User talk:TomTheHand/Archive 6

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Ship cleanups (AKA's)

Thanks for doing this stuff. I overlooked some of it when I was adding these articles, since there were close to a hundred of them, I was trying to get 'em done quickly and there was a LOT of Wikifying involved in the DANFS material. I have two questions:

1) What's all the nbsp stuff? (I'm guessing it's to keep things from breaking at the end of a line.)

2) Why all the emphasis on wikifying dates? (I normally try to do it, but I don't know why it's done.)

Thanks again. Lou Sander 14:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey Lou,

No problem. Categorizing is sort of my "thing." Both the nbsp stuff and the date linking are connected with the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

According to the units of measurement section, "Put a space between the value and the unit symbol, for example "25 kg" not "25kg". Preferably, use   for the space (25 kg) so that it does not break lines." The article non-breaking space has some more info. I use nbsp's in places sort of outside the exact Manual of Style guidelines, in places like task force numbers (TF 38 and such), but I think those uses are in line with the intent of non-breaking spaces.

According to the dates containing a month and a day section, "If a date includes both a month and a day, then the date should normally be linked to allow readers' date preferences to work, displaying the reader's chosen format." Whether an article is written with days before months (22 February) or months before days (February 22), if the dates are linked then they'll automatically be displayed according to the reader's preference. I also make certain formatting changes, like changing "22 to 24 February" to "22 February to 24 February", because otherwise someone's date preferences could have them seeing "22 to February 24". Some other users choose to have no date links at all in those situations, but I think they're useful.

I do all of this with AWB regular expressions, so I'm not manually going through and fixing dates. Instead, I feed AWB a list of articles that probably need categorization, then I manually add categories, let AWB automatically do date and unit formatting, and check over the whole thing. I still make mistakes, but I'm getting better. TomTheHand 15:10, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. I had no idea about the date stuff. I've looked at the various Wikipedia manuals, but since they're edited by committee, I don't find them very user-friendly. I guess I need to revisit some of them. If you haven't already found it, there's a small gold mine of articles that could use the AWB treatment -- all the original articles listed on my user page (beneath all the biographical cruft). Also, Malo had added Metric dimensions to the tables in some of my ship articles, but I didn't have the time or qualifications to do it to most of 'em. Maybe AWB or similar can help. Lou Sander 15:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It looks like you found the gold mine!  ;-) Lou Sander 17:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Haha, I sure did. I'm actually working my way through everything in Category:Amphibious assault ship classes. I had gotten down to the T's before discovering the amphibious cargo ships and adding them to the category back in mid-August. I was then on Wikibreak for a bit, busy with real-life work. Now I'm back up at A, taking care of Artemis, but I should be back at T by the end of the day.

I agree with some of your sentiments about the Manuals of Style, and I've by no means read all of them, but I do refer to them to get a starting point on formatting issues.

As my current project is ship categorization, I probably won't be touching the other articles you've created at this time, but I'll keep them in mind for the future. I don't have AWB set up to automatically add metric units, and I think it'd be difficult to do, but it's an important and worthwhile project so it might be something I'll look at one day. TomTheHand 17:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

It just occurs to me that when I've Wikified dates, I've just done the year for the first time it appears in the table. Sounds like I should do it for every instance, so the date formatting software can do its thing. Lou Sander 19:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, for date formatting purposes, where a full day, month and year are available the year should be linked as well. The year should be linked separately from the day+month: [[February 22]] [[1942]]. However, if you just have a month and year, linking them doesn't provide formatting.

That actually brings up a problem with the way I do things. There is a date format preference for ISO 8601 dates (YYYY-MM-DD). If you select it, it only formats full day+month+year sets and doesn't touch day+month links. This causes a problem with a phrase like "22 to 24 February, 1942," which I'd normally clean up as "22 February to 24 February 1942." If a user has set ISO 8601 dates, they'll see "22 February to 1942-02-24." I still think the way I clean dates up is good, and I doubt many people use ISO 8601 formatting and get bitten by this, but I still worry if I should be doing something different. Doing "22 February 1942 to 24 February 1942" seems to be taking things entirely too far.TomTheHand 19:15, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, BE BOLD! If there's a better way, somebody will find your edits and fix 'em. ;-) Lou Sander 19:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

AWB

If you know how to turn monobook tools into AWB code, I would be grateful for your help. I have created a new monobook tool with the aim of tidying up ship infoboxes. It is at: User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/general.js

I have only just started it and it is fairly easy to improve. However, I don't know how to make it suitable for AWB users. bobblewik 21:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Making it usable in AWB is pretty simple, and I'll look into adapting some of the expressions soon. One suggestion I'd like to make is using ×, the multiplication symbol, instead of the letter x for quantities. TomTheHand 14:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Using ×, the multiplication symbol, sounds fine to me. bobblewik 21:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. bobblewik 17:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Redundant Categories

Wow, doing a lot of work. Rename your user account "TomTheMachine".

