User talk:Phil Boswell/Archive2004

Archives

2003

2004

2005

2006

Odd timestamp turns out to be deliberate

No, that's right. I have a time machine. I use it when people whinge on Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress that their blocks expire too early and they can't do anything about it. Unfortunately the software doesn't have a method for changing the expiry time on a block-by-block basis. Setting the timestamp works, but it does tend to annoy people :) -- Tim Starling 12:07, Jan 12, 2004 (UTC)

(Can't remember)

January 13 looks fine to me. --User:Dcsohl

• Cheers. Phil 16:42, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

html2wikipedia

You asked me about running html2wikipedia on Windows. I suspect html2wikipedia works on Windows if you run it using Cygwin. Services for Unix would probably work too. I haven't tested them, though. You'll need a working version of lex or flex. Email me at dwheeler (at) dwheeler dot com if you have problems/questions. -- Dwheeler 23:46, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

**It is going to happen!

Soon in a wiki near you! Thanks for the reminder, Muriel 12:10, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Enjoy! Muriel 11:20, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Todays security bulliten?

I really don't know what your refering to. I added everybody on that list to my IM's. If you don't like that, it's ok to block me, but I don't understand this security stuff. What is this bulliten you refer to? Where can I read a copy of it? I didn't have anything in particular to talk to you about up until now, I was just being social. What is the security danger from an IM (now you have me worried ;) ? Sam Spade 21:46, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Music to add page

You might want to disambiguate your entry for Rush. RedWolf 04:53, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

(Can't remember)

Message for you on User talk:Tim Starling -- Tim Starling 00:17, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

Screen readers?

Phil, from your comment on Village Pump it sounds like you have some knowledge of screen readers (etc.). I don't suppose you know of a free/opensource one (a I've long preached the accessibility of my website without actually having tested it properly). Thanks. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:23, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

section headers

Done. (I hope I did it right. I'm fairly new here).

Wayland

Robbot

Thanks for the notification on the Robbot problems on Hungarian language. I (and Rob Hooft will have to look what is going on. Andre Engels 16:25, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

taxotables

Phil - we've updated the taxo-standard on Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. The biggest change is we are no longer linking the rank titles. I updated Amphisbaenia for that and other formatting issues. - UtherSRG 17:19, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looking for Hosers

(Copy of your question and my answer from Talk:List_of_web_comics#Looking for Hosers) I've recently started reading "GPF" and there was a cross-over between this and another comic named the "Hosers" in February 2000. However the latter appears to be unavailable (it used to live at http://www.hosers.org/ which is not responding): anyone know where to find it? Phil 12:29, Jan 14, 2004 (UTC)

• Hosers are still there, last comic appears to be 1/24/2003, site still semi-active, I'll try to determine the correct date range and add it to the list. The entry will look like this (the year on the comic looks off by one!):
• Hosers by Aric S. Campling and Lev Babiev 1999 March 22-2003 January 24? ( http://www.hosers.org/ )
• PS: cross-over with GPF is here http://www.hosers.org/archive/20000217.html Wikibob 23:24, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

Alphabets derived from the Latin

Thanks for your valuable input on Alphabets derived from the Latin. It's much more usable now. Jor (Darkelf) 14:35, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Aliens

Obviously that wasn't intentional. I must have just accidentally updated an ancient copy of the article by mistake. It's back to normal now. Sarge Baldy 12:50, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

HRs

Hi there, I noticed that you are using HRs to divide the stub message. HR's are generally considered ugly in the article namespace, and discouraged. Also, they go against the norm of not using them for this purpose, so please do not use them. Dori | Talk 17:07, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Precipitation

Hi. I didn't have a real problem with the tone of your message on the talk page. I guess though it didn't help to convince me of your position, although I understand where you are coming from. When one posts a topic for discussion, one must anticipate seeing other viewpoints. I have postponed implementation of my proposed change for now to see if someone else chimes in. Upon possible future reflection, I may just let it go — although I still think my way is the best way in this case! :-) . RedWolf 03:55, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)

Recent death

Thanks for liking it. Cheers, –Hajor

Dodgy browsers

I'm not sure how to phrase it really. It happens a lot on Meta, and I've never seen anyone told they are causing the problem. If you want to write something, I can try and reword it to sound polite, but I'm not sure how to explain the problem in order to write it myself. If that would be helpful, just put it in my sandbox or somewhere. Angela. 17:43, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

