User talk:Graham87

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Archives: March 2005 to March 2006 April 2006 to December 2006 January 2007 to May 2007 June 2007 to September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 to April 2008

Contents 1 Greetings from Germany 2 Requesting a copy of a deleted article. 3 JAWS 4 Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips 5 Question for you 6 Rtrievable page 7 Melbourne 8 ozone depletion 9 Rugrats vandal 10 Update and more accessibility questions 11 Thanks 12 Freo Doctor 13 Cherry Creek (California) 14 Thread at WT:WPM 15 RfA thanks! 16 like to have the newer artical that was deleted 17 Thanks 18 WP:ERRORS 19 Another question 20 Thanks! 21 Awkards bit 22 Canning Road 23 And thats the other thing 24 Khalid Kelly 25 I have a favor to ask... 26 New York Times citations in Mulholland Dr. 27 Oh dear 28 Another Rugrat vandal 29 Tasmanian Devil 30 Hi 31 thanks 32 Entry recovery 33 Date and time in Signature 34 thanks! 35 Back again 36 On Captcha 37 Thanks for The Link 38 math is what computers are best at 39 Honey ant image 40 Commas 41 Strange bot edit

[edit] Greetings from Germany

Hello Graham87,

I saw your name on wiki commons and there at the same time my postludium on the organ of Feuchtwangen. I am a musician and my favorite instrument is the organ. Perhaps I can give you some more audio files if you want. I like to do audio recording with my brandnew zoom H 2. Quite a lot of audio files are on my "Spielwiese" ( is it playground in english ? )No, I see: it is the sandbox !

Best greetings from Germany

--Metzner 21:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Von „http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Graham87“

Replied at User talk:Metzner on the Commons. Graham87 09:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting a copy of a deleted article.

Hello, I was told to contact you. Could you please send me a copy of an article that was deleted? The article was on "410bc". 410bc is a clothing company. The article I wrote was deleted because I did not provide enough information about notability. I would like to edit it and re-submit it because I do not think it should have been deleted.

Thanks so much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teenten88 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] JAWS

Hi. Thanks for the response. The point I was making was that on the page Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia, the first link goes to a page that doesn't give much info about how to actually use the program, which I thought might be confusing for people like me who had just stumbled across it and who do not have a reasonable understanding of how JAWS works, or perhaps who had never heard of it. It's a great idea, and I am all for expanding access to Wikipedia for all, so hats off to everybody involved. Davidelit (talk) 07:18, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Good call. Thanks Davidelit (talk) 08:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips

Hi Graham,

On an importance scale of 1 to 10, this is a -3. But Dorftrottel would like to delete Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips,as the redirect is not needed, I declined the speedy because you had previously restored it, and he still would like to, I assume to keep the subspace organized. I can see both your points; nonvital, but useful, subspace organization, vs. technically incorrect, but ultimately somewhat harmless, loss of history. I already deleted Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Noticeboard, as the usefulness of the history was negligible IMHO. Do you still feel strongyly about keeping the redirect? You and Dorf probably know more about the history of these pages than I do (I just ran across it at CAT:CSD), so I'll defer to your judgement. --barneca (talk) 17:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I just found it in my deleted contributions and was a bit shocked ... I believe all history should be kept where possible as can be seen from my deletion log. Redirects are cheap and IMO should be used in situations like this, mostly because the text of Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips was merged into Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Helpful Hints. I was the only contributor to Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips besides User:Filll, and I would prefer that to be recorded in the page history. However on an importance scale from 1 to 10 for Wikipedia, I'd rate it somewhere below 0. I can slightly understand the need for organisation of the Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly subpages to make it easier to use Special:Prefixindex on them, but I think keeping the page history is more important. I certainly wouldn't reverse any future undeletion of the page because that would quallify as a very very lame wheel war. Graham87 00:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't dream of wheel warring about something lame; I plan to save up my chits, and someday wheel war on something really big! I have no horse in this race; since you disagree, an uncontested housekeeping speedy isn't appropriate, and Dorf can MfD it if he wants to. --barneca (talk) 04:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

