User talk:Kotniski/Archive 1

Witaj! / Welcome!

Hello, Kotniski, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!  - Darwinek 12:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your Poland-related contributions

Hello Kotniski/Archive 1! Thank you for your contributions related to Poland. You may be interested in visiting Portal:Poland/Poland-related Wikipedia notice board, joining our discussions and sharing your creations with us.

-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  21:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Tramway in Poznań

I see watching Yopur editions, that You are familliar with Poznań and nearby area :) Cold You, as native speake check article Tramways in Poznań and correct this text of my language mistakes (I'm not enoiugh good in English to correct them, but good enough to fell that there are many of them) :) Radomil talk 23:12, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, will do.--Kotniski 07:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank You very much Radomil talk 09:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Kotbot 2

Is this a request for a separate bot (User:Kotbot 2) or is a second task for the first bot (User:Kotbot)? If it's the latter (a second task), then please change the second and third lines in the request to
==[[User:Kotbot|Kotbot]]==
{{Newbot|Kotbot|2}} and change the bot's template on the main WP:BRFA page to {{BRFA|Kotbot|2|Trial}}. If it is in fact a separate bot, don't change anything :-) —METS501 (talk) 15:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, it was intended to be a second task for the same bot, I must have mistyped something. I've made the changes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kotniski (talk • contribs)

Great. Thanks. —METS501 (talk) 16:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Gminas

You might be interested in my longish rant at Polish Portal regarding Gminas. ZOMG, you already have a bot approved? I certainly don't want to (and can't) force my opinion (Poles will maintain those articles), but I beg you to reconsider.... Duja► 15:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hello and thank you for great job covering gminas and villages of Poland. I waited long time for that bot :). I would like to ask you if your bot can create missing articles about gminas and villages of Silesian Voivodeship, especially Cieszyn County. Thank you. - Darwinek 20:13, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, yes, it can and hopefully will. At the moment Kotbot (or rather its current task) is officially in trial and I'm waiting for full approval. When I get that I plan to set it to work systematically, creating gmina/village articles for all voivodeships. The order in which it tackles them is currently the order in which the gminas appear in GUS's pdf file of population figures; so far it's been working on Lower Silesian V. If you like, though, I can do Silesian V. next. But don't expect instant results - it's quite a slow process even with the bot, since not all the Polish articles follow exactly the same format, so some human intervention/correction is still needed.--Kotniski 10:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I am looking forward for full approval of your bot. Take care! - Darwinek 12:45, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Geobox

I have moved this very lengthy discussion about the correct use of the Geobox template to this subpage. Kotniski 23:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Nice...

I like your bot; been doing NP patrol and seeing good articles is nice. Phgao 14:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!--Kotniski 16:36, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Kotbot and villages

Czy Kotbot przenesie wszystkie wioski z pl an en? Niekiedy sam tlumacze, i teraz zastanawiam sie czy jest sens czy poczekac na bota? Kiedy przewidujesz zakonczenie przenosin? -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  18:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Cześć! No taki jest plan, ale kiedy to się skończy, nie jestem w stanie powiedzieć. W tej chwili jesteśmy na etapie pewnych uzgodnień dotyczących Geoboksów. A w ogóle proces jest nie w pełni automatyczny, więc i tak dosyć długo potrwa. Na pewno jest to kwestia kilku miesięcy. Oczywiście bot importuje tylko podstawowe dane, więc jeśli zamierzasz przetłumaczyć artykuł zawierający więcej informacji, to nie ma na co czekać - bot nie usunie Twojego tekstu, najwyżej coś do niego doda. (A jeśli przypadkiem chciałbyś współpracować w procesie importowania - chodzi np. o ręczne sprawdzanie artykułów gdzie bot sygnalizuje jakąs nieregularność - to byłoby świetne;) )--Kotniski 18:28, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for interfering here. Though I don't speak Polish I got a general idea what User:Piotrus's question's about. The Geoboxer tool, which is not a bot but an external PHP script that is primarily designed to clean-up any Geobox and bring all its fields up to date, can also fetch data from other (national) Wikipedias. So far, we have full support for Slovak settlements: if the Geobox for a Slovak settlement on the English Wikipedia misses some data it can fetch them automatically from the Slovak Wikipedia, if a Slovak settlement misses a Geobox completely it can generate one from the data on the Slovak Wikipedia, provided the English article has a link to the appropriate Slovak Wikipedia article. Adding support for another country is pretty simple, the PHP script has all necessary tools, the only thig to do is create a "map" of fields in the other language Wikipedia and their Geobox equivalents and some simple string conversions if the data in the other language Wikipedia are formatted in a different way.

