User talk:Teratornis

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Welcome!

Hello, Teratornis, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! - review me 05:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Greetings!

Greetings, Teratornis!

Saw your page because of your work on my Middletown and Cincinnati Railroad page. I also did the Cincinnati, Lebanon, and Northern Railroad article. I've written a number of southwest Ohio articles and am glad to see another contributor. Let me know if I can help you out. Good work on the Lebanon Countryside Trail article, by the way. PedanticallySpeaking 15:11, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. I'm new at this, I'm sure I'm flubbing up something, so if you see that my fly is down, be sure to let me know. (I routinely ride a bicycle in traffic, and if I can handle that, I doubt any criticism could be worse. Tell it to me straight, doc.) My main early consideration is to do no harm. That's why I started with the Lebanon Countryside Trail; it didn't appear to intrude on anyone, and it filled an actual gap in other articles that mentioned the trail. As you can see from the May 13, 2006 version (I don't know how to hyperlink to a specific article version yet, other than maybe this ugly brute-force way), my use of the geolinks template in the article appears to be incorrect. Evidently a page should only have one instance of that template. So I will try the {{coor d}} template instead. I'm not sure of the best article layout to describe features along a trail (especially a long trail with lots of features to describe), and I haven't found any clear winners elsewhere on Wikipedia yet, not that my review is anything like comprehensive. Judging from the comments on User_talk:Tom_guyette, there seem to be some questions about whether bike trail articles are even valid Wikipedia articles. I think they are, but my point of view is hardly neutral on that.
Anyway, just a bit of rambling there. Yes, I did look at your user page to see whose articles I was tweaking, and I'm so new at Wikipedia that I didn't even know yet how to contact you. Please see my comments on the Little Miami Bike Trail talk page. I suggest moving the article content to Little Miami Scenic Trail (which I made initially as a redirect to Little Miami Bike Trail) and making Little Miami Bike Trail a redirect to Little Miami Scenic Trail, for the reasons I listed in the talk page (especially the disparity in Google search result counts). (I'm probably referring to this page-moving process much more awkwardly than a fluent Wikipedian would. I have some nerd credentials, but not yet in this domain.) Since I'm so new at this, I refrained from being bold and unilaterally moving it without asking the earlier author(s) first.
I downloaded a copy of Google Earth yesterday to give myself a convenient way to look up latitude, longitude coordinates of geographic objects (I guess using the WGS 84 datum), and now I would like to go around adding map links to articles about various objects I personally see when I ride my bike (for example, the Jeremiah Morrow Bridge---I had some trouble finding the exact location of the Golden Lamb Inn, however; I know it to within a block, but I think the geocoded position from the street address that the map sites return is a block or two too far south. Next time I ride to Lebanon I will have to note the exact position).
I have a dilletante's interest in mapping, because I have found route planning/navigation to be a surprisingly significant barrier to the smooth functioning of group bicycle rides. A typical recreational group ride on secondary roads may have from 25 to 75 named intersection turns, resulting in a level of complexity that baffles most people. This forces all participants on a group ride (on roads lacking painted marks) to ride within sight of someone who knows the way (for example, me), but the typical distribution of speed preferences is wide enough to make that difficult if the group is at all large. There are several possible solutions to the navigation problem, each with its own set of undesirable tradeoffs. Ultimately, GPS technology might solve the problem, but prices must come down, and there must be at least one cyclist who knows some nice routes and can put them into a format usable by all the others. That's the long-term goal driving my interest in mapping now. It's also just cool to click on a hyperlink and see where something like the Middletown Junction (which article I just updated with a geolink template) is on a map, and marvel at the satellite and aerial photos. Maps seem to make otherwise dry topics come alive in a way words alone rarely do, especially for things that are inherently geographical. Perhaps someday, someone will integrate Wikipedia into Google Earth, so users can fly around geographically and pop up articles on things by location. Then eventually it will all get integrated into ultra-miniaturized computers we can wear in contact lenses, to provide pop-up explanations on whatever we happen to look at in the real world, assuming the current situation is safe enough to permit the distraction, which the smart contact lenses must of course be smart enough to judge.
If we need to discuss anything at length, I'd find e-mail possibly more convenient, and if you agree, I think I have set my user preferences to allow me to receive e-mail. Teratornis 21:17, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
I recently stumbled across OpenStreetMap. This looks useful as a way to build up geographic information via the Wiki model. Teratornis 20:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I see you've done some work on an article I began, Jeremiah Morrow Bridge. Good to see your contributions. PedanticallySpeaking 17:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I gazed up in quasi-wonder at the Jeremiah Morrow Bridge from the Little Miami Scenic Trail, many times, before I knew its name. So it was natural for me to add some info and links about the Jeremiah Morrow Bridge from the Trail perspective. Thousands of people bicycle, inline skate, or walk under the bridge(s) each year, and it's possible they are more aware of the scale of the bridge(s) than the thousands of people who drive over them on I-71. I think bridges are cool. I noticed some of the bridge articles do not have coordinate templates yet. It's easy to locate the larger bridges in Google Earth, and get their coordinates with the method I described here. When I read an article about some fixed object or place, and it does not have coordinates yet, I just add them. It only takes a few minutes, and it improves the articles with those great coordinate template links. Teratornis 20:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] simple links

Hello. You really don't need to write [[Misnomer|misnomer]], as you did at quantum leap. Just writing [[misnomer]] suffices. Also, just writing [[hyphen]]ated, [[logic]]al, [[cat]]s, [[evolution]]ary, [[rabbi]]nical, [[Egypt]]ian, [[dogma]]tic, [[apocrypa]]l, etc., makes the whole word, not just the part in the brackets, appear as a clickable link, which links to the article whose title is in the brackets. The more complicated thing can be used for things like [[philosophy|philosophies]]. Michael Hardy 22:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. I make a habit of linking to canonical article names because I do a fair number of edits to computer software articles, in which many terms are regrettable overloads of common words such as find, cat, web, log, more, less, tar, gnu, zip, compress, patch, hash, head, tail, etc. (for more examples, see Category:Unix software); and even seemingly innocuous case variations in a link can refer to a different article than I intended. What's worse, new computer programs continuously appear, further eating into the namespace of ordinary terms. Thus there is no guarantee that case variations on an existing article will continue to point to the canonical article in the future. It's easier just to stay in the habit of linking to canonical article names, rather than have to check to see whether all the variations of case and so on link to what I want, and to keep checking forever. Besides, who suffers if the markup is a little longer than the theoretical minimum? Most Wikipedia visitors are merely readers rather than editors, and they never see the markup. — Teratornis 10:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I added an image for your Wikipedia user:Teratornis page, mostly for practice as the image upload has taken some learning on my part and since it was a wiki task that we had discussed. You may also be interested in viewing my first image upload attempt in the article Brittany (dog). If this image edit on your page is unsatisfactory, certainly feel free to delete it or modify it. To view recent images uploaded, go to [1]| Gallery of new files. I will be glad to share any pointers on image editing. Marycontrary 21:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Index to Wikipedia

[edit] My index

Interesting post to my talk page. The reason you didn't find any indication of anyone else doing (or thinking) of doing indexing, when you looked at what I've compiled, is that I've found nothing myself. I've left notes at a couple of user pages where the user had done a lot of work on their own personal directory, asking if they knew of an index (so I wouldn't be reinventing the wheel); no success. I admit to not thinking about searching meta for capabilities of the wiki software, however.

As to what generated my interest in an index - I started writing a user manual (for editors), and realized that organizing information about Wikipedia pages into a "logical" sequence was essentially impossible - exactly where does one put pages about edits, or manual of style - beginner, intermediate, advanced user chapters? (I've found several attempts to write what appears to be a "logical" guide to Wikipedia, abandoned.)

I then realized that rather than a table of contents, which I'd tried, or a directory (a page gets listed in just one slot), that an index provided the flexibility I needed - and, to boot, it was useful while I built it.

[edit] Meta and automatic keyword generation

What you found at m:Help-style indexing (and I'd never known about) was a built-in index (of sorts) for meta help pages, using keywords. For example, for m:Help:DPL, if you look at the source, you'll find the following:

<meta name="keywords" content="Help:DPL,Administration,Advanced templates,Array,Calculation,Cascading style sheets,Category,Common words, searching for which is not possible,Contents,Deleting a page,Diff" />

Looking at Help:Edit summary, this is in the source:

<meta name="keywords" content="Help:Edit summary,Contents,A quick guide to templates,Calculation,Category,Diff,Dummy edit,Edit conflict,Edit toolbar,Editing,Editing shortcuts" />

And looking at a very recent policy, Wikipedia:Canvassing, which has no antecedent at meta, this is in the source:

<meta name="keywords" content="Wikipedia:Canvassing,Canvassing,WP:CANVAS,WP:CANVASS,Administrators' noticeboard,Consensus,Ignore all rules,Multiposting,Policies and guidelines,Requests for arbitration/Guanaco, MarkSweep, et al,Requests for arbitration/IZAK" />

Where do these keywords come from? From wikilinks; they are automatically created by stripping off "Wikipedia:". (The software is smart enough to also strip off a the front of a full URL when a URL is used rather than a wikilink, in the text.) In fact, keywords are generated for every page in this wiki, I believe, based on my looking at a regular article and at my user talk page, though the rules appear to be different for different types of pages.

[edit] So, what next?

But are keywords used for anything that a normal editor might encounter? I can't find any indication that they are. A search of Wikipedia namespace found only one thing vaguely related to keywords, this very unusual WikiProject, which survived two deletion attempts (in the first, no one voted; in the second, a couple of users said - essentially - "I have no idea what this is, but it could be useful.") (Related page: User:Tractor.) And while the founder and sole member of that WikiProject is aware that source pages include keywords, he apparently isn't aware of their potential power (or has a totally different focus).

So, to summarize, we have (a) automated keyword generation; (b) a existing feature in meta that I'm guessing was designed for programmers looking through "m:Help" files, which uses keywords found on a subset of meta pages, and (c) nothing else, apparently, that takes advantage of these (except, possibly, outside search engines?). Interesting. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 23:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais

Hello, An article that I created as a part of Wikiproject Cycling called Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais and linked to the Mount Tamalpais article, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mountain Biking on Mount Tamalpais. Thank you, Bob in Las Vegas -  uriel8  (talk) 10:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Editor's index - thanks

Thank you for moving the indexing discussion, and for suggesting better navigation. I'm thinking about using three-character links (that is, span id = "Con") (generally, for Wiki, it may be five letters) instead of full names, a modified approach, which has the advantages of (a) requiring fewer anchors; (b) requiring less typing in the piped links, and (c) degrading gracefully. The last is particularly important - if in the index I change "Articles" to (say) "Articles (general)", then I break every anchor in index that points to "Articles" (true, I could leave multiple anchors in place); if I anchor to "Art", it doesn't matter. And then perhaps (d) - if I get the index entry slightly wrong (say, it's "Stubs" but I think it's "Stub"), it doesn't matter (just as now it doesn't matter because the link goes to the top of the "S's.)

