User talk:Davidgothberg/Archive 4

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Unsigned

Thanks for signing my comment for me. There should be a script or bot or something to do that *joke*. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, there used to be a bot doing that. But I haven't seen that bot around lately. And feel free to change the "unsigned" note on your comment to a real signature, since it looks a bit silly. I always feel somewhat silly when I forget to sign so I usually fix it afterwards. No one has complained about that I fix my edits later like that, even if I fix them a long time later.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot request

David, I have requested a bot to create template documentation talk redirects where required - would you like to offer an opinion? Kelly ^hi! 15:36, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, nice idea. I have commented there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

"Disruption" warning you left

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia. However, we remind you not to template the regulars, as you did on User talk:MZMcBride. Making a personal, specific comment will probably make for a friendlier and more productive atmosphere than using a template that treats the editor as a clueless newbie. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Rjd0060 (talk) 14:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

You gotta be kidding, right? For several months now he has been told many times by many editors (including me) in manually written friendly messages to stop his disruptive template talk page deletions. That has had no effect at all on him. So now I left a standardised warning template on his talk page since that is according to procedure AND I left a written explanation of the details several times longer than the warning template. Not using the warning template would be wrong according to the banning procedures as far as I know. So don't complain when I follow procedure.

And by the way, do you even understand the issue at hand? You only have a total of 17 edits to template talk pages in your user contributions.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you implying that I must be clueless about Templates, Portals, and MediaWiki since I have low edit counts in each of those namespaces. - Rjd0060 (talk) 16:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No, not that it "must be" so, but that it might be so. That you get so upset that I and many others are asking MZMcBride to stop deleting template talk page redirects indicates to me that you probably don't understand what such redirects are for, thus it seems you don't understand the issue at hand. That you only have a total of 17 edits edits to template talk pages increases that suspicion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

For reference / note to self: In March 2009 the case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MZMcBride was opened. MZMcBride was discussed there for similar deletion runs, and the actions mentioned above was also brought up. I am not entirely sure I read it right, but the Arbitration Committee seems to have decided that MZMcBride may not run bots and scripts from his main account anymore, and that he should be desysoped. But he resigned as admin before their decision was completed. From what I can see he is still running editing scripts.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:11, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Asistance with formating

Hello, I would like to ask you for some help. Is there a way to evenly spread the text in two columns, across their height? See here. I'm trying to reproduce the bottom of this document for Wikisource. Also, I can't understand why the signature images on the right place themselves under the text line, and not next to it. Please help me if you can. Thanks in advance! diego_pmc (talk) 06:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit busy right now so it might take some day before I get the time to help you with this. But I want to help you. Feel free to ask some other editors for help meanwhile.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:22, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Warning 2

Are you kidding? Someone creates an intentionally broken redirect and it is my job to (magically) know that and create the target for them? Is that some sort of joke? As Carcharoth pointed out, had I not been the one to take time out of my day to do the CSD#R1s, the bot would have deleted the pages just the same. And you leave me a warning? I used to have an enormous amount of respect for you and the work that you do with this project... --MZMcBride (talk) 14:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

In the vast wall of text I awoke to this morning, I didn't notice you'd also accused me of running deletion scripts again. I have no idea where that suggestion came from, but it's entirely untrue. I've had a one-click deletion tab for months. And, believe it or not, while I've done thousands of deletions, more than half were probably through batch tab opening.

You have access to deleted contributions. You can see that I not only eventually stopped deleting pages, I started tagging them for deletion. And instead of doing history merges, I asked Keegan to do them for me. A little assumption of good faith might be nice. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it took me one click to check that it was likely and two more clicks to become certain that they were the typical "centralise discussion" template talk page redirects. You should not delete template talk page redirects since you do not seem to understand what they are for. And you had already been warned about it.

You deleting those redirects made Wikipedia worse, not better. But I didn't start a discussion to block you for it at WP:ANI since as I wrote on your talk page it was a grey zone. Instead I wrote an explanation for you on your talk page in the hope that you would learn. See, I still haven't given up the hope that you will understand what such redirects are for, or at least that you will leave them alone.

Actually, considering how smart I know you are and seeing some other things you do and say in different places now, I am almost starting to think that you might have deleted those redirects just to test the limits or to provoke. That is, to see how far you can go before you get blocked again. I really hope that is not the case.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:58, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Warning warning

I have asked you to seek dispute resolution and you do not seem to have done so. Should you act on your warnings to block MZMcBride, you will find yourself in front of ArbCom. As you seem to like warnings, I thought I would give you this one. Physchim62 (talk) 15:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

You do not have the authority to order me anything. I suggest you go read the discussions at MZMcBride's talk page (don't miss the archives) and at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive427#Massive redirect deletions again. And read up at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution since you don't seem to understand that page.

Let's see:

• There's been lots of protests against MZMcBride's deletions.
• At the time you wrote your message above two other admins had already blocked MZMcBride because of the same issue.
• I have only warned MZMcBride and not blocked him. I have clearly stated that I intend to discuss it with other admins before I block MZMcBride. That is, make it a group decision. But you know, I didn't expect it to come to that. I hoped that he would not delete redirected talk pages again and then there would be no more problem.
• As you can see I was still trying to discuss the matter with MZMcBride, so I were already doing what the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution says.
• Oh, and you know what happened when you reported another user to arbcom. Your request was quickly denied.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Non-standard image templates

David, I have found several image messages that were missed when we standardized to Imbox, where can I list them to have them standardized? MBisanz ^talk 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I've just been listing them at WT:IMBOX. Kelly ^hi! 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, ok, will do. MBisanz ^talk 20:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, listing them at WT:IMBOX is probably the best option, since that talk page is watched by those interested in imboxes. Thanks Kelly for answering. I am mostly off-line now since it is summer.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:29, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Nowrap problems

I'm still finding templates that would fall into User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems. I don't know if it's still an issue though. Should I continue to edit them, or has the navbox template been updated so it doesn't matter any more? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:21, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, such broken lists still need to be fixed. {{navbox}} does not (and can not) contain any code that fixes the problem. This problem needs to be handled as long as people still use Firefox 2.0 which means for at least another 2-3 years or so.

There are also situations where we use {{nowrap begin}} and its helper templates just to get more fine tuned control of wrapping and that has nothing to do with the Firefox problem. Such cases will still need to use {{nowrap begin}} + {{·w}} + {{nowrap end}} correctly even in the future.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

OK I'll continue to edit as I find them. A couple of other questions:

1. What templates other than {{navbox}} does this usually cause a problem?
2. What is up with Firefox that makes a problem, and why is IE okay with it?
3. Will Firefox 3 (out June 17) address the problem?
4. I noticed that your subpage hadn't been updated in a while, so I started my own at User:Matthewedwards/Nowrap problems. I copied the text you'd done (thanks to the GFDL ) How did you compile the list originally? I'm finding it a real pain in the ass! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 04:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

3: I have heard that Firefox 3 does not have the bug. But since there is no Firefox 3 beta available for my OS I have not been able to test it myself so I am not entirely sure they have fixed it.

2: Well it is a bug in Firefox, and Internet Explorer does not have this specific bug. (Yeah, usually it is IE that has the bugs, but this time it is the other way around.) I have written a detailed description of the bug here: Wikipedia talk:Line break handling#Firefox bug. But note that Internet Explorer has a related "bug" (actually a bad feature) that causes line wrapping at special characters thus the same kind of fix is partially needed to handle Internet Explorer too, see Wikipedia:Line break handling#Nowraplinks shortcomings for more on that.

1: Well, its not really the fault of {{navbox}}. This bug can occur any time people use nowrapping in the "wrong" way. And they especially do that mistake when they do nowrapping on link lists. And link lists here at Wikipedia are mostly used inside navboxes. So I am not aware of any other template or usage cases here at Wikipedia where this bug occurs frequently.

4: I'll get back to you later about how I made the list. It takes a rather long explanation. I need to get some sleep and have a very busy schedule this weekend. (Going dancing with my female friends. That is, I will be busy with the babes. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Haha! Enjoy yourself! Or should I say, "Enjoy the babes!"? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 07:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hiya. If you're not busy, would you mind explaining how you created the list. I'm in a major writer's block at the moment, and so while I'm not working on any articles, this would be a good time to do some "behind-the-scenes" work. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I used commands such as "sort" from the command prompt. So before I try to explain this:

If you use Windows: Do you know how to open a command prompt or DOS window? And do you know how to use commands such as "cd" and "dir"?

If you use some Unix (even the new MacOS is Unix based): Do you know how how to open a shell or text window? And do you know how to use commands such as "cd" and "ls -al"?

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I use Windows, and I do know how to use DOS a little bit -- my general understanding of it is pretty limited though! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 19:11, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, if you are crazy enough to give it a try, here's how to create a list like the one at User:Davidgothberg/Nowrap problems:

1: First create a new empty directory on your disk. Then create three text files named "begin01.txt", "end01.txt" and "wrap01.txt" in that directory.

2: Then go to {{nowrap begin}} -> "What links here" and set "Namespace" to "Template", click [Go], then click "View (500)". Then copy and paste all those "Template:... (transclusion)" links into "begin.txt". (That's one operation, just take all those lines in one big copy and paste operation.) Then "View (next 500)" + copy and paste, and so on until all those links are in "begin01.txt".

3: Then do the same for {{nowrap end}} placing those links in "end01.txt".

4: Then do the same for all the {{wrap}}, {{!wrap}} etc templates. But only for the actual templates, not for their shorter names that redirect to them. And put all those links into the same file, the "wrap01.txt". Note that some links might now occur more than once in "wrap01.txt", but we'll fix that later.

5: Then open a DOS window, "cd" (change directory) to the directory where you have the "begin01.txt" etc files. There type the command "sort begin01.txt > begin02.txt". Which means we get a version with all lines sorted in "begin02.txt".

6: Then do "sort end01.txt > end02.txt" and "sort wrap01.txt > wrap02.txt". (Don't close the DOS window afterwards, since you will need it later.)

7: Then open "begin02.txt" in a text editor and remove the junk lines you get before and after the link lines. Do the same for "end02.txt" and "wrap02.txt".

8: Now comes one of the trickier parts, you might want to re-save the files as "begin03.txt" etc. before you do this since it is easy to mess up. You need a decent text editor with good search and replace functionality for this, the Windows Notepad is not good enough. Your word processor might be good enough. Use the "search and replace" feature in the editor to change this:

* Template:Something (transclusion) (links)

To this:

Template:Something

That is, mark the first part of the first line and choose "replace" in the editor menu and choose to replace with nothing and to "replace all". And then mark the end of the first line and replace all with nothing. Now all lines should be clean from junk before and after the actual template link.

9: Next step is to fix duplicate lines in "wrap03.txt". Unfortunately there are no tools in Windows and in most editors for this. But since the list is now sorted the human eye can pretty easily spot any duplicates. So go through "wrap03.txt" manually and turn any duplicates into a single line. There might be triplicates or more in there too, make them single lines too.

10: Now you should have three clean lists: "begin03.txt", "end03.txt" and "wrap03.txt". Now we can compare them to find templates that don't have all three of "nowrap begin" + "some kind of wrap" + "nowrap end".

11: Create a file named "beginend01.txt" and paste all the lines from "begin03.txt" and "end03.txt" into it.

12: Open the DOS window again if you don't already have it open and see to that you are in the right directory. Then sort "beginend01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort beginend01.txt > beginend02.txt"

13: Open "beginend02.txt" in your editor and take a look. Most lines should now be duplicates. The ones that are not duplicates are the ones who doesn't have both "nowrap begin" and "nowrap end". So the non-duplicates are the ones we want. Before you do the next step you might want to re-save as "beginend03.txt".

14: Now comes the hardest work: Go through "beginend03.txt" manually and remove both lines of all duplicate lines, so you only retain those lines that were not duplicates.

14: Now lets compare "nowrap begin" and "wrap": Create a file named "beginwrap01.txt" and paste all the lines from "begin03.txt" and "wrap03.txt" into it.

15: Then sort "beginwrap01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort beginwrap01.txt > beginwrap02.txt"

16: Before you do the next step you might want to re-save "beginwrap02.txt" as "beginwrap03.txt".

17: Now comes the hardest work again: Go through "beginwrap03.txt" manually and remove both lines of all duplicate lines, so you only retain those lines that were not duplicates.

18: A good thing is that we don't need to compare "end03.txt" and "wrap03.txt". That probably seems contrary to intuition. (Explanation: Any template that doesn't have a "nowrap begin" is listed in either "beginend03.txt" or "beginwrap03.txt". Any template that doesn't have a "nowrap end" is listed in "beginend03.txt". Any template that doesn't have a "wrap" (or similar) is listed in "beginwrap03.txt".)

19: Now we need to merge "beginend03.txt" and "beginwrap03.txt". So create a file named "total01.txt" and paste all the lines from "beginend03.txt" and "beginwrap03.txt" into it.

20: Then sort "total01.txt" by running this command at the DOS prompt: "sort total01.txt > total02.txt"

21: Open "total02.txt" in your editor and take a look. There might be some duplicate lines there. That is templates that have a "nowrap begin" but no "wrap" and no "nowrap end", or templates that have no "nowrap begin" but both "wrap" and "nowrap end".

22: Go through "total02.txt" and manually turn any duplicates into single lines. Now you have the full clean list of "templates with obvious nowrap problems".

23: Re-save "total02.txt" as "total03.txt".

