User talk:Thumperward/Archive 70

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Archive 65

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Archive 68

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Bentley Continental

I saw your pruning on the Bentley Continental dab page, and I find it a bit excessive. Where better to offer a mini-history of Bentley's use of the "Continental" name? Also, the gallery is useful in determining which car one may be looking for. The division into three main groups was also useful. Perhaps we could turn it from a dab page into a set index, something more like this: Mazda 121? I am leaving it as is for now, until after discussion. ⊂| Mr.choppers |⊃ (talk) 17:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I came to this page after reverting the change and find I'm not alone. Eddaido (talk) 19:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

If people are actually going to write a well-referenced history of this name then great. However, the current "article" is an utterly inadequate treatment of the subject, which inconveniences our readers for the sake of the wittering of random editors. Should that situation fail to improve in the short term the article should become a dab again, to best serve our readers. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:54, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

MIght the last be defined as a run-on sentence? Eddaido (talk) 23:03, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Not if one actually knows what a run-on sentence is. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

or Wittering? Eddaido (talk) 23:18, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite. Are you here to argue that the rationale was flawed, or simply to demand a fuller explanation? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Bentley Mark VI

Please would you be more specific about the copy-editing you believe is required on this article. thanks and regards, Eddaido (talk) 19:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I've de-tagged. The lead has a couple of run-on sentences, but the rest of the article is okay. I'll work on this myself. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Biopunk

There are at least two references that are talking about the term itself, not "just" using it. What's your reasoning for tagging it with the "neologism" template? Thanks! Allens (talk) 23:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe not the best tag. The article's tone isn't quite right, and it rather seems to lean on its less reliable sources (though the Salon one is both reliable and uses the term "biopunk" directly). Maybe more of an editorial thing than something which needs a tag: feel free to remove it. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 07:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps "refimprove" and "primary sources"? Quite welcome... Allens (talk) 11:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Thumperward. You have new messages at Template talk:Taxobox.
You may remove this notice at any time by removing the {{newmessages}} template.

re FC Zenit close

Chris, understand your concern, but my intent was to try and enforce a little process discipline. I made no decision on the move itself, and indeed if a move is warranted another RM should be opened as I said in the close. If behavior of the same disruptive nature occurs, that can be dealt with in the right venue. I don't think the procedural close should be seen as encouraging or endorsing that type of behavior, as I was pretty explicit that it was dysfunctional and shouldn't be repeated. You might be right and I might be wrong but I hope the behavior is not repeated and the RM can be accomplished using purely policy-based arguments. --Mike Cline (talk) 10:28, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

This was not a discussion where both sides were causing drama. A single individual, who so happens to be the sole individual opposed to a move, caused as much noise as possible in trying to shut it down. You inadvertently played into that, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is repeated when the discussion is next raised (which unfortunately will probably have to be some time in the future for no reason other than to avoid further heat in the form of accusations of bad faith in reopening a closed debate). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

aol keyword listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Aol keyword. Since you had some involvement with the aol keyword redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 16:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom proposed decision

Since ArbCom is proposing a decision that you be sanctioned for not explaining yourself and not participating in the case, it would probably be helpful if you were to participate at the proposed decision talkpage to defend yourself, FYI. --El on ka 17:20, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Cheers for the heads-up. I've replied now, for all that it's worth. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Betacommand 3 closed

An arbitration case regarding Betacommand (Δ) has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

The existing community sanctions on Betacommand were a valid response by the community to prior problems with Betacommand's editing, and that Betacommand was required to abide by those sanctions if he wished to continue editing. However, given that interpretation and implementation of those sanctions has led to ongoing disputes, the community sanctions are superseded by the more straightforward remedies provided for in this decision.
Betacommand is banned from Wikipedia for a period of no less than one year.
After one year has elapsed from the date of his ban, Betacommand may request that the ban be lifted. As part of any such request, Betacommand shall be required to submit a plan outlining his intended editing activity and demonstrating his understanding of and intention to refrain from the actions which resulted in his ban. The Committee shall present this plan to the community for review and comment prior to any modification of Betacommand's ban.

For the Arbitration Committee, --Guerillero | My Talk 01:49, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox protein

Hi. I would appreciate if you would take a look at {{Infobox protein}} and {{Infobox protein family}}. After you last, edit, the title of the box is now on top instead of inside the borders of the box. Was this intentional? I really preferred seeing the title within the box, especially when several info boxes are stacked on top of each other in the same article. I think having the title within the box looks much cleaner. Boghog (talk) 07:50, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