I'll take a pass, for the moment, on your offer of help; it's useful for me to inventory the trees, so to speak, every once in a while so that I'm current on what's in the forest; but I may come back on that. I want to play around a bit with the modified approach.

And, finally, apologies for missing your posting of the 13th. I'm starting to get in the habit of checking my talk page history to see if I've noticed everything, but that's recent - I've been used to just checking the bottom, but the volume is starting to pick up and that's no longer working well.

P.S. I've added navigation immediately below each letter, as you suggested - good idea. When I've been using the index, I've constantly had to go "top of page" to navigate; irritating. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, that is impressive. I'm going to be using your page even more now. --Teratornis 21:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yes, yes, yes, your post was brilliant

Your post regarding the nonsensical policy on IP editors was excellent, keep it up. I am coming to the view that the illogical a priori thinking on this issue must be visibly challenged when it come up. See this example of an exchange with admins as an example. The silent majority must speak up. Buddhipriya 20:23, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Here is yet another example of a public wiki which formerly allowed anonymous edits, and switched to requiring user registration in response to the inevitable deluge of vandalism and SPAM:
Supporters of the Wikipedia policy to allow anonymous edits claim that requiring user registrations will do nothing to reduce vandalism. And yet the experience of many other wikis disagrees with that claim. I find this peculiar. However, I would not go so far as to call the existing policy "nonsensical." Some of the problems it causes clearly are, but Wikipedia is the world's largest and most popular wiki, indeed Wikipedia is almost single-handedly responsible for driving the current explosion of interest in wikis, so the current array of policies here cannot be entirely nonsensical. I do, however, think the powers that be should continuously re-evaluate every policy, rather than mindlessly evoking the Appeal to tradition, to see if the reasons for the policy still apply. As I mentioned in my essay, Wikipedia is progressively requiring user registrations, by applying levels of protection to more articles over time. It seems inefficient to end up individually protecting a million articles from anonymous edits when we could just protect the whole site and be done with it. --Teratornis 21:37, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, of course. This is like living in a city that has prohibited the use of locks on doors. People are annoyed by burglars, so they urge putting more police on the streets. We should not be exchanging claims about things, we should be examining data together to see things like what percentage of edits that remain unreverted for more than 24 hours come from IP accounts. I am not aware that the Wiki software has the tools available to answer statistical questions of that sort, perhaps it is somewhere I have not seen. And I do not want to see data analysis from 2005, which is a long time ago. I want to see data from the current 30-day period. We must demand that these people cite reliable sources for their claims of how wonderful it is to let every adolescent on the planet participate in the authoring of an encyclopedia. Perhaps we could create a category for Articles where it does not matter if the content is correct and allow open IP editing of that class of material. Buddhipriya 21:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
You make some dangerously good points. I hope you do not get banned for being too persuasive.
Here's a link on the editor's index:
which is not exactly a statistical study of the type you mention, but is perhaps a vague first step in that direction. I've looked at the workings of the MediaWiki software a bit, while installing and running some corporate wikis; the information you want to collect is almost certainly available in the underlying Wikipedia database. Getting it out would require some database programming.
The editor's index links to other possibly useful pages, such as:
which links to some studies that attempt to quantify some aspects of Wikipedia. Perhaps you could find some researchers who would want to investigate the questions you mention. --Teratornis 22:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
And to comment on Articles where it does not matter if the content is correct, I think it would make sense to partition Wikipedia somehow into a zone where the newcomers can edit freely, and another zone where editors must have proven their competence in some way, even if just by having been around for a while and demonstrating a serious desire to contribute. It's interesting to see how few of the articles in WP:VITAL are featured or good. Having looked at that list, I see some obvious ways to improve Information technology, if only by adding links to articles that define the jargon terms and expand on the short summaries in what is essentially a survey article. --Teratornis 22:56, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aerial Photos answer on Help desk

Great post. Just thought you should know that. Xiner (talk, email) 04:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. For the record, I added some more comments. --Teratornis 17:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cincypedia

Personally, I'm partial to Cintipedia, like the postal abbreviation, but I'm too far upstream from y'all to have much of an opinion on the topic. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 14:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Another option might be "the 'nati pedia" but a phrase would be awkward, particularly one beginning with an Article (grammar). And speaking of upstream, I like to say Cincinnati will never experience a water shortage as long as Pittsburgh keeps flushing its toilets. --Teratornis 17:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm actually in-between the two (Pitt and Cincy). youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 17:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Detecting articles added to a category

Hi - I noticed your post at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Article_addition_to_a_Category. Related changes does a pretty good job of this, as described at Help:Category. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought of that, but when I looked at the Related changes for a category, I could not see an easy way to distinguish the articles newly added to the category from all the other changes to articles already in the category. Unless maybe editors typed an edit summary to that effect. --Teratornis 18:12, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki training videos

Very good find. I watched a couple - the guy knows what he's doing, though it's just a bit unpolished. It's also unfortunate that the breakpoints are (it seems) so arbitrary.

As for adding to the index - I'm happy to do that, but I'd prefer to link to Wikipedia namespace page rather than to a section of your user page, or, failing that, to a separate subpage of yours. For a Wikipedia namespace page, I'd suggest Wikipedia:Instructional material, as a more generalized name; that would cover, for example, a book about editing Wikipedia, and would be a good catch-all for a resource list (which I'd be happy to add - links to internal pages with coaching and classes, and to help/FAQ pages). If you're interested, just put the page up with what you have on your user page (which I thought was nicely done), and I'll edit the page to expand it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for the advice Coricus 16:29, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If you refer to my edits here, you must be joking. --Teratornis 17:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
LOL! No, I meant the advice about the Michael Bloomberg article. I was begining to think I was violating DBAD because I wanted to talk about the fact that all criticism is being edited from it and no one else seems to think it matters. (For example, the critical section "2004 Republican National Convention" has 3 sources in 4 paragraphs and yet it's still got an NPOV notice on it, yet it's probably already the best sourced section in the article... sourcing being a relative thing. And this bit has been removed completely, despite having 3 sources too). Oh well, he's not my mayor - I'll let someone else go through the drama of an edit war. Coricus 04:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
It looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger needs a similar campaign of reputation-cleansing. I'm finding that Wikipedia is so huge, and so naturally inconsistent as a result of all the different people editing various parts, that any rule anyone cites to justify doing anything to any article is simultaneously being violated on any number of other articles. Lance Armstrong has never been proven guilty of doping, but the sheer number of allegations and Lance's history of litigating his accusers is clearly notable. Another way around the edit wars is to start (or add to) articles which are specifically about the controversial bits that have been cleansed. For example, there might be some list-type article about allegations of sexual harassment against politicians. Allegations against a particular politician may or may not belong in an article which is primarily about the politician, but it's harder to claim they don't belong in an article which is about allegations against politicians. A similar controversy erupted around whether it was "NPOV" or "notable" to mention that an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa was robbed and beaten by three black men. See: Talk:Nadine Gordimer#attack on Nadine Gordimer & attackers' race (cont'd) (or the link which will survive archival). --Teratornis 17:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peacocks

If you think that was using peacock words, try the rest of it on[2]

I think I was perhaps a little easy on this. Notinasnaid 17:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that's a stampeding herd of peacocks. --Teratornis 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I think it's done

Thank you for your help.

I've finished my main copy-edit of User:The Transhumanist/Virtual classroom/Yuser, on fighting link spam. Please take a look, and touch-up anything that needs it. It goes live on Wednesday (tomorrow). The Transhumanist   22:22, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:User WikiProject Open Source

I am trying to design a userbox for WikiProject Open Source. This is what I have so far -

Template:User WikiProject Open Source Wikipedia:UserboxTl

The following code is entirely inside the {{ }}:

Userbox | border-c = #999 | border-s = 1 | id-c = brown | id-s = 12 | id-fc = orange | info-c = olive | info-s = 10 | info-fc = evergreen | id = WikiProject Open Source | info = This is a Wikipedia:UserboxTl. | float = right

Is it OK to ask this here on your talk page and is this what you meant? Thanks. Marycontrary 13:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Your question would make more sense if you cited what you are replying to. I don't memorize everything I send to people. For information on userboxes, see Wikipedia:Userboxes. I'd expect a userbox to be smaller, like the ones in Wikipedia:Userboxes, and to say something like "This user is a member of WikiProject Open Source." --Teratornis 18:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


Too bad for you since I memorize everything that I send to people. You typed the following in an email - "You could try to design a userbox for WikiProject Open Source. Call it: Template:User WikiProject Open Source with the code: {{User WikiProject Open Source}}."
If your instructions simply meant to create a userbox without that Tl code, then it could look like this:
Image This user is a member of WikiProject Open Source.
What could be a good image for this userbox? I am still trying to find the color codes. The WikiProject Open Source article infobox contains a lime green and a pale yellow, not the standard green, yellow or orange shown here. Marycontrary 19:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Open-source software shows a logo: Image:Opensource.svg. Unfortunately, it's copyrighted according to the image page, so we can't use it in a userbox. --Teratornis 20:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] E-mail

Your Barracuda Spam Firewall is blocking email from me and possibly others (?) today. Marycontrary 16:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm still getting my daily SPAM barrage, so perhaps you should just send me SPAM. --Teratornis 18:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Over-The-Hump Ride page

I made some edits on the OTH page. Marycontrary 00:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Over_The_Hump_Ride Marycontrary 00:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The Recent changes page on Bicycling Wiki indicates that I am editing actively there recently. Therefore, you'll get my attention just as effectively by leaving messages on my user talk page there. In general, it is better to communicate with someone on the same wiki you are editing on, assuming the person you want to communicate with is checking that wiki (and I am in this case). --Teratornis 01:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A deserved acknowledgement

The Barnstar of Diligence
You deserve a barnstar for your often very detailed and well considered replies at the Help Desk, where you give complex matters your fullest attention. Good work! Adrian M. H. 18:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I second that, particularly for this. You're good, mate. PeaceNT 06:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your comment on Help Desk

Excellent and informative comment on Wikipedia:Help desk#FA Stabilization -- Yellowdesk 23:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. (For future reference, this topic has moved to: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 April 23#FA Stabilization; permanent link.) --Teratornis 03:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A fun "To-do" list

Hello Teratornis. I discovered this "to-do" template on a fellow 'pedian's userpage and copied it to my userpage. I am posting it here for you to check it out and see if you enjoy it too. Even if you don't get to do much editing on the list items, it is still interesting to take a gander and see what's hot or rather, not-so-hot! {{todo}}