The tool can be used by any editor either by clicking on a button in their Opera browser or you can simply add a new tab to your Wikipedia account which does the same. This way, any users, completely unaware of what a bot or template is add the missing geoboxes. If you're interested, I can send you either the whole code or just the part responsible for Slovak settlements, if you know any scripting or programming language I don't think it's too difficult to modify the code for Polish settlements. – Caroig (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Right, Kotbot does something similar, although it also tries to find certain data in the text of the Polish article (it is mainly this that makes the process less than fully automatic, and hence slow), and inserts the most recent population data from a separate database (gminas only). It also makes associated pages such as redirects, disambiguations and navbox templates. --Kotniski 09:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Regarding your question of infobox preference posted at Portal:Poland - I think it is much easier to keep it with Infobox Settlement, as it is used currently by all Polish towns. It is also easier to operate. Please look at e.g. Bełcz Mały which was converted to Infobox by User:Detroiterbot. Could you please alter Kotbot to reflect that? It would be much better to have consistent articles. - Darwinek 17:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, it depends whether you mean consistent within Poland or within the whole world. Geoboxes seem to be about providing consistency at a higher level (although they don't seem to be widely used yet). I think we need to discuss the pros and cons like you (or was it Piotrus?) said before. We could just as easily convert existing Infoboxes to Geoboxes than the other way round, if it's found to have advantages. As for maps of Poland, I think these can be added to Geobox if that's what we decide to use.--Kotniski 17:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure, both infoboxes are good, no question about it. Point is that Poland-related articles already used Infobox Settlement so creating new articles with this infobox makes sense, instead of complete change. - Darwinek 18:09, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, because of my bot's recent activity (currently suspended), the numbers of Infoboxes and Geoboxes in Polish articles are now probably more or less equal (a few hundred of each). Not that that's a particularly relevant argument (and I have nothing particular against Infoboxes, I just have a slight preference for the appearance and philosophy of Geoboxes). I don't think we should change anything more just yet; maybe others will come forward with views, though it seems to be a very small group of us who have any interest in these matters;) --Kotniski 18:22, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Niestety. Tak czy inaczej trzeba się jakoś zdecydować, bo taka schizofreniczna sytuacja jak teraz nie jest dobra. Oba infoboksy są fajne, niewygodą Geoboksa jest jednak prosty fakt, że jest on robiony tylko jednym użytkownikem. Jeśli jutro Caroiga potrąci samochód, to Geoboks umrze też, Infoboksowi to stać się nie może. Wygodą Infoboksa jest też to, że nie jest w nieustannym developmencie jak Geoboks i jest już mniej więcej ustatkowany. - Darwinek 18:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hope you won't mind my 2c here. Whether Polish settlements use the Infobox or Geobox template is up to the editors working on that articles so that's not my business at all to meddle in this debate. The Geobox template started as a fork-off of the Infobox Settlement which tried to address a few issues with that template approximately a year ago. The first was the that template was editet by many users at that time who were often adding new fields but also commonly breaking the layout, nowadays the template's pretty stable thanks to big effort of User:MJCDetroit. The second issue was chaos in the way the fields/parameters were named, I'm afraid this issue hasn't been addressed yet. Third, rather minor issue, was the not very neat design. Since then, the Geobox template has come a long way and nowadays it is a general purpose template that can cover virtually every geography-related topic while providing a lot of automation for easy editing.

The main advantage of the current version are its database-like fields. They are named in a unified way, thus user will always enter the data in the same way, once they've learnt how to set e.g. the rounding in auto-conversion for one field they've learnt it for every other field as well. Another advantage is that "raw" format is enforced for every field (which means e.g. the population field will always contain the actual figure with no formatting, no comments, just and only the figure), and each separate piece of information has its own designated field. So the data can be easily manipulated by any parser or a completely new infobox layout can be built upon them easily as you will always know for sure what sort of data each field will contain and how it will be formatted. The layout "engine" of the Geobox is fairly complex and User:Darwinek is right that should I decide to stop its maintenance it might be complicated for anyone to fix/upgrade the code but it's similar situation to most other templates, they usually have one major developper. Anyway, it is the database-like field organization, their consistent naming and raw data input, all self-explanatory and absolutely independent from any layout, which is the core idea of the Geoboxes and their main advantage. And this applies for any Geobox on any subject.

As of now, the geoboxes in both versions (the second one being fully backward compatible with the all one) are used on thousands of articles, they are the default (because the only one) template for Mountain Ranges, one of two templates used for rivers (most major rivers seem to use the Geobox version), they are used for thousands of smaller settlements in the USA, the default template for Slovak settlements and anything related to Slovakia and probably for the Czech republic as well. So its not that uncommon a template. And though still under development, the field names (the core idea) have been stable for a year, just with a few fixes towards fully unified field names in the only Geobox 2 template. – Caroig (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggest this discussion now merge with the one here. --Kotniski 13:23, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Geoboxes

I haven't found time to reply to your last post on my talk page but now, so I'll continue here in case you aren't watching my talk page.

As of using ideas from the Geobox. There's no problem, this is how Wikipedia works, users share their work. The Infobox Settlement template uses a couple of ideas from the Geoboxes (and vice versa), it even calls at least one of the subtemplates that are a part of the Geobox project.

As of the opposition for Poland. I generally think it's better if one area uses consistently just one "box". Which is hardly the case of Poland because, as you pointed out, many various templates or just plain tables have been in use for this country. Besides, one or two users cannot enforce the use of their preferred template.