It's intentional: it matches the appearance of {{drugbox}}. The "outside" style uses an HTML <caption> element to display the title: this is a recommended way of marking up the title of a table semantically. Just using a styled table row gives less information as to the contents of the title to screen readers or other non-browser consumers of our articles. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:25, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I would guess that the vast majority of Wikipedia readers view articles through a browser hence the argument that placing a title on top of the infobox is better for non-browser consumers IMHO is not very compelling. I have done some searching to see whether there are any recommendations on whether placement of titles within or on top of the infobox is preferred and I have not found any. I hope you don't mind, but I have started a discussion here to solicit opinions from others. Any further thoughts you might have on this issue are certainly welcome. Boghog (talk) 20:45, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, this comes up perennially. There's no firm consensus either way, though I'll leave a comment at your new central thread. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 02:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Thumperward,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Wikipedia administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Young June Sah --Yjune.sah (talk) 21:47, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Infobox conversion

Do you have the stomach to return to this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Not right now, though I'd note that DJSasso's general approach to templatespace has massively improved since then if I remember. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:19, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:1994 PTS TOC listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Template:1994 PTS TOC. Since you had some involvement with the Template:1994 PTS TOC redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility enforcement closed

An arbitration case regarding Civility enforcement has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) is desysopped for wheel warring and conduct unbecoming of an administrator, in the face of previous admonishments regarding administrative conduct from the Arbitration Committee. Hawkeye7 may re-apply for the administrator permissions at RFA at any time.
Thumperward (talk · contribs) is admonished for conduct unbecoming an administrator, and for failing to adequately explain his actions when requested by the community and Arbitration Committee.
John (talk · contribs) is admonished for reversing another administrator's actions while said actions were under review through community discussion.
Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic banned from any page whose prefix begins with Wikipedia talk:Requests for Adminship. This remedy explicitly does not prevent him from !voting on RFA's; however, should his contributions to a specific request for adminship become disruptive, any uninvolved admin may ban him from further participation in that specific RFA. Further, Malleus Fatuorm is admonished for repeatedly personalizing disputes and engaging in uncivil conduct, personal attacks, and disruptive conduct.
Administrators are reminded that blocks should be applied only when no other solution would prove to be effective, or when previous attempts to resolve a situation (such as discussion, warnings, topic bans, or other restrictions) have proven to be ineffective.
All users are reminded to engage in discussion in a way that will neither disrupt nor lower the quality of such discourse. Personal attacks, profanity, inappropriate use of humour, and other uncivil conduct that leads to a breakdown in discussion can prevent the formation of a valid consensus. Blocks or other restrictions may be used to address repeated or particularly severe disruption of this nature, in order to foster a collaborative environment within the community as a whole.
The imposition of discretionary sanctions, paroles, and related remedies by the community is done on an ad hoc basis in the absence of clear documented standards. The community is strongly encouraged to review and document standing good practice for such discussions. As a related but distinct issue, the community is encouraged to review and document common good practice for administrators imposing editing restrictions as a condition of an unblock and in lieu of blocks.
Should any user subject to a restriction or topic ban in this case violate that restriction or ban, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year, with the topic ban clock restarting at the end of the block. Appeals of blocks may be made to the imposing administrator, and thereafter to the Administrators' noticeboard, or to Arbitration Enforcement, or to the Arbitration Committee. All blocks are to be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility enforcement#Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions.

For the Arbitration Committee:
Mlpearc (powwow) 02:27, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Discuss this

As the kids say, whatever. This decision seems more political than anything else, with little effort made to make the desired punishments fit the hastily-assembled "crime". Let not your heart be troubled.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Tags on List of Magic: The Gathering keywords

Hi, I noticed you added {{manual}} {{trivia}} {{fancruft}} {{primary sources}} to List of Magic: The Gathering keywords recently. Would you mind heading over to Talk:List of Magic: The Gathering keywords and giving some details on the parts you find objectionable? I ask because these are concerns we've seen raised in past AfDs, for which the results have traditionally been "no consensus". --Temporarily Insane (talk) 07:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The AfDs do a good enough job of explaining why the material is inappropriate. The ideal response would have been to rewrite the article so that it no longer attracted further AfDs. The talk page is nearly as bad, being largely a discussion of the subject itself rather than how to improve the page. A fundamental rewrite is probably in order here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

The last major revision appears to have been in July 2007, after the first AfD, to turn it into more of a glossary. It may need a further improvement toward that end. I will look into it when I have some time.

The talk page appears to me to be largely a discussion of the subject with regard to how to improve the page. There a few minor rules questions there, but the majority of the discussion appears to be about the content of the article (which admittedly is largely about the subject itself). --Temporarily Insane (talk) 21:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Exasperation

TfD:Infobox Townlands *sigh* Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

There are certainly plenty of terrible arguments there, but Richardguk makes some good ones. TfDs based on potential redundancy (i.e. "all the unique parameters in this template should be punted to the master template") often come unstuck simply because the work hasn't been done yet: when you can demonstrate that the output is the same with the merged template, by doing the parameter merge in a sandbox first, most reasonably clueful editors tend to get the picture. There's also the matter of this being a template concerning Ireland, so you're always going to get a bit of noise. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm increasingly of the view that TfD is broken; your comment on the Infobox journalist discussion refers. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:23, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