I also added "edit count | edit summary usage" on my userpage too as I discovered from your userpage. Thanks. Marycontrary 11:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I just discovered that the "to-do" list is more of a personal list after all. Evidently I have been watching someone else's "to-do" list lately and not just a general Wikipedia page for it.... duh Marycontrary.... LOL! So here is your chance to modify your Teratornis tasks to do, or not. Marycontrary 11:13, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, it can be either or all of the above - the to-do list can be just your personal tasks or also pointing to - Wikipedia:Community Portal/Opentask. Wikipedia is so awesome because when you learn something new here, it is like a delightful surprise that leads to even more surprises/discoveries. Marycontrary 11:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

For your efforts in helping out users on Wikipedia:Help desk. Keep it up! ~Spebi 10:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
For your efforts in helping out users on Wikipedia:Help desk. Keep it up! ~Spebi 10:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Support

Hello, just a note of support to your essays on the Help Desk - especially on the topic of only allowing registered users to edit. I would prefer to work on content, but probably 90% of my 2000+ edits are vandal reverts. It is tiresome. Thanks. Cheers Geologyguy 15:24, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for expressing your opinion. I have to wonder about all these people fixing all that vandalism; are any of the constructive editors actually enjoying this? Real soon now I should collect all my blathering essays from the Help desk and elsewhere and edit them into some proper essay pages in my user space. Then I can just link to my essays instead of cluttering up the Help desk with all that content. --Teratornis 20:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for your help in the help desk

Hello Teratornis,

I just wanted to thank you for your help at the help desk (user manual for administrators question). Your assumption of me being an inexperienced user is very accurate. I am shocked by the difficulty of learning how to use this platform... makes me feel quite inadequate more than I would like. :) You made mention of expert help, are there individuals who would help get someone configured (i.e. consultants?) that you know of? I have skilled programmers, but without knowledge of how wiki works (which they don't) I not certain how much help they can be. Regardless of whether or not you can assist, I do appreciate your help and wish you the best. By the way, if you respond to this, I am not sure how I would know, I suppose I would have to come back to this page, or do you contact me...see how bad off I am! -Captainb360 13:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)]

For the record, the question was:
User talk pages are (in my opinion) a somewhat awkward method to converse with someone, since the only way to notify someone that you have replied is to type something on his or her user talk page. When two people alternate replies like that, the resulting discussion thread becomes incoherent. Therefore I prefer to keep the whole discussion on one talk page. For example, I can reply here, and merely note on User talk:Captainb360 that I replied, so you will know to come back here and look. However, if we need to discuss something at length, e-mail would be better. You can e-mail me at: Special:Emailuser/Teratornis.
Your shock at the complexity of MediaWiki is understandable, but most large open source software packages are similarly mind-numbing. For example, try figuring out Perl, DocBook, Apache HTTP Server, etc. If anything, MediaWiki is somewhat easier than some of these other packages because all the documentation is itself in wiki format, and every MediaWiki user can potentially improve it. The result is that MediaWiki has some of the best and most extensive documentation I have seen for any product, and we can make it better by correcting any errors, ambiguities, or omissions we notice as we use it.
As to whether your programmers could make headway with MediaWiki administration, they shouldn't have any trouble getting it installed. Anyone who can set up a Web site can set up a bare-bones wiki with MediaWiki. But as I mentioned in my Help desk reply, the kind of wiki you want to build may be a long way from a bare-bones wiki. A wiki is essentially a tool for writing prose, and in my experience, one does not find many programmers who make enthusiastic and skilled writers. A lot of wiki tasks require a mix of skills that isn't very common yet, although that will probably change as wikis become more popular.
As far as how to find MediaWiki consultants, one option is to search Wikipedia's user pages for "mediawiki consultant"; oddly, that finds only one hit. I suppose Wikipedia discourages users from advertising on their user pages.
MediaWiki consulting is a line of business I would like to start at one of the companies I work for, but we're still in the fairly early stages of getting our own people up to speed with wikis. It may be a bit early for us to take on outside clients for this kind of work, but it's never too soon to start discussing it. If you'd like to talk business, e-mail me at Special:Emailuser/Teratornis, as we should not use Wikipedia to discuss things not related to Wikipedia. --Teratornis 17:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keep up the good work

The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
is hereby awarded to Teratornis for continuous dedication to helping Wikipedians with their wikiproblems at Wikipedia's help desk. On behalf of the hundreds of users you have helped, and the thousands more to come, let me extend to you a big Thank you. The Transhumanist    18:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Wow, and that barnstar even rotates. The score is now: Teratornis, 3 barnstars; Bill Gates, 0. I guess Bill will have to glean what solace he can find in his billions. --Teratornis 20:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Make them four..

The Barnstar of Diligence
For your excellent and diligent efforts to help out users in the Wikipedia help desk, I am more than pleased to award you this condign Barnstar of Diligence. Thank you so much for your work and public-spiritedness. Keep it up! —Anas talk? 20:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cut-and-paste pagemoves

I noticed that you suggested using cut-and-paste to move a page on the Help Desk. This is highly inadvisable and can take some time for administrators to sort out; the problem is that the page's history ends up in the wrong place, leading to what is technically a copyright violation (the GFDL has a provision requiring author information to be retained). The correct procedure is the use of {{db-move}} on the target page to request an administrator to do the move for you; to request the sorting out of a cut-and-paste move, {{db-histmerge}} on the page that doesn't contain the history is the correct request tag. See Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen for more information. Hope that helps! --ais523 15:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out my error. I struck my incorrect advice. --Teratornis 15:08, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help Desk

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
Thanks for answering that question. You gave me an idea, and hopefully thats sorted it. Anyway, that must have been one of the more difficult questions! So, for that, and your other work on the help desk, have a barnstar, and congratulate yourself! Stwalkerster talk review 17:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome. I'm starting to poke around with m:Using the python wikipediabot, so I would be interested in knowing what you come up with. (For the record, the question was Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 May 30#Category Lists. And now that I've amassed a whopping five (count them) barnstars, I'm wondering what the record for that is. Probably a long way off.) --Teratornis 17:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you so much!

You just made my day! Rockstar (T/C) 16:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help desk

Thanks for your answer, I appreciate your help. I was actually asking for my adoptee, Cristixav, again, thank you! Neranei T/C 21:34, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for your hilarious message on the HelpDesk as to the editing of the Jesus-article. Made my day brigther. Very funny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eivind (talk • contribs)

For the record, the question was: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 July 22#Want to edit Jesus (permanent link). --Teratornis 14:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Help_desk#Technical_glossary

Replied there. —AldeBaer 18:30, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help desk

I'm not sure that was an entirely useful/relevant/friendly message. Did you read the thread a bit higher up the page that the poster refers to? --Dweller 15:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

(1) Why? (2) Yes, if I am guessing correctly as to which of my several replies on the Help desk you allude to. --Teratornis 18:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Essay?

I saw the postings at Wikipedia showing bias in favour of scientific explanations. Have you thought about turning this into an essay? -- Jreferee (Talk) 06:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

For the record, the non-breaking link is:
I suppose I could think about it. First I would need to research what other Wikipedians have written on the subject, so whatever I add would be in reference to what has gone before. From what I can understand about critical thinking and the scientific method, it seems to me that the "scientific point of view" is the neutral point of view, since scientists (at least collectively, if not always individually) remain perpetually open to new facts which could require them to abandon or modify their current theories. This is in sharp contrast to religions which generally claim divine revelation (or something similar) as their source of truth. Of course the scientific point of view tends to rigidify over time due to the historical effect - that is, the longer a given scientific theory has stood up to accumulating data, the less likely it seems to ever be overturned. That's because the facts that support the existing theory do not just magically go away, so any replacement theory which accounts for new facts would have to explain all the old facts just as well as the existing theory does. For example, by this point it's hard to imagine chemists will ever make discoveries that require them to throw out the periodic table of the elements. Thus it may seem to a naive user that chemists are very closed-minded to any new ideas about the nature of matter. And, in fact, chemists are closed-minded to mere ideas. One problem that cranks in general have is that they tend to be heavy on ideas and very short on data i.e. facts. --Teratornis 19:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your addition to "About"

Thanks for adding the section. It isn't quite the way I'd word it, but (as you may know) it's easier to edit someone else's words than to turn a blank piece of paper (or text box) into something that reads fairly well. So I'm going to edit it (later), and probably will move it to near the top of the page. And one of these days (I'm predicting November or December at this point) I'm going to move the index to Wikipedia space and turn control of it over to the community (not that I think I own it, even in my own namespace, but it's just about done, so I'm getting to the point where I don't need the additional control).

And thanks again for all your help on this, including the encouragement and positive reviews. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I suspect all the good things I have said about your Editor's index amount to an understatement. The index is a huge part of why I seem to have become addicted to answering questions on the Help desk - I'm continually amazed at how many questions reduce to a simple lookup. Wikipedia and its underlying MediaWiki software are the most extensively documented system I have ever seen, and the Editor's index lays out the entire fantastic structure of internal documents and makes the whole agglomeration usable. As more people use the index, it can stay up to date and even get better - which is the opposite of an index in dead tree format. The Editor's index probably more than anything else shows how Wikipedia is better than almost everything else in the world of computers - or maybe almost everything else in the world, period. I hope more people get this, and collaborate on the important task of indexing everything else. --Teratornis 04:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anchors in the index

Regarding your question, anchoring on "News" is fine. I also added an anchor for "New articles) ("NewA") and "New Editors" ("NewE"); the first is unnecessary in some sense because that is where the main "New" anchor is, but since these two, plus News, are so large, it makes sense to have separate anchors for all three (for consistency). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question re: transclusion

