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Talk back

Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Essay

Very nice. Do you want to volunteer for any other British colloquialisms? WP:TRIPE, WP:TWADDLE and WP:BOLLOCKS spring to mind, and that is just me, neglecting the extensive Malleus lexicon. Yikes, preview tells me we already have something for WP:BOLLOCKS Might need a rethink there but I need to read it first.- Sitush (talk) 00:42, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

"Put up or shut up" is not a "British colloquialism". Take your false equivalences elsewhere, please. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:11, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

User recovery template

Oh, now i get it. its shorthand for including this paragraph, to save typing. for some reason, this wasnt obvious to me, now it is. sorry i didnt catch that. i havent seen the template function used in this manner before. I was thinking about userboxes indicating a person is an advocate for personal recovery, and just couldnt see what this was for. thanks for helping.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 07:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Your edits to Help:Infobox

In this edit, you stated "use a more up-to-date infobox example". But both Norwegian Elkhound and Norwegian Lundehund use the same {{Infobox dog breed}}, so how can one be more up-to-date than the other? -- DanielPenfield (talk) 00:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Because the example is a static image of the infobox, and {{infobox dog breed}} has been completely rewritten between the first and second images being taken (which is why the output looks so different). That the dog breed depicted in the two differs is incidental (I happened to have the Lundehund page loaded in a different tab at the time). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:53, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

AH problems

Problems have come to my attention as a result of the AH move you "proposed" a couple months ago. As a matter of formal record, in that discussion you promised to address and fix any issues that may arise. Please provide as soon as possible your plan to address and fix all issues. Thank you. Gimmetoo (talk) 14:14, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

This? That's a social rather than a technical problem. Gerda Arendt prefers that your bot use the template's new name, and you don't; either actually works perfectly well. or are you referring to a different problem? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:31, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you not aware of the problems surrounding this template? Please provide as soon as possible your plan to identify, address and fix all issues. Tbank you. Gimmetoo (talk) 15:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Who exactly do you think is going to consider this deliberately obtuse "communication" as a good-faith effort to report problems? Either explain what the problem is or point to where it's been highlighted. If you do neither, I wouldn't expect any reasonable third party to consider me to have reneged on my promise. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:07, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking of edits such as this which I am sure you are aware of, because it's one of your edits. Gimmetoo (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

So far as I can see the template is still working exactly as planned in that revision (and in the current revision of the same page). So what's the actual problem, and how is it impacting on the project? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:52, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

You asserted your "proposed" change would have no effect on any script. You were wrong. It affects my script. No more games, You made a formal promise. What is your plan? Gimmetoo (talk) 17:52, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

In what way does that edit affect your script? Programatically the output is identical save for some repositioning. Do you have a log file with some detail? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 18:34, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

The script does not recognize the template on that page. That's a serious problem. And that you are making such edits yourself is a behavioral issue that needs addressing. Gimmetoo (talk) 18:41, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I made edits like that for several years prior to the move: the {{article history}} redirect has existed since at least August 2010. If you are saying that your bot recognises only ArticleHistory and not article history then that implies that the bot has been missing these for over two years. The first thing to note here is that the page move has not caused this problem, but simply highlighted it. The second is that it should be a trivial fix to the bot code to be able to handle either (and other redirects such as {{articlehistory}}, if the bot presently misses them as well). If you can point at the bot source code I'll be happy to look into that issue and either fix it directly or endeavour to find another editor who can. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:00, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

At the point of the move there were 21 instances of "article history" in use, and as I recall only 2 of them were your edits, and they were quite recent (the rest being someone else's edits in February-April 2012 as I recall). In addition to creating inconsistency which causes more branches and more code that would need to be maintained, you also format the template name with spaces. Now how to you plan to fix the issues you created? Gimmetoo (talk) 20:14, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the above establishes that this isn't a new issue, nor one caused by the page move. (in fact, as the example code in the template doc uses the old title, new instances of it should still work if people follow the documentation.) The root cause is that the bot only checks for invocations of "ArticleHistory" and yet there are long-standing convenience redirects at other titles. I am more than happy to work on the bot's code to check for additional titles if you point me at the relevant source. That was the promise I made at the time. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:21, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

