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Future of Convert

I replied briefly to your support of the Lua Convert, but I need to say more about the months of struggling to get the Lua version to have equivalent features, rather than jump into Lua then cut and run when people want more options in conversions. As could be expected, when rewriting a massive system of 450(?) conversion units, who really wants to rewrite all those, plus add more options each week when someone asks to support an ancient Spanish acre unit (cuerda), convert time-of-day, or stop the wrapping before unit symbols? This year has been a constant struggle to add more functionality, while the Lua version struggled to match last year's options, reluctant to add user requests. Instead, this is the future of Convert:

  • convert time-of-day, as: {convert/time|30 November 2013|day}} → {{convert/time|30 November 2013|day}}
  • show singular "1⁄2 unit" as: {convert|1/2|mi|km|lk=test}} → 1⁄2 mile (0.80 km)*
  • remove spaces from fractions, where {convert|2+3/4|m|ft}} as 2+3⁄4 metres (9.0 ft) should show "23⁄4" without a space.
  • show fractions in results, as {convert|1.82|m|ftinfrac} → 1.82 metres ([convert: unknown unit])
  • show decimals in temperature ranges, as {convert|105|-|106|F|C} → 105–106 °F (41–41 °C)

As typical, every few months someone complains, loudly, about the peculiar precision problems in Convert, which are not yet fixed by Lua, as in:

  • {convert|43|-|45|lb|kg} → 43–45 pounds (20–20 kg)

So people have complained how the result as "20–20 kg" is nonsense for 2 different numbers of a range in an encyclopedia, and that should be corrected automatically in a better Convert. All year, people have requested new features, not re-inventing last year's wheel, and the Lua Convert has derailed progress but now poses to block improvements as an arcane, complex obstacle which few people could update. Read Module:Convert (3,334 lines) for 1 hour, and think about the questions people will face to expand the options. Instead, let's continue to add new options, and fix precisions, until a point where no one asks for new features during 2 months, then switch to Lua. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's a clue, though: people can be stupid and lazy. If those same people would have taken the time to actually read the existing documentation they could have solved their own problems. I love using Convert, but I'm rather dismayed at the extreme amount of bloat which has taken hold. Converting times, dates, music? Spelling numbers out? It doesn't need to be able to do everything, and really should be streamlined. But, I'll never convince yall of that, so why waste my breath. Regardless, the Module system is the best way forward IMO, and the seemingly increased rate of development on the old template needs to stop immediately to allow the Lua version to be caught up. — Huntster (t @ c) 08:50, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Most of the new features, or changes, in Convert reflect what people have requested, in some cases year-after-year, such as converting a 3-digit temperature and getting a 3-digit result, where 105 °F (41 °C) in a table should show "40.6 °C" automatically, without hand-rounding each case. If a quoted document spells-out the number 347, then people want to match the text, so we have {{convert/spell|347|mi|km|disp=sqbr}} to show "three hundred and forty-seven miles [558 km]" within a quotation. In the horse world, of equestrian registration rules, the height of a horse matters to the quarter-inch, and so we have fractional hands, {{convert|88|cm|hand|2}} for "{{convert|88|cm|hand|2}}". Meanwhile, we have told many people, "Cannot convert that" as when a person wanted to convert to an Islamic Calendar time and someone explained the time-of-day is set by an official who views the sky each day. Also, people have requested converting monetary currency values, and we directed them to Template:Inflation. However, Wikipedia has to handle the "sum of all human knowledge" and that is why Convert has so many options. The Lua version will always need to change and grow as well; if it cannot be updated easily, then it needs to be rewritten. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:29, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Huntster. You have new messages at Talk:SpaceX reusable rocket launching system.
Message added 01:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

N2e (talk) 01:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

COPYRIGHTS

I don't care for your condescending attitude in my talk page. Piss off. BatteryIncluded (talk) 17:12, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The attitude was in no way condescending, simply requesting you not do that again. Very well. Given the seriousness of copyright violations, I'll take this as your acknowledgement of the situation. — Huntster (t @ c) 20:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library Survey

As a subscriber to one of The Wikipedia Library's programs, we'd like to hear your thoughts about future donations and project activities in this brief survey. Thanks and cheers, Ocaasi t | c 16:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Images for Falcon 9 Flight 7

Hi Huntster. I found this image of the launch of F9 Flt 7 on Flickr, but no matter where I click, I can't figure out how to see what sort of license the photographer has put on it. So I don't know if it is like the Steve Jurvetson's Flickr photos, or if it has a restrictive copyright. I also could not see how to contact the photographer to ask.

