User talk:Omegatron/Archive/February, 2007

User:Peelbot

Hello. I've left a response to your comment on User talk:Peelbot, and would appreciate it if you could take a look. Thanks. Mike Peel 22:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your comments there, I find the Wikiproject tags annoying too, but I don't think they are pointless. I believe they relate to the Wikipedia 1.0 project. Those working on it are trying to identify a subset of articles that could be distributed as a CD version of the 'pedia. To do that, they need to figure out which articles are most important in each field, and which fields are of sufficient importance to be included. The tagging system also helps establish which articles are of sufficient quality to be included. It is I guess also flexible enough to allow them to identify other specialized subsets of Wikipedia, so for example they could publish on a CD an encyclopedia of Science, or an encyclopedia of Physics, each of which would be more detailed than the CD version of the whole encyclopedia.--Srleffler 06:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Your FR

Yes, I think that it would be better, but perhaps you should ask some RC patrollers what they think of it, since it mainly affects their work. (Radiant) 10:01, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I originally thought of it as mostly useful for watchlists, though. — Omegatron 13:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting point... some people with 1000+ articles on their watchlist may appreciate a "hide patrolled edits from watchlist" option. (Radiant) 12:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think of it as a marker for "patrolled edits" or diffs that have been "approved".

Think of it as a marker for unviewed edits; diffs that haven't been viewed at all by anyone yet.

Currently, I check lots of the diffs on my 2000+(!) watchlist to see whether they're valid or whatever. I'm usually suspicious of anything left by an anon or redlinked user name that doesn't have an edit summary. Often I'll try to rollback such an edit and find it's already been rolled back by someone else. With this feature installed, I could focus on the ones that hadn't been viewed by anyone else yet, making it much less likely for things to slip past the radar. — Omegatron 15:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Image gallery

Omegatron, I had just changed the image which was on deletion. Sorry for bothering you, if you do not want to have it, please remove. I had just replaced the image. Sorry again. Regards, Shyam ^(T/C) 19:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Just a suggestion with regard to generating audio

I was browsing through some articles, as one does, and I came across the following "Image:Square wave 1000.ogg". I Couldn't help but notice that the little disclaimer on it stating it may be mathematically incorrect. Well for such a simple audio sample, it is possible to generate a mathematically correct wave version using MatLab, if you have access to it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.69.185.154 (talk) 17:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Good point. I could generate it with GNU Octave. For that example, I used Adobe Audition, which generates a "perfect" square wave. But if you input a perfect square wave to a digitization process, with appropriate pre-filtering, the Adobe Audition version would not be correct. For the purposes of listening and an .ogg file, it's probably fine, but I'd like to create better versions of all of them and upload them as ogg-packaged WAV in the future. — Omegatron 17:31, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cquote

Howdy... I made a mistake in posting the beginning of something I was still writing on talk:cquote. You can now see what I meant to write. Sorry for the inconvenience. Mikker ^(...) 19:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. I'll check it out. — Omegatron 19:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

{PAGENAME}

It is one of WP:AWB's "general fixs". It is done because it makes the source more readable and saves server load. I only do "gen fixes", by and large as a side benefit of another edit. These particular categories actually belonged to a tag which was subst'd (or possibly cut-and pasted) here, the cat's consolidated here and the tag removed without the cats here. I have removed the cats. Regards. Rich Farmbrough, 19:57 11 December 2006 (GMT).

Graphics Lab

I saw your name listed on Wikiproject Illustration or the list of graphic artists, and I thought I'd let you know that a Graphics Lab has been created on EN. Based on the highly successful French and German graphics labs, it seeks to better organise and coordinate our graphic design and photo-editing efforts. Up until now, there has been no common space on EN where users could ask for maps, charts and other SVG files to be created. What's more, the Graphics Lab has discussion boards, tips, tools and links; in sum, a good common workspace. Come help us out! The infrastucture is already in place, and now we need participants. :) --Zantastik talk 02:08, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. — Omegatron 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template use sans Talk explaination

re: [this edit]