The Geobox template is used for most Czech settlements, regions and other administrative units as well as rivers, protected ares etc. User:Mikeshk has been working on adding a Geobox to Czech settlemnts, he also wanted to switch several settlements in a part of the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic to be consistent for the whole country. Yet the same user (User:Darwinek) who opposes your using the Geoboxes for Polish settlements switched them back to Infobox with the only rationale being: "I like Infobox more". Later, at User talk:Mikeshk#Geobox, he argued that "… there's no WP guideline saying which infobox is to be used … so it depends on anyone which infobox they choose and I opt for the Infobox … but I want the settlements of the Těšín region to use the Infobox". The bold text is mine. So for Poland, you are urged to use his preferred infobox because it is more common there (just more, not the only one), but for the Czech Republic, which consistently uses Geoboxes, he can do as he wishes for his favorite region. I think using "I want" as an argument in a discussion breaks several wiki policies (obviously WP:OWN, the same policy I was accused of breaking by him, with no proof given). Your last post at the Polish noticeboard went unanswered, probably beacuse no good arguments opposing yours were found. I think it would be better to seek an agreement for Poland but if you want to systematically use the Geobox for some Polish regions you are entitled by the wiki policies to do so.

As of merging Infoboxes and Geoboxes. At the beginning, the Geobox Settlement could accept the fields from the Infobox Settlement, it was up for several months but there was no interest from the Infobox Settlement creators for any cooperation. At the same time, several other Geoboxes (for rivers, mountains, protected area) which shared the same code were set up, so it was preferrable to keep consistency among them then share the oddly named fields with one of many Infoboxes for towns (the Infobox Settlement is no standard infobox for settlements at all, neither is the Geobox). As of the version 2 of Geobox, there's now just one template which can be used for any geography related object so there's so it can hardly be merged with an infobox which was primarily designed for just US settlements. – Caroig (talk) 08:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

In the beginning Caroig wanted people to start using his template instead of Infobox City. Caroig made his announcement about Geobox Town on Feb 18, 2007. Caroig left the dual names up in Geobox Town until March 4th when he stripped Geobox Town of the Infobox City parameters. Maybe there is a different way a measuring time in Caroig's part of the globe but here in Detroit, that's 14 days; not several months. No one interest in merging??? We (Rick Block and myself and later MattWright) were interested in and suggested merging the two. We even suggested making geobox as the master template. However, Caroig saw no reason to change anything about what he has called his "baby"—Geobox. Caroig claimed (and stills does) that Infobox City was designed for U.S. cities when in fact it wasn't and this was explained within that early discussion. It has been brought up several times before to merge the two. So the question remains: what would need to be done to do this?—MJCdetroit 03:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it would be a case of going through the fields and matching them up, or adding fields which one version (the one being merged from) has and the other (the one being merged to) doesn't have. Any maybe adding a few flags for different display styles (like maps at top v. maps at bottom), to avoid upsetting editors by radically altering the way their boxes are displayed. For practical reasons (since Geobox|Settlement is part of the wider Geobox scheme) it would seem most sensible to merge from Infobox to Geobox (so that the Template:Infobox Settlement page would end up with just a transclusion of Geobox, and editors would be encouraged to use Geobox instead). But everyone (the maintainers of both boxes) would have to be flexible. This is how I (as a comparative newcomer) see it - maybe there are other problems I'm not aware of.--Kotniski 09:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, one significant problem might be the difference in philosophy regarding names (e.g. Infoboxes tend to have the full official name at the top, whereas Geoboxes have the common name at the top and the official name lower down in smaller type).--Kotniski 09:15, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I haven't been watching the Infobox Settlement for some time and so I simply forgot the timelines. The dual parameter version might have existed for a longer time but obviously not several months, I take this back, sorry. Neither was the expression no interest for cooperation correct, there were some suggesstions. And I also remembered we were discussing the Infobox Settlements and U.S. seettlements in some way, this was clearly explained by MJCdetroit, sorry too.

However, I never wrote I want people to use Geoboxes instead of Infoboxes. I wrote countless times the Geoboxes are a new approach, that no-one was going to enforce their usage (and no-one has, I guess), that there's no competition and that it's up to users which template they choose. And that stands. Neither am I going to sweep thru other templates and eat them up with Geoboxes. In my view it's up to users from and/or working on an area to choose what template they prefer to use. There are a lot of settlement templates, mostly specific to each and every country and no offical settlement infobox.

As of a merger. Yeah, there were some suggestions by some users and I think it should be those users making those suggestions to explain how they wish to do that. I didn't see (then) any suggestions what I should change so how could I have refused to change anything?

I've explained more times what I see as a big problem in a merger and it is even more that case for Geobox in its second version. As it is not a settlement infobox but a single geography infobox. It can be used, without any tweaks for virtually any geography related object be it a mountain range, a mountain, a valley, a river, a protected area, a settlement, a castle ruin, a bridge, a bell, it's being considered for racetracks. And this is what this template aims at: to create a single template that is easy to use because it has consistently and clearly named fields and once a user learns how it works they can use it for any geography realated object in their area. I raised this in the previous debates but I don't think it was addressed. The second aim is to use only "raw" data (no html formatting, no included templates) in the template, so any parser can easily read them. These are the two corner-stones of the template and all changes/upgrades of the template must respect them.

