User talk:Fabartus/Archive01

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RL needs will make my attendence to wikiBusiness' 'problematic' through the start of my 'actual' vacation on August 2nd. Hope to pick up the pace here again circa August 15-18th. Fabartus (FrankB) is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Commons August 15-18th

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FrankB says:    Hi there, and WELCOME! Sunday 5 May 10:23 UTC
If there is a need for speed, duplicate your post in an email. (gives me an audible alarm even when I'm off Wikipedia) "fabartus–at–comcast.net" Click HERE To Bottom Post! Please take a moment and read about my prefered message conventions below!

Archive page:	Archive 'Ends' Date and Time:
/Archive01	06:30 hrs, 09 July    2005 (UTC)
/Archive02	19:59 hrs, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
/Archive03	19:49 hrs, 29 April   2006 (UTC)
/Archive04	23:30 hrs, Sunday May 14th  2006 (UTC)
/Archive05	…
/Archive06	…
A hundred thousand elephants, A hundred thousand horses, A hundred thousand mule-drawn chariots, Are not worth a sixteenth part Of a single step forward. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha

Archive Note

Archived to here (Partial_1 in Archive01 10

23, 5 May 2024 (UTC))// FrankB 18:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Message preferences

Prefer to keep a thread together if there is a give and take. Otherwise, none.

Templates and Wikipedia

1. From 10:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC) Navigate to: user talk:fabartus/Templates and Wikipedia
2. Think pushing 'WikiProject until Mid-August will be unwise with Real life demands.
3. Would like to see continuing discussion…
   1. esp. template names,
   2. reports on some trial attempts by others to use the template system, …
   3. especially someone that can try in another language and test my assertions of cross wiki scope
   4. really esp. template names from some more multilingual individuals!‼
   5. Anyone want to take a stab at formulating so have positional ability per Duesntrieb's comments, that would be a very good thing.

Best regards to all. // FrankB 18:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Back messages from history

Retrieve and pasted in above // FrankB 04:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Partial archive_01 10:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Fiction example

Howdy F! There are two projects, WikiProject Novels and a WikiProject Books, that have good guidelines on writing an article about a book, including an infobox template. If you want naming conventions, take a look at Book naming conventions. In what context are you using "milieu"? I admit to some annoyance about that disambig page; it's really too big to be a disambig. I hope someone else tackles it because I try to stay out of anything argumentative unless I really, REALLY care about it. Meanwhile, what the heck is a lofu⁇ Her Pegship 15:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Previously

While I visit, my home is WIKIPEDIA …

Post your messages MyTalk here or email me (fabartus-at-comcast.net).

See Also: My WikiP User Page

Test Sig Here

FrankB 03:55, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Navigation templates

(Should become a redlink:Category:Navigation Templates)

{{Maps of European history}}

{{the history of Europe}}

Please see the maps categorization scheme guidelines. For old maps showing the history of Europe (that is, maps made over 70 years ago), please see category Old maps of Europe.

Template:History of Europe

History of Europe and Historical Periodization
Prehistoric Europe | Classical antiquity | Middle Ages:  Early Middle Ages  High Middle Ages  Late Middle Ages | Renaissance | Early modern Europe | Modern Europe

Transwiki

I'm not sure how to do it. PS I make maps too :) Nichalp 16:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Intriguing

Hi Frank,
Thanks for your comprehensive message:

See User:fabartus/EuroCats , this should be most country topics in Europe, though it probably ought to be augmented by a good think on 'Major Regions'… to balance out the Islands groups if nothing else. …So redlinks are 'missing pages' per what I can see of the way you've been setting this up. If you've got a master plan, I can help a whole lot more to move things along. One thing that would be helpful is to know the mass transit to city to country set up… Any good lead on the planned top down heirarchy will let me do what I can to land maps in the right places.

In recent weeks there have a few people trying to sort out the maps here, so everything you've come by (even if not directly involving maps) stems from this intention. Flamarande and I seem to've been the most active, although he's been quiet for a week or so now. He and I began leaving messages for each other here, where I guess you'd confirm much of what you've already worked out. A prime motivation was our agreeing via the Village Pump that the use of "historical" in maps' categories was ambiguous, hence what may appear as a focus on a "Maps of"/"Old maps of" distinction. The plan is more evolutionary than master, as we are in no more privileged a position than any other editors here; we just decided to start the process. We're seeking a balance between minimising numbers of categories but not at the cost of creating large category listings (exception: locator maps categories) or losing too many ways to reach a map. (I think Flamarande would agree with this characterisation.) Re mass transit maps, we haven't considered those yet.

