, again! Sandy 16:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

2nd Round

A pedantic but, right now, relevant point.

Map of countries' best results

What is meant by "2nd Round" or "Round 2" of the FIFA World Cup. Is it:

1. The last 16 / Round of 16 (between 1st Round and Quarter-final)?
2. Collectively all matches after the 1st Round ?

If 1, "2nd Round" can be mentioned accordingly on page FIFA World Cup.
If 2, someone needs to edit this pic →

Cheers. Abut 15:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The FIFA rules for this year's World Cup (page 42, articles 33-37) describe all the single elimination matches as the "2nd round" (i.e. #2). In the pic's legend, the box that says "Round 2" could (pedantically) say "Round of 16", but one could interpret all the categories above "Round 1" as subsets of the previous (i.e. "Round 2" in the legend means this country has made it into Round 2 but has never advanced further than the Round of 16). -- Rick Block (talk) 15:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Zen Buddhism external link

Dear Rick,

I asked information about my proposed external link a few days ago, and on the discussion section I was addressed to you. This was the question I sent:

---

---- ---- ----

Dear Friends,

I'm confused. I wanted to contribute by adding - as external link to "Zen" and "Buddhism" - the link to www. bodhidharma.it or in the English version: http: //users.libero.it/seza/indexgb.html - The Flower of Bodhidharma

I noticed that the link was systematically removed. Now, it even seems to be blacklisted. Please note The Flower of Bodhidharma is a web site of an Italian Monastery (Musang Am) associated with UBI (Italian Buddhist Union) and linked with many important Temples around the world.

On the web site are available not only examples of what zen teachings are, but also original teachings of our Master Tae Hye sunim, a Zen Monk ordained in Korea and now resident in Italy, probably one of the most credited Teacher in Europe. I wonder if I made any mistake in proposing the link the way I did, maybe there was a misunderstanding due to my inexperience? In this case I am awfully sorry. Thank you for your help.

Sergio Zaccone (Upasaka Tae Bi)

_/|\_

---- --- ---- --- ---

And this was the suggestion:

What should and shouldn't be added to the external links sections of articles is discussed at Wikipedia:External links. After reading this, if you still feel this link should be added to these articles please discuss it on the articles' talk pages. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

---- --- --- --- ----

So I tried to read (I’m not English mother tongue) the instructions about what should and what should not be linked.

Well, if I take the first point:

• Articles about any organization, person, or other entity should link to their official site, if they have one.

From this point of view there is no reason why www.bodhidharma.it should not be included in the external links of “Zen” or “Buddhism”.

In fact it is the official site of the Comunità Bodhidharma – Bodhidharma Community which is an organisation recognized by Italian Law and regularly included in the UBI (Buddhist Italian Union). We also have contacts with many European Zen Organizations, for example in Hannover (Germany) and Helsinki (Finland).

On the other hand, please note I did not find any reason why it should not be included in the external links. We have nothing to sell, there are no banners to click, even the activities like retreats are completely free (and believe me, I think this is really rare!).

The only goal is to communicate our existence to explain better the Zen teaching.

Of course the last decision is yours, and we shall accept and respect it.

Thank you for your time and your answer,

Upasaka Tae Bi

Copied to, and reply at, Talk:Zen. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:54, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

External link to Zen and Buddhism

Dear Rick,

you say:

The quoted point (links to official site should be added) means this link should be added to Bodhidharma Community, not Zen or Buddhism.

Funny what you say, Rick, the Bodhidharma Community is indeed nothing but a Buddhist Zen Monastery!

Please just look: http://www.tricycle.com/business-directory/173.html

No problem, anyway, I think your links are already almost exhaustive about the subject.

All the best

Tae Bi

Padding for an infobox

Hi - I'm trying to come up with a somewhat simpler version of template:Infobox Country, see User:Rick Block/Template:Infobox Country. I'm having trouble getting the padding to look similar. It appears that the padding specified in the infobox style in common.css can't be overridden globally for the infobox. Does this make sense to you? If you could take a look at this I'd appreciate it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:07, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure of what you are trying to do, but:

• The padding is for .infobox on Common.css, but not for .infobox th or .infobox td
• Using the DOM Inspector, I can see that the computed padding for the table element is 0px, even if both Common.css and your inline style says otherwise
• Looking at [7], we have "Also, in this model, a table doesn't have padding (but does have margins)", which explains why it's 0px
• The computed value being 0px means you can't simply use inherit (it'd be 0px too)
• There's no way to, with inline style, change the padding for all cells (since inherit doesn't work); you really need a descendent selector

The best way would probably be to add another class (so you'd use class="infobox infobox-country" and have something like .infobox-country th, .infobox-country td { padding: 0.4em 1em 0.4em 0 } on Common.css)

--cesarb 22:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

What I'm trying to do is emulate the look of the existing Country infobox, but in a way that might be (easily) reusable in other infoboxes (like template:Infobox City and the numerous country subdivision templates like Template:Infobox U.S. state). It seems relatively insane to me that a city's infobox, the infobox for its national subdivision, and the infobox for its country each have dramatically different looks. The "new" look of the country infobox is (I think) the newest one, but it uses a ton of stuff that makes it difficult to reuse. Rather than .infobox-country th (and td), perhaps we could do a .infobox-geography th/td. My preference would really be for all infoboxes to use the vanilla infobox style, which seems to be the point of styles in the first place. Having these heavily customized infoboxes seems like a problem to me. -- 01:05, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Which is why I suggested class="infobox infobox-country" instead of class="infobox-country": it's still the vanilla infobox style, plus a bit of extra style; the difference is that the extra style is not contained in the (very repetitive) inline style, but in the main site CSS. --cesarb 01:16, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Argh! border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 1em 0.4em; is very close to the existing look, but (sigh) IE doesn't support border-spacing. I guess your first suggestion of border-collapse: collapse; and padding set in a TH/TD style is the way to go. This doesn't achieve the 1em border, so the border lines for rows that have them will go edge to edge. I'm not sure how attached the Infobox Country folks are to the current look. BTW - does this strike you as a ridiculous waste of time (trying to rationalize the various geographical infoboxes)? Just curious. Thanks for the help - I'm still maintaining that I'm not a CSS expert. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:42, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

From my point of view as a computer programmer, I see what you are doing as eliminating redundancy, making sure everything is defined at a single point. This makes it much easier to change things later (you have to change it once, in only one place, instead of chasing all the places where it's done), avoids bugs, and is in fact the same philosophy which led me to create MediaWiki:Common.css. --cesarb 04:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Speedy delete this please

Hey Rick,
Can you speedy delete this Template:MJCdetroit Test Template for me? There's no point in TfD since I am the one who created it. Thanks, —MJCdetroit 01:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

unwatch

would you please unwatch my talk page? --Ostrich11 18:18, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm still curious if there's something I might have done that bothered you in any way. Please let me know. BTW - your talk page is public, and you don't have any particular way to know whether I'm watching it or not. If you mean you're not going to respond to my question there, that's fine. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

A MH primer

Hey Rick, take a look at the Many Doors problem stub. Perhaps after it's fleshed out some we can make it required reading for the doubters.  ;-) --hydnjo talk 20:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Funny. But you're not serious about this, are you? Perhaps we could include something on the talk page in addition to the big banner. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about serious, haven't thought it through that far. We've used the many doors/cards analogy on several occasions and it seems to me to be the best way to help someone have their Aha! moment. After I saw you going through the same thing again today at MH talk this (MD) just popped into my head. What might you have in mind for the talk that would force (encourage) someone through the "many" analogy/exaggeration? Also, it would be nice to codify it in some way that is well thought out and would be of the greatest benefit for those who are not inclined to follow the math or the many other reasoning schemes in the article. Perhaps something like a sub-page to MH that could be easily pointed to as a first pass attempt for someone who doesn't grasp the explanations in the article. And yes, I think that the exaggeration could be muted somewhat so as to not belittle the reader. --hydnjo talk 22:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's possible, but I think the article itself is the right spot for this. A companion article to help explain what's in the article just seems wrong to me (and your new Many Doors problem article likely falls under the WP:NOR clause of Wikipedia:Deletion policy). I don't think there's any way we can force anyone to read anything, but we could include something at the top of the talk page with a big bold "If you think it's 50/50 after reading the article, please read this first before suggesting it's wrong" (the banner may help, but it doesn't offer any additional explanation). If you'd rather not have it in the talk page, we could create a subpage of a user page with anything we'd like. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:00, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

My original intent was to start a User:Hydnjo/MD page just for chuckles but after composing it I said what the hell and put in the Mainspace for now just to draw Rick's attention (just kidding). If you burrow though MH talk and its archives you'll find this device used over and over again. My thought is to have this concept codified in some way, I don't know where exactly but I was thinking Monty Hall problem/Many Doors (or Cards) device or whatever so that we could all polish it and then point to it instead coming up with it contemporaneously each time. --hydnjo talk 23:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

How about a subpage of the talk page, with a pointer from the banner? -- Rick Block (talk) 23:51, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The more I think about it the more I think that the reason (at least in part) for today's conversion was that the message was "personalized" for the user. I'm not sure that pointing a user to a boilerplate explanation would have the same impact (how's that for a 180º). Anyway, I've moved the MD article to my userspace and lets sleep on it. What do you think? --hydnjo talk 00:14, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure a personal exchange has much more impact. On the other hand, I think the 52 card version is pretty powerful as well. If I'd seen this anywhere other than here, I think it might be appropriate it to feature it more in the article (it's a little too close to WP:NOR). Anyway, I do agree that it's a good idea to put it somewhere. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops, your convert has slipped away (damn!). One's "common sense" is a difficult hurdle and methinks he thinks that you snookered him and he's not about to let you get away with that. Feel free to introduce MD (as an experiment) if you wish. --hydnjo talk 03:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC) addendum: We seem to have made nearly simultaneous posts, you there and me here! --hydnjo talk 03:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Again he misses the essence of your example: "...and then while I'm looking at the 51 I've kept I turn over 50 that are not the ace of spades...". I think that to make the linkage between starting with 3 doors/cards or 10 doors/cards or 52 doors/cards we need to state emphatically that Monty reveals all of his losing doors/cards before the offer to switch is made. --hydnjo talk 04:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

...and now he's off to the Three Prisoners Problem: here and the contribs, Geesh! How do we know that he isn't one of us in drag?--hydnjo talk 00:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

TfD question

Greetings Rick,
Before I list all the Template:infobox country_data_s for TfD, can you look at User:MJCdetroit/Sandbox to make sure that I am listing all those templates correctly. Is there any problem with listing them as such? Please comment on my talk page: User talk:MJCdetroit. Thanks, MJCdetroit 17:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Daily bot tasks

Hi - There seem to be an increasing number of daily maintenance related activities that various bots perform (archiving Village Pump discussions, new day headers for CFD, TFD, VFD, etc.). I suspect Pearle (or, shudder, PyWikipediaBot) could be given a tasklist to do these things. Rather than have each of these tasks done purely on the good will of some bot owner, do you think it might be a reasonable idea to ask Brion (or Jamesday, or any other developer) to schedule an "at" job to run <pick one> bot with a tasklist specified in a protected file? The idea is to provide a mechanism for the daily maintenance tasks to run, effectively unattended, and without the need for the tasks to be picked up by some bot owner. I'm willing to run this by Brion as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

If these things can be automated, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether it's implemented as an external bot or as an "official" one running on a local server. The only thing is that 1.) presumably someone needs to write code to do these things and 2.) someone needs to be around to maintain them and perhaps check up on them occasionally. I personally don't have the time to do so, but if I did, it's more convenient to have the job running on a machine I have shell access to. Right now, that's my laptop, but for greater reliability I could use my desktop machine or the toolserver. The toolserver might actually be the platform of choice for this sort of thing, since any serious participant can get an account there, without having to get access to all the other backend stuff. I don't know how busy the developers are right now, but there does seem to be a labor bottleneck and a backlog of issues in Bugzilla. -- Beland 21:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

do we need to talk

no why?--Ostrich11 00:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

huh? I didnt create any articles like that. How do you mean i created them? --Ostrich11 02:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

oh it must have been a mistake. there is no issue. --Ostrich11 02:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Howdy

Hi Rick, I hear that you are looking for "an honest, omniscient oracle." Looks like we have found each other? I simply knew that we would find each other sooner or later. Now... if I asked "How can I help?" would that discredit my powers of foreknowledge... - Abscissa 02:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

You're an honest, omniscient, oracle? Then we really need to talk about next week's lotto. But I suppose you'll say you knew I'd say that! -- Rick Block (talk) 02:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The numbers are going to be 20, 40, 46, 48, 54 and bonus number 27. However, using my abilities I am able to tell that you do not believe in my powers and you will not buy a ticket, so I'm not really sure why I'm even telling you this. - Abscissa 02:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Well it seems that if you had followed my psychic guidance you would now be a multi-multi millionaire. Maybe next time! :-) (See official results) - Abscissa 22:06, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

RE: Denver's gay/lesbian population

I really have no citation, other than that I live in Denver during semester and used to have a gay roommate who would brag about how Denver had the third largest gay population in the country for a major city(next to san fran and minneapolis), other than this there really is not citation, but I know the statement about their location where they are most concentrated is fairly accurate. As you probably know, there isn't really a way to determine sexual orientation statistics other than by reputation, so if you feel its necessary you can delete my comment for the diversity section. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.239.147.92 (talk • contribs).

