User talk:Billinghurst/2013

From Wikisource
Latest comment: 10 years ago by ShakespeareFan00 in topic Adventures List
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Watchlist message notices

Since you mentioned it elsewhere, this usage always seemed lacking to me. It was months before I realized there were actually "messages" up there - I always overlooked them since they seemed to part of 'Watchlist options' unless one stopped to really look & then read carefully. We really should be using the .js-based(?) message banners for system-wide notices like Wikipedia does (if you haven't opted out of them or turned them off in User Preferences that is).

I tried to figure all that out at the same time I changed the MediaWiki .css and .js purge & edit warnings a week or two ago, but it seemed we are so far behind the most common of improvements that I was just happy to change one or two of the messages and some of the background colors for existing message boxes. Most everything else was beyond my skill set & limited understanding to fiddle with any further sadly (plus they conflict like the featured icon once did under dynamic layouts before hacked to load higher). -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:00, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but it was better than the site banner. On my journeys elsewhere, I will see what others do for highlighting. Not sure where we can test though — billinghurst sDrewth 08:00, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
fwiw.... there happens to be a new "banner" along the lines of what I was talking about earlier up now on most pages of Old Wikisource. Lord knows how it is being generated though - must be [java?] scripted because it doesn't seem to show up in the usual place(s) when I look at the raw HTML underneath. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:56, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Was it MediaWiki:Sitenotice? mw:Manual:Interface/Sitenoticebillinghurst sDrewth 07:24, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Nope. something about a Wicnic (Wiki picnic) in 23 cities, etc. etc. -- George Orwell III (talk) 07:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
It may have been part of m:Special:Centralnotice? — billinghurst sDrewth 08:04, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Bingo! That's it. I'm not saying we should go through all that (though it wouldn't hurt) but mirror whatever it is that generates those types of banners/messages. Watchlist notices are just too out-of-the-way to effectively notify the max. number of folks on the latest WMF upgrade "enhancements" and how to resolve/tweak them. I'm thinking it could cut down on the number of redundant [Scriptorium] posts typically made in the wake of such changes. -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:27, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Sitenotice has the same effect as centralnotice. We used to use it, and it was often equally ineffective, or considered irritating as non-logged in users cannot collapse it, so it is always there. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I would have assumed as much, being most regulars disable such messages in their settings (& I have little affinity for the IP user; most are 1 day contributors at best anyway). All I was wondering is how feasible would it be to put a banner-like message at least where the watchlist message goes if not the WS-wide message. Something that the eye cannot mistake for normal watchlist info in other words. -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Presumably someone can do a better coding effort of div id="watchlist-message" so that it has the right code to highlight the message in MediaWiki:Watchlist-announcements, and collapses nicely when someone hits hide. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Homes of the London Poor

As this was your suggestion, can you please check through and proofread the text for August's featured text, "Homes of the London Poor"? I was not able to find that much on Wikipedia about the book itself, and I was not that familiar with the subject to begin with, so I am not sure if my description is adequate for the book.

- AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:26, 27 July 2012 (UTC)


New tool

This authority control tool is a new offering from Magnus Manske, tweaked to work for WS after I saw him at a meetup a week ago. Not too opaque, though I have been using it without the green button so far. (The DNB mentioned is not our one.). Charles Matthews (talk) 21:30, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it was stalling for me in a typical TS means. At this stage, I just picked "Authors-M" and am working my way through the sub-categories ... so scientific. I am presuming that you are aware that we have a VIAF gadget to assist with the additions. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:37, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

No, I am very ignorant about gadgets. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:50, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

To Do

I've created two To Do lists, both of which are currently empty. The first To Do list, shortcut WS:TODO (or WS:TO DO), and an admin specific To Do list, at Wikisource:Maintenance of the Month/To do (admins) with no shortcut at the moment. Do you want to start listing things or can I steal items from your "Things to do" list? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:35, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Both can happen. No need to wait for me, and no need for me to delegate. Nothing sacred there. Thanks for all of that. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


Oops. I may have accidentally been fighting you on Page:Rise and Fall of Society.djvu/69

Hi Billinghurst.

I happened to notice a footnote was not being completely generated on this page. (Well in fact I was following up on one of User:EVula's notes on a "working example of multi-page footnotes", and found it actually was not in fact … working!) Footnote 3 was being truncated at the text "thinking how many pounds of wool", instead of correctly continuing through to "His worth as a human being was involved."

Perhaps in hubris I thought I could fix this, and did so (I believe!)

Only then did I check the page history; and realised with horror I had (almost) reproduced something you had in fact removed only a few days ago (the <section begin=body/> bit, although I put my version lower down than the one you had removed. I don't particularly like the label name "body"; but The Rise and Fall of Society/5 already is so coded; so I thought "minimal change." (Ha!))

Would you please be so kind as to look at this again and make sure I have not inadvertently recreated whatever the situation was that you were originally addressing? MODCHK (talk) 21:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Meh! Not an issue. Needed to remove the section tags, and then fix up the transclusion to just be a neat start to end. All evidence for why that hack that we used was abandoned. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Much tidier than my approach in any case! MODCHK (talk) 07:35, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Sort key fun

Hi,

Couldn't help but notice the recent attempts to populate the 'Sort key' field on Index: pages with the PAGENAME derived default. Finally realized there is nothing special about that field nor does it have any coding, api, php, or scripting associated with it - its always been nothing more than an input for the ol' DEFAULTSORT: magic word command via MediaWiki:Proofreadpage index template. I tweaked the existing...

  • {{DEFAULTSORT:{{#if:{{{Key|}}}|{{{Key}}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}
to....
  • {{DEFAULTSORT:{{{Key|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}

... and that forces PAGENAME to be used when the Key (or Sort key) is left blank. Still won't visually populate that field but the execution of sorting is always set to a default nevertheless.

Too much compartmentalization going on, imho - the Page: and Index: namespaces are being pieced together from both local and server based bits & pieces rather than being compiled through one defined option-form layout based upon the usual skin(s). The results from the current approach will always conjure "ghosts in the machine" (i.e. lead to unpredictable behavior)

For instance -- open Index:Frost - A Boy's Will, 1915.djvu to edit mode, don't touch a thing, click 'Preview' then click 'Show changes'. Note the addition of fields that shouldn't require an independent refresh & save to make them present & current. More important is that you note the removal of the fully transcluded Category if that page was saved at that point. -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:07, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep. I was having a peek to see if the template could prepopulate with text, and I am still looking to get a defaultsort added to {{book}} so we can import that instead. Re the remainder ABSOFLUTELY. As MZM says to me, the WSs have been so bad at defining our needs, and that is a very true statement. Ori (one of the WMF's engineers) has been working on schema stuff at meta m:Schema:OpenTask so a note has been left for Tpt about this nascent(?) development (not read it yet). Now I have to try to get my head around m:Wikimania 2012 Wikisource roadmap (which is all so very boring and takes me away from transcribing). Re cats and Index template, yes, and it is even worse that HotCat gadget and Index really misbehave to the point of bugzilla:43168billinghurst sDrewth 02:20, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding Books to the sidebar menu

Hello Billinghurst! I have replied to you comments at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Adding Books to the sidebar menu. Cheers. Kaldari (talk) 06:05, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I have replied to your comments. Kaldari (talk) 00:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Charles Matthews#Question on volume 32

Please weigh in. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:34, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

formatting

How again would you change the formatting for the following?

< nowiki >'< /nowiki >''text text''

Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:26, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Found it. Thanks, & Merry Christmas. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:31, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

As you saw, I have been using &apos; though I think that the html5 coding is &#39;. Though how in the hell we are meant to remember that I have no idea. /me blames GO3billinghurst sDrewth 03:49, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Please pardon both my kibitzing and in adding my $0.02: What about {{'}} (which incidentally internally happens to use &#39;!) Fairly simple to remember, and can be made robust against html++ so-called standards as they change... MODCHK (talk) 04:51, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
NO USING LOGIC AND INTELLECT! Unfair! wink
Fair cop. Logic usually my strong suite; but what is this Intel®LECT thing? Some kind of microprocessor perhaps? Never come across one before. MODCHK (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Pretty certain it is from lectera which is read. So probably where you read the really small text on the microprocessors. If on all chance it is not that, then billinghurst sDrewth 22:52, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Volume information for EB1911

Please see Wikisource:Bot requests#Volume information for EB1911 and the section on my talk page called User talk:PBS#EB1911 volume info. Your thoughts on this problem would be appreciated -- (Philip) PBS (talk) 13:12, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

You were too fast for me! I have created two sections at Wikisource talk:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica for discussion of the points this small bot project has thrown up. -- PBS (talk) 13:41, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up Author:Edith Louisa Floyer Butcher and Author:Laura Maria Roberts

Once more you have impressed! As you can probably tell I was getting pretty tired and frustrated with my (lack of success in) finding information about these ladies; and had done the "Damn it! I'll just save what I've got so far!" act. (I had transposed the "i" and "a" in Louisa earlier; so funny you picked up I'd done the same thing to Maria and this time not noticed... I really was tired!)

I really had thought the next person to look at these would probably want them expunged for lack of detail, so thank you for locating so much more than my paltry discoveries.

Now for the question/ruling/your opinion: What is your view on handling female authors who wrote under both their maiden and married names, as I believe both of these two did? I personally tend toward putting the base Author: entry in under the maiden name if at all possible; but I get the impression you go for the married name? Any stylistic recommendations as to a standard for noting the relationship between names? (I only used the nee twist with E. L. Butcher as I only realised late "Floyer" was in fact her maiden surname. Thanks also for straightening that out.)