24: Now you need to add some wikimarkup before and after the template names so you can use the list on a wiki page. So for each line turn this:

Template:Something

Into something like this:

</s>[[Template:Something]]</s><br>

There's several ways to do that efficiently, one is to use the search and replace feature of your text editor and search for the newlines and replace them with all that including a newline. That is to replace say "^P" with "</s><br>^P</s>". And do "replace all" once it worked for one line. The trick to find what newline symbol your editor uses is to mark a newline before you choose "search and replace", then many editors automatically fill in the "search" field.

25: And you're done! Good luck with all this!

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Navbox edit links

Hi, I've asked at question at Template talk:Navbox#Why is View Discuss Edit on the left, instead of the right? that you might have some insight on. (it's received 2 unhelpful replies so far). If you have a chance to take a look, I'd appreciate it :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I have responded there. And as you can see I did disagree with you, sorry. Although to me the placement of those items doesn't matter much.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I just wanted an intelligent reply (which you gave) instead of the statements-of-the-obvious which the other editors had given. If I'd just wanted just a confirmation, I would have gone to WP:USE ;) Thanks anyway. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Template/CSS questions

Hi there! I figure you would be a knowledgeable person to ask about a couple things.

First, when should templates use html tags instead of wiki-markup? For example, why doesn't {{shortcut}} use the {|...|} notation? Is it for performance?

Everyone seems to have different idea regarding CSS. Like when it should be added to the common.css or monobook.css and when to keep in inline in templates. I mainly work on Commons (where I admin) and our templates seriously lack community input as far style goes. I would love to have some kind of standardization there but that's too much for one person, I'm already categorizing nearly every one myself (got it down to less than 200!). Being the only one who apparently cares about this neglected namespace, I have taken it upon myself to try to improve them as much as I can. We don't make nearly as much use of our global CSS files as here. I was thinking of adding some classes for heavily used styles. For example: {{GNU-Layout}}, {{PD-Layout}}, and {{Copyrighted-Layout}}. It seems like the best choice to me, but my CSS skills are nothing to brag about. It's largely trial and error and that doesn't mix too well with the MediaWiki namespace, so...

I know you're not a Commons person, but you seem like nice guy who *hopefully* maybe has a little bit of time to spare and can help me out. (I don't mean editing over there, just some advice—unless you want to of course. :) Thanks for your time. Rocket000 (talk) 05:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, here goes:

Well, there are several good reasons to use "HTML table tags" instead of "wikimarkup tables". But first notice that the HTML we use here really is "HTML wikimarkup" since it gets processed and converted by MediaWiki just like the other wikimarkup.

• When we use wikitables with the {|...|} notation then we can not use pipes "|" and braces "{ }" in the code inside them. Then we have to resort to using for instance the template {{!}} which has several drawbacks:
  • It means that lots of instances of {{!}} has to be transcluded which adds load to the servers.
  • Many of us think that using the {{!}} makes the code very confusing, since it becomes all pipes and braces and very hard to see what is what. Consider when you also use a bunch of {{#if:||}} statements and {{template calls}} inside the table...
• Even when we don't have content that needs pipes and braces then wikitable markup is pretty unclear when you do advanced tables. It is hard to see which pipe is which, so it is hard to see where to insert classes and styles and where to insert cell data. And in wikitables newlines do have meaning, which is very confusing!

So basically, HTML tables cost less server load, and most of us think it makes much more readable code thus saving programmer time and reducing human errors. Pretty much every advanced wikitable I have seen have had errors in them because people have counted the pipes and braces wrongly...

And yes, people seem to be confused about when to add a CSS code to MediaWiki:Common.css and when to add it to MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Basically, since templates are visible in all skins then CSS code for them should first be added to Common.css so the template works in all the skins. Only if you then want a special style for the template in for instance the monobook skin should you then also add special CSS in Monobook.css. Really, Monobook.css should mostly be used for things that are outside the article area, for things like the left side page menu and buttons at the page top.

The next question is when to use CSS classes in Common.css and when to use in-line styles in the template code. In most cases it doesn't matter much from a performance point off view. Or rather, the more we move to the .css files the more a new user has to load on the first page load, but then the page codes become shorter thus later page loads are faster. Thus from a performance point of view it only pays off to move styles to the .css files for templates that are widely used and that will be loaded many times for each user. Note that the average visitor to at least the English Wikipedia only loads 5 pages on one visit, and only visits Wikipedia perhaps once or some times in a month. There are also a definitive drawback of moving styles to the .css files: The .css files are set to be cached for 30 days in the web browsers, thus any updates or fixes to the styles there take 30 days before all users see them.

So, the real reason to move styles to the .css files are to make templates skinnable. That is, so they can look different in the different skins and so that logged in users can add their own styles in their own Special:Mypage/monobook.css.

So since the .css files are cached for 30 days, nowadays I first hard code the styles in a new template so all can see and test how they look immediately without confusion. It also saves me as a template programmer the extra clicks and the 1-2 minute wait time to force the reload of the .css files each time I have changed the styles, and it makes all the code that the template uses visible in the same edit window. This also means we can deploy the new template without having to wait 30 days! Then if people say they want to skin the template or I think it is likely people will want to skin it, then I copy the styles to Common.css and 30 days later I update the template to use the classes instead of the hard coded styles.

For instance, you might have noticed that I took over the care of {{shortcut}} some time ago. When I reworked it I did organise the in-line styles in such a way that it will be easy to move them to Common.css. But I have not yet moved the styles to Common.css since no one has mentioned that they want to skin them. After all it is just a small white box so it works pretty well in all skins.

There is of course one more case when we move template styles to Common.css: When the same style is going to be used in many templates. Then it is neat to have the CSS code in one central place. I see that they instead have used a template for that in the {{GNU-Layout}}, that probably works about as well. That causes a little more server load, but works around the 30 days CSS caching problem. And will cause a faster first page load for new visitors. But it means the templates can not be skinned.

And regarding on which sites I edit: I am Swedish so my native tongue is Swedish. But back when I started editing Wikipedia I decided to edit the English Wikipedia, since that reaches the most users and the other language Wikipedias and the other projects tend to copy the stuff we make here. Thus that is more efficient use of my time. And as you can see people are for instance now copying the ambox/imbox templates and styles to many of the other projects. (Many of my templates are being widely copied to other projects! :))

But I know User:Kelly has done image and image/license template standardisation work at Commons and she probably knows who else to talk with. So I recommend you talk to her.

And yeah, CSS is tricky stuff. It took me a long time to grasp it and I still learn new things about it every week. I recommend you download the official CSS 2.1 specification and read/use it. It is messy to read but contains most of what you need to know. Here are links to the specification: HTML pages in a zip file or HTML on-line (slower to use). And good luck with your CSS studies!

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very very much for your helpful and thorough response! No one explained the monobook/common thing before but it all makes sense now. I'm not sure Commons has the same 30 day cache issue because I added a class the other day and it worked right after I refreshed. (I applied it to a fairly heavily used template and got complaints so far.) I don't know how it works exactly, but since Commons license templates show up on every project I figured it would be better to include those layout templates in the css (I don't know if users on, say, here can skin those but I doubt it since it doesn't use the local css (there should be a way to override this i.e. each project can customize the, um, transcluded (?) Commons image page templates).

Anyway, I got some studying to do. ;) thanks again for all your help! Cheers, Rocket000 (talk) 08:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I just checked. Unfortunately commons:MediaWiki:Common.css and commons:MediaWiki:Monobook.css also are set to 30 days caching time.

I also took a look at an image that is stored at Commons and has templates added there. That is, I looked at it from here (English Wikipedia). I "viewed the source" of the page in my web browser, but all the templates on that image had hardcoded styles so I could not see what happens if classes from Commons are used. I think I will code up an example to test it later and report the result to you. I think the very reason that Commons uses meta-templates to include the styles into templates instead of using CSS files is so that the styles will work when shown on for instance the English Wikipedia, since as far as I see my web browser does not load any CSS files from Commons when I view such images.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, look at the new class I added on June 17, and then check out the template that uses it. The style is in effect yet that was only a few days ago (it worked instantly, btw). The whole thing with displaying Commons pages on other projects is very interesting. I'm pretty sure styles work even if they are not defined locally because some maintenance templates use some en.wp doesn't have and it works fine (I think). I'll have to do some tests. Maybe there's a really good reason not to use CSS on Commons (unless it's main.css or something). Rocket000 (talk) 02:26, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, some expert users like you and me have bothered to turn on privacy settings in our web browsers like: "[x] Always clear my private data when I close Firefox". That means we reload the CSS files each session. But the majority of non-geeky users out there use the default settings and thus only reload the CSS pages once every 30 days. Also, if your allocated disk space for the web browser cache gets full then it drops older pages, so you might have a small setting for that space and thus reload the pages pretty often. And so on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:45, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Notice template

I posted somewhere, but I'll post here again, {{Notice}} needs conversion to the Ambox style. Cheers MBisanz ^talk 06:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes. I assume you mean it needs conversion to the ambox/tmbox/imbox/cmbox/ombox styles, that is to use the {{mbox}} that has namespace detection and changes to the proper style for each namespace. Currently {{notice}} only uses some of them so it only looks right in some namespaces.

Problem is that we still do not have consensus for tmbox and ombox so we are not yet officially deploying them. Well, so far all seems to agree with the new ombox style but I think we need some more users to say "okay" before we deploy it. But people do not agree on the tmbox styles yet so that one needs more discussion. This means it is not appropriate to start using the mbox since it uses those. Actually, {{notice}} was one of the reasons I made the tmbox and ombox, to get a complete set so we could make the mbox. So just hang in there, this will take some more weeks.

I am planning a watchlist-notice about tmbox and ombox when the current watchlist messages are done. Then we will get more discussion and can hopefully achieve a consensus even for the tmbox.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Reply to protection offer

Hi, David - I just noticed your offer at User:Kelly/sandbox (for some extremely strange reason, I did not have my own sandbox watchlisted, and only noticed your message when I went back to it to write a new article). I really appreciate your offer - I think I'll take you up on it. I sometimes deal with anons on my talkpage but I can't think of any need for an anon to edit my userpage. Thanks! Kelly ^hi! 18:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Kelly: Yeah, since you did not answer in some days I thought you might have a too long watchlist or something so you did not notice. But I thought that sooner or later you would see the message and you did. I see that minutes after you responded here on my talk page MBisanz correctly made the protection of your pages. MBisanz probably watches my talk page since we are working together on some things. Kelly, ideally you should have responded in your sandbox since when responding here many vandals could have seen it and gotten inspired. But hey, them vandalising a page like yours just makes it easier for us to catch them. But I thought it probably is getting a bit too annoying for you by now and might be disturbing your productive work.

MBisanz: Thanks for doing the protection immediately! :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Tmbox background

David, is there a way to use a css option to force the background of tmbox to be white? MBisanz ^talk 04:56, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just tested it at User:MBisanz/BAG1 and it works. MBisanz ^talk 05:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes there is a simple way. And I checked your test and you did it almost right. But you should not use quotation marks since they are added inside the tmbox code. In your example the quotation marks destroyed the styles, thus MediaWiki used the default which is white background and no border for tables. Here's a correct example:

{{tmbox
| type = notice
| style = background: white;
| text = White background and default tmbox notice border.
}}

Doesn't look that nice.

Looking at your example I think this might be what you want:

{{tmbox
| type = notice
| style = margin: 0; border: none; background: transparent;
| text = No margin which means width is 100%. No border and transparent background.
}}

Kind of a weird use.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I like the second one a lot, see I have a bunch of templates that must maintain the same appearance they had before, as they are legacy templates used by people who don't want the appearance changed, so I can now convert them to tmbox, without changing the background color. MBisanz ^talk 05:28, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I know what kind of messages you mean. But the only thing you gain from doing like this is consistent handling of the left and right side images. So I don't really see much gain in converting them to tmbox. Or am I missing something?

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

More or less my urge to standardize everything, no performance gains. MBisanz ^talk 05:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Cryptography and Computing

Dear frnd , thanks for bringing your concern to your attention....Please understand these are done in in good faith . We do understand All cryptography is not computer /computing . Only Category:Cryptographic protocols are tagged which falls under the scope of this project. With primary objective of wikiprojects is to improve articles in their scope , why is this serious objections? It is understandable if articles are wrongly tagged that doesnt fall under the scope of the project. We have taken note of your concern ..... Please understand that with this tagging effort , we have tagged around 8000 newer articles that didn't even have a talk page , let alone the other wikiproject tagging. This reveals the potential of this project. Please read the section on the discussion on the scope and goals of this project -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 15:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I understand this bot run was done in good faith. And I guess you were not aware of older discussions where among other WikiProject Cryptography didn't want the maths WikiProject to mass tag for instance all crypto articles.

I only blocked your bot so we could discuss this, just so we don't have to revert that many pages. You really should have first contacted the WikiProjects involved.

This was just a quick answer before I go read the discussion about this on the other pages.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

OMG... You blocked the bot without even checking the Bot is running now ? The last edit of the bot was hours ago before u blocked. Please unblock the bot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 16:04, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Kindly unblock the bot ... The bot had stopped running much hours before you had blocked. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 16:25, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Hey, take it easy. I am not a native English speaker so it takes some time for me to write up a response. I was reading what you wrote on the other pages and wrote a full response over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computing#descendant tagging. See what I wrote there for why I blocked your bot and what you need to do for me to unblock it.

