Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Carcharoth (talk | contribs) at 17:08, 25 October 2007 (→Your RFA was successful: reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is a Misplaced Pages user talk page. For the fictional wolf of the same name, see Carcharoth.

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• October - November 2007

Cleanup templates

Just to let you know that most cleanup templates, like "unreferenced", "fact", "cleanup", "merge"etc., are best not "subst"ed. See WP:SUBST for more details. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 10:47 4 October 2007 (GMT).

Thanks. I was trying to remember how to link to the talk page discussion. This is how I've done it now. I did it for the other one, but forgot for this one. Hope that's OK now. Carcharoth 10:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Splendid, thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 11:14 4 October 2007 (GMT).

Comet comment

Yes, it does sound convincing. Sir Carchlock strikes again! A brilliant discovery about "Walke Pauls", I must say! And there was me trying to be all William Empson about it. What an odd place to go for news, though, a cathedral. Of course, churches were dens of iniquity in those days, now I come to think about it. Pepys used to go to different ones each week according to which woman he wanted to chat up, which he did during the sermon. It was almost the only chance there was to get a respectable lady at your mercy.

Catherine de' Medici was also very interested in comets, I've been finding out. She had this tower (right) built for her astronomers to study the sky from. Looks a bit puny now, doesn't it; but it was quite something in its day.qp10qp 17:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

A blast from the past! It seems like that message was from months ago, but the response was well worth waiting for! I might even get round to writing something on the comet that inspired James I. Confusingly, it seems there were three comets, which is why I went off the idea of that article. Carcharoth 19:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, dear Carcharoth, THREE comets should have aroused your interests further. I would have thought a detective like you would know that one murder in the village is mere jejunosity, whereas THREE........! Give the cat another goldfish.

On the subject of what pages I watch, I keep a fairly blank watchlist. My responses, like comets, appear somewhat randomly, I confess. But they are sure, like comets, to appear in the end, usually with their backsides on fire.qp10qp 20:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The cat liked the jejune goldfish. That's a word I never thought to see someone use in everyday conversation! If the comets work out, I'll let you know. Carcharoth 21:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Tolkien family

Category:Tolkien family was nominated for deletion, and it looks like it will get deleted. Maybe it should be merged into Category:Tolkien so that the articles don't fall out of the cat structure? (Category:Inklings is BTW also there.) Súrendil 14:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It was deleted indeed, as I feared. Sigh. Súrendil 18:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I have added former cat members to Category:J. R. R. Tolkien, but I'm not sure whether Simon Tolkien, Tim Tolkien and Baillie Tolkien should go there. BTW, maybe Eucatastrophe and Cellar door would be better placed in Category:Tolkien, as "after Tolkien"? Súrendil 13:19, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Category fashion comes and goes. It's not the end of the world. I felt Eucatastrophe and Cellar door were more personal to Tolkien, but maybe you are right. If we strictly limit the personal category to family and books about him, it will be more logical. I also feel that somewhere there should be a list (maybe in Misplaced Pages namespace) of articles related to Tolkien and Middle-earth, but not related enough to go in a category. This would generally be articles on the "what links here" lists for Tolkien and Middle-earth. Sometimes it is enough to link between two articles without having a category. Carcharoth 23:11, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

ffolliott

Much obliged. Oops. Do you suppose we need a comment to keep people from "fixing" the ff?

Give the cat structure some more dried goldfish for me... Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I thought it was Ff, but then found her webpage. Comment to stop others correcting it? Maybe. If you think people will read it. Carcharoth 17:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments show up at the point of editing, and are therefore the last guard against know-it-alls. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Claudius Aelianus

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I copied it here. 1of3 17:20, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Response to comment on Admins noticeboard/incidents

Oh, when i stated that "the police know everything". I did not really mean it, and my guess was that they went on wikipedia and found the incident and contacted Eliz that way, i do not think that it was a fake email. From experience the police handle these type of incidents quickly and efficiently. Cheers! Tiptoety 01:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On 11 October, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Astronomische Nachrichten, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Elkman 21:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realise that DYK attracted the wrong sort of eyes too. I guess congratulations are in order, for putting Astronomische Nachrichten into the eyes of the vandals; lets hope they read a little of it before they poop on it. John Vandenberg 01:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

If an page image are not kept on a system that I trust, I upload them onto Commons. This is normal procedure, and there is a special extension on Wikisource that allows side-by-side comparisions. See s:Page:Astronomische Nachrichten No. 44 - Herschel.png. With Astronomische Nachrichten, I have been using ADS, so I have not bothered to upload each page image onto Commons, as I trust ADS to be around for a while. Did you see that I added images to commons:Category:Astronomische Nachrichten. Those are all of the figures that are in the first two years. Not many. I think that Schumacher will only have added those images on issues that had important content, so it would be good to figure out which article they relate to. There is also a latin book that Schumacher included the cover and three pages of as an appendix to an issue. I intend to transcribe that as well :-)

I do try to OCR the text, but often that doesnt work, so I type them out by hand. It also means I take in more of the content. s:The Times/The Late Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S. needed to be typed by hand, but in my opinion it is far easier to type that obituary up than it is to do the equivalent amount of improvement to the Charles Babbage article. Some of the obit may be wrong, but once the errors have been noted, there is no further changes required. Finished uploads can also be protected.