EasyTimeline discussion

Hi Phil, EasyTimeline accepts dates (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy) only from 1800 AD, this is a limitation of Ploticus, which probably, as often happens with software, stores date values as a number of seconds since a arbitrary chosen start date. But full years, no limitation. I checked [1], only years there, so should be no problem. Erik Zachte 00:04, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, you can copy the site if you want, but why would you want to? If you want to add it to the Wikipedia, it would mean double maintenance, which I'm not looking forward to. If I may make a suggestion: it would be really neat to have a tutorial where a chart is built from the ground up and intermediate results are displayed and commented. This would be really something to put on the wikipedia since people can add or alter it when some part of the explanation turns out to be unclear or ambiguous. You might use Middle Earth as a starting point, it will appeal to many. What do you think? Erik Zachte 17:25, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, you have a point there. The syntax description probably should be on meta. It will be a nontrivial task to convert it to wiki format though, since it is quite a lengthy document. Cheers, Erik Zachte 10:45, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, please, go ahead. Erik Zachte 12:17, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Phil, thanks for your work on the EasyTimeline documentation. I made a different version of the chess timeline, horizontal layout seems more fit for a timeline with many long texts. Cheers, Erik Zachte 11:41, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

comprise

You're actually in the wrong here, but don't feel bad. The whole comprises the parts, not vice versa. correct usage. -- 68.161.160.230 14:44, 26 May 2004 (UTC) (a third party who noticed your comment)

Wikisophia

You are the only person on Wiki I note as being involved in this project - what came of it? How much had been developed? --Oldak Quill 14:15, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Got a note from you, Phil; sometime back in Feb. re: collaboration on WikiTeX.  Wikisophia is finally back up, and I'm back from sabbatical. Let's talk. Danenberg 11:51, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

REDIRECTs now disallow any extra text?

from the pump

I was trying to add a Category to a REDIRECT page (don't ask rude questions and I won't tell you where to stick them :-). However when I tried to save the change, not only did the Category not get saved, the Edit History wasn't even updated! I have just tested it in my Sandbox and it seems that whereas it used to be possible to append text to a REDIRECT, to explain why it was there, for example, such as "Common mis-spelling", this would seem now to have been forbidden. The edit seems to be simply ignored, but there is no message saying that this has occurred. Was this a planned feature of the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade? --Phil | Talk 14:57, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know why in this particular instance, but ISTM that to have a category on the redirect wouldn't work anyway as in the category page linking to it when you click that link you'd be redirected through to the actual target page anyway, thus it would be an unusable link. Categories should only be on target (valid) pages. --VampWillow 15:17, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I know that now! (wishing I could recall from whence that is a quote). Well actually I had figured it all along but I wanted to see if it were possible or whether MediaWiki would tell me I was doing something unwise. When the edit was just silently rejected I dug a bit more. It turns out that something which is reasonable and was allowed before—i.e. adding extra explanatory text after a REDIRECT—has now been forbidden for no apparent reason and without any message to explain why MediaWiki is throwing the edit away. --Phil | Talk 15:50, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

I just created Abdul Rahman, Tuanku and it seems to work. There is some sort of char-conversion bug affecting them though. -- User:Docu

You used a template message and appended it to the end of the REDIRECT: if you put your extra text on a new line it gets wiped! A little testing in my Sandbox proves it, and also that the history totally fails to register even the attempt at editing. --Phil | Talk 17:25, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC) ... and just to add a little spice to the mix, putting the Category directive on the same line does allow you to specify a category for a REDIRECT (see Category:Test which has members if no actual text). Which has to make some kind of twisted sense if I can just twist my mind enough ... --Phil | Talk 17:34, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Book blurb

from the pump

Originally posted on Wikipedia talk:Fair use but garnered no response yet ... Is the blurb on the back of a paperback, or on the flyleaf of a hardback, fair game for inclusion in a Wikipedia article? It would seem intuitively obvious, since the purpose of the blurb is to garner publicity for the book, but is there any hard policy? I would of course assume that any such text would be clearly annotated as such. --Phil | Talk 13:05, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

IMO (though IANAL), any short quote, if properly attributed, can be used under fair use. older≠wiser 13:20, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, it should be fair use if it's quoted. Obviously, the blurb shouldn't be quoted entirely if it's too long, and the quote shouldn't be the most significant part of the article. Dori | Talk 14:52, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Miles Vorkosigan