I just stumbled across this... it seems to be about the largest gay populations in North America -- in which case the cities are handily San Fran, New York, and Toronto. Also, Toronto and NY have the largest Jewish populations anywhere outside Israel. Not sure that the two are related though. I am pretty sure Toronto's pride festival is the biggest in the world, if not the second biggest. FYI! -Abscissa 11:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I ran into http://www.gaydemographics.org/, which looks like a promising source. The point is that claims of this or that city having large gay populations (or large anything else) need to be sourced. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

After this edit this morning, I sumbled on this which i thought was funny considering. The old "my friend is gay" or "my friend is black" routine... and everybody's favourite, "I have a lot of jewish friends.." ... it always tends to precede a comment that is homophobic, racist, or leveled against diamond merchants... :-) - Abscissa 17:00, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

Made a partial revert of your change, as the prohibition against violating copyright applies to all namespaces. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Median household income

Yes, I am intending to add the value, the median household incme for all 50 states and their rank. Best Regards, Signature^brendel 17:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

thanks for previous suggestion

Hi, I didn't reply to your previous post (1 May) on my website because I was hideously busy. Your message didn't really call for a reply, but I found your suggestion helpful, so I thought it'd be nice to drop a thankyou line. I looked up the article on pitch correction, and it was exactly what I'd been wondering for many years. cheers The Mad Echidna 09:41, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Css/HTML question

Hi - I'm not sure if there's a way to do this, but I thought if anyone might know you would. Various infoboxes have entries that really should wrap if the width computed by the rest of the entries warrants it. I've looked for some way to effectively say "don't use this entry's width in the width computation" but haven't found anything (seems like "width=0" should work, but it doesn't seem to). Anyway - if you know or can think of anything, please let me know. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

After some experimentation, I found out something which works for me on Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4. It might or might not work on other browsers; according to CSS 2.1 17.5.2.2, the algorithm completely depends on the browser (and, to top it off, the trick I've found does not work with the suggested algorithm in the specification; and of course, since IE tends to do its own thing different from everyone else, there's no way I can guess what will happen on it).

The trick consists in using width: 1px on the offending cell; I have no idea at all why it doesn't work with either width: 0px or width: 0, and I can vaguely guess that width: 1px works because it affects the "maximum cell width" used in the calculations (while the CSS 2.1 algorithm isn't the real one, it's supposed to be similar to the ones used by real browsers).

Here's the sample I used for testing (I only tested the tables, the floats/"caption" around them were added here):

First

a	b
short	long
short	very long

Second

a	b
short	long
short	very long

Here's a better formated example:

First

a	b
short	long
short	very long
short	really long

Second

a	b
short	long
short	very long
short	really long

--cesarb 02:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Hm, after some more testing, I can see this causes some really strange behaviour:

a	b
short	long
short	very long
short	really long

It should use the maximum width of the third row, but doesn't; somehow, adding the magic width: 1px on a single cell makes the whole column use its minimum width, not only that single cell. --cesarb 03:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Moved the Village Pump edit to the bottom

Yeah, no problem. By the way, if you'd look a little closer at the Village pump (technical) article, the whole thing is sort of out-of-order. That's why I got confused. The article at the top is dated July 6th. The lowest one (above mine) is July 5th. So, I thought it was in reverse-order. If you want, you could reformat the whole thing. I'd do it, but I'm a new editor. --Robocracy 17:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Funny Joke!!

Two penguins are standing on an ice floe. The first penguin says, you look like you're wearing a tuxedo. The second penguin says, what makes you think I'm not??

I thought you would love that :-) - Abscissa 04:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Tee hee, thanks for the jokes, I especially like head/shoulders one. Sadly I must confess that this joke is about five years old and while everyone seems to laugh at it, it has no value as a humourous joke. See User_talk:Hydnjo#Joke_for_the_Day for more info. Sincierest apologies :-) - Abscissa 13:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Browsers not reloading common.css

Hi - I've heard some folks have had to do a forced reload to get their browsers to know about some styles I recently (like a week ago) added to common.css. Any ideas what might be causing this? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:48, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The proxy servers are requested to only check with the origin servers after 31 days ($wgSquidMaxage). This means you can only be sure your changes have been propagated to all the squid servers after 31 days have passed. This is visible as the smaxage=2678400 on the import of Common.css, which corresponds to a HTTP Cache-control: s-maxage=2678400 header. --cesarb 19:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Any idea why this is set so long (I assume $wgSquidMaxage is something we control somehow)? 31 days means any change in common.css won't necessarily be visible to clients for this long (right?). This seems like an awfully long time. Is this a Brion/Jamesday or somebody like that thing? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a developer-only setting (its value is defined on the site configuration files). Given that the only thing it controls is the amount of caching, I'd guess it was set that way for performance reasons (after all, the site CSS doesn't change that often, does it? ☺). --cesarb 00:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Earl Hines

Sure Rick. I made an hour-long film with Earl Hines in Blues Alley in Washington in 1975 over about a week. I must have done about 3 hours of "interview" with Earl but his playing was so just great that in the final film, we didn't - just didn't have time for - use much of the interview stuff. I've still got the transcripts of it and the film itself [with all the other unused numbers we recorded] is in the BFI [British Film Institute] library. They don't keep many things but wanted this.

Hines then used to come and stay with me when he was in London and he was a great talker.

Making it with him does remain one of the great experiences of my life. I feel I've met three people who I'd call "geniuses" in my life and Earl Hines was sure one of them. c.n.

Sequences of Composites

I'm having some trouble confirming my e-mail address, so I'll reply here for now.

1. Bertrand's Postulate. That's the one, thanks. And I only wrote out max(ZSpan(n), Π(p(n))-ZSpan(n)) for thoroughness (it is, in fact, the precise conclusion), and because the later stages get the other upper bound potentially much closer to ZSpan(n).
2. Ditto. I wrote it in the order I did because it seems a logical progression - from the most insanely obvious and easily proven (next to the one you gave) to the least certain but lowest.
3. I called them "prime candidates", BTW, for what seemed a sensible reason - any prime higher than p(n) must be somewhere among these potential primes. I don't quite follow your correction, though. If it matters, I could try explaining my analysis in more detail.
4. Indeed. Not a major adjustment, but it does pull it down some. That's why I said I wasn't sure it counted as "non-trivial".
5. Well, not quite. I followed this line of reasoning because it reflects the actual structure of the thing, which seems important to a proof that describes more than broad generalities. It's just tricky to make anything a certainty. However, to correct your second sentence, I can guarantee that there will be quite a few (I could almost certainly give a formula for how many) that don't have a prime candidate next to them. The guarantee that all of them had at least one was part of #4, where only one prime was involved.
6. Yes, but it comes at it from a different angle. I have almost proven, however, that it's not true at all. I'll go into detail below.

You're absolutely right. I should have thought of that. Running some numbers, though, it seems to start out less stringent than what I suggested, and become progressively even less so as i goes up. For instance, evaluating it for i=29 indicates that the span is less than Π(p(i))/3.686651584, whereas the other indicates it's less than Π(p(i))/29. I can't improve its curve much, but I think I can make the details somewhat more accurate. The actual number of pairs of twin prime candidates less than Π(p(i)) is equal to Π(p(i)-2), leaving out 2-2=0. The number of pairs of candidates four apart is the same. So, any others must be at least six apart. The number of candidates six apart is 2(Π(p(i)-2) - Π(p(i)-3)), this time leaving out primes 2 and 3. Any not covered by those formulas must be at least eight apart. The counts of gaps larger than six get complicated, but I'm working on it.

I've managed to prove that, if there exist any gaps of length 2k*p(n) in p(n-1), I'm wrong about #6. For each that exists less than Π(p(n-1)), there will be one instance less than Π(p(n)) where it gets both its edges lopped of - where each of the prime candidates bordering it is a multiple of p(n). (As it happens, I simultaneously proved that there will be p(n)-1 instances where it sits untouched.) So, if gaps of that length exist, I was wrong.

Another thing I've been working on: Each Π(p(n)) can be divided into a relatively large number of equal-length sections, each of which contains the same number of prime candidates. I'm working now on the largest number of such sections each one can be broken into.

Your response is, as before, awaited with eagerness. Black Carrot 21:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a job yet. I just finished high school, and in a few weeks I'm going to college, to major (if possible) in both Mathematics and Computer Science. I'm only really going to the trouble of figuring this stuff out right now, though, for the money - the Riemann Hypothesis is worth, as you doubtless know, a million dollars, and I don't see any reason it can't be answered. Naive, perhaps, prideful, perhaps, but there it is. I don't see an excuse for not having an answer already to that, or the twin primes conjecture, or Goldbach, or any of them. It just seems like basic relationships like those, should be basically easy to answer. So, I'm trying to. How about you? Hobby? Life's work? Obsession?

You're quite right, I should have used the proper notation. So, here it is written out again:

The actual number of pairs of twin prime candidates less than ${\prod _{p=2}^{i}p}$ (that is to say, the primorial of n) is equal to ${\prod _{p=3}^{i}(p-2)}$ for i>2. I can prove this two ways. 1) Consider how many twin numbers relatively prime to p(x<=i-1) there are below its primorial. To determine how many there will be for p(i), we perform two steps. First, we copy the entire arrangement p(i) times, end to end, on the number line. Then, we place a dot every p(i) spaces, covering up any multiples of it. This is, essentially, the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Now, consider what will be covered up between zero and the primorial, then the primorial and twice the primorial, and so on. Remember, p(i) and the product of all the primes below it are, by definition, relatively prime. Every space in the original sequence will be covered up exactly once, somewhere on the extension of it. So, if the number of pairs of twin prime candidates for p(i-1) is t, the number for p(i) is t*p(i) minus one for each time a pair gets split up, meaning t*p(i)-2t, meaning t*(p(i)-2). An important point: since twin primes are right next to each other, only one of a pair can possibly be removed at a time. 2) Imagine a pair of twin prime candidates. What will they look like? 2X2X2, of course, with the Xs being the candidates. What about 3? Well, only one place where it can go. 3_X3X_3, then, followed by either 5___X5X___5, or 5____5X_X_5, or 5_X_X5____5. Each step, there will be p-2 possible positions for the prime p in relation to the prime candidates. The number of possible combinations given by that is the product of those numbers. And it's guaranteed by the Chinese Remainder Theorem that every such combination containing p(x<=i) will exist exactly once in the range from 0 to the primorial of p(i). The others just continue that logic. The number of pairs of candidates six apart, by the way, is $2({\prod _{p=5}^{i}(p-2)-{\prod _{p=5}^{i}(p-3)})}$.

And the other:

I've managed to prove that, if there exist any gaps of length 2k*p(n) in p(n-1), I'm wrong about #6. For each that exists less than the primorial of p(n-1), there will be one instance less than the primorial of p(n) where it gets both its edges lopped of - where each of the prime candidates bordering it is a multiple of p(n). (As it happens, I simultaneously proved that there will be p(n)-1 instances where it sits untouched.) So, if gaps of that length exist, I was wrong.

Oh, and the email thing - the problem was, Wikipedia was having some difficulty accepting that my address existed. I think I've dealt with it. Black Carrot 04:30, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Wassup. If you're still interested, I've come up with a lot more formulas along the same lines, and a general system for calculating all others. I think I'm closing in on the upper bound. Let me know if you want anything I've worked out.

