This is an archive of past discussions with User:Thumperward. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I changed the infobox tram network template so that it once again had defaults resembling the ones in the standard infobox template. The ones you had used were very different. In particular, the header text was much smaller, the box width was wider and the image width was narrower, which made the infobox as a whole look very different from, and much less satisfactory than, the ones produced by the standard infobox template. Please do not revert my changes without further discussion. I see no reason why the infobox tram network defaults should be any different from those of the standard infobox template, particularly as the layouts of a great many tram network articles are based on the assumption that the standard defaults will apply. Bahnfrend (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
The values I chose were exactly those that {{infobox}} uses: I've been transitioning templates to use these defaults for over five years now. The reduction in default image width for the second image is in line with the general style guidelines which suggest using the user's thumbnail preferences as a default. I'll proceed with a full {{infobox}} conversion shortly, which will simplify the code and make it even more obvious that the old values were arbitrary. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Microsoft Project need more cites ?
To Microsoft Project back in Feb 2011 you added a refimprove tag.
I am trying to figure out how to close the tag. Can you say tell me whether your interests have since then been addressed or if not, then please describe what are the points that would do so ? Markbassett (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for kindly providing those likes at the TfD discussion, they are most certainly helpful. Quick question though, I'm guessing we would need to have the history of Infobox Eurovision merged into the new template followed by the history of AxG's sandbox thereafter? Wes Mouse | T@lk14:13, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Quick update. All of the history from {{Infobox Eurovision}} has been moved to (and Anthony has added a redirect) to {{Infobox Song Contest}}. Now from what I understand this newer version needs to be renamed without the capitalisation of Song Contest. Is this correct? And if so, I am assuming it would be a non-controversial move, seeing as all of the issues raised at the TfD of 17 December have now been addressed. Also, may I just check with you. As it has also been suggested to merge Template:Infobox ABU country and Template:Infobox Eurovision country together to make another universal type (from what I gathered at WT:ESC would be named Template:Infobox song contest country, would it be safe to try and use the similar coding based on the other universal and tweak it slightly, or would this require a new rewrite of coding? Wes Mouse | T@lk13:38, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
I shall await for Chris' reply, thank you very much - seeing as I asked him the question, not the person now stalking me around various talk pages to cause further distress. Wes Mouse | T@lk14:10, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
You tagged the "Thunk" article as too technical. The article is about an advanced programming language topic, so it must be "technical" insofar as it requires a basic level of knowledge. With that in mind, was there anything specific that was hard to understand? 50.185.134.48 (talk) 07:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
That's the default get-out clause used to defend impenetrable writing in technical articles. We have articles on law that don't require readers to be lawyers: we have articles on medicine that don't require readers to be doctors. It should be possible to provide sufficient context to allow people other than programmers to derive knowledge from the article. The article fails to provide sufficient context for readers who aren't intimately familiar with the concept of evaluation strategies to read beyond the "background" section and understand any of it. Fixing that isn't necessarily easy, but it has to be done in the long term. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:55, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi there, you left a comment about PXE's lead section; I have updated it.