• I think only lame things should be wheel-warred about. That being said, I'm not hell-bent on having the page deleted, as you both correctly assessed, it's just my desire to keep the NTWW space as clean and manageable as possible, but I acknowledge the point about the page history, so nevermind. Dorftrottel (complain) 04:18, May 7, 2008

[edit] Question for you

Hi - I've been working on the Monty Hall problem mostly in response to issues raised at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Monty Hall problem. I don't know if you know this problem or not, but there's a large graphic that was created by user:Father Goose that he is quite attached to (in the "Solution" section of the article). I'm curious whether there's any difference at all for you between the solution section in the current article (including his graphic) and the one at User:Rick Block/MH solution. If you could check these two versions out and let me know what you think I'd appreciate it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:57, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know this problem - I first encountered it through reading the Marilyn vos Savant article and, once I understood it, having a good chuckle at the controversy. Anyway, regarding the article's accessibility, the table in your version reads much better ... I can follow the problem like a probability tree. The table in the actual article has seemingly empty columns which just make following the problem harder. There is a problem with the images though: all versions of JAWS released after 2004 and at least the latest version of Window-Eyes read all graphical links by default, using the file name. All graphics are linked in Wikipedia, so any graphic without a caption will be read by these screen readers as the file name and other extraneous text. So the first graphic in the solution section of Monty Hall problem is read by JAWS as "Monty-CurlyPicksCar.svg/163px-Monty-CurlyPicksCar.svg" while the first graphic in User:Rick Block/MH solution reads as "Monty-LeftCar.svg/150px-Monty-LeftCar.svg". Either the graphics should have a proper caption, or a non-breaking can be used as I said at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1 #Image alt text in templates. Graham87 04:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added alternative text to the images at User:Rick Block/MH solution. This should really be a featured article criteria - I'll bring this up at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria (if you are so inclined, please join this discussion). There is already a criteria that mentions captions, but it doesn't say anything about images for which captions are not appropriate (like these). Although the criteria about following the manual of style implicitly includes Wikipedia:Accessibility, I think it might be more appropriate for accessibility to be specifically mentioned as an explicit criteria at the same level as references. Thanks very much for feedback. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a big improvement. I agree with you that accessibility should be part of the featured article criteria ... most of the guidelines there increase usability anyway. One more improvement could be made, but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. When moving by row, screen readers will read the left-most column as the header. For example, when navigating by row along the right-hand side to the bottom row of the table, it thinks the header is "Switching loses with probability 1/6" and reads that before the actual information of "Switching loses with probability 1/3". There's more information about how JAWS reads tables at "Tables with JAWS" on the Freedom Scientific website. Graham87 14:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rtrievable page

Hi, you deleted Khalid Kelly here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Khalid_Kelly on August 16, 2007. I would like to read whatthiws said. Can you send me a copy? Robert C Prenic (talk) 11:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Melbourne

Okay. Thanks for the note. Much appreciated. Having just encountered a bizarre page move at Estevan, I was clearly too quick on the gun at Melbourne. Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ozone depletion

the tone may be inappropriate for wikipedia but the content is far from inaccurate. please edit it to show the proper tone if you are embarrassed by it.

as far as inaccurate, let's check some things out.
1) hot air rises. ever since humans discovered fire they found out that hot air rises. modern times call the action convection. true or false? (true)

2) electric sparks cause ozone. this has been proven true by scientists. the "fresh" smell from just after a thunderstorm is from the ozone created by the lightning. maybe there are different physical laws in germany than in the states... scientists create ozone in labs by using spark gaps within a normal atmosphere.

3) from the scientists i've heard, most of the pollution in the atmosphere gets into the upper atmosphere in australia's hot desert via convection (see point 1).

so, what's wrong with using all 3 tidbits of information we all know and creating a system to replenish the ozone layer or even creating a new one that all the CFCs can destroy?

