User talk:Thumperward/Archive 17

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 10

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Archive 15

Wikipedia style

Thanks for the pointer. That was a missing element in my Wikipedia education. Rhmccullough (talk) 01:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I just wanted to thank you once again for catching the list style problem. I've been thru that enough on past papers that I should have caught it myself, but I just wasn't focused enough. Rhmccullough (talk) 07:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. You might also want to note that you need a double line-break to actually break paragraphs up: I've added one above to split your comments apart. Alternatively, you can use bullet points, which only require one carriage return to break lines. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

mKR & email address

Excellent point! I'll look up the URL for the email archive. Rhmccullough (talk) 17:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks Chris for your comments on Talk:Al Gore and for cleaning up the page. You've made great contributions in the past to the article. I'd like to push the article at some point towards GAC - if you have any time to edit or add suggestions, it would be great. -Classicfilms (talk) 18:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Cheers! I'll try to run over it again in full over the weekend if I can. :) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:21, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic - it will be nice to have an experienced editor tear up the article a bit - I think it is close to being ready for GAC - the areas for Congress and the VP need work and expansion, many of the references still need to be checked and formatted and the article could use copy editing and overall cleaning - but I do think it's in pretty good shape. This article is about 6 years old and it's time that it moved up to at least GA. Thanks - Classicfilms (talk) 23:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

When you have a chance you take a look at this image?

It has a "Personality rights warning" tag attached to it - something I'm not familiar with. It would be a nice image to use if the warning tag could be resolved. -Classicfilms (talk) 22:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Personality rights means you can't stick the thing on a t-shirt and sell it as the "Al Gore T-shirt". We're 100% in the clear. In general, anything on Commons is kosher for us: the Commons people will remove anything which isn't on their end. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:17, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok - I think it is something to add to the article. But I'd like your opinion - I think that the quality is high enough to add to the infobox which would end further discussion of that topic. On the other hand, it is not a professional image so maybe it belongs in the body of the article. -Classicfilms (talk) 22:57, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Nah, I'm very much in favour of keeping the current infobox picture. It's high-quality and fitting. I'm okay with replacing high-quality infobox imagery if there are copyright issues, but not just because they aren't "current" or whatever.

On that front, the first paragraph of the intro no longer mentions that he was VP. This is still his most notable attribute. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:05, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. It is a good image to use somewhere, so if you look through the article at some point and can think of a good place, please do add it. As for the first paragraph - that's true - it's hard to know how to phrase it or what the most notable aspect is. If you want to go ahead and tweak and make the change, I'd appreciate it - I'm working on other sections at the moment. Thanks for your suggestions -Classicfilms (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for converting the firefox header warning into a template for use elsewhere. I had thought about doing the same but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Should be useful.--Oni Ookami Alfador^Talk|@ 15:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Person

What do you think of the notability requirement for the "parents" and "hometown" parameter. I want to remove "if notable" from the requirement. Everyone should have their parents listed, they shouldn't have to have Wikipedia articles to have to be listed. What do you think? Do you know if hometown is only used for living people and where they currently live? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:54, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree: infoboxen are not meant to be exhaustive lists of facts, just at-a-glance guidelines, and non-notable material should be omitted from them. But the argument needs to take place on that template's talk page. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:39, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Referring to the Linux article

Progress seems to have completely stalled on the discussion of references. I'm pretty happy with the summaries of arguments and don't think the solutions have had enough attention. I'm happy to post a last call for the proposed solution and then move forward. What do you think good next steps would be? A straw poll on the options (what would be acceptable, what would be preferred?) among the participants? I can also bring in some uninvolved editors who have told me they'd be willing to help shepard this.

Once this sub-issue settled, I may try to deal with some of the article naming-mess as well. —mako ๛ 20:31, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm stumped. Uninvolved editors would be a great help though; the more the merrier. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:19, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I'll try to bring in some help. —mako ๛ 17:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Warhammer 40k

It's truly depressing trying to bring those articles in line - virtually 95% of the content has to be scrubbed (which is hours and hours of someone's misguided work) and I'm convinced that a large part of the other 5% are copied directly from guides and magazines. --Allemandtando (talk) 13:19, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I know. All I can say is that at least it's not as bad as weeding through, say, anime articles. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 13:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I...I.. you could BUILD a bolt gun after reading this, there are even lavish diagrams about bullet construction. I'm too scared to look at anime articles. --Allemandtando (talk) 16:37, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Tell me about it. Thankfully there are, like, 40,000 dedicated wikis that this stuff can be transposed to, so that the five days someone spent in MS Paint haven't gone to waste. That is if GW don't sue them all into oblivion (something which, by the way, you're doing a great job of helping WP to avoid). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:40, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I actually think that's the reason that I'm getting NO heat at all about my cutting and slashing - I think all of the hardcore have already moved to the Warhammer wiki. --Allemandtando (talk) 16:43, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Heh. Here's hoping. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Teachings of Falun Gong six months on, review request

The page has recently gone under some gigantic changes. If you like, pls take a look and give some feedback. This request is sort of a precursor to a more formal engagement with the wikipedia peer review process, and the different steps of community review up to Featured.--Asdfg12345 12:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Partimage, notability

You tagged an early version of the Partimage article with the {{notability}} tag. Partimage is the open source alternative to Norton Ghost, and is widely used among open-source enthusiasts, both windows users (booting with Knoppix) and Linux users. The article has been expanded after you applied the tag, and in my opinion, the notability of Partimage is clear from the article in its present form. I would therefore like to remove the tag, but would appreciate your opinion before doing so. Thanks. --NorwegianBlue^talk 20:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The article contains only one reference, which is from a distributor. The article currently contains zero indication that the subject has received coverage from secondary sources, which is of critical importance to establishing its notability. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Whole Day Edit

Hey, first of all, my apologies about the vandalism thing, there were editors from the UEFA Euro 2008 article who were messing with the template, simply because they didn't like the color, which isn't a good enough reason, so I reverted with that summary by force of habit. As for the format of the box, I understand what you're saying, but this page gets a lot of attention by overzealous MLS fans. We don't get a lot of soccer outlets in the States, so those of us who do follow soccer can sometimes get carried away. We had a ton of people editing this page right after the season started, but they would only edit part of the standings or results, and then people would update the stats without knowing they had already been updated, and, well, you see the problem. I don't mean to claim ownership over the template or the MLS articles, and I apologize if you felt I was. If there's a way to help this box fit into the standard format a little better without causing it to simply blend in with the ubiquitous current events banner, I'd love to hear suggestions. I'm just trying to make the articles as accurate as possible. Also, thanks for sending me a message rather than just flaming me on talk or edit summaries like some people I've run into. Hope to hear from you soon. -- Grant .Alpaugh 07:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Replying over at your place. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

No, we've got the pages updated pretty well between myself and another few editors who understand that it works better if we update the whole day's results at once. As for the template, I look forward to seeing your suggestions. -- Grant .Alpaugh 17:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem

That edit summary is a joke by the way - I just tagged it in universe for clean-up - contrary to the popular view, I'm not trying to delete everything connected to warhammer 40K and I'd perfer to do clean-up and mergers where possible. A big problem at the moment is that the categories seem to be set up in a very wonky fashion - so it's impossible to grasp the size of the area or how many articles there are. So warhammer 40k should be the top category and then everything else should a sub-category of that - but that's not what seems to have happened. For example Warhammer 40k technology is a top level category when it should be a sub-category of warhammer 40k. Even from just skimming, I reckon a good 50% of the articles need to be merged or redirected to more suitable umbrellua articles.

Moreover, it's great to see that someone else is going to have a go at some clean-up. *lots* of people have turned up at my talkpage saying "No no.. you need to..." but oddly virtually none of them actually want to get their hands dirty and do any editing on the articles. I have no interest or grude in warhammer 40K but now I've seen a) what a mess the area is and b) that nobody else is really bothered to do anything about it, I just don't want to go "oh well, that's just too much hard work, let's just leave the area to be a ghetto". That also means that I welcome other people noticing and watching my edits in this area - this is a community project and the more people who get involved in cleaning it up the better. --Allemandtando (talk) 14:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

If you have a look at the 40k project archives, I made an effort a while back to rejig the categories so that they nested properly and hierarchically. Unfortunately the guinea pig articles I chose to get right first were the Chaos Space Marine Chapters. Heh.

The main reason I don't do more work in the region is because there's more chance of random editors being able to cure AIDS or the common cold than there is of curing fancruft. It always finds a way back. I give it a blast now and then, but there's only so much interest I can have in it, y'know. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:48, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I know I know - what's odd is that there are those massive massive articles but current editors for the area seems entirely thin on the ground - I can only guess that they all went over to one of the dedicated 40k wikias. I'll keep on tilting at windmills for a bit yet. --Allemandtando (talk) 14:53, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Dude GOTO BED!