Hi. I saw your response to User:PrimeHunter at Wikipedia:Help_desk#How_to_post_Article_about_a_nationally_acclaimed_singer. and wanted to ask, if you don't mind explaining, what you mean about substitution and transclusion. I followed the links and read them, but they're a good bit more technical than I can easily follow. I'm asking in case this is something that I myself should be doing differently with templates, for example, {{subst:W-graphical}}, which I sometimes use. If you haven't time or inclination, I can always ask at the help desk. :) --Moonriddengirl 17:29, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be curious to know what you don't understand about Wikipedia:Substitution and Wikipedia:Transclusion. Even though those pages cover technical subjects, they should nonetheless be understandable to every Wikipedia editor who uses templates, at least in their introductory sections. I recommend that you read each page from the top, and the first bits you find confusing, ask about on the respective talk pages. Hopefully other editors can clean up the pages to make them understandable. It's possible the pages assume too much technical background, but they should be understandable to anyone who can use templates.
The difference between substitution and transclusion that matters with reference to my comment on the Help desk (permanent link, for when the current link breaks due to Help desk archiving) is that substitution leaves no hint of where the template text came from, whereas transclusion preserves a clue in the wikitext in the form of a template call, for example: {{W-graphical}}. Why does this matter? Because of the way many users learn MediaWiki editing, by clicking "edit" links, and looking at wikitext to see how other users did various things. Someone who sees a template call such as: {{W-graphical}} will immediately know that this is some sort of a tricky code that generates a whole bunch of code automatically. They might not know about templates yet, and they might not know they need to read Help:Templates, but they will know they need to look for some sort of help page. In contrast, if a large complex block of wikitext resulted from a template substitution, the new user who examines the resulting wikitext may assume some previous editor typed it all in.
In short, substitution is like the wikitext editing analog of failing to cite our sources.
Now, of course there are arguments in favor of substitution in certain circumstances, which you can read all about in the help pages. I'm just saying that in my opinion, one of the great strengths of Wikipedia is its learnability, and substitution degrades that. Wikipedia is not just "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but it is also the encyclopedia whose page coding language anyone can study by clicking edit links. Ideally, clicking an edit link should display exactly what the previous editors typed rather than a combination of what they typed plus a bunch of automatic changes done invisibly by the software.
Also, come to think of it, template substitution may be questionable from a GFDL standpoint, because when a user substitutes a template, the page history credits the resulting template text to the user who substituted it in, not to the user(s) who actually edited the template text. That is, there is no difference in the history between text you type and text you substitute. --Teratornis 21:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it, and your position certainly makes sense. If it were somehow indicated in the text that a template had been used on the help page, I would have been able to see that in the edit window and have either repeated the template there (instead of referring to the previous answer) or at least more readily adopted it for future use. To answer your curiosity, I am probably more technologically clueless than your typical Wikipedian. I could follow the pages more or less, but could not make sense of them in context of the comment. I wonder if it would be possible to encourage template makers to <!--note the name of the template--> within the template text itself, so that the substitution tag could be used but the template still be obvious to other users? I guess that's a village pump kind of proposal. --Moonriddengirl 21:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, just about anyone could add HTML comments to a template, to document it after substitution. One would only have to know enough template syntax to know where to stick such a comment. Some templates do have such comments, I think. But really, the MediaWiki software should automatically generate such a comment as part of the act of substituting the template text. --Teratornis 01:40, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Barnstar of Diligence
For manning the WP:HELPDESK. Nothing harder than that. --Sharkface217 09:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! But honesty compels me to admit it's not really hard to answer Help desk questions, because I leave the really hard ones for others to answer. And also because Wikipedians have put together such great tools for answering questions. As Richard Dawkins put it, I'm just a midget standing atop a gigantic pile of midgets. --Teratornis 13:28, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another barnstar (and a question)

What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
For the profound insight in essays such as Teratornis/Outplacement and Teratornis/Help desk notes. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which, what is your policy regarding editing of your userspace essays by others? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 13:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, and according to the Dunning-Kruger effect your ability to recognize competence in others (assuming your impression of my essay raving is correct) reflects well on your own competence. Therefore, I can't see the harm in letting you edit my essays. I would only ask that if you change them extensively, you explain what you are doing in edit summaries (of course) and on the respective talk pages (which would be good, to make it more likely for other readers to realize "my" essays are no longer reflecting only my thoughts). Since they are "my" essays, I reserve the right to revert anything I don't like, or to fork off my own "personal" versions if I think the collectively edited version is drifting in its own new direction, but generally I try to approach online interaction with the requisite sangfroid, so it takes a lot to get me to climb the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man. Until now, I hadn't actually thought about a "policy" regarding editing of my userspace essays by others, because I wasn't even aware anyone was reading them yet. It's a pity the English Wikipedia disabled MediaWiki's hit counters, particularly in userspace where they would be usefully informative. --Teratornis 17:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

For the time being, I only have one tiny technial thing in mind (I have not yet reached the level where I can actually improve the essay itself), but seeing that only you have edited those pages so far, I decided to be extra careful. Thanks, and keep up the good work. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 08:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Attempted Retention Process/Policy

Thankyou for your help on the Helpdesk, could I get you to add your thoughts to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Attempted_Retention_Process.2FPolicy as this appears to be the "offical" policy place? Fosnez 02:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sort of a diversion

The problem with becoming (somewhat of) an expert on everything important in Wikipedia is that I come across glaring (well, at least to me) holes that I think need fixing. If you have time, would you take a look at:

User:John Broughton/Cite.php version 2.

Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the current situation with footnotes is untidily diverse. However, there seems to be an ongoing dispute at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes, so there may be political as well as technical factors in the way of cleaning up the mess. I can't say I have examined all the issues carefully enough to have understood what people are arguing about, and to pick a side I might be on. Usually when I add a footnote to an article (which isn't often, but I've done it here and there), I just follow whatever style the article already uses. I agree that the inconsistency is glaring, but this may be one of those difficult-to-resolve issues like the national varieties of English. I probably won't find the time to look at your proposal in enough depth to comment intelligently on it. I could suggest, however, that in its current form the proposal is hard to understand without inline examples to illustrate the various footnote style alternatives. Some screen shots might help make the material less abstract. A basic principle of persuasion is to try not to impose too much work on the people one is trying to convince of something. --Teratornis 18:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki administration

I think this was of interest to you (I'd put it in the wrong place in the index; have moved):

MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide (a book).

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Too bad it's not as informative as a Google Books entry, which seems to be missing for this particular book. --Teratornis 18:51, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
For your thoughtful and informative contributions at the help desk. Even though I'm not the questioner, I learn a lot from your responses about technology, policy and interpretation. Moonriddengirl 12:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, and wow, to think that an administrator learns from little old me. I'm not worthy! I learn a lot from reading the Help desk too. And from searching it. --Teratornis 21:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Pshaw. Your wikipedia-fu is most impressive. Plus, you seem to look at things differently than many of the other help desk volunteers, so I often see you answering a dimension of a question I hadn't considered or answering it more thoroughly. :) Take your User:Teratornis/Tips for teachers, for example. That's a perfect example of looking globally at the help desk and attempting to address the situation that prompts the question rather than simply responding to the question. Most admirable, sir. :) --Moonriddengirl 21:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, if you are going to reward my transparently false modesty like that, I'll have to persist in it. How about: "Thou hast caused me to rend my garments." The interesting thing is that just two years ago, I barely had a concept of Wikipedia. I'm not sure I could even spell it. Wikipedia sits alone in an enviable position on the graph of design complexity vs. ease of learning. --Teratornis 23:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tips for teachers

Discussion that was here moved to: User talk:Teratornis/Tips for teachers. --Teratornis 17:03, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help!

My article, Moeko Matsushita, is up for deletion when I only just created it. I need your help. Please respond on my talk page.Kitty53 02:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I replied at: User talk:Kitty53#Moeko Matsushita. --Teratornis 03:24, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Drop-down list

Thank you for the example but I what I was actually asking for was the code or script of the drop-down category list that I can use on wikipedia pages. That's what I don't know how to do.

Jotsko 19:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I replied on User talk:Jotsko. --Teratornis 19:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that the scripting is {{#categorytree:Cycling}} but that is the category tree for Cycling. I would like to make my own tree rather than displaying a category tree of a particular category page.

Jotsko 19:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I failed to understand your question because you did not specify what you want to make a list of. Are you saying you want to make a list of something which is not a category? It looks like mw:Extension:Tree view does that, but that extension does not appear on Special:Version so evidently it is not available on Wikipedia. You might describe what you want to do on mw:Extension talk:Tree view and see if anybody knows anything. --Teratornis 19:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another set of eyes

Hi. I'm wondering if you can tell me if there is some reason that this edit or this edit are useful. The IP that added them has made questionable edits otherwise (see this blanking, for instance), but for all I know I'm seeing a bunch of ???s because I don't have the proper language script. I don't want to remove the edits if they have function. :) If you have a moment and can offer any insight, I'd appreciate it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:35, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I only see question marks also. According to Help:Interlanguage_links and List of ISO 639-1 codes, the editor appears to be adding interlanguage links to the corresponding articles in the Sinhala Wikipedia. The editor should have explained this in his or her edit summaries, but does not appear to have done so. You could leave a suggestion to do that on the editor's Talk page. The Sinhala Wikipedia must be very new, because it does not appear in List of Wikipedias yet, and there is no [[Sinhala Wikipedia]] article yet. But there is a wiki at the URL his/her interlanguage links are pointing to. --Teratornis 16:56, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into that. I'll leave a note suggesting edit summaries for future use and just leave them be. Evidently, they don't actively harm anything. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:08, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User:Teratornis/Outplacement

Are you aware of the existence of Wikipedia:Alternative outlets? Also, your idea is a good one in theory, but you should make sure the destination wiki has a compatible copyright policy to Wikipedia. Otherwise transwiki-ing info would be in violation of policy on its own. - Mgm|(talk) 16:25, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