And remember, bot blocks are nothing dramatic, not at all like user blocks. Oh, I checked, seems you are a new bot owner. You will soon get used to that your bot gets blocked every now and then, that is normal. Actually, as far as I know that is one reason why we use special bot accounts, so we can block the bots even for minor things, without blocking the user. And to not pollute the user's block log with the bot blocks.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Replied at the project talk page. The bot is not going to run for the project without consensus. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 17:06, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Replied at the project talk page. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 01:14, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi frnd, I do respect your view points and concerns. If you see my statements at the project talk page , how many times have I iterated the fact that there will be no tagging until further consenus or agreement. I request you to go back and read the discussions by me... Being an admin yourself , I appeal to you to be a bit more sympathethic and courteous to the actions done in good faith. To call me or the bot as monsters and dangerous is something very unfair....I too work for wikipedia with the same good intentions as you are also. Just my 2 cents... Btw thank you for unblocking the bot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 04:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Ouch, you have misunderstood the "monster" comment. First of all, your bot is not you, it is considered a separate entity. And bots can be very dangerous. That is, when they malfunction they can in very short time damage thousands of pages, before an admin reacts and blocks it. That happens every now and then so it is not a hypothetical danger but a very real one. And it can cost lots of work to repair the damage done and respond to all the questions from concerned users. It can cost 10-40 editors full time work for a week or more! And all the concerned users also loose valuable editing time when they investigate, revert and/or ask questions.

So bots are dangerous monsters in the manner of a cute furry lion. Normally when you handle it right it nicely jumps through hoops for you. But there is always the danger that it goes berserk and starts biting everything in sight.

So as I said, at the slightest sign of danger we tie the monster up. That is we block the bot first and investigate after that.

I hope you now see what I mean?

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:02, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Friend , Let us leave this in good spirits and understanding. I have made some suggestions here. Do you mind looking into this and let know your opinions ?? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 05:08, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I took a look. What you suggest there is outside my area of expertise and I am anyway way too busy in other areas so I barely have time to keep up in those areas. Among other things I am managing the huge message box standardisation project (ambox/tmbox/imbox/cmbox/ombox/mbox) and reworking some other templates. Sorry.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I see that... I just wanted your suggestions whether I could go ahead with those proposals or not ... One is creation of cats and additions of banners to articles that falls under it for an already existing task force project and other is merge a wikiproject similarly with WP:COMP as per the consensus ....I dont want my bot to blocked again  ;) -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:35, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I know close to nothing about assessments and WikiProject banner parameters and WikiProject task forces. So for suggestion 1 on that page I have no comment what so ever.

For suggestion 2 on that page I have these personal reflections to say, and this is not based on any policies but on my personal opinions and experiences: Only 4 users agreeing and only discussing/announcing it for 2 days on the talk page of a WikiProject and not announcing it at the main page of the WikiProject is not even close enough to declare a consensus and kill a WikiProject. I think that you should put a big box at the top of the main page of that WikiProject telling about it. And any important discussion like that should be announced a minimum of one week, since some editors only log in at specific weekdays. But preferably you should announce it for more than one week. You should probably also leave a notice on the user talk pages of the users listed as participants in the WikiProject. But apart from that I think it probably is a good idea to merge inactive WikiProjects with a parent WikiProject.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:22, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments...Btw I had already left msges to ALL participants of the concerned projects . Please understand the idea is to NOT to kill projects . Those projects were already marked as inactive and nobody even cared to remove the Inactivity banner.My idea was to revive them only to the best of my efforts. Btw I now left a notice of the WP:COMPUTING main page also for better attention. I will wait for your opinions on the project talk page also -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 04:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Templates, etc.

Hi! I'm going on a 6 week WikiBreak more or less now for real life reasons. In my absence, I'm sure you'll manage to conduct the tmbox style poll. I've already added my comments; if in doubt, get some more opinions. Take a look at Wikipedia_talk:Article_message_boxes#Move_arrows; I've completed the set. Other than that, thanks for your help and patience over the last few days, and good luck without me.--HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 02:09, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for all your help! Your set-up of the styles discussion seems very efficient.

I like your new arrows, although now that I see them all I think the blue is too light blue, I would like them darker, and perhaps also the red slightly darker. (I'll say that on that page too, now or perhaps tomorrow since I am very tired, been a long dance night out! :)

What patience? It has been a pleasure working with you. So, have a lovely vacation (or whatever it is your are going to do) and see you in 1.5 months.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Template:PD-Russia

Thx, I don't know about this feature. Alex Spade (talk) 07:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't like the "show/hide" feature, I rather scroll a little more. I think this case is a good example when it hides important information and it isn't clear that any important information is hidden. But unfortunately the other editors that worked with the license templates wanted to use the "show/hide" function...

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

TinucherianBot

Oh come on, Dont block the bot for a bot request given to me... Please see this for the discussion ... I have been asked by the WP:FOOD WikiProject Food and drink members for the tagging of articles for the project . I gave them the entire category tree and I got it 'cleaned' by them (See this ). I have also tried my level best to remove any unwanted categories. What should I do further ??? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 08:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Glass production was tagged because it was wrongly categorized under Category:Wine packaging and storage and Potassium bisulfite was categorized under Category:Food additives . This is no fault of the bot... I request you to kindly unblock the bot ? -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 09:03, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I see that you have pasted this message onto several talk pages. And I already had left a message for you at your talk page. So see my response at your talk page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:51, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

See my talk page for comments -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 12:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Issue with TinucherianBot in Project Banner Tagging for WP:FOOD

Thank you for expressing your concerns on the recent issue Issue with TinucherianBot in Project Banner Tagging for WP:FOOD . I have make some comments at Wikipedia_talk:Bots/Requests_for_approval#TinucherianBot and I am leaving this note just for your information -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 08:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Whow ! Why was the bot blocked again now by you :( ??. The bot was not even running since yesterday when it was blocked( I had stopped it more than 24 hours ago) . See Special:Contributions/TinucherianBot -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:10, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Sir, with all respect , may I ask why do you hate me like this... ? :( I am throughly demoralized ...The bot was stopped some 24 hours ago.. We discussed it all over...And decided how the bot should be running in future and hence was unblocked. Still , you now went again to block the bot which ran some a day ago for the 'past crime' and never ran later. This is totally unfair... -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 10:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't hate you. Actually, I just think you are overenthusiastic. Enthusiasm is usually a good thing, but too much of it causes problems. That is, you need to learn to let things take their time. Like announce things, then wait a week so people can check them, before you go ahead with big things.

And yes, I mistook the dates so my block comment was wrong. Sorry about that. So I re-blocked your bot with a correct block comment and stated that the previous block comment was wrong.

See my answer about this at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Section break.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:23, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your re-block

Please see Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval#Re-Block by Davidgothberg. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

For future reference: That discussion has been moved to Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Re-Block by Davidgothberg.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I have replied at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Reply_by_Tinucherian: This is just FYI -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 06:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello, Davidgothberg. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. ---- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 07:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A discussion

An important discussion on " Should WikiProjects get prior approval of other WikiProjects (Descendant or Related or any ) to tag articles that overlaps their scope ? " is open here . We welcome you to participate and give your valuable opinions. You are receiving this note since I thought you may be interested in this disussion. -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - , member of WikiProject Council. 13:06, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Cspam

Hi. No reason at all -- complete accident! For some reason, the latest version of Firefox on KDE doesn't show check boxes as being checked when they are the subject of focus, so I must have checked it and not noticed. The protection is removed. Sorry about that! Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 18:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thought so. But that cascade protection didn't hurt at all. Since all those warning and protection templates used on that page anyway should be protected. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Template cite web sandbox problem

Hi, could you help me out with a sandbox for a template. Discussion has been had at {{cite web}} about the format of dates. In essence WP:MOS changed so that dates nolonger need wikilinking which was only done to show in a registered user's preference style. The concern was that most users not specified a date preference and all anon editors of course also have no preference set. Hence the wish is to be able to force a date style (American "January 1, 2000" vs European "1 January 2000") in some articles if no user date preference has been set.

The original coding of the templates sandbox for this was by Gary King at [1]. Other date parameters in the sandbox also though needed this coding for consistancy (Gary King had used a lk parameter for this, although renamed by myself), and multiple options with ifeq ends up with multiple nesting.

So I have tried to use #switch coding instead, and as this was going to be needed several times, I thought use of a metatemplate might be a good idea. Hence, I have created {{Date style}} which is used in latest version of Template:Cite web/sandbox.

As you will see from the sandbox's own examples, no problem where the renamed datestyle parameter set to options of dmy/mdy/ymd, but only getting a redlink date if datestyle is empty or blank (assuming you have not set your own user date preference). I just can't see where I am going wrong - could you have a look for me please :-) Yours David Ruben ^Talk 01:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I took a look at {{date style}} and I don't see the problem you describe there. (Or I am misunderstanding you.) Could it be that you have not purged the page after you did your last code change? I added a "purge this page" link in the documentation of that template for your convenience. I also added indentation and spaces to the code to make it more readable. That usually helps to find bugs. But I see no obvious bugs. But I see the red date links in your examples at {{cite web/sandbox}} even after I purged those pages, so yes, there is some kind of problem. I will look into it more in some days since I am pretty busy in other places right now.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell for my playing about, the problem originates with the wikilinking [[{{{2|}}}]]] in the #switch list of {{date style}}: in essence this works if I wikilink not in the metatemplate but in the calling {{Cite web/sandbox}} (i.e. I remove the [[ ]] from {{date style}}, as this, and apply them around the call of [[{{date style | {{{datestyle|}}} | {{date}}} }}]], as this). This sorts out the current red links but is not an overall solution as then all possible outputs are wikified and this does not work where {{date style}} returns a formated date (ie not in the default YYYY-MM-DD).

The brainteaser of course is that the Template:Date style/doc documentation subpage currently manages to show all situations working correctly with no red links, yet the same metatemplate called from cite_web/sandbox is having problems. Is the problem that one template can not accept a winklinked date output from a called metatemplate, or is this really just a problem of my buggy coding skills ?David Ruben ^Talk 18:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok I think I worked this one out for myself (unfortuately, as I will explain). In essence I was encountering 2 problems that are insolvable (I believe) in current Mediawiki:

1. Not possible it seems to test for a user's date preference. The test that I had been looking at was as suggested by another of seeing if a forced date style (using #time:) of the ISO YYYY-MM-DD matched how a wikilinked date appeared (if no user preference set then this is the case, else the wikified date will be in some other style). Hence the coding was {{#if: {{#time y-m-d | {{{date|}}} | [[{{{date|}}}]] | match=no user preferences set | no-match=user has set a preference}} - but this fails to work. According to meta:Help:Date_formatting_and_linking#Accessibility of date preference for branching "The date format cannot be detected with #ifeq, because the date format is converted after expansion of parser functions."
2. It seems it is not possible to pass a wikified date from a metatemplate into another template. As {{Date style}} and its documentation show, it is possible of course to use any template to return, say [[1975-05-21]] and this gets shown on a page as of course 1975-05-21. But if this result comes back into another template, then result gets shown as a single item red-link 1975-05-21 (PS I cheated in getting this to show here by using a leading space). To test this out, try editing {{Date style}} to be just [[1975-05-21]] - then purging ones browser reveals the documentation showing beautifully wikified dates, but the outcome at {{cite web/sandbox}} is then a series of the redlinks.

My work-around solution is to trap in {{cite web/sandbox}} when the datestyle parameter is blank and the output should be a wikified date, doing the wikifying directly in the main template. Otherwise if datestyle parameter is defined, then to call the metatemplate {{Date style}} to provide the various formated options.

Hence the partial solution for simplifying the coding using a metatemplate is as per this which is hardly ellegant coding, but a lot better than just duplicating all the coding in the template itself without recourse to a metatemplate as per this improvement !

David Ruben ^Talk 00:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, good that you solved it. I've been too busy lately, so I have not had time to look into your stuff. (Summer with lots of activities, new girlfriend, and a lot of other Wikipedia stuff to do.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:44, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

A minor comment about {{mbox}}

This discussion was moved to Template talk:Mbox since it might interest more editors. --David Göthberg (talk) 12:36, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Templates

Thanks for the instructions! NawlinWiki (talk) 14:56, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Image:Example.svg

A tag has been placed on Image:Example.svg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section I8 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is available as a bit-for-bit identical copy on the Wikimedia Commons under the same name, or all references to the image on Wikipedia have been updated to point to the title used at Commons.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Image:Example.svg|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. Sdrtirs (talk) 22:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

That image does not exist here on the English Wikipedia, so your tagging of it was erroneous. Thus I reverted your tagging. But its image description page exists here since it contains an explanation of how that image should and shouldn't be used here at the English Wikipedia. For discussion of this see: Image talk:Example.jpg#"Example images" notice box.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:24, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:Terra of the Teen Titans.png)

Thanks for uploading Image:Terra of the Teen Titans.png. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:02, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

For my own future reference: The image was not used in the Terra (comics) article for a day or so. But other editors put it back into the article and removed the {{di-orphaned fair use}} tag from the image page. So all is well.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Questions about classes

Could you explain how "metadata" and "boilerplate" classes are intended to affect a template? - jc37 03:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Currently the "metadata" class does the same thing as the "noprint" class, that is it makes objects marked with that class invisible when printing to paper. For more on the "metadata" class see the recent discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Metadata class in mboxes. Also see its description over at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes#Classes. There are currently some oddities with the "metadata" class and the other "noprint" classes. It is on my personal to-do list to investigate and fix those oddities. By the way, I recommend using the "noprint" class instead since it has a clearer name.