Regarding linkage from Wikisource to Wiktionary and Misplaced Pages, that is normal practise, where the linkage improves the ease with which the reader can understand the text. I am always cautious about links, because if I have it wrong, it is not likely that someone else will correct it, as there are less people involved in WS. I left of a lot of links that I wasnt sure about because I was hoping to have some additional help with that. I was expecting the help from the people who watch Charles Babbage, but it looks like you have found cross-linkages that make me confident the linkage is correct.

Where linkage doesn't make sense, every page has a "notes" field in the header, which is free text for Wikisourcians to provide more general notes for the reader. It is also permitted to add editor footnotes on Wikisource, but with works that include its own footnotes, it can become confusing to the reader.

John Vandenberg 07:12, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Information regarding the source of the text is placed on the talk page. See s:Talk:Astronomische Nachrichten/Volume 72/Beobachiung der Sonnesfinsterniss am 18. August 1868 zu Windsor in New South Wales. (ignore the naming convention; they are in flux over there at the moment.

The Page: corresponds to the Image: (which is on commons and should have precise source information), and then multiple Page:'s are transcluded onto a mainspace article for the finished product. see here. btw, im going to be afk for an hour. John Vandenberg 07:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Jack Halpern nn tag removal

Your action seems completely reasonable. Zargulon 13:27, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

RfA thanks

		With thanks!
		Thanks for participating in my RfA, which closed successfuly. I leave you with a picture of the real Blood Red Sandman! Note his 'mop' is slightly deadlier than mine! - - Blood Red Sandman 18:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

defaultsort

It is possible to know how many biographies don't have defaultsort, for example watchiing each article in each Category:XXXX births, searching "defaultsort" string. My bot run for 1700 births to 1830 putting some thousands defaultsort, but there are a small group of biographies (between 1700 births and 1830 births) that haven't got defaultsort (because they are special cases, althought it is possible to do a list for humans). When all (or almost all) biographies have got defaultsort, it is so easy to do a bot for to put defaultsort key into talk-page template WPBiographies, exactly "listas" parameter. Then, Category:Biography articles with listas parameter would show all (almost all) biographies in English Misplaced Pages sorted. --Emijrp 07:31, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

What I am after is not a one-time search in a limited area, but a continuously updated category over the entire Misplaced Pages. A search will be out-of-date within a few days.

Also, I approached the problem by thinking that {{WPBiography}} would provide a more comprehensive list of biographical articles. It turns out that the transclusion list of that template also includes lots of musical groups articles, which cover the musicians in that group. This is rather unfortunate. This also excludes articles that don't yet have WPBiography on their talk page. Your approach of using the birth categories only works if the birth year is known (unless you include the unknown birth year categories as well), and, more importantly, you won't pick up the articles that haven't been put in a birth year category yet. But both approaches should get the majority of well-written articles.

One thing I would be careful with with DEFAULTSORT is that some naming conventions are difficult to understand. Chinese and many other languages sort names differently. Also, the defaultsort should no include special characters or accents, because those sort in a different way. I'm tempted though, to say that this can be sorted out later - and I think, from looking at the bot request, you are only copying what people have already put in the category sort key, so if the initial mistake is there, you are perpetuating it, but there is not much we can do about that.

But the main thing I am after is a rough idea of the ratio of articles with DEFAULTSORT to those without. ie. You added thousands, but how many already had it? And Is there a way to scan the entire list of articles with {{WPBiography}} on their talk page (warning: this is a large list of over 400,000 articles) and give a number for those without DEFAULTSORT? That is the key figure I've been after for many months. Carcharoth 07:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

• You also said "it is possible to do a list for humans" (for the ones that the bot couldn't handle) - ooh, yes please! :-) Also, I think that all articles should have DEFAULTSORT, even when the title is the DEFAULTSORT. If this is not done, there is no way to distinguish a page with no DEFAULTSORT that doesn't need one, from a page with DEFAULTSORT that does need one, if you see what I mean Carcharoth 07:49, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Pardon me for being bold...