71.66.102.41 (talk) 04:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rugrats vandal

Hi again Graham, 72.148.144.40 is back and has vandalised alot of articles related to the Rugrats again. Can you please revert them and issue a further block. Thanks from your old friend TheProf07 90.209.255.78 (talk) 17:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Just so you know, I've reverted his edits to the Rugrats related articles. However, he may do more between me going offline and you reading this message. Again, thats for your help on this matter 90.209.255.78 (talk) 17:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC) (TheProf07)

[edit] Update and more accessibility questions

Hi - It appears the accessibility guidelines won't be explicitly added to the featured article criteria, see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Accessibility. The general argument against is that the criteria already includes WP:MOS so the accessibility guidelines are already included, albeit implicitly. user:SandyGeorgia has added adherence to the guidelines to a checklist she maintains for featured articles, which will hopefully be sufficient.

The questions are about template:TOCright, template:TOCleft, and template:TOClimit.

1. Is TOClimit an issue at all?
2. The guidelines basically say to not use TOCright or TOCleft. Are these actually significant issues? For example, is this version of the article on Georg Forster or this version of the article on Tolkien difficult to read? One of the editors of the Tolkien page apparently stomped off in a huff over the TOC placement (without using TOCleft the TOC appears by itself between the lead and the first section creating a large area of blank space to its right). If TOCright and TOCleft do create significant issues should we take them to WP:TFD?

I'd very much appreciate your opinions about this. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm glad the accessibility issues are being considered in FAC.

I have no problem with Template:TOClimit - if CSS is disabled, it won't do anything and won't generate actual junk like Wikipedia:HiddenStructure does.

I don't object to the use of TOCleft and TOCright templates on their own. However, I strongly object to changing the position of the TOC. When I read through an article, I expect no text after the table of contents, so I skip to the first heading after I've finished with the TOC. In general, screen reader users expect things to be on a consistent position on a page - it makes life a lot easier. As I said at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1 #articles with a floating TOC, the first time I encountered the TOC position being changed at isotope, I thought the article was vandalised because it seemed to have no lead section.

In summary, TOClimit is alright, and so are TOCleft and TOCright, but the placement of the table of contents in an article should never be changed - it should always be, in terms of the wiki text, below the lead section and directly above the first heading. Graham87 15:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The bottom line is where the TOC is in the HTML (right?), and it just turns out that putting TOCright or TOCleft immediately before the first heading keeps the TOC in a consistent spot in the generated HTML. This concern would say __TOC__ should in general not be used as using this forces the TOC to be generated wherever it appears (this is used by both TOCright and TOCleft). Perhaps this should be raised as a MediaWiki issue. I'll talk to Sandy about this so she understands the issue. By the way - scanning your contribs it doesn't look like you frequent WP:FAC. I don't know if you're interested, but I'm sure accessibility comments would be appreciated at FAC reviews. Most of us have no idea what articles look like through your eyes. Thanks again. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, where the TOC is in the HTML is the important thing. In general, __TOC__ shouldn't be used, but I don't mind the situations where it's placed at the end of the page ... I can't remember where I found that now. The TOC shouldn't obscure any text for people navigating by headings, so there is almost nowhere sensible to place it besides in its default position. I used to frequent FAC ... in fact, my first contribution there is the reason that I created my userpage to tell people I use a screen reader in case I make strange edits. I usually just copyedited the entries - I couldn't think of much constructive feedback to give. I hadn't thought about commenting on the accessibility issues ... I'll check out the FAC page every now and then and speak up if I find anything unusual. Most good pages are accessible, unless unusual layouts are used. Graham87 00:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: your message on User talk:SandyGeorgia about the timeline at John Vanbrugh: If you mean the one in "List of architectural works", that's fine as it's just plain text. Graphical timelines like those generated by EasyTimeline aren't accessible at all. Graham87 10:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It's an EasyTimeline in the HTML between the lead and the first section header transcluded through Template:John Vanbrugh timeline. The accessibility guidelines don't say anything about timelines. Should they? -- Rick Block (talk) 13:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well ... if it wasn't for the links to view, discuss and edit the template, I wouldn't have even known the timeline was there. The last time I checked out timelines (my musings are at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1#Timelines?), I used to be able to at least read the text of the timeline, without being able to read the years. Now timelines seem to be just one big graphic with no caption and all modern screen readers will just completely ignore them. It would be best if the output of the timeline extension was accessible, so sighted and blind users could get the same information, and I don't see why it can't be. User:Mzajac and I had a brief discussion about this in May 2006 in the link above. Where would be the best place to hammer out an accessible timeline system? Graham87 13:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