TfD's always been like that. Compared to, say, AfD it works extraordinarily well. The journalist infobox TfD has gotten even dafter since yesterday, but I'd still expect a clueful closer (of which TfD has several) to get it right. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Let's hope so. Meanwhile, could I trouble you, please, to look at enacting this, and then making the Townlands template a wrapper for the Settlement one, as allowed by the former template's closure? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:03, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

{{Infobox criminal}} kept, with a one-parameter difference to {{Infobox person}}. There are just 78 articles using that parameter. Some of those should use other templates, such as {{Infobox spy}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:38, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

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I see you are working on the TOC templates. That is a good thing, as there are too many variants and most are creaky. {{Horizontal TOC}} has two issues: the section numbers make it quite ugly and sometimes you just need to format a TOC into rows. {{CompactTOC8}} is vastly overcomplicated— a quick sample shows that most articles are using only the A–Z links, and a handful have added rows like {{ColorTOC}}. Every use I examined was either a list article or had an embedded list.

I started {{User:Gadget850/List TOC}} as a proof of concept, with testcases at User:Gadget850/List TOC testcases. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:35, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, there's work to be done. I'm going to give it until the end of the week (when hopefully 75% of the existing TOC templates have been nuked) before getting seriously into exactly what we need and how to code it. I'll ping you and the rest of the parties who have expressed interest then, hopefully. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree. As I said, it is just a concept for the moment, but it looks pretty good. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I've found a few more templates that were uncategorised and have addeded them into Category:Wikipedia table of contents templates.

-- WOSlinker (talk) 17:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Gracias. :) I'll try to plough through them tomorrow, if nobody beats me to it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:19, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Template: Deportivo Independiente Medellin squad

Hi, I'm the creator of the template: Deportivo Independiente Medellin and I'm currently updating it to include the full roster. Could you please help or explain me how to get rid of the improper code at the beginnig of the header of the template, I think there's where the link to the discussion should be. Thanks a lot. Palpo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Palpo (talk • contribs) 04:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

You need a name parameter, as the documentation at template:football squad/doc says. I've added that for you. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

February 2012

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Regarding your edits to Glossary of boiler terminology, it is recommended that you use the preview button before you save; this helps you find any errors you have made, reduces edit conflicts, and prevents clogging up recent changes and the page history. Thank you. Your edit here, no matter how well intentioned, broke the original page. Please don't do this, or at least use preview beforehand so as to try and minimise the damage caused. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, "broke": what an excellent technical description of the problem to work on. Thank you for taking the time to template me about this. This is petty over and above what I've come to expect from disputes with you. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Fixing those references would only take a minute and would result in a far better article. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

In what way do you suggest that glossary articles could be improved, is there a relevant project in which to be discussing this, and shouldn't this be taking place on article talk pages anyway?

I note that neither of you fixed those references, merely that Thumperward broke them, didn't bother to check what he'd done, tagged the remains for deletion and walked away. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, no. What I actually did was unify the referencing format so that all inline citations were located in the references section. It turns out that I missed the red errors indicating that some of the "references" were not actually used in the article, but that's a ten-second job to fix. A reasonable editor (i.e. one who was interested in working with other editors, rather than battling them at every junction) could have done so, or even asked how to do so, before reverting a good half-hour's work and DTTRing the editor responsible. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

So just how big a job is it to organise references on an article of this size? First of all it was "a minute". Then Rambling Man claimed "two-seconds". Now it's up to half an hour. You still seem to think it's OK to trash the references and leave it for other editors to fix. Is that your interpretation of "one who was interested in working with other editors"? Andy Dingley (talk) 12:35, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:COMPETENCE (and if you can't achieve that, at least preview) still applies to admins.

You took a large page that was well-formatted according to practice for similar glossaries, then you trashed it. You trashed it so thoroughly that you broke layout, navigation, image sizing and even the referencing. Subjective issues of style are one thing, but here you obviously hadn't even looked at the results of your handiwork. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I looked thoroughly at the output, and liked what I saw. I've already pointed to the article which provided inspiration on the article's talk page. If you think the layout was "trashed" and "broken" then that's your subjective opinion, but no reasonable editor could be expected to take those words in any constructive manner. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

You broke the internal links and anchors. You broke external links. You broke the references table. Please explain how these are an "improvement", even if the formatting would otherwise be subjectively favoured. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not interested in having this battle. Once you've gone and found something else to be angry about, I'll return to the new revision and correct the various syntax errors that seem to have resulted. It shouldn't be too much work, as there's nothing fundamentally unsound about the approach taken. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

What "battle" ? That an article shouldn't have a glaring red MediaWiki error message at its footer, after you have "improved" it and walked away? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

And now it doesn't. Nor would it have done so had I received a friendly ping to that effect. Instead, I get the usual aggravation coupled with an insinuation that I'm not competent enough to edit the encyclopedia. A change from being called unfit to be an administrator, admittedly, but still not helpful by any measure. Thank you for wasting an order of magnitude more of both your own free time and effort and mine on resolving this minor cleanup issue than was necessary. We're done here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC)