Bryan Derksen/Archive 10 |
= Succession boxes =
Hello there. By convention, we don t group a peerage succession (e.g. 03:00, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:Okie-dokie. It s my first time using these things, I ll keep it in mind for the future. 03:02, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::No worries, and I m glad to see someone else doing the grunt work. Happy editing. 03:12, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::Hopefully any messes I ve made will be easy to clean up now that the data s been put into templates like these. It looks like a very tidy system. 03:36, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::::After over a year of trial and error...mainly error it seems like. Ah well, nothing like free time I don t have. Incidentally, I think I ve straightened out the Lord Warden bit. Whomever went and did them all in the first place really didn t know what they were doing, and we re always tripping over them and fixing them. 05:48, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::::Thanks. BTW, did I guess right on the pluralization of Lord Warden when I created the category for them I have the sneaking suspicion that I should have called it Lord Wardens instead of Lords Warden. :) 05:52, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::::::I have no idea ;). Go ask 05:55, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::::Hmm, it seems Emsworth is taking a vacation. From a cursory Google search, I d think it s Lords Warden , but Emsworth, John Kenney, etc. are far more knowledgeable on the topic than I am :) 20:05, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::::I d say Lord Wardens , since they are primarily Wardens rather than Lords. It s similar to 15:03, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
= L.A. County =
Thanks for the re-cat of L.A. County. That was exactly what I had planned to do someday. You got it done while I was still thinking about it! Cheers, - 05:17, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
= Disinformation =
Just to let you know, I m not actually serious about this project. It would, most likely, be a terrible idea. Think of it as a hoax about propagating hoaxes. 10:19, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:That in itself is also a bad idea, since I m sure it s going to result in a lot of bad attention from other editors who react even more strongly to the idea than I do. Besides, I don t think I can really trust you at this point; you ve inserted blatant disinformation into an article once already that I know of, and the same disinformation is presented on that page as an example. Besides, what s the merit of a hoax project to insert hoaxes Remember that our goal here is to write an encyclopedia, not build an online community. Everything ultimately must serve that goal. 16:36, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:: *sigh* :: You re probably right. I m sure someone could come up with a really good justification for the idea, but I can t see it at the moment. I think its best use is as a at the page or sth. I am interested in who might believe it to be serious, though. 21:42, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:::To ping Wikipedia, how about selecting a number of random articles and independantly verifying the information contained within to see if there are flaws That s straightforward statistical sampling, and it has the added benefit that it will allow any errors so detected to be corrected. I recommend deleting the disinformation page entirely, it s only going to draw heat. 06:34, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
=Bloom=
Thanks for adding the note to 21:51, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)
=Geo-stubs=
Hi Brian, I ve spent the last couple of weeks going through all the geo-stubs and putting them in their correct subcategories (such as Africa-go-stub, UK-geo-stub, etc). I had another look today, and lo and behold there were a fresh bunch of new African ones just put in geo-stub. I appreciate you adding the stub messages to articles, but please can you make sure there aren t more appropriate subcategories when you do Cheers, 04:59, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:Wasn t aware there were subcategories to that, I ve just been tossing it in whenever I was doing something else in a geographic stub anyway. I ll take a look and try to remember the subcategories in the future, thanks. 05:04, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
::Thanks. They re all listed at the top of 23:33, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
= Redirs to VfD =
G day Bryan
there seemed to be a problem with the redirs at 23:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:No problem, as long as the VfD discussion can be easily reached from the VfD headers on the articles being VfDed I m perfectly happy. 00:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
::Done, and I ve wikilinked from the nomination to this discussion, so please don t archive this or edit the heading for a week or so. 01:54, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:::Okay. It takes a lot longer than a week for my talk page to fill up, fortunately. :) 01:56, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
= Consensus science/scientific consensus/RFC =
(
= Academy Awards =
Please stop, I beg you. What you re doing is put it completely in the wrong direction I had going. I ll be happy to explain but please stop changing everything. 21:39, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:Well, I ve stopped for now because I think I m done with the things I felt needed doing. By all means explain what you think is wrong with what I was doing, and if I agree I ll help fix things. If I don t agree, though, I ll be happy to explain my own philosophy as well. 21:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:Oh, one or two minor things just came to mind which I think you ll find noncontroversial. I should put the (film) subcategories under 22:14, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
::First, please see my rational on the CFD page. ::*Regarding film categories: I m not sure where they should go. Putting films under makes sense and likewise for actors ::*Regarding Best Director: I don t think that was my addition. I had created the category but didn t populate it. Someone who saw my best picture category addition must ve added all the oscar categories for it. :: 22:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
My biggest problem with your renaming is the massively lengthed categories now. I m not entirely sure how long, but I spent hours just thinking of ways to name categories to make them succinct but understandable. For a film that won 11 awards or even a couple, those category names will fill up several lines in the category box already, but now several more because of the extended length. My optimal choice would be to put everything back and strike up a discussion on a talk page instead of involving WP:CFD on the issue. :) 22:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:As with most of the big categorization projects I wind up involved in, I didn t intend to do this much work at first; I was just browsing through 22:34, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
=Cricket subcategories category=
Bryan
Philip and I are the two main categorisers of cricket-related articles. As you saw, we were both in favour of retaining the cricket subcategories category as a tool to help us - and there are good reasons for keeping it rather than a list. Categorisation takes a lot of time as it is, maintaining a list of subcategories would merely add to it (after all, it takes one second to add Category:Cricket subcategories at the bottom of a newly created cricket subcategory, given WP s current performance, it could take up to a minute to add it to a long list.
