User talk:Carcharoth/Archive 3

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Community section - let's see what you have in mind!

I don't think too many others are on there right now, so why not just change that whole section to what you have in mind, and see what happens. We've added quite a few links, and so maybe your approach will save space so we can add more!

By the way, what is and is not a community type page? --Go for it!

Really don't know how to define community round here! I like the links you've added. I also get tied up in knots over using user talk pages. I know I should probably go to your talk page or something, but I've replied here. Thanks for the message! Carcharoth 11:42, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Yep, wikimail is a pain, until you get used to it. Though I don't mind checking where I've left messages. You're on my watchlist now! --Go for it!

But you didn't answer the first part of my message above. Do you plan on showing me what you had in mind? I'm tingling with anticipation. --Go for it!

It is more complicated than I thought. I'm trying to copy the layout of the portal bar and also trying to think of good links to put here. Will probably take a few minutes. Then I'll be off. How long are you around for? Carcharoth 11:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Afd

Hi, thanks for your message, I left you a reply on my talk page. If you want to withdraw your nom on Golden State, strike out the nom and then type something like: I withdraw this nom and request speedy keep, or something along those lines. That should lead to someone closing the nom before the end of the five days. Cheers -- JJay 07:56, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Multilingual portal link for Main Page draft?

Hi! The section already contains a link to the complete list of Wikipedia language editions. Why should we refer users to a redundant page that contains less information? —David Levy 13:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Search box focus

Thanks for your response. I was addressing the concerns of the Extra search box folks who think that the search box is too obscure. Personally, I only start on the Mainpage for things other than an article search. For an article search I usually start at WP specific Google because of my spelling and WP's case sensitivity or the Wikiwax look ahead WP engine because I'm never quite certain of the exact article name. BTW, my browser is Safari where Alt-F brings up a Find (text) box. hydnjo talk 16:58, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you for telling me about the Alt-F trick, it's very nifty indeed! -- EdGl 18:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Geesh, you're way ahead of me. I just cranked up Firefox this week and am in the process of getting all of my bookmarks (hundreds) from Safari to there. Firefox does have many advantages so I'm inclined to keep sloggin' along and get there. Thanks again for your prompt reply and for your suggestions. hydnjo talk 02:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Just curious. Does the tab key move your cursor to the search box? hydnjo talk 19:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Categories can be displayed as a tree...

Regarding the "topic list" tip further up the page, I just wanted to briefly point out that while categories cannot yet be displayed as trees within Wikipedia, there are several tools out there that do allow you to browse categories as a tree structure. The one I found is linked from my user page (don't have time to put a link here, sorry). Maybe you are aware of this, but it is just a thought. I've noticed some of the tips of the day can contradict each other, which is understandable as I don't think many people know all the tricks and tips for something as large as Wikipedia. Carcharoth 15:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. I'll definitely look into it, and will write a tip on the category tool. And of course I'll modify the topic list tip for consistency, so the two tips don't contradict. Again, thanks for the heads up. --Go for it! 15:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

By the way, what are your favorite Wikipedia tricks? What were your hardest lessons learned, so that newcomers can benefit from your experience. If you don't have time to write these up as tips, please just jot down some quick titles/links, and post them on the tip page (or here), and someone in the project will write them up. --Go for it! 15:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyvio deletions

Hi and thanks for catching that copyright violation. Unfortunately, any contribution you make that is deleted will not show up on your contribution list. For instance, if you tagged an article for speedy delete or made spelling edits to an article that was later deleted for copyvio, as soon as the article is deleted, it will be removed from your contribution list. There's a tool that will show you the number of edits you've had deleted [1] but you're still not able to see the content of those edits. Copyvios are generally removed from their list as they're dealt with -- sometimes a copyvio doesn't mean completely deleting the article, so in order to keep others from doubling the work or having to check through items that are already finished, we remove the items as we go. I've actually wondered lately if strikethroughs might be better and just having the day de-listed when it's completed. I'm sorry it was such a frustrating experience for you -- we can all hope that as the developers keep improving the software, better ways to handle contributions will come about :) .:.Jareth.:. ^babelfish 14:07, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource

I just wanted to let you know I sent an email to the foundation mailing list. I believe Dovi mentioned it on Talk:Main Page. I thought things had settled then, but I just sent another urging them to take the situation on. I didn't bring it up on IRC, I didn't think that would help things. I believe the Wikisource article discusses the reason for the name in depth. Short version is it was originally a multilingual project within Wikipedia called Project Sourceberg. If you understood the work that was involved in migrating things and repairing links throughout many sister projects, I don't believe you would suggest changing domain names. I realize you mean no harm by it. Basically it would a be a logistal nightmare, even after you convinced all the different languages to agree. Our efforts are better spent improving the content and structure of Wikisource.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 11:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Dab headers

I don't know of a guideline for them; and I would use judgment rather than guidelines anyway. I tend to be generous, on the grounds that it is just as well that the reader should be able to get where he is going. Somewhere there is a link to Ptolemy which some bot will disambiguate -wrongly- to [[Ptolemy I Soter|Ptolemy]] by this time next month, or next year.