And to answer the original question, yes ... the guidelines should be modified to say that they don't read at all with screen readers. However I would prefer it if the EasyTimelines were fully accessible. Graham87 14:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

for the copy-edit. I had no idea about irregardless; I thought it was one of those flammable/inflammable things.--ragesoss (talk) 02:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Freo Doctor

Of all the arts to attract things - it seems funny - the other month it was the deserts - and ned kelly had to get protected - oh well anybodys guess who is next - cheers SatuSuro 00:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the mixup with the email dont knpw what happened - and btw the whole south west tas issue is a nightmare - a very under covered area (at least 30 mountains and rivers should be in but are not) and a confused south tas wilderness an south west world heritage area and the national parks that make it up - hope over time to clean it up but its a mess! sorry i also misunderstood your email first time - will get back - cheers SatuSuro 02:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The dark hole of calcutta the tasmanian project - i once waited 6 months for a repsonse on one of the articles - sigh SatuSuro 02:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be great to have that art copyedited - and remove my npov tag - as it read like either a copyvio or a tourist thingo - hey i gotta get off have a good day - cheers SatuSuro 02:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that - cheers SatuSuro 03:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Wowo - you have been through the rigors of american centric supposedly universal encyclopedia articles - I think I would have tagged half of them us centric! - cheers SatuSuro 08:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cherry Creek (California)

Do you have any idea why the article is saying though these areas are accessible only to backpackers? I am not familiar with the area. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thread at WT:WPM

Hi - Might you be able to comment on the thread at WT:WPM#Pascal's triangle? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 11:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Rick Block (talk) 04:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome - I usually prefer simple layouts to more complex ones as they work with more software and hardware, hence the preference for ASCII over tables where it makes sense. Graham87 04:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RfA thanks!

		RfA: Many thanks
		Many thanks for your participation in my recent request for adminship. I am impressed by the amount of thought that goes into people's contribution to the RfA process, and humbled that so many have chosen to trust me with this new responsibility. I step into this new role cautiously, but will do my very best to live up to your kind words and expectations, and to further the project of the encyclopedia. Again, thank you. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] like to have the newer artical that was deleted

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Charansagar (talk • contribs) 11:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for your assistance. Being a new user, it's pretty hard to figure wikipedia's procedure. It's so complex for first time usage. Anyway it's been a good experiance to learn from mistakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charansagar (talk • contribs) 11:12, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:ERRORS

This took out the bottom of the page, hence my revert, not because I deem you a vandal ;) --Stephen 01:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks for the note - I'll try to be more careful when removing things from that page in the future. I didn't even check if there was anything below the out-dated report. Graham87 01:22, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another question

Hi - Yet another question for you. In Monty Hall problem#Why the probability is not 1/2 there are two tables that are identical except for the entries in two columns. I've highlighted the changed columns for now using > and < characters around the entries. The actual HTML way to do this would be to use the STRONG or EM tags, but according to this page these tags don't cause any special treatment by default in JAWS. Is there some other standard or quasi-standard way to indicate emphasis or highlighting that you know of or could recommend? BTW - if you ever grow tired of questions like this please let me know. It is extremely helpful to be able to ask someone who actually uses a screen reader about issues like this, but I can imagine it might get tiresome. As always, thanks very much. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The < and > will speak under the default JAWS settings, but they read as "less" and "greater" so they sound confusing. The form of emphasis mainly used by blind people in text is to put asterisks around a word like *this*, but I'm not sure how professional that would look. I think it would be acceptable to mention that certain text is italicised or bolded or whatever - all screen readers have keys to find out the attributes of the text under the cursor. It is also possible to use the table summary tag to give more detail - it could be appropriate in this case as long as the summary text is not too wordy. JAWS notes that text marked with <strong> is bold and text marked with <em> is italic as I discovered at User:Graham87/sandbox3. I don't mind the accessibility questions at all ... they not only help Wikipedia, but teach me more about accessible web design. Graham87 02:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Thanks for making the NYT ref in Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness accessible! --Hordaland (talk) 07:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Graham87 08:13, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Awkards bit