But, noticed for USS Slater (DE-766) it now has these cats

• Category:Cannon class destroyer escorts|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:Frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:Frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States Navy|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:World War II destroyer escorts of the United States|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:Frigates of Greece|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:Frigates of the Hellenic Navy|Slater (DE-766)
• Category:Museum ships|Slater (DE-766)

Generally I have been trying to remove redundant cats (Frigates of Greece==Frigates of the Hellenic Navy) and (Frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States == Frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States Navy). Or even should we build hierarchies to avoid multiple cats per article. Since Cannon class destroyer escorts is part of US Navy just put that category under US Navy category. I noticed some of these cats were recently created so I was wondering if you have some sort of plan for the categorization? --MarsRover 20:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I do have a pretty extensive plan for categorization; check it out here and join WP:SHIPS if you're interested. I agree with you about the redundancy, but unfortunately we were unable to agree on whether to categorize by country or by navy and we're doing both as a middle ground. I would much rather just do it by country. TomTheHand 20:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Hummm, seems like you should have won that augument. By Navy makes close to zero sense. Either your have something that is confusing like knowing "Hellenic Navy" is "Greek Navy" or it simply makes that name longer "US" -> "US Navy". It doesn't help categorize it any better most countries only have one navy. --MarsRover 03:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Well, if you weigh in on the issue over at WP:SHIPS we might come to a decision to change the way we do things. TomTheHand 13:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The return

Guess who's back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ossara

At least, it very much looks like Copperchair; we should keep an eye on him. PBP 22:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Very interesting. I'll definitely keep an eye on him. TomTheHand 00:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. Compare Ossara's contributions with Special:Contributions/190.10.0.87, posted here by Rangeley back on the 31st. It seems clear that they're the same person, and it also seems clear, looking at the two together, that they are Copperchair. I'd like to observe for another day or so, though, assuming he doesn't do anything disruptive. If he's disruptive I'll block him immediately, but if not I'd like to collect more evidence before doing it. TomTheHand 00:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

My VP mistake at Nuclear weapon

That was certainly a mistake! I remember the vandalism, but I'm not quite sure how the mis-reversion happened. It looks like three of us were chasing the same edit. Thanks for letting me know. Regards, Mr Stephen 10:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I've worked it out now, a user had vandalised two pages; I fixed one & warned him, then went to Nuclear weapon and rolled back, obviously after Trnj2000 had fixed it. Coincidentally, a bit later Maury Markowitz accused Trnj2000 of vandalism to the article! diff Mr Stephen 14:17, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Sloops cathead template

The tag {{Cathead sloops of the|United Kingdom}} on the page Category:Sloops of the United Kingdom returns "Sloops of the United Kingdom include all sloops-of-war designed, built, or operated by the United Kingdom." Ideally, I think it should read "Sloops of the United Kingdom includes all sloops-of-war designed, built, or operated by the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom." If you agree, is it possible to tweak the template? Emoscopes ^Talk 17:23, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll gladly fix the "includes" issue. The problem with the "Royal Navy" part is that it would be necessary to add an additional input to the template (for navy name), and then every category that uses that template will need to pass in the additional input. That'd be easy enough to do for the sloops template, since only two categories use it right now, but it's something I'm not eager to implement across the board. TomTheHand 17:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. No problems about the navy, how about just wikilinking the country then? Emoscopes ^Talk 17:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, you're way ahead of me. Lovely stuff. Keep up the good work :). Emoscopes ^Talk 17:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Haha, thanks. Yeah, already had the country linked. Linking to navies is a good idea, but it multiplies the workload. We need to have a good, long discussion about informative templates in the future, but there's so much other stuff to do now that template issues don't have my full attention. TomTheHand 17:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ships by Navy CFR tags

All eight are tagged. Josh 21:39, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Ships by country

Ships, like other articles, should not be categorized both in a category and a subsequent sub-category as a general rule. Thus for example a ship should not be listed under both Aircraft carriers of X and Escort carriers of X. Instead, if it belongs in Escort carriers of X, then it should be there only. There are a number of ships that are listed at multiple levels. I am cleaning this up as I see them, but the intent is not to remove ships from by country categorization. Josh 17:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

In this particular case, what redundancy do you see? Are you talking about an example like Category:Aircraft carriers of France and Category:Cold War aircraft carriers of France? Though Cold War aircraft carriers is a subcategory of aircraft carriers of France, that's a cross-structure link so someone can cross over from Ships by country to Ships by era. Is there a different redundancy you see? If you want to perform a mass recategorization of ship articles in contradiction to the proposal on WP:SHIPS, which seemed to meet with general approval, please discuss it there instead of undoing my work on your own. TomTheHand 17:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Keep in mind that this contravenes broader guidelines, but that's always okay per application if it does meet with general agreement. Josh 17:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I kept the categorization guidelines in mind, but they do say that exceptions can be made when they're helpful. I think it's helpful to be able to look at all aircraft carriers of France at once, for example. Was it the country/era issue that you had in mind? As I said, I sort of think of that as an inter-structure link rather than a real parent/child relationship, so it doesn't bug me too much. If I had to eliminate the redundancy, I personally would probably do it by removing the era->country link rather than by removing the country from the ships. TomTheHand 17:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Which Jack?