Ptolemaic looks fine. Adjectives are not usually good article titles, however; and in this case it may be just as well to make it a redirect to Ptolemy (disambiguation) and let the dab squad keep it cleaned up. If you don't want to waste your labor, that's understandable. Septentrionalis 23:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I know of no specific bot; but a bot and a clueless editor on automatic amount to the same thing. Septentrionalis 23:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Ptolemaic Empire

While the entire dynasty needs work (I was about to do it when other pages became demanding), this one seems clear: Ptolemaic dynasty is a genealogy; the other two are histories of post-Alexandrine Egypt.

Should Ptolemaic dynasty become Lagidae? Septentrionalis 00:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Lagidae is the proper name for the descendants of Ptolemy son of Lagus. Whether it is too pretentious for WP is another question. Don't worry about this too much; one of the advantages of working on a wiki is that people editing those pages will straighten this out eventually. Septentrionalis 00:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Moves are more tricky, since moves followed by editing the resulting tedirect are harder to reverse. Septentrionalis 00:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Was Claudius a Lagid?

No one knows; some people have made conjectures. Presumably his family received the Roman citizenship under a Claudius, probably one of the Julio-Claudian emperors. Did they have the name Ptolemy because they were toyal, or whether royalty made the name popular, like George or Henry in England? Your guess is as good as mine, and almost as good as T. L. Heath's. Septentrionalis 00:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

'Sweeping' Wikipedia

I spotted a comment you made at the Help Desk discussion page: "I'm in the process of sweeping Wikipedia of links to all its question answering departments, and replacing them with a single link in each location to route all questions traffic through an upgraded Wikipedia:Questions page." Do you mind me asking how you "sweep" Wikipedia of all those links? How do you find them all? Carcharoth 21:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

What are you planning to sweep? --Go for it! 22:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing particular in mind, but I like what you are proposing and wanted to be able to propose it myself if it would help in similar cases. Carcharoth 23:57, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It's very simple, but time-consuming: you go to the destination of the same name, and click "What links here". Then you click on 500. And in the case of a page which has links on multitudes of user pages, you use your browser's search feature (ctrl-f on Firefox and IE) to find instances of "Wikipedia:", which finds the pages in the Wikipedia namespace which have the link. Then you go to each of those pages, find the link, and edit it. If you wanted, you could data massage the list off-line and then feed it into AWB. But I usually only do that if the list is packed with links that need to be changed. In this case, there weren't more than 20 or so, which made searching the better option. --Go for it! 21:18, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Bevan's "The House of Ptolemy"

Bevan is still considered quite good, if of course lots of new discoveries have taken place since. Occasionally, almost always in matters which people like me would consider to be mere detail, modern scholarship departs significantly from him. I'm hardly a Ptolemaic scholar; but by good luck the Web actually has someone who is, and who (exceptionally for such people) is very responsive to queries of this type; you will have seen links from "my" Bevan to him here and there, and I suggest you get in touch with him: Chris Bennett, who runs "Egyptian Royal Genealogy". (Note: the URL I ∆u gav you is the one he insists on preferring; but fairly often, it refuses to answer, so if that happens to you, see his alternate site here.) Best, Bill 00:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Ptolemy

Thanks for your work on Ptolemy (disambiguation). The information you have added is very valuable, however, Wikipedia policy says that disambiguation articles should not have substantive information, only the minimum information needed to distinguish between ambiguous entries. I am not sure where all the info on the etymology of Ptolemy etc. belongs. Perhaps on a page on the mythological Ptolemy (as the oldest one), with mentions on the other pages? Most people who end up on, say Ptolemy IV Philopator will not consult the disambiguation page for more information on the name. --Macrakis 02:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. No hurry. As long as you're on it, there's no reason for me to do anything... (which is a good thing). --Macrakis 15:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Template

{{Ptol}} Good luck with Ptolemy. David91 17:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem: just trying to save you from having to reinvent the wheel. David91 02:49, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

SisterProjects template

Hi! I'm preparing to bring the disagreement over project slogans to the Communications Committee weekly meeting, and I've asked for input on the talk page where the discussion had been occurring, but perhaps it might be better if you could respond either by e-mail or on my wp talk page to these three questions:

• On what basis does en.Wikipedia ignore another WMF project's slogan?
• On what basis does en.Wikipedia ignore another WMF project's description?
• Is the SisterProject template on Wikipedia using slogans or descriptions for all projects?

- Amgine 21:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I've brought the issue to the Communications Committee meeting, and will follow up at the next meeting.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation sister projects page; it is slightly out of date but is still authoritative. I will bring this issue to people who work on that site, and I have also applied for editing privileges on that site myself. As far as I know it is still the appropriate place to link to, however there is also Wikimedia projects, www.wikimedia.org, and Complete list of Wikimedia projects. Less informative in some respects. - Amgine 19:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The committee did not reach any decision regarding localised logos, descriptive texts, or self-identifying slogans. Some members of the committee would like to draw up a style guide, which would cover this issue. Because no decision was reached the discussion is ongoing. - Amgine 22:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)