When u get a minute please take a look and let me know if we are in the right track. Thanks Pxe 213 37 84 214 (talk) 16:39, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
It's a step in the right direction, but the lead really needs to summarise all of the article's key points. It still has a long way to go until we get there. The article could do with some significant reorganisation first to be honest; I'll see if I can pitch in there. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:03, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
I think a bloated lead is not good either but I'll try to include a more descriptive one. About what you say that the article "could do with some significant reorganization" I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of reorganization you have in mind. The article is now organized following a chronological line of the RFC Standards and events that lead to the PXE standard plus it also includes the positioning of PXE compared to sibling and descendant environments. I really think the organization as it is now is crystal clear. Thanks Pxe 213 37 84 214 (talk) 09:42, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
In my experience it is almost vanishingly rare for a lead to be too long while being structurally correct. As for the structure of the article itself, it's difficult for me to describe what's wrong with it without putting it right, which is what I'm going to try to do. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:25, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
In my experience a too long lead makes the reading experience unpleasant. If it is difficult for you to describe what's wrong with the article organization I would invite you to discuss in the talk page your ideas before to make changes. Thanks . Pxe 213 37 84 214 (talk)
Sod/Turf
Was there ever any discussion that turf should redirect to sod rather than to grass? That change just screwed up every reference to a "turf" racetrack in wikiproject horse racing, as in that case, it refers to grass tracks, and such tracks are rarely sodded, they are generally seeded. Before I go start some RM drama, thought I'd check to see if there is some history there. Montanabw(talk)00:43, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
In 2011, it appears. I'll tweak the dab and check incoming links to see how many horse racing articles link just to "turf" - I must say that I am surprised, as there are a lot of racing articles, but perhaps most link to grass. Montanabw(talk)19:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Wisdom to that. Nonetheless, I still don't think "sod" when I hear "turf" though... turf is grass and the soil in which it grows, not just the stuff that gets harvested and moved to make new lawns... I'd almost rather see "turf" redirect to "grass". Thoughts? Do you have strong feelings on the matter? And, of course, "sod" isn't just the modern stuff, it's the natural form as well... e.g. sod bustingMontanabw(talk)22:02, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
As a Brit I'm the exact opposite. "Turf" here primarily refers to slabs of grass, so much so that any other use would be a colloquialism. I feel the present arrangement best suits an international encyclopedia, given that the move didn't disrupt any existent inbound links. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:07, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Well, I certainly have no interest in creating drama about it. However, that said, given that US and UK English have precisely opposing meanings in that sense (US English turf is the grass and soil, however it gets there, slabs or seeds) how DO you feel about "turf" being the dab? Montanabw(talk)23:01, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
That was the previous state. I felt it was confusing enough for non-US readers to warrant changing. In the worst case, the correct result is now two clicks away rather than one. The hatnote can be adjusted if that's felt to be inapproperiate, leaving US readers no worse off than previously. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:05, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
I just watched very confusing American news clip about women's soccer in which playing on "grass" was compared to playing on "turf". As turf and grass as soccer surfaces are identical, this did not make sense. Later the conversation mentioned artificial surfaces and I realized the conversation was actually about comparing grass to ASTROturf, which is ARTIFICIAL turf. I presume they avoided saying Astroturf because it may not have been what FIFA was talking about (being a trademarked product). They did not refer at all to SOD and suspect that is because SOD is also a deprecated word being short for Sodomy or Sodomite, and thus vulgar. In all my 60 years I have always used the term TURF in preference to SOD for this reason. SOD is not synonymous with TURF. TURF is the structure of grass plus the soil beneath containing the roots. It is a generic term and generally uncountable. A SOD is a section of TURF. The article currently called SOD should IMHO be renamed TURF. I do not understand why it was changed nor do I see any record of a discussion about it. I checked some web pages in Australia and South Africa and TURF seems to be the most used word there. I accept that American usage may sometimes prefer SOD but this is still to me a rather offensive word. 84.250.34.50 (talk) 15:03, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Hey Chris, I work for EON Reality and noticed you flagged our page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_Reality, as not meeting notability guidelines. I went in and added references to EON Reality appearing in two major VR/AR industry surveys, refs #1 & #2. Is this sufficient to remove the notability flag? Thanks! Mcheben (talk) 21:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
I've cleaned the article text up a bit: however, in that time another editor has started the AfD process. During this time, editors will evaluate the sources to establish if the subject is deemed notable: once that's complete, and assuming the article survives, I'll remove the tag in favour of more specific action. The text still reads very much like promotional copy (the history should be about the formation and history of the company itself, rather than just a chronological listing of every single product, for instance) which will need to be worked on in the long term. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:46, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. I doubt I was the first to use the phrase in that context (and obviously I didn't coin the phrase itself) but I've been involved in these discussions before, so I've replied over there. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:40, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
From time to time, I run across situations where people get into minor disputes about the best way to write a Yiddish word. It recently happened on the page Shabbat. Traditionally, a word like that with Hebrew origins was spelled in Yiddish as it was in Hebrew (in this case, שבת). In YIVO's standardization scheme, similarly to what was done in the Soviet Union, it might be spelled a little differently (in this case, שאבעס). The lead to the article Yiddish correctly notes that in most cases, people will still use the traditional spelling, academia notwithstanding. But both spellings do exist in the world.