I've infered that you had or still have a categorize by year on images when it's known.

Not really; at least, not yet or not consistently. I guess that'd be a consideration for a second pass through the maps. (At present, we're trying to keep the criteria simple.)

I've an impression a lot of thought hasn't been given or accomplished toward standard historical epochs along the lines of Reformation, Counter-Reformation, …

As regards the Commons overall, I don't know, but suspect your impression is accurate; as regards the Commons' maps, then I'd say it was accurate!  (Again, maybe something for a second pass / review.)

…We probably need to develop a pair of categories signifying a lot of work need done to adjust a sub-categories sub-cats need a lot of work, or such.

Please elaborate…?

Perhaps you have some tracking categories already like Category:Historical Period Templates, Category:Templates using ParserFunctions , Category:Succession templates but you can add these ones to your watch list....

You're at least one pass-through-the-data ahead of our current situation in Category:Maps – but that's fine; there's no law stating everything has to be done bottom-up. Re ParserFunctions, the wisdom I've received is to avoid using them #if possible, to keep (future) processing demand to a minimum. Seems sensible.

Is there any German language bi-lingual working over here? If I can read some of the stuff people have put up, I can move things where they belong.

My impression is that the bulk of folk involved here are either U.S. or English-speaking Germans. Do http://babelfish.altavista.com/, http://www.freetranslation.com/, http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php etc not suffice?

I'm sorry you didn't like my 'proto-template' on 'Maps',

{Indent|3}Oooopsie… wrong cat. The graphic is on category:Old maps, Not maps— hadn't gotten to the parent yet save for parking a half dozen or so Maps where they belong! …

Replying to your message is my first activity here for a couple of days; I'll have to disengage again in a few minutes, but I'll take a look tomorrow.

Has anyone given any thought to cross-connecting at each branch level with Navigation templates? … I used a succession template in the 10th and 11th centuries [1] …

Again, as regards the maps, not yet (or, at least, not that I've seen). I'm beginning to think your working on this "second level" while I (and anyone else happy to) continue a "first level" pass through the maps, each giving the other level reaction and encouragement, could work well.

Now, alas, it's time for me to move onto less interesting stuff. Best wishes and thanks for your interest, David Kernow 01:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Followup re template formatting

Hello Frank,
I'm deliberately not adding any responses yet to your thoughts at Maps reorganisation or latest additions to the Howdy thread as I'd like to give Flamarande more time to see the former (wherever he may have gone…) and you more time to finish the latter (no hurry). Meanwhile, however, I thought I'd suggest why you may've had/have criticism re Category:Old maps:

1. My experience from Wikipedia suggests people prefer templates to be wider rather than taller, especially when used in categories, to minimize the amount of scrolling needed to reach (say) the "Articles in category X" heading and entries. I don't feel it's that great an issue, but I sympathize with the general idea. Has anyone taken exception to the pale-yellow background and blue-line border? I think it's a definite improvement and would want to retain it (or something like it).
2. More cosmetically, you may find criticism of your use of underlining in the {{WikiPcat}} template on the page (and in the other {{Wiki*}} templates elswehere). I'd have more sympathy with this view as the WikiMedia style seems to've cast underlining aside; unlike the double and triple quotemarks for italic and bold, there doesn't seem to be wiki code for underlining. I've an idea why: underlining that cuts through (lowercase) letters with tails (y, p, j, etc) can look poor when displayed (screen-size/resolution depending). I can also imagine the argument that it also attracts "too much" attention to itself. (Does the "P" in "WikiPcat" stand for "Project"?  Apologies in advance if I'm being dense.)

Time to go again. I'm busy much of this weekend, but hope to return to some more map sorting soon. Best wishes, David 20:01, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

No rush here

No rush here, I shouldn't be answering you yet, save for Simpson's maneuver. That and EurekaLott's undoing of some other WikiP changes (category redirect on 'Historical Maps', iirc.) strongly suggests we need a project page… to tag empty categories at the least. Catch the byplay on the three 'middle ages map cats' that were speedy deleted (and then restored) on my WikiPtalk page, etc. We don't need to be in a position of constantly defending changes, so a project page laying out the heirarchy there and perhaps here on the commons seem to be in order.