OMGZOMG! I will REPORT you for the vandalism you have just committed on my userpage - I will ask the supreme wiki council to sentence you to clean up duty on Israeli-plasticine threads FOREVER! yours general krull --Allemandtando (talk) 01:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Just for that, I think I'm going to start adding new things to Planets of Warhammer 40,000 from memory. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Sir - that is a DECLARATION of war. _{with that I WILL take my own advice and goto bed.} --Allemandtando (talk) 01:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh....my...god... that article is LONGER than the articles we have on REAL planets! _{really going to bed now} --Allemandtando (talk) 01:07, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Template:Microsoft video gaming

Hi again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Microsoft_video_gaming&diff=prev&oldid=223742158

"please stop adding decorative CSS to templates which are supposed to be generic. If this problem presents itself in the template, discuss it on template talk:navbox"

I have, I believe, tried this, but so far no resolution seems to be in sight. The CSS isn't decorative; as the comment beside the code is meant to indicate, it stops lists from appearing to run from one to the next, regardless of changing background. That, at least, is how they appear here, in Firefox 2.0.0.14 on a Windows XP PC. Please, therefore, make the following part of the "generic" (default?) Navbox code:

|groupstyle = padding:0.35em 1.0em; line-height:1.1em;
|liststyle  = padding:0.25em 0; line-height:1.4em;

Together, these reduce the otherwise disproportionately large gap between wrapped groupname lines and ensure lists are spaced such that they don't appear to run from one to the next. Sardanaphalus (talk) 17:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin and {{navbox}} is fully protected, so as I say it really needs to be raised and discussed on template talk:navbox so that all articles benefit from it. Personally, I'm afraid that the issue just isn't apparent to me. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:30, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I forgot that a recent example of what you're suggesting is in progress on that very page. Sardanaphalus (talk) 17:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Cool. It'd be best to keep any discussion of line-heights and such there, then. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Infobox football club

Hi, I think what he means with "took the top off it" is that the article name is over the and not in the Infobox, even though I have no problem with that, it seems he think it's broken. You can see the difference here User talk:Chandler/infoboxtest, it might also be good to make Founded and Ground non-optional as they are/were. — chan dler — 14:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I figured that - and it's an easy enough fix, but it means having to move the nickname attribute back into the article body instead of placing it neatly at the top. The problem is that I don't like trying to read people's minds based on pithy edit summaries. As for the mandatory attributes, I believe the MoS recommends not having mandatory attributes; it's not as if the infobox is any more useful having "ground - unknown" than it is not including it. But anyway, best discussed on the template talk, to make sure the community gets to see it all. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

ye, that's probably true. — chan dler — 14:46, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Apng edit

Hi Chris, I'm not sure if this entry in your talk is necessary, but could you please respond here: Talk:APNG. Zalumon (talk) 16:24, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I've replied over there. Please feel free to drop me a line any time you want input on a particular discussion. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Findsources template

I was just curious if you created that or just imported it from somewhere--Meieimatai 15:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not the author of the template, just the last person to edit it - the page history is here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you--Meieimatai 02:38, 8 July 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meieimatai (talk • contribs)

PHP is a project of the Apache Software Foundation

I have more proof. If you still don't believe me, check out archive.org and ctrl+f for "apache software foundation". THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS. --TIB (talk) 01:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Those links are from four and five years ago. Perhaps our relative definitions of "is" vary. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 02:20, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Biomass Cook Stoves

Thought it was a redirect, if it is a template then I will reclassify it.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 15:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It is part of the new assessment scale, I just assess them using the tools set forth by WP. I think it is to allow projects to know redirects are set up in their project space. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 18:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Messagebox change

this change broke the "small=yes" function of {{AutoArchivingNotice}} so I undid it for now. –xenocidic (talk) 17:11, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Sorry for the breakage. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:13, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem, if it can be fixed to handle it properly, please do so - I just have no idea how =) –xenocidic (talk) 18:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Response

Responded on my talk page. Thanks! Larrythefunkyferret (talk) 06:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

about trac

did you think it a self promotion something? did you read the page? did you find it easy to install trac for everybody? ok i ll tell you that the thing that was promoted is the techinque article not my self. if you like i can move that page to of a web site of yours. again what was it did you think was a promotion?! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Renfeng (talk • contribs) 07:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Self-promotion means advertising one's own work. You wrote something on a website, and now you're adding it to Wikipedia. This is inappropriate, not least because the external links section is not meant for tutorials. I'll add a comment to the talk page about removing the link again. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:33, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Revert of virtualdub: lack of wipe/fade

I believe your revert-removal of my addition to VirtualDub about the lack of fade/wipe capability is inappropriate, and the text should be restored. I have created a discussion of this on the talk page for the article. If you wish to comment, please reply there. DMahalko (talk) 10:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit summaries

You were right, not vandalism I just slipped when I reverted it. That said it looks like spam Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#spam.greenoptimistic.com so I'd suggest the link should still be removed. Caomhin (talk) 12:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Mbox