confusing |http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abbreviation&diff=86636332&oldid=86636235FrankB 19:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW- Your're the official first ever recipient though there are a couple of others pending in my edit stack. Comments are being solicited on Template talk:Wet noodle award, as is help truncating it down to a reasonable length. I'm very tired of not finding documentation notes. I've removed your {{confusing}} tag, as the article (I'm sure you've been diligently policing changes— or hope so!) seems pretty clear to me. Perhaps you read too quickly? Have a good holiday! Best regards // FrankB 19:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That whole section needs to be reorganized. It's just a bunch of random trivia in random order. — Omegatron 20:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It reads quite well. I just perused it again. The whole reason I visited it was I left a note on Mel Etitis's page, and he got the same cleanup notice you did above. Since he's a real stickler for nits and such grammer, I looked in as I was amazed anything he'd edited would draw such a notice... In sum, while it reads awkwardly through that section from some use of some Commonwealth English terms, I think it reads fine enough to leave alone.

Moreover, please note that my motives in picking you as the first recipient for the wet noodle was because I have seen you around and know you are an experienced editor, so I thought it something of a joke and test. I realize we haven't interacted much at all save perhaps on the occasional XFD pages, but I've seen your edits and felt comfortable knowing you've been around quite a while like me. (I just looked at your user page--I was right--and we have a fair amount in common it seems. We're both double-E's for one, and your debunk arguments are good and resonate.)
Your summation had thrown me as I was looking for 'clean' or 'cleanup' until I rethunk and saw the section and the {{confusing}}. Note the template above doesn't differentiate... a categorization + BOT effect I am sure. In any event, I hope you didn't take serious offense, as you can see from the template and my comments in the tfd, the issue is one I think worthy of some solution--it makes me somewhat hot, as I will not overrule another editor unless I know what the the rationale is or likely was. There is far too much of that that goes on now amoung the younger editors—to me it's extremely disrespectful, and my languge about it reflects that predjudice. Most of the time the date and intervening edits are a good guide, but it gets real dicey to make a call when you can't find those, in which case I can't ask as I normally would. Which means a lot of time looking when there is no reason for it to ever happen. And is far too often enough to stoke the furnace of my verbage on the matter. Hence the template concept.
I've userfied it, db-authored the redirect and just left the link above vice an in-your-face version. That is not the proper forum to improve it which was the next step. I humbly apologize for letting my quirky sense of humor apply it in your case. It's not like your case was too flagrant, just untimely, I guess... when adding in my temptation. (I've been sitting on that since Friday and itching to use it. I got weak, what more can I say.) So apologies. I don't believe I've ever had an idea recieved so badly! I wouldn't mind a hand figuring out to get my point across and minimize the offensiveness... I admit I'm no good at that subtle stuff, I'd really prefer it to be somewhat funny as well. Happy holidays. // FrankB 02:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you even read the TfD page? You should. All I said was "Just look at it". I didn't say it was offensive, ugly, intrusive, or rude, but everyone else saw that it was so, without my prodding, and agreed that it should be removed from the project. Userfying it doesn't solve any of those problems. Here's what you should do instead, next time this happens:

Find the person who added the {{confusing}} template
Put a message on their talk page that says, "Hey. You added a confusing template to x, but it looks fine to me. Why did you add it?"

Simple and inoffensive. — Omegatron 03:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something up my nose before...

/* Insert grumbling noises*/
Ok, yeah I didn't like your reversion without discussion, ok yeah I still think you're wrong, etc etc but... I was more than a little bit snarky on Wikipedia talk:Don't worry about performance before. Sorry mate, I'm back in my box now. - 152.91.9.144 03:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's fine. We've all been there. We'll leave it as disputed for now, I guess. — Omegatron 15:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re. you dash/unitfixers etc.