Phil, I've split up the Miles Vorkosigan page into two separate pages: Miles Vorkosigan now discusses the character himself, and Vorkosigan Saga lists the books with a plot summary of each. I also fleshed out the descriptions of some books, especially Mirror Dance. Ekaterin 13:30, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

eh ! I am currently rerere-reading the whole serie :-) I love it :-) ant

Voldemort

(Hope you don't mind me asking this here, but it seemed the simplest way to get a quick & simple answer :-) If you were to treat the name Voldemort as a French word and translate it into English, would it be better to translate it as Flight of Death or Flight from Death? And just to check, should it be Flight or Thief for the translation of the Vol... segment? (Sorry for disturbing you, we return you to your usual program :-)

That is a good question :-) I never thought of what it would mean. Vol as flight or vol as theft... Funny... Actually, I just asked on the fr:irc and no one had never thought of it either. You just made me realise the traitor had a french name... My respect for the author just drop a bit :-) I think it is best not translated. Both interpretations are worth it. Probably meant to be :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing 16:46, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Internal links acquire an "external link" icon when clicked

Hi Phil, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I had forgotten my submission and just saw it, and replied to you there. Any ideas? -- pne 11:02, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

unprotection of user pages

I believe the material on User talk:Dori that you are referring to is not vandalism, but a comment in some langauge other than English. I could be mistaken. In any case, it was User:Dori that I unprotected, not the talk page, and User:Dori has never been vandalized, ever, in fact having never been edited by anyone except Dori and a bot.

I did a database query a week or so ago to check for protected pages not listed at Wikipedia:Protected page and found quite a number. Many of them were user pages. I checked further and found that quite a number of user pages that are protected (including both those listed at Wikipedia:Protected page and those that are not listed there) have no history of vandalism at all.

I believe that protected pages, in general, are harmful and are detrimental to the spirit of the project.

I believe that user pages belonging to administrators and protected by their "owners", merely as a convenience to them, are particularly problematic because it comes off as a perk of adminship, since non-administrators can't do this. Non-admins can request that their user page be protected, and sometimes do so, but then they can't edit it themselves.

Most of the user pages I have unprotected have no history of vandalism at all, though some have non-vandlism edits that the user they "belong" to didn't like. A few may have had some vandalism a long time ago (over a year) since I didn't check the history back more than a year.

I believe that it is appropriate to protect user pages temporarily to stop repeat vandalism, just as is done with article pages. And there are a few user pages, like User:Hephaestos, that are targets of such frequent vandalism that it, regrettably, makes sense to leave them protected indefinitely. But in most cases, vandalism should just be reverted, as is done on article pages.

I have had my own user page vandalised. The vandalism was reverted. No big deal.

If the project, as a matter of policy, wishes to disallow editing of user pages except by the user they are attached to, that change should be made in the Mediawiki software so that it will apply uniformly to admins and non-admins.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if anything yet remains unclear.

Best regards

UninvitedCompany 16:28, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Intemperate Comments

I am posting this here, so that you will feel quite free to delete if you wish (and you will!)

Your comments on vampire watermelons were unconstructive and personally insulting.

"Restraining myself from reverting out of hand because I know that would just inflame things" - This is an arrogant assumption that your judgement is better than mine; you make zero attempt to support your views, and make a patronising suggestion as to the action you think I'll take (with no justification for your assumption). As it happens, you can revert all you wish; once I've made my point, I'm happy to let others (hopefully not just you, but whatever) to take next steps.

" ... mutter ... mutter " - Spit it out; if you have further insults, please feel free to express them in an adult fashion.

This is my last word; I also have no wish to inflame your short fuse; revert away. Heenan73 17:52, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vampiric proofreaders

m:Proofreading is underway! Check it out, spread the word, prepare to suck imperfections from the text of unsuspecting contributors. +sj+ 06:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Substub support

Thanks for your support. We need all the help that we can get. [[User:Mike Storm|Mike Storm (Talk)]] 17:03, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Enchanted Chocolate Pot

In an edit summary for Patricia Wrede, you say: "if you bother to check the author's website you will discover that the entire series is named after the subtitle of the first book". Where do I find this? I didn't see anything like this in a quick skim of the "official site" link from Patricia Wrede. There is a Caroline Stevermer web page, where the web page as a whole is named "The Enchanted Chocolate Pot"; but I don't really see an indication that that's supposed to be the name of the series (after all, A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics are discussed on the same page). Cwitty 17:01, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hieroglyphs

Thanks for that - I didn't know this - it might save me some considerable time - I have just added another half-dozen before catching up with your message. Regards --JohnArmagh 20:15, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for correcting my misspelling on the requests for page expansion. Can't believe I missed that. Chuckles Lyellin 14:12, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

Adminship?