I think your proposal to convert this category to a list would not only be a waste of your time, it would also hinder our work to categorise cricket and lead to a waste of Philip s and my time. When the software changes so that we can look through categories, we will no longer need this subcategory - until then, I ask you to appreciate that this is just one of thousands of categories, and to realise it is doing more good than harm. Kind regards, 07:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:Nevertheless I remain committed to doing just that. See - you may be one of the primary users of this category, but I have just as much right to fiddle with it as you do. You re a fan of cricket, so you do a lot of work on cricket articles; I m a fan of good, clean category structure, so I do work on tidying up cases like this. I don t think it s worth the trade of a few seconds convenience to have this inappropriate category remain in Wikipedia. How often do you create new cricket subcategories, anyway There are roughly 250 of them in that category right now, so it would have taken a grand total of 4 hours to add those all to a list if you did them one at a time and it took a minute for each one. How long have you spent arguing with me to keep that category
:Please, tell me what sort of work it is that you think will take years to complete on these categories, I m not trying to be obstructionist and I really do think that a list will be more helpful for whatever it is that you re trying to do. I can even help out with doing it, I m good at categorizing stuff and can probably contribute way more than four hours worth of work if it needs doing. 16:30, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Bryan, you have offered your opinion and now been told by at least 3 members of the Cricket WikiProject that we do not like your idea of having a list of subcategories rather than a category of subcategories. It is members of the Cricket WikiProject who are most likely to be categorisers of cricket articles. I ask you to just accept the position as it is. I thank you for your idea, but ultimately, what tools are used by those who categorise cricket-related articles should be determined by those who categorise cricket-related articles, rather than your good self.
I would also add that your persistency is beginning to have a negative effect - certainly I for one am reluctant to continue much categorisation work as I am not sure whether you are going to hinder or destroy that work going forward. I m sure that is not your intention, but I would like to point out that as far as I am aware this discussion is now counter-productive to the categorisation of cricket-related articles. After all, we are only talking about one category amongst thousands - if you do not like it, it is easy enough to overlook it, Kind regards, 17:29, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:I have never suggested that I would destroy any categorization work you ve done, indeed I ve offered at several points to help with it. I categorize a lot of heck of a lot of articles. I ve had people think I run some sort of categorizing bot through this account (I don t, it s all manual). But so far none of you have actually told me what sort of work you re trying to do here, you ve given me no reason to believe that this cricket subcategories category is of any use and you ve certainly given me no reason to believe you consider it only a temporary thing. I don t think I m the one who s being counterproductive here. Would you please at least answer my question 00:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
= Succession boxes =
As a note, when showing succession of peerage titles, we generally use 03:28, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:Ah. I note, however, that that template is actually just a wrapper for the succession box template; using it is identical to using the succession box template while leaving the years value blank. Just blank the years on the ones I did and it ll have the same effect, with (very) marginally less server effort. 03:35, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
=English cricketers=
Please keep the English cricketers (or other nationality) categorisation in the individual players articles - I m not alone in finding it very useful. By all means remove the Cricketers categorisation in the individual players articles. Kind regards, 04:15, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:I m probably going to regret asking, but what do you find it useful for This sort of redundancy is explicitly frowned upon in the categorization conventions on . Specifically:
*An article should not be in both a category and its subcategory, e.g. Microsoft Office is in Category:Microsoft software, so should not also be in Category:Software. *A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. For example, Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her. *Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.
:There are exceptions to these, of course; I made one myself on 05:02, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
::It may be useful, in a spirit of co-operation to explain the categorisation of cricketers.
::1. The year of birth and (if applicable) death are categorised; ::2. The nationality and the fact that a person is a cricketer is categorised (eg English cricketers). Sometimes a player has had a number of different nationalities - for instance, Kepler Wessels is a South African who became Australian and then South African again. ::3. Players are categorised by skill and by nationality (eg English batsmen , English bowlers , English all-rounders , English wicket-keepers ). A player may be in more than one of these categories - and if he is an all-rounder he will be a batsman and a bowler too. Personally I do not like these categories and am not convinced people find them too useful as I do not understand why anyone would specifically wish to search by nationality and skill, but I have to date respected the fact they are there and used them. As far as I am concerned, this is the only redundancy in the current classification system. ::4. Players are categorised by major domestic teams that they have played for. This is where cricket-knowledge comes in most useful - as it can be difficult to spot what a major team is if you re unfamiliar with the history of cricket in a particular cricketing nation. For instance, I know that there should never be a category Epsom cricketers , as Epsom is not and has never been a major team. The most difficult situations are pre-19th century cricketers (like Thomas Lord), cricketers in Pakistan (where many of the major teams are tied to different companies), and more recently South Africa and Sri Lanka, where there has been a recent consolidation of the major sides. Note that there is no redundancy with 2 - many cricketers have played domestic cricket in a number of countries - for instance, the English cricketer Ian Botham infamously played one season for the Australian side Queensland, and so is, amongst other things, categorised as a Queensland cricketer . ::5. If a player has played international cricket, then this is also noted. There are two sorts of international cricket - Test cricket (with categories such as English test cricketers ) and One-Day International cricket (with categories such as English ODI cricketers . ::6. If a player has captained a national side this is also noted (eg English cricket captains ). ::7. Certain other honours - such as whether a cricketer has been knighted, or received a Wisden Cricketer of the Year award are noted. ::8. Many cricketers have gone on to become commentators, broadcasters or writers - this may also be noted.
