User talk:Ilmari Karonen/archives/7

Your superb diagrams

Thanks so much for doing the diagrams for relativistic electromagnetism. This will really push the article forward after a long period of stagantion! I will of course check them before inserting into the article. Thank you once more for your swift response 8-))--Light current 01:58, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Image request(s)

In the iPod article, there's a list of the models with small thumbnails. It bugs me that many of them have non-transparent backgrounds (white or a real one) when they could be better viewed by themselves with no distracting table or whatever. This is especially true where the background isn't all that nice to begin with. If you could go through those thumbnails or even commons:iPod (and related pages linked by the template) and remove backgrounds where appropriate, and maybe quality-check the ones that have already been altered, I'd appreciate it.--HereToHelp 02:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I'm going on a trip for a few days, so I won't be able to look into this until next week. I'll take a look at the pictures later and see what I can do. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks.--HereToHelp 20:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've done one so far: Image:Ipod 5th Generation white transparent bg.png —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

That looks great. Would it be too much trouble to rotate it so it faces upwards?--HereToHelp 17:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Like this? That worked surprisingly well; I'd have thought there would've been more perspective distortion, but I guess the iPod is flat enough that it won't matter. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

That's great; thank you. The image now looks on par with Apple's image of the new iPod shuffle. When you get a chance, Image:Ipod-shuffle-usb-connector.jpg also needs some work. I tried to remove the background; it didn't quite work as well as I had hoped. (The old version is still stored.) Rotating it might be nice if it doesn't distort the image too badly. You could also try to work with Image:Ipod Shuffle Comparison.JPG. I appreciate it.--HereToHelp 23:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the first one can be successfully rotated. It's not very good for background removal either (as your result shows), since it's low resolution, the background is uneven and there's some serious unsharp masking at the edges. In fact, I'd personally suggest reverting it to the original version; it may not have the nicest background, but at least you can see all the details. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's what I managed with the second one: Image:Ipod Shuffle rotated transparent.png None of the shuffle images seemed very good for background removal — low resolution makes it hard to get the edges to look right — but this one produced at least passable results. I also straightened the original, since it was very slightly skewed; the tweak was minor enough that I didn't think it necessary to upload it under a different name. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It looks better, even if low rez (blame the original image). I was able to take the background off of Image:Ipod backlight.jpg (it actually came out pretty well) but the image itself is too dark, and I wasn't able to fix that myself. Also, is it possible to add a drop shadow?--HereToHelp 14:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do; it also seems to have some barrel distortion, unless the sides of that iPod really are curved (don't think so). Shouldn't be too hard to fix. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's what I came up with: Image:Ipod backlight transparent.png. I also reuploaded a version of the original with the old background but with the distortion fixed; I figured that could be useful if someone wanted to use the picture specifically for showing the the backlighting effect. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, I was able to make Image:IPod-Nano-package.jpg. You're welcome to try and improve it (I recommend starting with the original file).--HereToHelp 14:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

That one looks pretty good already; I'm not sure I could do any better. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

That looks like a good set of images. If you'll notice the list of iPod models almost all have good images now. This is largely in thanks to you, and also to the credit of an anon who just showed up yesterday, uploaded some good images, and left. Between the two of you, you've really impressed me with the quality of the images. I think that's about it. Thank you for your help.--HereToHelp 23:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

New development: Image:Ipodnano 2g 8gb centre.JPG looks like really good material, but I can't seem to get the whole thing out without losing some of the sides of the iPod. Do you think you could handle this? Thanks in advance.--HereToHelp 00:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Navbar