I don't know what the "boilerplate" class is supposed to do. It doesn't have any decent description at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes#Classes and I don't see it in any of our CSS files. But I just did a quick search so I might have missed something. You probably should ask about it at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. And you can check the history of the templates that use the class to find the editors that added the class to the templates and then ask those editors about the class. If you find out what the class means it would be nice if you updated its description at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes#Classes.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

What "oddities" are you finding?

I ask because I am finding that templates with these (and seemingly some other) classes will cause a template to not display for me. I have to edit a page, remove the classes, and then show preview in order to see the output. And in some cases (a transclusion of a transclusion of a transclusion) I don't even have that as an option as the classes are sometimes buried in a deeper transclusion.

I left a note at the WP:VP/T about this, but got no response there. (Though Kbdank71 and I discussed it somewhat on his talk page.)

Any help you can give would be most welcome : ) - jc37 20:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

The oddities I find are those I have discussed over at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Metadata class in mboxes. That is, the "editlink", "noprint", "metadata" and "dablink" classes are declared in MediaWiki:Monobook.css which means they only do noprinting for users that use the monobook skin (the majority of users). But I think that users of other skins too should not see the navboxes etc. when they print pages, thus I intend to move those classes to MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Also, when such boxes are shown on other pages such as talk pages or demonstrated on for instance Wikipedia:Template messages/General then if you print such a page you of course want to see the boxes. Thus I think that the noprinting should only be for article pages, when on all other pages they should be printed. I intend to fix that too and I know how to do it.

(Unfortunately the "noprint" class itself is also declared in commonPrint.css so I can not fix that one, only the other classes. I have to ask the devs to fix that one. If they don't fix that one we have to recommend people to no use "noprint" and instead use some other class for the noprinting. I don't like the "metadata" name since it doesn't tell that it does noprinting, we need a better class name, perhaps "article-noprint"?)

That you don't see objects marked with those classes in your web browser is very weird. I just checked the global CSS files for all the different skins but there were no faulty noprint/metadata classes there, so it is likely it is in your personal CSS skin file. Since you probably use the default monobook skin I took a look at your personal monobook.css and it's empty so there is no code there that could cause it. What Wikipedia skin do you use? If you tell me what skin you use I can check the right file.

And what web browser do you use, on what operating system? And have you told your web browser to load any extra local style sheets? And what Wikipedia gadgets have you turned on (since some gadgets do load extra CSS styles so I can check those too)?

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

None, none, and none. This computer doesn't run any javascript (or activeX) either. Using defaults (including monoskin) in preferences, and no gadgets.

Awhile back, someone must have made a change to how templates were handled.

For example, hidden templates used to automatically display for me (since no scripting), now they automatically do not. Note that this had nothing to do with whether the template was "set" to auto display or not. It was merely a "side-effect" of no scripts.

What's interesting to me is that now, some do and some don't. The RfA ty from doczilla on my talk page is an example. (The change happened not long prior to that posting.) If you edit the page, you should find a "note to self" where I discovered what section to remove in order to see the template. Had the same trouble on his userpage (but after I let him know, he added links to subpages with similar info).

But then, I run into "hidden" sections that auto-display. So I'm not sure what the deal is.

Where this became really noticeable was on my talk page. My "top quotes" section disappeared. The box was mostly a copy from the Template:cfd top and cfd bottom. Which is a big problem for me, since I now can no longer see closed discussions at all.

And Template:Main no longer appears, but Template:seealso does. (I know this due to the user categories section at Wikipedia:Userboxes.)

I hope I've given you a plethora of examples/information. Ideas welcome : ) - jc37 15:14, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Very weird indeed. Do you see the same problem when not logged in? And do you see the same problem when logged in from another computer? Have you tried to clear the history/cache/private data from your browser? As you mention someone might have edited some CSS file somewhere some time ago and then changed it back, but you might be caching and thus still using that faulty version of the CSS file.

By the way, it is correct that you should not see most of the "The RfA thank you notice from doczilla" on your talk page. Since you have disabled javascript you don't see the [show] button on that box. Well, even if you enable javascript you will not see the show button in that box in most web browsers since that box is overlapped by your table of contents. (But the overlapping problem is a whole other issue, which we did solve for the {{ambox}} and the other mboxes by the way.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

As for the hidden boxes, in the past they "auto opened" when I was on a computer which had no javascript (such as this one). So there was no worries/no need for the "show" button. That changed at some point, and now they aren't. Again, noting that this (in the past at least) had nothing to do with the template default setting of show or hide (it could be set either way, and still would show on a non-javascript comp).

Check out User talk:Kbdank71#Pump (technical) for some additional questions/answers - if you haven't seen it already.

Most other computers I have access to (but which I don't use "personally") all run javascript and have entirely different settings. Some of which even run firefox or linux, or "other" set ups.

As for clearing the cache I presume you are menaing <ctrl+F5>? If so, then yes I have.

One other "fun" thing that I have noticed is that when on "preview" I get even more "fun" flakiness. For example, some of these templates will appear, but only if there is another transclusion directly above it, and then that transclusion disappears. I'd make a joke about a shell game, but it's not really that funny atm. (This is one of those things which we will be able to laugh about later, I'm sure : )

And btw, I really appreciate your help in trying to help debug this with me : ) - jc37 06:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Any other or further ideas/suggestions? - jc37 22:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a busy weekend, I'll get back to you later.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Just pressing <ctrl+F5> or other such key combinations usually isn't enough to clear cached CSS and javascript pages. Such key combinations usually only reload the HTML pages and images. You need to go into the options menu or similar and click on "Clear all" or similar.

But as you mention you have disabled javascript and then it is not strange that many of the boxes remain collapsed. The whole [hide/show] thing depends on javascript. You can of course talk to those that coded that functionality and ask if they can do so the boxes opens when javascript is disabled. Although from what I remember they made them closed by default on purpose, since otherwise we who do have javascript first see the boxes open for some second before the javascript on a page kicks in and closes all the boxes. And some did complain about that. (It didn't disturb me.)

Apart from that I can recommend that you get your Firefox into working order, that is do a total uninstall and reinstall. You mention you have problems with your Firefox, which is very strange since Firefox is one of the more stable web browsers. You should scan your computer with a recently updated antivirus software and with an anti-adware software. Since some adwares do wreak havoc with the web browsers.

I don't think I have any further advice. Sorry.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you : )

I'll definitely check out the cache situation more fully.

Something that I know sounds logical (and would make sense from your comments above) has not been my past experience. Templates which were set/defaulted to hidden, still used to "show" uncollapsed on this comp. (Note that they showed "appropriately" on other comps I've used.) The fact that they did in the past would seem to indicate to me that this is due to some relatively recent change (in the last several months). But that's more an annoyance compared to my current issues, I suppose : ) - Though in re-reading your comment, I'm now wondering how recent that last change was...

As for the current problem (disappearing templates), for this to "suddenly" happen, means that a change happened somewhere in the software. I haven't delved much into Wikimedia development (discussion mostly). Is there a way to see whether those or other classes (or perhaps something which handles those classes) has been changed recently? - jc37 06:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Update

After some discussions with User:Simetrical, it turns out that it was some recent change to monobook which my browser apparently didn't like. I now have a "personal" patch (monobook subpage), and he said that a future update should fix this and other bugs.

.editlink, .noprint, .metadata, .dablink

Seems I was right about the classes though : )

Anyway, I thought you'd like to know how it turned out. - jc37 11:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I took a look in your monobook.css. That is just weird. It means something that is loaded before your monobook.css makes those classes not display. (Or your web browser is really buggy and thinks it is a printer.) I said this before: A wild guess is that you might have some Wikipedia gadget enabled that adds some buggy CSS. What gadgets do you use? Since I know that people often misunderstand what we mean by "gadgets", here they are: Your user menu at the top of Wikipedia pages -> My preferences -> Gadgets. Which of those are enabled?

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree about the weirdness.

As for gadgets, none. (Incidentally, I think I mentioned it above, but I don't have javascripting, so presumably none of them would work.)

Even though I (with Simetrical's help, obviously)isolated the section of monobook which was causing the trouble, I'm guessing that it's likely a change to something which "handles" the skins.

See also this bug. - jc37 12:10, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Shortcut#Colours

Hello, David! If you haven't already, please see my latest replies. Thank you! —David Levy 18:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a busy weekend, I'll get back to you later. (And yeah, I did miss that you had left two messages on that page.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks!  :-) —David Levy 20:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

RE: Image:Imbox deletion.png

My apologies for deleting it. I can honestly say I'm not sure how I did that. - Rjd0060 (talk) 17:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Images derived from yours

Hej David. Jag har snott skamlöst av dig när jag tillverkade Image:Olympic torch current event.svg och Image:Olympics current event.svg. Tycker du att jag har gjort något fel (licens, allmänt fusk eller något annat), hör helst av dig på min svenska sida. Jag kollar inte här så ofta. Mvh // Mankash (talk) 22:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, jag har svarat på din svenska sida.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: Category:Formatting templates and Template:Usage div

re: Hi FrankB Please do not use "hard redirects" when redirecting a category, since that makes it hard to see if any pages are wrongly categorised there. Instead use a "soft redirect" by using the {{category redirect}} template. That also makes it easier for our bots to find and fix pages that are categorised wrongly. See how I fixed Category:Formatting templates after you had edited it.

Why did you import the template {{usage div}} from commons? It will only cause confusion. We already have a much better and standardised way to write template documentation, that are use here at Wikipedia and at many other Wikimedia projects. That is, by using a /doc subpage and the green {{documentation}} template. Read all about it at Wikipedia:Template documentation. I would like to delete the {{usage div}} to avoid confusion, do I have your permission to do so?

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Where's the confusion? The two aren't remotely equivalent in function and only (a stretch) mildly similar in appearance...

Sorry, but can't agree... both with deletion (Just wrote it today, to save time, as a matter of fact) and characterization of "Much better"... this is WP:IAR case... that's some of the tension working interwiki... I probably use {{template doc page pattern viewed directly}} more often with the accompanying hardcoding as as some sites need original code, and your precious standard takes nothing into account interwiki...

First, speak like an adult and loose the concept of "Wrongly", and substitute "Equivalent" and/or "good enough" (Wrong??? according to what? A standard that is ridiculously overdone? Does your "standardization" effort cover the other sister projects? NO... I know it doesn't... but I do. See such like {{wpd-catlist-up}}, {{interwikitmp-grp}} and {{interwikicat-grp}}... or most of Interwiki utility templates. Your standardized system just costs me time day in and day out. So {{usage div}} saves me time in some cases where a /doc page is contraindicated...)

I'm merely fixing a link some idiot broke without considering the interwiki impact it would have. Soft redirects are out, so is category redirect. I'm getting real tired of #ifexist, and #ifeq{{SITENAME}}... logic too. Particularly when some of your "well standardizing" friends then take it out and break things all over. Enough!!!

So heres the tale:

1. some admin had changed the category name common to many other sisters to have the wikipedia prefix. (a little bit of parochialism here, as always, a little bit of NIHS (not invented here syndrome), in other places. But, I gots to get along with everyone, and do things besides make answers like this one!)
2. Hard redirects are now handled by the software, especially since January (though the change last August and the one before that gave a decent performance), and in such cases where there is no likely spelling error, used with abandon these days in other projects, particularly the commons. In this case, anything fixed up elsewhere and then reimported here, will still show up in the proper category... as desired... the hypothetical fix you desire is not wanted.
3. Moreover, Ca February 2007, David Kernow, Me, RobertG (At the time RobotG was the only bot fixing category redirects) and a few others worked out the technique of making both a hard redirect and a category redirect (Just append like it is a {R from ....} template) on categories as the best of both world's nearly 20 months ago, iirc. (That was BEFORE the bugzilla filing by me on this and the second batch of software changes... but hard redirects were working even then... only an anal attitude that all category names had to be the same continues the belief they are somehow bad. So what if the name is redirected... does the category page list the article in the category? Fine. We're good. Done!!! Things are working. (For example, on the commons, one might categorize an image to Saxony... in GERMAN... or Spanish... and it shows properly in Saxony, so en.wikipedia is way behind on this useful feature. Why debate U.S. Army something versus United States Army... endlessly... different people relate to things differently. Embrace the diversity! <g>) In short, You all are slow catching on! <g>
      Moreover, IIRC, the system software already fixes up hard redirects for you on the source pages, so you're worried about something already automated. If not, then having two handles for the same list... works for everyone... so no harm.) Using both a hard and category redirect, btw, gives the best of BOTH the bot fixes the names to those ones preferred by those Anal enough to dictate how others associate in thought and, the redirect keeps editors productive. (Think about it!)
4. In THIS CASE, category redirect will fuck up templates (Letting a bot loose in templates has never been wise! Shudder!) and there is no reason to prefix a self-reference like Wikipedia onto any category and never was. (People making unimportant rules that cost other people time... what else is new!) More to the point, we don't want those templates fixed... they're fine now, or would be if some hadn't messed with the categories that are common to all the other sisters like this case. (Me, David Kernow and Mike Peel left those category names in common use alone for a reason... dictating compatibility issues to other sisters is not cool! More to the point, common template category names gives "visiting editors" an immediate starting point, saving them time and trouble. The whole idea of providing commonality!)
5. If you've changed it, please put it back... this way works from the other sisters, with least (NN permutations on XX templates... the mind boggles at the multiple!) on the other sister projects.
      Note, No other sister uses template categories prefixed with Wikipedia... 'naturally enough!