I've never showed any particular interest in merging the Infobox Settlement and Geoboxes beacuse I don't think the former has anyting to offer to Geoboxes (it is my view, anyone is entitled to have a different one) so I've never taken any action in this direction. That doesn't mean other users cannot attempt that taking into account that any change in the Geobox template will affect also rivers, mountains, pretected areas etc. And the activity and proposals should come from their side. – Caroig (talk) 18:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I will give a serious look at what it would take to merge the two in the next couple of months. If something is doable, I will have a proposal. We should also consider trying to merge things like Infobox river, mountain, etc. I know some of those are really horrid anyway. Regards, —MJCdetroit 18:56, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it would be beneficial for both readers and editors not to have hundreds of various infoboxes. I just believe merging should be done in a peaceful way; Wikipedia editing is a way of relaxing for me and I'm still upset from some users' behavior in another case so I've been a bit stingy at bad targets recently. You might all be interested to start-up a Wikiproject:geodata (or under any other name) as suggested by User:SEWilco), a project focused on coordinatation of presenting geographical data which might also involve geography related infoboxes. – Caroig (talk) 19:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Settlement sandbox

I made to few changes to your edits at {{Infobox Settlement/sandbox}}. So be aware of the change. Check it out but don't transfer that version to the live template. A change as such, would have to be discussed in complete detail first. —MJCdetroit 03:55, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment added at Template talk:Infobox Settlement.--Kotniski 08:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI: Don't bother with a color for the top. I've tried before and it causes an up-roar every time. —MJCdetroit 13:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Now that it is live

Nice job. The elevation max and min was something that I had been meaning to do for a while. I did it for the {{Infobox City Lebanon}} a while ago. I think that you'll have tinker with the name official name stuff. It didn't seem right when I was messing with it at London earlier.

Question: Are you going to switch the remainder of the Polish geoboxes to infobox Settlement? My bot would have to be recalibrated first and if you were already doing this I wouldn't want to step on each other's toes or waste time. —MJCdetroit 03:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I will fix the Polish geoboxes at some point, probably over the next few weeks (my bot will need recalibrating too, but I'll need to do that anyway in order to produce more articles). Only do it if you think it's an urgent matter.

About the names: I think it's a big question which needs to be discussed at length. It's hard to find a solution which fits every possible case (London is always going to be weird - there I wouldn't fill the new fields at all, except for setting total_type to Greater London like I already did). I had long arguments not too long ago with User:Caroig about names in Geoboxes, so I know what a potential minefield it is. It seems natural and logical to have the fields we now have (name, official_name, other_name, native_name, settlement_type, total_type), but finding a consistent way of displaying them that satisfies everyone might be hard.--Kotniski 15:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Deutsch

Hello. Well, I think it would not be unfortunately possible by bot. I took it from Deutsch Wikipedia, e.g. de:Podgórzyn. Some articles have German names for all villages, some have not. - Darwinek 19:06, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Shanghai

Can you look at Shanghai? There appears to be problems with the infobox. In particular: the density and the elevation. I am not sure if it is something to do with the subtemplates or not. —MJCdetroit 21:19, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Weird. The problem seems to stem from the use of {{nowrap}} in the subdivision_name field. See User:Kotniski/Śądbóź - the problem appears only in the test infobox which uses nowrap. Looks like {{nowrap}} is generating something which can't be passed as a parameter to a subtemplate. Will look into it further. --Kotniski 21:57, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It's probably because the HTML generated by nowrap contains an = sign, which interferes with the template parameter passing syntax. Not sure what to do about this, apart from removing nowrap and using non-break spaces instead (which I have now done in the Shanghai article).--Kotniski 22:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the problem can be solved by using named parameters instead of numbered ones in the subtemplates. I'll look at it again tomorrow.--Kotniski 22:45, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope this is fixed now. Let me know if any other strange phenomena are observed.--Kotniski 17:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

MOSDAB

But why? I don't really see a compelling reason to do so.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:36, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to avoid displaying Lower Silesian Voivodeship twice. But change it to something like [[Orsk, Lower Silesian Voivodeship]], a village in south-west Poland, if you prefer. (By the way, thanks for drawing my attention to MOSDAB, I didn't realise there was such a page.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is no problem that it is listed twice; WP:MOSDAB most certainly does not prohibit such approach, but it does strongly discourage unnecessary use of piping. As for the link to MOSDAB itself, you are quite welcome. Glad to be of assistance. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:24, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Another way to resolve this problem would be moving the article in question to Orsk, Poland. This, of course, is assuming that there are no other places in Poland named "Orsk" and that such a name is not contrary to the guidelines on naming of Polish geographical locations (WP:NC:CITY#Poland, however, says nothing on this).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 21:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Vilnius

The problem wasn't resolved.Xx236 (talk) 14:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Kotbot

Does Kotbot have its bot flag yet? It ran for a while in November without a flag, it seems. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Odd - it has had a flag since September I think. --Kotniski (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Owczary, Oława County