Hi - I've looked at your version of the navbar template (and tweaked it so it looks OK in Opera). Your version is simpler (one less div). It looks fine in Safari 1.3.2 on a Max OS X (10.3.9), and in Opera 9.02 (on a Mac). The title bar padding doesn't match template:NavigationBox (and probably should), but other than that I think it's at this point functionally equivalent to the version at template:NavigationBar. Fixing the JAWS traversal issue requires making the list be a table element or something else that there's a "skip to next" shortcut for in JAWS. When I started working on this I tried to make "scrollbar" an option to template:NavigationBox, which uses a table. The issue I ran into was that IE seems to need an absolute width specified for the table (see this version). I ultimately gave up on this approach and went with DIVs. Going back to this approach would solve the JAWS traversal issue. I've seen references to using "expression" to tell IE a width, but haven't played with this yet. If you play with this and figure out a solution (using tables) before I do, please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, there is simply no way to make IE (or Safari) present a scollable row in a table other than specifying an absolute width (not using an expression). I have a version at user:Rick Block/navbar that embeds the list in an HTML inline list. I think this will address the JAWS traversal issue. This version works with Safari, Opera, IE, and Firefox, but not an older Mozilla (1.7). I haven't merged your changes into this version yet, but this is clearly doable. If you have any other comments or suggestions please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:27, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the version at template:Navigation bar. Checking things out in various browsers, I noticed your version does not display a scrollbar in Mozilla 1.7 with Classic skin but looks fine on Monobook (and my comment about the JAWS accessible version not working in Mozilla seems not to be the case). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I notice you haven't commented on this template in a day or two. Are you more or less happy with the current version? Is there some problem we should talk about? Just curious. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The current version does more or less work for me, and I haven't had time to look into the browser-specific issues others have reported. I do have an idea for improved scroll bar support in general, but that requires some IE-specific additions to the global style sheets, plus a lot of testing. But in the mean time, if the JAWS issues have been adequately worked around (and my plans wouldn't address those, anyway), I see no reason not to go ahead with the current version. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Selective deletion

I just wrote WP:SELDEL last week to formalize a procedure that I saw applied by some administrators. I think the method you mentioned on AN is slightly better than the one there because it leaves no trace whatsoever in the article history. Would you mind adding it WP:SELDEL? Thanks! Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 11:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The idea of first undeleting the (usually few) revisions one wants to delete is particularly clever. That page is much better now. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 15:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Image:Speciation modes.svg

Hi, thankyou so much for the impressive diagram Image:Speciation modes.svg, I'll be using it in my biology essay. However, do you think you could amend it to include peripatric speciation? Thanks again - Jack (talk) 19:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Does the new version look right to you? Keep in mind that I'm not really a biologist, so if you find the drawing somehow incorrect or misleading, or can suggest any other improvements, please let me know. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm no biologist either, but the images for the middle two columns on the bottom row seem odd. You'd think that there'd be less overlap where the new species is isolated then when it is adjacent to the old population. But that's based on logic, not science.--HereToHelp 00:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Eh, you may have a point. The amount of overlap in the previous versions was pretty much random, and not really meant to have any significance. Still, I've uploaded a new version that at least doesn't give the paradoxical impression you got, and in my opinion looks a bit nicer too. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me :) thanks - Jack (talk) 12:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I just uploaded yet another version, with the bottom row images identical for all columns (as indeed was the case for the original illustration this was based on). That way at least no-one will assume any deliberate differences where none were intended. I also tweaked the descriptions of peripatric and parapatric speciation to hopefully explain the difference better. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

So that implies that no matter how the speciation occurs, the end result is the same. Now if that's how it works, it's fine. But why bother with the way speciation occurs when the results are the same? The second most recent version looked fine to me. But again, I'm no biologist; if that diagram you based this off of was authoritative, ignore this. (Who would have though such a small detail could cause all this discussion?) --HereToHelp 14:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I'm no biologist either, but given that there quite often seems to be considerable debate on how a particular speciation event may have occurred, it would seem to me that determining the speciation mode from the end result cannot always be very simple, even if it may be possible. In any case, since I do not really know what significant differences in the outcome there might be (but see allochrony for a possible example), I'd think it more advisable not to imply any differences that may or may not be real. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Leave it how it is.--HereToHelp 17:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

re: Cut and paste move repair

Makes total sense... I should've asked before acting. I apologise, that's a totally cogent reason to not have merged them. I default to having all of the information accessible to everybody (by in this case, undeleting), and this is a case where it looks as if I could've looked deeper. I apologise again, I'll be more careful next time. Snoutwood (talk) 00:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Quick question

Hello, I noticed your name on the list of Finnish-English translators. Can you tell me if "Meritie" is properly translated as "sea road"? Owen 23:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yup, that's the exact literal translation (meri = "sea", tie = "road"). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Chromosome Picture