On your second message, on {{usage div}}... because I NEED IT. Your "Standard template documentation" standard is way over the top too complicated for simple templates and far from popular on sister sites. (TEXT SEARCH "Not sure whether your acerbic comment via /doc pages" here] where I allude to a chastisement of same use... I can't find the original talk, but if I understand correctly, /doc pages are being deleted on the commons.)

You are likely unaware of it, but I'm the one that caused the attitudinal sea-change leading to the /doc pages... putting inline documentation in place in the fall of '06 was a big effort of mine, whereas documentation on a talk page made little sense... and still does!) and while your standardized documentation system is pretty, it's inflexible and frankly unneeded in most times, so to me, what the standard has done is get in the way... particularly of portability.

BTW--{{usage div}} is also useful to throw in (temporarily) when editing your favored version of a doc page so to see where code.../code stands out and so forth, which is not pretty colored in the {Tl|Documentation}} system.

In short, your method is not universally loved and/or admired, and if the template doesn't need it per high inclusion rates for a template per the original WP:DPP rationale we worked out, I certainly have gone away from using it. I support it, in short, where and when necessary, and not farther. Perhaps you should do the same. // FrankB 23:35, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Your depreciation note was hardly helpful[2]... a formatting template is a formatting template... there is no requirement it be used in usage. The name just keeps it memorable to me! I trust you can live with the cat changes... no doubt some other busybody will come along and F*** with that someday too. // FrankB 01:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Anontalkpagetext

Hi David, thank you very much for your explanation! Since you're active now and I should be sleeping already (nightshift), I've reverted back to your revision of MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext, and I think we've identified the problem now. If you view the source code of a random IP talk page that contains this MediaWiki message (e. g. [3]), you see that both <br>s of that message aren't closed. If I understand your explanation right, this is indeed a parsing error then. Regards --Oxymoron⁸³ 07:46, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Ouch! You are very right. I have now checked both an empty anon IP page, an empty anon page in edit mode, and one with messages on. As you know the MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext is shown in all those cases. And in all those cases they <br> tags were unparsed (not converted to XHTML <br /> tags). So yes, it must be a MediaWiki parsing error. I will report that to the devs.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! --Oxymoron⁸³ 08:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Spam working in progress in interwiki?

Hi David, I'm a sysop in it.wiki. I write you because I've seen that you are a sysop online. Please check about a possible spam in progress starting from en.wiki and moving in other wikipedias.

Late June Korazim registered in en.wiki. He's working on pharmacology and medicine articles related (some references: [4], [5], [6], [7]). In these articles he wrote about Femarelle, a new drug and post many references derived from the same authors which work in medical/scientific institutions of Israel (also Korazim work in a scientific institution in Israel).

From July to August the new articles and edits of Korazim was propagated in the same mode into pt.wiki, fr.wiki (some articles removed here) and it.wiki by an user recently registered as Marbahur in those wikipedias. Other contributes (but I can't verify the authors) are posted in he.wiki. This user is not able to speak in Italian but is able to translate from English to Portuguese, Italian, and French and from Portuguese to Italian. I think all that's very strange... So, in it.wiki I've put the main article (about the drug Femarelle) in simple deletion procedure in 15th of August. 18 hours later a new user was registered as Neutral6: he speak correctly Italian and supports the edits of Marbahub and done new articles or edits translated from pt.wiki about same topics. We are started a check user because I think they are the same person.

Please note that Femarelle was lauched earl 2008 in Italy and Israel, I don't know about other countries.

I think all that is very dangerous for the neutrality of Wikipedia, so I suggest to check the neutrality of those recent edits in en.wiki.

Thanks for your attention. Greetings --gian_d 09:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC) (in it.wiki: it:Utente:Giancarlodessi)

Ciao Giancarlo. Unfortunately you are asking the wrong person. I don't know much about handling spam and I don't know much about medicine. I mostly became admin since I program high-risk templates and thus need to be able to work with protected templates. And I am really not even supposed to be home today, so I am kind of in a hurry. I think you can ask at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard what to do with this. They should be able to point you to the right place.

Sorry about this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks David, I'll write later in the page you have cited --gian_d 10:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Giancarlodessi (talk • contribs)

Template:Ambox

There seems to be a problem with Ambox. It shows in {{Merge}} that uses the deprecated merge-style. It looks like a accidental linefeed or something, like this:

[[Category:Ambox templates using deprecated

types|Main:Mailing list]]

I'm guessing it is related to Your last edit (08:43, 21 August 2008). – Leo Laursen – ✍ ⌘ 14:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, You fixed it while I was typing. – Leo Laursen – ✍ ⌘ 14:44, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, slightly embarrassing. Thanks for reporting it, it was a pretty sneaky bug. I would not have found it myself since the line break were exactly where my edit window wraps. But I thought it was strange that the category wasn't filling up. Thankfully another user also reported it over at Template talk:Tmbox#Deprecated ambox parameters.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:53, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

Hey. Re: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#New edit tools enabled for everyone: Sorry I've confused things by adding the code chunk after my comment. I've clarified that it was from me, by moving my sig below it. You probably will want to move/rewrite your reply ;) -- Quiddity 18:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you mean. Oops. Yeah, I too prefer to add some words both before and after my code examples and sign after it to make it clear who is showing what code. And yes I will correct my comment immediately.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Changing the [show]/[hide] link text

Hi! I'm back with another template question. :) I just installed collapsible tables on Commons since the collapsible divs turned out to be not as versatile, so now we got both just like here. I was wondering if it's possible to change the "show" and "hide" text to something else per template. I want it to say "comments" instead of "show" in one of my templates I'm working on. The "hide" can stay the same. If it's possible here, it's possible there since the code's essentially the same. If it's not possible here, what can I add to Common.js to make it possible there? Thanks. Rocket000 (talk) 02:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Now you are asking the wrong person. I don't know javascript but I am a programmer so I can read it a little. It seems you have to add code to the commons:MediaWiki:CollapsibleTables.js to handle that. And each new name people want to use on the buttons have to be added to that file. I think it is possible to make the javascript code so that you can tag your table with a class name that indicates which of the button names you want. That is, which name among the button names that the javascript code at that moment has support for.

You should ask this at the right places: MediaWiki talk:Common.js and commons:MediaWiki talk:Common.js.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. That helped anyway. Rocket000 (talk) 10:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Category based Bot Tagging

Hi there, I hope you remember expressing serious concerns regarding category based WikiProject tagging by bots here. I made this FAQ list which tries to answer some of your concerns. Let me know if you have any questions . Thanks -- Tinu Cherian - 11:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Business perpose disscussion.

This is M. A Kabir from Bangladesh I would like intoduce ourselve with you regarding business. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.79.21.195 (talk) 07:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Ambox

I caught it - and noted it at AN. Are there any other images we need to work on? I saw a list at commons, but the images we're having issues with here aren't on it. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Right, that list seems to be incomplete. And I guess all we can do is to check the images we are "responsible" for. That is the images for which we know where to get new copies. I am not aware of any more images that need fixing, but I have not checked all "my" images yet. For instance, I am now going to check all my old png images that people have remade to svg. If the svgs are gone I can put my old png images in the articles again. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Documentation/preload

Hi again David.

• http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Template:Documentation/preload&diff=next&oldid=236974868

Your revert entirely understandable given the current discussion at Template talk:Documentation, of which I was unaware before editing. I'll leave the page as is. Sardanaphalus (talk) 13:22, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thanks. And sorry if my edit comment was a bit brusque. I was irritated with those syntax theorists who blame everything on "accessibility" even when that is not true. And yeah, since they were doing the discussion in the wrong place you could not know that that discussion was going on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Template sandbox notice

Hi David. Your message was not cranky and sorry for any problems I caused. I thought the "noinclude" would prevent my addition from affecting the sandbox. Template:Template sandbox notice instructs to add the template to the top of the sandbox page with the code below. All the pages I added Template:Template sandbox notice were not categorized in Category:Template sandboxes. If you can, please add Category:Template sandboxes to those high-risk templates from which you removed the sandbox code. I'll look over the sandbox pages that I edited. Thanks for the notice. I won't add any more Template sandbox notices. Suntag (talk) 06:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Note to self: Responded at User talk:Suntag.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi David. I revised the usage instructions at Template:Template sandbox notice. Please feel free to revise them as needed. Suntag (talk) 15:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

And I reverted you for the time being. Sorry. See my explanation at Template talk:Template sandbox notice.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Chat Channel

I followed you here http://www.pjort.com/e_contact.html; you can find me here http://www.pino.com/; I'd like to open a chat channel but without the phone call if possible. I have Windows Messenger (MSN), Yahoo! Messenger, AOL IM and I'm open to using an IRC client. We concur email seems impersonal. What works for you? – Conrad T. Pino (talk) 19:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Note to self: Answered at Conrad's talk page, with address to where I chat on IRC.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Nutritionalvalue

Hi, I have an issue I'd like you to look at. {{nutrititionalvalue}} produces a table giving standard nutritional information for various foods. For some reason, however, the 1px black border around the template is missing on part of the right side of the table block, as viewed in Safari on Mac OS 10.4. As I'm not sure what's causing the problem or how to fix it, I'm hoping that you would check it out and possibly fix it, or otherwise provide some insight. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 22:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC), fixed somewhat 01:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean {{nutritionalvalue}}. And ouch, that is a big template. But sure, I'll take a look and see if I find anything.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I indented the code for readability. Fixed some bugs. Added some default values so it can display well, so we don't need "includeonly" tags. And I cleaned up the documentation and moved the test template to the "/sandbox" page while I was at it.

But the minor bugs I fixed should not cause what you describe. However that part of the border is sometimes missing in long tables is a known bug both in Safari and Firefox. So it might not be our fault.

By the way, I made a private sandbox {{nutritionalvalue/test1}} where you and I can experiment without being disturbed by the other editors. It has a copy of the improved code I made. I also updated the main template itself to use that code.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I just saw some more bugs. I'll fix them right away.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done - I fixed the "colspan=2" usage. You had the wrong number of table cells on some rows. I think I remember that that is a known cause of the missing border bug in some web browsers. So perhaps the box will render right for you now. In any case, you have a much cleaner and correct code now. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's it. I didn't realize that that could cause the problem. The template now appears to render properly, which is great; I cringe at long tables like this one and was quite frustrated earlier. Thanks for your expertise! :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 01:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Navbox padding and line spacing

Hi David. I would like to know, per my current post at the above, whether it'll be worth my while spending the time and effort to learn what I need to learn and then try to revise the {{Navbox}} setup so it can handle a different group/liststyle.

You may be interested to see, if you haven't passed by it already, this and take note of Edokter's damp (and, ultimately, misleading) comment.

Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Just tried to send you an email to follow this up in private, but unfortunately one doesn't seem to be associated with your account. Please let me know what you think, either here, on my talkpage or via email. If I have offended you, please accept my apologies. Sardanaphalus (talk) 21:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

We have already told you repeatedly: NO, NO and NO! Why should we bother to answer you again? You are just wasting everybody's time. The changes you are demanding will break things, and we have told you so repeatedly for months now. You have to stop pestering people with your demands. It would be no wonder if for instance Edokter is giving you harsh or bad answers, he is probably extremely annoyed with you by now. But I took a look at the discussion you linked to, and he is only giving you correct and pertinent answers. His comments were in no way "damp or misleading".

The only sane path of action you have is to code up the whole thing in your own user space and experiment and test it carefully to try to find something that works with your ideas. (But I think it will probably be hard to find such a solution.) And what we are talking about is that your demands break the navbox subgroups, that is the navbox inside navbox functionality. And we have explained that to you many times. So PLEASE just shut up and go experiment in your user space. You are damn annoying!

But as we have told you before, even if you find a working technical solution (which isn't complex to use) it is unlikely that people will want that padding and margin change you are demanding. So there is one other sane path of action for you, that is no action. Just drop the whole thing and go do something else, okay?

I have no reason to answer ANY more questions from you. If you don't stop pestering people on those talk pages I find it likely that they will consider taking preventive action against you. Your refusal to stand down means you are wasting everybody's time and making people angry. And that is detrimental to Wikipedia.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:46, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Background colours

Hi David,

On WP:VPT you wrote:

[...]so already many years ago I set my computer to show all "white" areas as a slight off-white.

How did you do this? Thanks!

--M.C. 21:33, 22 September 2008

(Since I think this answer will interest many I will copy this discussion to a subsection of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Background colour in articles.)

I use an old Swedish Windows ME, but I know these settings can be done in a similar way on all Windows versions. (And I hope you can do that in most other operating systems too.) Here is my rough translation to English of the things you need to click to do that setting:

On the Windows desktop: Right-click to get a small floating menu, at the bottom of that menu choose "Settings" or "Properties". That gets you to the "Properties for the screen" window. There choose the tab "Looks". That gives you a tab with a picture with examples of windows and other screen objects. Left-click in the middle of the example picture, in the white "Window text" area. Below the example picture there is the "Window part" drop down box, that one should now show an option named "Window". To the right of that you see the little drop down box named "Color" which now should contain a white little box. Click that white little box. You get a simple palette. At the bottom of that palette click the "Choose my own" button. That gives you an advanced palette window. There you can compose your own colour. I use RGB = 255, 251, 240 for the "Window text" area. Type in that colour and save it by clicking "Ok" in the two windows you now have open. Now try to open the Windows Notepad, or a Wikipedia edit window in your web browser. Now you should get that "255,251,240" off-white background there! Even the page background in MS Word gets that background colour. That saves a lot of eye-strain. (Even small fields like most browser's address bar gets that off-white colour.)