I wonder if you can quickly tell the license somehow? Or perhaps take a look at the SpaceX group on Flickr and see if someone else has not perhaps taken some good shots of f9 Flt 7 (carrying SES-8) that we might use to improve that article. Cheers. N2e (talk) 13:43, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

N2e, on an individual Flickr image page, if you look at the metadata on the right side of the page, scroll down and you'll see "Additional info". For that image, it is "All rights reserved", so no go on that. However, someone has uploaded some freely licensed images of the SES-8 launch! See this custom search. It'll take some manipulating to remove the watermarking, but I'll get them uploaded before too long. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:24, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Super. Glad you found some. Looks like Mr. McCloskey's photo is about to get some wider distribution via Wikimedia/Wikipedia, thanks to the helpful license he left on it; whereas the photo I had linked to by Mr. Greenwade is not. I love the internet, and bottom-up giving that so many folks do with their time and effort in allowing it to be used by others!
On your custom search, looks like I should keep a link to that search somewhere to enable the right kind of search in the future; no point being disapointed in not being able to use Mr. Greenwade's photos if he's asked us not too.  :) —23:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
By the way, I've uploaded two versions of the Juno flyby of Earth video to Commons: File:Earth and Moon Seen by Passing Juno Spacecraft (no descriptive text).ogv and File:Earth and Moon Seen by Passing Juno Spacecraft (full video).ogv. Really cool stuff if you've not seen it yet. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Very cool. I had seen that earlier today and believe that having that photo/video sequence on Wikipedia will be a very good thing. Good on you. N2e (talk) 23:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

N2e, check out the contents of Commons:Category:Falcon 9 Flight 7 and choose the pics you think will work best. I've removed the watermarks from all of them. I just wish they were crisper, but free is free, c'est la vie. — Huntster (t @ c) 02:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

  •  Done. If others want to change the image, I'm fine with that; but is good to have at least one image in that article. Thanks for uploading those pics!N2e (talk) 02:56, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

whooo ... deep breath. OK ... I said merry xmas to to a few folks. OK .. so now ... Thank you. Thank you for always being a friend. Thank you for always givin a shit. You're an amazing dude ,, and I am so very greatful for your friendship. Thanks Hunster - I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season and a great Christmas.

ched

Ched, thank you so much. Hope you and yours do the same! — Huntster (t @ c) 01:29, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


Season's greetings from Santa and her little helpers

Some baklava for you!

Thanks for the Thanks, but are some animals more equal than others? Elvey (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Question on convert template use

Hey Hunster. I've got a question about a couple of changes you recently made in the use of the {{convert}} template on SpaceX reusable launch system development program. I definitely don't understand all of the myriad parms etc. of {{convert}} so could be missing something here, but I am unclear on two things:

  • It seems to me that the numerical value that editors ought to put into any use of the convert template is the one that is found in the source, whichever system of units that source uses. It appears you may have changed a couple occurrences to put in the result/converted number, rather than the numerical value and units as found in the source provided. Am I missing something here?
  • I had only recently learned that the parm |sp=us gets meters, kilometers, liters, etc. rather than metres, kilometres, litres, etc. I noticed you removed that; not sure why.

Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:41, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

N2e, you've got both points correct, but for the sake of end-user readability I've taken up "Ignore All Rules" in this situation.
1) On the first point, yes: normally, you want to use what the source provides. However, because Convert provides purely mechanical conversion of the figures, I don't feel it was be a breach of the original research rules to do what I did. It's a bigger impact to readability to have the double brackets, and since it isn't possible to use two |disp= parameters in a single instance of Convert, I chose to use the slash to improve readability. An alternate solution would be to dispense with Convert altogether, as was done with the Mach issue. I wouldn't oppose this at all, if you felt it the better option. I love Convert, but it simply cannot work in all circumstances.
2) Second, I only removed the |sp=us because I changed those instances to abbreviated unit names (to match the other conversions in that section), which means any spelling differences are not shown and thus |sp= becomes redundant. If they remained spelled out, using |sp= would certainly be appropriate.
Hopefully I've made sense...my brain is a little off-kilter this morning. — Huntster (t @ c) 15:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, I'm groking the second item: it is redundant with abbr=on.
On the first item, I'll offer three thoughts.
  1. The double brackets was slightly (only slightly since the extra closing paren was outside of some numbered refs) kludgey
  2. At a minimum, if you are going to IAR and go with your edit, I think it is incumbent upon you to leave a hidden edit comment in there as to why you did so. This will help the myriad other editors who will edit this in future months and years, and also the GA-reviewer I hope to have on the article in a few weeks.
  3. perhaps an alternative that would present well (as you are concerned about) as well as leaving in the original numerical values in the convert input (which I am concerned about), would be to replace the outer set of parens that was previously there with m-dashes? That is a primary and standard use of enclosing m-dashes, where they set off a parenthetical.
Cheers. N2e (talk) 21:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
N2e: Using the mdashes is problematic because the sentence is already full of hyphens, and adding the mdashes results in a visually chaotic structure. Grammatically they might be okay (to a point), but they would significantly detract from reading comprehension. I actually did try them out before settling on my edit. I'm less concerned about the inline comments (though I'm not at all a fan of them), though I'd really prefer kicking out the convert templates entirely, especially since we're specifically not concerned with precision in this situation. Hmm. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
I hear you. Yes, if the sentence is complex already, even the m-dash solution isn't so good. If you want to hand code it, I don't have any problem with throwing out the convert template, just hand code the thing and see how it looks; that would at least include, in the wikisource, both the number that was in the cited source AND its conversion. N2e (talk) 00:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Scrolling references

That's fine on the scrolling refs. I simply had not seen that previously, until I recently did see it used in a major high-traffic article and thought it a novel way to get the refs of a well-sourced article to not take up so much article real estate. So I used the same approach on a couple of articles that had a large number of citations.