I've recently noticed your dash-and-other-things fixers, and I decided to adapt some of them to a script I'm using to selectively apply regex-based substitutions. See here: User:Gerbrant/edit/autoReplace/default.js

Since I did some things slightly differently, I thought you might be interested. Shinobu 11:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Cacycle also made a modified version of the fixer scripts for use in his editor script. I keep meaning to try it out, but haven't yet. — Omegatron 14:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen wikEd before, but it will not work in my browser, I'm afraid... besides I don't really need syntax highlighting. But techniques like that could in theory be used to create a WYSIWYG editor. Which would be very cool. Shinobu 21:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am trying it out today and the syntax highlighting is tremendously helpful.

m:WYSIWYG editor — Omegatron 21:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To each his own, I guess. A lot of development tools come with a lot of fancy colouring, so obviously there is a demand for it. I usually turn most of it off; I find it distracting. As for the WYSIWYG tools - nothing works yet, or if something does work, no installation instructions are given. I'm seriously wondering whether it would be faster to write a user script myself instead of waiting for those things to actually happen :-) Shinobu 11:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Image:PETA dumpster incident dead animal retrieval.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:PETA dumpster incident dead animal retrieval.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. — BigDT 15:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Wikipedia Club of New York

Come see: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Club of New York. —ExplorerCDT 14:32, 26 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Concern

Please see the new comment at Template_talk:Dablink#visual_formatting_should_be_done_in_CSS.2C_not_wiki_markup. —Mets501 (talk) 22:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Broken templates

Hello, your changes to {{for}} and {{otheruses}} seem to have mangled all the articles they are used in. See Beirut, Tapas, etc. for examples. - SimonP 22:25, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything mangled. Those templates should probably have white space after them, but that's all I see. — Omegatron 22:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might be browser specific or something, but it seems to be widespread. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical): Someone's screwed up the formatting of the dablinks!!!. Thousands of articles are potentially affected, so this should be dealt with quickly. Perhaps you should consider reverting yourself until the source of the problem is found. - SimonP 22:36, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I see. They form a definition list when used consecutively. I'll fix it. — Omegatron 22:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you {{for}} seems to be working perfectly now. - SimonP 22:40, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dablink CSS/wiki formatting

When you converted the otheruses templates to CSS instead of Wiki formatting (as you did here), it did not convert the style straight across. The format :''Text'' creates a bottom margin which the dablink class does not. It makes the dablink text and the intro line for articles too close together. -- Renesis (talk) 22:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see that. There are two ways to fix it, as mentioned on Template_talk:Dablink#Another_problem_:-.29 — Omegatron 22:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding paragraph tags: I'm not 100% up to speed on our CSS definitions here, but by default <p> tags have default margins, but divs are completely styleless blocks. The paragraph tags actually seem to work quite well right now (at least in Firefox), but I just worry using them in an application like that, since they can be temperamental. For one, we rely on whatever the global margin is set to, instead of forcing the style in the dablink class. Second, <p> tags used consecutively combine their margins (for example, if the top one has bottom margin of 5px, and the bottom one has a top margin of 5px, they will merge and the total gap will be only 5px). This may or may not be desired behavior. Mostly, I'd just like to see the margin explicitly defined in the .dablink class. -- Renesis (talk) 07:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Instead of converting things explicitly to p tags, I'm converting them to instances of {{dablink}}, so changes to that templates will propagate. — Omegatron 07:27, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I really like that idea. I thought about doing it earlier, but I chickened out because I wasn't sure if the increased number of transclusions could possibly be worse on the server. -- Renesis (talk) 07:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PERF is the culmination of one disruptive user's multi-year battle to try to enforce a blanket rule against nesting templates inside each other. Nested templates are ridiculously useful, make tons of sense from a programming point of view (who doesn't use include statements?), server load issues are largely imaginary, and I see no reason why we should be intimidated into not using them. — Omegatron 07:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i.e., e.g.

They are not archaic. They are still in use. (Just consult some academic writing published in the last 20 years.) Their continued use in wikipedia just buttress wikipedia's professionalism.Dogru144 16:25, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They are Latin abbreviations. Latin is a dead language. They only continue to be used for the sake of brevity, but wiki is not paper; we have no size contraints, and no need to abbreviate things like that. — Omegatron 22:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]