There may be "convenience redirects" but 21 instances, 19 of which were installed 6 months earlier, and 2 installed by you at the time of your proposal, show that they weren't being used. It is your move proposal, and your edits that created more of these uses. Dealing with any of those options would create more branches. You promised to fix all issues. Since you don't have the code, how do you plan to fix issues? Gimmetoo (talk) 23:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Access to the code is implicit to my being able to directly fix the code. If that's not possible, then the best that can be done is to add a notice to the template documentation detailing the bug (which, as noted, was present before the page move and is not correlated to it). I'll do that tomorrow. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:03, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

There is no bug. Code does not need to be written to handle non-existent conditions. The problem most certainly is a result of your move "proposal", during which you unequivocally stated the the move would not affect any scripts or bots, and formally promised to fix any issues that may result. You can fix the problem by moving the template back to the name it had for years, and which was consistently used on the wiki prior to your actions. Gimmetoo (talk) 00:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

It's a bug. There's a well-described situation in which GimmeBot fails to notice an {{article history}} template; that situation has a trivial remedy in the form of checking for alternative titles (as User:AnomieBOT does when dating maintenance templates, for example). Had I access to fix that bug myself I would do so. But regardless of that, it has nothing to do with the page move; there had been a redirect at that title for at least two years and articles had been using it prior to the move. Moreover, the move does not affect in any way GimmeBot's ability to add {{article history}} to articles that don't already use it, nor to update those which use the old title. We're going round in circles here. I'm going to post to WP:VP/T with technical details on this issue; please follow up there instead of here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Now done: please follow up at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#user:GimmeBot and template:article history. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 00:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Moving talk page

Dear Chris, on Nov 16th, you moved Preference tests (animals) to Preference test. Unfortuantely, the Talk page was not also moved at the same time. I do not know how to do this, and I believe this requires administrator status. Please can you assist.__DrChrissy (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Moving the talk page would not require admin rights, as talk:preference test is currently empty. However, I'm not actually sure the article had a talk page at its old title to be moved: are you sure that one existed? I've checked both the deletion logs and our contributions lists from that period and can't find any reference to such a page. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:57, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

OK - perhaps one never existed - thanks for looking into it for me. __DrChrissy (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: San Francisco burrito

I removed the drive-by tagging. I would be happy to help "rewrite" the article to meet any concerns you might have, but you will have to detail them on the talk page. The more specific you can be, the easier it will be. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 00:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

"Notable taquerias"? Really? Simply removing that section would probably do the trick. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:00, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The section is sourced and these taquerias are world-famous. The only problem with this section at the moment is that it is somewhat narrow in scope. In other words, it needs expansion. I see that you are currently in Scotland. Are you aware of the history of the San Francisco burrito and its importance in California culinary history? It has an entire subculture as well as a 51 year-old history and an enormous amount of sources. The topic itself is a subset of the Mission District and San Francisco/California cuisine articles. Describing the notable taquerias here is no different than any number of our articles that describe notable attractions and landmarks. Viriditas (talk) 10:44, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I have never seen a section consisting of restaurant reviews, especially of current restaurants, which was written in a style more appropriate for an encyclopedia than for a restaurant / travel guide. It's an elementary style problem in an (otherwise well-written) article. I'm not sure what qualifications you expect me to pull out, here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:00, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the quality of the article has been greatly weakened over the last few years due to multiple editors adding and removing material, so the current version needs a lot of work. Looking at the current section in question, I don't see any reviews or style problems. I see three listings, one for El Faro, a claimant for the original Mission burrito style dating back to 1961, another for La Taqueria, a famous taquerias notable for the "super" burrito style, described in prose, noting their unique stylistic variation of not adding rice. I do notice that it also mentions what kind of drinks they serve, which is superfluous. Then we have a listing for El Farolito, noting the types of customers and other items. Some of this can be trimmed, but the cultural aspects of the people who buy Mission burritos is part of the topic. Viriditas (talk) 11:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

At the very least it needs completely reformatted. A tag helps editors interested in that sort of work to locate areas that they can help with. As I usually say to people, a tag is as much a reminder to myself as to anyone else, and while "drive-by tagging" has a low reputation with some I reckon I've got a pretty good track record of eventually doing the work myself if nobody else steps up. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:12, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose everyone has a different approach. Best practice is to list the problems on the talk page and tag the main article if you can't fix it yourself. I think part of the problem is that most people have no idea how huge the San Francisco burrito subculture is, how long it has been active, and how influential it has been on cuisine in the United States and in the rest of the world. One source claimed that these types of burritos might very well be the heaviest fast food in the world. Some Mission burritos can weigh in at anywhere from 1-2 pounds. Viriditas (talk) 11:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I am not arguing that discussion of the culture surrounding the subject is not notable. I am stating that a section which consists of a big table of illustrated blurb on selected restaurants makes the article look like a travel guide, and that this needs cleaned up. One does not need an advanced degree in burritology to come to that conclusion. For what it's worth, an advanced degree in burritology would have the best coursework ever. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:25, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