You raised a question and a point; I respond to them separately:
  • Yes, I am aware of Wikipedia:Alternative outlets. If you compare it to User:Teratornis/Outplacement, you will see that I disagree with some statements it contains:
    • The section: WP:OUTLET#Inclusion criteria says we are to deliberately limit the list of alternative outlets. Since the list of alternative outlets is insufficient to take all the articles Wikipedia rejects, this is equivalent to saying we should want to completely screw some fraction of new users who got suckered by Wikipedia's overly-encouraging interface. I don't see how that is acting like a charity (Wikipedia gets a tax break, after all), nor is it consistent with WP:BITE. Did anyone analyze a representative sample of articles that new users created in good faith, which Wikipedia rejected, and determine that the list of alternative outlets is sufficient to give all those article attempts a home? I know from my Help desk experience that the list of alternative outlets is not enough to handle all the articles Wikipedia deletes. The most important feature for a list of alternative outlets is comprehensiveness. That is, if Wikipedia intends to follow its own policy of do not bite the newcomers, then Wikipedia owes everyone it suckers with its overly-encouraging interface a result comparable to what the interface implies you will get: your article somewhere on the Web. If Wikipedia really does want to prevent some articles from appearing anywhere, then let's behave charitably and fix the broken interface, so it properly informs new users of the large probability that their hard work will be summarily destroyed. Or better yet, let's require new users to demonstrate some knowledge of Wikipedia's content policies before we let them create new articles.
      • The important principle to bear in mind is the enormous cognitive overload and knowledge disadvantage new users face. Many have never used any other wiki. They have no clue that Wikipedia deletes around 2,000 articles per day. They have no idea that Wikipedia has fantastically complicated policies and guidelines. All they see is a bunch of articles, and an interface that encourages them to make articles about whatever they have in mind. We the experienced users know that if what they have in mind is not already here, odds are we don't want it, but they have no clue about that yet. Making it so easy for them to waste hours of their time and then get shocked by a deletion policy they had no clue about, when we know full well this happens over and over and over, is in my opinion insensitive to the point of meanness. It's much like the Vogon Constructor Fleet in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which came to demolition Earth to make way for an interstellar bypass, and shrugged off the last-second protests of Earthlings by noting the plans had been duly on file in a field office in a "nearby" star system. Never mind that earthlings at the time had no idea that other star systems were even inhabited. Good faith requires not only dreaming up policies, but making a good-faith effort to inform the people our policies affect soon enough so they can include them in their decision-making.
    • In any case, we are talking about Wikipedia's garbage. These are articles Wikipedia deletes. The fate for many of them is that they don't go anywhere. Sane people do not place many restrictions on where their garbage goes, as long as it goes away, and doesn't cause problems. When I set my garbage out on the curb, if someone finds a use for something I'm throwing away, as far as I'm concerned that's better than tossing it in a landfill. I don't care whether the person who uses my garbage agrees with my political views, my mission statement, or whatever. As long as he isn't actively harming me or someone else with my garbage, what do I care? Let's get over ourselves.
  • I don't see why I need to care about the copyright policy on the destination wiki. It's not my article. The user who typed the article submitted it to Wikipedia under the GFDL. If that user wants to copy the article somewhere else, that user bears the burden of complying with any restrictions stemming from the submission to Wikipedia. For example, if the alternative outlet wants to copyright the material, then the user will have to rewrite the article to work around the GFDL. That's the user's problem, not my problem, and not Wikipedia's problem (although I'm not an attorney, so I can't be sure). In practice, it is hard to see how this could matter, since Wikipedia deleted the article anyway. Wikipedia keeps a copy in its database, but only administrators can see it, so if common sense remotely applies, no one outside Wikipedia would hit us with a copyright violation over content they can't even tell we have buried in our database. I'm not saying there is zero risk, but the risk seems negligible in comparison to other risks Wikipedia takes, such as posting the Muhammed cartoons.
--Teratornis 05:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change of licensing

Thanks for the pointer. I can't think of any place that a change of licensing would impact the book, but - since I'm scheduled to do a complete author review this week - I'll keep my eyes open. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paid illustrators

Thanks; already in the index. I actually read the Foundation discussion on this, including the Board vote. (Doesn't affect the book - not really very much money involved, and they're going to hire professional illustrators.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help Desk

Hello Teratornis, although I understand you have around 2000 edits to the Help Desk, could I ask you to refrain from giving extended answers to questions (as you did with Gas Prices in 1958) that shouldn't be asked or should be directed to the reference desk. I understand you're only trying to help them, as me and other do, but making the page unnecessarily longer when the header of the page specifically says for questions relating to the use of Wikipedia, isn't what the help desk is for. I apologise if this causes any sort of offence, but please recognise this is in the interests of all parties. Regards, — Rudget Contributions 19:20, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Taking offense is something I have never found useful for remote collaboration, so I generally avoid it. I appreciate your input and share your concern for the usability of the Help desk - clearly the Help desk can improve, and there are ways we can improve it using the available wiki tools. However, the Help desk uses wiki technology that clearly was never designed for threaded discussion. Perhaps someday, mw:Extension:LiquidThreads may help with that, and the massive (and growing) size of the Help desk will no longer be such an issue. The Help desk also suffers from some Usability problems. Most Help desk question come from users with little to no experience at editing on Wikipedia; the steady stream of inappropriate questions demonstrates that our instructions at the top of the page do not by themselves constitute adequate user engineering for the users we intend to help. As a perusal of my Help desk contributions shows, I currently lean toward not punishing the users we are currently confusing; I attempt to answer inappropriate questions anyway, and I have been doing this consistently for some time. (My personal view is that if we are concerned about inappropriate questions, we should fix the broken software that promotes them.) As far as I can determine, answering inappropriate questions represents the consensus of the Help desk volunteer community:
Wikipedia guidelines are constantly evolving, so if you feel that guideline needs changing, please start a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Help desk/How to answer or Wikipedia talk:Help desk. --Teratornis (talk) 22:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Will do, thanks for replying. Must go to sleep now though. All the best, — Rudget Contributions 23:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course, the content of any of my Help desk replies is open to challenge, as is everything anybody writes. If you notice that I made factual errors anywhere, feel free to throw down the gauntlet. --Teratornis (talk) 01:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help Desk New Template Template:Hits

Hi,

I have created this new template for the Wikipedia Help Desk, for Hit Counters, can you please check that it is ok?

Template:Hits

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The Helpful One (Talk) (Contributions) 20:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks good enough to use. I might refine it later a bit (I'm leaving my computer now), using links and content from previous answers on the Help desk to this question. I'm thinking about making an alternate set of standard response templates, to reduce unnecessary bloat on the Help desk page (see the talk page topic just above this one). There is no need to substitute N copies of the same standard response text on the help desk. Instead, we could make compact standard response templates that look like templates (messageboxes), summarize the answer briefly, and link to a Help desk FAQ for the gory details. (The existing Wikipedia FAQs do not cover all the semi-frequently asked questions on the Help desk, so we should expand the FAQ collection to cover any question that comes up more than, say, twice in a year.) In general I like standard response templates to look like templates, i.e., they should display as message boxes, with links to back to their template pages, and from there to the list of standard response templates. This would provide several advantages:
  • Users would know they are getting a standard response. This would be:
    • Honest, and therefore in keeping with Wikipedia's policy of transparency (everything we do should be visible and understandable to everybody, so if we are giving people a canned response, we should make that clear).
    • Self-documenting. The Help desk volunteer community constantly turns over, with new volunteers joining the effort all the time. New volunteers learn to answer questions in large part by studying other users' answers on the Help desk. When an answer contains a substituted standard response template, this makes it harder for new volunteers to learn that we have standard response templates (and we need more).
Rather than (disruptively) change all the existing templates, I might create an alternate set, since there is no limit to how many templates we can make, to illustrate what I have in mind. And just a friendly side suggestion: I advise against including irrelevant religious greetings in a signature. Wikipedia reaches a fantastically diverse worldwide audience, and religion is one of the most divisive topics known to humankind. Unless the topic of discussion is religion, best not to bring it up. --Teratornis (talk) 21:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self-policed semi-protection

Hi. I was recently reading with interest arguments that you'd previously made in support of the policy of only allowing logged in users to edit Wikipedia articles. I'm currently venturing an idea that I see as something of a compromise, namely that, subject to the establishment of some rules of thumb, all logged in editors should be allowed semi-protect articles as they see fit. You can read about it here and contribute to the discussion if you like. Thanks. --SallyScot (talk) 20:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kardashev Scale

Hi, recently the Kardashev scale entry has gone through some major reverts, I'd like to talk about the reinstatement of the material. I've looked around and have seen that you've made some major contributions to the article and are interested in it's progress. I feel we need to talk about the reverts and reinstatement and talk about whether either are justified. Talk:Kardashev scale If you could help or add your two cents I'd really appreciate it. Thanks--Sparkygravity (talk) 01:48, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Administratorship

I extend my appreciation for your thorough-going efforts in responding to people's questions on the help-desk page, and your willingness to discover and convey the conventions and policies, such as they are, in this neighorhood. I freely admit I have not explored many of the corners of Wikipedia's routines as deeply as your exploration, and perhaps that is the primary content of my admiration. I recognize that your article edits are not so numerous, and subject to criticism on that score in relation to a request for admministratorship nomination, and your own interests and motivations may not include the tasks that admins elect to undertake. Despite all of that, I, at your humble and extended leisure, would be willing and happy to nominate or participate in motivating you to seek administratorship at a time that makes sense for you, and to draft some (inadequate) reasons why your perspectives are a valuable administrator quality for the Wikipedia commnity to avail itself of. (No, I have not ever nominated anyone previously for an RFA.) I don't pay that much attention to the Wikipedia:RFA page, but I suspect the closest parallel and similar nomination to your own potential nomination...and potential reaction would be this one, the comments on the nomination of a now departed template editor, Ben, in March of 2007.
Your continuing thoughts invited.
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 03:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It's something to think about, if I find myself asking administrators for help. So far, I don't think I have actually done that, other than maybe suggesting a change to some protected page somewhere. One task where I could probably use administrator tools might be generating shortcuts for the Editor's index, which needs possibly several hundred of them, and mass-creating shortcuts by hand via the usual page-creation interface is quite tedious. I thought about running Perlwikipediabot to generate a copy of the shortcuts we need, on another wiki where I do have administrator access, and when I get the bot code debugged, I would just find an admin to run it for me on Wikikpedia. Other than that, I haven't really felt motivated to seek adminship, but I suppose if someone hangs out on Wikipedia long enough, adminship is sort of the natural direction one would go. (What else is there to aspire to?) Should I ever begin to think I need adminship, I'll be calling in these offers of support, so thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I read PrimeHunter's RFA, and now maybe I could think about seeking nomination on a similar basis, for example to view deleted pages so I can coherently respond to WP:WWMPD questions on the Help desk. I have close to the same number of edits on the Help desk as PrimeHunter (we seem to be battling for second place there). I can't see myself getting too involved in the bare-knuckle brawling aspects of adminship (blocks, deletions, etc.), although that does sound intriguing. So if you still want to nominate me, I guess (gulp) I'm ready to be thrown to the lions. --Teratornis (talk) 19:32, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, Thanks for letting me know. I'd like to, over the next month or so make the time for a thoughtful introduction, and that would allow you (and me) the opportunity to mull over the potential (ad)venture. And if someone else gets you there first, so be it. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 05:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
That sounds good to me. There's no hurry. --Teratornis (talk) 06:53, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks to our mutual lack of urgency on the topic, I admit to not having yet worked on my offer to you yet, but I haven't forgotten you. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 00:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, there's no hurry. Once in a while I run across something I could use admin powers on, such as looking at deleted articles when people ask about them on the Help desk, but it's not a screaming need. I'm sure you'll get to it soon enough. In the meantime, there's more than enough to do as a plain user. --Teratornis (talk) 02:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • As I start to finally review your fine editorial activities, you may desire to be thinking about the standard questions, and anticipate the likely ad-hoc questions that will arise. Cheers, -- Yellowdesk (talk) 04:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh dear, that sounds as if it may require some actual thought. I guess the RfA procedure discriminates unfairly against nonthinkers. I'll rely on PrimeHunter's RfA to some degree, since my case is similar insofar as our Help desk activities go. --Teratornis (talk) 05:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I have some notes at: User:Teratornis/Notes#Request for Adminship. --Teratornis (talk) 21:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I sense...