Oh, and prepare yourself to get comments from your friends like: "Hey, your screen is getting old, its colours are slightly off". :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:36, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Warning templates

		The Template Barnstar
		For spending all that time coding those warning templates. MBisanz talk 00:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Block template

This discussion has been moved to Template talk:Tmbox#User warning and block templates. --David Göthberg (talk) 15:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hello. The tmbox changes you made to {{uw-block1}} look good ... with one exception. Instead of being centered, the template should be left-justified to match the rest of the warnings/messages/block notices in the harmonized uw-scheme. Thanks, Kralizec! (talk) 01:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I just fixed some bugs. MBisanz asked me since he had trouble getting it right.

But left-floating? I think not. How talk page message boxes should look was standardised and made into a Wikipedia guideline in spring 2005. See Wikipedia:Talk page templates. We amended that standard with some coloured borders some month ago so the warning templates should be able to follow the guideline too. (It was a long process, see {{tmbox}}, its talk page and the examples at Template:Tmbox/styles and so on.) So I think it is the other way around. That is, it is time the warning templates catch up with the talk page message box standard.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I wonder how the centering will look with the numbered layout as specified at WP:UW and WP:UTM. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, I just noticed [8] that the admin .sig is no longer included inside the block template message box. Is this an oversight or another "feature"? --Kralizec! (talk) 03:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that is awkward, I do like the signature in the box. With my own tmbox implementations,I've always been able to move it inside, see User:MBisanz/MESSAGES. MBisanz ^talk 03:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess I would use the phrase "looks terrible" but "awkward" works just as well. While I would really like to support the {{tmbox}}, forcing newer (working) templates like the uw-series into the change without first addressing all the issues gives me great pause. It would be a different story if someone had said back in January 2007 "hey, make sure these new uw templates follow Template:Tmbox/styles" but 627 days later? --Kralizec! (talk) 12:22, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

He he, I bet Tmbox didn't even exist in 2007. I did fix the sig part of the Uw-block1 template. MBisanz ^talk 12:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Since this discussion is about talk page message box standardisation I have moved it to Template talk:Tmbox#User warning and block templates. See my response there and please continue there. --David Göthberg (talk) 15:00, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

CSS question

Moved to Template talk:Tmbox#Nested strikes back (section break 3) Happy‑melon 10:47, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much...

This discussion has been moved to MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin.

...for the note about the ToC margin change, I had no idea it was in the works. I very much appreciate it, and I will take steps now to remove the additional spacing I had added into some articles. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 01:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, sometimes we work a bit slow. I hope people will like it and not protest, since not many people were involved in the decision so it is a weak consensus. (But none of the people involved were against it, and that is a good sign.) However I doubt people will even notice, since it is a rather small change. I hope you think the new margin is enough? Since I wouldn't want it larger, and I usually like to have more margins and space on pages than most... The others didn't have much of a point of view on how large to make the margin.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:25, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I've actually seen it, yet. Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 04:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm pretty sure I've seen it now, and I don't want to seem ungrateful, but, boy, I wouldn't mind a little more space -- it still seems a little bit constricting as it is. Do you think anyone would object to a bit more? If yes, so be it, but you did ask.... Ed Fitzgerald ^{t / c} 17:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: Right, the next step is to test what margin people prefer. See my long answer at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin. --David Göthberg (talk) 03:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has been moved to MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Table of contents margin, see my response there and continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 03:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

mbox classes

Now that you've converted all the mbox series to use the mbox-text and mbox-image classes, will you be removing the old 'tmbox-image', 'imbox-text', etc, declarations from Common.css? Just wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten... :D Happy‑melon 11:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

As I wrote over at Template talk:Mbox#Simpler to use class names: "What remains now is to search for and fix any remaining hard-coded use of the old class names. And then to remove the old class names from MediaWiki:Common.css. That is to remove any usage of "ambox-text", "ambox-image" and "ambox-imageright" and the same for the other mboxes."

Unfortunately, that is the bigger part of the work so that will take some time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, of course that makes sense. Neither google nor wikisearch has any (more :D) results for tmbox-image and tmbox-text, which is a start. I'll have a look at the other classes - I don't have high hopes for ambox-text and ambox-image!! Happy‑melon 14:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

CSS again

Ok, I'm trying to lay the groundwork for the deployment of the new header system, and I've already dug myself into a hole :D. Can you possibly take a look at Template:WPBannerMeta/testcases and explain why the banners in the bottom shell get 100% width in FF but not IE? It's using Template:WPBannerMeta/sandbox - I expect the top five lines will be all you'd need to dig into - I recommend a non-wrapping text editor! Many thanks in advance, Happy‑melon 16:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I have removed all the clutter and put a simple version at User:Happy-melon/sandbox6. The issue is resolved by setting the colspan to 2 instead of 3, but I'm not sure why. Happy‑melon 17:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the simple version. Well, this was a ridicules bug that I was not aware of before. I did some testing and changed parts of the code at a time until I found out what works. In my IE 5.5 the colspan may not be more than 2 in this case. So I set it to 2 and removed one of the {{td}} from the second row to balance it. I guess this might be a problem in your more complex versions since you probably want to use more columns there. One workaround will be to use no colspan in the header and then instead put a table inside a big cell in the second row, so you can do whatever you want in there. (Note that the second row also must have a mini td cell to the right so the box gets 100% wide when no header is shown.)

While I was at it I removed the 'align="center"' since that one is not needed for the mbox classes. It is only needed for the old "messagebox" classes.

Now it works in all my browsers: Firefox 2, IE 5.5 and Opera 9.02.

Oh, and I don't know if I have mentioned it before: I checked your new code in {{WPBS}} some day ago and today too, and that code is correct. (I know you know it works, just wanted to mention I have double checked it.)

But I don't understand why you went back to using a wikitable instead of a HTML table. HTML tables are much better since you don't need to escape with {{!}}, which means more readable code and less server load. And in wikitables whitespace has meaning which makes it easy to do mistakes.

Oh, and why does "wpbs-inner" use "padding:2px 4px 4px 4px;"? I think it should be for instance "padding: 4px;". I think it looks strange with 2px padding on top but 4px padding on all other sides.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:01, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmn, thanks for confirming. I think I'll have to do what you suggest and put the content in subtables. As you can see in User:Happy-melon/sandbox5 I've been minded to put the header content inside a subtable anyway, to line up the breaks in WPBS (and now WPB too!). Looks much nicer than the original (can't remember where I got it from now!). So I guess putting the content inside subtables won't be too arduous. I just wish there was a simpler solution.

Don't understand why I used wikitables where?

Vis the padding, I'm not sure why I went back to it. If you check the history of WPBS you can see I did once set it to 4px all round, but changed my mind. I can't actually remember why I did that! But I assume I knew what I was talking about... :-S. Happy‑melon 07:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't like how you line up the headers in the User:Happy-melon/sandbox5 example. It looks squeezed.

And regarding wikitables vs HTML tables: I mean I don't understand why you use a wikitable in {{WPBS}}. Especially since I noticed that while you were developing that new version you used a HTML table. But then in the last few edits you changed it back to a wikitable. HTML tables have several advantages over wikitables. Especially when doing complex table coding. As you can see in {{WPBS}} you even had to mix in HTML code in the lower /Comments part. (Otherwise you would have to use {{!}} to escape the code down there if you wanted to make it 100% wikitable code. And having to use {{!}} is one of the drawbacks with wikitables.)

And regarding the padding for the "wpbs-inner": Note that at the time you changed that padding you had that tmbox margin code in your personal /monobook.css and that can have effected how you were seeing things. Anyway, I think you should use the same padding all around for the "wpbs-inner", and I think it should be 3 or 4 px. While the tmboxes inside should keep 2px margin all around so they get 2px between them, since I know from before that you prefer that.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "squeezed"?? I know they don't centre properly, which is something that needs fixing (probably with a 6em left-floating div like the fix that's applied to {{WPBS}} itself), but I think otherwise it's the same or very similar to the existing padding, margins, etc. That was the effect I was trying to create, anyway. It's probably been skewed around a bit by the various changes that we've made in the meantime elsewhere. Do you like the concept of aligning the headers?

I can't remember where I sandboxed that update, but I am aware of the relative advantages and disadvantages of HTML vs wikitable; I have been doing this for a while now :D. Both have their strengths and weaknesses - a significant advantage of wikicode is the ability to pass both attributes and contents to a table cell in a single string; I had to add |class= and |style= parameters to all the {{-Class}} templates to enable me to use HTML table code there, which is a suboptimal solution. When it's not necessary to escape pipes, as in this case, wikitable code is clearer and a more efficient syntax. I don't consider mixing HTML and wikicode to be a problem; the effect could alternatively have been achieved with or even without {{!}}, but in this case the clearest method was to use HTML. So I don't agree that HTML is necessarily preferable to wikicode here, or even that it's possible to objectively declare that one is better than the other in the majority of situations.

And 'gah' would be a good way to describe that - of course it would have affected the display, silly me. But not in a way to change the relative padding - looking at the boxes now, I'd be tempted to try 3px to see what it looks like. I'll have a play. Happy‑melon 11:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I checked in all three in my browsers (FF 2, IE 5.5 and Opera 9.02):

• In all of them the midpoint between the project name and rating is aligned compared to the other banners. So far so good.
• In Opera that midpoint is exactly in the middle of the banner, which to me indicates that you are even compensating for the [show] button width. That is, it looks perfect in Opera.
• But in Firefox and IE that midpoint is far from in the middle of the banners. Instead it is much more to the left. Much more than can be explained by the [show] button alone. In fact, in higher screen resolutions in Firefox the end of the rating is to the left of the banner centre! Thus leaving the right half of the banner empty, apart from the [show] button.
• Since the text is squeezed to the left in Firefox and IE it means in lower screen resolutions the project names are line wrapped in spite there being plenty of free space in the right half of the banners.

Based on what I see in Opera where it looks like I think you intend: Yes, I think I like the concept of aligning the headers.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:21, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for checking so thoroughly, as always. It's nice to hear what it looks like in Opera, since I don't have that browser myself (too lazy to download and update it :D). Also good to hear about lower resolutions, since the lowest resolution my main screen will support is 1024x768! Linewrapping is certainly a Bad Thing that I'll have to deal with... maybe I should be working on that in the time before October 31, so I can lump it into my planned grand update of wikiproject banners, with tmbox classes, auto-nesting and now header centering. Presuming, of course, I can get the damn thing to actually align... every time I work with CSS and HTML, I think I come to like it a little less... Happy‑melon 21:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Need Help

Dear David Gothberg,
I came across you through the template. I am Asiri, from Sinhala Language Wikipedia [9]. So I am looking for develop template for Sinhala Wikipedia. I have tried various way to create on their using HTML, in spite of i couldn't make rich out put like this.After following various templates i found, it is necessary to Ambox TemplatesTemplate:Ambox. So if you have leisure time, can you kindly help me to develop Ambox templates on Sinhala Wikipedia. You can use my User SandBox [10] for do experiments.
Thank you! Best regards Asiri wiki (talk) 03:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am sorry but I don't speak a single word Sinhala, so I can't really do any work on the Sinhala Wikipedia. However what you need to do are these three fairly easy steps:

• Copy the "ambox" CSS classes from MediaWiki:Common.css to si:MediaWiki:Common.css. (Since si:MediaWiki:Common.css is protected you need to ask an admin at your wiki to do it.)
• Copy the code from Template:Ambox to for instance si:Template:Ambox. (I see someone already did that some time ago, but you might want to update to our latest version of the code. You probably should check the history of si:Template:Ambox and contact the user who have been working with it.)
• Copy the ambox documentation from Template:Ambox/doc to si:සැකිල්ල:ලිපිපණිවුඩපෙට්ටිය/ලේඛය and translate it to Sinhala.

That's really all there is to it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:52, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much David Göthberg ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Asiri wiki (talk • contribs) 04:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Navbox spacing

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[11]

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by Sardanaphalus (talk • contribs) 23:25, 1 October 2008

Link

My placing a link at the bottom of your talkpage was to notify you about a post elsewhere. I'm sorry if this attempt at courtesy backfired. Sardanaphalus (talk) 15:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Ambox error message

Any reason not to add class="error" to the error message? —Ms2ger (talk) 16:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: I didn't know about that one. Now I tried it out, hehe, VERY visible. But I want to wait some day before I use it. See why in my longer answer over at Template talk:Tmbox#Deprecated ambox parameters, section break 1.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Disambig editintro notice

Hi. There's a question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation#Disambig editintro - working from Bellhalla that we need technical help with.

[I would guess that many of the SetIndex users will want similar exclusion. Possibly changing something to do with the categories would fix them, but I don't know what else relies upon the Category:All disambiguation pages? Our categories generally terrify me...]

(If you don't know the answers, could you prod someone who might?) Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No worries. I took a look. I know several easy ways to fix that. I just have to think and test a little which way to fix it is the best. I'll get right to it since this seems urgent. You can tell people at the other talk pages about my answer.

Could you point me and everyone else to one single talk page where we can discuss this and where I can publish the solution I recommend (once I have figured out which one is best)? Oh, and I think we can have this fully fixed within some hours. :))

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

mbox appearance

I could be wrong, but I would guess that you really don't care what the various colours/images are, except that usage of the boxes, per type, should be standard, correct? - jc37 04:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You are both right and wrong. In some areas I care much less than people think, and in some I care a lot. Here's what I think:

• Right, one of my primary concerns is that each type should be recognisable across the namespaces. So that when we see a yellow box we know it means a "minor warning". This also means that it is important to not have too many different colour types, since then people will not learn what they mean. And having a unified look looks far better than having the chaos we used to have.