Hi, Ilmari. Since you seem quite the expert at creating biological diagrams, I was wondering if you could create an SVG version of this image of a chromosome? The current (and slightly rubbish) PNG version is a high-use image of something that is no doubt of great importance. It could be much better, and given the material you'd be drawing, I'd say it would have a fair chance at WP:FPC - Jack (talk) 21:14, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I'll see what I can do. I notice that the image you linked to is just a part of Image:Chromatin chromosome.png, which presumably needs SVGfying in full. Also note that there's already a pretty nice SVG image of a chromosome, Image:Chromosom.svg, which just needs translation from German. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:33, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Law

hello. I'm sorry, but I disagree with redirecting Illegal to Illegal (Shakira song). Far more people who search for illegal or who click on a link that says illegal are going to be looking for law than this song. I have reverted back to the old redirect. --דניאל - Danielrocks123 ^contribs 23:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

More iPod images

And you thought we were done...oh well. I tried to find the owner of Image:Ipod 4G.png; no luck; it probably traces back to Apple. So in order to get in line with the law and featured article requirements, I need you to work your magic on the best legal image we have, Image:Ipod4g.JPG. Don't worry about the dock or the angle of the subject. Also, Image:Ipod nano.JPG could use a wider crop and drop shadow, and Image:Ipodnano 2g 8gb centre.JPG could be really good after background removal, but this is secondary. Thank you so much in advance for your help.--HereToHelp 02:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Not infallible nofollow wikitech :)

tried to email you about this one:

On 5/14/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l>> wrote:

If you go to the old vote and exclude the users who didn't make any substantial contributions to English Wikipedia after the vote you'll find that the results were overwhelmingly in favor of enabling nofollow.

I have just been through the first 14 (of 61) voters to "disable nofollow on en" at the list at meta meta nofollow and 11/14 of them have edited en dozens of times recently (ten in the last week and one other has edited .de recently). I don't need to go through the other 47 who voted "disable nofollow" because only 12 people voted to keep nofollow on en, but I am sure they are around too. The "overwhelmingly in favour" seems well, fallible. I doubt you've got 20%. On the en vote Wikipedia:Nofollow I have just tried a straw sample of 20 people each who voted for and against. Surprisingly a high proportion of both are still active (17 and 16). No way you can fairly call this majority "disable" suddenly an "overwhelming majority enable" it still looks 60% enable.

This trick on wikitech was a bit of a hijack of democracy. By all means open a proper discussion but you should not have gone ahead on the basis of a few people on a tech list when there was a strong majority of the community opposed last time the subject was discussed. In the meantime *please* could I ask you to abide by the last community decision and not that it matters but Jimbo's personal view too JImmy Wales on nofollow, and disable nofollow throughout en until you have a consensus to overturn the past.

Well, I am asking and you can say no!

Cheers

--BozMo talk 16:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the message you quoted is from Gregory Maxwell, not me. I just wrote the previous message, which he's quoting. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, sorry for the false fallibility attack. So who actually gave the instruction when even the thread in wikitech has several people pointing out there was a lot of opinion on Meta and EN on the issue? Putting pages like Wikipedia:Public_domain_resources under nofollow is highly contraversial and a proper debate might have got the line drawn in the right place.--BozMo talk 17:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The situation is somewhat complicated in that there have been several proposals and polls, some less formal than others, about the subject. The proposal I started, and which resulted in the current practice on the English Wikipedia (use nofollow on other pages, but not in articles), is here (and was announce on the Village pump and other relevant places). For that particular proposal the support was pretty close to unanimous. That said, you could certainly start a new proposal for disabling nofollow in the Wikipedia: namespace (but note that there are various talk-like pages such as AfD and the reference desks there) or only in some specific pages therein (but note that someone would have to design and implement such a feature first). If the technical issues are properly addressed, I might quite well support it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

OK. Well pretty fragmented and I missed it. It should have been posted on both of the previous polls particularly the one at Meta which still reads as current. It shouldn't have been in Wikispam space because the issue are much wider. I doubt whether anyone even bothered to contact the hundred odd users who had voted against enable when a dozen decided to overturn it. It might be better to move half a dozen pages from wikipedia space to main space. --BozMo talk 17:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