The idea of creating Commons:About map categories or the like had occurred to me (for the sake of the maps) but I'd agree the larger subsuming "WikiP" project would be more in need of one of these pages first. There'd then be something toward which to direct wary or puzzled people…

I'm supposed to be building muscles and digging dirt trying to get some beds in, sod moved, et. al. on the grounds. We really didn't have a 'spring' here in northern Massachusetts, unless you count only rainy days; ocean effects made for much flooding and lot's of marine climate rains.

Hadn't seen any criticism anywhere on that Old Maps template—is there some on the local VP, there is NO talk page.

Don't worry; I was trying to sort out "I'm sorry you didn't like my 'proto-template' on 'Maps', … {Indent|3}Oooopsie… wrong cat. The graphic is on category:Old maps…". I've now taken the libery of amending it, near-reverting the wording so (a) the box takes up less room on the page; and (b) it uses less sophisticated English. I hope altering its width to 56.5% doesn't (re)introduce the kind of display problems you'd needed to correct when you "reduce[d] size 65%--->61.5% to work with IE6 on medium font-size setting" (edit history).

• Sure. Just be sure to check any tight graphics on both IE6 and whatever more HTML compliant browser you use in several size settings. Most others simply use [CTRL][+] and [CTRL][-] to scale fonts. // FrankB

The wiki'P' is almost something in the way of a 'in-joke', it's just shorthand for wikipedia and has the virtue of ending with a non-vowel… which is too say 'little virtue' otherwise. I choose it as it goes back to an old programming project 'naming convention' having nothing to do with wikipedia at all, but could have easily been 'wikipCat'. Truth is I didn't give it a lot of forethought, it just seemed 'right' to balance 'commonscat'. Perhaps 'WikiP' as a shorthand is less common than I thought.

I think I recognise the programming reference, but suggest you go with "wikip" (or maybe even just "w" per the abbreviations the Wikimedia sites use) unless you can see a future problem with it.

• Don't want to overstress an operator like 'w' itself. Also have {{W}} floating around. Don't know squat about renaming templates, but if you feel it's worth the time and some guideline is relavant, I'll support whatever gives the functional interwiki connection. Just tell me where to vote, and when you want help cleaning things up to the new name. Do keep in mind, I'm almost a virgin here on the commons, though my user account is not young, I didn't do squat here until I pitched in on the maps… and I sure haven't had time lately to read and snoop. I'm just doing what I can in good faith. I'm very new to templates as well, and nearly as handicapped in HTML/wikimarkup, but for being able to draw on nearly thirty years of programming this and that language. // FrankB

I stole the color scheme from user SlimVirgin, and am partial to the 'parchment' feel of it myself—that color is one that will manifest in HTML/wikimarkup, iirc, but I'm not sure they are equal. Haven't seen a table on wikiSupported color names. Shrug. I should check back on it to make sure it's one of the 256 color renderings that don't dither.

I'm tempted to convert <div style="border: 2px blue solid; padding:2em 3em 2em 3em; margin-right:5em; margin-left:0; width:56.5%; background-color:#FFFfdd"> [{{{1}}}] </div> into a template nonetheless; what do you think?  {{Headerbox}}?

• If the ffffdd color is in the don't dither set, and the title isn't used in wiki (It isn't… even with caps, {{WikiPtmp|headerbox}} found that out <g>), sure go ahead. You may want to see if the 'Banner' on this fits into you list of forseen 'uses'. I'm partial to the TOC title section with the yellow contrasts, and I think that is more golden than that first. I gotta get to bed, the wife just yelled for me. //FrankB 08:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

On Decenders

Your point on underlining and decenders is well taken--I hadn't thought of that. But the new shorter versions don't have any of the violated 'letters' going to 'Link'. You might want to see {{Left60}} which will force somethings to be taller vice wider, to set them side-by-side.

{{Left60}} looks cunning. (You may need to check Category:Late Middle Ages though.) I later realised I too had slipped into using underlines – see for instance Category:Old maps' recent history – so I'll correct my transgressions as and when I see them.