Are you a wikipedia administrator, and if not, would you like to be? I like your edits, and I'd gladly nominate you. You should probably read Wikipedia:Administrators before responding yes.

And, do you maintain some kind of reading diary? I'd love to see what you're reading, as it strikes me I would probably enjoy reading the same books. --Woggly 06:52, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Another substub vote

I just wanted to let people know that there's another vote on substubs going on in Template talk:Substub#Survey. I know that this is a second vote, however, apparently it was originally intended to be only a vote about whether to keep the template message, but somehow evolved into a vote on the existence of substubs themselves. I know that you already voted in favor of substubs, so I wanted to get your support on this poll too. Thanks for your support! [[User:Mike Storm|Mike∞Storm]] 23:33, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

List of web comics

Just wanted to explain the current policy on article-less entries in List of web comics. The problem is that the list is a magnet for WikiSpam, and we've been trying to discourage people from simply adding their comic's name and a link. Perhaps it would be better to just not allow external links in the list? — Gwalla | Talk 19:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Gmail invite

Howdy. I just got some more invites in - do you still want one? blankfaze | (беседа!) 05:36, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Birthday greetings

Happy Birthday Phil! Hope you are having a great day. Keep up the good work on Wikipedia. [[User:Yardcock|Yardcock | talk]] 16:30, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

IMDB templates

Hello there. Just wanted to warn you about your use of the Template:imdb title on American Pie (movie) page. You used it the wrong way. On the id parameter, you should leave ONLY the numbers. Check my fixes if it helps Oh, and for furter instructions, see Template talk:imdb title

Thanks — Kieff | Talk 04:55, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Nosy question

Hi Phil, I didn't get your point at Angela's talk, which item are you interested in? Just have a look at www.wikispecies.org/, if you were interested in the logo. Best, Benedikt

Thanks

Thanks for cleaning up my Wildstorm article. When i wrapped up i was so beat i didn't have the inclination to go and hunt all the disrepancies and errors left from editing the old version and my own typing errors. I was already plannning to get to that, but i found it already taken care of. Thanks  :) --Asmodai 10:41, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Italian Images

Good idea, but I am useless with images, and can only just plonk them on the page and hope somebody else will sort them out. Pleas feel free to link any image I upload to anything, except a category of thick, dense Wikipedia Users Giano 12:19, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

re: Proposed new format for sub-pages

Good morning, Phil. Your proposed table for VfD discussions might be overkill for short discussions. We get a lot of pushback over the difficulty of the mechanics of nominating new articles. Pasting in a table would be yet another step for users to complain about. And Mike Snow has a very good point about instruction creep. The table would be very helpful for long complicated votes, though. My only recommended change would be to add a border to the table. Good thoughts. Thanks. Rossami 13:01, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

• Hmmmm. As I think about this more, perhaps there is a way to make the mechanics easier using the subst function. I'd also like to integrate some old thoughts about moving the discussion away from "mere voting" and more toward "policy arguments". I'm going to duplicate your template and play with it for a while. I'll put my musings at Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/Proposed new format_v02. Rossami
• In the meantime, you might be interested in some of Eloquence's thoughts at Wikipedia:Deletion requests. His idea never took hold but maybe the time is finally right. Rossami

parenthesis/-ses

I see, you corrected the spelling in my new list. Thank you for that. Am I right that "parenthesis" is singular and "parentheses" is plural? So the title Parenthesis is acceptable, isn't it? --SirJective 13:49, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's slightly more complicated than that. The singular word "parenthesis" can refer to a single round bracket of either orientation or to a phrase contained within parentheses (the latter word indeed being the plural of "parenthesis"). I'm afraid I might have got a little muddled up on your page: I probably should have changed all of them or none to stay consistent. I'll have a little think about it, and maybe try fixing it up; or maybe you might want to do it yourself? --Phil | Talk 14:20, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I answered on my User talk:SirJective talk page, let's only talk there. --SirJective 14:29, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Table

Oops, I thanked User:Everyking who's likely responsible for some extra links.... Anyway, thanks for the table. Do you know what page this table coding is explained on? [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 15:02, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Yes. let me have a look (start by clicking on the Editing help link down next to the "Preview" button, that's usually quite helpful…). Aha! m:Help:Table seems to be the place to look, and it's the pipe syntax you're after. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 15:45, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Roseanne

Since you were wondering why noone noticed the thinko in that article before... it's probably because I just added the list of major characters last night. And the fact that it was 3 or 4am or so also explains why I made the mistake in the first place, I guess. ^.^ -- Schnee 14:36, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Aha! I just assumed that the character list had been there from the start, since Roseanne is a very popular show. --Phil | Talk 14:51, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Project links poll

The poll in Wikipedia talk:Sister projects has changed, due to intervnetion by Netoholic, of whom I'm growing less fond by the minute. As such, I took the liberty of removing your vote of support (the only other vote other than mine), thinking that it better to remove it than have you pledge your support for a modified poll. I would be much obliged if you were to cast your vote once more, now that the poll has changed. -- Itai 13:35, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Of course, what happened is that I first edited your signature out of Wikipedia talk:Sister projects, forgot to save the edit, and then added the above comment. :-) Luckily, I noticed that you got this message, are aware of the situation, and have not withdrawn your support. I'll try to get the poll listed somewhere, in order to get more votes cast. -- Itai 13:57, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I hate to bug you on this - I suppose you didn't know what you were getting yourself into when you added your support to my poll - but I could use your help at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Netoholic. You don't have to help if you don't feel comfortable with the subject. -- Itai 16:04, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it after the weekend. --Phil | Talk 16:56, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding Template:Template NETL, I've removed all instances of it from Wikipedia:Sister projects. -- Netoholic @ 17:22, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)

Catherine Asaro

Well...*laugh*...all I really did to that article was to add the piped surname, firstname to a category that was already on the article, so that it alphabetized under A instead of C. People do some weird things around this place sometimes, don't they? *grin* Bearcat 21:54, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• LOL they do indeed. Yeah i thought i might have a play and see whether i could put a few ppl in the lesbian category. Actually it started with some dickhead who put a vanity article on about himself, and i though how funny, when he comes back to update it, he'll have a nice little categorisation down the bottom: 'categories: gay, lesbian or bisexual people.' It made me laugh so i thought id weave a web of deceit, linking various people together with strange lesbian connections ;-) Catchas Wifki 04:26, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Danny's award picture

No probs with the pics. Yes, that is the Golden Nica award, which Wikipedia received this spring. Danny 11:36, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mov-stub

I don't see why you moved mov-stub to movie-stub. Is that really necessary? I was using the computer abbr. for movie for this stub name. Additionally Film-stub came after mov-stub, and I think keeping stub names short is much better than typing something really long. --[[User:AllyUnion|AllyUnion (talk)]] 09:49, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

movie-stub seemed like the best idea with the least chance for confusion, and it's only an extra two letters, hardly an impossible effort. Given that the category is actually called movie stubs it seemed like a no-brainer. --Phil | Talk 09:56, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Abstract regular Polytopes...

Hi! I've added a picture in response to your comments on (the talk page of) Regular polytope. I haven't changed the text though. Does it help?? Thanks! --mike40033 07:27, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That is a brilliant picture which answers some questions and raises more: continued on the talk page. --Phil | Talk 08:03, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

I've added to the discussion... :-) --mike40033 07:21, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Soap opera cats

If you're going to split the EastEnders characters into their own subcat, do the rest for the other shows, please. In the spirit of completeness, at least. Mike H 17:38, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Give us a minute, I only just started :-) It might have to wait until tomorrow to finish, is that OK with you? --Phil | Talk 17:41, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, no rush. I'd do it but my birthday is coming up and I'm expecting company. Mike H 21:28, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)

Sister Fidelma

Thanks for editing the Sister Fidelma article... it was my first try apart from 'sandbox'-fooling Lectonar

No problem. I'm sure I read some of those books a while back and seeing it on Detective fiction intrigued me. Would you be able to define some of those Irish legal terms? --Phil | Talk 12:14, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Indeed I could, but that will take a little time and research, especially as some of the legal terms are intertwined with the system of the celtic bards... Lectonar 13:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Go for it, sounds like we could get a whole set of articles (and there's no particular hurry :-) --Phil | Talk 13:32, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Temporal aliasing

I'm flattered... I had the same idea myself but wanted to do a bit more before unveiling it as an article, but this is fine.

Trying to find out whether the "stroboscope" invented in 1833, by the Simon Stampfer was, in fact, used by Stampfer to analyze rapid repetitive motion. All the quickly-Googled sources say only that it was virtually identical to the Phenakistoscope. It's odd that the word "stroboscopic light" which originally referred to the fact that the light flashed repetitively came to refer instead to the typical xenon-arc bulb that made the flash... and hence "strobe" came to mean a non-repetitive electronic flash... [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Red-link recovery

Howdy and many thanks for your work on that list of mis-punctuated links. The list's pretty much completed now - I'll be generating a new version of it in due course, taking all the lessons learned from the last one into account. In the meantime, if you enjoyed working through the list (or at least found it a worthwhile distraction), you may want to have a look at the similar list of plural discrepancies which highlights red-links that might be red because they (or the article they are aiming for) are improperly pluralised. Again, thanks for your efforts - award yourself a wikimedal for janitorial services if you haven't already got one! - TB 11:25, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Invite

Hi

I'm posting this to invite you to participate in WP:LCOTW , a project you may be interested in. Please consider nominating and/or voting for a suitable article there. Filiocht 12:37, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a look, but it looks a bit high-brow for me :-) I'm likely to nominate Category:Science fiction writers or even Category:Romantic fiction writers for a big push to completion. --Phil | Talk 14:05, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

High, low or middle brow: all welcome. Filiocht 15:44, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Mathematical symbol table

Hi Phil, have you lost interest in "rejigging" the Table of mathematical symbols? Paul August 22:17, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

No, I just get really easily distracted by other, more immediately-possible things. Sorry, I am coming back to that looking for my round tuit --Phil | Talk 08:04, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Be careful what you write, I hate red links, I may have to write an article on "round tuit" now — and If I do I'm going to expect your vote to keep on VFD ;-) Paul August 13:13, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Fairy 'nuff, that's where I got the idea for wikiholiday after all :-) --Phil | Talk 13:33, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

WP:LCOTW

Template moved to top of page Filiocht 10:42, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for making the literature going-ons work properly. Filiocht 15:55, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

Blockquote

You're right. I had misunderstood. Thanks for pointing out the difference between <blockquote> and :. Should I ever use a colon to to indent a quote, or are blockquote tags always preferable? Tim Ivorson 17:01, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

My personal preference is to use BLOCKQUOTE every time. The point is that future versions of the Mediawiki software might decide to treat quotations differently, which is impossible if they're all labelled the same as ordinary indentation. In the same way as -- might be transformed into – and --- might be transformed into —, there might be a proper wiki-syntax for it. In fact, it's already possible to modify your personal CSS file so that BLOCKQUOTE shows up distinctly, if I could just figure out how to use it (see if you can figure out help:user style: apparently this should look different except that the Q tag is disabled :-) HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:25, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

re:jessica steen picture

you have recently listed on my talk page that a photograph i have uploaded onto this site may be in violation of copyright. you may be correct in this assesment, as i had not at the time read the wikipedia page regarding fair use policy. I have no objections to anyone removing this image from the site Autopilots 09:06, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright on Sharon Lee

Yeah but...ok, if it's not a copyright violation, that's good -- but then it's just a puff piece that actually says nothing at all about why she's in any way notable or interesting; what has she written? What's interesting about her? Why would someone want to know who she is? It's kinda like the blurbs on book sleeves; if you're holding the book, you know the blurb is about the author, but otherwise you do need to be told that the author wrote that book (and likely others). I'll tell you what my teacher told me when I cribbed a bit too much from an encyclopedia: "You're a good writer. Put it in your own words." ... On general principal, publicity bios are only good as source material for Wikipedia; they're generally not encyclopedic. --jpgordon{gab} 16:13, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copyright

Hi Phil. I'd say it's best to let someone else remove the copyvio notice rather than doing it yourself. I've put a question at Talk:Sharon Lee about it. Angela. 17:23, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

I've replied there: I sent them an email directing them to the GFDL so we'll see what arises. --Phil | Talk 17:42, Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for fixing my Glen Gook picture. I'm planning on going in there and fleshing this entry out. There's hardly any info there at all, and some is too uncited for my tastes. Lists two books as forthcoming. I would love to know where this information was gleaned from. I'll probably go through the history. Funny the page has like 500 edits, but only a hundred (?) words. Of course you have people like me that didn't realize it was recording every save. I figured the final product would be the only thing of interest, but of course you;d need it set up the way it is for versioning.

Anyway, that was my first attempt. Should have tried something easier.

Christopher L. Jorgensen 03:51, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sherlock Holmes subcategories

Thanks for beating me to moving all the Sherlock Holmes stories to subcategories. But is there a reason why Adrian Conan Doyle's pastiches are in the "short stories" category instead of the "pastiches" category? --Paul A 16:47, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, the ACD/JDC stories were not intended so much as pastiches as a serious exercise in response to the many stories alluded to by Dr. Watson scattered around the canon. YMMV. In any case, there is a cross-reference in ACD which should be added to The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:59, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

List of unseen characters

Regarding Henne in the List of unseen characters: Indeed, Kein Pardon doesn't have an article. This struck me hard because I hadn't even bothered to try and follow my own link, simply because the movie is/was quite popular in Germany.