• I REALLY dislike that the warning message boxes are used in articles. Since they are a self reference and should be placed on the talk pages. They are confusing to our readers and make us look unprofessional. Oh, and I think they scare away editors. Since it's very discouraging when you have put in a lot of work to make a nice article and then get smacked with some big clean-up tags that make your article look terrible. It's sad that the people who spend their time complaining instead of writing articles have hijacked the top position in the articles. A compromise could be to place most of the boxes at the bottom of the pages.

• But it could probably be useful to have a small box in say the upper right corner of an article that informs that there are issues currently discussed at the talk page. And perhaps using the colour scheme to show the severity level, but without going into details what it is about.

• But the deletion notices probably should still be big and visible. And the purple move boxes are informative to the readers since they tell there is another article on the same subject, so I don't mind them that much. And some of the blue notice boxes might be useful for the readers too.

• I do find message boxes on other types of pages very useful.

• I got involved last year when they were standardising the article message boxes. And since I realised we probably never will get rid of the boxes we might just as well make them look good instead. So I helped out. They had already come up with the design, I mostly just did the programming and mediating between all the people involved.

• And then we standardised the boxes for the other namespaces too, so boxes can look good everywhere. But I think we failed with the category boxes, they are fairly ugly. But people demanded to have coloured background for at least one of the namespaces.

• I would prefer to group it as three kinds of pages: Articles, talk pages and other pages. I find it silly to have special designs for category and image pages. But the majority of users wanted it that way.

• I do like the colour scale we use. That is an internationally well known scale. Some neutral colour for notices = blue or grey or brown border. Then yellow for minor warnings. Orange for major warnings. Red for deletion and red+pink for speedy deletion. Well, I voted for just red for both deletion and speedy, but some people demanded something more visible for the speedy deletion. (As far as I remember it was a small minority but they were very vocal and most of us didn't care enough, so we gave them the pink to get them off our backs.) I think we probably can use red for the higher level user block warning boxes too.

• And I think we have good colours for the license and featured boxes for the {{imbox}}. And purple is the best move colour since we happen to use red-blue icons for that. (And the existing transwiki boxes used a kind of pink.) And since we need some colour for that and purple was free, why not? I think those purple boxes look kind of cool. :))

• I do have pretty strong feelings about the icons. We did put a lot of work into them. But already from the beginning most of us agreed that a specific message should of course use a more specific image if there is one. Making the message clear is much more important than having a good looking icon. Thankfully we can often find or make icons that are both clear and good looking. :))

• Also, I think that we should use icons in most boxes. Since only using colours makes it less clear what a message means. And we have gotten comments from colour-blind users that the icons of course are good for them.

So basically, most of the ideas were not mine. But I have suggested a lot of tweaks, and I have argued hard for what I think, so sometimes people have agreed with me so some of the designs are "mine". But when the majority of users have disagreed with me and I have not managed to change their mind, then I have used their styles. Well, there have been very varying points of views so the designs we have now are mostly a result of compromise.

And then I have defended those styles when we deployed. Since as you say, having a working standard that people accept so the boxes can be easy to recognise and understand is after all the most important part. I refuse that two vocal users should come along and change a standard that 50-100 users have worked out in lengthy discussions for over a year. That would just be wrong. So that means I sometimes actually "enforce" styles that I don't like myself.

Oops, sorry for the rant. Now, what is it you have on your mind?

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

lol.

(Sorry, your last few comments snuck up on me : )

Anyway, my main reason for posting was a note at WP:AN, and thinking that a mountain may be being made out of a molehill, when really all that probably needs happen is a new discussion started.

Though now after reading your comments I think we should probably clarify a couple things...

One in particular (and if you don't wish my word for it, I suppose I can go dredging the archives) is that the cosmetic look of the deletion templates was opposed by more than "one or two" (even in the original discussion - I know because I started one of the several threads), and that doesn't even include the speedy debate.

That aside, there's a lot of what you say above that I do agree with.

In particular, that there should be fewer types of mboxes. (article, talk, and "other" sounds fine with me, though I think imbox has more than a few idiosyncracies, worth being separate.) But then, I also think all the mboxes should probably be shaded. (With maybe the exception of article space.)

With only a couple exceptions (that you know about), the icons seem fine to me. It was funny to me at the time how much more of the debate was over the icons than anything else. Now in hindsight, perhaps I should have been more interested in that part of the discussion...

All of the above aside, I sincerely hope that you aren't feeling hard feelings due to something I've said or done. If so, I hope that we can resolve whatever it is.

For me, my recollection is that you've only really brought me to annoyance once in the whole time I've known you, and in that case I decided at that point to leave the conversation. (Though I'll admit that I still am somewhat stunned in hindsight.)

Anyway (somewhat back on topic), if I were to start a "broader" discussion concerning XfD templates (and possibly the caution/warning templates), is this something you see yourself strongly opposing? - jc37 07:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Right, I remember we were arguing hard about something some days ago. But I suck at remembering with whom I argued about what, so I actually right now didn't remember what it was about. (I have unfortunately been in more than one heavy discussion lately.) I had to look around to find out that you were one of the two users over at Template talk:Mfd to argue against me.

By the way, I wonder when I did stun you? Was it in the discussion over at Template talk:Mfd?

Anyway. Right, almost every style in the mboxes have been heavily discussed by lots of users, and often heavily contested by some users. So I didn't mean to say that everyone agreed about the deletion style. On the contrary, I think that was one of the more heavily discussed styles. But the current styles are the compromises we achieved after all those discussions. And to clarify: The colour scale and some other basic things were heavily debated for the ambox and most thought that the same colour scale should then be reused for the other namespaces. For most of the other mboxes the discussions were then lighter since we had the old ambox consensus/compromise. Ombox was probably the least discussed. But for the tmbox we did get heavy discussion again, but that ended up with confirming the ambox colour scale. So as I see it the mbox colour scale has been repeatedly confirmed in very large discussions.

And that is what I mean with that it is far from enough that two or so users now try to overturn that compromise. Especially since the same number of users had the opposing view on the very same talk page.

If they/you want to overturn the styles then they/you better bring it up for full discussion again, announcing it on the Village pumps and code up comparative examples and so on again. I think you seem to understand that, at least to some extent. While Ned Scott thinks he can just demand and get his will through.

So no, I am not "opposed" to you guys bringing up the discussion again. That is everyone's right to do here at Wikipedia. (Well, until it becomes deemed a "perennial proposal".) Although already the thought of all that discussion again makes me very tired.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

First, my apologies, I didn't mean to bring up the past. I was just trying to be accurate while making a semibroad statement. And was (perhaps not very well) trying to be accurate concerning past discussions. (And no - in fact, I seem to recall supporting you in the mfd discussion - AFAIR it was a while back when we were "discussing" possibilities in coding. Not sure which mbox talk page anymore.)

I'm not saying that the colour scale is "wrong", btw. As I said, in general I agree. I just think that there are a few situations (caution/warning and XfD) which need a broader discussion, due to specific uses/applications. During those other discussions there were such concerns that the "bigger issues" be dealt with (like the icons and the basic scale, etc.), and worry about the rest later. So XfD templates, though brought up by several, were pretty much steamrollered (ignored/pushed away from the main discussions) by those who were more interested in the convention/standard to succeed. It's part of why I backed off of it back then. As I said, I agree with most of it. I just think its unfortunate that those who let other concerns wait until the "big" debate was done are now being "steamrollered" with the suggestion that these things were discussed in the "bigger debate", when indeed, most concerns along these lines were ignored or arbitrarily dismissed by those implementing this scheme. (When is "later", if not now?)

And please, while no offense to anyone is intended, please don't group my thoughts and comments with others' ("you guys"). While I may respect others' right to an opinion, I may not necessarily agree with that opinion, and likely won't agree with the presentation or "tone" of the opinion.

And I so understand the feeling of "tired". There are quite a few things that I just look at and say: "maybe tomorrow". There are days I avoid opening my "back burner" list. It's grown so large already. - jc37 20:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Forgive my intrusion, but I feel I must agree with Mr Göthberg's points concerning the discussion that has taken place to bring the current message-box systems and their associated styles to being. Lots of functions must be factored into such decisions, which ensures long discussion periods for any potential change. All proper procedures have been followed, and I cannot see grounds for another, tiring, and almost certainly mostly repetitive discussion so soon after the event.

Personally, I have absolutely no problem with said systems and styles; I believe, for instance, that imbox and cmbox should be retained because their respective namespaces are highly visible to readers, in contrast to the back-room machinery of community-related pages tagged with ombox. I am also quite a fan of the category boxes—I especially like the notice and move types, and I find examples like Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup quite elegant. My favourite box is {{category redirect}}, and it will be the only thing I'll be sad about when we'll finally have proper category redirects.

What I am not so sure about is this: descriptions inside the template. I much prefer having the descriptions below the template, as in most category pages (including my previous example). I think discussing this feature—page-description integration—would be a better use of our time... Waltham, The Duke of 17:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No offense to you whatsoever, but I have a feeling that you have no idea what my concerns are.

I dropped this note here because I've (fairly often) discussed (rather congenially) with dg, and thought that attempting to find out his opinion here was better than in the midst of what the typical "big debate".

You (and others) are of course welcome to join in (this is Wikipedia after all), but please realise that my concerns are focused on only a couple types of templates, and not with dismantling a scheme which I strongly think that Wikipedia needed.

Anyway, thanks for your comments, and I hope this clarifies. - jc37 20:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It's too late not to offend me, Jc37... I challenge you to a duel!

All right, actually not. It is true that I had no idea what your specific concerns were. I only wanted to note that the boxes were dealt with as a group. Opening the debate for a component of the system is close to (re)opening the debate for the entire system, as changes to small parts can have a much greater impact. I have never thought that you intended to dismantle the scheme (although the clarification is appreciated). But I do believe that piecemeal additions and/or modifications should be made with great care or not at all, or else the system can be corrupted and its utility undermined.

All that said, I should like to be educated on your concerns, so that I may assist in addressing them properly. There is no need to repeat yourself if a link can do, of course. :-) Waltham, The Duke of 02:41, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Waltham's previous message: Haha, thanks Waltham. That's a prime example of what I mean: Waltham likes the category message boxes, while I dislike them. That is, the styles now are a compromise. They are not my personal taste or design, but the logical middle way between all the disparate wills. The "logical" middle way as in not necessarily exactly the middle way but instead something that works together with the other styles in a logical way.

And yes, I very much agree that category descriptions should not go inside the category notice boxes. That's like putting a Wikipedia how-to guide inside the {{how-to}} box or similar. Notices should of course just be "notices", not entire pages. I have it on my to-do list to bring that up for discussion somewhere and fix some of the category notice usage. (But I have been too busy with more fun work, like programming templates.)

Regarding Waltham's latest message: As usual Waltham says what I am thinking but in a more clear way than I could.

jc37: Aahhww, and I who were just going to suggest we move this discussion to Template talk:Mbox. But sure, we can keep the discussion here a little longer. I hope it is okay that we move it to Template talk:Mbox later when we feel a bit more "finished"?

jc37: Now I am curios (just like Waltham), it seems your concerns perhaps differs form what I thought they were. You mention XfD message boxes like they are a subgroup of the deletion boxes. Are there other deletion boxes than XfD templates and speedy delete templates? I mean, for the speedy delete templates we have the red border and the pink background, so they have their own style. So as far as I get it the style with red border and the normal background is reserved for XfD templates. So, is XfD boxes a subgroup and you thus mean to add a new type of messages (with a new style), or do you want to change the style for the existing delete type?

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; I meant to show this difference of opinions. Although I have been rather lucky, as I only really had to compromise in the tmbox discussion, and not as much as others had to, either.

Note: I'm still watching all the -mbox templates, even though there has been nothing non-technical for me to comment on for ages. I think this is my opportunity to take my watchlist below 110 pages for the first time in months. Could you let me know if something style-related does come up? Waltham, The Duke of 06:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Waltham: I'll try to remember to let you know. But it is not that likely I will remember. Do not trust that I will remember anything. I don't even trust my own memory myself. (And that is why I write important things down. I wouldn't survive without my little old-school paper-based pocket calendar. I don't leave home without it.)

And hang on! 110 pages? Isn't there a zero wrong there? My watchlist is about 1600 pages long, in spite that I constantly remove items from it...

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I fully understand what it's like to have a weak (or simply highly selective) memory. No need to be anxious; if something is big enough, I'll probably hear about it in the Pub Pump or on this page, which I do not intend to un-watch.

Speaking of un-watching, the number was correct. The greatest-ever extent of my watchlist was around 140 pages, a month or two ago. I simply remove whatever I don't need, and being a humble third-rate copy-editor, there are few mainspace pages and templates to watch. I stalk a few talk pages, WikiProjects, discussion venues, and guidelines, and that's about it. I do check on the watchlist quite often; it even has its own button below my browser's address bar (although it's permanently open in its own tab anyway—I always have at least ten of them open). I have three more buttons, which I click several times a day: SBS watch, Check protection expiry, and Main Page errors. My self-imposed chores, see. Waltham, The Duke of 08:44, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

(Ok, I've lost all hope of trying to thread responses.)