We actually have lots of articles, both good and featured, which use a similar layout (images and descriptive captions) to describe historical points of interest, attractions, and landmarks. Is there a reason you are singling this particular article out? I don't see it as a "travel guide", but rather as an encyclopedia article about food history and regional cuisine. Yes, changes can be made and the article can be improved. Viriditas (talk) 11:31, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, I eliminated the section per your request and merged the images into other sections while trimming the captions. If I restore the section, I'll follow best practices from GA and FA articles. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 12:32, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Great. Cheers. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:12, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

COM stale drafts

Thanks for taking the time to see and explain what COM was doing (i guess you remember, i just found these and figured it out). assuming good faith on behalf of another editor, as many commenters are doing in these discussions, is a fantastic policy, EXCEPT when the editor in question is clearly acting in bad faith, as COM obviously was back then. Also, thanks for your comments on blanking userpages (i didnt know there was a template, thats a very polite thing to do, i think ive left personal notes if ive done it at all). I agree, blanking is more of a courtesy, easily reversed, to keep info up to date on pages not easily confused with articles, and even sometimes to alert editors they have old info floating around. stale forks of articles, i have found, are enthusiastically supported for deletion by the actual user, once they are notified of it, if they are good editors. In case you were curious, i went through every COM/ page i could find, and chose CSD if completely in violation of policy (they rescued content just prior to deletion on some, even after voting to delete, and even said what they were doing in their comments), or MFD (if there a good faith userfication from an admin), as appropriate, being careful to check for any signs that might justify my just recreating an article. i didnt find anything.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 21:06, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Yeah, I remember CoM from his very early editing history. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:23, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

All the...

...best to you and yours in this season and the ones to come!

From Portugal, keep it up --AL (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Buttered toast phenomenon

I noticed you left a notability tag on this article. Why do you think its not notable? -- YPNYPN ✡ 16:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

It's less a scientific phenomenon and more a whimsical observation. Being the subject of an Ig Nobel Prize thesis is not, so far as I can see, an adequate claim of standalone notability. (Much of this also applies to buttered cat paradox.) Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:31, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:Official website icon

Hello. Thanks for your input here: . I don't understand the point you're making, however – almost certainly because I'm still pretty new to all this – so could you unpack it for me? CsDix (talk) 19:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

You wanted to have a comment added after {{official website}} in the style of {{registration required}}. The latter is a warning; the former is simply a note, and isn't really required, so your request was declined. it was therefore inappropriate to create a new template for the same purpose. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you're saying now. However, that's not what I had in mind. I've commented accordingly back at the thread linked above. Thanks for clarifying. CsDix (talk) 11:55, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Your submissions at RfD

Hello. I have been cleaning up old deletion candidates and I have come across two which you have nominated for deletion but an error appears to have occurred. Gallery of flags with animals and Gallery of religious symbols both have deletion tags but neither appear to be on the RfD log. I have done some digging and found that Twinkle appears to have added one nomination over another, these are the edits: here and here. I am letting you know so you can either re nominate them/add them to the log, or remove the deletion tag if you don't feel they should be deleted anymore. -- Patchy1 09:03, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Eek. Thanks; I'll renominate these and log a bug with Twinkle. Sorry for any trouble caused. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Not a problem, I was working my way through this database report and found them. I know its often hard, sometimes very hard, to find these kinds of mistakes unless you know its happened and are looking for them or someone else points them out. -- Patchy1 10:48, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Honorfics in Infobox officeholder

Could you revisit Template talk:Infobox officeholder#Formatting of name & honorifcs, please? A bot is removing the inline markup from instances of the template (see progress reports on my talk page) and there is a renewed debate about how the template should format its content. Conversion to {{Infobox}} may help. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Season's tidings!

To you and yours, Have a Merry ______ (fill in the blank) and Happy New Year!FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:43, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Holiday cheer

		Holiday Cheer
		Michael Q. Schmidt is wishing you Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings.

Cookies for you!

		Viriditas is wishing you Happy Holidays!
		Enjoy your cookies and have a great 2013!