Ex: The number of gaps of length 28 is $162{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-2)}-740{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-3)}+1368{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-4)}-1300{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-5)}+662{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-6)}-168{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-7)}+16{\prod _{p=13}^{i}(p-8)}$ Black Carrot 20:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Did my emails reach you? Black Carrot 02:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

2005 in baseball

Could you possibly weigh in on the discussion regarding the 2005 in baseball article (principally discussed here)? Kingjeff insists on shifting principal content to a separate article (which I find unnecessary) on the basis of the 66K article size, with no discussion by others editors. I have others ideas for reducing the article size, but seems uninterested in working this out. MisfitToys 21:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Bear baiting

Just a little joke. Raul654 is an outspoken opponent of the little top-right FA star (and all other article-space metadata). —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:59, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Hydnjo's response to the blocking proposal

I thank one and all - Jarandal, Antandrus, Titoxd, Xaosflux, TenOfAllTrades, mboverload, PseudoSudo, Knowledge Seeker, Haukurth, Deathphoenix, Zzyzx11, Tyrenius, Zscout370, AnnH, Rick Block, Tyrenius (again), Zscout370 (again) and NoSeptember for your support.

To Jeffrey O. Gustafson who initiated this block request I ask why? We have had no interaction until now so how do you come to this requested action at WP:AN? Did you come across my account during your own research or are you acting as a proxy for another admin/user with whom I've caused to be angry with me? In reviewing your contributions I see no such "letter of the law" before now and so I feel singled out by you and I have no clue as to why - that to me is most disturbing. If you've come to this action on your own then should I be always wary of another admin challenging the legitimacy of my account?

For TenOfAllTrades who advised me not to worry and Rick who made me laugh I give special thanks, you've helped me to not take this so personally. And to Jeff, thanks for being courteous in informing me of your action and for letting me feel that your heart wasn't for blocking me.
Except for my one explanation above, I haven't edited for a few days now so as to allow y'all to comment about this based on my history of contribution rather than my reaction to it.

I wanted to say all of this before it all goes to archive heaven. I still have a lingering concern that this may arise again and don't want to go through WP life looking over my shoulder or worrying that I might piss-off some admin and cause another inquiry about the legitimacy of my account. If any of you who have been so gracious as to take the time to support me here have any suggestions to prevent such an action, please drop your thoughts on my talk or by email.

Finally, on a personal note to all, I never ever expected so much supportive response from all of you. I know that I've been moody at times and have spoken in ways that I have regretted the next day. I hoped otherwise but it seemed that those unfortunate responses might end up being my legacy as they were the foremost in my mind. And so far as this being a "role account", I think that I'll let the descriptions of AnnH and NoSeptember (both above) stand as the most intuitive descriptions of this account. My (and our) warmest regards to all of you for your understanding and outward support for the continuation of hydnjo's user account and future contributions. Again, my delighted and humble thanks :-) --hydnjo talk 02:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

addendum: Jeff, I was confused at the outset in that I wasn't aware of the "role account" policy and then after becoming aware I was frustrated that I had made so many edits which could mislead someone to the conclusion that my account was a role account. I'm sorry that in my zeal to understand your actions that I posed the possibility that you were acting at someone else's behest. I have no evidence of that and it was improper of me to even mention that such a bizarre conspiracy was possible. I find myself guilty of "blaming the messenger" and posting an inappropriate comment about your motivation.

As for my account, I want to state that it is not a role account and I apologize for leaving the impression that it is one. "hydnjo" is the signature that I commonly use for much of my correspondence and thought it to be appropriate when I first started my WP account. The portmanteau is an acknowledgment of our shared existence and not an indication that Heidi and I share in editing at WP.

I thank you for your courtesy in informing me at the outset of the discussion at WP:AN and for your compliments about my contributions. The comments in my response were made in the shadow of my own frustration with my having left a trail of edits that could easily be construed as having come from either Heidi or myself. I sincerely apologize to you for making any suggestion as to your motivation in bringing up a legitimate policy question. You have a genuine concern for the orderly behavior of our editors and I thank you for initiating this discussion and providing me the opportunity to explain the nature of my account. --hydnjo talk 19:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: absolute css positioning for dots on maps

Hi - Do you know if there's any reason not to use absolute CSS positioning to put dots on locator maps (as is done by some geographical templates, I'm not sure of any current examples but template:Infobox U.S. City used to do this)? I've asked this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps#Locator dots with no response. And, BTW, while I'm here, do you know why the featured article star recently stopped working in classic skin? I can't find the change that did this (not template:Featured article or any change to common.css). Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I failed to see any mention of the dots in any discussion related to that deleted template; it looks like people either weren't aware of the feature, or the other template already had the feature and it got removed. As to the FA star, you forgot to look at MediaWiki:Standard.css; looks like the relevant style got commented out on purpose. --cesarb 13:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Subcategories

Hi Rick, Haven't talked to you for a while. I'd like your opinion about something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently. As you probably know, I've been pushing for wider acceptance of duplication of articles in parents and their children for quite a while. Here's my present thinking about this, and what I'd like to propose to the developers:

• Categories are a tool for browsing.
• Categories are sometimes useful as an index of a subject, but often are not available as an index because they have been broken into subcategories and depopulated.
• Many of these subcategories are in essence intersections of larger categories. For example, Category:American film directors can be though of as the intersection of Category:Film directors and Category:American people.
• It would be useful to have categories fully populated at the "level of notability", by which I mean that directors are much more likely to be notable as "film directors" than as "American film directors".
• There are many category intersections that do not exist that some people might find useful. Adding more and more intersections clutters up the category listings for articles.

To address all of these things I propose the following:

• Categories be fully populated at the level of notability.
• The software be modified so that category intersections get created on the fly.

Here's how it would work:

• All the categories that are intersections would be deleted and their members moved to the larger categories at the level of notability. Some of these categories would be rather large (like Category:American people.

• New wiki-markup would be added to the software to create dynamically created subcategories. Here's how it might look:

[[Subcategory:American people:Film directors]]

This markup would be added to the page Category:American film directors. The markup would initiate a database comparison of the categories listed to find the articles and subcategories listed in both categories. The page would be displayed as a "Sub-category" instead of as a "Category" which would indicate that it was dynamically created. There might be automatically generated text that would say something like, "This sub-category contains all the articles in Category:American people that are also in Category:Film directors. Additional text for the page could be created as normal, and the subcategory could be categorized as normal.

Articles could be placed in the category directly. For example List of American film directors could still be put in the category. There should be some visual indicator of the articles that are in the category directly and those that were from the intersection of the parents to help alert editors of miscategorized articles.

Articles would only list Categories on the bottom and not list all the Subcategories that they may be found in (unless they have been put in these categories directly by mistake). Perhaps, each category listed might have a check box, by clicking on some of the check boxes and then clicking on a link to "display subcategory" the user could go directly from the article to the dynamically created subcategory.

Does this sound like a good idea to you? Comments? Suggestions? Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 10:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Response on my talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 07:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Responded again on my talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 15:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

and again. -- Samuel Wantman 08:24, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Earl Hines references

Rick, it's great that you got the Dance book and have begun to use it. As for your reformatting the references, I notice that the format you are using, from Wikipedia:Citing_sources/example_style (which does not actually enforce one specific format) is the APA--American Psychological Association--format. That would suggest that it would be more suitable for scientific articles. On the other hand, I see that Wikipedia usage varies so widely, even within a given field, that I am not inclined to argue about this for now. I guess most important right now is expanding and neatening the article itself; we can always revisit the formatting issue at a later time. As always, just "thinking out loud." Regards, Alan W 00:00, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

City infobox

Hi. I noticed that you're interested in changing the design of Template:Infobox City. I agree with you, I like the look of the country and US states infoboxes, which all have the same idea. I had been working in an infobox in Template:Infobox City/Proposed until I noticed you already had your own version ready. So the change can happen I suggest that we do a an agree/oppose poll, because the discussion isn't going anywhere. You can move your version and replace mine at Template:Infobox City/Proposed and we could also use that same page so people can vote and discuss. --Enano275 22:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I am aware the discussion isn't moving very fast, but Wikipedia:Voting is evil and I'm not sure a yea/nay poll will accomplish what we're after. I'm trying to work this from a variety of angles simultaneously (I've proposed a change to template:Infobox Country, and a new guideline at wikipedia:geographical infoboxes) and haven't pushed it very hard yet since the new "infobox geography" style hasn't aged enough in common.css to be visible to everyone yet (I understand the caching for this is set to 31 days!). I added the style to common.css on July 5, so it should be visible to everyone by August 5 or so. I'm intending to wait until then to push this harder. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, no problem, there's no rush :-). --Enano275 04:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

OK Tough Guy

Here is the Two Ants Problem. Apparantly it's the devilish work of Martin Gardiner:

A rectangular room has dimensions 12´12´30. That is, the floor and ceiling and both the side walls are 12´30 and the two end walls are 12´12. In the room there are two ants, a male and a female. The male ant is on the floor at one of the corners. Now the female has positioned herself to be as far as possible from the male. That is, she has located herself at a point so that the male will take the longest possible time to get to her, given that he has to crawl along the walls, floor or ceiling of the room and will (of course) choose his path so that he gets to the female in the shortest possible time. The question is: where is the female?

Well there's an obvious answer--the diametrically opposite corner. That's certainly the point which is farthest from the ant as the crow flies. But an ant is not a crow.

I don't know the answer. So far as I know there are no tricks (there is no such thing as a female ant lol!!!) and it's a valid problem....

-Abscissa 02:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

You can get to the diametrically opposite corner by going sort of diagonally across the floor and diagonally up the wall, traversing the diagonal of a 30x24 rectangle). The question is whether this is farther away than every point on the opposite end. As you come away from this corner (at the intersection with the ceiling) I think you have to actually go farther to get there. I think the maximal distance is along this edge, but I'm not sure exactly where (I don't have the time to figure it out at the moment, but there are at least two ways to get to each point on this opposite end and you figure out formulas for each way and then figure out the intersection point between these formulas). -- Rick Block (talk) 04:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting the ant travels the hypotenuse of the 12x36 triangle (rectangle), ie. directly across the floor? Can you help me to understand why any particular point (no need to be exact) would be further to travel (as the ant travels) than the direct opposite corner...... -Abscissa 05:23, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry that should be 12x30, but I'm sure you knew what I meant. - Abscissa 05:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Travel the hypotenuse of the 12x30 rectangle to get to the diametrically opposite corner? No. The ant travels diagonally across the floor to the other wall, 15' (halfway) toward the opposite end and then straight from this point (diagonally up the wall) to the corner. if you topologically unfold the wall (imagine the room is a cardboard box and you're breaking it at the vertical edges and laying it out flat), this route is a straight line from one corner of a 24x30 rectangle to an opposite corner. There's a symmetric route diagonally up the adjacent wall (halfway to the opposite end) and then diagonally across the ceiling. Both of these routes are shorter than another "straight line" route using only the floor and the opposite end which you can visualize by "folding" the opposite end of the room flat (like the floor) making a 42x12 rectangle. This route is the hypotenuse of the 42x12 rectangle (i.e. sqrt 1908 which is farther than the other route which is sqrt 1476).

The two ways to get to any point on the opposite end are either a straight line within the 42x12 rectangle (a route using the only the floor and the opposite end) or a straight line within the 42x24 rectangle (using the floor, the opposite wall, and the opposite end. The picture I have of this is a 12x30 rectangle (the floor) with another 12x30 rectangle on top of it (the opposite wall) and two 12x12 squares on the end, making a 24x42 rectangle. The points on the opposite end appear twice, once in each of the 12x12 squares, but the top square is rotated 90 degrees. If you call a point within the 12x12 square (x,y) where x is the height of the point off the floor and y is the other dimension, so the diametrically opposed corner is the point (12,12), the "floor/opposite end" route to any point is a straight line within a 42x12 rectangle of length sqrt((30+x)**2 + y**2). The "floor/wall/opposite end" route to the same point is sqrt((42-y)**2 + (12+x)**2). Setting these equal to each, and simplifying, I get 7y = 72-5x. Anywhere on this line (within the square) is the pessimal point. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

WRONG!! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE ANT !! LOL!! Just kidding. ;-) Thanks very much for your thoughtful response, I will have to think about it and mull it over with someone else. Until then, don't write any "introductory explinations of math problems" books ;-) TTYS - Abscissa 14:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the diagram, I am only back from vacation jut now. -Abscissa 00:05, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Tokyo Skyline pictures (Sorry about this)

Hi Rick Block I'm sorry to get back to you so late, and I sorry to have not clarified where I got the pictures of the east Asain cities skyline's from. The exact web page where I found the photos of tokyo skyline- [8] a forum user Sonie took these pictures and I sent a message to the user asking if I could post these pictures on Wikipedia. I don't quite on how to expressed that when placing licensing information about the picture. The Hong Kong and shanghai pictures were from a website I can quite recall and listed as desktop backgrounds. All of the pictures were slightly altered to fix the resolution requirements on Adobe photo shop elements.--Astuishin 02:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

hint hint

Where oh where have my emails gone? I hope not to Hotel California (You can check out any time you want but you can never leave...).  ;-)) --hydnjo talk 21:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Flickr