A real inclusionist or some other form of ist type person would probably see ways of merging the kala zig zag art with the upper darling range railway - but for reasons now partially obscure - we kept em as separate arts - i think part of it was that some bright sparks (and that is ambiguous as you like to make it) considered the possibility of resurrecting the zig zag as a railway - and now with the spirit of the west restaurant train being closed down by their current owners there is a potential market - the zig zag resurrectors even got money to do feasibility studies - but then havent heard much since. so the two arts were kept separate partially for the circumstances - cheers SatuSuro 10:54, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Yikes you even found my msa stub from the deep dark past - I really should have gone down the line of making sure there was a stub for every steam engine class in wa - but one of the million threads thought about but not ventured (yet) its three years of crazy disparate threads tommorrow afternoon! SatuSuro 10:57, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey like your response - that makes me feel better about some of the tasmanian stubs I have to get back to yet :) SatuSuro 11:03, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Therein lies a terrible confession - I went to the launching and bought a copy of the timber railways book by gunzburg - started a stub and have never been back - there would easily be up to 120 sep articles from that book alone if properly exhausted of potential material - I'll make it a commitment that seeing im at my third birthday wikipedia wise - that i promise to you afer next week - an article a week a minimum for you (some will be stubs of some shortness) for the next year - god willing that I am on wikipedia - so that might be about bracnh lines, engines, and some of the weirder subjects - and it wont include dry stubs about the locomotives - so keep me to my promise! better than the heaps of rounds of drinks that i owe moondyne, gnangarra, orderinchaos and hesperian - so that will really be something considering how crazily chaotic my editing is. cheers SatuSuro 11:18, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

OK deal that it is - I will try to make sure there adequate links - because I understand how it is always worth going down the links to make sure they are ok as well SatuSuro 11:29, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Canning Road

OK it starts at the north at the kalamunda shops - theres a round about when you get to the top of kalamunda road - it goes south - through kalamunda, lesmurdie, carmel where it proceeds east into pickering brook, then south again through canning mills and karagullen until it hits the brookton highway as its southern end. Very very roughly over 15 km long and probably in parallel most of the way with the old rail reserve - havent checked closely enough. hope that helps. SatuSuro 11:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC) Its not a fast road - so it could feel like ages - but these days we seem to be driving faster SatuSuro 12:00, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] And thats the other thing

No one has had the guts to start the trams in freo or perth articles yet - I have tottered almost in starting stubs for almost two years now - it will be done in the near furture! SatuSuro 14:59, 24 May 2008 (UTC) Ok - the boulder/kal/leonora localities did have either something or other - like the loop railway in kal before the superpit removed part of its alignment (I think)- and leonora did have a tram - also in the pre first world war era most of the public works department jetties had very small tram/rail lines like - carnarvon - and the mundaring weir line was started by pwd and got taken over - it gets interesting - so more soon! cheers SatuSuro 15:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Khalid Kelly

Hello, Please may I ask that you send me the full article text from the newly deleted Khalid Kelly article that was deleted on the 13 May I think. I am doing something wrong and this time round want to fix it completely to be a very good article and I would greatly appreciate the article text to re-edit. Many thanks. User:Arthur Warrington Thomas (talk) 07:53, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I have a favor to ask...

Hey, I hope this finds you well-
As you most likely already know, there has been ongoing discussion about the formatting issues surrounding the references sections in articles. Because the fonts are so small that they're borderline-illegible, it's making it difficult for folks to properly read them without some serious squinting action. Frankly, it's a headache in more ways than one. However, we have been told that the reason they are like that in the first place is because some articles (particularly the science ones) have massive amounts of references and if the font size wasn't so small, the pages would be ridiculously long.
So, I've been fiddling around with different solutions (see WP:VPP#Small fonts, and the idea that I've finally settled on is to use a bit of css code to place the references section in a scrollbox. I think it looks really great, and it doesn't have some of the problems I was dealing with when I was trying to use {{hidden}}. I'm especially happy that, unlike with {{hidden}} you can jump directly from an inline reference marker to that individual reference without having to do any extra scrolling. Or at least, that's the case when browsing wikipedia normally. I strongly believe that this will work with screen readers too, but I want to be sure before I go any farther.
What I'd appreciate if you did, if you have some extra time and don't mind being my guinea pig, is to go to my test page (User:L'Aquatique/Template Box) and click on the first inline citation you find, then let me know if it works properly. Just as fair warning, the test page is a copy of String theory- the first article I thought of when I went to go find something with lots of refs. However, you shouldn't have to wade through too mu physics gobbledegook to find a reference.
Thanks so much for your time, hopefully this won't take up too much of it. You can reply here or on my talk page, but if you do reply here please place the {{talkback}} on my talk page as I'm a bit of a space cadet and would probably forget to watch this page. You don't have to reply with mind-blowing super-hero speed like in the past, although you won't find me complaining if you do. *grin*. Thanks again and happy, uh, Wednesday...
L'Aquatique[talk] 22:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New York Times citations in Mulholland Dr.