"some dunging out"

You added a {tooshort} template to the Asus Eee PC article per 12:43, 31 October 2012 (as part of a greater edit), but you did not provide any clues specifically regarding this addition.

I'm scanning the text without finding anything obvious, so I'll return in some time to remove the template unless there's some discussion by that time. (Such as: What are your misgivings regarding the article's lead? What do you feel is missing? Alternatively, are there any details you feel doesn't belong in a lead?) Cheers, CapnZapp (talk) 16:40, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's only six sentences long, and as such omits any mention of vast sections of the article body. In particular, the "history" and "hardware" sections of the article (both several pages long) are assigned a single sentence each in the present lead. It needs significant expansion. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Infobox referendum

This is scary: {{Infobox referendum}}. All the best for 2013. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:52, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh my. There's also {{infobox Referendum pending with map}}, {{infobox Referendum approved with map}} and {{infobox Referendum rejected with map}} (just from the doc page referenced in the creation summary). Looks like this needs thorough investigation. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:22, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

And {{Infobox Referendum with detailed key}}. Transclusions and, FWIW, dates of creation & last (trivia excepted) edit:

• {{Infobox referendum}} = 27; 17 July 2009‎; 7 May 2011‎
• {{infobox Referendum pending with map}} = 1; 25 December 2008‎; 28 December 2008‎
• {{infobox Referendum approved with map}} = 15; 24 December 2008‎; 15 July 2009‎
• {{infobox Referendum rejected with map}} = 20; 24 December 2008‎; 6 November 2009‎
• {{Infobox Referendum with detailed key}} = 7; 8 May 2011‎; 8 May 2011‎

Also, note the use of red/ green to distinguish data types - that;s inaccessible to people with the commonest form of colour-blindness. Clearly ripe for merging and improvement. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Gee

Can you expand on your LEAD tag in Gee (navigation). What do you feel needs to be expanded on? (generally you should put an explanation in the check-in note, otherwise its difficult for other editors to understand the context of the tag) Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The bit of extra context you added helped. I've removed the tag. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Free software, Stallman and advocacy/promotion by these

Hi there Thumperward, I feel you may have misunderstood the paragraphs (which you cleared), about the advocacy/promotion of the ethical and social rationale behind Free Software, a topic which is one of the most defining things about Richard Stallman. In including these paragraphs in the relevant articles, it is not I who is doing any adovcacy or promotion. Rather: the article mentions the strong advocacy, promotion and activism of Richard Stallman, who coined the term "Free Software" particularly to refer to ethical and social reasons behind the freedom rights that Free Software grants its users. To make it clear, I refer you to the following speech by Richard Stallman:

What your views are that’s for you to decide. You might agree with the FSF, you might agree with the open source movement, you might disagree with us both; it’s up to you. But I’d like to invite you to support the Free software movement. After you’ve had a chance to think about the issues. and if you _do_ support us, please wave our banner. Our banner is the term “free software”. If you support the movement free software, say so by using the term free software. Its one of the ways to keep us in the public awareness so that our views and principles will be visible to people and they will have the chance to think whether they agree or not. Because the open source movement tends to get more support and businesses and those businesses tend to use their terminology and because they don’t criticise the practice of proprietary software their views are easier. They are less challenging ethically. So they get a lot of supporters who are not prepared to consider the ethical issues that we in the free software movement raise. So the result is that their name is heard more and we often get forgotten. If we were to raise this ethical issues so that people can think about it we need to get heard and you can help us with that by raising our banner the term “Free software”.

"Transcripts from the Speech of Richard M. Stallman at the Madras Institute of Technology, Chromepet, Chennai; 13th, March, 2002"

source (original source)

Richard Stallman founded the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and his advocacy and activism also permeate those two organisations (well one is a project, but it also has strong views). So it most definately is important to mention this stong activism and advocacy. In fact, because Stallman and Free Software push ethical issues so heavily, they are heavily criticised for this by some people such as ESR (, ).