I sense a touch of liberal in you, judging from Wikipedia:Help Desk#safety. Kudos on the well thought out post :) Seicer (talk) (contribs) 17:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

To the extent that liberalism means attempting to base one's beliefs on facts and critical thinking, then I suppose some people might momentarily call me a "liberal," depending on which subset of my beliefs they might be noticing at the time. However, all the self-described liberals I know waste about as much gasoline as the self-described conservatives I know. The notion that something could be inherently wrong with mass automobility is extremely rare where I live. Rarer still are people who oppose automobiles without opposing technology in general (I want all the Moore's law we can get). None of the Democratic Party candidates in the current U.S. Presidential campaign have suggested that the United States should begin taxing motor fuels the way Germany and France have done for decades. Even so much as lip service acknowledgement of the insanity of mass automobility is rare in any political quarter, but it can be found among a (very few) conservatives. For example, some conservatives are able to put two and two together and realize the folly of our "addiction to oil" (as George W. Bush put it, although I don't see Mr. Bush cutting back on his insanely wasteful trips in Air Force One). --Teratornis (talk) 18:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I substantially depart from both liberalism and conservativism on their basic views of human nature. As Steven Pinker points out in his book The Blank Slate, liberals tend to view humans as having no innate nature; rather, we are born as blank slates and shaped by society. Marxism involves a more extreme version of this view. Conservatives, on the other hand, may be somewhat more likely to view humans as having an inborn nature; the racialist views of Naziism involve an extreme version of this view. Political views tend to originate from an armchair perspective; the scientific method, in contrast, tries to get at the truth of things without preconception. The truth about human nature is probably more complex and nuanced than the notions that form the basis of any existing political philosophy. --Teratornis (talk) 18:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Awesome

I don't like going off on tangents on wikipedia often, but I thought that your latest post at the Helpdesk was awesome. Here have a cookie.--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 18:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried eating that cookie, but it tastes oddly like glass. (Do we have any SVG cookies? Then we could zoom them up to full-screen.) I'm not really sure what was tangential about my latest post on the Help desk - that is, what was more relatively tangential about it than the Help desk in general, which seems to field every imaginable question. Besides, if someone wants to apply the "for the children" argument to Wikipedia, I'm going see if they want to apply that argument consistently. --Teratornis (talk) 19:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh your post was far from tangential, my comment here was the tangent, and also that cookie picture unscaled is rather large. :)--KerotanLeave Me a Message Have a nice day :) 22:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tracking things that are archived

Thank you for letting me know about your addition to the answer to my question, and for the answer itself. I'll try it out.

When I asked the question, I had no idea there would be multiple ways to approach the problem. The more I learn of this software system, the more amazed I become.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 19:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome, and thanks for the feedback. --Teratornis (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Google images

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Google images

Template:Google images has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Nsaa (talk) 11:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me. I added a comment citing the issues from the earlier related discussion: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_April_19#Template:Google which resulted in: not deleted. I see that {{Google images}} needs its documentation to be similar to that for {{Google}}, with a notice not to use the template in articles, so I will do that now. --Teratornis (talk) 17:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Great! Nsaa (talk) 22:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks again for notifying me. I would probably not have noticed the nomination otherwise. --Teratornis (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Navbox

See my reply. And again, feel free to ask me any questions or anything. -- Ned Scott 05:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned on the template talk page, thank you very much indeed for the most impressive answer. --Teratornis (talk) 07:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need major help

HI THANKS I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE EXPERTS OF THIS STUFF IM NEW I CAME HERE TODAY! and i was wandering i made an article called Siege of Kapisa, and i dont know how to make it look like a battle article with the commanders or casualties or that blue box on the side if you can give me instructions or put it for i will be in debt for you, and if you can tell me in my talk how to change title of article of Siege of Sardis to Siege of Sardis (547 BC), tell me, and if you can just do it yourself do it and tell me how at the same time, sorry im a rookie at this stuff i love wikipedia and i joined to give new info to it, thanks!--Ariobarza (talk) 09:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk

[edit] EIW shortcuts

Okay, I've posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) as well as at WP:BOTREQ. Assuming someone volunteers a bot and there is no surprise opposition to the EIW shortcuts, it will take me perhaps an hour to add all the shortcuts that are needed to the Index. But I'm going to hold off (I did do "A" as a demo/pilot) until it looks like things are good to go.

And thanks for keeping an eye on this; I do need prodding from time to time. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:19, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Any chance you could take over the request at Wikipedia:Bot requests for a bot to set up the EIW: shortcuts that are in place at WP:EIW, for the letter "A"? The only special requirement I know of is that they should include the template {{R from shortcut}}.
If you can work with someone to get the "A" shortcuts put in place, I'll then add the B to Z shortcuts so the job can be finished.
If you don't have time, I will get to this, but it might take a bit longer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been wanting to play around with bots on my corporate wikis (one of my coworkers already has a little). Maybe I can figure out exactly what to do, and debug the method on one of my backup wiki copies that I run under XAMPP on my computers. (It's too bad I can't just use Special:Import to import a set of shortcuts in Wikipedia after I generate them locally, but if I can tell someone who runs bots on Wikipedia exactly what to do, he or she should have no problem.) So, I'll try to get to this before you do, but I can't guarantee I will "win." Thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 21:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Search VP?

Hi. I was wondering if it were possible to do the same magic you did for searching the help desk, over with the Village pump archives? It appears (from a bleary post-lunch glance) to probably require a bunch of page-moves/structure-changes to implement, but it'd sure be useful.. Would it be possible? Just a thought :) -- Quiddity (talk) 00:12, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

This may be tricky because of the naming scheme for the Village pump pages. Google's custom search likes to have the slash character for a delimiter. Unfortunately, the various Village pump sections use parentheses. However, it seems Google's custom search can use the ( character as a delimiter, allowing one Google custom search to search on all the sections and their archives simultaneously. In any case, it is straightforward to search on the individual sections. Check out these examples I created by copying and editing the table of examples I had written earlier to document {{Google custom}}:
Type this To get this What it produces, or searches for
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump||Search Wikipedia:Village pump}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump Blank form to search only the "main" Village pump (does not find the parenthesized sections)
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) Blank form to search the Village pump (policy) section and its archive pages
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) Blank form to search the Village pump (technical) section and its archive pages
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(||Search Wikipedia:Village pump (}} Search Wikipedia:Village pump ( Use the ( character as a search delimiter to trick Google into searching the sections
I added the above examples to the table in Template:Google custom/doc. {{Google custom}} is a general template that can create links to Google searches on any part of Wikipedia that ends in a page name, or a slash, or a parenthesis character it seems. I made {{Google help desk}} as a cut-down copy of {{Google custom}} that I hard-coded to search only the Help desk. That saves much typing when I answer Help desk questions and I want to illustrate an answer with a search of the Help desk archive pages. If you need to search a particular part of Wikipedia many times, you can easily copy {{Google help desk}} to a new template and edit it (also copy the {{Google help desk/doc}} page). Or if it is too bewildering, I can do this for you. Just tell me what particular search(es) you need. Since the Village pump page naming scheme makes searching a bit awkward, I'm not sure exactly what template(s) you might want. --Teratornis (talk) 02:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
That's excellent. Thanks. I'd guessed that the search absolutely-required a slash as a delimiter.
If you'd like to, I'd suggest adding links to these and other searches, at somewhere appropriate (VP headers, talkpages, Wikipedia:Village pump archive, etc). Maybe a search for "Wikipedia:Village pump (" (as above), and another for the earlier section listed at Wikipedia:Village pump archive#July 2002 - July 2004. I'd assume the "October 2004 - October 2007" section is unsearchable...?
(However, I was initially just trying to find out if any questions about "watchlists" had been asked there recently, and knew of your useful helpdesk template. I'm not involved with VP maintenance/related at all, so wouldn't know where to be bold, etc).
If you don't, I might try poking at it next week. (replies here are fine :) -- Quiddity (talk) 03:07, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks like the place to add search links would be the {{Villagepump}} template which has the table code for WP:VP. Since I don't hang out on the Village pump much, I'm hesitant to be WP:BOLD. I guess I'll try editing a test copy of {{Villagepump}} on my User:Teratornis/Sandbox2 page to add some search links. If that works OK, I'll leave a comment on Template talk:Villagepump#Village pump section search links asking the good people there if they like the search links. It does seem like kind of a no-brainer, though. You go to a page that lists a bunch of archived content, of course you'd probably want to search on it. Maybe everything on Wikipedia that generates big archives needs a {{Google custom}} search. --Teratornis (talk) 06:19, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, check out: User:Teratornis/Sandbox2 (diff). --Teratornis (talk) 07:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Template talk:Villagepump#Village pump section search links may not get a lot of attention. If you know of a place to ask this question that gets more eyeballs, please ask it there. --Teratornis (talk) 16:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I edited Template:Google custom/doc to document the above findings. I made a separate section:

to make this method of searching archived discussions easier to understand. I added a link to that section under WP:EIW#Archive. I followed some links from WP:EIW#Archive and left some comments for other users who may find this search method useful:

The {{Google custom}} template would be widely useful on Wikipedia for searching the many sets of archived pages. --Teratornis (talk) 19:23, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I tried experimenting to create one for the psychokinesis talk page, but was unsuccessful. In the example you gave {{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser||search the AutoWikiBrowser discussion archive}} it uses the address phrase "/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:" yet talk pages use just "/wiki/Talk:" in their urls. I tried both ways, did searches for defintely findable terms like "telekinesis" and "PK" and the Google searches came up zero. Let me see a working template example for the psychokinesis talk page and its archives. My experience with Google is that they intentionally block the Wikipedia domain after one or two results; otherwise, searches could result in page after page of just Wiki articles. You sure about this? Leave a brief note on my talk page and I'll come back here for your reply. Thanks. 5Q5 (talk) 23:23, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Every namespace has an associated talk namespace. See: Help:Namespace and Help:Talk page. Articles are in the "main" namespace which has no prefix, so its talk namespace has the prefix: Talk:. All the other namespaces have their associated talk namespaces, e.g., Wikipedia: and Wikipedia talk:, Template: and Template talk:, User: and User talk:, etc. I looked at Talk:Psychokinesis and the archives are the usual subpages, so I expected the usual Google custom method to work, but it does not appear to work:
Type this To get this What it produces, or searches for
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychokinesis||Search Talk:Psychokinesis}} Search Talk:Psychokinesis Blank form to search Talk:Psychokinesis and its subpages - does not work
{{google custom|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychokinesis/||Search Talk:Psychokinesis}} Search Talk:Psychokinesis Blank form to search Talk:Psychokinesis and its subpages - does not work, with or without the trailing slash
Also, I tried some plain {{Google}} searches as you mentioned, such as: Talk:Psychokinesis, and Google does not even return the Talk:Psychokinesis page as one of its results. Google does appear to find a copy of that page on somebody's mirror wiki, but not Wikipedia's talk page. This is very odd, because both plain Google search and custom Google search return Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser, for example this plain Google search finds the page as the first result: Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser. It's looking very much as if Google only indexes talk pages of non-article namespaces. That is very strange. As you can see from my table of examples in {{Google custom}}, I hadn't actually tried any Google custom searches on the Talk: namespace yet. I will ask on the Help desk to see if anyone knows anything about this, and add a note to the {{Google custom}} documentation that the search doesn't seem to work on Talk:. Thanks for pointing this out. --Teratornis (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I Googled for clues (naturally): google does not index wikipedia talk pages and found this blog post by User:Cumbrowski:
which includes a comment posting that says "Google excluded the talk pages from the index" by which he probably means article talk pages, since Google is still indexing talk pages for non-article pages. So I guess there is nothing to ask the Help desk about. {{Google custom}} is not going to work on the Talk: namespace. --Teratornis (talk) 09:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the All Wikipedia Links Are Now NOFOLLOW Jan 2007 article link. I'm going to post a brief note of it on the PK talk page to inform other editors. 5Q5 (talk) 15:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback

Hi, I noticed your great contributions and thought that you might like rollback. It's basically a quick way to revert vandalism. Remember, rollback should never be used on good-faith edits or in an edit dispute. If you'd like to test it out, you can head here. Happy editing! bibliomaniac15 01:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That could come in handy sometime. --Teratornis (talk) 05:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why do you hate Scott A. Brown?