Hi. I noticed you altered the citations for the New York Times in this article. There's a discussion on the talk page about this. At one point, the NYT required a login for at least one of the articles. I think their site randomly imposes logins at times. I'm not sure why they appear then disappear. Since logins aren't acceptable for online sources in Featured Articles, I considered reverting your formats when I saw them last night, but so far I have been able to see the articles from their links. However, at any time in the future they require a login, I'll have to undo the formatting. FYI... --Moni3 (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oh dear

You have found all my old hills arts - they in part are so embarrassing - thanks for your cleanups - oh dear SatuSuro 15:27, 30 May 2008 (UTC) Wine regions is rubbish - I do have some good refs on that - gawd you are covering ground that makes me feel I should be going back and covering my tracks - have you heard through my mining fields of western australia list yet? It might have to be my surrogate railway art of this weekend - has been bit mucked up by having to tend to my teenagers a bit. cheers SatuSuro 16:31, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that - at Mineral Fields - appreciate the help - I am reluctant to put estab dates for the gold fields as although they are probably the same as the parent category - I have no direct evidence that they werent created at a separate date - wow the iso dates look very weird - cheers SatuSuro 04:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe there is a limit to the columns in the dynamic list template internals ? we could get rid of the size column - as it is from 1981 data and may no longer be correct SatuSuro 07:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, then it seems it needs extra coding internally then? SatuSuro 07:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It would be very good to learn about this as I know of about more than a dozen articles that could do with the sort of list - and hey the challenge is worth it - thanks for going to the trouble - I do appreciate it SatuSuro 07:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Would it be -class="sortbottom" ? SatuSuro 07:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Enjoy the books - take your time - will be still mulling over which railway art goes up next SatuSuro 08:24, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Heheheheh - the list - somehow marble bar has become 3ble bar or about to fix - it looks so funny 3le bar! thanks for all your help there SatuSuro 12:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it not to worry about it now it is looking very good! SatuSuro 12:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Too late on the long weekend to start poo stories - I have too many from a simple editors point of view :( SatuSuro 13:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another Rugrat vandal

Special:Contributions/67.174.128.251 -- This user is editing all the characters to suggest they appear in another Rugrats spin-off. A google search reveals that no such spin-off exists. I seem to remember the main Rugrats vandal liked to make up false TV series and films. Same person!? Hope you are well. 90.209.255.78 (talk) 15:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC) (TheProf07)

Just to annoy the world. S/he's back as Special:Contributions/24.11.226.5, same vandalism to same pages :-( Makes me want to come back, even if just to protect these pages ;-) Thanks for your help with these vandals! 90.209.255.78 (talk) 00:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, my new part time anti-vandal account is set up! Any chance of some rollback rights? (You know, just to make things easier). Cheers! AGU! Defender (talk) 20:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Another one you might want to keep an eye on -- Special:Contributions/68.97.78.5. This one keeps changing the names of cartoon characters. No sources are ever given and i know the ones relating to All Grown Up! (Rugrats) characters are bogus. This is a clear case of vandalism IMO. AGU! Defender (talk) 10:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tasmanian Devil

We have a very smart one here - would appreciate oversight - thanks SatuSuro 06:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hi

Im new in Wikipedia, my english is not good, i want know how i can insert the userboxer in my page. Thanks. --Frida :·) (talk) 17:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC) I have a page in Wikipedia in spanish. I used the same name.

