Revision as of 00:45, 5 May 2009

To speak to another with consideration, to appear before him with decency and humility, is to honour him; as signs of fear to offend. To speak to him rashly, to do anything before him obscenely, slovenly, impudently is to dishonour. Leviathan, X. This is a Happy Talk Page. No bickering. Proverb for the year: if you have nothing new to say, don't say it. If you're here to talk about conflicts of interest, please read (all of!) this. You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there. In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email. I "archive" (i.e. delete old stuff) quite aggressively (it makes up for my untidiness in real life). If you need to pull something back from the history, please do. Once. Please leave messages about issues I'm already involved in on the talk page of the article or project page in question. My actions: Contribs • Blocks • Protects • Deletions

The Holding Pen

The <div> tag and Cascading Style Sheets_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets-The_Holding_Pen-2009-02-03T06:39:00.000Z">

The <div> tag is part of the HTML standard, and in essence lets you group things logically in a HTML page. Since different user agents have different needs and treat the data differently (e.g. a screen reader for the visually impaired, a bot or a normal browser like Firefox) the rendering of elements and the logical structure has been separated into two different languages: HTML and CSS.

HTML is supposed to structure the document logically while CSS is used to change the visual appearance of a page. A website usually only has one or a few CSS documents (style sheets). Many HTML documents can then share the same style sheet, providing consistent formatting across the site.

The div element has two attributes, class and style, that are linked to the style sheet. The class attribute determines what "class" the element belong to. It is then possible to define a default style for elements of this class in the style sheet .

The style element is what's most interesting here though, it lets you override the default style of an element. So the part within the style="" is actually CSS.

W3C (website) is in charge of the CSS standard and it can be found on their website. Unfortunately, the dominating browser sets the de facto standard so things might not work as expected or even be implemented yet.

The W3C specifications aren't particularly good for learning but they are good as a reference. What you are looking for is probably: .

If you search the webb for CSS you will find countless examples and tutorials. Quick Googling turned up this for example: .

I took the liberty to modify your div tags on this page as an example, feel free to modify and revert as you like. I hope this is somewhat helpful at least. :)
—Apis (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets"> _tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets">

Thanks! William M. Connolley (talk) 20:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Reviving Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Fluid dynamics

Crownest has expressed interest in reviving this. Since you were a member of the FD project (now converted into a taskforce), I'm wondering if you'd be a part of the Taskforce. The taskforce is undergoing a significant overhaul at the moment, and by the end of it, it should be fairly easy to get around and there should be a nifty compendium of useful tools for people interested in FD. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

In principle, I can help in small ways, though no longer being professionally involved. I wonder if there is an embedded prog taskforce? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Prog taskforced?Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Current

User:Sam Degelia

Sam Degelia (talk · contribs) is still edit warring on Charles Harrelson. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 00:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Done William M. Connolley (talk) 06:50, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Ocean acidification

A reader writes:

"Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments. This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean."

I'm not sure, but it sounds odd. You can beat me to it if you like William M. Connolley (talk) 18:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like it was User:Plumbago William M. Connolley (talk) 18:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Correctly deduced. It was me. It may not be worded well, but I think that it's factually correct. Basically, as well as its other effects on living organisms in the ocean, acidification is also expected (see the references) to dissolve existing carbonate sediments in the oceans. This will increase the ocean's alkalinity inventory, which in turn increases its buffering capacity for CO2 - that is, the ocean can then store more CO2 at equilibrium than before (i.e. the "implications for climate change" alluded to). As a sidenote, it also means that palaeo scientists interested in inferring the past from carbonate sediment records will have to work fast (well, centuries) before their subject matter dissolves away! Hope this helps. --PLUMBAGO 06:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Izzedine 3RR block.

William,

I'd appreciate your input at User talk:Izzedine#3RR Re: Syrian Desert regarding your 3RR block of that editor and his subsequent unblock request(s)—specifically, in the request that is currently "on hold."

Many thanks,

AGK 20:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. Replied there William M. Connolley (talk) 21:05, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Anthony on stilts and User talk:Ht686rg90

I'm reviewing some blocks and I came across these two from you. Is it possible to solve this through page protection rather than blocking? I think we just need to force these two to discuss with each other and the block is putting that on hold. Mangojuice 23:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

User lucpol

Hi! First of all, I am usually the IP 141.83.42.10. I just created a log because of a user here. I already wrote to you because of him. Now I looked to other wiki's. E.g on the polish wiki he was blocked several times and the last block is for 2 years. Even here he is blocked with the reason well known multiwiki troll and 1 rok is as far as I know 1 year. And that is, how he show on his user site, his native language wiki. Now he spam again on my user page and on my discussion. And he don't get, that Katowice and Silesia is in European Union, so they are already listed here. The only way he operates, is to accuse others as sockpuppet and vandalism. I found also one thing where he just removed an answer from an IP without any reaction on it (perhaps because his English is worse than mine) . Or he remove edits without any reason. These are just a few examples in last time, don't want to look in older edits. Another thing is his neutrality, e.g. he remove in a disambiguation an important information just because it is the word Poland . For me all this looks like a German right-wing extremist, but I see he isn't a German (edits in German wiki were in a very bad German). Also by Lukas Podolski, were it is an important information that he is from Poland (for example his reaction when he scored goals against Poland and other reactions, too), he removed the information Poland and Polish-born . Two months before he wanted a information there, but a different one . And here he was adamant that a historical(!) region is as information in the topic sentence. Decide yourself what to do. Greeting --Dontwantanick (talk) 00:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)