I'm hoping I didn't go overboard in deciding to just create the nomination statement now and letting you get to it whenever you get to it. I'll be honest, I've never bothered someone about adminship this much, I just think you'd be that good of an admin. Hopefully you'll accept this, but if wish to wait then that's fine as well. If you're still deciding then sorry if I'm being too pushy, I'd just love to see you with the tools :) Wizardman 03:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm very flattered by that nomination statement! I think I will go ahead this time, as otherwise I will dither until the cows come home! I just want to do a few things first (less than I would in an ideal world, but I still feel these need to be done): (1) Tidy up my user pages a little bit (I've been putting this off, so this should provide the impetus for that); (2) Go back through my user talk page archives and find people who have previously suggested or offered nomination (would contacting them be considered canvassing? - I don't think so, but I know how touchy a subject that can be - I would ask them to co-nom, but I would prefer to avoid that - I'd ask them to support instead, but that does feel like canvassing!); (3) Think up some sensible answers to the questions (obviously!), especially what I would use the tools for (hopefully some of this reply will cover it); (4) A brief explanation of why I dithered for so long and why I'm biting the bullet this time (I must try and keep everything brief!); (5) Take the time to read the main administrator-related pages and update myself with what has changed - and say that I will re-read the subpages and other related pages before carrying out any actions covered by those pages; (6) Make clear that, if I am given the tools, I will take it slowly with them at first (just as I did with the ordinary editing tools); (7) Change my e-mail address and enable it; (8) Point people at User:Carcharoth/Contributions for a personal survey of some of my contributions; (9) Make clear that I will not change my attitude or behaviour after RfA - it will just be more of the same, but without having to do things like use {{editprotected}}; (10) Note that my edit count should be taken with a pinch of salt, as despite my best efforts to use the preview button more, I still end up correcting typos and mistakes in my initial edits.

Um, I think that covers it. Any more? I'd want a day or two to sort my thoughts out, though I'll keep that brief to avoid it looking like I'm soapboxing any particular wiki-philosophy, and leaving some to add to answers to the questions and answers to any further questions people add. I'd think I'd be ready by about Wednesday or so. Shall I drop a note off for you then, once I've done the "accept, sign, answer questions" bit?

One final thing, I wonder if I'm allowed to comment on the nomination statement and suggest a few changes? I'm impressed with the stuff you've found (it shows you really have picked around through my contributions - I had forgotten the World Cup talk page contributions), and I appreciate the examples you've chosen, but as I rummage through my memory, I can think of examples that might be better than the ones you've chosen. If I tweak stuff a bit and provide other examples, would that make me a co-nominator? :-) Image:IWMcV.jpg for example is really a duplicate of a pair of stereoscopic images - I'm sure some people (including me) might argue that we should only keep one of them, so a better example of me providing a source would be Image:EPChristy.jpg or Image:Mansfield Lovell.jpg. Also, if you are going to mention redirects, would you mind not mentioning the Middle-earth redirects? I ask because I only set that up - another user User:YLSS has done most of the work. If you do want to mention redirects, you could mention Misplaced Pages:Categorizing redirects, something I help to shepherd from proposal to (reasonably well) accepted guideline. You could also mention that I turned many redlinks at Royal Medal and Willard Gibbs Medal blue, simply by searching for the articles and creating redirects. I should add some of this stuff to my contributions page, but maybe I'll do that later. Could you also link directly to the non-free content talk page? WT:NFC should do the trick. Oh, and you've mis-spelt my name at one point. :-) (Lots of people do this).

Some final thoughts: it might seem like I contribute in a lot of areas but Misplaced Pages is such a large place there are many areas I've never even looked at. I do no vandal fighting, for instance, and I could list many other interesting areas that I just haven't had time to participate in. Right, that's enough for now. I may add more later, but I have a long list of things to do to get ready for Wednesday! :-) Carcharoth 18:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright, sounds good. I'll get to modifying my nomination statement around Tuesday. Thanks for accepting. Wizardman 01:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Just dropping by with an arbcom notice and saw this - I think you'd make a fine admin. Picaroon (t) 21:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Carcharoth 17:09, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Tidying things up

• (2) 1st, 1a, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and (finally, I hope) the one above, 8th. Hmm. Eight times? I hadn't realised it had got that bad. More than eight people as well (for the record: User:jc37, User:Cbrown1023, User:Mirlen, User:Gurch, User:Durin, User:Guinnog, User:Radiant, User:Samuel Wantman, jc37 (2nd), User:Viridae, Sam(uel Wantman) (2nd), User:Wizardman, User:Pascal.Tesson, Wizardman (2nd), jc37 (3rd), Wizardman (3rd), User:Picaroon).
• (11) (new point) - important point to make that I have a great deal of sympathy with those who don't want to become admins and make a point about it, or who resign to devote more time to editing. I also think that it is important that people remember how things look when you aren't an administrator (mainly the differences in interface and the abilities to look at deleted revision in places like deletion review). This is similar to logging out every once in a while and reminding yourself what Misplaced Pages looks like to people without an account.
• More here later... (Wizardman, if you are reading, I may need an extra day to finish up, but don't worry, I'm definitely going for it this time - finding eight previous suggestions that I accept an RfA has made me realise I was being silly to dither for so long)! :-) Carcharoth 17:09, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
• (1) is sort of done now, though the subpages are still a mess... Still need to do 3, 4, 5, and 7. Carcharoth 02:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Alright then. I fixed up the nomination so basically whenever you're ready just transclude it. :) Wizardman 02:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
    • That's great, thanks. Apologies for the public ticking of notes off a list... :-) Will now aim for tomorrow. Carcharoth 02:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Drafts to do (offline)