Regards, MODCHK (talk) 14:47, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah well, there is nothing right or wrong, I went with what you had. When I create, I tend to go with the weight of evidence. Given an option I would go with birth name, but that is just personal preference on how I record people, though always with alternative names. I more make sure that we get the requisite redirects, and their sorting. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)


You have new messages
You have new messages
Hello, Billinghurst. You have new messages at George Orwell III's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

re: 5.55 promotion of en.wikiSource via youtube.com

Billinghurst, please look at and give your opinions on Scriptorium re: 5.55 promotion of en.wikiSource via youtube.com As always - with due respect, —Maury (talk) 04:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Participation vs. volume

Eh, I deal with the "hat collection" argument all the time (I just had people lay it against me just the other day on the Simple English wiki, during my ill-timed second RfA), so I try to maintain some semblance of humility. ;) EVula // talk // // 15:58, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Which is one of the clear reasons that I started and continue the awards, and with that low hurdle. We need to celebrate that as a community when we achieve something, and each month we now achieve the fact that together we start and complete a work to validated status, whether the work is of personal interest or not. For this, every person's effort is appreciated. I find that PotM is often the only area that some contribute at enWS each month, and whether it is the trinket at the end, or the ideal of the work, no idea. Wear your trinket with pride, you contributed. smiley

To the commentary around hat collectors which is an accusation that I too have received, I give it no notice. I apply to have access to a set of tools required to do a set of tasks, and at each site, I only use a portion of those tools, but I do use them. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Heh, that rationale works well enough for me. :) I think I'll go back and restore all the boxes I've been removing while I kill time so that I show up to the NYE party fashionably late... EVula // talk // // 01:34, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

SDrewthbot

Bot approval not found. Would be nice to link to at Wikisource:Bots/List if you know where it might be. Jeepday (talk) 20:43, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

(show/hide) 17:36, 25 February 2009 Zhaladshar (Talk | contribs | block) changed group membership for User:SDrewthbot from (none) to bot (as per approval on WS:S and per WS:BOT) @ Special:UserRights/SDrewthbot, though I will need to dig in the WS:S archives to find it. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
archived at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2009-03#Request_community_permission_for_bot_for_SDrewthbotbillinghurst sDrewth 23:35, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, updated. Jeepday (talk) 14:13, 1 January 2013 (UTC)


Re:Picture Posters images

Hi and happy New Year. I've uploaded the first 20 of the 150 images to this category. These were in .png format but I am thinking of switching to .jpg because their compressed size is double that of the (compressed) .jpg format. Would that be OK? Otherwise, they are quite nice considering their age. Enjoy. — Ineuw talk 00:43, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

It is my understanding from information at Commons, that for this type of (non-photographic) image that lossless png is preferred rather than lossy jpg, information at Commons:File types. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
These images should be in color (colour) (and perhaps are I suspect) except for the first one of a lady [PP D008] who is "ugly as sin." Happy 2013 to everyone and may Wikisource progress like never before. —Maury (talk) 06:44, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Here she is in colour. It is too bad that the same image in color cannot be used when a book does not show the same images in color. The book would look better.—Maury (talk) 07:02, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Sure we can! We don't get stuck with a poor scan. We know the image is the image, and this is where we use our brains and put in the one of best quality. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:07, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

formatting

I was messing with the formatting too, and thought {| {{table style|mc|ac}} (the 'ac' part) might be all that's needed to be added to your initial edit; digits still wouldn't be perfectly aligned, but nearly so...? Prob. more important that digits are aligned? Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:53, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Fahrenheit. Barnsdorf.
96 13
18 11
 4.5  0
 0 −1

Went there too, then decided that I would stick with the text's alignment with it being a scientific work following scientific formatting. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The Early English Organ Builders and their work

Why have you decapitalized the last word of the title? --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Should I ask a similar question? I tempted to just take it to The early English organ builders and their works or the 1865 review just called it Early English Organ Builders and it seems to have been advertised that way too Advertisements & Notices. The Pall Mall Gazette (London, England), Tuesday, September 26, 1871; Issue 2065.billinghurst sDrewth 00:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Are there no Wikisource standards for title links? It's not the DjVu file I'm concerned with, but how we list the work once it is transcribed. Expectations will be for a modern capitalization, despite the fact that the original has its title in all-caps. I don't hold with advertisements as particularly enlightening, as they depend upon the whim of the particular editor/publisher. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC) --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You'll need to customize MediaWiki:Pageinfo-footer appropriately. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Susannah_Lattin

Hi. This page looks like a collection of articles about a subject. I guess it is not the proper way to handle it, but I do not know what is the right way. What is your view?--Mpaa (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Typical of the contributor. Thinks that we are a scrap bucket, and his rules. We have previously moved it to a subpage of user, and I have again appended it to the same page, and "re"deleted it. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

This keeps happening...

Maybe my eyesight is not that good but I can't tell any difference. See Special:DoubleRedirects. -- George Orwell III (talk) 16:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Seems Byron had a similar (yet different) issue (ref 70). I don't get either of them... only that some characters that look exactly alike are actually "twin sons of different mothers": differences not visible to the naked eye, yet equally distinctive. I've had to copy/paste a Mainspace title before in order to correctly link to it elsewhere, for typing it out 'exactly' as rendered caused a redlink. Don't know if that's what's going on with the double redirects or not, but it triggered the thought. Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I have no idea why the first shows a redirect to itself. You say it keeps happening, so are you also say that it self resolves, or that you do something to resolve it. Maybe it is some unicode differentiation/respresentation of the ndash

@Londonjacks: ndash <-> hyphen issue? — billinghurst sDrewth 00:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably something like that... If I come across it again, I'll bring it up. By the way, you need to sign above. Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Sure that's actual time? Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Sue me! — billinghurst sDrewth 01:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Here's one for your header: Chump change! [a fool and his money] ;) Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:53, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Well its absolutely sure its something you're doing and no it doesn't resolve itself - look again Special:DoubleRedirects. -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:33, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

EB1911 transclusion

I have added a section called "Using transclusion" to WikiProject EB1911 and a new subpage Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Transclusion. They are modified copies of Wikisource:WikiProject DNB and Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Transclusion. Please could you have a look at them and make sure that I have not made any silly mistakes. -- PBS (talk) 17:24, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Umm, no. That is clearly old, and made worse. We have much improved our techniques and templates, further we have improved Proofread Page.

Have a look at what I did for {{DNBset}} which outputs to <pages>, definitely keep away from straight transcluding, or raw #LST. It would be much better to give users a quick and easy EB1911 specific template that plugs and plays. Hell, as the wise decision was made to put your pages as subpages, we may even be able to preload one with an editnotice (see mw:Help:Edit notice). I think that we have learn that as much KISS as possible with such works. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

OK I've created a {{EB1911set}} template modeled on the {{DNBset}} but I have made some changes. I have stripped out some of the options, and I have assumed that the translucent tag will be the same as the article name. I could not work out quickly how to remove the initial switches so I have left them in but simplified them. I have put in two new switches to remove the annoying "07" problem. This template handles that silently. I have updated the Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Transclusion Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Transclusion documentation accordingly.-- PBS (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I have put the same patch for the 07 problem into Template:DNBset/sandbox (as it seems odd to me to provide this really useful template and then leave a gocha for the users) -- I am not going to test it or implement it, but it is there if you are interested. It would almost certainly be possible to write the same thing more elegantly using string manipulation, but I would have had to spend time looking it up :-(
-- PBS (talk) 09:32, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Query regarding Author: redirect with categorisation.

Hello.

I literally stumbled across this whilst looking for another author, and I would appreciate your thoughts. N.B. I am referring to the redirect (not the Author:Elizabeth Thomasina Meade record referred to) currently consisting of:

#redirect[[Author:Elizabeth Thomasina Meade]]
[[:Category:Authors-Sm]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}}

Isn't it a little unusual to have a categorised redirect like this? (I seem to recall some discussion railing against this;but for the life of me cannot recall who, or where I read it―biological double parity error.)

In case this form is indeed legitimate, do you have any objection to changing the DEFAULTSORT line from «PAGENAME» to "Smith, Elizabeth Thomasina", so that this entry does not stand out by itself under heading "E" in Category:Authors-Sm (which is where I originally noticed it), and correctly resorts amongst the "Smith"s?

Regards, MODCHK (talk) 19:19, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

D'oh, it was meant to be in that form. It must have been late at night when I did that redirect. Fixed. We did have a long ago conversation about categorised redirects when I proposed it (WS:S]] about 2007/8) sheesh, that long!. We only do it for authors, as the pages are meant to be a finding aid, so for each surname variation one redirct will appear. It has greatly reduced duplicates. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:54, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. I really did not mean to be so rude as to suggest you made the change, but at least I now know I was reasonably on-track, and have a solid example for next time. I'd better plead tiredness myself. (By the way, I was not involved with WS back then, so it is reasonably unlikely I'd stumbled across that precise conversation. I'm nosy; but not that nosy, surely?) MODCHK (talk) 02:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I saw no rudeness, none. My commentary was more it was discussed, though there is no policy nor direction either way. As I expressed in an earlier conversation, I like the way you work, so please continue the "learning" challenges and hopefully I can continued informative explanations. You have your head screwed on right, and can make significant contributions locally, we just need to find you the niche most comfortable. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Re: nosiness: I'm "that nosy"... You can actually learn a lot that way. Just because information is old doesn't mean it's obsolete. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
O.K. Between you two maniacs you have embarrassed me into finding the original discussion (Yes?). And then to rub it in further the archetypal example: Author:Emily Tennyson Smith is nearly identical to the author redirect which kicked off this whole line of enquiry. And what is worse, the two examples sort side by side in Category:Authors-Sm. What is this? 17-odd degrees of freedom to re-establish neighbours?
P.S. Must establish correct term for "one who induces-, or several who induce- manic tendencies in their target audience." Term under current consideration: "people." Give me a dog any day. MODCHK (talk) 17:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I never looked (nor desired to look) for the page/incident/history Billinghurst spoke of. I was just making a general statement about the learning process of "being nosy" here—in some cases. In my experience (I can/should only speak for myself), "manic tendencies" are self-induced [not chemically—unless you count coffee—but thoughtfully (imagination)] (although, of course, influenced by external sources). If it is a negative/unproductive experience for you, stay away from the source/influence. If it is a positive/productive experience, then knock yourself out! Hoping you have more positive than negative experiences here. May you (personal responsibility) let no one lead you astray (i.e., may no one but yourself "exploit the gap" in your noggin). :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
P.S. "Curious" is probably a better word than "nosy". [Hmm... curiosity killed the cat, but then he was probably sticking his nose into something he shouldn't have been. But then again, he has nine lives, so it's okay... unless it was his 9th ;)] Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually it was the reversing car that killed the cat, it was curiosity that put it in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I used to have manic tendencies but I have managed to turn it around, and now I just tend to be manic. Mad. Silly. Whatever. Congrats MODCHK, you found that I asked and prodded with all my naïve questions back then. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Humor is good medicine. Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)