So I hope the articles can be polished up to show this. Thanks. Hnfiurgds (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox, and articles on people and organisations are not supposed to be written from the point of view of those subjects. I am intimately familiar with the FSF's positions and with the rather uniquely boilerplate way in which they are officially represented. It is entirely possible to explain what Stallman, GNU and the FSF stand for without having to fill articles with large sections which are either direct quotes of or extremely thinly paraphrased from the FSF's official documents. That is how we treat every single other biography or organisation. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, ok. But wouldn't you agree that Stallman's (FSF's) very strong activism and promotion are missing from the article's lead? I mean: it's the defining thing about him, right? So we need a way of mentioning it. Of course we can say it in ways that are not from FSF's own documents, or not from Stallman's own words. But on the other hand: do consider that we should source things, and when trying to describe what an organisation of person thinks, it's best to source (WP:V) information from there directly (as references). Of course we can write it quite differently, combining it with ESR's criticism (as linked above) for example, and others' views, etc. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

So my reply to your statement "articles on people and organisations are not supposed to be written from the point of view of those subjects", is: ok right, but the articles should describe and characterize the point of views of those subjects, thus allowing the reader to realize the views that these subjects have. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

If there is one single thing that our coverage of free software does not suffer from, it is underrepresentation of the official positions and goals of Stallman, GNU and the FSF. Our coverage can certainly be improved, but we do not lack for long paragraphs explaining what free software is, how much time Stallman and the FSF have spent fighting for it et cetera.. Nonetheless, the material that was added to the GPL article, for instance, has proven of great use in improving it once taken out of the lead and incorporated more closely into the article. So thanks for that. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Well I just searched the article Free Software for the word "ethic", "social", and "cooperation" and did not find it. And Stallman's goal and activism/promotion of social and ethical cooperation (in computer use) as rationale of free software (the four freedoms) should be in the lead of the Stallman article. What else do you think Stallman is about anyway!? Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

But there are some articles on that can possibly be merged. Examples are Free Software and Free Software Movement; or GNU Project and GNU. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we probably need more personal insight into the ethical motivations behind free software somewhere. It's a balancing act. We also have too many articles on overlapping subjects (although personally I like having two separate articles on GNU and the GNU Project as I feel that the former should more directly concentrate on the historic desire for a once-unknown 100% free software system, while the latter is on a project probably more widely known for individual components). Feel free to start proposals where you feel improvements are required. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Templates: vertical vs horizontal

Hello. Please don’t change template code from vertical to horizontal format. That makes the page code less readable (it’s harder to find where something in the template begins or ends), and a giant diff with that. Leave at least some line breaks in. --AVRS (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

If you're not going to provide any indication of what template you're talking about then I can't provide specifics, but in general the hlist format has been widely accepted and in general results in far more compact and therefore readable templates (particularly on lower-resolution devices). If you're talking about breaking hlists up in the middle with line breaks (again, I don't know, because you haven't deigned to tell me what template you're talking about) then that breaks the markup; instead of having a relatively sane single list element per table row there are then several. In that case they should be split to separate data rows, not simply fragmented with arbitrary line breaks. Happy to provide more details if you point me at a template that concerns you. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I am talking about your “general wikification throughout” in . --AVRS (talk) 14:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh right, whitespace in citations. The previous revision used a mix of both spaces and line breaks: I simply standardised on one of them. Presumably we can agree that articles should be using one or the other rather than both. FWIW I strongly prefer using spaces as it ensures that all line breaks in articles are meant to be line breaks in the article (outside of things like infoboxes) as my editor can then easily identify where a paragraph has accidental extra whitespace. What can help is to move all of the citations out of the article body using named citations; I've now done that (a bit of work naming ~100 citations, but worth it), which means that it's trivial to reinsert the line breaks if you really want. Cheers. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• I am using the default MediaWiki’s editor without highlighting, so it is difficult to find the beginning of a particular template or its property (e.g. “title” or “accessdate”) sometimes.
• In a paragraph, line breaks help me find a paragraph by its size (if a short paragraph has many refs, with “horizontal” templates it does not look short). Also, it is easier to see the end of the paragraph text even if there are templates after it.
• Sometimes I use a mix of spaces and line breaks in a template use, so that it takes less space (when there are multiple multi-line templates), but still can be parsed visually and helps diffs (although I notice diffs break if you convert templates from one format to the other). But that’s often only to appease those who use the horizontal format.
• Named citations are an interesting idea, but if all refs are at the end of the article, editing a section is inconvenient (or at least feels unusual).

--AVRS (talk) 10:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Named citations are the best compromise anyone's found for this so far. They're not usually a good idea while an article is still being developed as they're harder to insert initially, but for long articles with lots of citations they significantly improve the readability of both the article body and the references themselves. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

User:Dogmaticeclectic

Hello, Chris. Happy new year. How do you do?