Witam. Twój bot dodaje taką informację do każdego hasła (Owczary to tylko przykład): Prior to 1945 it was in Germany. Jednak niemieckie te miejscowości były tylko do 1742, wcześniej była to Austria (a właściwie Czechy w składzie Austrii). Być może warto by lekko rozbudować bota, by był bardziej ścisły? Pozdrawiam [1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.17.102.70 (talk) 08:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

• Praktycznie całe dzisiejsze terytorium województwa dolnośląskiego zostało zdobyte przez Prusy na Austrii w 1742. Dopiero więc od 1742 te wsie i miasta mogą być traktowane jako należące do Niemiec (sensu państwa, bo ludność niemiecka była tam wcześniej). Mapę nabytków Prus masz tutaj [2] (zaznaczony na jasnozielony teren Śląska jest właśnie przyłączony w 1742). Pozdrawiam Piotr967 --156.17.102.70 (talk) 20:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Kulin

Just to let you know, that this article is about the Native Australin's that live around Melbourne in Victoria, they have their own languages and culture. It is not about a place in Poland. As per User:Kotbot. Thanks mate. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 20:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Infobox settlement error

See Rutog County.

When |seat_type=County capital and |seat=[[Rutog]], there is a hugh white space at the top of the article. Any ideas where this is coming from?

—MJCdetroit (talk) 03:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, no idea at the moment. The problem seems to be caused by the fact that the Seat line is at the very bottom of the Infobox (put a dummy population figure in and the white space disappears). Have to rush now - I'll look at it again when I have time if you don't solve the problem in the meantime.--Kotniski (talk) 14:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I was just coming here to say the same thing. The white space is reduced, but not gone with a time zone addition too (Burang County). —MJCdetroit (talk) 15:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Solved (see User talk:MJCdetroit).--Kotniski (talk) 20:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Wesołych Świąt

Darwinek wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Cześć! Życzę wesołych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia i wszystkiego najlepszego w Nowym Roku. - Darwinek (talk) 11:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Piotrus and friends, in the midsts of Wigilia, wish you to enjoy this Christmas Eve!

Infobox Settlement area_land

Hello Kotniski,
Could you look at Infobox Settlement's code and figure out why when area_land_km2 or area_land_sq_mi are entered but area_total_km2 or area_total_sq_mi are left empty, the "Land" values are not displayed. I found a need for only "Land" and not "Total" to be displayed. —MJCdetroit (talk) 01:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a couple of curly braces were in the wrong place. Should be OK now.--Kotniski (talk) 10:11, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

It's ok now. Thanks, —MJCdetroit (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Subdivisions

Hello. Thanks for the notice. I do not plan to do something more with the templates. I am just making articles about all municipalities in Cieszyn Silesia. Czech part is already done, Polish part would include whole Cieszyn County and part of Bielsko County. So I am just operating there, making articles, inseting infoboxes and adding gmina templates. Hope it won't interfere with your bot. - Darwinek (talk) 15:31, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you and Happy New Year to you, too! :) - Darwinek (talk) 21:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Infobox settlement error---Odd shield size & shield image blank emblem error

Hi Kot,
I found a new error in Infobox Settlment. Check out Yangon. If |image_shield= and |shield_size= are present and not fill out and if |image_blank_emblem= IS filled out there is a visable error that is produced. I've tried to reproduce to in Template:Infobox Settlement/testcases but I really couldn't. It's odd. Any thoughts to where it is coming from? —MJCdetroit (talk) 03:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

After poring over the template code for ages, finally found the error - in the Yangon article. Looks like there was some hidden character (a tab?) after the = sign after image_shield.--Kotniski (talk) 10:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I did the same thing. I placed the template in a sandbox looked through the code; placed it in the testcases play with it some more. Then, gave up and went to bed. Thanks, MJCdetroit (talk) 15:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Józef Piłsudski

Since you commented in the last round, please note that the nomination has been restarted. Thanks for the comments and edits so far! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Polish coordinates

Thanks for spotting my errors in adding coordinates to Polish town/city/village articles: the bot is supposed to catch these sorts of problems, but it clearly failed in this case. I've reverted the special cases you mentioned of recently tagged articles with "Lower Silesian Voivodeship‎" in their names. Can you tell me if the other remaining recently-added Polish place coordinates look reasonable?