You just have to type several words to get the intersections. However you can only have one word tags. If you type "China Suspension Bridges" all you get is things tagged with "China" "Suspension" and "Bridge". This doesn't seem like it would work for us without changing things rather dramatically. -- Samuel Wantman 05:48, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Rick Block/update after

What's the deal with you fixing the same problem twice in User:Rick Block/update after; did I somehow manage to edit and save the old version of the page? --Scott McNay 03:34, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what happened, but this diff changed the curlies back to parens. I think the only reasonable explanation is you picked up the older copy somehow (looking at the diffs perhaps?). It's no big deal - don't worry about it. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Plans for CI

Rick, I can put some work into getting what we have into a proposal. I'd like any comments you might have on what I last wrote before you go. Also, it would probably be good to get some more people's feedback before we approach developers and the larger community. I met Jimmy Wales this past spring (I had him over for dinner), and would like to send him an e-mail to take a look when we are ready. I can't think of anyone in particular to approach for now, and am wondering if you have any ideas? Radiant! woulod be my first choice, but he's no longer with us. I also realize that this will be hard for people to get a handle on, so I'm thinking that we should mock up some pages so people will get a better idea what we're talking about. -- Samuel Wantman 05:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I've commented on your latest. Other folks to approach - maybe Steve block (but he's on a break at the moment), Splash, user:Kbdank71. I've noticed William Allen Simpson is quite active at WP:CFD these days. Cesarb, Dragons flight, and Interiot are all developer types and might be willing to comment on it. I've found all of them to be generally thoughtful. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll put some effort into polishing it up, and then invite some people to look at it, your list of people and any others that I can think of. I plan on making it clear that it is not yet a proposal for the general public. -- Samuel Wantman 01:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Two more: Beland, of Pearle fame, definitely worth listening to if he'll comment, and perhaps ProveIt, who I don't know at all, but has apparently been categorizing orphaned categories lately. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Scarce?

...as in valuable or reward? :) --Scott McNay 12:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

---

Eeeek!! A ghost!!! <grin> Tinkering with it. I gave up and reverted it. About to try again, in my talk page, to see if I can isolate the problem. --Scott McNay 04:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Re:Break

What was it you wanted to know about my reasons. I'll gladly talk them out with you, but my passion for editing the pedia seems to be waning. Anyway, let me know once you return from your break, and keep well. Steve block Talk 22:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back

Hi Rick,

I've been editing up a storm at CI. I'm about 3/4 done. It was more work than I expected. I realized a few things fleshing it out which you will notice. I've changed the deliniation of the CIs to Intersection:xxxx&:yyyy&:zzzz which makes more wiki-sense, though I don't know if it will create any problems. I still have to write a section about how this will affect categorization policy, ect... Jump in whenever you want. BTW, someone noticed our page and left a comment (it is now archived on the talk page). I was quite surprised that anyone found the page because I have removed all links to it as well as all the discussion about it. It turns out that by putting the proposal template on it, it was categorized in Category:Wikipedia proposals. So that is gone for now. -- Samuel Wantman 10:56, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Would Intersection:xxxx+:yyyy+:zzzz be alright? What about Intersection:xxxx^:yyyy^:zzzz or Intersection:xxxx/:yyyy/:zzzz which seems to imply that there is a natural hierarchy to the pages? -- Samuel Wantman 20:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind ::, but I just though that +: might be a little more intuitive. Ther are categories that use "+" in a name (Category:C++ for example), so it probably should be an unlikely double combination. I'll use "::" for now. -- Samuel Wantman 22:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I've responded at CI talk. We might as well use that talk page! -- Samuel Wantman 07:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Rick, We're really not that far away from each other. Perhaps we can invite some people to take a look and get some more opinions? I get the impression you are loosing intrest? or perhaps you are very busy? I'm going away for a month starting mid-September, so I want to get this rolling before I go. -- Samuel Wantman 03:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I knew the day had to come that we disagree (not about Bush!) I wouldn't be at all surprised if you came up with something quite wonderful if you put some more effort into working out all the details of your CI vision. Whenever I start down that path I end up back where I started.

One thing I've come to realize about Wikipedia is that it is impossible to make any large overhaul to how it works. If you want to change things in a big way, you have to make a series of small steps to get there. For instance, shortly after we came up with CategoryTOC, I wanted to abandon the policy that said "articles with eponymous categories would only be put in that category and no others". It took about a year of discussion and small changes until people started making that change in a big way. I've recently talked to people that have no idea of the previous policy and wonder why so many eponyomous articles are miscategorized.

My point in bringing this up is that there is a political process for making CI a reality. If we can introduce it slowly, without the wholesale deletion of hundreds of categories, pehaps a year or so from know it will become clear that the categories no longer serve a purpose, and should be deleted. In the interim, people will be adjusting to CIs and understanding what can be done with them. Without the inbetween steps I don't see how it can happen. It sort of like the evolution of birds. Before they left the ground, lots of details had to evolve. The flip side of this is that as the details evolve, the ultimate solution changes as well.

So how about if we contact BRION and ask him his opinion? I've noticed in past interactios with him that he seems to make very quick judgements so we need to make our request pretty short and brilliant. So would you edit my attempt below for posting on his talk page?

Brion,

We are two longtime Wikipedian administrators who focus on categorization policy. There are some long festering basic conflicts in how people use categories that we think could be solved if a system of category intersection were implemented. We are aware that this has been discussed quite a bit in the past, and that code to do category intersection was even written at one point. We have written a proposal for how to implement category intersections in such a way that will reduce category clutter, automate the management of categories, add thousands of category intersections that do not yet exist, add a simple interface for making intersections, and even solve the category redirect problem. Before we go any further with this proposal we need your feedback. Do you think what we are proposing is feasible? If so, do you have any suggestions for improving it? If not, what makes it unfeasible, and do you have any ideas about how to make it feasible? Thanks for your time. User:SamuelWantman and User:Rick Block

-- Samuel Wantman 08:16, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to a meetup tonight that Jimmy Wales will be at (in San Francisco). I met him once previously (he came over for dinner in the spring). I'll put a printout in his hand and ask him for advice on the best way to approach Brion. I used to be a software designer back in the 80's. Started out writing software in assembly language on Apple IIs. For a while I was a database consultant. I never particularly liked programming although I was really good at it. Ended up doing mostly software design. In the early 90's I designed a simple web editor that I tried to get a friend of mine to implement, but he wasn't interested, and I didn't want to become a programmer again. It was basically a wiki! Working on this proposal with you has gotten me to fire up some brain cells that haven't been stimulated in over a decade. But I don't think I'm up for becoming a programmer again. -- Samuel Wantman 20:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Updating information

Check it out when you get bored for a moment. :) Wikipedia:Updating_information --Scott McNay 23:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

---

At the rate that we're going, a little more tweaking, and there won't be any pages at all. <grin />

I cleaned out the old hidden text in the page Updating Information page (can pull it out of history if needed). I also cleared these pages; they need to be deleted: Template:Update year Template:Update after3 Template:Update after2 Template:Update 2008 Wikipedia:Updating information/2006 Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/9 Template:Update 2007 Template:As of 2007. I've already removed or nowiki'd all of the links to them.

> Looks good. Seems like it's time for more publicity, perhaps WP:VPP and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Style issues

Done! I was gonna pass the buck to you, but figured that saying so would be "weasel words". <grin /> --Scott McNay 06:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: div.tleft not working?

Hi - I made the change to MediaWiki:Standard.css we talked about a while ago, but it doesn't seem to work (see MediaWiki talk:Standard.css#Change to div.tleft. Do you have any ideas why it might not be working? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

What you changed was only the border; the right margin was already at 0.5em (the same as monobook). I took a look, and found another difference which can explain what you see on monobook; the left margin on ul (and also ol) is set to 1.5em, which matches the larger space seen on monobook. You could try either setting the right margin on the image to 1.5em, or setting the left margin on ul and ol to 1.5em. --cesarb 20:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

New patterns for Tawkerbot

Window$ is now in the blacklist -- Tawker 04:52, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

CI

I put a copy of the proposal in Jimmy's hand on the meetup on Friday night before he left for the airport. He said he'd read it on the plane. I haven't heard back from him yet. I only got to talk to him about it for about 2 minutes, but he seemed very interested and also called over a Wikia programming intern to listen. I'd like to get a response from him before we call more people into the mix.

I've responded to the changes in your mockup. Have you looked at my mockups recently? -- Samuel Wantman 07:12, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, that someone mentioned on Friday that the German Wikipedia has already decided to remove all categories that were intersection and fully populate primary categories. So they will love what we are doing. -- Samuel Wantman 07:22, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Trolling?

I don't understand why you have a problem with me. I'm donating my time to write articles and try to work out disputes and I get verbally abused. --NE2 05:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I'll think about it overnight and possibly say more in the morning. --NE2 05:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

We have what seems to be an uneasy standoff between the side backed by naming conventions and the side backed by numbers. I'm still not sure what to do. --NE2 18:07, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Easing myself back in

Well, I'm slowly easing myself back in, but thanks for the comments. Sorry to drift out of the debate we were having, I pretty much agree with your thoughts on article stability and the governing of wikipedia. That said, what troubles me is that whilst WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:NOR are agreed as the basic immutables by consensus, the interpretation of them is open to such huge debate it seems like there is no consensus. They've become bloated and almost like religious tracts. The basic immutable seems to be that every article must reference a secondary source that has been subject to review by an editor or peers, and summarise that information as presented there-in. That would seem to be a statement worth declaring as the basic principle. Steve block Talk 11:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

List of U.S. states by elevation

http://www.usgs.gov/state/state.asp?State=KY

This source is good enough for me, it has to be good enough for you.

New project

I have an idea for a new project after we've finished CI. I'm thinking about starting a forum to discuss the internal contradictions of Wikipedia's policies and practices. For example, there is the idea that red-links are good because they stimulate the creation of new articles, on the other hand they are discouraged in Featured Lists, so authors write stubs on subjects that probably will never be mentioned anywhere else leading to the creation of stubs on non-notable subjects which is discouraged. Or the idea that policies are descriptive, but when people, after discussion and consensus, decide to experiment with different ways of doing things they are accused by others of not following policy. As we've seen, the lack of CI has led to contradictory view on what categorization is and how it should work. If some more of these contradictions were discussed perhaps it would lower tensions, lessen conflicts and lead to some creative ideas. I realized that I was fighting a hopeless battle with categorization, and that led me to think more about a technological fix. As for a name for this project, I'm thinki of Wikipedia:Wikipedian dialectics. -- Samuel Wantman 07:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. I have at least two other projects in varying stages of (in)completion that I would like to get back to at some point. If you start something like this please let me know, and I'll at least watch it. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Time to get others involved

Rick, I think it is time to get some more people involved in CI. I've tried making it clear that all the differences you and I have are different options for how it could be. To be honest, I'm not sure which one I like the most. I suspect that this will continue to evolve as more people get invovled.

Could you add to the description of your view of the design (option 3), and make any other changes you think are necessary? I'd also like to add something to try and focus the debate to whether the overall concept is a good one, and ask people to add to the list of options and features. Then we can bring in all the people you mentioned, perhaps mention it at Wikipedia:Categorization. Also, are you ever on IRC chat? I've never figured out how to get to the administrators chat, but it might be good to mention it there, when Jimmy is on-line, so he could comment. -- Samuel Wantman 10:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I took a whack at the page, and split out the variants into their own subpages. There are some things that aren't quite smooth yet (for example, the section on primary categories is mostly irrelevant if we go with the separate namespace variant). I'll write up more details for the variant I have in mind. I didn't add a summary for your option 2 yet, perhaps you might want to do this. I'd like to add something up front about the various kinds of categories that we currently have - I think there are at least three: primary, intersection, and navigation (or index). Introducing these earlier might make it easier to talk about the variants, for example I think your original variant addresses only intersection categories while the other two address both intersection and navigation categories.

I don't do IRC, but I know some folks who do. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Great work. I'll take another pass at it and hopefully finish it. We're close. -- Samuel Wantman 03:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I filled out the detail page for "intersections as a separate namespace". -- Rick Block (talk) 04:37, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm ready to show it to people. Every time I look it over, I find things to fix and edit and improve, but I think it is in good enough shape to show to others. Shall we start with the list of people you mentioned and Brion? I'm going to send an e-mail to Jimmy mentioning that it is ready to be seen and perhaps he could mention something over IRC or post a comment on the talk page. Are you ready? -- Samuel Wantman 08:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I've mentioned the proposal to Steve Block and e-mailed Jimmy. -- Samuel Wantman 09:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Like you, every time I read through it I see more that could be improved, but I think it's close enough. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

BLP

Yes, it's a contrived use of BLP, I should have been clear that this is an a fortiori inference from BLP - if we restrict critical information in articles, where it belongs, surely the project needn't publish inflammatory statements about living people in userspace. I stand by the edit. - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

How about, "Crzrussian knows that Zinedine Zidane is an idiot and barbarian and uses vicious headbutts when angry" - is this appropriate for userspace? What is the difference in principle? None. - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Very well. I continue to think the box was perfectly inappropriate, but will not pursue this if you choose to revert me - CrazyRussian talk/email 04:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

My confusion

Rick, thanks for the note about my answer to your question on naming of cities in Japan. I was indeed confused, but I'm not sure where the confusion came from. The original question seemed clear enough, so I don't know why I used "Tokyo City" in my answer... I'll think it through some more and post a clarification. Thanks again Fg2 22:04, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Bedfordshire Template

I like the design for the Bedfordshire template you did, is there a way to make it automatically or does someone have to hand code every one? Lcarsdata (Talk) 19:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

It can be done in a single (largish) template what would take as a parameter the town/village name, or it could infer this from the pagename if a parameter is not provided, but it really does boil down to manually making the lists. I've started a version like this, and it's pretty annoying to create. I have done a fair amount of simple text processing with a variety of tools and could probably write a little program that would generate the contents of such a template (a one-time use tool). If you'd like I think I could put something together a version pretty quickly to show you roughly how it might look. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the templates you have done, I think that 5 is best as on low screen resolutions it creates problems. If you need some input from me I would be happy to help but otherwise it would be great if you could make them. A single template would probably be better. Thanks. Lcarsdata (Talk) 16:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again, it's great. Lcarsdata (Talk) 18:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there a way I can regenerate the template with new information easily as there are some changes that need to be made that would take quite a while manually. Lcarsdata (Talk) 12:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I used an awk script to generate it (which I think could be turned into a Perl script pretty easily), which I'd be happy to let you have. If you're not a programmer it might be easiest just to let me know what's wrong and I'll fix it. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:08, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't have the ability to install any of the software required to use programs like that so I can't do that. Anyway the only changes that need to be done that I have found so far are "Bedford, Bedfordshire" to " Bedford" and "Billington" to "Billington, Bedfordshire", I haven't put it on all the articles yet so some more may appear. Thanks. Lcarsdata (Talk) 17:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I have identified another article that needs adding Clipstone, Bedfordshire (I don't know how to add completely new articles just changing current ones), however there have been many other changes to the template since you last updated it. Thanks. Lcarsdata (Talk) 11:32, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the source code, I will try to get it working. Lcarsdata (Talk) 17:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Template parser functions

You wrote on Radiant's talk page that "Template parser functions have arrived (see m:ParserFunctions) and have let any number of folks go truly nuts with templates that are completely inscrutable" [9]. I'm just curious, which folks/templates did go truly nuts? --Ligulem 13:18, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I was not thinking of any template or anyone in particular, just the general explosion of templates including parser functions and how completely opaque at least some of them have become to "ordinary" users. I had a discussion a long time ago with user:TakuyaMurata about use of templates at all. He was arguing that templates are generally bad because they introduce programming style syntax and concepts that many people do not understand, effectively making them editable to only a subset of users. This was when they really were just snippets of wikitext transcluded into a page. They have now blossomed into nearly a complete programming language with a syntax as arcane as troff. At times very useful. But I'm sure pretty much any template using parser functions looks like gibberish to >99% of Wikipedia's users and probably at least 95% of the editors. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

My problem is just that Wikipedia has many editors and those 5% you are referring to can read parserfunctions "code" like a newspaper. I know it is a problem. I've been doing a lot on the citation templates and right in the middle we were caught be the template:qif rampage of Netoholic (without a clear statement by the developers in the form "You will never ever get a built-in qif"). The whole thing was rather frustrating. It was just too early for me to say it failed and let's kill all these templates (Now we have over 20,000 pages depending on template:cite web). On one side, we have people that can read stuff like template:qif like a headline of a chapter and on the other side people who mocked themselves about meta templates ("I don't speak meta") deposit requests at template talk:cite journal ("can I have this and this behaviour please?"). We also have articles about quantum physics and the schrödinger equation, no problem for the specialists. And of course yes, these pages are not transcluded into other pages, so the comparison is weak. But we have that problem that the 5% people get very bored if asked to paint the streets with a toothbrush because 95% percent do not want to learn how the street painting machine works. I just don't like if you do describe the 5% as "nuts". I do not describe the editors of schrödinger equation as nuts either. --Ligulem 15:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, this was not a slam and if it was it targets me as well (my latest "inscrutable" creation [in response to a help desk query] is template:Places in Bedfordshire, a chameleon navigation template that will look different on every page that uses it)! I really meant no offense and did not mean to disparage your or anyone else's efforts. "Going nuts with something" is a colloquialism (at least in the US) meaning "use alot". I think parserfunctions are a very good thing and definitely have their uses. On the other hand, I'm aware that they make certain aspects of editing inaccessible to the vast majority of folks. For those of us used to sophisticated programming languages it's nearly second nature. But there's a price. For example, I don't think a non-expert could successfully add a new parameter to template:Infobox City. This is a template that shows up on over 2000 articles. By making it "inscrutable" we've put it in the hands of only an elite set of editors (not even including all the admins!) which makes its form on the articles using it highly unmalleable. In addition, it's complicated enough that I think a non-expert would have a very hard time cloning a similar template from it. I think it's inherently unavoidable, but the more programmable we make wikitext the less we allow "anyone to edit". The bit on Radiant's page was meant only as a pointer to something that he will likely run into and that he might want to read up on. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Nevermind. I'm a bit sensitive on that button (I was chased enough by the anti-qif cabal ;-). While we are at it, there are a lot of things that are damn complicated on Wikipedia. I think a wiki-newbie sure has a lot of problems understanding all the processes and policies/guidelines/slang we have on this project here. And in this case, it is like a "fungus" (as Phil Boswell put it). As long as we keep the complicated things inside templates, then I see no problem. Not everyone needs to be able to add a new parameter at infobox city without the help of others. It is sufficient if he posts a request on the talk of the template. One of the 5% will happily add it. I see no problem with that. I don't edit schrödinger equation in ways which are out of my knowledge either (that's why I only disambiguated a link there ;-).

We could see these templates as an extension of MediaWiki:Common.css. Not everyone needs to edit that. And I am sure there are a lot that haven't understood even the basics of CSS (Despite we are some kind of webmasters here). Back to work now. I'm talking too much anyway. --Ligulem 17:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Geo boxes

Well, it does sound like a good idea. But maybe it could benefit from a more concrete proposal? The project page currently reads "we want to standardize" but it doesn't give any sample standards or anything. Just pick two or three and ask people to comment, that might work. Also, advertising at WP:RFC or WP:CS could work. I've reverted my tag, I'll watchlist it and see what happens. >Radiant< 17:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The current proposal is on the talk page, not the main page. I did advertise on WP:VPM, various infobox templates, and directly on the talk pages of 10 or 15 folks who have worked on them. I'll move the proposal from the talk page to the main page, but I think there's either an indifference or ignorance issue (not sure which, maybe both). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:12, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

CI

Nice to hear you're also technically inclined (of course I did not mean to imply that other people did not qualify, I hope my remark didn't read as such). I've downloaded the WP source code and am examining what's feasible here. A few design decisions are important (e.g. namespace vs specialpage; do we want 'or' and 'not' queries; what about subsets by namespace; limits on depth; etc). Please take a similar look and tell me what you think! >Radiant< 21:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Radiant! (and Rick), I will be gone for a month from 9/11 to 10/11, traveling in Europe without a computer (it will be a Wiki vacation). I am glad that you (Radiant!) are on board with CI. I have found myself in the last few months saying to myself "What would Radiant! think about this". I'm glad I don't have to channel you any more!

I've been thinking a bit about what has to happen. Here's what I see as key questions:

1. Where do we ultimately want to end up? Many people, developers and editors have been wondering how category unions fit into what we've been discussing. It might be useful to brainstorm a bit about the ulitmate design of things that included category unions.
2. Are there interim steps we can take along the way, such as turning on DynamicPageList and then putting dynamic lists of intersections on category pages, while repopulating primary categories? In fact, I'm wondering if that is the most important thing we need to do (everything is already in place to do this, DynamicPageList is already in the Wikimedia software). I still have no idea of the process of deciding to turn this feature on can or should be made.
3. Should we create a plan for the political process of making this happen? This might be the hardest part of the task. A decree from Jimmy and the developers might help push the transition. We probably need to come up with a map for the categories that will get repopulated and any structural changes that need to happen.

I'll try to find an internet cafe every now and then to check up on what is happening. -- Samuel Wantman 21:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I think unions are actually easier (in the sense that their CPU consumption is easier to limit). I mentioned on Radiant's page that expanding this quickly turns it into a generalization of search, which is distinctly not what I'm after. I want the "x by y by z" categories to go away. This means (for me) DPL doesn't do it. It's better than what we have, and might be a reasonable intermediate step, but I don't think we can depopulate any "x by y by z" categories until we have something like the checkbox intersection request on articles (if we depopulate category:African-American actors before the checkbox mechanism is implemented, how does a user get to this category? only from the primary categories? I don't see how this can work). In any event, in reality I don't think we'll actually make much progress in the month you're gone. Europe? For a month? Reading not very far between the lines, I gather you're either retired or independently wealthy. I'm jealous - but have a fabulous time. I hear there are some Wikipedians there. Specifically I've heard there's one or two you might want to meet in the Netherlands :) And, oh yeah, user:Steve (no relation) block lives in the UK someplace. If you happen to run into anyone, please say hello for me (not that we've ever met or anything). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Rick, We've been on the same page (pretty much) during this entire crusade. The thing that we've both focused on has be the interface for the common user. I'm certainly not abandoning any of those concerns. I mention DynamicPageList because it might be a way to start the process of getting people to think about getting categories repopulated into primary categories and out of intersection categories. It might also light a fire under the developers to create the checkbox interface from articles exactly for the reasons you mention. Perhaps we need to create a sequence of upgrades, each one an improvement, and each one leading naturally to the next one. I'd really like to know how the German Wikipedia made the decision to repopulate and what they expect to do next.

I am mostly retired (though this past month was eerily similar my former life as a software designer) and we live fairly simply which means we have enough to take a month now and then travelling. While I haven't done any database consulting or software design in the last 10 years, user interface design still has all the same issues. I sure hope something does happen in the next month. There has to be some leadership to push issues towards constructive change. This was one of the things I thought Radiant! was (is) very good at. It is too much to expect this from any one person. But if the people now discussing CI all stick together to push for change, it would be a very powerful leadership voice. -- Samuel Wantman 06:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• I think where we ultimately want to end up is some way of searchable metadata. Wikipedia isn't very well searchable for context, only for simple tags. While there presently isn't room for that in the database, it would not be difficult to add. That way, Wikipedia can (rather easily) answer questions to find e.g. poets born between 1910 and 1913, or famous Chinese Aquirii. The good thing is that some kind of union will obviate our "need" for any <x> by <y> categories, which are presently a total mess.
• A second goal is that I'd like categorization to be consistent. At present that's impossible because the amount of categories is about the square of the amount of categorizable topics, because most categories work by two (or even three) characteristics. If all categories are single characteristics, it's much easier to see which ones are and are not useful.
• While I like the DPL, I don't really see how it fits in with Wikipedia. Wikinews uses it for great effect to show 'recent news related to <foo>' and such. I'm sure someone will think of a use for it here, if we want, but it's not a search function.
• A political proces... er, I don't know. I think Jimbo has a lot on his hands already, and so do the devs.
• At any rate, I've submitted a software patch via Bugzilla. It hasn't been picked up yet; I have no idea what (if anything) the process for that is. I suppose I should IRC sometime and talk to Brion about it, but I don't really IRC all that often. I think if our first step is cat unions, a second might be adding two date fields to each article (birth/death for a person, creation/destruction for a building, etc).
• By the way which part of Europe are you in? >Radiant< 20:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Radiant - I think Sam's gone at this point, and he didn't tell me his travel itinerary. Searchable metadata is definitely the way to go. Have you seen Semantic MediaWiki? I think doing something coordinated with the Semantic Web folks (that would leave the tags in the XML) would actually be better. I agree with most of your points above (in the first bullet I assume you mean intersection, not union). I'm not sure if you saw my response at Wikipedia talk:Category intersection#Some technical bits, but I suspect performance when intersecting large categories might be an issue. An intersection with a null result requires the database to read the entire index. I don't really know for sure, but I'd guess this was at least part of the rationale for the 200 at a time limit that Tim implemented. Someone should really just ask him (or post something to the wikitech list). In fact to get some developers to look at your code, posting to the wikitech list is probably a reasonable approach. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Blank lines in NH town infoboxes

Hey, Rick :) When I first looked at the changes you've been making to the town infoboxes, I thought you were deleting the second (and later) "leaders" and nearly had a fit! Then I figured out what was going on and calmed down :) Looks good - I should have done that when I was adding that info. Sorry for the extra work! But Thanks for doing it! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Nope - didn't do it that way on purpose. As you can see from the code, I put in the <br>s for the third and greater — and didn't even think to put it for the second, thereby keeping it on one line. Forest through the trees and all that :)

By the way, I'm curious if you know the answer to something that's been bothering me about CI. Are the cats of an article stored separately from the article itself? Or are they just lines of text in the article? From what I gather, you're a technical person, so you'll see that the latter is a huge overload of resources when you're searching for something, while the former would make CI much easier to implement.

Thanks again, -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 03:24, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I would think that if it were stored correctly, it's a simple query for an intersection. Of course, I'm not a database expert - I work with them (MySQL) in a PHP capacity, but I suspect I don't use them as efficiently as I could :) Thanks for the info, though, and thanks again for your work on NH towns! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Ligulembot

I've requested a bot flag now, to be able to run faster. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ligulembot for the discussion. --Ligulem 16:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I've responded to Wikipedia talk:Uploading images...

... with a couple of responses to what it was that you said. BTW, I did study very hard the list of tags and so think I might know which one would be the best one for the picture should I ever get the chance to actually use it, but I still really need help with the rest. And the link you provided me was only useful if I'd been interested in copying information from one website, which I have never been interested in. I wrote my text as an original product, created after doing lots of careful research of the band's history. That was the easy part. The whole photography thing is what's giving me a massive headache. Owie. I need extra-strength Tylenol AND Advil now. (Krushsister 06:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC))

Thank you for responding promptly and for being patient with me while I try to navigate the waters of proper image usage and file uploading. I've only been at this site since April, so you really are helping out a n00b to the site, someone trying to get a feel for it. And I appreciate your assistance. BTW, still haven't heard back from the photographer. I'm still holding my breath, though. (Krushsister 02:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC))

Infobox city tweak

Hello Rick,

I was wondering if you could help me out? I am trying to move the location of the postal code in the box to the bottom. I have moved it and aligned it to the left, but I can't figure out how to place a line between the postal fields and the footnotes section. Here's my sandbox for it: User:MJCdetroit/Template Sandbox1 and these are the two sandboxes I've been using to compare with and without the postal codes: With codes and Without codes. Thanks. MJCdetroit 12:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Updating info

Sounds good. Wikipedia has way too many announcement boards, but the main one I'd suggest you add it to is WP:RFC (and possibly, but arguably less so, WP:CENT). >Radiant< 22:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Your reply to : 'Category watch don't show newly added subcategories/pages'

If I add a category into my watchlist, the 'recent edits' of the pages that I watch shows only the edits that are made to the category page itself but does not show recently added subcategory/page to this category. Adding this feature will help those who are working on better categorization of wikipages and other readers as well who are interested on the pages related to a category but some of which do not exist in wikipedia as of now.
Should I added this request to bugzilla as well, pls suggest. Vjdchauhan 06:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Per Help:Category, the "related changes" feature can sort of be used for this (related changes shows changes to articles and categories in a category, adding an article to a category shows up as a change). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not able to decipher the suggested page (frankly I find WIKIPEDIA pages (help, proposal, project etc pages) much more complex to decipher than the article pages) and also I am not able to figure out how to enable 'Related Changes' feature. Pls help. Vjdchauhan 06:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Related changes is in the toolbox on the left. It usually show changes to pages that are linked to from the page you're currently on, so it can be used for "alternate" watchlists (see, for example, List of India-related topics). When you're currently viewing a category page, this feature shows changes to articles/categories that are in the category rather than changes to articles linked from the category description. You can create a wikilink to a "related changes" page that you could put on your user page, for example Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Uttar Pradesh is a link to the related changes page for this category, which currently shows Girls' High School and College as having been changed by adding categories (according to the change summary) and, indeed, it was recently added to category:Uttar Pradesh. I think it's not as direct a mechanism as you'd like, but it has the distinct advantage of being already implemented. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Vjdchauhan 08:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The 'related changes for a category' didn't work for me, it throws up a lot of changes whereas I am interested in getting only the new additions to this category (new page / new subcategory). I have posted the same finding on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Category_watch_don.27t_show_newly_added_subcategories.2Fpages hoping that it will taken up. Thanks. Vjdchauhan 09:53, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Tokyo Architecture Info

Hi, Rick. I didn't mean to offend by adding the link to Tokyo Architecture Info. While I can understand why you would see it as a purely self-serving move, TAI isn't any more commercial than the Japan-Guide link already on the page, and is certainly more useful than the Japan Times link which is 404. I don't know of another English language resource that has so many photographs (300+) of Tokyo, or such accurate statistics on the city's buildings. I think TAI should be accepted on its merits, and is certainly worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia's Tokyo page.

Re White space changes using AWB?

Hi Rick,

Can you explain the point of [this edit]? It looks like it's just white space changes with no substantive change at all...

Primarily a template update (see edit summary). Best wishes, David Kernow (talk) 18:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

The edit summary says "internal"...

Apologies; I glanced at the first summary. Yes, it looks like it's whitespace (maybe a typo correction too) that I would've added during the previous edit but was probably distracted. Hope you appreciate the benefit of this kind of whitespace (i.e. I don't subscribe to all varieties of whitespace being unwelcome). Yours, David (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Whitespace deletion in spelling edit

No idea what happened there. I use an addon for firefox to show me what it thinks are spelling errors with a red line underneath but I make all changes by hand. I have no idea where the white space deletion has come from. I'll keep an eye on it though. Cheers. SeanMack 01:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Japanese prefecture template problem

Hi there. I saw that you were the major editor of Template:Japanese prefecture so I thought I would ask for your help. I've been macronising the pages in Ōita Prefecture recently (per WP:MOS-JP) and I noticed that the "Districts" link in the Japanese prefecture brings up a red link to the [[Category:Districts in Ōita Prefecture]] (with the macronised Ō) which doesn't exist. The MOS says that we shouldn't macronise categories, so this page will never exist. Any way of doctoring the template so that we can get rid of this red link and get it to point to [[Category:Districts in Oita Prefecture]]? Cheers, Bobo12345 11:59, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I've fixed this (there was an existing DistrictCategory parameter). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow! Very speedy, thanks! Bobo12345 14:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Seconded – thanks Rick!  David Kernow (talk) 21:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Your message on my talk page

Although I feel that my mind is not ready for such a leap, I will humbly accept your offer/nomination and thank you immensely for it. I also enjoyed our cordial discourse regarding the country infobox, and hope to put the past "conflict" behind us. With regards, ²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, thank you for nominating me to such a position. I have filled out all the necessary blanks and is now on the RfA page. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about #if: in infobox country

User:AzaToth did some major changes as we all know and shit-storm safely passed by, but I am confused on one of the #if:'s he did. Under total area at first glace it looks like s/he made {{{areami²}}} optional by enclosing it in the {{#if:______}} structure. However it doesn't seem to work like it's optional. If you go to any country and remove the '|areami²= ####.#' and hit "show preview", it will not remove the square miles as if it was optional, it will place a '{{{areami²}}} sq mi' in the missing fields place as if it is not optional. I thought #if: was always for optional parameters. Take a look and see what I'm talking about. —MJCdetroit 03:30, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

One too few { . I've fixed it (I think I actually did this one, not AzaToth). Thanks for pointing it out. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It was not optional before and I was going to put it back that way, but I guess I didn't see the missing {. Anyway it looks like it was AzaToth that first changed it. I put it back to non-optional. Thanks. —MJCdetroit 04:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

self-confusing

your edit comment confuses me. were you referring to my edit? did i miss something? sorry in advance if i did. ... aa:talk 04:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Back to CI

Had a great trip and did get a few bridge pictures. Anything interesting happen while I was gone asside from the CI stuff?

Since I've been back I've been looking through the wikitech-l postings to read the discussion. I'm halfway through, but I've seen no discussion on that list or on the CI talk page that says even hints that CI should not happen. The sole question has been how to make it happen technically. Since this is already done by sites like flikr, I have to assume that it is possible, and if it is currently a problem for us to implement it, it will eventually be possible in a few months or years. So assuming it will eventually happen, there are still questions to be answered:

1. What should the user interface look like? I was surprised to see that there has been virtually no discussion about options that we presented.
2. Assuming that it will happen, how do we get categories repopulated and reorganized. I'm still wondering how the German Wikipedia did this.
3. How does flickr do this? Are there DB engines out there that are optimized for these queries?
4. What do we do in the interim?

--Samuel Wantman 16:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Horizontal scrolling text box

hi, sounds like a good idea. i'd like to see the end result.

have a look at template:panorama simple too, which is similar but does work in IE i think. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 06:11, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi

I came across your name on the Monty Hall recent edits so naturally I "looked you up" but my reason for contacting you is that I have noticed several editors mentioning "recent edits made by a specific editor blah-de-blah": how do they do that? I am asking you because I see on your user page you have made your edits public thus: *My contributions. Is that how one editor can see the edits made by another editor or is there a simpler way I have missed? Also is it considered OK to investigate edits in this way? As you will have guessed I am pretty new to this but very keen on the whole concept.Abtract 20:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Update after documentation

Using the 802.11n discussion as an example, do you think it would be ok to use the template in this example or should it wait for Review_after?

"The 802.11n update to the standard was expected to have been released by 2007 January 1, but there has been no announcement about it as of 2007 February 1.{{Update after|2007|3|1|COMMENT=See http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/tgn_update.htm for updated info}}"

In this case, we have an event which should have occurred by Jan 1 2007, but did not, and the AS OF date should be updated at regular intervals to ensure that readers are not exposed to obviously-stale content. --Scott McNay 01:16, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Damn, did I miss a whole year? It is still 2006, right? Update_after seems reasonable to me (since it's still a future date). The other way to handle this would be to update it after each successive scheduled WG meeting. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:00, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

That was an example. :) I was asking your thought on it, since it's not exactly a "100%" thing (or rather, is an artificially-created 100%), therefore does not completely match the guidelines.

I've changed the template to link to Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating on the due date, and to link to As of nnnn. This linking with the existing mechanisms will probably help make it more popular.

So, hypothetically, if a standards group (or anyone else) announces they'll do something by some specific date I think it's perfectly appropriate to add an "update_after" tag on (or shortly after) the announced date. If the date is not met, then I think it's reasonable to pick a new date based on (for example) how often the standards body meets. If there isn't any sensible way to pick a specific new date (and I suspect this is the case you're interested in) then I think it's reasonable to pick arbitrary, but "rational", dates like maybe once a calendar quarter. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Note how I phrased it; I basically made it an authorized exception, i.e., if it's already being used, just change the date to some reasonable future date and keep on going.

I saw someone suggest that {{update}} is basically the same as {{Update after | {{{CURRENTYEAR}}} | {{{CURRENTMONTH}}} | {{{CURRENTDAY}}} | BANNER=Y }} (I'm going to go ahead and add the banner option, using the {{update}} banner; it should be fairly straightforward); do you think we should suggest it as a replacement for {{update}}? I think we should; it ties everything together as different faces of a single mechanism. --Scott McNay 23:16, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Different printable version of a template

Hi - Do you have any idea how to make Template:NavigationBar look different when "printable version" is selected? As it stands, the scrollable version is displayed which is not appropriate for printing. I could make it a non-printing style, but if there's some way to make the "white-space: nowrap" and "overflow: auto" conditional I think that'd be a better solution. I'm interested in any other comments you might have about this template as well. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:31, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The only way to make something look different on the "printable version" is to change common/commonPrint.css and common/wikiprintable.css. However, the "printable version" is not what is printed (it's in fact rather useless, and was added only to please some people who expected to see it; it prints exactly the same as the normal page). When a page is printed, the CSS media print is used instead of screen; this not only enables the print stylesheets (which one depends on the current skin), but also disables the corresponding skin/main.css on monobook-derived skins (which is used only for medias screen and projection), and enables the @media print styles on all the stylesheets. This is how the non-printing styles are implemented (see for instance .noprint on MediaWiki:Monobook.css).

So, if what you want is just correct printing, and you don't care if the so-called "printable version" looks a bit off, you can add some CSS styles with @media print to MediaWiki:Common.css; if you want the "printable version" to also look perfect, you have to get a developer to make the change for you on the print stylesheets.

There is no way to do it on the template itself; you have to change the stylesheets.

--cesarb 23:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to be dense but, for example, how do I make this template simply not show up on a printed article? It's currently class="toccolours". I've tried various ways to add "noprint" to this, and can't seem to find the magic incantaton that makes it work. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It should work with class="toccolours noprint". --cesarb 22:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

The Neverending Problem

Pardon my taking the title style from Michael Ende but I couldn't help myself. Although we've not been as WP active lately for reasons beyond our control, it is always a comfort to come and find the MH article and its talk as lively as ever. Damn, is there any other article (other than political or religious ones of course) that have shown this kind of staying power? Amazing, and we love it! Shoot, maybe you should write a book; those royalties would continue to trickle in forever. ;-) --hydnjo talk 00:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Nah, just google her and get it all for free at places like this and this. It's amazing to read her MH critics and her responses (hmm, maybe some good ideas there), its kind of like reading WP MH's talk and archives. And, who would've thought that we'd have this article - well silly me, of course we do. --hydnjo talk 12:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Thank you very much, Rick Block, for nominating me to serve as an administrator of Wikipedia! My RfA passed on October 17, 2006 with a tally of 53/6/0, and I am elated to serve as the 1,022nd administrator of Wikipedia. I send my heartfelt thanks for your support for me to serve in such a capacity for the benefit of the community. If you need me for anything, just ask me at any time! With thanks, 210physicq (c) 02:13, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Confused!!

Grr! I seem to be getting nowhere so far at embedding a banner; I expected it to be straightforward, but nesting it within a conditional seems to be a problem. Want to take a look at it and see if you have any ideas? The template page is here and the test page is here; feel free to tinker with them. --Scott McNay 04:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Psst! See Q up there under User talk:Rick Block#Update after documentation. --Scott McNay 03:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Re an old question

Deliberate, for the time being, to avert spam. I'll reconsider it, though. >Radiant< 12:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Shields/coat of arms question in the city infobox

Hello Rick,
Do you think you could address this question for Krm500. I couldn't figure it out the other night and I ran out of time tonight. —MJCdetroit 01:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:LA

Hi Rick Block. First, thanks for updating the list :) Next, I wanted to ask you something. Me and NoSeptember were just discussing this as a thought.. What if we could just merge the Active and Semi-active. I know thats a big change, but we were just thinking that there is hardly a barrier to manually update this list. If it was just Active and Inactive, there would be a set barrier to go by. Can I get your thoughts? — Moe 13:52, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Copied (and replied) to wikipedia talk:List of administrators. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:37, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello Rick,

I am still somwhat baffled as to how our VPRLC page differs to many pages that currently exist and are deemed suitable for the site. If you have a look at the Oxford Cavaliers (Rugby) page, you will see we have used the same format as them e.g History, Honours etc. Why is there page OK and ours is not? Our Club and Police Rugby League in Victoria has featured in many newspapers, police magazines and journals, Rugby League Weekly, the National Rugby League web site and more. We are not an 'unheard' of association and have broken ground in rugby league in Victoria and Australia. Our players have been involved in international test matches and helped paved the way for the sport in developing states. I have perused many of the pages covering various topics and fail to see why ours is not suitable. Cheers, VPRLC Committe.

RE POLICE RUGBY LEAGUE CLUB.

Can you tell me please how I can view my page (any of the three I have created, saved and had deleted. I have checked log but can't find it with a search. If I can make changes to one of these as you have suggested, then it should be suitable. VPRLC 08:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Bedfordshire template

I prefer the new version, it offers a smaller version of the template I originally created, tanks for your hard work. Lcarsdata (Talk) 18:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

I have awarded you The Template Barnstar on your userpage. Feel free to format it in any manner that you wish to match the others. Thanks for helping to improve all of Wikipedia's city pages. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 03:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Rick Block (talk) 03:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Large category template

Looks great. So perhaps it is time to use it to make {{LargeCategoryTOC}}. I'm going out of town for two weeks, but perhaps I'll undertake the task if you or someone else have not when I return. -- Samuel Wantman 06:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I started making it, but I don't understand how plainlinks work and how to make your template work with them. Perhaps you can take a look. I don't think I have enough time right now to finish the template, (I'm on a computer with a one hour limit). Once it is done we can try it on Category:Living people -- Samuel Wantman 18:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Police Rugby League

Hi Rick,

I have made some changes to the clubs page, particularly the beginning. Can you check it and see what you think. If it is okay, how do I get it back on to the site as a proper page?

Thanks. VPRLC 22:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps someone has an issue with it being a 'police' club! There is no reason it should not be allowed to go ahead as it is clearly no different to other existing pages. I have questioned the user who deleted it and await a reply. Thanks for your help. VPRLC 11:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Rick, can you please give me an idea of where things are at with my page? I am not too sure what happens now, or what else I need to do, other than throw the idea into the too hard basket. Could you check the talk page for the other user to see the latest. Thanks VPRLC 01:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC) Hi Rick,

I have followed up some of your suggestions but I am not having much joy. I will do what you said about putting it forward to have a consensus done re deletion. Can you please help me with this at all? Thanks VPRLC 03:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

see above request please. VPRLC 17:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Deleted posts

Please do not remove my posts from RD. Thanks--Light current 03:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, the regular Ref Desk contributors should be left to police themselves, and Admins should only get involved when the normal Ref Desk Talk Page discussions have resulted in a request for Admin assistance. StuRat 21:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The "regulars" have no exclusivity on this page. I'm not doing anything any other editor could do. I happen to be an admin, and have identified myself so that there aren't any misunderstandings. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hm...

I don't know of any method which works well on the Wiki other than to lead by example. Let's hope it works out in the long run. --HappyCamper 00:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Deletions

Hey Rick Dont start deleting peoples comments! Thanks! Otherwise maybe you could find yours deleted.--Light current 03:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, WTF

I'm having discussions at RD/talk with some of the regulars that I wouldn't have expected. I don't understand why the environment there has become hostile lately and certainly hope that I haven't inadvertently messed with someone's head. Any ideas? --hydnjo talk 09:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

RD tone

Just thought I'd drop a note to express appreciation for your efforts to improve the tone of the Reference Desks. I like a bit of wit as much as the next person, but some of the comments – particularly over the last little while – were getting a bit rude. As you've noted, the RD is a very public part of Wikipedia, and it's frequently visited by new editors who may be unfamiliar with our policies, our practices, our formatting, or for that matter with the English language. Mocking newcomers has all too often been mistaken for a sense of humour; I'm glad that you're helping to keep an eye on things. Cheers, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:38, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Yea...

I didn't even notice that yet, as I was about to post on the Reference-desk. You can delete it if you can. 68.39.174.238 01:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

User page for anon IP

Sorry, Rick, my mistake. I shouldn't have done it! --SunStar Net 09:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thanks for fixing a really annoying problem. Moving that footer back down to the bottom after every time someone posted a message was driving me nuts! I was going to have to lose my sanity or lose the footer. You saved me from doing either. Thanks man.   The Transhumanist   14:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

		The Technology Barnstar
		Is hereby awarded to Rick Block For customizing a footer using a specialized CSS trick I wouldn't have dreamed of in a 1000 years. It's like magic! Thank you!   The Transhumanist   14:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding "Contents" link to Main Page

Hi, Rick.

Thanks for helping out The Transhumanist and me with that pesky smiley talk page footer problem! Even when I was reading along with a CSS tutorial, I still couldn't follow exactly how the three divs were working together. Oh well, I stumbled across how to do a slight modification for my talk page anyway. :-)

When I came over here to thank you for that and noticed you're an admin, I thought I might as well hit you up for some other help while I'm at it. A discussion at Talk:Main Page#Proposal: add one or more of these links to the main page seems to show consensus to add a link to Contents at the top of the Main Page. To keep 800X600 displays on one line, this can be accomplished by removing the link to Searching, then adding the Contents link just to the left of Categories. However, no admin has stepped forward to add the link. David Levy suggested to me some other admins to ask, but so far no takers. Thanks for your consideration. Rfrisbie^talk 18:05, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

p.s. If you could say a thing or two about what each div does, I might learn something. :-) Rfrisbie^talk 00:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It does not work but the article got phased out after the normal 5 days

How do I add the following tag

<a name="Contents">

immediately before the Contents of the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics

As a regular visitor, I want to jump to the Contents as soon as possible but I do not know how to achieve this unless an HTML-tag is added OR a button is added at the top of the page BY YOU. Twma 01:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

   I've added a DIV with id="Contents", which makes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics#Contents link to the spot I think you want. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I clicked your above link four times with two different machines all indpendently, it went to the top of the required page, nowhere near the Contents table. Please try it yourself. Thanks. Twma 01:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

It is working now. Thanks. You may want to delete this whole entry. Twma 07:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

User:VPRLC

Hi Rick, I left the above user a message, per your request on the EA talk page. Hopefully it'll be of some use to him. Take care, riana_dzasta 11:54, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Large category TOC

Hi Rick,

Just wondering if it might make sense to subst the subtemplate in {{LargeCategoryTOC}}. It would make it much longer, but I'm guessing that it would speed things up. The list could then be shortened by removing combinations that rarely or never happen (like JX and QZ). What do you think? -- Samuel Wantman 06:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Ref Desk Block

If you were to block User:84.68.125.122 for disruption, I would support you. JBKramer 13:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

list of FA editors

Caould you add featured lists to your script, or create a separate page? It would be nice to honour those editors as well. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 20:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It's done in two steps, one that starts with the FAC logs to produce a table with a month's worth of the by-year lists like Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006 and another to parse the by-year lists to produce the WP:WBFAN table. It looks like Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured list nominations is done mostly by hand at this point. The first step could start with the featured list logs, but unlike the second step it's not fully automated (the logs aren't quite regular enough to reliably determine who the nominator is). What I actually do is run a script that parses the logs into an intermediate form which I check by hand against the actual logs, and then run another script using this intermediate form to generate the table format. After updating the by-year list, the second step is done with yet another script that reads all the by-year lists and generates the WP:WBFAN table. The second step is actually the easier one since it's fully automated, but it relies on the existence of the by-year lists. I'd be happy to make the scripts I use to generate these lists available, but don't think I can take on generating by-year lists for featured lists. If you (or anyone else reading these words) would like to, please let me know and I'll make the scripts available. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:39, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: Template:SCOTUSCase

Left comments on the template talk page. --MZMcBride 03:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

User page layout

Hi Rick, that's much better, thanks! I think I did something almost exactly like that earlier but I missed out the |'s on the end of the lines containing the formatting... oops. Thanks a lot for helping out, much appreciated. --YFB ¿ 19:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if you can help me again - for some reason there's a big gap between the intro text box and the three columns of contributions, which my table editing skills don't seem to be up to fixing. Would you mind having another look for me? Thanks =) --YFB ¿ 21:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Two things

I've been thinking of some templates to aid in navigating categories and categorization of articles. It is Radiant's talk page so perhaps you could take a look? Respond there if you feel like it.

I'm guessing you've been pretty busy recently. You seem to have missed my recent posting on your talk page which you archived without responding!

I hope all is well. -- Samuel Wantman 08:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look at Radiant's page. Things are fine, but I have been kind of busy. I recently spent a week in the UK on business, which has led to an extremely busy time at work. Sorry about archiving without responding - I simply missed that one. Rather than subst template:LargeCategoryTOC into cat:LP and change it to eliminate rare combinations, I think it might be better to create a version without the rare combinations (perhaps the default version should be the pruned one and the current version renamed LargeCategoryTOCFull or something). There still seem to be fair number of folks who absolutely hate the underlying template:Navigation bar. I'm not quite sure what to do with it at this point. Discussion on the talk page has pretty much stopped, but there's been no real consensus. I may list it at TfD to try to generate more discussion. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

addLoadEvent

Hi, one of your user scripts uses the addLoadEvent( func ) function (see [10]). This function will be removed from MediaWiki:Common.js soon. Please modify your scripts to use addOnloadHook( func ) instead. —Ruud 18:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Ask Marilyn

There wasn't much more to it than I mentioned in the article. The full text will be available on-line on Tuesady here. This version of the problem seems even more counter intuitive, since the same exact scenario has different odds depending upon what Monty Hall knew before he opened a door. The most disconcerting part of it was that the odds go from 2/3 to 1/2 because there are times when he guesses and opens the door on the car. In the example in the paper, that did not happen. So this is a good case for how the odds for something that could have happened in the past but didn't can still have an effect on what will happen next. I'm sure there'll be lots of discussion about it on the talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 09:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

The new US court template is wonderful. Thank you. Ratherhaveaheart 18:23, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Left project...

