User talk:Sdsds/Archive Oct 2007

Thank You

Hopefully, my early efforts to tag articles for the {{WPSpace}} is more helpful than frustrating (causing you more work due to unclassified or misclassified articles). I appreciate your recent post on my talk page. - Ageekgal 05:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello Sdsds, Ageekgal has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Go on, smile! Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

- Ageekgal 05:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome, and "no worries!" One of the nicest things about an all-volunteer colaboration is that no one can cause anyone else work -- we're all free to just let it go undone if we prefer. Anyway I was happy to WP:AGF regarding your tagging of WPSpace articles.... (sdsds - talk) 05:25, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

LOL Silly, it isn't bad form, that is not "my" userbox, it is a template for the community, I didn't make it, and I welcome and completely appreciate your addition of the code that adds the category to sub pages, I honestly would have never thought to do that, you rock! ^Ariel♥Gold 03:41, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, just one thing, you might want to place a note on the template explaining to users how to add the category, if they do want it to show, and how to hide it if they wish, using the parameters you added. Would help for people who don't know the syntax stuff, I think. ~*Hug*~ ^Ariel♥Gold 03:46, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay just realized it added the category, not removed it, lol. ~*Bonks head*~ Either way, I don't mind and actually really appreciate you adding me to the category, I didn't even realize it wasn't doing it because the box was on a subpage, and you still rock! ^Ariel♥Gold 03:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank-you for your good-heartedness, in this as in so much else! I took your suggestion and put a "Usage" section on the template page, BTW. Good idea! (sdsds - talk) 04:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Saw that, and formatted that a bit. Can you take a look at the userbox that I did create, {{Template:User HSF Project}}, and see if that needs to be tweaked as well, if you get the time? Pretty pretty please? Thanks! ^Ariel♥Gold 04:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, and I have a question, I'd like to add the userbox to Wikipedia:WikiProject Human Spaceflight, just so users can see what it looks like ahead of having to click on the template, but it is automatically adding that page to the category, which is a bit... redundant? I've tried using the parameter |nocat=true but that didn't work, do you have any idea how to fix it? I'll add the userbox, but if you can go fix it so it isn't adding the project page into the category, that would be excellent. Thanks! ^Ariel♥Gold 04:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

You give my skills at this more credit than they are due! The way I can see to do this is to modify the userbox so it only adds pages to the category if they are in the "User:" namespace. Somewhere there's documentation for how to determine the namespace of the current page.... I'll take a look! (sdsds - talk) 04:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I have faith in you! I'm sure you'll figure out how to make it work. Perhaps you don't give yourself enough credit! Hee hee. ^Ariel♥Gold 05:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

See? You did it! That category is not showing up on the project page anymore, yay! Thank you so much! ^Ariel♥Gold 05:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your confidence! Please see my followup description of the changes at Template talk:User HSF Project. (sdsds - talk) 05:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, please forgive my stupidity, but could you explain the (use |info-lh if provided) thing? I get that it has something to do with line height, but what line? And what height? The text? How it is displayed? I am of course, not saying that's not a valid thing, but just I'd like to understand how that parameter is used, or why. And I think you're rocking with these template things, Mr. Modesty! (Eeep, I am assuming Mr. - Apologies if you're a girl like me) ^Ariel♥Gold 06:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I offer as an example of info-lh the userboxes at User:Sdsds/Userboxes. By giving info-lh=1.05 (rather than the default, which is something like 1.25), the lines of "info" text are squished together more.

(No need for apologies -- assume anything you like! ;-) (sdsds - talk) 06:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay does that mean the text itself, or the padding between the edges of the box and the start of the text? Or does it mean the distance from the top of a letter, to the top of the box? Sorry if I'm not getting this, I tried to compare the two versions, pre and post your revision, but I saw no difference at all. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right thing? ^Ariel♥Gold 07:16, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it might not do anything, depending on one's browser. Do the examples at User:Sdsds/Userboxes/Sandbox all look the same when viewed with your browser? (sdsds - talk) 07:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep, the box height is the variable, okay so that's the horizontal height. Normally I use a different format when I make my userboxes, so I specify height specifically, but with that box, I used the standard template (not sure why lol) so that explains it, thanks! And thank you for fixing it, too! ^Ariel♥Gold 07:29, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I was apparently overly confident after all! Some of my changes involved "white space" (spaces, newlines, etc.) in the template, which unfortunately can make a difference in layout in some circumstances which I don't really understand. I've gone back and removed a bunch of whitespace from the templates. They're now ugly to read, but seem to layout properly again. (sdsds - talk) 08:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I was following your changes, but I honestly didn't notice any difference between revisions, so maybe with Firefox that stuff isn't visible, I dunno. Either way they look good to me! Hee hee ^Ariel♥Gold 08:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Eeep!