Template this #redirect[[{{subst:sandbox}}#{{subst:PAGENAME}}]] sandbox = Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blind links

"The Land Down Under"

Billingsworth, why is it that Australia is called "The Land Down Under" [just read about it as "LAN" on your User page], while New Zealand is further south of Australia? —Maury (talk) 04:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Because we thought of it first, and it is ours! Otherwise don't let facts get in the way of a good story. Anyway New Zealand is a pissy set of little islands, and they have the name Shaky Isles, or Land of the Long White Cloud; plus it is made up of people who couldn't even be convicts; they fancy sheep; their cricket team is crap, &c. &c. &c. so we just ignore them. The penguins rule Antarctica in the really down under, but it is too cold for most to visit, plus the seals eat them. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:29, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Your "Things To Do" List

http://archive.org/details/huguenotstheirs00smil

Billingshurst, do you have any idea when you will be adding this "Huguenot" book to en.Wikisource? You have it on your on en.WS list and it is also on your link page of archives.org. My interest is in mainly on James Fontaine and his family in England and Ireland. —Maury (talk) 04:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Nothing imminent, I am trying to get that dratted list of "in progress/running" smaller too. We should nominate it for PotM, it would make a nice point of difference, the scan looks good, not too much complexity in the formatting, though it is quite long and may not quite get completed. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I believe that it is good to always have some short books totally set up and waiting to be edited. There should be a list of these particular works for new people to look over. Therefore, when new people come in they see something they like and all they have to do is "edit". All of the time and knowledge it takes for some people, like myself, and others, and new people to just set up a book and get it on en.WS is a real "turn off" for some people. For some it will be too complex and that is _if they seek out and read all needed instructions to do this_. Illustrated is always nice to find/see too. Men who have made the Empire (1899) [MSN] [304 pages] G'night, —Maury (talk) 06:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
There would surely be hundreds of books available in the non-proofread state available … Category:Index Not-Proofreadbillinghurst sDrewth 09:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
I looked through many of those mentioned above. One of our biggest problems is that while they many been mostly, or even totally proofread, they just are not Validated. I myself typically work on a project and validate other people's works. Last night when communicating with you I was working on Clipper Ships and then I would validate several of Beeswaxcandle's pages which are on Admiral Dewey. Not validating is a serious issue which is why we have those "hundreds of books" I also noted that many not proofread are about War. Regarding that, the volumes of the Southern Historical Society's "Papers" (American Civil War") that AdamBMorgam and I have worked on are proofread to a good extent but not Validated as usual. Only very recently, within a week, MODCHK has been working on VOLUME I which was proofread by me long ago but not validated. There are many volumes in the SHSP and several have been proofread but not validated and yet, I have asked, and been told in reply, that "validation is an important process." Therefore, somehow we need more validating done on such works. Perhaps small proofreads of the month should be combined with a validation work? But I strongly believe people will do the proofread of the month and ignore the validation. Therefore, perhaps a 2nd special and specific "award" should be included. One for proofread of the month and one for validation of the month. Any validation award should look different than a proofread of the month award. People like collecting the awards and displaying them. It worked for Napoleon (awards aka "medals and ribbons" in his situations) and it can work for us. Napoleon stated to his staff officer when asked why decorate so many men that "One medal is worth gaining a thousand men" (because they will naturally want to collect more awards) The works presently not proofread at all can be dealt with later. (1.) small work + work needing validation & a specific award for each either every month or every other month. (2.) Ofter we get concerned and talk about if we can get 2 small works in and sometimes a 3rd part small work in when we go fast as with the recent Japanese Flower arrangements that went fast. Therefore, we are doing 1-2-or even 3 small works. This can be modified to a small work plus a validation work. Presently, many new incoming books are totally processed while leaving the older non validated and non proofread works behind. Respectfully, —Maury (talk) 12:27, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


Talk pages

Morning. I was wondering if there was a WS page or section of a page dedicated to the policy or proposed policy surrounding the use(s) of Talk pages. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Umm, don't remember, though would have thought that less likely. Guidance would be "communication for the benefit of WMF or the community in general"; the general WMF terms would apply.

Also, if one edits an Index page—thereby ending up on one's Watchlist—and someone else comes along and leaves comment on the corresponding Talk page for that Index page, is the former User notified via the Watchlist that the Talk page has been edited? That is, are the pages 'linked' somehow? If no, there might be some benefit to making that the case (if technically possible). Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist is watchlist, and reacts as you configure it through your preferences. Two components, 1) General preferences, and if you have E-mail me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed set, then you will get an email for page changes; and for what sets off the trigger, you need to see how you have configured it on the specific Watchlist preference page. Talk pages notifications are paired with their equivalent 'front' side.— billinghurst sDrewth 05:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Ok. Thanks. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

{{Helpme}}

Hello.

I noticed you recently modified the above template, and was hoping you might be able to clarify (what is to me) an oddity therein. The instructional line to helpers this template generates:

Note to helpers: once you have offered help, please remove this template or replace it with {{tlf|helpme}}.

is an apparent lie, as the template itself internally uses {{tlg}}. Is this deliberate (in the sense {{tlf}} omits linkage); or is it indeed an oversight? Since I cannot decide which I thought it best to bring to your attention.

Cheers, MODCHK (talk) 01:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

These templates are xwiki artifacts of ugliness, though generally accepted with other equally arcane and ugly templates due to their hystehistorical nature.

The purpose of the change to {{tlf}} is to simply stop it transcluding, and hence showing up in certain flagging categories (it contains <includeonly>Category: something or other</includeonly>) and thus it will trigger a count in Special:RecentChanges (up the top). I could have equally just removed it; or <nowiki>'d it; no rhyme or reason for today's choice. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:56, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure why

Regarding this comment, I totally agree with you, can the page be deleted??? Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 03:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Like any page it an be nominated for deletion. It seems that there was previously content linked to it, and that was the vestige. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Darwin and The Excursion

Your minor aversion (probably wrong word) to poetry led me to think of you in association with Darwin when I proofread "Poetry and Science in the Case of Charles Darwin" some time back ("...now for many years I can not endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me..."). In a recent piece ("Darwin's Life"), I learned that Darwin had read Wordsworth's The Excursion twice, so I thought it might also be something you might be able to tolerate ;) Now whether Darwin read the poem before or after the turning point "age of thirty", I did not research further. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:20, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey! I have read poetry, I just don't get it as an art form. Blah blah blah. Let me tell you that I constantly wear it for not getting "artisans". Let me hide away and make my life easier. Enjoying the art and design of nature is sufficient. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:20, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
No argument from me :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

?Speedy

Hi, this page has somehow come up for speedy deletion, but I cannot find the template to remove it other than in the list of templates at the bottom of the screen. I've tried purging the page in case it was due to one of MODCHK's templates that I've just removed, but to no avail. ???? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:00, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, can we do it? can we? can we? can we? huh? huh? huh? — billinghurst sDrewth 04:37, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
DAMN you fixed it. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
Umm guys, I know you are having ***way*** too much fun here; but if I've somehow requested a cascading deletion (and I know I did not mean to do so), how about a little lesson in what I *should* have done, please? MODCHK (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
No idea what happened, wasn't concerned enough to look (somewhere between "meh" and "huh". Can we worry about it if it happens again. It is not a biggy. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:25, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
O.K. In the total absence of care, facts etc. I assume it might have been because it was a template the speedy delete transclusion applied momentarily to your page as well. I don't really plan upon making too many entries which subsequently require deletion; so I hope it is a really long time before this issue is resolved... Is that "meh" enough? MODCHK (talk) 01:40, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


January PotM

Hi, at the rate they're going with the Cycling book I suspect that this will be completed before month end. I suggest that instead of putting another work up, you switch to validating small works. Cheers, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Grind them to paste under a stack of books! <vbg> — billinghurst sDrewth 07:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Dunno?

I don't know if its useful or not but in my adventures on IA to fix/replace some of our rotten source files, I came across this just uploaded a week or so ago...

Described as "historical Victorian Births/Marriages/Deaths (Australia) stored as CSV data", I figured it might aid in your Author: data gathering efforts & best to leave you a pointer before I forget all about it. Prost. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks presumably from the copyrighted CD products, and currently not available for sale due to the extension of privacy withholding periods. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

SDrewthbot has confusing edit summaries

http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Author:Richard_Mott_Gummere&diff=4294580&oldid=4157567 has an edit summary of "→‎Translations: convert to {{Pd/1923}} using AWB" and yet does nothing of the sort.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:20, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Yep, that was the general process that I was undertaking, but it was only half bot'able due to crap in many, so every edit was half processed by bot, then massaged by me, and manually reviewed. Those that were really ugly, I pulled out and did from my main account in public. I will make a note to the community on the bot page, as what was meant to be an easy task did get bits of tidy up. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:52, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Bot spelling error

Hi, when SDrewthbot did the run of changing twoem to bar it also changed {{hws}} to {{hypenated word start}}, which doesn't exist. Can it please put them back again? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:50, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed the typo. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)


{{min-width}} unsuitable for forcing widths; controlling right margins.

Hello.

Just saw your note regarding my attempt at a useful template. I think you have made a good call. Have you any suggestions as to how to redress this? If it is entirely hopeless now is probably the best time to simply delete the template before it starts causing serious problems. The only use at present is on the first few pages of Lengths and Levels To Bradshaw's Maps/Canals and Railways in the Northern Map.