0. Acceptance statement (thank nom, find brief way to summarise some of my thoughts on why accepting now).

1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?

2. What are your best contributions to Misplaced Pages, and why?

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

Review past contributions to help answer this. Carcharoth 02:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

All the above done. Nearly ready to go! :-) Carcharoth 01:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Alright. Just to answer your couple questions, there's no rule about when to add the nominator support. I usually add it after it's transcluded myself, so I'll so remove it and readd it upon being put on the page. As for the mathbot links and edit summaries, those are added by others, you don't have to worry about them. I believe that's everything, if you have more questions feel fee to ask Wizardman 15:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

No fair!

(Visualise petulant look here) - No fair, no fair, no fair... I wanted to co-nom : (

(That said, great job on being bold, I personally think that it's about time. : ) - jc37 17:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

You can still co-nom if you want, you got a bit of time.

Plus from when I wrote it up and he posted it as a couple days, you had time :P Wizardman 18:08, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I had thought about it, but I decided that between your text, my text, and his text, we'd swamp the page : )

So I just added a couple things from my nom that you both hadn't covered much as a part of my comments.

And I can't believe that I missed this going on! His talk page is one of the places that I usually keep an eye on. (I guess having over a thousand pages on my watchlist may cause such things to happen - looks like it's time to prune again : )

Anyway, again, great job. Hope you're having a great day : ) - jc37 18:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:100

Congrats on breaking the 100 mark : ) - jc37 12:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! - Thanks for the congrats. I was going to wait until it was over to drop you a note, but I'll apologise now for not letting you know about the nomination, as I know you wanted to co-nom. It all started happening very quickly once I decided to accept Wizardman's nom, and I wanted to avoid lots of co-noms, but I think you were the first person to suggest a nomination, and I hope you found my link to that in my statement! Carcharoth 12:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did : )

And no worries about missing out on the co-nomination. I hope you caught on that I wasn't serious in my "petulency" : )

And as I mentioned above, I suppose I still could have, had I chosen to. But I felt that 2 verbose people in the intro was enough, you probably didn't need a third : ) - jc37 12:30, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Alkivar/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Picaroon (t) 21:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

ME-fact

At the time I just noticed it was broken, which in the past has been why people start removing this template from articles. Someone took it out of Troll (Middle-earth), and I only saw why he did that after I reverted it. I didn't bother analyzing it at the time; I just wanted to fix it.

On looking it over, it was probably the space between the two cats, but that's just a guess. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Link to response from CBDunkerson (eom)

re: That bot request

Put the status on Misplaced Pages:Bot requests in case others are interested. It's coming along, but I've had less time than I thought I would so it will be a bit longer. -- JLaTondre 23:38, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Sadi Carnot

Thanks for your note :)

I've fixed the name typo (too much wiki on my mind obviously), clarified the clarification issue, and noted the old AFD more. I ignored it since an AFD (which isn't even part of DR) and no formal warning visible, over 2 years ago, seemed rather poor grounds for a ban without warning unless something had happened in between. Other thoughts welcome - does this fix it for you? FT2 16:36, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Noticeboards

People hastily closed CSN because it was imperfect; now we have a worse situation at ANI. The mob effect is stronger there. I proposed creating Misplaced Pages:Disruptive editing/Noticeboard and that was shot down. Maybe you can create Misplaced Pages:Long term abuse/Noticeboard since you're so popular.  :-) It should be a rite of passage. New admin tries to make a change for the better, and gets hazed by the grizzly regulars.

We do need a better situation. Arbcom can't possibly handle all these cases themselves. - Jehochman 20:15, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Your RFA was successful

Congratulations, I have closed your RfA as successful and you are now a sysop! If you have any questions about adminship, feel free to ask me. Please consider messaging me on IRC for access to the #wikipedia-en-admins channel. Good luck! --Deskana (talk) 17:02, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I won't have time until after the weekend to have a proper look at the tools, but I'd like to thank everyone who supported my RfA. I won't be dropping off thank-you notes to everyone, but I may respond to a few of the comments on individual talk pages. Carcharoth 17:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)