In my view, the problem with the refs taking an overly prominent place in the visible article space—rather than being less visible by default and only becoming more visible when a reader either mouse-overs the citation number, or clicks on a citation to read it, or explicitly goes into ref-land to show the refs—is a problem that needs to be fixed in the English Wikipedia. Having said that, I'm quite patient about how editors more skilled than I in the coding and wikisyntax arts will eventually solve that problem. Cheers. N2e (talk) 12:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

N2e, I agree, there's room for improvement, but the simple fact is that, for the time being, over-coding will leave some users without functionality. I really like the scrolling solution myself, and having never seen the personal CSS solution before I went a-looking yesterday, I'm going to install it immediately.
I am curious why you think the existing citation setup is a problem...we're not really limited in article size. I personally feel that citations *should* be prominent. It's been my experience that articles with few to no citations tend to receive fewer citations with new edits. This is, of course, in no way scientific, lol. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:47, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
It is just an aesthetic balance thing to me. When there are several screen-height's worth of refs, and readers have to scroll through them to get to any article matter that follows the refs section (e.g., Ext Links, Templates, Categories, Date last modified, etc.), then I think it would be cool if some mechanism existed that would:
  • reduce that "real estate use" impact on the occasional reader,
  • while still showing the refs prominently in something of less than a screen-height's worth of article real estate (e.g., I don't think that the standard show/hide technique would be good with the default set to hide--and apparently others agree, as I've never seen that used for a References section of a Wikipedia article),
  • while still always and cleanly linking to the numbered citation when the cite number is clicked on in the article body,
  • and of course being reasonably cross-platform compatible with the browsers that readers are using to the read the Wikipedia.
Sounds like that from what you said, that solution does not currently exist due to problems with compatibility. So I have no problem not using it for now; heck, I had just discovered the scrolling ref technique a few days before on another highly-ref'd article, and thought it an elegant solution to the problem. Hope that answers your question. N2e (talk) 13:17, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Wicca

Cool, I'll post some thoughts on the talk page. :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 02:47, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

I have posted my main concerns at Talk:Wicca. :) Goldenshimmer (talk) 03:12, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

GA nom broke Talk page?

I nominated the SpaceX reusable launch system development program article for WP:GA today. For some reason I've not been able to figure out, that nomination has broken the TOC on the talk page. There was a table of contents on it before my edits, and now there is not. Do you think you might have a look and see what you can find? Talk:SpaceX reusable launch system development program — N2e (talk) 17:09, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

N2e, that's just plain weird. I cannot see any reason for the TOC to have disappeared. In any case, I've forced it to reappear, hopefully that's the only issue. — Huntster (t @ c) 19:29, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing it! Maybe you should inform someone somewhere that this occurred. I'd be happy to do it, but have no idea where to notify for such things. N2e (talk) 05:32, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
N2e, good idea. I threw the question over to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 123#Strange problem with "GA nominee" template?, so maybe someone smarter than me will figure it out. It's sad...I used to be that smart person, but then I went and forgot everything! — Huntster (t @ c) 05:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Heh heh. Thanks for doing that. N2e (talk) 12:16, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

How to do a Photo file rename"

The File:SpaceX private launch site map.png seems, to my sensibilities, to be named incorrectly. It is not the map of the "SpaceX private launch site", it is a map of one proposed location and layout of a proposed launch site, at an early date in the notional concept. Wonder if "SpaceX proposed private launch site--TexasSite2013" or some such might be more honest of reality. There are a hundred other ways to name it that would avoid the misrepresentation; I'm not hung on any one.

But my big question is, how does one go about doing this? I don't see a "Move" button, and the file doesn't appear to be on Wikimedia where it should be. So should I just start a Talk page discussion on the File Talk page? Or what? N2e (talk) 15:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

N2e, there is no on-wiki method of moving files from en.wiki to Commons, but there is a tool called For the Common Good which does provide such a method. Unfortunately, unless the user is an admin, after the file is copied the en.wiki one remains. I'm more than happy to move files over if they're pointed out and I can verify licensing. As for this particular file, I've gone ahead and transferred it to Commons at File:Map of proposed SpaceX Brownsville, Texas launch site.png. — Huntster (t @ c) 05:47, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks very much. I like the name you chose for the file; much improved. And getting it to commons is best too, as I understand the image thing. N2e (talk) 06:17, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
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