Here is the background as to what I was attempting (feel free to skim, as I've got far too much detail in here):

Iain Bell pointed out to me that tabular columns of fractional lengths lend themselves very poorly to any of the default layouts., e.g.:

Imperial Quantities: Various Alignments
Default Centred Left Right
10⅙ 10⅙ 10⅙ 10⅙
6 6 6 6

My intended solution had been to try to "force" the enclosed character cell to be larger (i.e. a fixed width enclosing a proportional font) than required, so that columns could align on the numeral-fraction interface (ala decimal point alignment): {| {{ts|bc|w25}} align="center" border="1px solid black" |+ Compromise using {{tl|min-width}} via {{tl|winf}} | {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|10|⅙}} |- | {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|6}} |- | {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|0|¼}} |} as you have pointed out, has obvious flaws, including a subtle loss of horizontal centreline: {| {{ts|bc|w25}} align="center" border="1px solid black" |+ Compromise case degrades when narrow/restricted space | {{t/r|3}} {{ts|width:22.5em;}} | || {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|10|⅙}} |- | {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|6}} |- | {{ts|ar}} | {{winf|0|¼}} |} If the situation really is infeasible, I can always fall back to this approach:

Ideal (but formatting this is tedious!)
10
6
0 ¼

Thank you for your patience wading through this. MODCHK (talk) 06:26, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I am not saying that there are not valid reasons, or even necessary times when we will use width/min-width/max-width; it is about how we wisely use them. We haven't done well with defining (universal) classes to utilise in tables, especially for certain columns, and I don't think that we have explored well the use of children components. NOTE that html/css are not my strength, I am just a dabbler. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:25, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm in agreement with Billinghurst on the more elegant (& more newbie friendly for future application) solution is to have some of this framed in CSS class definitions first and [re]build our templates out as needed from there. My problem is I'm of the "old ways" (HTML, CSS and the like) and not so much about what or how wikicoding does to it. I know there are ways to automatically pad integers, both from the left and the right, to have the one, ten, hundred, etc. whole numbers as well as the milli, micro, nano, pico, etc. decimal/fraction values to all line up neatly in a table the way I think MODCHK is looking for - but damn if I know how to do it through the current wikicoding (the HTML table variants are not supported here either). -- George Orwell III (talk)


  • On a related tangent to this, all indications point to a tightening in HTML element (or tag) usage in the coming months whether we like it or not. This has always been a pet-peeve of mine (i.e. we don't create [chapter] headers using any of the header tags designed just for that purpose because wikicode automatically converts them to editable sections, adding them to the internal TOC in the process; or using the paragraph tag is pointless here because wikicoding automatically adds the closing tag while the standard says its optional and many other quirks of this vein) and I get the feeling we are going to get punished for being so willy-nilly about tag usage or the lack thereof to date at some point in the near future.

    It would be nice to review all the .CSS files being applied before we even get to our local common.css but even those don't fully come up in my browser's cache anymore because it seems a good portion of the CSS defs are being micro cached on the fly now. I'm pretty sure we should begin by having all the defaults (from main to vector then monobook down to our local css') and have a group review of what we need to throw out (Tabber-tab; this means you) & what changes to high usage templates could made to further simplify them by using any combination of defined defaults. And I don't know about you guys but resource usage seems to have ticked up for me with every other batch of wmf upgrades, making certain things "slower" than they probably should be. -- George Orwell III (talk) 20:12, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

    I feel that a root and branch review would have value, and I have sort of asked if there is anyone fully CSS compliant who may be available to help us work through the bits. I was asked why I didn't put such a request to m:Tech, and I didn't have a reasonable answer. We definitely haven't a gap analysis. I know that I would like to fix layouts, and our hacky sidenotes. Probably a time to build a list, but not for tonight. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:18, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah - I wont have any "real" free time until at least a week or two after the general elections here in the U.S. either. Sidenotes is a prime exmample however. I understand that at the time of first inception the template coding seemed the only way to go but if we just stuck with the classes in the templates rather than building into them further inside/outside or left/right mechanics primarily in the Page: namespace for rendering in the main, we should have simply added to our common.js...
jQuery( document ).ready( function( $ ) {
        $( 'body.ns-0 .sidenote-left' )
                .removeClass( 'sidenote-left' )
                .addClass( 'sidenote-right' );

... and the whole any-left-sided-moves-to-right-side thing functions pretty much like dynamic layouts do. Assign different classes in the tempates for different options and the whole inside/outside is just as easily handled; all done automatically in one namespace only, the main. -- George Orwell III (talk) 17:59, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

  • Abject apologies for opening this can of worms. I guess I have proved I am not suitable for contributing towards this review (though I genuinely would follow same with interest.)
  • Please note the templates are no longer in use, and as far as I am concerned may be summarily deleted as I have since reworked the original pages to use a direct table format approach (my "tedious" method above.)
Looks like I carefully planned a campaign of action; made preparations and promptly marched off a cliff...MODCHK (talk) 15:49, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
No need to apologize - everybody's input is welcome. And its not really anything you've said or done; its the changes that come down to us by those making changes or upgrades to the code every ~10 to ~14 days now instead of every 3 months or so like before. -- George Orwell III (talk) 17:59, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

{{botanist}}

Does what new user Pigsonthewing has done to this template & its documentation make sense? Microformats (and their real use/purpose) are beyond my understanding. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Microformat is of which I am aware, but not versed in knowledge, nor really the time nor the patience. It is a form of standardised XML, and allows the direct comparative, so Wikidata will be there, notifications, etc. Pretty much what TwitterCards use. Shall we run away together and sit down the back of a library and pat old books? My gut feel is that we need to invite in those who know and let them do this stuff for us. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:52, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Umm, "Twittercards"? Never 'eard of 'em. Probably something to do with Spacebook (or what ever it's called). I just want to liberate the old books from the back of the library and make them available to lots of people to pat, and sometimes this new-fangled stuff seems to get in the way. [Curmudgeonly rant ends here.] Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:02, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Aha, though this should be allowing for machine-to-machine talk, to get rid of some of the dross tasks, or at least points of connectivity, and eventually/potentially/... <shrug>. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:26, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


PD-NorwayGov

RE: Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations#Works_of_Norwegian_government, Do you have the ability to transwiki in PD-NorwayGov or would it be easier to just copy and paste it over? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I am pretty certain that they are just built on {{license}}, AND I can/will do it. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Thank you :) JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
OR we can use one we prepared earlier {{PD-NorwayGov}} — billinghurst sDrewth 11:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
Probably merging in to here from the extras at Commons, would be good. Not really required though, I put a note at Template talk:PD-NorwayGov about the Commons License, which presumably would stay more current. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:14, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

I responded your message on my talk page. Cheers, Lester Foster (talk) 02:50, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Responded again! Lester Foster (talk) 06:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)


I have converted it to a vote

Re: edit. I don’t see any recent related edits where you made a change. Pretty sure I agree with you, just not sure what you changed. Jeepday (talk) 11:18, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Vote-lite <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 11:38, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I see, saw that, thought you were talking about word changes to the policy. Jeepday (talk) 11:47, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I was thinking a crat would come by and close them, and remove any bot flags that needed removed. Then I would do the archiving and post any votes required as an approval request. What are you thinking happens next? Jeepday (talk) 11:47, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I think that Hesperian should do the de-bit and you can archive them, and we all light pipes in our rockers. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:53, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I noticed a few days ago that the process seemed to have stalled. But I read something that suggested to me that Jeepday was going to handle it, which suited me fine, and also I didn't want to tread on any toes. But I guess the process does call for a crat to close, so I will get onto that shortly. Hesperian 12:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
I think I have done what is needful at present. Henceforth I will check in on bot confirmations at the start of the month when I am doing the admin confirmations. Hesperian 12:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Ok I will go work on my part. Jeepday (talk) 13:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Either Hansel and Gretel with breadcrumbs, or the vampire slayer (or whatever is the new movie)

Around April 5, the 90 day warnings can loose their flags if they remain inactive and/or don’t ask to keep them. If they become active or ask to keep them they go for confirmation in the next round July 2013. Jeepday (talk) 14:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

appending {{smallrefs}} as active references on page

Hello Billinghurst. If you take a look at the Author page for Florence Earle Coates, you'll see how whatever you worked with the references on the author subpages kind of set things awry on the Author page. The way things were beforehand made it "work" out on the Author page... somehow... Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:50, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Awry? To me it has just appended the refs, and removes the warning about missing refs. Format around it, or remove the individual references, as there is no point in having references and then not having them display.
Maybe you don't see what I see. Looking at each individual subpage (Works | Collections | Other Works) that you adjusted, things look correct. Looking at the Author page, which 'houses' each author subpage, the same reference is shown [incorrectly] in each 'box' (subpage), and all other references are not shown at all. Scroll down to the very bottom of the page, and you get the red Cite error message.
Most visitors will not land on the subpages... When all was formatted how I originally had it, all rendered as desired on the Main Author Page. Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Should I take this as a sign that I should simplify the page? Speaking of signs, you for got to above. Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
If you transclude the pages, please wrap the individual (subpage) components in <noinclude>. Traditionally the subpages for authors have been used to separately list long pages, rather than to be transcluded. If you are transcluding such pages, it would be great if you could still set them up as standalone subpages ({{author subpage}}, references, etc.), but then wrap components to not be transcluded appropriately. It is not about simplify, it is more ensuring that we are clear about what a page is doing (having people guess is less than ideal), and ensuring that we are managing error messages. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:49, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
Sorry. When I was designing the page way back, I basically copy/pasted from somewhere I can't now remember (I suspect not another author page); I just liked how it looked, and had no idea how it worked, only that it worked. That is still the case, and I have to admit, I'm not even 25% sure what you mean for me to do with the noinclude—where and how. I would like to be clear myself about what the "page is doing", but alas... I only know what I want it to do!Feel like assisting? You can direct me if you'd rather, but it would need to be in layman's terms and in baby steps. Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:50, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
w:Help:Template#Noinclude.2C includeonly.2C and onlyinclude, and yes I will get the pages done. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the direction and the doing. It always seems more daunting when one overthinks things. Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

What does {{#tag:pages ...}} do?

here? Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:26, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

It is just <pages> but as a tag. It has implicit quotations, so I didn't have to wrap anything. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:30, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand (even with the MW link). What is the benefit/difference/use, what do you mean by "implicit quotations" and what was perhaps wrapped before that isn't now? No hurried response to my questions necessary (sorry to bug you with them); I'm back and forth at the helm. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
They are the same code, same outcome, just expressed in a different way, one as a hard tag < >, the other as a soft tag {{#tag:...}}. There are occasions when soft tags (in general) are quite beneficial, even necessary, as hard tags stop some functions occurring, as you may have seem with <poem>. Here it was just a preference to do something quickly, and not have to stuff around with making sure that I was dotting Is and crossing Ts. I wouldn't fuss it, it isn't worth the hassle.
Re implicit quotations {{#tag:pages||index={{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}.djvu|from=|to=|fromsection={{SUBPAGENAME}}|tosection={{SUBPAGENAME}}}} (implicit) and <pages index=".djvu" from= to= fromsection="{{SUBPAGENAME}}" tosection="{{SUBPAGENAME}}"/>billinghurst sDrewth 10:02, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:40, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I have actually forgotten after all this time why I gave up the poem tag initially. What were/are the possible issues surrounding its use again? Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:18, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
I have no problems with it. Hesperian had a PoV. The issue for me is hard tags, not poem per se, and it is too late for that intricacy. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:15, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Okay. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Fast validators

Hi Billinghurst. There were three fast validators doing what you described on ShakespeareFan's page. I blocked Shakespeare and Bible_in_Metre (who did it first and with inferior results.) ShakespeareFan, I haven't investigated the extent of his errors, but found one on the first page. If there's no more I'll release the block. Beeswaxcandle wanted to revalidate those two's works, but I think we should just rollback Bible_in_Metre, but I'm not sure what to do about ShakespeareFan. There was a third person, but he did it with a work that was easy to validate, so I think he was just inspired to work fast.