You know, that might just work — we could create a meta-page in the main namespace (say, at WP:FOLLOWTHESELINKS) and transclude those half a dozen pages (whichever they are) onto it. It would be completely useless for anything else, but it would let search engines see and rank those links. Of course, that probably needs to be formally proposed and discussed first; some people are quite strongly opposed (sometimes for good reasons) to such non-article pages in the article namespace. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyway I guess there was no deliberate minority conspiracy, just a failure to understand the breath of an issue and failure to engage people as well as all the previous times it had previously gone the other way. A shame on all of us, but my role as democracy policeman is done. I am not going to contact everyone who has been unknowingly run around for the sake of it. Sorting the debris can wait. You may eventually get something from me on Wikitech on it (I don't know if the emails are somewhere in the ether) but I am basically done. --BozMo talk 18:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

You might update the page on Meta though. The discussion you refer to doesn't get listed for pages under Wikipedia nofollow: The meta page, and en-nofollow is what everyone sees and probably watches. --BozMo talk 19:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I've added notes to both pages explaining the current situation. I find them quite messy, though; they're basically old proposal pages occupying titles that should properly feature a descriptive page about the issue. Probably they should be rewritten and the old proposals archived, but I'm not quite sure where to start with this. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree the whole thing is messy and a bit unsatisfactory. I might have a go at some point but I'll probably tell you when I have had a first stab. Also at some point I personally feel the whole community needs to discuss nofollow again (I don't think you quite manage it in May) but I am very tied up doing a 2007 version of the 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection so it won't be soon. --BozMo talk 09:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

As a postscript my own take on nofollow is here User_talk:Pascal.Tesson#Nofollow. I think taking the debate to Wikispam friends first makes some sense --BozMo talk 07:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Andreev reflection

Thank you for the nice figure. There has been some discussion about the spin of the reflected hole. The result was, that the incoming electron and reflected hole live in different spin bands and that the figure should be modified to avoid confusion. I am not sure how to illustrate this though. Maybe you have a great idea. If there is no way to achieve this, how about omitting spin completely and focussing on the angle of incidence/reflection. -- Bamse 01:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Continued vandalism

You recently blocked User talk:203.101.61.7; however, he/she has continued to vandlize pages. In reviewing ther contribution page you will see that their last four edits were vandalism; three with vulgar language. I placed warnings as I discovered the vandalism, but given their recent blocking I felt I should point it out to someone familiar witht the case. Given the repeated vulgarity I think the case is extreme enough to merit immedate blocking. Storm Rider ^(talk) 06:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Arthur Paul Pedrick

Hello Was just wondering why Arthur Paul Pedrick was on your shopping list. It's not very complete, I agree, but in the absence of any more verifiable personal info, I'm not sure what can be done except to discuss more of his patents, which would be an endless task and largely pointless in view of other, easily available resources. I'd like to improve this article myself, but at present don't really see how. Your thoughts? GDallimore 17:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The article is fine, it's just been a really long time since I cleaned up that to-do list. :-) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:32, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I just realised that you added Pedrick to your list at least 6 months before I created the article. As a fellow Pedrick-fan, I still would like to hear any suggestions you have for improving the article now it's there. Having Pedrick as the subject of a featured article would be a just reward for the great man! GDallimore 17:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Graphics Lab

I saw your name listed on Wikiproject Illustration or the list of graphic artists, and I thought I'd let you know that a Graphics Lab has been created on EN. Based on the highly successful French and German graphics labs, it seeks to better organise and coordinate our graphic design and photo-editing efforts. Up until now, there has been no common space on EN where users could ask for maps, charts and other SVG files to be created. What's more, the Graphics Lab has discussion boards, tips, tools and links; in sum, a good common workspace. Come help us out! The infrastucture is already in place, and now we need participants. :) --Zantastik talk 01:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Diff problem

Hi - I'm having a problem/question with diff's they don't seem to be working right. I noticed you made a change recently (per mention here) so I thought that might be it (perhaps it is a feature and not a bug?). For example looking at the article history for Great Sphinx of Giza.