I have two main concerns: visibility, and making sure the currently intended template usage reflects actual past intended usage.

The first concern is mostly about the discussion notiification templates. (Which is mostly XfD, but prod/move/merge/split/transwiki/etc. all fall under this grouping.)

The second concern is mostly about Template:Caution and Template:Warning.

Taking the latter first: Giving a template a makeover shouldn't dramatically change its intent or usage. And if irregularity in usage is discovered, it would seem to make more sense finding a solution to the irregularity, than to force an arbitrary standard without repairing the usage of the past. It would be similar to dramatically changing where a redirect pointed, without changing WhatLinksHere. (Imagine if WP:V was suddenly pointed to WP:VANDAL, for example.)

So I'm not thrilled with what happened to the two templates post-mbox. They were mostly intended for warnings to users about actions, but in reality have been used for anything which an editor thought it would be cool to have a the triangle ! or a stopsign.

But now, Template Warning has been made the "content" type, with a different icon, and a different colour scheme. A rather dramatic change from it's original design. Especially for such a widely used template.

My suggestion was that we should add two more "types" to mbox called "caution" and "warning". As an option, the "content" type could be renamed "caution". (Calling one "content" really is confusing, since most templates are about "content", and because often the "content" style is used for templates that have nothing to do with "content", simply due to the progressive nature of the colour scheme.)

By implementing my suggestion, the entire standard still would remain. The colour scheme would remain stable and intact.

And by doing this, we wouldn't have to go back" and check over the previous edits of the editors.

And even better, just like the "notice" type essentially deprecated the "notice" template. (I presume.) These two types would deprecate the "caution" and "warning" templates in the same way.

And further, we wouldn't have to go back and look over the previous edits, since: the previous "style" would essentially be in place, just as the original editors had intended when choosing to transclude them in the first place.

We get all the benefits, without any negatives that I see. (Unless there's someone out there that doesn't like the stopsign, or red, I suppose. But then, both of those were in wide usage prior to the standardisation, so I really don't see that as an issue either.)

Anyway, that's about as succinct as I think I can explain.

As for the page notice concerns, I'm working on a proposal. (Since at this point, I think people need to visually see the problems, in order to understand.)

Does that clarify somewhat? - jc37 11:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Your proposal

I started to comment there, but decided that here was better.

• "Good luck with that, my experience is that much of that won't ever find consensus. (Then again, perhaps people may at least understand your proposal : )

The main one is that you just suggested that a "cabal" of admins decide who can get a user-right.

Another is that (from what I understand) "protection" is hardwired into the user-right system and would need to be re-written. Something that would presumably be more work than just moving around some of the other "less-integrated" user-rights. (I suggested protect to be given separately awhile back, thinking that it would be nice for certain bots and experienced coders. Needless to say, nothing came of it.)

And a third is that the-powers-that-be have said that they don't want an "interim admin" package. (A half-step between user and admin.)

Hence my suggestion. This should meet most of the concerns, and yet be rather simple to implement, and there should be little to not "changeover chaos" in implementation, as the existing processes absorb it effortlessly. But I guess we'll see. - jc37 14:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't really have much to answer about this. I just wanted to share my idea about the user levels over at that discussion (wherever it was, I don't have the link handy and you didn't link to it). Anyway, I just wanted to note that I have read your message.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Mountainindex

Hi, David! Could you, please, explain, what was wrong with tying {{Mountainindex}} to {{SIA}}? The way I see it, the former is in no way different than any other set index that can be produced by the SIA template with the type parameter. Am I not seeing something obvious? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Never mind; I've just spotted your response on the talk page. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:10, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded to Ezhiki over at Template talk:SIA#Parameters.

--David Göthberg (talk) 02:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Scheme copied by Commons?

I've noticed the Commons message boxes on this page and find their colours quite interesting. What do you think? Waltham, The Duke of 04:22, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean their "featured picture" boxes, or their "retouched picture" box? Or both?

Their box design pre-dates our {{imbox}} design. And our imbox design is partly based on what people already were using for image message boxes. When we designed the featured image box for the English Wikipedia (the one you see at the top) we on purpose made so it would look good together with the featured image boxes from Commons, since as you can see they end up on the same page. But we still kept the Wikipedia style for it, so it is visible that it is a Wikipedia box. That is 80% width and light grey background, like the other imboxes. (The box at the top is an {{imbox}} with "type=featured".)

And I think their boxes look fairly good. Although 100% wide is a bit much on higher screen resolutions. I like the brown boxes, but I think their grey box has slightly too dark background and too light border.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Please forgive the delay in replying; I've been down with a nasty cold.

Thank you for explaining the situation; I agree that the boxes look good, and like the overall harmony of the page. The grey box's background may be a little dark, but I don't mind it and find that it matches well with the background of the brown box (though its border could be a little bit darker).

I am pleased with how our boxes have turned out; ours and the Commons ones are alike yet different. I hadn't paid much attention to the Commons boxes before, so I have only recently seen the similarity. As I was not involved in the format designing for imbox, I could not know which set was the original. There is so much interchange between projects nowadays, after all; I've found amboxes used in crazy ways in some foreign Wikipedias... Waltham, The Duke of 03:39, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a lot of interchange. Some of the mbox styles have actually been inspired by ideas from the other projects and languages.

And yeah, I think I saw that on one project they used the ambox styles (not the tmbox styles) for talk pages only, but had no standard for article pages. And I think they even called it "ambox". So the styles are not coordinated between the different language Wikipedias.

I think it would be very hard or at least way too much work to coordinate the designs with all the other projects. (I don't have time to do more than I already do.) Thus so far I have just continued my work here to make good and clear code and styles here, with good documentation. And that job isn't even finished yet. I hope that makes it reasonably simple for the other projects to copy our mboxes if they like them.

And that's exactly the reason why I and many other non-native English speakers do our work here at the English Wikipedia, instead of on our native language Wikipedias. That is, this is the biggest language Wikipedia and editors from many languages and cultures help out here, so the work we do here is more likely to be reused (and be reusable) on the other projects than if we do it "locally" at the other projects.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. On one hand, it is more likely that, due to the English Wikipedia's size and stature, trends will trickle down from here to the other projects rather than bubble up our way. On the other hand, this place gathers more contributors, and therefore talents and ideas, and has more potential for fruitful exchange of opinions.

We really are at the centre of innovation (although this would probably also include the other big Wikipedias, especially the German). And it is a good thing to consider the needs of other projects—which we do. But it is certainly not our job to baby-sit other projects and their use of templates developed here. After all, everything is available for free use. Waltham, The Duke of 04:27, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

		The Special Barnstar
		Thanks for spending a lot of time helping me to fix Image:Preah Vihear Temple.png last night. n:Thai-Cambodian generals in talks after border clash kills two finally has the map! Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, how did you get that instruction template to show up that people see when they edit your talk page? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. But that image fix was really just routine.

And the instruction template you see when you edit my talk page is an editnotice. You can read up on them at Wikipedia:Editnotice. And you don't need to be an admin to add one to your user page or talk page.

The one you see on this page is a bit special since it uses my own editnotice loader, which has special features such as the "view" link in its upper right corner and some other things that makes it easier to use. It also makes it possible for users to add editnotices to subpages in their user space. I have so far not been able to get consensus to install that one for all users.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:31, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks David. That seems terrible complicated, but it might be because I'm doing it at 2am! I have the notice I'd like to use at User talk:Matthewedwards/Sandbox/Editnotice. Would it be possible for you to actually set it up correctly for me, please? Regards, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The Anomebot2

Hi, just letting you know that I have unblocked User:The Anomebot2 on the condition that it performs its other approved tasks, ie. not adding {{coord missing}} to articles. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 13:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Ameliorate: Thanks for informing me. But I looked around and I can't find any place where Anome has accepted and understood under what condition the block has been raised. Has there been such a discussion somewhere, or do you just assume that he will not continue to add the {{coord missing}} to articles?

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:45, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have given you the link before. It was discussed on ANI (archive link) and clarified on my talkpage. If it starts to add {{coord missing}} again (whether there is any visible content in the template or not) it should be reblocked, but as far as I know it performed its other, approved, tasks without objection. ~ User:Ameliorate! ^{(with the !) (talk)} 10:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to intrude in , David , but here is the link  :) -- Tinu Cherian - 10:13, 20 October 2008 (UTC) I am late -- Tinu Cherian - 10:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Ameliorate: Ah, thanks for the links. And yes, the other task of the bot (to add existing coordinates found in other databases) is very valuable.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:54, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari.

This section has been copied to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell#Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari. --David Göthberg (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi David, i've been away a bit, and it seems you are still working on all this templatebanner mess, so i figured you would know best where to look. As of recently, i'm seeing this problem with the wikiprojectbannershell on Safari 3.1. Can you help pinpoint the problem ? non tmboxed banners do not have this problem. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you point to the page here at Wikipedia which you took that example from?

And it really is User:Happy-melon who is working with those templates, not me. He has been doing a lot of code changes lately and I am not up to date with his changes. And he has Safari, while I can't run Safari on my operating system.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:24, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have Safari, actually, which explains why I haven't seen this issue before. I echo DG: I need to know what the code looks like that produced that output for you. Happy‑melon 16:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I looked around a little since TheDJ has not yet responded. I see the problem when I use my slightly old Opera 9.02 and look at Talk:International Space Station. I don't see the problem with my Firefox 2 and not with my Internet Explorer 5.5. The cases I have found that has the problems use {{WPBannerMeta}} inside {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. I have not had time to look closer at the code, and I might not have any spare time for a week now or so.

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:34, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is almost certainly (read probably definitely!) with the tmbox classes rather than WPBannerMeta per se, but I'll consider all options, naturally! Can you (TheDJ and DG) take a look at this sandbox and tell me what you see? Happy‑melon 15:54, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

First a note: I will be moving this discussion to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell later.

Happy-melon: In the sandbox you linked to, when I use my Opera 9.02 I see the following banners being only as wide as their text content: Discworld, Aerosmith and Foo. The others (including the "trivial" one) have 100% width.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm... I've just downloaded and installed Opera 9.02 from the opera.com archives, and it renders both pages entirely correctly! How bizzarre! I might try Safari just to be certain. Good idea to move this to TT:WPBM btw, go ahead with that. Happy‑melon 17:01, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

This section has been copied to Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell#Wikiprojectbannershell and Safari. Continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Have a great day

-- Tinu Cherian - has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy munching! Have a great day -- Tinu Cherian - 05:48, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Spread the goodness of cookies by adding {{subst:Cookie}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Tinucherian: I am pretty sure I have said it before: I do not want any contact with you. Stay off my talk page.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

CAT:

1. Probably the best thing to do with these is move CAT:, WP: into a subcategory, membership to be transcluded by {{R from shortcut}}. This can be done automatically or manually.
2. I turned off sentence casing yesterday - putting REDIRECT instead , but found that most of the items were "redirect" - as you say it does not matter greatly, but I prefer as much WP-ease (template names, style on talk pages/documentation etc.) to be sentence case and full words as it creates a conducive environment for reducing the amount of work fixing article MoS problems. I may tweak this to only change lower-case to sentence case.

Thanks for your note. Rich Farmbrough, 12:01 23 October 2008 (UTC).

Note to self: I have responded over at Rich's talk page, where I started this discussion.

--David Göthberg (talk) 12:30, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

WP: YEs I remembered that after I posted.. "template cannot.. detect" I can't keep up with which parser functions are implemented, but that sounds like a challenge! (To our template gurus - I hasten to add.) Rich Farmbrough, 12:34 23 October 2008 (UTC).

Broadbot

Hi David

You blocked my bot earlier today beacause a stupid edit in the doc-template. As stated before (in May) my bot very rarely edits templates (last time was in May) and only deals with new articles. The template edits was part of a cleanup on the danish Wikipedia which included a few template edits, of which the doc edit was the only faulty one. Therefore i would like to have my bot unblocked again as soon as possibly. Thanks in advance. --Broadbeer (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I have responded over at User talk:Broadbot#Same problem again.

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Is mbox type=delete officially a misnomer?

Regarding this edit, my reasoning in not using type=delete originally was that "delete" is stated as being for "Deletion templates" in the documentation; there isn't a type for "This is serious, read it before you do anything", so I made up a "custom" type and styled it to look just like delete. If anything needs to be done about it, just a change to say "Deletion templates and other serious notices" is sufficient as far as I'm concerned. Anomie⚔ 23:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The official mbox style for "major warnings" such as for "This is serious, read it before you do anything" is the orange "type=content". The red "type=delete" is for deletion templates, and perhaps for the highest level block warnings and similar. (What colours to use for user block boxes is still being discussed.) But, in your own user space you do pretty much as you like, so I may not force the orange major warning "content" type on your message there. Besides, that message box is about blocking, so red is probably the right colour there. And I had to do something to stop that {{ombox}} from reporting itself to our error category. So since you had given it a red border I changed its type to the red "delete" type, since that was the one with the same look as your hard-coded style. And as you saw I did the same on some other pages in your user space.

For the box on User:AnomieBOT/source/tasks/SandboxCleaner.pm the "delete" type was not a perfect match, since you had hard-coded a 1px border. But I chose the delete type anyway since that was the closest. But I also left your hard-coded style, thus the box kept your 1px border. Another option would have been to simply remove the "type" parameter, since then the {{ombox}} falls back to the default "notice" type. And then your hard-coded border would still see to that your box looked like you wanted.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:21, 26 October 2008 (UTC)