Questions:

  1. You are here this evening--can we co-ordinate our efforts on ShakespeareFan? That is, should I wait till he responds before investigating and/or lifting the block?
  2. And is there a fast way to rollback Bible_in_Metre's Vanity Fair work? I asked on WS:AN, but maybe you know?
  3. And Beeswax said the two were in different countries, but he's not a checkuser and maybe he's wrong?

I will be here for 2¾ hours, otherwise, see you tomorrow. ResScholar (talk) 06:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm back. Have thunderstorms, and power fluctuations this evening. I will run some CU to see if we can get a better idea of what is being done. If there is anything particular please let me know. I might drop BWC an email. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I just graded ShakespeareFan's work--I caught six mistakes he could have corrected but didn't in sixteen pages. that I looked at. In books with a lot of dialogue, you've got to do more than just read. Especially a classic like Dr. Doolittle. ResScholar (talk) 08:47, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Okay and from memory they are not long pages. Do you want to ask him to stop proofreading by choice while we discuss? There is a little angst there in our discussions, so I am wary to not exacerbate an existing situation. I can understand if you would prefer that I did, seeing that I opened the can of worms. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:50, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Go to my talk and User Talk:Beeswaxcandle for more specifics. I blocked the two for a week, so work at your leisure. Oh and Bible_in_Metre is the same guy who talked to you and Beeswaxcandle on the administrative noticeboard about lifting his patrol-status. He also put his poorly-done validation on the main page in New Texts. ResScholar (talk) 08:56, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Edit conflict: If the checkuser doesn't reveal anything we could undo the block. He didn't do anything to aggravate the situation. ResScholar (talk) 08:56, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
No, I discovered Bible_in_metre first, and it roped him in willingly or no because of the similarity. I'll be glad to ask him not to proofread if there's no checkuser problem. ResScholar (talk) 08:59, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I was looking at CU to see if there was anything evident in the user agents in user, indictative of bots or otherwise. Both just show normal browser responses and two very different editors (not unexpected), so it would seem that we have editing/validation akin to "tick and flick". — billinghurst sDrewth 09:17, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I can't top that. Does ShakespeareFan get any consideration for his years of service, or should we wait for what has to say before offering parole? ResScholar (talk) 09:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
A polite request to desist until a resolution can be discussed is what I would think would be an appropriate first (and only?) request. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:39, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
(posting from main account) I don't use bots on Wikisource. I'm in the process of checking through the recent batch of validations, given that concerns were raised as to them having been done too quickly. Shall I fix and re-validate, fix and downgrade, or just simply downgrade if I find a discrepancy?
I had not IIRC marked many pages of Vanity Fair with Validated because I had concerns about 'dash' style consistency,

and was rather puzzled as to how it got done very quickly..

Do you have a list of pages that were validated too quickly ? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:25, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/Sfan00_IMGbillinghurst sDrewth 13:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
I wasn't just thinking of my own contributions, and I was asking for a 'specfic' list as opposed to the general one.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Page:The Story of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/196‎ (typos)
Page:The Story of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/200 (typo)
Page:The Story of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/33 ‎ (quot)
Page:The Story of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/31
Page:The Story of Doctor Dolittle.djvu/29‎ (typo)

ResScholar (talk) 17:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

SFan, what is your connection with the Vanity Fair validations? We were discussing your Doctor Dolittle edits, not those. ResScholar (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

To note that we will all have misses in validation, the issue is the hit rate of errors, especially with your speed of validation. I also noticed some with another work that you were doing after the above edits. Comments that I have are italics, typos, hyphens, mdashes. It would seem that more rigor would be useful in your proofreading, and to us, we acquaint rigor having a time component. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Taking you up on your offer on Vanity Fair

Hi, what needs to happen is that all edits by User:The Bible in Metre to the Page: namespace for Index:Vanity Fair 1848.djvu, where he is the last editor of the particular page, need to be undone/rolled back/reverted/set back to Status 3 (or any other terminology). Cheers, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:32, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Done for two users where they were shown as the validators, so I am hoping that anyone who edited afterwards stuck the Validated tag into place to override. Too hard (for me) to pull last editor and still get a readily working list. So it will be more work that expected, though will probably suit the more strident around. Do we need to consider another work for similar treatment? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
Bah, as I did it from my main account, to give it authority, what I didn't consider is that I now cannot validate the pages.<shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 13:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Kathleen's already looked after the other work, so nothing needed there. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:42, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Maintenance tasks

Per your suggestion and some vague thoughts I had floating in the back of my head, I have created Wikisource:Maintenance/Tasks. I'm afraid I was creating this at the same time you were creating Wikisource:Maintenance of the Month/Regular tasks, so there is some duplication of effort here.

It took some time as I had to rework the template I made for this. It seemed OK in my sandbox but I noticed a few problems after going live. The whole page needed restructuring too and it is now a collection of similar subpages held together by a shared header template. Finally, I had problems just finding the maintenance categories. They were scattered across several different parent categories and I'm not actually sure if I've found all of them yet. As part of this, I have tried to organise the categories; they should all be under Category:Wikisource maintenance now and I have tried to collect them both by broad type of maintenance and by the relevant namespaces (many of the categories for which already existed).

I hope this all makes sense to other people (and that I haven't broken anything while trying to "fix" the categories). Wikisource:Maintenance/Tasks still needs things like basic directions for solving each task but it's mostly in one piece now. Is this anything like the resource you had in mind? Do you think there's anything that should be changed? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 15:08, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Annotations and derivative works

I have closed Derivative works on Scriptorium as a general support in favour of derivative works. Now I've set up Request for comment on annotations and derivative works to work out the details. I know its a little over detailed but I would like to solve this problem and I thought this way would be more successful than the last time. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Page-specific editnotices

Billinghurst, the new Community portal needs to be kept up-to-date with Ws:Index/Community, Help:Contents, Ws:Policies and guidelines, and Ws:Essays. This might be done by the users who modify these index pages. Is requesting this through an editnotice fine in your opinion?--Erasmo Barresi (talk) 13:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that or through adding html commentary fields giving instruction. If it looks crap through an editnotice we can just remove it, No harm in trying. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:07, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
OR we break it up and have it as component pages that have instruction, eg. main page and {{new texts}}. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:08, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I chose HTML comments. Thanks for suggesting that.--Erasmo Barresi (talk) 12:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
oh that was easy. One (uiet) day I will get to and look to page editnotices. Too many other busy bees in that space at the moment. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Oops. Boss checking up. Better look busy. MODCHK (talk) 03:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