So I created something to try to bridge this. For the moment, it's located at User:StevenJ81/sandbox#Yiddish. I chose not to be WP:BOLD and publish it because I did not create it from the base {{Lang}} templates. (I couldn't really decipher those templates so well, as they are nested, and in any event I figured the need here was unusual, at least, if not unique. I did not add any onlyinclude category language yet, either, though I figured to do so before publishing. I will also write documentation.
Questions for you:
What do you think of the idea in general? (Proposed name: {{Lang-yi-dual}})
Is there something else I am missing by not building from the {{Lang}} templates? If so, can you help me with that?
From a quick look it seems to be exactly what's needed. I haven't looked at the language meta-templates in any real detail for a long time, but if I get a chance I'll see if I can decipher the code well enough to re-use it for your implementation. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Excellent. Don't kill yourself. Unless there is a reason to try to incorporate the code of the meta-templates for this purpose, I propose keeping this one simple. So do what you'd like, but if you don't get a chance to play with it in the next 30 days, I'll just go ahead and publish it as is, and we'll leave it at that. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:43, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
Release early, release often. :) I can't guarantee I'll get a chance to look at it, but if it's out there in the wild then if there are problems with it then someone will to be sure to pitch in. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
OK. I'll do that (probably next week). I doubt there will be an actual problem with it the way I wrote it. It's more a matter of whether there is a value to recasting it using the {{Lang}} template that I'm not especially seeing now. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:52, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Update 16:25, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
Working on it, but I found one problem that I hope you can help with. (Actually, it manifests two different ways, but I'm betting it's one problem.) See User:StevenJ81/sandbox/Yiddish. This problem does not exist with standard {{Lang-yi}}.
In ordinary lines of text (as in the current example 1), as long as there is not a space between the template and the text following, the result is fine.
In ordinary lines of text (as in the current example 2), if there is a space between the template and the text following, the parser adds a line break, and then the space appears at the beginning of the text following (resulting in the boxed text shown).
In bulleted lines, the parser adds a line break immediately following the template, regardless of what follows. Then, if there is no space after the template, you get a result like current example 3; if there is a space, you get a bulleted version of example 2.
I noticed you had put a "One Source" template on the article Magic Smoke back in October of 012. The article appears to have had substantial updates since then, but I am not comfortable removing someone else's flagging of that issue.
Could you take a peek and decide if the flag is still applicable?
I agree with you. Those in favour of the deletion had not considered what was taking place in any detail, and, quite possibly, had not understood what the nominator perceived as the issue. I had not understood it either until it was explained to me. I have done all the detective work I am competent to do (very little) and lodged a further opinion there. {{Italic title}} (or however the title has been italicised initially) seems to have created what I perceive to be a trivial issue, and deletion of the redirects is papering over the cracks. The discussion is well intentioned, but is the wrong discussion in the wrong location, and, in my view, needs to be closed early with the correct action to be taken as an 'extraordinary close'. FiddleFaddle08:28, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
I disagree as I think they understood perfectly clear what the problem is. In fact, look at the above notification I posted in this section via Twinkle: All the text after "Since you had some involvement with the..." appears incorrectly due to the wiki markup problems that the link to the redirect created, including the single apostrophe before "de facto", the fact that those words are in bold, the word "facto" is italicized, and all of the other characters in that notification are in bold. This is the whole basis of my deletion rationale: wiki markup issues caused by links to these titles. The evidence above couldn't make it clearer in my opinion. In fact, there was a fix/corrective action: the addition of titles containing two consecutive apostrophes to the title blacklist (as I said in my nomination statement.) Steel1943 (talk) 23:12, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
That "fix" broke working redirects. Whoever is responsible for said fix should revert it, and come up with a less clumsy solution to the professed problem whereby apostrophes in titles can mess with the way they're displayed. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:36, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