[edit] thanks

Thank for your help, i tried the insert the userboxer in my page. I have a page in wikipwdia in spanish, i hope there u understand my english, because i speake spanish.Thanks again.Bye.--Frida :·) (talk) 18:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Entry recovery

Hi,

I am very new to Wikipedia and a couple of months ago I created a page for Octagon worldwide, a sports marketing company. However, my page on Octagon Worldwide was removed from Wikipedia and I have since learnt it was becuase my entry appeared to be promoting the company. I have been passed on your contact as somebody who may be able to help me recover the page so that I can ammend it where needs be?

Any help would be greatly received.

Many thanks

--S0504280 (talk) 14:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Date and time in Signature

Thanks for fixing the problem on Mr. Wales's page for me. I hadn't even noticed the disconintuity discontinuity. ៛ Bielle (talk) 04:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Graham87 04:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Even the shortest comment can use a spell check! ៛ Bielle (talk) 04:12, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Hehe yes - and the shortest comments are usually written in the biggest rush. Graham87 04:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] thanks!

Thanks for your advice [Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_40#button_to_edit_only_the_lead.2C_aka_section.3D0 here]. It seems to work quite well :) --Enric Naval (talk) 19:09, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Back again

The Name changing "Rugrat" vandal is back again, this time as 67.174.143.5. This person must have access to lots of computers! Cheers AGU! Defender (talk) 18:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! As I said in one of the reverts I made as an IP, these pages seem to get more vandalism than the George W. Bush page! And I believe that is offically the most vandalised page on Wikipedia. Again, thanks for all your help with these :-) AGU! Defender (talk) 08:37, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] On Captcha

You're lucky RE: sighted help. That's something I (and probably most blind users) can't get, so CAPTCHA is, in fact, a major issue. Using a synth like espeak or festival has several major issues. First, the sound they generate is much too regular: no pauses of differing length, no accents, no differing voices, etc. Second, it requires that particular set of synths to be installed on the wikimedia servers; this may not be the case. If one uses wav data, the wav file format is simple enough that .wav captchas can be generated entirely in PHP, without the requirement for third party applications/libraries. This means that the open source PHP captcha library can be used in any project, even where the website is hosted (like on dreamhost). I have begun writing back-end functions for doing this (Thank goodness wikipedia has good audio-related articles), and that's why I've not been on wikipedia updating things much. The major sticking point is getting distortion that is good enough to defeat a voice recognition system, when that system has access to the code responsible for doing the distortion in the first place, and that is fast enough to avoid slowing down the entire server. The problem is compounded by the fact that we have no standard cross platform audio editing library, in the same way we do for images; most php image CAPTCHAs written today get to use things like image magic to do the heavy lifting of image processing. We do not, as far as I can see, have the same or similar for audio data. Another issue with an audio CAPTCHA that involves words is that it is extremely discriminatory towards any blind user who's second language is the language of the CAPTCHA. I can think of a number of blind friends who would not pass if the captcha were, say, "colonel epoch" (try spelling that without using your screen readers say by letter function; did you get it right?). Blind people, for the most part, are bad spellers. A CAPTCHA that's going to work for us needs to keep that in mind. Oh, and what if the audio captcha word is colour? Is it c o l o r or c o l o u r? What about their/there/they're? As far as I can see, the only solution for an audio captcha is to use numbers and letters. This is a captcha, not a spelling test. Fastfinge (talk) 20:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for The Link