|{{whip}}{{kissbutt}}{{bs}}{{yeahright}}{{wtf}}billinghurst sDrewth 03:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
O.K. I admit I got a good laugh out of that.
Scared to think what some of those templates might involve.
Seriously wondering why your validations of above seem to have been so forgiving so far. Probably warrants a {{kissbutt{{|}}context=beg more pay}} MODCHK (talk) 04:13, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Pictograms, or similar, some easy, some not so . So many ways to respond … opportunity … next pay grade … {{innocence}}billinghurst sDrewth 06:50, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Ge' awa' w' ye. Thars noo way tha' emerged fro' a healthy hooma' bowel. Cue recent depressing presentation from Hesperian. MODCHK (talk) 07:42, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I am still slightly worried you are validating without any apparent corrections. I just don't have that good a hit rate normally. MODCHK (talk) 07:45, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
A bib and a bob, but to me it looks fine. Sorry to be a disappointment. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:34, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
You may indeed have your moments when you are a complete ; but never, ever a disappointment, or lacking in either educational or entertainment value.
At last, a change: you don't seem to like {{nop}}s on chapter boundaries? I can live with that. MODCHK (talk) 10:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Books written by Collins NLA, and the publication dates align, even republish notes and commentary of its use. See Collins, David. So it is miscited. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
O.K. I'll buy the miscite. That still doesn't entirely explain the misname existing in the Author: namespace. That was the peculiarity I was trying to draw attention to. The chain currently runs:
  1. A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821/Chapter 10 transcludes
  2. Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/322 which has a link to
  3. Author:History of New Holland which redirects to
  4. An account of the English colony in New South Wales which happens also to be the destination of redirection from
3a.An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales
Perhaps you intended to refer to some kind of a chain from History of New Holland, which obviously does not currently exist? MODCHK (talk) 11:42, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
{{fuckknuckle}} thanks. That said, you should always feel welcome to have fixed them, and if you had admin rights you could have properly fixed it without poking anybody. Even worn your undies on the outside. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:24, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
I was still identifying the problem, and ensuring there was not an historical reason for things being in the strange state they apparently were. As far as I know admin rights do not incorporate telepathic abilities, otherwise we would not be at this impasse.
In any case, my undies are in exactly the right place―on my head, where they server to reduce the chafing from wearing my regulation Eccles size 19 boots on top of them. MODCHK (talk) 15:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Just hysterical reasons (for my incompetence). I am a denialist. I keep believing that I can multi-task despite my gender. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:06, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the issue is in the wording, as is often the case. Maybe you can virtually multitask telepathically, and all observed problems are simply down to the (naturally inferior and thus faulty) perceptions of outsiders? MODCHK (talk) 16:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Umm, it seems that you think that I have superpowers, so let me state now that I am not physic! — billinghurst sDrewth 22:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
Correction. I know you have superpowers. But by your own admission you are a denialist. Which puts you in rather a personal paradox if you don't also know you have said superpowers. Now get back to bending RSJs, robot! MODCHK (talk) 00:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Obviously such a paradox would be intolerable, and thus by application of w:modus tollens you have superpowers. MODCHK (talk) 00:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Gotcha. I was vaccinated against modus whateverus and other things when young! I have since had a booster with needlus vacuous. Nah! So clearly this is a a case of "I wasn't! I never! Dolly did it!" billinghurst sDrewth 01:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Another argument for the anti-vaxxers. Sigh. And I never would have noticed your {{innocence}} was not quite pearly-white if you hadn't made that last edit. There's just no arguing with omnipotence. MODCHK (talk) 01:41, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
  • We shall never get anywhere in this task of mutual humiliation if I have to keep breaking the flows of genial abuse with serious questions. However, this:
In Index:Emancipate your colonies!.djvu I note you appear to have studiously avoided the use of long-S, even though the scans do contain same. Was this deliberate (and would you like any validations to reflect this change); or do you have strong feelings should I be rash enough to reintroduce them? Ground rules, please. MODCHK (talk) 02:19, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
I basically see them as an exercise in pointlessness. We don't display that way, they make proof reading hard then if we display them properly, and the Poms stopped using them for a really good reason. Some like to do them, and good luck to them. Here I request first contributor's rights not to flourish. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Makes life easier all 'round. MODCHK (talk) 03:59, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Made suggestive changes to Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/362 that output at A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821/Index. IMO centred letters don't really work on modern wider screens, so I modify as per example. If that is suitable, I will do the rest as I validate the index's pages. If you don't like, revert, and I will just do the anchors. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Noted (out of sequence) that you'd screw-whiffed the letter titles (I was trying to figure out how {{CompactTOCalpha}} did its magic; never used that one before. All done now.) and then read this note. Either is good, but inconsistency not. Please proceed (better not if I 'validate' my own work, eh?) MODCHK (talk) 22:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
The only way to demonstrate something is to leave it in place, and no point changing and validating them, if we are about to revert. I should have done a {{talkback}}, as it seems that it was another stalking me. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
You have already convinced me this is a good way to proceed (and it it not as if I claim to 'own' the project in any case. I am merely an interested observer.)
Stalking? Shadow? The ego on the creature! Anyway, can't I just be a nemesis instead? MODCHK (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
I have been doing the index deformation for a little while, and it started as most index pages where columnar and that didn't work, and they were less helpful. That saidmy ToC presentations aren't a perfect form (yet), though my more recent renditions with the ToC in the header work within annotation guidance. Hmm that needs to be added to the discussion. Such should be considered a work in progress. ToC and Index pages are things that have elements of complexity, and relying on a facsimile of the book on the web doesn't always work in the migration. Probably both need specific information pages in our Help: sections. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:40, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Bearing in mind I've just spent the last couple of hours tearing {{dotted TOC page listing}} into digital confetti, your last change comment read out of context came a a cruel blow to this stalkerputative nemesis. I nearly had an infarct to sit down and have a considered pause. After catching my breath/grasping for reality review, I see your point. I like the new-look A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821/Index, and the way you've made even missing letters like U index correctly. That rather threw me, but I can now see how you made it work with multi-destination {{anchor}}s. I don't envy the help-page creator. MODCHK (talk) 03:11, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Those blinking dotted things? HATE HATE HATE. Pointless waste of time! I have adequately trained myself for tables, and just do them as wiki-standard. The main reason is that most people can come along and read them, at least read the table structure, though they may have to look up the {{table style}}. Otherwise you have to trained in the arcane to even try to proofread. One day, I will work out a way to neutralise them in the TOC index, on a spare day! — billinghurst sDrewth 04:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Don't go overboard―just tell us how you really feel! In which case I just know how secretly ecstatic you shall be when I tell you I just created five more of the twisty little things. MODCHK (talk) 04:54, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

New project, new here

Many thanks for the welcome. I decided to tackle the 1872 West Virginia Constitution with Amendments. The document dates from 2007 and has the Preamble added in 1960. I did see another WV constitution that lacked the preamble and was stopped at article 5, so, I thought, why not....... This will of course be ongoing, and I am learning, I hope there is not a time expectationCoal town guy (talk) 12:37, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

We would host each version of the state's Constitution, each against a verifiable source. So it is important that you pick your steady version and work to it. Getting a scan would be best, so it can be verified, see Help:Proofread. Time? yours to give. Help? The best place is Wikisource:Scriptorium where most hang out and plenty available to give help. Again welcome. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
EXACTLY. The source is the WV State Legislature, the House Clerks Office, it is their PDF that is offered to the public. Appreciate the welcome, and the keen eye on veracityCoal town guy (talk) 13:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Irving Fisher

There was some question as to whether this Irving Fisher and Irving Norton Fisher was the same person. I believed I looked into it further at the time, and found nothing conclusive, so removed "Norton" when I had added it... But you might have better sources(?). Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Irving Norton Fisher might be a son? Graduated Yale 1923. That's not to say his Dad wasn't a Norton likewise, but I haven't found evidence of its use yet. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I just went off the defsort, which was a little slack. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:40, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
VIAF shows two
  • VIAF ID: 27126999 Fisher, Irving, 1867-1947
  • VIAF ID: 33058072 Fisher, Irving Norton 1900-1979
A quick look at some genealogy research says father-son.[1]billinghurst sDrewth 11:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
US SSDI records show INF dying in 1979 ... Irving Fisher 8 Nov 1900 May 1979 Hamden, New Haven, Connecticutbillinghurst sDrewth 11:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
My father, Irving Fisher (1956) — billinghurst sDrewth 11:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The Dictionary of Australasian Biography almost completely validated

Hi Billinghurst, I've gone through and validated all the pages I can, there's just five left where I was the proofreader so I can't validate. So when you get a chance you might want to proof those pages and update the category for the DAB to Validated. I've learnt quite a bit doing this project, I saw you created the {{Mc}} template which is great for McCulloch etc. so I've been using that. Nice work too, in adding the supplemental info to people's main article. The initial scanning was pretty good overall, but I noticed later on it seemed to have trouble with "5"s, many ending up as "6"s. I've been fixing these up, but there's probably few more in some early pages. A few of other mis-scans I saw recently were "Borne" for "Rome"; "Bladen" for "Sladen" and "be" for "he., I found a few other examples of "Borne" and "Bladen" by Google searching within the DAB and fixed those up, but there likely a few "be"s that should be "he"s still. Diverman (talk) 12:43, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

US Legislative Data Workshop

hi, i noticed your work at Portal:Acts of the United States Congresses. would you be interested in teaming with the Cato institute started at w:Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Legislative Data Workshop and their open government xml data going forward? Slowking4 (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Gday. That was maintenance work only for OrphanedPages, so thanks for the offer, but please excuse me declining. I actually added a post to Wikisource:Scriptorium about the work from where these works were transcluded, and aligning with style, and that it was fully proofread, though not fully transcluded. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:30, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Pages I can validate

I saw your comment on Moondyne's page and tried the gadget out. Very useful, very clever. But I think it is silly that it puts a red border around every redlink. I already know that I am allowed to work on redlinks; and they are already easy enough to find. On index pages where there are a lot of redlinks (e.g. Index:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu, this gadget lays down a veriable sea of red borders, and I have trouble finding the information that I actually want.

I am going to fork the gadget code and delete the line that puts red borders on redlinks. I am wondering how you feel about me doing so in at MediaWiki:Gadget-mark-proofread.js. I'd rather do it there, but if you think that is too cheeky then I will create my own private userspace fork.

Hesperian 05:54, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, problematic pages should be bordered in red, not green. Problematic pages should be presented to users as "something I can work on". That this gadget automatically tags all problematic pages as "someone else's problem" is almost offensive. Hesperian 06:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Mate, I just stole the use of Beau's code. He said that at the time it was a rough job, and I would think that any improved code would be welcomed. IMNSHO the only pages that need to be checked and ringed are status=3 (Proofread), and then only a yes/no response. I would presume that in the long-term with the next stated goal of shared modules, that we can look to having these for all. I mind not where improvements take place. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:31, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Ahhh, that's better. Hesperian 11:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
Whichever of you two "fixed" the above gadget: Thank you. I much prefer the way it works now! MODCHK (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Jolly glad you like it. :-) Hesperian 06:46, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The gadget would be even more useful if it could be run on demand instead of a preference setting. ie. a link next to the purger and toolserver icons at top right on index pages. Is that possible? I often switch between several index pages and don't necessarily want to choke my system with doing this on every tab. Moondyne (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

<answer lang="strine">NFI and noice.</answer> Sounds like a better means to do this than a separate gadget. Noting I would think that it is just running on Index: pages. It is an @Hesperian question. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:50, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I agree it would be better on demand. I'm sure I know how to add it as a sidebar script; I'll have a look at the icons some time. Hesperian 04:32, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Done. I'll leave details at Moondyne's page. Hesperian 06:46, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for supporting Proofread setup in Telugu Wikisource

I am glad to inform you that we completed transcription of one complete Telugu Book on History of Andhras recently. I would like to thank you for the support extending while setting up Proof read extension on Telugu Wikisource.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:14, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations to you and your community. Best of luck with your future endeavours. @AdamBMorgan, I think that this makes a great mention in our news. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Abuse filter: external linking from certain namespaces

I just took a look at my Abuse log and see it has two entries. Both are for "external linking from certain namespaces" which doesn't inform me what the "abuse" is or how to avoid repeating it, if this is not a false positive of some sort. Indeed, the message doesn't even define "namespace" which might be helpful. It does appear you maintain some "filter" for abuses that triggered this which is why I'm leaving this message on your talk page. --Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 02:49, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