Was your change of USS Oriskany (CV-34) to a 48 star jack in error, or are we editing to different criteria? Please chime in on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships#Which Jack?. Thanks. FWIW, I've been drilling down through various "WWII footypes of US" categories and changing anything with a final decomission before 7/4/1959 to 48 stars. --J Clear 17:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Why change the jack on the USS Thresher (SSN-593) to a 48-star version? There were 50 states when the boat was lost in 1963 -- wouldn't they have been using a 50-star jack?--A. B. 03:41, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

My edit summary was in error; I didn't change the jack to a 48-star version. Sorry about that; when I AWB I sometimes botch edit summmaries! TomTheHand 12:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar

Thanks for the barnstar, all I did was strip the canton from the flag files that someone else made, but I did learn about the inner workings of SVG files in the process. I'm glad I could help out. Good job with that template, it should make future additions or changes a snap. --Dual Freq 00:08, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Power band

A belated nod for the diagram at power band. I neglected to "watch" the page, hence my tardiness. :-) ENeville 16:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Question

Hi. Ok, they accepted my proposal for categories to be merged. So what do I win now? I've been watching my mail, but nothing's come through so far. Do they send it FedEx, or what? thanks. signed, Curious in NY :-) --Sm8900 21:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you referring to the Aircraft carriers of the United States Navy merge? If so, it's already been done. Here's the process:

1. 1. At the end of the discussion period, an administrator looks at the comments and decides what the community has decided. The administrator closes the discussion, listing the decision at the top.
   2. The administrator lists the decision on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Working.
   3. In the case of a rename, a volunteer Wikipedian will create a new category with the new name and copy the content from the old name to the new one.
   4. Volunteer Wikipedians will go to each article that uses the category and update them. In the case of a merge or rename, they will change the old category to the new one. In the case of a delete, they'll remove the category that's being deleted from every article where it's used.
   5. When the category to be merged/renamed/deleted is finally empty, a volunteer will remove it from the To be emptied or moved section to the Ready for deletion section of CFD:W.
   6. An administrator will delete the empty category.

It's a pretty manual process, so if it's something you'd like to help with, they'd be happy to have you. There's no need to ask permission or sign up anywhere; just go to CFD Working and jump in.

In the case of the Aircraft carriers category, volunteers removed or changed all references to Category:Aircraft carriers of the United States Navy about a week and a half ago. TomTheHand 21:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good! Thanks for the answer. that's good to know. see you. --Steve, Sm8900 14:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Londonderry

I'd like a third opinion before this gets into an edit/revert war (perhaps too late). Check the last few edits of USS Charles F. Hughes (DD-428). I added a few reasons on the discussion page, too.--J Clear 21:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

So, would you say . . .

Does Robert Johnson deserve a tag for not citing sources? Seems like the person who admitted the article was not sourced on my talk page is the one who removed the tag.

See:[1] Mattisse(talk) 21:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I believe the article deserves the tag. Because Aguerriero understands that he was mistaken, I don't believe he'll remove the tag again. There shouldn't be any further problem and hopefully someone will step up to the plate and cite the sources. TomTheHand 22:24, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 22:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Timmy12 slips up

Timmy12 just slipped up and identified herself as Mattisse by claiming to have placed tags which were actually placed by Mattisse. See the last point on this request for checkuser. This makes Mattisse's 19th sockpuppet and 4th or 5th sockpuppeting incident. Isn't it about time for an indef block? Ekajati (yakity-yak) 18:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe I'm too involved in this situation to make that kind of decision. Assuming that Timmy12 is a sockpuppet, I would say yes, at this point an extended block is probably necessary. I am generally on Mattisse's side on the tagging issue, but I think the sockpuppetry is unacceptable. Again assuming that Timmy12 is a sockpuppet, Mattisse has gone through great effort to be deceptive this time around. I absolutely feel the request for checkuser is justified and I hope a conclusive result is found. TomTheHand 18:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Understood. There have been claims the she has previously been cleared by checkuser, but whenever I have asked for a link to the result, I have not gotten any response. Ekajati (yakity-yak) 18:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)