Wikipedia:WikiProject Human Spaceflight: You're making me feel like an old woman! LOL I honestly can't really read that middle box at all'. Granted, I run at 1600 resolution, but hoooooo boy is that text teeny tiny! lol. Nice job on showing all the awesome varieties you've come up with! ^Ariel♥Gold 06:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's small. But on my screen the text of the two smaller versions remain within the height of the (also small) image. (At least with my browser doing its "normal" text size view.) By the way, the info_s parameter lets you set the text size larger too! (sdsds - talk) 07:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue III - September 2007

The September 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 01:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Image in portal box

I noticed the trouble you are having with the image in Spaceflight portal box, I posted a request for help in the Village Pump [1] for the correct format. --Statsone 14:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It was really frustrating. A given image size would work (i.e. appear) for awhile correctly. Then I would go and change several portal boxes and -- presto -- it would stop working in all of them! My assumption at this point is that it is somehow a flaw in the way the server is caching scaled-down images.... (sdsds - talk) 17:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Chinese launch site spellings

I think that continuing to avoid areas of conflict on these words is probably the way to go. Here in the UK, "centre" is the only form of the word regularly used, and "center" is only ever used when refering to US places by name. As for further discussion, we could revive the brief discussion that we had over the topic on WT:TLS when it came up as an issue during the implementation of standardised spellings and date formats. I think it might be a good idea to try using this principle for all disputed spellings in space articles (and specifically articles relevant to WP:TLS), not just Chinese ones. Basically, I think that a policy of avoiding disputed spellings wherever possible should be implemented for the portal, and also for TLS. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 23:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Stanley Dunin question

Hi there, thanks for commenting on this AfD. Would it be possible for you to have a look for any sources that discuss this man's contributions to spaceflight? The problem we are having is that claims are made in the article and backed by citations to obscure and hardly-cited papers that we can't access. High quality secondary sources would solve this problem entirely. Thanks and all the best Tim Vickers 18:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tim. I agree with your assessment: claims are made that are difficult to verify. Please recognize I am not an expert in the field of space exploration, but only an amateur scholar with an avid interest in the subject and a desire to help Wikipedia cover the available historical material. Please also recognize that at the time, the problems of spacecraft guidance were considered both difficult and important. If Dunin did in fact help develop spacecraft guidance techniques both for GEO satellites and lunar landings, the claim of notability is "true", based on the (selfish) measure: "I would want to know about that." I note there is as yet no article on Spacecraft guidance, much less one on the History of spacecraft guidance. If those articles existed, I might be tempted to support an effort to merge the Dunin bio into that topic. Of course that would require omitting some of the material currently in the bio, but by my above-described selfish measure, that would be OK with me. <grin> (sdsds - talk) 19:58, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting on this. To be honest I am extremely sceptical of the truth of this article, but the truth is difficult to determine. What is certain is that this article is unverifiable with the current references. Tim Vickers 22:25, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Although I share quite a bit of your skepticism, I don't understand your assertion that the claims regarding spacecraft guidance are unverifiable. The papers available from NTRS which I listed on the article's talk page show that the papers mentioned in the bio were in fact written and/or presented. Anyone with access to an extremely complete collection of spacecraft-related research (which doesn't include either of us) could find them. Or anyone could write to this still-living author and request copies of his work. Didn't that process used to be common in academia? (sdsds - talk) 22:34, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm using "unverifiable" here as a polite way of saying "bu****it". Either this is the wrong reference, or the claim is a simple falsification. I cannot believe that somebody could calculate something so important and only publish it three years after a satellite has been launched. That simply doesn't sound plausible. Tim Vickers 22:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I share your belief that the article currently mischaracterizes this work. I think it likely the article is about orbital station-keeping not oribtal insertion. Wikipedia coverage of the Syncom satellites (BTW, Syncom 2 was first to acheive GEO, not 1) glosses the fact that ... GEO works in theory but not in practice, i.e. satellites drift out of GEO due to subtle influences e.g. of the Moon's gravitational pull. Did Dunin address this early (even '66 would be early) based on experience gained with the first GEO satellite? We can't tell from what material is readily available. I think we both sense this work was not what motivated the addition of the bio to Wikipedia. That the editor apparently got it wrong is evidence of an apparently cavalier unconcern for veracity. I do not want to "reward" that. But I do not want to throw out the baby with the bath water, either. (sdsds - talk) 22:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, without reliable sources there is no baby. I'm all for pulling the plug. Tim Vickers 00:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Delta

Greetings... I have posted a (much-belated) answer to your question regarding the National Space Vehicle Program and Delta at Talk:Delta_rocket. Kevin Forsyth 17:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

de facto relationships in Australia

Hi Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the marriage talk page. To avoid a derail of the discussion there, i'll quickly comment on your question: "In Australia, are "solemnized marriages" perceived as the only fully valid marriages, and "de-facto marriages" seen as somehow having lesser validity?" The common law marriage#Australia page you linked to summarises it well in the last line: " Most laws dealing with taxation, social welfare, pensions, etc. treat de-facto marriages in the same manner as solemnized marriages." So, technically, yes, solemnised marriages are seen as having somewhat more validity, but, in practice, not in many circumstances. I suspect gay de facto couples feel the differences a little more than heterosexual de facto couples, but have only the opinions of a few friends on which this opinion is based. WotherspoonSmith 13:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)