::The categorisation is pretty comprehensive. And, except for the categorisation by skills, I think all the categorisations have intrinsic interest, particularly for cricket aficionados. Source information can be found on www.cricinfo.com and www.cricketarchive.com.
::Note that there are many cricketers on 19:38, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:::Okay, you re probably going to argue with me more on this, but as far as I can see from the thorough explanation you ve given (thanks for that, BTW) it looks like removing those articles from category:English cricketers was the right thing to do after all. This is because those articles were already in various more-specific subcategories of English cricketers, such as for example Category:English bowlers. Every article that s in Category:English bowlers is also considered to be in Category:English cricketers, since it s a subcategory; the nationality information is automatically included that way. You were okay with me removing them from which I did for exactly the same reason; consider the analogy there and I hope you ll understand where I m coming from on this. I m not going to lunge straight for those articles to re-remove them again, before you panic, but I ll probably get around to it eventually - I m pretty sure my understanding of category conventions is correct in this case.
:::A suggestion for the non-major-team cricketers. How about creating for them, or some other more appropriate name That way it ll be easy to tell which cricketers are from minor teams without categories of their own and which are just not yet fully categorized.
:::Later tonight I ll get to work on that list of cricketers. This is the sort of categorization job I m really good at, IMO; I can probably work my way through all four hundred in the next day or two. 05:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
::::Please do, but please preserve the English cricketers , West Indian cricketers , Indian cricketers , etc. categories - they are very useful. The classification by skill, certainly for older cricketers, is somewhat pernicious, and I for one find searching for cricketers by skill to be confusing, 07:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:::::I just said that I wouldn t preserve those categories (meaning I presume leaving articles in them that belong fully to one or more subcategories), at least not in the long run; articles that fall into subcategories of them should in general be removed from the categories those subcategories are in. I ve given my reasoning above, with citations of the relevant conventions from 08:10, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
:::Oh, in case you were keeping track, turns out I didn t have time on the second day to finish categorizing that cricketer list, and I m going to be out of town from now to the end of the weekend. I ll have to get back to it on monday to finish up. 07:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
= Category:Books by title =
Do you mind if I remove the CFD tag from now that the situation has been resolved -- 07:27, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
:By all means. I had assumed it would be done automatically as part of the resolution. :) 09:15, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
=Claudia Beni=
Err... I ve never done that before, and I must not be understanding correctly how to do it, since that website doesn t appear to be listed on the blacklist, so... I ve left a note on 14:46, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
:It s here in this section:
### BEGIN RUSSIAN SPAM SECTION .6x.to
:All the others in this section aside from .pillsbook.com have .su or .ru TLDs, so if it s legit it may still be in the wrong section. 17:17, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC) ::Aah, okay. Done. 18:02, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC) :::Thanks. Article categorized. :) 18:08, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Please stop sending user death threats or I will block you. -- 05:41, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:I m not aware of any death threats I ve sent out, perhaps you could point one out for me Seriously, I have no idea what you re talking about. 05:58, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
=Ghost Town=
With a pop of ~1500 and few if any abandoned buildings I doubt that 17:11, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC))
:The only reason I put it in that category was because it was already in category:ghost towns, I was just moving things to the right geographic subcategory. Recategorize freely. :) 19:53, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
=Wired Magazine Article=
Congratulations on your inclusion in the [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66814,00.htmltw=wn_tophead_1 Wired article]. I wonder if there is an entry for 04:43, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:Thanks. I m also in the dead tree edition, with picture no less - [http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki.htmltw=wn_tophead_5 The Book Stops Here] by Dan Pink had some profiles of Wikipedia users that was the inspiration for the ones you link to. Not meaning to brag, of course. Hope this won t go to my head. :) 04:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
::I feel strangely compelled to write the 00:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::Also, this may make any Wikipedian Windows user switch. [http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard/ See WikityWidget lower down the page.] This is my last comment. I just thought it would be something you might find convenient, finally being able to put wikilinks in your regular text documents. -- 00:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
=Bring back quickpolls=
I think it s time that 05:11, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
= Astrology =
Thanks for the great work you re doing on ·[[User talk:foobaz|o|
|