Diff #1:

• 10:55, 15 December 2006 Stbalbach
• 04:06, 15 December 2006 CJLL Wright

Diff #2:

• 10:55, 15 December 2006 Stbalbach
• 10:51, 15 December 2006 Stbalbach

In Diff #1 there is nothing indicating a change even though a change was made in Diff #2. Thus it is not possible to see a long-range view, one has to step back through individual diff's to see what happened. Am I doing something wrong? -- Stbalbach 15:16, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems you've made two edits to the article, with the second one reverting the first one and making a small additional change. Thus, the combined diff (your first link) correctly shows only the additional change, not the changes that were reverted. I'm not sure why you did that — perhaps by mistake? — but there does not seem to be any bug that I could see. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok I see. My mistake sorry, must have clicked edit on a wrong version of the article. I thought I saw something like this earlier, so I thought it was related to the recent diff changes. Thanks for taking a look. -- Stbalbach 16:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Khaleel Mohammed on deletion review

An editor has asked for a deletion review of Khaleel Mohammed. Since you closed the deletion discussion for (or speedy-deleted) this article, you might want to participate in the deletion review. Dennette 09:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I've commented there. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:39, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Deleted article you restored up for deletion again.

Hello. Per this AFD, the article The Llama Song was deleted on March 19, 2005 and again on December 28, 2005. You restored it on May 8, 2006. It is currently up for deletion again. It would probably aid that discussion if you would be so kind as to go there and comment. It would help if we knew why the article was restored. Thanks. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

My restoration of the old version was purely for practical reasons: since the article had been recreated four months earlier, and didn't seem to be going away, I saw no real reason to keep the old versions deleted. Since the actual content of the article at that point was quite different from the substub that the original deletion debate had been for, I felt it didn't really satisfy CSD G4 any more.

Actually, as far as I can tell that page has a rather confusing history. It was first created as a substub on 22 November 2004 and speedied on the same day; this was so long ago that it doesn't show up in the deletion log. It was then recreated on 4 March 2005, put on VfD on the same day, and duly deleted two weeks later. The next recreation was on 21 October 2005, but at a different title (Llama song); I saw it on newpages patrol and, not knowing it was a recreation, tidied it up and removed the lyrics. About two months later, on 28 December, someone else moved it to its current title, at which point it was immediately tagged for deletion as recreated content and speedied. However, only four days later, on 1 January 2006, it was again (apparently independently) recreated, cleaned up, lyrics removed again, etc.

I had the article on my watchlist all the time, but I don't think I even noticed the deletion and recreation — I probably just thought someone had cleaned up and rewritten the article a bit. This was all before I was made an admin, so I wouldn't have seen the "there are X deleted revisions" notice, and I didn't happen to notice that the history had been truncated. However, back in October 2005, I'd added a diff link to my original cleanup efforts (then at "Llama song") to the "Article rescue" section on my user page. In May, I think I must've happened to try clicking on that link, and noticed that it no longer worked. At that point I must've looked at the deletion log and noticed that the page had been deleted and recreated earlier. Since the new version didn't bear much resemblance to the one that had been on VfD before, I decided not to delete it and to instead restore the old versions so that they could be reviewed and linked to.

Anyway, I really have no particular opinion on whether the article should be kept or not, but I'll go post a comment on the AfD page summarizing the relevant parts of its history. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I see I've commented on the 28 December deletion on the article's talk page, so I must've noticed it after all. Anyway, I'd probably forgotten about that episode by May, else I would've left a more descriptive undeletion summary. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. :) ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I rather feel as if I ought to give you a barnstar exclusively for your summarizing so well the procedural history involved here (of course, in view of my exceeding laziness, I won't, but...). I stumbled upon the AfD two days hither and spent a moment looking into the history of its creation, deletion, and recreation in order that I might apprehend what actually happened and intended to come back to it sometime thereafter; not only did you save me that trouble, but you also saved those participants at RfA from what would, in view of my prolix style, have been an unnecessarily verbose summary apropos of a tangential issue. Good on ya! Joe 07:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)