Please refer to its main actor Hape Kerkeling's article, I just linked the movie from there. Reviews with quotes regarding Henne exist on IMDb. A Google search on kein pardon henne reveals more shopping pages than anything else; at least they provide quotes of Peter's mother mentioning Henne. --Demitsu 22:20, 2004 Nov 15 (UTC)

Direct-to-video

Hi phil, seen your edits there, which I agree with all but one. The title "other markets in Japan" is, I feel, not correct. It implies a technical difference (as the previous heading is 'DVD market'), and does not effectively sum up the content. I would suggest "V-cinema and OVA in Japan" or something along those lines. Interested in your thoughts.Pseudosocrates 16:48, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do as you see fit: I was just awash in a sea of capitalisation and went a bit mad :-) --Phil | Talk 17:05, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Hope that's better. --Phil | Talk 17:11, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Use of pics of genitals in articles

Hi. Phil, you write on the Village Pump, addressing Robert the Bruce:

No, what we see here is a rude jerk who can't stand his discussion being displayed anywhere else than in the most public place possible, regardless of how crowded that space might become. The pump is for general discussions: there's not room for everything. Only the most high-profile and high-volume discussions get their own articles, you nitwit, so stop complaining. You've got a whole brand-spanking-new article to use for your debate: stop your posturing and high thee gone.

Well I agree with you that Robert can be very rude, and the exchange between Robert and a number of other people seems to show him deliberately goading people to get an angry response, making very serious accusations of incompetence and suggesting that some people--who mostly, sometimes over a long period, have demonstrated intelligence and good judgement--should be supervised.

So it isn't too surprising that sometimes someone blows up and reacts in the way you did there. Now here's where I come in. I'm trying to dissuade Robert from the kind of rude behavior he has been engaging in. Politely pointing out where he has been overly personal in his comments, and so on, because in his exchanges where I have witnessed them I have found him to be rather rude; evidently he is the kind of person who doesn't quite get the point of being polite.

Now Robert comes to me and points out your attack on him--and it is a serious one. The Village Pump is a very public place, and as you know personal attacks do not belong anywhere on Wikipedia. So in fairness to Robert, I am making the same plea to you that I made to him. [2]

I would appreciate if you went back and, perhaps, overstruck the very hostile words and restated your opinion in a form that does not look like a naked personal attack.

Let's set a good example. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway ^Talk ]] 20:54, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Phil. I don't know whether Robert will appreciate this, but I do. I try to run flack for Theresa now and again, but as she's often engaged in the same articles Robert is she is an easy target for him. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 14:18, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• This last comment is a great disappointment. Sad to see your "civility" efforts are merely "running flak for Theresa" and not as you presented (and I accepted) for the good of Wikipedia. - Robert the Bruce 00:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Robert, I'm sorry that you feel that way. The problem is that you sometimes make posts that have the appearance of personal attacks on Theresa (and others). Such behavior is forbidden and also would have a deleterious effect on the environment if I did not occasionally speak up and voice an opposite view with factual rebuttals. Running flak in this way for a poster under personal attack is in the interests of wikipedia. --[[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway|Talk]] 04:30, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

---

Thanks

Thanks for your wikifications in the List of mnemonics article. Uranographer 10:24, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Subpage for LinkBot suggestions

That could definitely work. I've actually been quite surprised that some people were annoyed about suggestions on the talk page (it's almost like there's a suspicion the whole aim was to annoy them, rather than try and help them!) - but there have been enough responses like this to make me think that some change in approach would be a good idea. Your subpage idea is the first constructive criticism that I've received that addresses this concern, whilst still being feasible, and having the benefits of using the talk page (and the whole purpose of the talk page is to discuss and suggest improvements to the article). I'll work on something like this - for the talk page, I'm thinking something like the current section header ("Suggest 36 possible wiki links and 21 possible backlinks for XYZ") + a bit of text that says "An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the XYZ article, and they have been placed on this subpage", and link on 'this subpage' (so you'd get just 2 lines of text added to the talk page). Then the actual subpage would be just like what was previously being added to the talk page. Does that sound better? All the best, -- Nickj 05:44, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've actually replied on your talk page already...actually I was thinking more along the lines of putting more into the sub-page and less into the "victim" talk page: just a heading and a transclusion should do it. I prefer a transclusion so that the link-list can be edited directly from the talk page so as to keep track of progress. We can refine the rubric further so if you do decide to include all of them into a master page, the repetition doesn't become too annoying. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 09:31, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Re: Added talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions page:

I like it :) This also means that if people say "why does nobody link to my page?", you can (sometimes) say "see talk:Abraham Lincoln/Link suggestions#Inward links".