I was reading the guideline on dispute resolution and it says non-cooperative users who cause problem should be reported to an admin. Well, I hate to say it but I have one on my hand: User:Dogmaticeclectic. He persistently removes information regarding WinSxS ("Windows Side-by-Side") from Windows XP article. Three users have so far contested his edits but not only he has a passion for hitting revert button, it is very difficult to get a single word out of him as to why he reverts. He is irritatingly economic with words.

Eventually, today I discovered that the reason for his reverts are because some limited form of Side-by-side is implemented in Windows 2000, so I went ahead and only included changes in Windows XP. But surprisingly, he reverted again. His edit summary reads: "read my response at User talk:Dogmaticeclectic#WinSxS and XP" but he has not added any such response. (One must appear after this edit: )

I will be pleased to talk and resolve our dispute, but if he does not say what is wrong, he will be no different from a vandal.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 19:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello again

Well, this is embarrassing. Just when I decided to ask your help, he decided to stop reverting: . Sorry for bothering you in the first place.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Talkback at WP:ANI on the issue of personal attacks. Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Since you were the one who made the change in the first place

You might be interested in this. — Francophonie&Androphilie 15:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Done, cheers! Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Settle Hydro

Chris-I don't follow the logic of the two warning tag. This was an easy stub to write- three easy references - so merely a paraphrase. - OR hardly, and each para is supported. I was chasing the red-link mill actually- after my content there have been a few minor edits? --ClemRutter (talk) 19:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

"it is difficult to determine how much carbon was used in the construction of the screw and the transportation from Germany"? To be fair, that should probably just be removed, which would obviate the OR/SYN problem. I'd prefer more references to work with, but I suppose everything that's currently in the article is cited and so that's probably overkill as well. Thanks for the response. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

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Template:Infobox power station

Hi, Thumperward. Is there any specific reason why you removed the background color from the Template:Infobox power station? Beagel (talk) 12:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It's superfluous and there's no obvious colour key. I've no strong objections to it returning, but most infoboxes these days don't have hard-coded colours. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Infobox station

It appears that articles that do not specify the |image_size= parameter can no longer display their |image= images (or their captions). I recommend a rework or a revert. 2001:558:6045:A0:1947:F371:FD3B:B1F8 (talk) 15:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I've made a change which should have resolved that. Can you check again, or provide an example page? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for making the change, it appears to have fixed the problem. Earlier today I browsed to a few station articles and noticed the problem. For articles that specified an image_size I saw no problem. For articles that did not specify an image_size the inbox contained slightly garbled text instead of a display of the image. As best I can recall from this morning the articles I tried were:

that was the extent of the station browsing I carried out this morning when I noticed the problem. I hope it helps you further troubleshoot the problem. Thank you again for the quick fix. The station articles that exhibited the problem, for example, Moffett Park (VTA) exhibited text something like: ] within thier infoboxes, instead of the thumbnailed image, when the problem was present. 2001:558:6045:A0:1947:F371:FD3B:B1F8 (talk) 05:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I would have expected to happen given the fix. There's ongoing discussion on the template talk page regarding exactly how to move forward from here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

summary

Wondering if got lost in the unilateral discussion? NE Ent 16:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

It took up a significant proportion of the discussion. I didn't feel it would be honest to just ignore it. "concerns were raised" is perhaps a bit weaselly: if you can think of an appropriate rewording which still avoids getting personal I'm all ears. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

My concern is that it would lead to ... well, what's going on now between two of the participants. Too late. I thought the summary was a great idea if it could focus/keep the discussion on track without it devolving into personal back and forth. Ce'st la vie. NE Ent 16:37, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

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Recent changes to Camouflage template

Hi Thumperward,

I note your recent changes but am not at all sure they are improvements. I have cropped HMS Argus to remove the escort, so we can keep it and Yarra in the top section - we should have a pic of people like Kerr or Wilkinson in the Camoufleurs section.