I've noticed that you are interested in Polish geography:if you could point me at any better coordinate data I could use for Polish locations, I'd be very grateful, particularly if it can provide enough information to let me discriminate between places with the same name within different regions. -- The Anome (talk) 18:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Voivodeship

Thank you! Just missed it. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 15:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Villages in Lower Silesian Voivodeship

From our discussion on my talk page on November 17th, 2007: I have finally went through and made sure all in Category:Villages in Lower Silesian Voivodeship are using {{Infobox Settlement}}. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 03:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Sometime I'll have my bot create articles on the villages in the other Polish provinces.--Kotniski (talk) 13:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:TfD nominations

Many of your recent WP:TfD nominations are incomplete. Firstly, referencing other nominations for your reasoning is generally not a good idea, especially when you aren't specifically specifying which ones. Additionally, as you are nominating them as redundant to other templates, you should list what templates you feel they are redundant to. Please go back and revise your nominations, or they risk being closed for lacking complete nomination rationales. JPG-GR (talk) 02:03, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Polish Barnstar of National Merit, 2nd Class
		I, Tymek (talk) 19:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC), am awarding you this Barnstar as a gesture of appreciation of your excellent contributions covering Poland. Thank you, keep it up as your are doing a great job!

affricates

Hi Kotniski,

Yeah, the affricate tie bars are a pain, but they're pretty much irrelevant. Yes, I know they make a difference in Polish, but they're so little used in Wikipedia pronunciation guides that they would only confuse most readers. Anyway, most of the people looking up the help key aren't really going to understand or care about the difference; they just want to get a basic idea of the pronunciations. Those who care enough to learn the difference will probably have graduated on to the main IPA article anyway. kwami (talk) 12:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Help:IPA

Hmm, I've seen that u thing but not in IE (I also have IE6, though I'm not sure which font it uses (ariel unicode?). Since with and without the space looks identical on my computer (the tie bar displays correctly but it is misaligned), then I can see the benefit of putting the space. As for the superscript, it doesn't make sense to me to have a superscript there. The semantics behind the superscript numbers in the body of a text is "see note 1" or "see note 13" and then you list the notes. Take a look at a page using <ref></ref> tags. A superscript number appears leading to a note with a non-superscript number. Nothing to get bent out of shape with either way, though, and if you still feel like the superscript there is better, I'll let somebody else who feels more strongly about it change it back to #. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 12:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Poznań

Nie zmieniaj nazw w Poznaniu. To kompromis osiągnięty po ciężkich bojach między kilkoma wersjami. Poczytaj dyskusję. Stwierdzenie, że nazwa niemiecka jest najważniejszą obok polskiej zaś to POV. Pozdrawiam Radomil talk 20:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Chodzi Ci o dyskusję w Talk:Poznań? Tam znalazłem tylko propozycje typu "former German name Posen" kontra "German Posen". Nie widzę żadnego kompromisu polegającym na pominięciu niem. nazwy w pierwszym zdaniu - może taki osiągnieto gdzie indziej? W każdym razie nie rozumiem, dlaczego Poznań ma być traktowany inaczej niż większość innych byłych niemieckich polskich miast.--Kotniski (talk) 15:03, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Przejrzyj też historię. Spory dotyczyły też, dlaczego nazwa łacińska ma być przed niemiecką, czy ma być nazwa w jidisz, czy niemiecka jest ważniejsza od łacińskiej, czy należy dodać nazwę francuską z racj ina okres Księstwa Warszawskiego... Uspokoiło się po wprowadzeniu aktualnej wersji. Spokój ten trwał do momentu, aż do twojej edycji. Skoro wszystkie te strony pogodził obecny stan rzeczy to na litość boską nie burz tego spokoju (czyli de facto kompromisu) w imię swojego POVu. P.S. Odpisuj na stronie edycji usera. Gdyby nie to, że jeśli z kimś rozmawiam, a nie jest on zbyt doświadczonym wikipedystom, obserwuję jego stronę dyskusji, to bym nie wpadł na Twoją odpowiedź. Pozdrawiam Radomil talk 16:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, nie będę nic dalej zmieniać, tylko zwracam uwagę, że w wielu innych podobncyh przypadkach niemiecka nazwa jest we wstępie. O i jestem dużo bardziej związany z Polską niż z Niemcami, więc nie chodzi tu o mój POV, tylko o to co uważam za bardziej pomocne dla czytelnika. (A co do polityka talk page'a, to jestem zdecydowanym zwolennikiem prowadzenia danej dyskusji w jednym miejscu, co jest chyba bardziej wygodne dla obu i ew. trzecich stron - ale gdybyś sie nie odzywał to bym zostawił wiadomość u Ciebie więc spoko:) ) Pozdrowienia z Murowanej Gośliny--Kotniski (talk) 19:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Zgorzelec

Hi, Should we put "formally Gorlitz"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Agrofe (talk • contribs) 19:13, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good we will leave it as is. By the way, Gorlitz and Zgozelec are certinly translations as Polish Zgozelec is certainly formerly Gorlitz whether you want them to be or not. --Agrofe (talk) 19:43, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Zgorzelec is part of former Gorlitz (or rather formerly part of Gorlitz). Gorlitz still exists.--Kotniski (talk) 11:05, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Template:Autodense

A tag has been placed on Template:Autodense requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>{{transclusionless}}</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Gora

Yes, exactly. The word actually means "golden" but is used for people of yellow or light-brownish skins. Some have however applied it to people of lighter skins as well (but then it is not properly used.) Mostly its used for yellowish-skinned people. - IndoHistorian —Preceding comment was added at 23:25, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

It isn't really widely used in that sense. It is misused sometimes, but not widely. A yellow-skinned (or golden-brown) person qualifies as a "gora". - IndoHistorian