Why do you hate Scott A. Brown? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.55.114.252 (talk) 22:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The above question appears to be vandalism. See: Special:Contributions/84.55.114.252 and User talk:84.55.114.252. --Teratornis (talk) 22:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WAZZ/WFLB

Please see my reply to your reply on the help desk.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear before, and I may just have made things worse. Nevertheless, I followed the directions and discovered that a merger of those pages has been proposed. Some of the content on the WFLB page is specific to WFLB and should be preserved, although it would be no problem for me to start that page over.

Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger and re-creation completed, though there is still a history issue. Those who contributed to the former WFLB article can still be seen on the new WFLB page, but somehow this needs to be made clear in case anyone is looking at the WAZZ page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:41, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Since we cannot edit the history directly, the best option I can think of would be to explain on the talk pages of these articles the details of the page mergers, moves, etc. Then anyone who need to reconstruct the provenance for the GFDL can do so. Thanks for taking such care on these articles. --Teratornis (talk) 16:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canadian Pacific Steamship Captain

Thanks for your help at Wikipedia:Help Desk#Article Naming Conflict ....

The new article has been entitled Samuel Robinson, RNR because (1) this is the way the mariner seems to have identified himself in the 1924 report detailing what happened to RMS Empress of Australia during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923-- see here; and (2) I found another book which explained that all Canadian Pacific steamships in this period were captained by men from the Royal Naval Reserve, having an implied cachet in the early years of the 20th century which passes unrecognized (or under-appreciated) today -- see Tate, E. Mowbray. (1986). Transpacific Steam: The Story of Steam Navigation from the Pacific Coast of North America to the Far East and the Antipodes, 1867-1941, p. 238.. There may be a better way to name this article, but this choice is at least plausible and informed. --Tenmei (talk) 14:33, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I'm not sure how much I actually helped, about all I know how to do is find the manuals, but I'm glad to see you figured out a course of action. Almost everything we do will probably get edited into something else eventually. --Teratornis (talk) 01:40, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Peak oil

Hi, you've made some good contributions to the article and discussion at Peak oil, so I was wondering if you would mind having a look at and commenting on what's going on here. Thanks, NJGW (talk) 00:46, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The bad news is we're running out of liquid fuels. The good news is I helped create a navigation template. Industrial civilization may collapse, but at least our site is looking cool. I try to help where I can. --Teratornis (talk) 19:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A star

The Help Desk Barnstar
For your way of answering this[3] and others at the Help desk, I award you *cue fanfare* the now prestigious Help Desk Barnstar! Julia Rossi (talk) 08:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Sometimes I wonder if I'm talking to myself on the Help desk, so it's nice to get the occasional feedback from someone who finds some value in what I wrote. (I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but in the interest of accuracy, I only post to the Help desk which is distinct from the Reference desk. Then again, I often do answer questions on the Help desk that belong on the Reference desk, so in a larger sense I am effectively a Reference desk contributor even though I have very few if not zero edits there. We could edit the above to use {{The Help Desk Barnstar}} and no one will be the wiser.) --Teratornis (talk) 17:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Please, be my guest Teratornis. It just shows your attention to detail and the barnstar is all yours. There again I learned there's a difference – I find so much that's helpful on the help desk, I rarely need to pop up there in the questions or answers but appreciate its offerings more than I can say. It was time to say... thanks heaps.  ; ) Julia Rossi (talk) 22:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Tweaked it on passing by, : ) Julia Rossi (talk) 23:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar thanks

I didn't know that one. Thanks! PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the Korean user

Sorry, I'm about to be out, so I can't help the Korean editor right now. I would help him or her about 3 hours later. However, admin BorgQueen speaks Korean fluently, so he or she could help him/her if the admin is active. --Appletrees (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dude.... I need help finding a nice mountain bike.

I like your bike I saw tonight. Where can I find one?--Deca2499 (talk) 02:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I got the bike from the Randall Scott Company. --Teratornis (talk) 03:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! ! I will go check them out! --Deca2499 (talk) 03:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] y does this site suck so bad

I loved your reply to the above question at WP:HD#y does this site suck so bad. Even though the poster will probably never read it, I appreciate your educational answer and assumption of good faith along with a small measure of appropriate sarcasm. Touché! Thomprod (talk) 17:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Instead of getting defensive when someone "insults" our beloved Wikipedia ("When you impugn the honor of Wikipedia, you impugn the honor of all of France!" or something), I acknowledge that yes indeed, Wikipedia sucks for lots of people. Then I explained why. I know it came off as being somewhat sarcastic, but I'd like to think I was simply being factual. Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself project, and most people simply are not do-it-yourselfers. If someone who isn't a do-it-yourselfer wants to feel embarrassed about it, I suppose that's their choice. In any case, the ergonomic view of software is to acknowledge that all software sucks for somebody, and good design is about adapting tools to their users rather than the other way around. If people are having trouble with Wikipedia, we should at least be aware of it, and maybe we can think of some ways to make Wikipedia suck less for more people. --Teratornis (talk) 17:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Well-said. I agree. (And notice that I said "appropriate" sarcasm. <g>) Thomprod (talk) 18:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response to your comment at my User Talk Page

Sorry for the late response to your comments and questions at my user talk page. Well, better late than never, right?! Cheers! --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 05:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
Just to say thanks for helping me quite substantially on the Help Desk! Adam (Manors) 17:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hi Teratornis, I'd just like to say Thanks for your support on my talk page. I will respond to all the messages on my page now. Adam (Manors) 21:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re: User talk:UBX#Category suppression

Mets is slightly inactive. Just make the change yourself - he won't mind. Cheers, xenocidic (talk) 01:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for SeaMonkey help

Thank you for the help today. It was up only about an hour after I posted it. It worked! That is, you prompted me to find what in SeaMonkey corresponds to the Firefox Content Tab. In SM, the image manager is under "tools". Indeed, a gremlin (it couldn't have been me!) had blocked Wikipedia. Thank you, again. Greetings from Naples, Italy. I owe you a pizza, and take the rest of the day off!Jeffmatt (talk) 08:02, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. I think the gremlin explanation may be legitimate - with software getting so clever these days, it's easy to bump the wrong keys and trigger some massive chain of unintended consequences. A pizza sounds really good, but Naples is a long hike and swim from Ohio. If you're feeling really grateful, you might consider answering questions on the Help desk someday. We always need more volunteers to keep the response times short. It takes a lot of volunteers to cover the Help desk round the clock. It's something to consider if you get bored with other parts of Wikipedia. --Teratornis (talk) 23:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Linking to a point within a page

Interesting discovery. It's logical, but I didn't have any idea that it was possible. One reason I missed this is because of the similarity of redirects to section headings, which DO get hardcoded. It raises the interesting alternative of adding "span" anchors in such cases, so that if a section heading is changed or a section is merged into another, the redirect doesn't need to be changed. (On the other hand, it DOES complicate the wikitext even further; probably best to pay the price of a bit more manual work in order to keep the working of things more obvious to the vast majority of editors.)

Anyway, thanks for keeping this issue alive, and helping to fix it. (I still have my heart set on some EIW:xxx shortcuts, for which the solution you found doesn't apply, but what you've done makes that a bit of a lower priority.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcuts

Hello Teratornis, I just got my computer back from Repairs and just seen your messages. Yes I would be happy to create Shortcuts, please let me know how I can help with this. Adam (Manors) 21:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I just created and placed WP:COFAQ. Is this done correctly? Adam (Manors) 21:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I went ahead of myself and did the same for all the FAQ headers, hope it's OK. Adam (Manors) 21:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, those look good. (Be sure to type edit summaries when you edit any page.) I was sort of thinking to make all the redirects have names like WP:FAQCO, so they would group together with the FAQ pages themselves on the Special:Prefixindex/WP:FAQ page, but that isn't a huge deal. We can always add any number of shorcuts later that link to the same pages. Assuming we'll go with your shortcuts, the next step (somewhat laborious) is to add invisible name anchors and {{Shortcut}} templates to each FAQ entry. For each FAQ entry, make up a brief abbreviation for it, ideally something easy to remember, but keep it short enough to be easy to copy. I will add a first example now so you see how to do the rest. --Teratornis (talk) 22:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, see my diff and do something similar for each FAQ entry, adding name anchors off the shortcuts you just made for each FAQ page. The anchor names only have to be unique within each FAQ page, since you have separate shortcuts for each page. For example, I just made the section shortcut: WP:OFAQ#WHAT, but you could also have a #WHAT entry on another FAQ page, since it would base off a different shortcut page. Thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 22:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm on it now Teratornis, I just created a #WHO tag. Adam (Manors) 00:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Just done all of WP:OFAQ. Adam (Manors) 00:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
That's beautiful. Now the FAQ is becoming more useful as a tool for the Help desk. And note that linking to a entry in the FAQ is smaller than transcluding or substituting a standard response templates. I don't object to standard response templates (I was one of the people who called for writing more of them), but they do tend to bloat the Help desk page after a while. Lately I'm thinking maybe all we really need is to link to FAQ entries. It won't hurt a questioner to click on a link. Anyway, it's good to see you contributing constructively, especially after I "vouched" for you. --Teratornis (talk) 02:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I've now done shortcuts for all of WP:FAQ, WP:OFAQ and WP:RFAQ. Your right that simple shortcuts will make the page look a lot more simple - I like the standard response things but they make the page massive and hard to keep track of. I'm off now but I should be back in a while to do some more. Adam (Manors) 13:55, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcut Template

Just to let you know I added {{R from Shortcut}} to all my Shortcuts. Adam (Manors) 10:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Good job. --Teratornis (talk) 05:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ilities

I have raised some concern about the naming of the Ilities list on that article's talk page. Please leave your feedback. Thanks. —Latiligence (talk) 17:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcut locations in the index

If I understood the discussion at the template talk page, It looks like the underlying cause of the problem was a software change (bug), which has been fixed. Since it seems fixed, I've put the shortcuts for subtopics back on the subtopic heading lines. I'm seeing a bit of misalignment in Firefox on the Mac (the subtopic shortcuts are on the right side of the page - good, since that was the problem - but not aligned with topic shortcuts, which are on the far right). But I'm not seeing the same problem in Safari on the Mac. I've not looked at IE7 and Firefox on a PC.