Thanks for the link to spoken wikipedia. This will help get wav files quickly for all the various CAPTCHAs. As well, the more different recordings we have for each language, the harder the CAPTCHA will be; we can mix different voices into each captcha presented. As I say, the first thing that needs to be struggled with is finding a way to distort the recordings using only php in a way that can't be either reversed or compinsated for by someone who has both the distortion method used and all of the original recordings that went into the CAPTCHA. I begin to see why nobody has worked on this yet, the problem is non-trivial. Even the Google audio captcha, that has the advantage of a completely closed system where the method of distortion and the original recordings are not available, has recently been completely cracked. Last I checked, facebook doesn't even use audio captchas; instead, you need to provide a cell phone number and enter a code you're sent via sms. This works on the theory that while you can easily get many email addresses, most people only have access to one cell number, so can only easily sign up for one account. But this solution doesn't solve the problems (like account highjacking and bot prevention for already existing accounts) that wikipedia is using captcha to solve. So, to make a long story short, I'm still just trying to find a viable solution to the problem that wikipedia can implament, never mind convincing them to put it into place. One thing that would perhaps lesson the problem somewhat would be allowing every IP address to create one new account per week (or perhaps month, depending) without filling in a captcha, and allowing 3 log-in attempts before requiring a captcha on login. This would let most blind people onto the system. But then we've still got a problem with becoming autoconfirmed before you can get rid of the CAPTCHA completely. I've no solution for that. The way wikipedia attempts to verify humanness, IE a CAPTCHA, is just a fundamentally bad system no matter how you hack it. The "real" solution is requiring wikipedia users to present ID on signup (credit card number, sin number, etc) and then banning spammers/vandals/trolls by ID. But somehow I absolutely don't think wikipedians are going to go for this for other perfectly good reasons. But if they do, can I be a checkuser? I could really use that identity theft money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fastfinge (talk • contribs) 01:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] math is what computers are best at

I'm not surprised that got turned off quickly. A text captcha, in order to work, must (take this list with a grain of salt; I just thought it up this afternoon): have a large and frequently updated database of non-math puzzles to solve that does not depend on any open computer readable dataset (thus the database of questions must be closed source, and not automaticly generated from another open dataset like wordnet or freebase), be able to present all questions in the database in a variety of formats and wording ("What color is a blue shirt?" vs. "If I have a blue shirt, what color is my shirt?" vs. "I have a blue shirt. Is it: a. blue. b. yellow. c. green"), and never ask a question that could not be answered by all English speakers on earth or that could have more than one correct answer ("What was Nixon's first name?" "Who sang Red River Valley?"). This problem is just as hard as an audio captcha, and can't work for wikipedia due to the requirement for a closed source database of questions. What we need is a computer that can administer a turing test to a user and tell if that user past. Unfortunately, a computer that could do this could pass the test itself! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fastfinge (talk • contribs) 01:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Honey ant image

Gah - you deleted it again after only a few minutes! I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to do what I needed to do. If you wouldn't mind undeleting one more time, I will expedite and drop you a note when I'm done. Thanks! Kelly ^hi! 14:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

All finished, thank you! Kelly ^hi! 14:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Commas

Re: your comment on my talk page -- I don't really edit anymore (busy IRL), but in any event I'm not at all bothered by your changing punctuation around.

The bit about "comma monkeys" on my user page is a lame attempt at humor. At work I spend a lot of time mindlessly fixing punctuation in contracts and briefs -- which makes me a, well, you know...comma monkey. (I guess like all bad attempts at humor, the more you explain it the less funny it gets.) Anyways, since at work we use the typesetter's or "American" style, I do tend to use the same approach on the rare event that I can edit here. I should probably use Wikipedia's preferred approach instead, but, well, life's too short. Best, --TheOtherBob 05:54, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Strange bot edit

yes, that edit would be the reason I don't run the subst program on MBisanzBot, as I can't figure out how to disable the substs of the parser {{sig}}. When it first cropped up, I had all of the bot's recent edits rolled back, about a 1000 or so, so I'm not sure why its showing up. What I can do is run an intersection of my bot's edits and the image used in the template, which might help me determine the size of the matter. I'll get back to you tonight. MBisanz ^talk 16:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

So {{anonblock}} and {{schoolblock}} appear to be the only templates with the weird {{sig}} thing. Thankfully, they use unique images in the warning. So I cross-tabbed all the occurrences of those images, with all my bot's edits. Then I loaded that list into my watchlist, and rolled back all the top edits my bot had made. That shouldve corrected most of the errors, since it looked like a lot of pages where my bot was not the top edit was someone clearing/rewarning the IP. Also, I've gone into the AWB code I was using an removed {{sig}} [1] since it shouldn't be automatically subst'd if there are these weird parser uses of it. Thanks for pointing out the prior rollback didn't get everything. MBisanz ^talk 20:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)