No, I really don't have any way to check that automatically. I'll remove this user, and when I get time I'll look all the users manually. Ral315 (talk) 05:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It is worth noting, however, that he just left the project last week. Usually, people like you notice them before they pile up too much. Ral315 (talk) 05:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, if you've got it lying around, I'll bug you for it (no hurry; feel free to send it via my talk page or e-mail when you have time to dig it up). Thanks. Ral315 (talk) 05:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

You've Earned Yourself Another Barnstar!

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		I, Persian Poet Gal, hereby award you this barnstar for all the kind and considerate help you have often offered to new users at the Help Desk :). ¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 04:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Category structure

I think Samuel's idea has merit; it worked fine for tagging cats as "self-reference" and such. I've created Wikipedia:Category structure for central discussion on the topic; please participate. Yours, (Radiant) 16:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Denver Metro

Like most metropolitan areas in the United States, the extent of the Denver Metropolitan Area is largely contextual and the subject of lively debate.

Most Colorado counties are extensive. The three suburban counties adjacent to the City and County of Denver are long and narrow, with high population densities at the end of county near Denver and very low population densities at the opposite end:

• Arapahoe County is 72 miles long and 4 to 12 miles wide.
• Jefferson County is 54 miles long and 4 to 18 miles wide. (The southwest corner of the county is a wilderness area.)
• Adams County is 72 miles long and 6 to 18 miles wide.

There are several overlapping, officially designated Denver metropolitan regions:

• Denver Metropolitan Core Counties – 4 counties with 2,013,234 population.
• Denver Regional Council of Governments – 9 counties with 2,600,697 population.
• Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area – 10 counties with 2,359,994 population.
• Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area – 12 counties with 2,869,377 population.
• Front Range Urban Corridor – 17 counties with 3,965,289 population.

There are many additional unofficial and quasi-official definitions of the Denver Metropolitan Area.

The Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area article started life as a Denver Metropolitan Area article. While the label Denver Metropolitan Area is almost universally used in the metro area, the name of the article was changed to Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area to coincide with the United States Census Bureau designated Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau also designated a Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area. The definition of the Denver Region used by the Denver Regional Council of Governments is the most common used locally.

I recommend that the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Area article be retained (and possibly renamed to the more popular Denver Metropolitan Area) for general information about Metropolitan Denver. The portions of the article that deal with a specific regional entity such as the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area or the Denver Regional Council of Governments should be moved to those articles. --Buaidh 22:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Re:Featured candidates by month

Oh I had no idea. I hope by making the list I didn't annoy you since some people enjoy performing some tasks themselves. I don't wanna take any work away from you if you enjoy doing it. If you wish for me to take over this process for any reason, I would be glad to use your scripts. Thanks. - Tutmosis 17:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for the response. I'm definetely interested and I'm running Windows. - Tutmosis 18:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I'll definetely check that out. - Tutmosis 18:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Template proofread

Hello Rick,
It's been a while. Can you do me a favor and please proofread this infobox template before I implement it. You can make comment about it and see an example of it here. Thanks. —MJCdetroit 02:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Ref desk cleanup, help needed

As a user who has expressed interest in dealing with misuse of the reference desk, you may be interested in my comments at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Where we stand and my new strategy for dealing with the problem at User:SCZenz/Reference desk comments. It will take help from many people in order to make it clear which behaviors aren't appropriate. -- SCZenz 03:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Albanian translation

I speak Albanian, and I'll translate Wikipedia talk:Searching#alban skenderaj for you by the end of the day. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

• Your translation is done. See here for the translation. Glad to have been of help - let me know if you need anything else. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 20:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Assistance w/ photo

Hello, I found you in the Wikipedia talk:Image use policy page and I just wanted some input on a photo I recently uploaded. You can find it here. I used the "work of a US gov't" fair-use tag but I think that might be incorrect. Could you let me know what you think? Thanks alot. Naufana : talk 00:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: My sig

Hi!

Q: Is there some reason you need a link to your contribs, or your current focus article?

A: I don't really care much either, and if you find it makes to code for the sig too large then I'd be happy to remove it. Really it's just a copycat thing: I've seen many people use 'contribs' links in their sigs, so I did the same.

Q: You're presumably trying to drum up interest in your current focus article with the other link.

A: I've just removed it.

Cheers, Yuser31415 06:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Denver

Are you complaining that I removed the same advertisement text that you removed (though I also removed the link to YouTube). Let's be clear. We get a spam link every three seconds. We are not even beginning to catch the ads that are going into articles posing as encyclopedic content. Perhaps if we were to deal with the problem instead of worrying about the feelings of spammers, we would make some headway. Danny 21:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

You use rollback for edits that are bad. It is all rather simple. In fact, I was around when rollback was instituted. Danny 04:49, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

When we get thirty thousand links a day, most of which are spam, as well as constant attempts to put advertising copy on our site--when SEO agencies have forums devoted to how to game Wikipedia--I am had-pressed to come to the conclusion that the people who are adding these links and ad copy are much better than the vandal that writes "poop" all over an article. They are simply cleverer. Danny 11:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry... -_-

I was'nt thinking straight when i did that. 12hernn 01:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC) P.S. my account name is now User:Animine, and your unknown origonal source quote came from Mark Twain.

Am I correct in assuming you're responding about this? And, if you have a source for Twain being the originator of the quote I'd love to have it. It sounds like Twain to me (maybe "hung" rather than "shot"), but I can't find it (and I've looked). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:59, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

On voting

As long as this kind of attitude continues, I see little hope for being able to move forward. I asked a couple questions I consider relevant- depending on the answers, maybe this needs to go to RFC or something. Friday (talk) 18:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Extra spaces in the infobox city template

Howdy RB,

We are having a minor problem with the Template:Infobox City and I was wondering if you could give it a look. I detailed the problem on my talk page and have some sandboxes set-up too. For the sake of a continous discussion could you please reply over there. Thanks, —MJCdetroit 01:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm looking at it. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rick. Thanks for your message. I tried working on this but the current complexity of Template:Infobox City is too high for my brain to handle. I tried some transformations but failed. I can't fix it. For my taste, this is out of control. --Ligulem 00:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you seen this?

It looks like a reasonable way to handle the large TOC problem without using scroll bars. What do you think? -- Samuel Wantman 22:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Hadn't seen it. I'm not much of a fan of the show/hide thing, but it seems to be proliferating. I still don't understand what the violent objection to the scrollbar thing is about. Given the very, very strong feelings the scrollbar seems to bring up, I suppose the show/hide thing is probably a better idea. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

"geography" class

I have removed this from the stylesheet. There is no reason why a couple of infoboxes need their own separate styling. The infobox class is to give infoboxes a consistent look. We should also not be overriding skin colours. Feel free to create more semantic classes such as the "mergedrows" subclasses to create the layout you need, but don't use subject-specific names. All colours should be put in monobook.css (these will be grey, grey and grey...). ed g2s • talk 17:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

santa says...

Hey Rick, happy xmas/holidays !! - Abscissa 12:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Friday

When, exactly, are you going to do something to stop them from harassing Friday, I wonder? Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

My talk page

If you wish me to disengage from the users in question, I call on you to enforce my ban on them from taunting me on my talk page. Failure to enforce this will likley result in me reengaging. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I expect that you will take corrective action if he fails to listen you you adequately. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so

You know, I unwatched all of the pages this was going on at - I unwatched friday, unwated the reference desk talk page, unwatched everything. But, even after all of that, I still get to see this, because I didn't unwatch the actual reference desks themselves (which I will not do). I am considering acting agressively, but would like your opinion on the appropriate level of agression. Thanks. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You certainly are giving him a lot of chances to keep taunting me. Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Analysis

Rick, I got your message on my talk page and will respect it. However, I do not understand why User:Hipocrite is allowed to behave the way he does and I believe that the comment you removed was truthful and I will be glad to provide diffs as evidence if you will ban him from harassing Reference Desk editors. There are multiple administrators that see his comments and attacks and do nothing, giving the appearance of approval of his actions. -THB 23:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The type of baiting and insults that User:Hipocrite posts would have resulted in a ban long ago, had it been done by an inclusionist. StuRat 23:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I am less interested in the past than in the present and future. Hipocrite has agreed to remove himself from the situation. That's good enough for me. I know he is watching this page and I urge him to not comment in this thread. I do not condone the behavior of nearly anyone involved in any of this. I know you, THB, think you were unfairly blocked and I suspect LC thinks he was as well. You're pursuing action on this through the Friday recall, which I assume you realize is being taken seriously (even if it turns out not to have the result you're interested in). This situation has been far too hot for far too long. Please try to help cool things off. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Rick Block, generally I say what I think and I don't know why anyone assumes that I think I have been unfairly blocked and I wish someone would please show me where I wrote that. I haven't commented on that either way, either time I've been blocked, at least that I recall. I can't speak for Light current.

This statement by you and so many others trivializes why this petition was submitted. There has been serious mistreatment of editors by a few admins plus Hipocrite and it has gone completely unaddressed.

I'm not just concerned about the particular incident this morning. Hipocrite is constantly uncivil and makes personal attacks and nasty comments and games the rules and is frequently reported by many people from all over the encyclopaedia. Admins see his comments and do nothing. He's on a crusade and no one stops him. If someone neutral went through a couple of pages of his "contributions" word for word he'd be permanently blocked from Wikipedia. He doesn't contribute to the encyclopedia, but trys to act as a hall monitor.

Frankly, if Hipocrite, Radiant and SCZenz were subject to recall as editors or administrators, Friday would have been fourth on the list, not the only one. What I have seen condoned here by so many is appalling. There have been no changes in behavior and no apologies. The irony is that Hipocrite might actually believe he is helping the encyclopaedia when he is incapable of seeing just how much he hurts it. -THB 01:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have assumed something that might not be true (I must have misinterpreted these comments). Mistreatment by admins is a serious allegation. Is this strictly in reference to the actions at the reference desk over the past month or two, or is there more to it than this? And, would you include me in your list of abusive admins (just checking)? Like I've suggested to StuRat, help is available from a variety of sources (for example, Wikipedia:Association of Members' Advocates).

I'm not going to comment on the behavior of the specific folks you've mentioned, although like I said above I do not condone the behavior of nearly anyone involved. I'd be willing to bet that everyone involved (not just Hipocrite) believes they're helping the encyclopedia. Is this something we can all agree on? It might not be much, but maybe it's a start. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that SCZenz and Friday believe they're helping the encyclopaedia and that they generally do, but sometimes act inappropriately. I don't have an opinion on Radiant about his beliefs but see him act inappropriately.

Hipocrite may believe he is helping but his actions are so out of line with so many guidelines and policies and general standards of human interaction that with him I believe it is irrelevant whether he thinks he is acting for good or not because his actions are so contrary to that. Look over his contributions. He is only here to be antagonistic. He makes no contributions to the substance of the encyclopaedia. Worse, he drives off good editors. At the risk of being accused of personal attack, he just seems downright hateful, as my mother would have said. -THB 02:04, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't answer all of your questions. I am still capable of assuming good faith with you. The abusive editors I named. It has been concerned with the Ref. Desk. My comment you misinterpreted was to StuRat about what is considered consensus and was not even a criticism of Bishonen. I would also have to say I don't know Lars but from what I have seen so far he is extremely appropriate to act as clerk and I also must praise Friday's behavior in the face of the recall petition. Others would have reacted differently. -THB 02:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I will also say it's about time someone started commenting on Hipocrite's behavior. He's out of control, a rogue editor. -THB 02:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Hippocrit

I thought he had promised to stay out of things yet postings from him are appearing. So why did you delete my post to his page/--Light current 02:59, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

He explicitly asked you not to post there. I'm trying to keep the two of you from doing things you might both regret. If you look, you'll see I've asked him not to revert your changes. Good enough? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Removal of Content

Hey... You removed some content I put on the MH problem page despite the fact that it was being discussed, your questions were addressed, and you offered no counter argument.

Let's discuss this at talk:Monty Hall problem. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Greetings: there's further discussion on WP:AN/I about this incident. Let me know what you think. Antandrus (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Category intersection (again)

I'm still thinking about this, and thought of a way to handle the server problems. I've posted the idea on Radiant!'s talk page. Comment there if you'd like. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 09:10, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of CI, take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Categorization. They are going wide with the desire to chop all the categories into tiny bits. I don't know if I can restrain them. This is maddening! -- Samuel Wantman 10:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• See my talk page. >Radiant< 13:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)