So - a question: What's your opinion of putting topic shortcuts back onto the same line as topic headings? (Thinking about it, I suppose that would solve any misalignment problems on the far right, in any browser.) I don't have a sense if it makes for cleaner edits - that is, easier to read wikitext - to have such shortcuts on their own line; of course, that is a bit inconsistent with subtopic shortcuts not being on their own line. And I'm probably not taking into account other considerations - which is why I'm very interested in your take on the situation.

(And, of course, thanks for working away at the problem until it got fixed; it wasn't a fatal problem but it certainly was annoying.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Whatever you want to do with the shortcuts is fine with me, as long as I end up with shortcuts I can copy and paste. The cosmetic problems are annoying, but not fatal. I don't think we actually fixed the horizontal alignment problems. See: User:Teratornis/Help desk notes#Shortcuts and User:Teratornis/Help desk notes#Shortcut template testing. In Firefox, the {{Shortcut compact}} template is not always floating to the far right. I made the {{Shortcut compact}} template to squeeze into vertically-constrained areas, such as on successive list lines, but the template is not working yet. Davidgothberg tried some things but has not fixed the problem yet. I should probably work up a request for help on WP:VPT where more people might know about templates and CSS. Thanks for letting me know the alignment looks different in different browsers. I've only been looking at it in Firefox on Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, where the horizontal alignment problems look identical. --Teratornis (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
The original problem (and if this wasn't clear, I apologize) was that shortcuts were ending up in the left side, totally disrupting the index. As it is now, Firefox on XP doesn't line up the shortcuts consistently on the right (as you noted). IE7 on XP, however, does. So there is something in the Firefox code - on all three platforms - that is different. I'm going to do some testing with no shortcuts having their own line, and see what difference that makes. (And yes, absolutely, the shortcuts need to be visible so they can be cut and pasted.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FAQ

Hello Tera, just a quick note that I've done the damn long FAQ Page, contributing, and now I'm only left with 4/14 to complete. Slow and steady wins the race. Adam (Manors) 21:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. WP:COFAQ does look brutally long. I see lots of the entries could use links to the related entries in the Editor's index. Those could be useful to work in at some point. --Teratornis (talk) 21:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A barnstar....

For this comment:

Your Opinion is More Important than You Think Barnstar
Your comment on the Help Desk regarding inexpediency of omitting details was not only timely, but truly inspiring. For that, this barnstar, the first I've ever given. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 21:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I thank you kindly. It seems I get about one barnstar per 300 edits on the Help desk. I need a lot of shots to hit the mark occasionally. I guess I'll stay away from stand-up comedy. --Teratornis (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Great line

I love this line "To paraphrase Archimedes, give me a place to stand, and I will offend the Earth" - I think I shall adopt it as my motto! DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Offending the Earth is quite easy - just get your facts right. --Teratornis (talk) 21:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] regarding toni jo heni

thanks for ur reply to my question. i do not want to write the article buti will give you link if you want to check it out for article.

http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/tonijo.html

like i said before she is pretty interesting to me and will have movie coming out next year about her life called the pardonBold text. i am using a work computer so can not creat the article myself. also unclear of copywight laws for the website i found. anything you can do would be great.

thanks, brandy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.41.204.3 (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] add to guidelines

Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed


You should add this to the Wikipedia guidelines so people can refer to it. Some CNN blogs written by CNN reporters are not really blogs but news stories. Carinsuranceismandatory (talk) 16:22, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Anybody can edit the Wikipedia guidelines, and that includes you. If your question refers to my comments in WP:HD#E-mail as a Source (eventual archive link: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2008 May 22#E-mail as a Source), note that I quoted from a footnote in WP:V#Notes and references, so that material is already in the WP:V policy ("verifiability" is a policy rather than a guideline). --Teratornis (talk) 17:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Help page patrol

Hi Teratornis. As you're listed listed on Wikipedia:Help Page Patrol, I thought you might be interested in a discussion regarding the use of the {{resolved}} template. Editors have argued that it slows the loading time down through the use of graphics in particular, and also it is sometimes incorrectly placed, leaving some editors with an incomplete or incorrect response. Please express your thoughts at Wikipedia talk:Help desk#Recent constant use of the resolved template. Thanks, and keep up the good work. PeterSymonds (talk) 17:12, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] huggle white list

in reply to:

  • How did you find out you were on this whitelist? Ideally, whatever you saw that informed you of this should also have contained some link explaining what it means. If the link is not there, then we should fix that if possible. Since Wikipedia is a do it yourself project (and probably the world's largest one), we need to make everything on Wikipedia as self-explanatory as possible. (Reference: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2008 June 5#'huggle whitelist')

I typed my user name in on Google (i have this same usernames on different websites) and then the huggle white list came up...but it was not a Wikipedia page, it was an inderpendent website. Ill get it if I can. Aflumpire (talk) 04:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. According to the link at the bottom of that page, the page is a mirror of Wikipedia:Huggle/Whitelist, and it looks like the one sentence of rather cryptic explanatory text comes from Wikipedia:Huggle/Whitelist/Header. Therefore we (i.e., Wikipedia users) can probably make this explanation more likely to inform people who stumble into the page or its mirrors by a Google search on their Wikipedia usernames, and who otherwise have no prior knowledge of Huggle. --Teratornis (talk) 18:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

Thanks Teratornis, I am getting the general idea slowly but surely and learning why Wikipedia needs to be as it is. What strikes me immediately is that people like you are willing to help out so quickly which is really encouraging. My article is coming on quielty in my sandbox and I am learning how to format it, ie why my "External Links" heading has been lined out and changed to "Headline text" or someting similar and also why there are dotted blue lined boxes suddenly appearing??Mark J Richards (talk) 08:35, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Dotted boxes can occur when you inadvertently use one of the formatting methods in Help:Wikitext examples#Just show what I typed. Also read WP:NPOV and WP:PEACOCK - you have some phrases that express subjective opinions, such as: "The interior is arguably one of the finest in Scotland." On Wikipedia, that's a no-no if it appears by itself. Instead, you have to reliably source that type of opinion to some qualified critic. For example, if you can find and quote a notable authority on the subject, then you can present that authority's opinions. Otherwise, some editor may challenge your apparent statement of fact. Subjective opinions are not necessarily facts, but it may be a fact that some notable person published a particular opinion, so we can cite that. --Teratornis (talk) 21:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Thank you for your help

Hello Teratornis

Many thanks for you help on[4]. . The wiki system is so complex and I have no idea why but trying to find info on what to do is a nightmare? I am aware that the powerful & informed always win, but there is this pack mentality, that attack in a swarm after a few unpleasant experience I have see many many editor just walk away. When you’re trying to play the wiki game as an independent editor and then find that you have three others that will oppose you no matter waht, then to me its bully tactic or fear munga ring at its bets. For example [[5]]

The instigator or the ring leader is this User:ScienceApologist his record is appalling? His block log is a disaster see [6], but back he come to bully the new editors, who have little experience to adjust to this surprise attack. Even is user page is offensive and mean inn the extreme "I act to mitigate, redesign, and occasionally destroy the offerings of users who think that a particular "breakthrough" or "notable idea"..."[User:ScienceApologist]. Then to play he places a RETIRED notice up crossing out the RE all odd & planned? This behavior is not going to improve and at some time someone with guts, in the wiki system, will have to address this user and not leave it to people like us, who need time to understand how it all works. And thats sad!

It seems to be a new trend in the wiki world that the new editors are told you can play that the wiki way and then powerful have their fun & sport. The solution? Who can tell.

But again many thanks, Best Regards Vufors (talk) 05:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia can be a cruel place, but it all depends on what you try to do. If you choose to edit controversial articles, then you can expect people with strong points of view to use any available means to oppose you. If you decide to enter a gun fight, you'd better learn how to use all the available guns. Fortunately, most of Wikipedia is not like that. There are lots of boring articles on boring subjects where the vast majority of people agree on the facts. Lot of those boring articles need lots of work, so why don't you start with those? (See: WP:CLEANUP for lots of articles that are just dying to meet you.) Then when you learn enough about Wikipedia to take on the User:ScienceApologist aggressive types, you'll have a hand to play. On Wikipedia, knowledge is power - the only kind that matters. If you want to do stuff that requires power, you need to get a lot of knowledge first. This takes time and effort. You have to come back and read those instruction pages over again, day after day, until they start to sink in. Also check out other wikis - Wikipedia is hardly the only game in town, and probably not the best game for most people. If it's not fun to edit here, you can probably find a fun wiki to edit. But remember, on Wikipedia we have rules for just about everything, along with highly effective mechanisms to enforce the rule. But you have to make sure everything you do is on the right side of the rules, or you lose. The more you understand Wikipedia's rules, the more fun you can have here. Another way to learn the rules is to answer questions on the Help desk. I've recommended that to at least two other users who were having edit disputes with other users. On the Help desk, you can learn how to search and apply Wikipedia's rules to real problems that other users have. Once you get to the point where you can answer most of the questions on the Help desk, you will know enough about Wikipedia to hold your own here. See Wikipedia:Help desk/How to answer if you want to really learn how this place works. --Teratornis (talk) 06:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I do agree that Wikipedia presents itself as being more welcoming than it actually turns out to be for lots of users. It's kind of like tossing candy all over a mine field. People see the enticing candy, but they only learn about the mines by stepping on them. For example, lots of new users jump straight into creating completely new articles from scratch. It's easy enough for new users to figure out how to create new articles, but not nearly as easy to learn ahead of time that a very high proportion of new articles by new users just end up getting deleted for violating various policies and guidelines that a new user is unlikely to understand. Wikipedia's philosophy seems to be that it's better to stay out of the way and just let some people make mistakes and end up wasting their time on edits that were doomed from the start - as long as some percentage of people figure out what to do, the system as a whole will continue to work and grow. --Teratornis (talk) 08:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)