"I prefer a transclusion so that the link-list can be edited directly from the talk page".

Well, the problem is that people sometimes get annoyed at an increase in the length of the talk page. To see more on this, see the negative feedback page, comment number 8, where you and Shane King both independently made somewhat similar suggestions at around the same time. Personally, suggestions on the talk page wouldn't annoy me, but it's undeniable that some people have disliked it, and (I'm hoping) they'll dislike it much less if it's mostly on a subpage, with the talk page just having a link to that subpage.

I've created that Master List.

Cool. One thing though - won't this page become absolutely huge? There are around 750,000 suggestions in total. Each could be suggested twice (once as a link, once as a backlink), so that's a page with a list of 1.5 million things :-(

To-do list.

The suggestions might not be inappropriate, so this may come under the "experimental ideas (these should be discussed first to reach a consensus)" clause of What a to-do list is not.

I do appreciate your comments, and thank you for making these example pages, it really helps. All the best, -- Nickj 03:54, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Phil, I've had some further ideas on this. Is it OK if I run those past you, to see what you think?

1. Placing all suggestion subpages under LinkBot's user space. E.g. User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abraham Lincoln. That way:
   • Suggestions are not in the article's namespace, they're in the user's namespace, and should hence be even less objectionable to people. (i.e. it's a psychological difference, rather than a technical one: Adding a subpage in the article space could be seem as potentially intrusive, whereas creating a page in your own user space and then inviting people to take a look should not be seen as intrusive).
   • If articles get deleted/moved, then there's less for admins to delete (because no subpages in the article space, and I'm not really worried about keeping LinkBot's user namespace clean).
   • I can automatically update the suggestions if I ever run it again (just replace the contents of the subpages, irrelevant of what was there before). This is part of the psychological difference - nobody should object to a user updating one of their own user pages, but they may very well object if subpages in the article space get wholesale updated (especially if they've added comments or crossed things off the list).
2. In the article talk page note, can include a line that shows how to transclude pages, but leave it for the user to enable this (e.g. "Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Abraham Lincoln}} to this page.")
3. I've made the notes and feedback bits of the suggestion pages into transcludes, for easy updating (if needed).
4. I'm wondering whether the quick note placed on the talk page, couldn't be a transclude too. E.g. perhaps transclude a page that says "An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Phil Boswell/Archive2004 article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.
   Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Phil Boswell/Archive2004}} to this page."

All the best, -- Nickj 04:58, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Sharon Lee

Hi. Have you ever heard back about GFDL permission of the text of the Sharon Lee article, as mentioned on 12 November? Please note on Talk:Sharon Lee, thanks. -- Infrogmation 06:40, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How much longer do you think we should give this? -- Infrogmation 06:23, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that. Best wishes, -- Infrogmation 17:16, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirect plural template

Hi Phil, There's been some discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Creating_a_Wikipedia_Bot about using the new Template:R from plural for all applicable plural redirects. However, it seems that in large numbers that categories have big performance issues, whereas lists don't seem to. Is there some way that Template:R from plural can be modified to use lists instead of categories?

Also, LinkBot has done some runs using the new the scheme you suggested (suggestions on a different page, formatted as you suggested), and it seems to be working well (8 bits of positive feedback and no negative feedback for the last 200 suggestions). -- All the best, Nickj (t) 05:10, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Daughters pseudo-rant

Hi, Phil. :) I'm a bit behind in my talk page correspondence. You asked if the pseudo rant was quoted from something, the answer being not that I know. :) It was inspired by the discussions over at clitoris. func(talk) 19:00, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re :Haileybury College

In case you havent been answered yet, Yes, the Haileybury College in Melbourne is related to the one in England. Well it's related to 'a' Haileybury in England and since there's only one that i know of then I presume its that one that is listed in wikipedia. The one in Australia is like branched off from the england one I think. Perhaps the first principle was a former student of the england one or something. I've got no idea on the history on my own school.... However I think you'll find that both haileyburys have school songs that are the same. --AmpedLemon 05:57, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Re: Haileybury College

Yeah, Vivat Haileyburia is one of the songs we have to sing.

vprotected

Two glyphs: /. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 04:23, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld

Spam message: Having noticed you have made some great additions to the Discworld articles I thought you might be interested in this new WikiProject. It's at a very early stage and needs quite a bit of work. violet/riga (t) 21:43, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)