I have noticed you are converting message boxes from the old formats and from {{ambox}} to the {{mbox}}. Note that ombox is not yet deployed since we still need to decide what styles it should use for talk pages and it needs some more testing. And you should not change {{ambox}} usage to {{mbox|demospace=main}} even in the future. Since using mbox costs much more server load and it makes your code unnecessarily complex since you add the "demospace" parameter.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:06, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. A bit too keen on bleeding-edge code sometimes, I am. I'll stick to using the established templates in future outwith things I'm incubating. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 15:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

"consensus is that current wording is well-thought-out and an acceptable compromise"

Hi Chris,

Before I reply to your remark in the WikiProject_Free_Software discussion, I need to have a private chat with you. That claim of yours:

1) ignores that we have dissenting opinions 2) by repeatedly pointing back to old Shareaza talk pages, you only show me that you are able to shoot down quick, ill-advised edits.

This saddens me. I disagree that the "current wording is well-thought-out and an acceptable compromise". Please understand that in order to reach a true consensus around that claim of yours, you need to bring me around as well. You do not do this by circular arguments like that.

I have asked you previously to reason around your reluctance to highlight the status of the software. Both for me to understand your way of thinking, as well as help me move forward in ways acceptable to you. So far, all you've done is point me to that talk archives. This is not helpful, as it contains few if any reasoned attempts at reaching consensus and a true debate, and I'm asking you to clarify. Or at least show me the precise sections of the talk archives you'd like to put forward as a good reasoned discussion on why nothing should change.

I'm taking this up with you here first; to make it known that I find that comment of yours to be unhelpful. I would very much like to avoid an argument where we could have a constructive discussion, and so I'd like to straighten this out with you first. Hopefully you appreciate this. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 22:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm really not sure how I can persuade you. Neglacio is a respected Shareaza community member and he's happy with the current compromise. I've really said all I can on the subject. Consensus does not have to be (and frequently connot be) unanimous. You haven't offered any better arguments than "in my opinion we don't do enough to dissuade people from visiting Shareaza.com", but this isn't the function of an encyclopedia: we have described the current situation from a historical perspective and removed references to the old domain. You believe that we should be acting as guides to the Internet; Wikipedia is not supposed to prescribe or advise its readers. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:FICTION

Referring to current warhammer AfD's as being based on WP:FICTION seems to provide grist for the mill. My suggestion would be to refer to WP:N more generally and WP:GNG more specifically when declaring these articles to be non-notable. While they fail WP:FICTION as well, it isn't enacted and appealing to a proposed policy might be miscontrued as appealing to no policy, rather than appealing to the appropriate basis behind both WP:N and WP:FICT. Just a suggestion. :) Protonk (talk) 01:16, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

So I see. Thanks. Just stripping the words "per WP:FICTION" off (until, god willing, the guideline is fully adopted) seems to be the easiest way of resolving this, seeing as I'm providing a rationale anyway. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 07:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

So I can stress it a little

I've mentioned this a few times in the discussion over there, but this is what I meant by policy flying in the face of the current convention: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). The english-language references used in that article do primarily call the console Genesis. To add to this this particular policy is a part of WP:MoS#Foreign terms.

I'm not trying to be a dick about anything nor push a geocentric view of North America, but when something's wrong, it should be fixed.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:55, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Given that "Mega Drive" is only intelligible in the English language, this doesn't pass the laugh test. If the MoS were as clear-cut about this as you think it is, you wouldn't be in a distinct minority in wanting it moved. A general tip to be used in fighting a minority position is that if one finds onesself trying to beat people over the head with a particular policy that either the policy doesn't do as good a job of settling the issue as one might think or that one has misread it entirely. Furthermore, if one finds onesself replying to every single comment any dissenter makes, then it suggests that one's arguments are insufficiently convincing to stand on their own without constantly being reiterated. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

One might also think a policy should be emphasized if the people counter arguing are seemingly ignoring it. Also to add Mega Drive is not a term exclusive to english: if you notice the other language articles also use the term in relation to their own language. For an english speaking discussion however they don't factor in as much (i.e. Final Fantasy Legends (NA only) vs. Makai Toushi SaGa (Japan only)). If the references themselves counter the name, shouldn't that be a clear indication that rethinking is in order?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

This is obviously not the same as Final Fantasy Legends versus Makai Toushi SaGa - the latter is in the Japanese language, and is gibberish in English. "Mega Drive" is a brand name designed to be intelligible in English and intended to be used worldwide - it is not directly comparible to any of the analogies you've put out so far. You're not listening to people's arguments. If you've anything to add, please add it to the main discussion on the move. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)