Barn Star

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For your tireless work splitting Wikipedia:Userboxes/Wikipedia into many smaller pages - it was needed Ahunt (talk) 14:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

test 14:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.158.196.118 (talk)

Audio-IPA-pl

I noticed in {{Audio-IPA-pl}} that one must put pipes between each sound so as to link between different sections of IPA chart for Polish. I've changed IPA chart for Polish to not have these sections (and I don't think it should, since other IPA chart for X articles don't do so). It's a neat feature, but perhaps we should make Audio-IPA-pl and {{IPA-pl}} similar to {{Audio-IPA}} and {{IPARus}} in allowing one to not put the pipes since removing them currently makes no link. Thoughts? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:56, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've made a change to {{Plph}} which ensures that there is a link even when the pipes are not used. Maybe we should actually create a further page in Help: space, similar in purpose to Help:IPA and Help:Pronunciation, taking more or less the form IPA chart for Polish had before you standardized it, and link to there instead. If it's a help page I don't think there should be any objection to keeping it un-technical and having separate sections.--Kotniski (talk) 10:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Did I make it too technical? I'd like to see IPA chart for X pages be of the same usefulness as Help:Pronunciation so perhaps we should convert the IPA charts for Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish to help pages. There's not much use for IPA chart for X pages except as a quick reference guide to the sounds; this is especially useful when transcribing words or phrases from these languages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

All right, maybe it's not too technical as it stands. I'll just modify the IPA-pl templates to link directly to that page without sections (I suppose now the tables fit pretty much on one screen, the section links aren't so necessary). I don't know whether these pages should be Help: pages or mainspace pages - we do have Help:IPA and Help:Pronunciation, but on the other hand most Help: pages seem to be about technical help for using/editing Wikipedia rather than this kind of content-related help. --Kotniski (talk) 17:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Well the idea I have is that these pages would guide editors into understanding how phonetic transcriptions in each of these languages ought to be made on Wikipedia. The lead sections would emulate that of Help:Pronunciation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

No objection from me then if you want to make the charts into Help: pages.--Kotniski (talk) 08:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hiddenstub magic word

I've replied at Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Stub category policy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: PipepBot

Hi Kotniski, my bot just solved interwiki links conflicts. Deleted links in Gmina Brzeg Dolny are wrong links. They are already present in Brzeg Dolny. --Pipep (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why the italian link it:Brzeg Dolny would make more sense in Brzeg Dolny than in Gmina Brzeg Dolny, because the italian page talks about "Gmina Brzeg Dolny". Anyway, for the moment with my bot I will only remove interwiki links that are obviously wrong. --Pipep (talk) 17:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The japanese link in en:Malbork was removed because it was wrong. en:Malbork is about the town of Malbork. ja:マルボルク城 is about the Castle of Malbork. It is linked in en:Malbork Castle. I remeber you, that interwiki links are only to be put between articles covering the same subject, see Help:Interlanguage links. --Pipep (talk) 18:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I know that the japanese article is about the castle, because in the first sentence it says "...german language: Ordensburg Marienburg, polish language: Zamek w Malborku ..." and in the box in the right it says "english name: Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork, french name: Château de l’ordre Teutonique de Malbork". Thus the English link in the Japanese article is right, and my edit in Malbork is correct. Of course, my bot don't understand any language, but every time it sees a problem it asks me, and I decide what to do. For more informations about how interwiki bots are working, please read m:Interwiki.py. If you still think, my edit was wrong, please tell me why. --Pipep (talk) 20:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Górki

You may be interested in it; how is the bot-aided transfer of entities going? I haven't seen any recently.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

CFD closure

Hi Kotniski, I just want to let you know that I've removed the closing template that you posted for the Francophonie CFD. I'm sure that you did the closing entirely in good faith, but under the rules for CFD's, participants are not allowed to close CFDs. I'm sure you can understand why that rule exists. So just hang tight, it'll be closed soon enough even without your help! :) Cgingold (talk) 12:14, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, sorry about that. I knew non-admins could close debates but I didn't know/remember that excluded participants.--Kotniski (talk) 12:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Re:Bot transfer of entities

Ciekawy pomysl, proponowalbym zapytac sie o to gdzies na WP:VP.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:11, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Settlement / UN/LOCODE

Hi Kotniski, if your bot gets a list of articles and related UN/LOCODE could it add the code to the article? I think the quality of Wikipedia and of the UN/LOCODEs can be made bigger, if these two databases are tight closer together. WP would have an official reference for existence of a settlement and the UN would have nice articles related to their codes :-). A lot of articles have already a UN/LOCODE redirect, which allows all websites running with UN/LOCODE to link to WP, see Category:Redirects_from_UN/LOCODE. Adding the codes to all settlement articles would help the process of creating redirects. I will post this also to the Infobox talk. Thanks for your feedback. UnLoCode (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi (and thanks for unvandalizing the page!) Theoretically my bot could do this, but it isn't the best choice for this kind of task, simply because of its slowness (I have to run it over a fairly slow link, at restricted times, and it would take months to make tens of thousands of edits). MJC's bot (for example) could probably do the job much quicker.--Kotniski (talk) 07:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, my bot is not approval for uploading dasebases. And I wouldn't know how to program it either. User:CapitalR's bot has done massive database work in the past in relation to Infobox Settlement. He'd be the best person to ask. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 12:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi both, thanks for your feedback. Nice to hear of CapitalR's bot. UnLoCode (talk) 13:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Słupsk