• I wouldn't bother, unless there is some rock hard guideline saying it's detrimental to handicap text readers. I'll ask Quiddity, he was the one that suggested underlining to me as preferable to bold and SHOUTING with caps. He and I have become good friends but had a hell of a row over 'violations' of 'standards' by yours truly as 'he' saw things. Anyway, he's a good source to know as he follows a lot of talk in policy and such I don't do much more than drop in on occasionally. // FrankB 08:17, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

On the below, thanks for the 'moral support', though I see you've been pretty active on Cfd. I'm hoping the lack of sheer numbers of here will be less 'wordy' than over there! I'm much more into getting things done and being effective. With that, I have to go see Ms. Lott's WikiP talk to see if she gave me a response. I'd asked for advice since she tagged the cats for speedyD. (Nope-offline so far. en:User talk:EurekaLott#I'd appreciate a reconsideration here) // FrankB 13:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

"…getting things done and being effective…" – so true. I enjoy following w:Wikipedia:CfD but it's been weeks now since I added any substantial new content to the encyclopedia. Not good, I think.

Best wishes, David 17:18, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Re w:CfD

…Lend some vote help please!

Looks like you have the support you need to keep your workspace (or at least no consensus to delete it). I have the CfD page on my watchlist to see what happens and contribute if necessary. Yours, David 12:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi! Nichalp and JYowlinski enveigled me to sign up over here about a year back, but I never had much personal reason to be active here until recently. I was looking to upload Maps and am planning on generating maps for wikipedia history articles, locate images for same, etc. I'm afraid I'm somewhere back in the middle ages lately <g>. In any event, I noticed your BOT on moving redirected categories, and was wondering whether you were planning on running it over on wikipedia. I've generated some interwiki traversing templates at either end See category:old maps and note how easily one can pop back and forth. I figured I'd clean out some of the categories there that have been depreciated in the scheme here, and have already tagged one or two with the category redirect on wikipedia.

I'm also figuring a scheme to sub-list several layers of sub-categories in small font form under 'Maps of' and 'Old maps' major sub-categories and also set up a better century traversal template than the succesion box I used in category:Maps showing 11th-century history. I'm not the best template programmer, but I think I can come up with one that will take a single perameter s.a. 11, or optional modifiers s.a. { 1,st,nd,rd} to take the toughest group of non-th suffixed numbers.

Has there been any discussion of a branch level traversal similar to the succession box, along the shape and form of {{Maps of European history}} but oriented towards leaf hopping within the subcategories, or has the idea been shot down before. Seems like the new category system is just barely toddling, or other such early days term as you prefer in maps, at least.

Besides that, just figured I'd say Hi, is there anything I should know about.<g> And not meaning BDA's name either! He's another 'good egg', and a privilege to know. Best regards // FrankB 07:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a bot to fix categories. Maybe you're thinking of User:Orgullobot, run by User:Orgullomoore. User:dbenbenn 11:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

reply

Hi Frank, ok no problem about using Navigational templates instead. youve just confused me with this talk about templates across portals – I dont understand this very well. Do you mean a template on wikipedia for the images which are on commons? is that possible since the images arent actually on wikipedia?

Ill try to do better with the edit summaries, I usually use them when its important but sometimes forget if its something that doesnt seem to be edited by many other users.

thanks about the WW2 maps – I bought two ww2 atlases just for doing the maps and did lots of other research. they still have many things which need checking or fixing since it is extremely complicated – as noted on the discussion page, but at least they give you the approximate idea of what happened. thanks for telling me about the wikiproject, ive signed up there. something else i should ask – this is a minor thing but do you know if the sep,oct,nov,dec for 1939 on Template:WW2 month can be lined up with the rest of the septembers etc for the other years?

by the way, sitting in a browser window for days⁈ do you never turn your computer off? :) Regards, --Astrokey44 03:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Awesome! they look great! maybe that would be a better way to arrange the template on the individual maps too? --Astrokey44 23:23, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Help

(and test to see if anyone is patroling here) re: Commons:Template:dynamic navigation box with image should be speedydeleted ASAP. Tagged with {{Badname}} // FrankB 07:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

End

Partial archive_01 07:08, 11 July 2006 // FrankB 15:46, 19 July 2006 (UTC)