It has noted the edit, nothing more, there is nothing that you need to avoid or to change. Don't get hung up about the name used by WM, just a name of a tool. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

"Versions"

Re: "Sappho": They are two different poems, not different versions of the same poem. Should it not then be a disambiguation page? or am I misunderstanding our usage here? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Duh, fair point. We probably then should look to have one disambiguation page, and then as many version pages as required. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:35, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Rivers to the Sea (Collection)/The Kiss

Hi. This is is not a version but a different poem than to the other (two) "The Kiss". Isn't "similar" more appropriate? Bye.--Mpaa (talk) 17:51, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

That was probably my fault. I created a versions page that should have been a disambiguation page. I have (hopefully) rectified the situation, to include changing the ov to sim. Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:24, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
I am presuming that it has been corrected. I was just linking orphaned works/pages, and went off whatever had been labelled. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:33, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

smart quotes

Billinghurst, are smart quotes allowed or not? I cannot remember that rule but I have been replacing them with " when I find them. Respectfully, —Maury (talk) 21:57, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Maury, see WS:STYLE#Formatting for the current thinking. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:18, 13 April 2013 (UTC)


Punctuation: "Use typewriter quotation marks (straight not curly)." Thank you sir. —Maury (talk) 23:08, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
BUT if someone has done a *whole* work that way, then do not change it, just leave it as is, it hurts no one. This is more about direction to users about our preference to make things easier for all, and contemporary presentation. So be guided by the rules. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:34, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Billinghurst, if anyone does a large work using smart quotes I have no plans to change all of them. I would work on my own projects instead. My mention about smart quotes was about an occasional page that had both smart quotes and straight quotes. I did change those smart quotes and there were not many or I would have made a post to that editor and let him make needed changes. I just wanted to make sure *I* was doing the right thing so I asked here. —Maury (talk) 04:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Sure. I was more indicating be rule-guided, not rule-bound. I was qualifying, nothing more. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:43, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
I ended up thinking about this situation. I feel that there are works with both smart quotes and straight quotes that get past us even during validation month. It may be possible for one of our tech-genius' to create something that can be used to convert all smart quotes (curly quotes) into straight quotes. I do not think our works look good with some of each and I do not believe we are perfect enough to catch all smart quote marks.—Maury (talk) 14:59, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
I assume that someone can write a bot to replace all of U+201C(“), U+201D(”), and U+201F(‟) with U+0022("). One would presumably leave the double prime U+2033( ″) as is. One could try to do something similar for single quotes, but you would have to decide what to do about apostrophes. MarkLSteadman (talk) 15:30, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
a bot run is pretty easy to do for that sort of change; the issue is whether there may be a need for that special case for that formatting. The reverse is a little trickier. Put requests to Wikisource:Bot requestsbillinghurst sDrewth 23:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
That single quote you have mentioned must also have a code that can be included. Just make all as straight quotes, left, right, single quote. Then the bot mentioned can correct all quotation marks and single quotes. Y/N?

Billinghurst, I do not think there is a "need" for anything we do on wikisource. We don't "need" to be here but we are and for our personal reasons. If a bot can eliminate problems that makes all texts clean so as not to be part curly quotes and part straight quotes then there may be a "desire" for people here to have such a bot. There may be a "desire" to have it because it makes all en.WS projects look better. It makes proofreading and validating our many texts easier. Books don't have both types of quote marks--except perhaps on en.WS. I never use curly quotes since I do not write off-line but instead only on-line here.—Maury (talk) 02:16, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Doing the inverse (straight to smart) is a little trickier but I'm sure there is some standard regex code to do it. Converting the curly quotes U+2018(‘) and U+2019(’) to the typewriter quote U+0027 (') is possible, but U+2019 is also used as an apostrophe, e.g. I’m vs. I'm. Then you have the grave accent character ASCII 96 (`) which is often available on a standard keyboard (for example, under the tilde). Do you change `foo' to 'foo' and does it have other uses where it might cause problems? There are more exotic characters out there used in transliterating languages (e.g. for glottal stops) that would be presumably be left as is, as well as the single prime character U+2032(′). MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
As an example, the left (‘) and right (’) represent two different letters in Arabic transliteration (not sure how many Arabic passages exist on en WS but something to be aware of) MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:47, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
If anyone goes ahead with this, I hope they'll bear in mind the danger of turning "‘‘This text is not in italics’’" into "This text is not in italics". Hesperian 03:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Hence my concern with single quotes said above. It shouldn't be a problem with double quotes (i.e. “This text is not in italics” to "This text is not in italics") If one wanted to change single quotes, one could first look for all `` and change them into " before changing single ` into '. MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:44, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Nothing is happening here. I talked about possibilities, not a plan. Anything that needs to be done goes via bot requests, and would always be a case by case run. Bots don't eliminate problems, they just do as they are told, whether what they are told is right or wrong. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Fig 770 missing

Fixed. Thanks for pointing this out.--Laverock ( Talk ) 21:12, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Reference:Ntsamr spam

This has also been happening at Envirowiki http://www.envirowiki.org where I'm also an admin. I had to contact the founder/other admin of the wiki. He has locked down the wiki so only admins can edit--locked down from 2nd April. Could you tell me what you are doing about it so I can pass it on to this admin so the wiki can be unlocked? The MediaWiki version at Envirowiki is 1.16.5. --kathleen wright5 (talk) 02:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

User:GertrudeL has just turned up, if you want to play with it. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


definitions

Dear Billinghurst, Thank you for your kind help in my Talk page. I have a new question! Are the users of English Wikisource allowed to add the definition of hard or archaic words or expression to the pages? If yes, where should they add them? Should they use footnote or some tools like template {{Tooltip}}? --Yoosef Pooranvary (talk) 20:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I would normally add a link to the word at wiktionary. [[wikt:arachaicword|]]. The only thing to watch for is overlinking. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Moving works from Commons to WS

Sorry about this, but I noticed that one of the works I had uploaded to commons is copyrighted in the UK until 2018(its source country). The work is Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction, with an index here, the djvu file here along with the various images collected here. The uploaded version is the British version but it was also published in the United States by Holt and Company in 1919 so it is {{PD-1923}} in the US and is therefore suitable for enWS (right?), but not for commons as mentioned above. What is the best approach to remedy this situation? MarkLSteadman (talk) 04:19, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a template at Commons that I can apply there that will transfer the files. Welcome to drop a note on my talk page there for future files, alternatively ask any admin to apply Template:PD-US-1923-abroad-delete. I will get these done now. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Done the tagging and a bot will move them over. I hope that you will be able to update the files here once that is done. As a pointer for books, here and Commons, we like to use {{book}} to tag books; also at Commons they we like to use the {{creator}} for their Creator: ns, even if it is a nude {{creator:author name}} in the book or information templates. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll finish tag them all soon. MarkLSteadman (talk) 13:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
Oops, in the end I bot'd them as I was deleting them at Commons. Please more apply a sanity check. It would also be worth looking at where we should stick the category as we haven't particularly considered the organisation well post moves. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:34, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


Failed Downloads

I posted Wikisource:Scriptorium#More_Failed_down_loads a couple days ago, but no one seems to have noticed. You did a great job tracking down the other causes. Can you take a look at these? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:49, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The beast is unresponsive at the moment, so after it is back. The last change was meant to have fixed it, though I feared that it was only going to be for where the header is used rather than <pages />. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:12, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


Index page notes

Hey Billinghurst,
I think that you were part of adding a note on the index page if an Index talk page existed, so if I'm wrong I apologize. Assuming I'm right, I was wondering if there was some way to limit the width of the box; currently it pushes everything to the left. Is there a way to limit it to half page width or third? I've uploaded an image real quickly to show you how it appears for me. - Theornamentalist (talk) 00:47, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Done - that entire template should have made into a proper input form by now. If anything, it should be a standard template in the template namespace; only called by the MediaWiki setting as needed. -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:08, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you George, it looks great :) - Theornamentalist (talk) 12:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

http://archive.org/details/inmemoriammatth00instgoog = "no meaningful content or history" ?

Billinghurst, you have deleted a great history but only on WikiSource.

07:07, 14 May 2013 Billinghurst (Talk | contribs) deleted page In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maury (WS:CSD G1 - No meaningful content or history: content was: '{{header | title = In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maury | author = Virginia Military Institute | translator = | section = | previ...' (and the only contributor was '[[Use...)

"(and the only contributor was '[[Use...)" = User: William Maury Morris II—Maury (talk) 13:06, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Why did you delete that work I did that was filled with meaningful content and encompassed history that changed the all maritime nations right down to including now. Even the United States Navy has the man's name as a memorial on their "navigation charts" of today due to the Brussels Conference (which also has continued from that original 1838 meeting.) Are you aware of the Brussels Conference and how it came to be and how it changed many nations and is that not "history" as well as "meaningful content"?

In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maury

Take a closer look at the .pdf file from Internet Archives again at all of the history within and show how that has no history -- show how that has no meaningful content. History itself is "meaningful content"

http://archive.org/details/inmemoriammatth00instgoog

Extract from wikipedia article: International meteorological conference

" Maury also advocated an international sea and land weather service. Having charted the seas and currents, he worked on charting land weather forecasting. Congress refused to appropriate funds for a land system of weather observations.

Maury early became convinced that adequate scientific knowledge of the sea could be obtained only through international cooperation. He proposed that the United States invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a “universal system” of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of a pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels in 1853. Within a few years, nations owning three-fourths of the shipping of the world were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where the information was evaluated and the results given worldwide distribution.[4]

Maury was sent by the United States as advocator of his sea data collecting ideas but not for land. Still, as a result of the Brussels conference a large number of nations, including many traditional enemies, agreed to cooperate in the sharing of land and sea weather data using uniform standards.[2] It was soon after the Brussels conference when Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, the free city of Hamburg, the republic of Bremen, Chile, Austria, and Brazil, and others all joined the enterprise.