The arrangement of the Camouflage template without collapsing is interesting, but it does make the navbox much larger, and this causes problems in many other articles (not so much in Dazzle as it happens) so I'd like to revert that now if that's ok. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:29, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't particularly mind where the images are positioned so long as no more are added: until today the article contained ten images, which is well beyond what is required to illustrate the subject. I see you've already done a wholesale revert of the sidebar template: in my opinion the collapsing option should only be used where the sidebar would otherwise be unmanageably huge, as otherwise it's used to paper over all sorts of problems with placement, suitability and inclusiveness. The new version is a little over twice as long as the collapsed version, and only a little over half as long uncollapsed (which is what readers with Javascript disabled, or on mobile devices, see by default). I'd rather that the condensed version be restored and those articles unduly affected (which are bound to be articles overstacking their leads as it is) reworked so as to obviate the problem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Dazzle is quite heavily illustrated, not my doing... there are even more in the list of US patterns, which seems a better home for them. But camo. is a visual topic, so perhaps we needn't apologise for illustrating it in some detail. I don't think there's imminent risk of more being added. On the template, the list is already quite long and will grow as it contains the camo. patterns which are growing like Topsy (mostly without refs.....). It's quite a handful, and collapsed does seem best. I'm sure mobile device browsers will continue to improve; and if people have JS switched off, that's their choice, isn't it. On inclusiveness, I've been very selective, and others have added only very sensibly, so it seems things are quite well-behaved at the moment. You're certainly right about the need to watch out, AfD is full of absolute nonsense, and templates and lists are certainly no exceptions. All the best - Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Thumperward, I'm a bit surprised that you've gone ahead with a different set of undiscussed changes, especially as we had this discussion under way. Right, this version is not as disastrous as the last one, but it looks a whole lot less appealing than the original, and I'm much minded simply to revert - I don't understand why we've abandoned the nice clear clickable bars for each menu, nor why we've gone for centred lists; nor indeed why the current generation of mobile browsers and devices are proving such a big limitation or such an important target, certainly I've never heard of it from anybody else on this or any other corner of Misplaced Pages. So, is there evidence that many Wikipedians share your views, or that a sizeable percentage of the readership are having difficulties, and that they in fact demand more mobile navigation of the camouflage articles? --- Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Rather than making this personal, or going through the usual kabuki of "show me your consensus", "I've never heard of this before" et cetera, why don't we simply discuss the changes one by one? The header colouring is distracting (IMO) and arbitrary (there's no strong association between the tan colour used and the subject matter). Whether the lists are centred or not is a trivial stylistic matter; it happens to be the default layout, so I didn't feel the need to override it. So what exactly are the problems with the more compact layout? How does it inconvenience editors or readers? Why does this template need to override the default values for width / font / justification provided by the base code? What parts of this do you feel we should compromise on, and why? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:13, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I haven't made any personal remarks and I hope I will not do so. However I do feel that it looked well before, and I'm a believer in if it aint broke dont fix it, so I will return your "what exactly are the problems..." with "Why exactly do you feel the need to change this?" I don't believe, in short, there is any good reason for change. With the logic of the paragraph above, you can change anything at all, and then demand reasons for reverting, plainly not the usual Wikipedian position. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I explained my rationale for each change in the reply above. If you disagree, you need to explain why; "it was like that before" is only a good argument if you can explain why it was like that before. Along those lines, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" implies a reasoned argument that it "ain't broke", while I've given a concrete argument for why it is. Again, I'm perfectly happy to compromise here if there is a rational basis for doing so. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Um, no you didn't, the second set of changes appeared without any note here at all, it arrived between my 2nd and 3rd entries above. However, since I too wish to reach a reasoned conclusion, let me say that the original template had a usefully bold main title to attract attention (though perhaps larger than needed), a clear division into the 5 neatly centred coloured boxes contrasting with the white background (though perhaps a deeper hue than needed, and really clear sub-menus (though perhaps taking more space when expanded than needed). In the spirit of compromise, I suggest we go for a main title "Camouflage" that is sized at say 150% rather than 300%; that we make the image a little smaller, say 100px; that the main menu entries ("Topics" etc) are centred, and placed in very pale sandy rectangles (ideally the same colour as the sand in the image: certainly associated with the subject); and that I learn to love the sub-menus as they now are. I hope that's enough explanation... how's that? Chiswick Chap (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

{{Sidebar}}'s default title size is adequate for the majority of its uses; making it larger in this case simply makes the template unnecessarily prominent (somewhat ironic given the subject matter). Reducing the image size is fair enough. I'd rather that we not choose an arbitrary colour scheme for the headings, but it's not a major disagreement. I've implemented this in the sandbox: is that acceptable? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:27, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I see we edit-conflicted here. Your current version is fine to me, though I really don't think the title size override is necessary. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:29, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, either colour scheme will do - I'd prefer a slightly larger title. Thanks Chiswick Chap (talk) 23:32, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

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