The Pope established honorary flags of distinction for the ships of the papal states, which could be awarded only to those vessels which filled out and sent to Maury in Washington D.C. the Maury abstract logs.[5] "

"No history, no meaningful content"? I do not see how that can be because it is all history, and beyond just the Brussels Conference of 1838, plus it did and always will contain meaningful content and a lot more so than many other "works" presently on WikiSource. —Maury (talk) 13:06, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

There was no work there, just a header, when you have some work transcluded, feel welcome to recreate the page, or ask me to undelete it. It doesn't do well to have headers that mislead people to think that a work exists, and especially one that is sitting there orphaned. The 'history' statement relates to the history of the file, nothing else, it doesn't reflect on the work; the content similarly relates to what was at the page. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Well then that is an entire different situation. I thought I had placed an entire book there, the one that shows in the text above and presently is on Internet Archives. I don't know why I would have just started it, almost starting nothing, and then not do the entire book. I owe you an apology and I hereby do apologize to you. I ask that you forgive me for my not understanding but in what was deleted, as shown in the [deletion log], I could see nothing and thought it was the entire book. Thank you for the explanation. —Maury (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Sure, and no worries. Rest assured that if there was anything like that I would be discussing it with you directly. No need to get your knickers in a knot, always happy for a gentle enquiry. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
recovered it and moved it to your subpages User:William Maury Morris II/In Memoriam. Matthew Fontaine Maurybillinghurst sDrewth 14:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Index:In_Memoriam._Matthew_Fontaine_Maury.djvu is on wikisource

Moments ago I found the entire book here on wikisource along with the images and all pages but one have been validated. Would you please validate the one page? It has been sitting there a long while ready to be completed. I have helped in many validations for you and others and yet my plea in the past about this remains untouched -- one simple validation. I knew I had done that entire book but didn't know if I placed on Project Gutenberg or elsewhere. Kind regards, —Maury (talk) 20:58, 14 May 2013 (UTC) Index:In_Memoriam._Matthew_Fontaine_Maury.djvu

I will see how I go during the day. Please look to use internal wikilinks, where you can. You can just paste the title name. 1) internal links allows the system to know what is linking where, and with backlinks, run reports etc. 2) when you force a url, especially with a http or https protocol it takes some of out of our logins. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:21, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you and while I am not sure what you mean, I often use internal WikiPedia Links, or do you mean something else? If I can get that book, one page after a year, Validated and then "transcluded", I will wikilink the hell out of the book because (1) it is only 32 pages long and (2) I know the people (I write in the present tense about them) and history and place names mentioned. For decades, before these wiki areas existed I studied and learned more of what I already knew of Virginians and other people and deeds associated with them. I started it as a child with my grandmother teaching these things to all of her grandchildren and for me--against my father's wishes for he had a different philosophy than his mother)--but still, my father needed my grandmother to "babysit" so he shut up and let his mother teach us about Virginians and families or he would end up sitting at home instead of going out to dance and eat with his friends. Besides, I have always had an intense interest in what my grandmother taught us kids and beyond confirmations of what she taught us. These are not just books to me, they go far beyond that simplistic idea. Thank you, —Maury (talk) 01:16, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
You also regularly use full urls rather than internal wikilinks, eg. here and I converted the link in my reply. It adds elements of difficulty when that is done on other internal pages. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:49, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
I did not know of, and have not seen, any rule (is this a preference or a rule?) existing where people on enWS were not supposed to use a full url on a Talk Page. In the past when I worked on articles on Wikipedia I never used full urls or what I would call an open or closed url. That's easy to change but I know of no enWs rule about it. —Maury (talk) 10:33, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Clearly people are too polite to you. It should be self-evident that internal links (soft) links and the fact of their creation and their preferred use are the preferred means to link, and how the system is set up to manage and accordingly interrogate all such links. If soft and hard links are all equal then there is little point in having both. You can either take my word and experience on the matter or not. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:47, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
Aren't people polite to you? I know you work on a other wiki areas so perhaps they aren't. It is good that people are polite to each other and it is self-evident that politeness is needed on every wiki area to constructively build up any given wiki area by the process of helping one another--or as Hesperian recently stated to me on a project we both worked on--"Teamwork" —Maury (talk) 04:41, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Not what I said, nor what I meant. I am not in the mood for tangential rhetoric today. I have done up the links that indicate that address these matters w:Wikipedia:Wikilinks and w:Help:Link. I hope that they assist. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Billinghurst, I fully understood and understand now what you mean as well as what to do and not do aside from this reply. I do not care for your personal insults to or about me regardless of how much authority you weigh in here. You are the one who started this silly situation, back at least to your statement of "Don't get your knickers in a knot" which since you are British as you posted long ago, you should now know the original statement was "Don't get your knickers in a twist". I look up at your statements above and I can take those apart piece by piece whether it be a sentence or a word or one of your erroneous assumptions. Let it go and be more civil or pick someone else to annoy since I did nothing to you to elicit your offensive statements. Above in a portion of one of my sentences I wrote, "That's easy to change..." BUT onward you continued on the situations. If you don't want me here for some personal reason just say so but don't try playing headgames with me because you would never win unless you can spend 7 years or longer as I did in a debate with a professor long ago on the topic of the American Civil War. —Maury (talk) 09:15, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

PSM watch clarification

I’ve been utilizing this filter to see what and where other editors are working on. After being minimally active for the past couple of weeks, I activated the filter and it was blank. Then, I only got results displayed until April 30 by specifying 500 records and 30 days, although editors were working on PSM more recently. For example: User:Maxime.Debosschere, who applies his keen eye to proofread or validated pages, according to his user contributions, he was last active on May 11, but the filter won’t display it. Since his work requires patrolling, does this affect the filter display? Thanks. — Ineuw talk 15:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

It seemed to me that MD was editing well and sufficiently enough to be excluded from the filter, and in asking Mpaa they said that they were not utilising it. As the filter was not evidently being utilised, I turned it off otherwise it is just filling the abuselog file for no real function. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:43, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
OK.— Ineuw talk 17:06, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
If you are using, then we can turn it back on, though we should be actively managing the list of people who should be whitelist'd from its tagging. I do not see that it should be used for general edit patrolling that is the purpose of the 'patrolflag' (red exclamation). It should be used for those who are not familiar with your project and the formatting that you have in use. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the offer, but don’t turn it back on. I was using it for your stated reasons as well, but everyone is following the format, and corrections made to my missed work is much appreciated. I will use the Recent changes instead.— Ineuw talk 06:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

ProofreadPage on FiWS

Our hard-at-work devs are making progress on a ProofreadPage bug that affects foreign language Wikisources, e.g. FiWS. They made a new bug report, number 47596, after they identified an underlying problem. Unfortunately, nobody is assigned to the bug, and progress is again stalled. There is some issue with Proofread page mixing up canonical and localized namespace names. Would you please take a look? Kindly, Heyzeuss (talk) 14:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Hiya. It shouldn't be affecting the local wiki at all in a "stopping work" sense. That bug is solely so language-imbeciles like me who cannot manage foreign language namespace can type Page: and Index: for your namespaces, etc., rather than Sivu, Keskustelu sivusta, Hakemisto and Keskustelu hakemistosta. My understanding of the bug is that it will effect all the WS wikis, so rather than them manually having to do it for each wiki, there will be an underlying component that has it, and the namespaces will be formally known by those for the language of the wiki. So if there is an issue with PrP at the wiki, it shouldn't be this. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:39, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Three things:
  • PrP does not work as it once did. The pdf pages were a bit slow, but at least they would load up. Do you have any idea why they will not load anymore?
  • Is it possible to correct the namespaces' canonical names manually, since the needed patch to PrP is not coming soon?
  • Some of my work has been lost in the process of correcting namespace numbers. The index pages have been recreated, but the table of contents that I made, which took some time, is no longer there. Is there anyone who has both the expertise and the time to recover some of it, starting with index pages (1 & 2)? Heyzeuss (talk) 20:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I am going to have to sit and ponder this. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:19, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
No worries. :) Heyzeuss (talk) 20:39, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
As to the third thing, I fixed the index page, and I have made a request at bugzilla:40759 for a maintenance script so that we can get our lost work back. Heyzeuss (talk) 23:06, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

{{Gap}}

"it was right this way" Why? There is already the "he" interwiki on the documentation subpage. --DixonD (talk) 14:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

there is nothing wrong with <onlyinclude>, so it was right that way, and no specification for the change. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
In this particular case changing <onlyinclude> to <includeonly> or back doesn't change anything. The main intention was to remove duplicate "he" wiki. Should I comment every obvious edit in order for it not to be reverted? --DixonD (talk) 16:20, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Comments are always helpful, especially to semi-protected and widely-used templates. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:55, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Tech news — 2013, week 21

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message deliveryContributeTranslateGet helpGive feedbackUnsubscribe • 19:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Slash and burn

I believe you have OTRS access? If so can you take a look, after this Difference between revisions of "Wikisource:Possible copyright violations" the work started getting updates and the Copyvio tag came off. Usually the OTRS people will post something on the talk page, of the work in question but the talk page is a red link currently. Jeepday (talk) 23:45, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Within OTRS I have access to the info@ws email address, not to the en-permissions queue. My understanding is that the progress with the permissions queue is glacial. The best that I can do is try to wave at people and see if someone will pay attention. Maybe you have interest in getting access to the queue, seems like a reasonable idea. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:18, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Let me think about asking for access to the queue, just got back from a long holiday, and the stack of things to due is large. My feeling is that we are not inappropriately violating anyone's rights on the work, so I am ok with leaving things on the work as they are developing until we get more detail. Jeepday (talk) 12:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
(-: What a great idea, and what I had been thinking. Let me know when you put something up at m:OTRS/Volunteering as I would like to have my boot prints of support on that application. Can I note that just make the application as these things take days to get into place anyway. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Applied. Jeepday (talk) 14:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Commented and suggested another (quiet) queue. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Index:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf

Any chance of some assistance on this? I'm trying to get it finished, but would appreciate a second eyes person.

In addition, it mentions a number of prominent individuals, and it would be reasonable given your work on the DNB if you would consider inserting appropriate cross referencing if that's reasonable. Wikisource is NOT paper! ;) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:39, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not picking up new big works at the moment, I have a backlog on those already. So I am unable to do more than fly-by edits. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:12, 27 May 2013 (UTC)