Mógłbyś poprawić ewentualne błędy gramatyczne i semantyczne w tym artykule?
Could you correct the eventual grammatical and semantic mistakes in this article? Jubilee line (talk) 11:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I will. But maybe I'll wait till after you finish working on it.--Kotniski (talk) 18:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hidden Categories

Might I interest you in revising the heading/purpose of Category:Hidden categories to reflect the fact that WP:CAT now includes guidelines on thier use. The current heading/purpose was written before WP:CAT included its discussion of Hidden Categories. Thanks Hmains (talk) 03:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, done.--Kotniski (talk) 13:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Augustow

Hi Kotniski, you added Lithuanian name to Augustow and seriously, this is OK. But look at double standards of Lokyz. He removed Polish names for Varena and Lentvaris, but insists on keeping a Lithuanian name for Sejny. What do you think? All I want is a fair game. Let them keep Lithuanian names, but let us keep Polish names. Tymek (talk) 19:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't like to engage in nationalistic warring, but I agree that this kind of information should appear in articles on places. Let me know about any more incidents where people are removing Polish names, if you need any help ensuring that they are restored.--Kotniski (talk) 19:16, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Company Types

Hi fella,

please see here:

Talk:Types_of_business_entity#Please Separate Articles Again !

answer me on that talk page if you want...or here, up to you

Cheers!

Nic

62.176.111.68 (talk) 09:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

excellent suggestion about the "list of business abbreviations", i'm all for that, thanks. that would be cool - simply have one link to that page from this one and nothing else, and keep THIS page as the main page everything else links to (and obviously, have a note on the other one saying main article: types of business entity).

could you please send me - or post here - a more precise link to the ORIGINAL history page that you mention, however, since the "history" of it seems to automatically go to the history of the CURRENT page (kinda like in Back to the Future II ! :-) ). I just can't seem to find it...

Thanks, Nic

ps. or at least somehow send me the entire wiki code for it (ie. the original text, written up as you would when editing) eg on this talk page so as i can pick it up to use later...???

However, i would prefer it if You resurrect it, or ask someone who is interested in doing so, since, as i said, i can't register on Wiki and do it myself...

ta! 62.176.111.68 (talk) 20:00, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've put it on that talk page (well, actually a subpage which is linked to from that talk page, since people might want to leave messages on the talk page). You can use it from there. If it was put back into the main encyclopedia it would probably just get deleted, since it adds little to Types of business entity and contains much less information. --Kotniski (talk) 09:06, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for doing that - much appreciated.

and you're right, it is better if all info stay on one page - and it is pretty clear as it is, so i wont insist on the other page to be added anywhere to not clutter up anything, but just use it myself for the minute.

by the way - how did you get that old page's history - do you have to be a registered user? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.176.111.68 (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem. No, you don't have to be a registered user to get the page history, but since it's now a redirect you have to do this: type "Types of companies" in the search box and click "Go"; at the top where it says "Redirected from Types of Companies" in small type click "Types of companies"; on the "Types of companies" page click the "history" tab; click the date+timestamp of the version you want to look at; click "edit" to see the source. Cheers, Kotniski (talk) 15:20, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hyphens and dashes

On the MoS talk page, you refer to the Chicago Manual endorsing the use of hyphens where en dashes would otherwise be used. You also mention a London-Sydney usage in Chicago. I assume you are referring in both instances to the Chicago Manual of Style. Which edition are you using and where is that London-Sydney bit? -Rrius (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was actually from their Q&A website. London-Sydney wasn't an example from there, it was just an ad hoc example of mine to show the difference with New York–Sydney. In fact it probably wasn't the best example to choose, since in this case the hyphen/dash does actually represent "to" so the dash might be preferred anyway.

Damn, I can't find the exact page on their website I was reading about this on, which contained some good example. But this one: [3] seems at least to summarize the issue.--Kotniski (talk) 08:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

3RR

Hi. I just saw your reply at the end of the thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 43#Question about 3RR policy, which I don't think I'd seen previously. You have some very good points. Definitely there are downsides to blocking. I still think my point about self-discipline etc. is also a good one. I don't know what the best overall solution is. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 13:28, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Daniel B

Heres what you missed (since you cannot view deleted pages/histories): the article, the user, the MfD, the open letter, the afds, and the drvs. Anything else I believe is deleted (false positive?). For the DRV's: just click history and view it befoore the courtesy blanking. Cheers! Hope this clears a little up. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 07:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say you probably don't want to touch this issue with a 10 foot pole. Emailuser me if you need more information. MBisanz ^talk 10:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Hold off for a few days?

I'm in the middle of some major work on style guidelines, could we hold off for a few days, maybe a week, on the 1700s matter? I don't know how hairy it will get. (Feel free to respond here.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 20:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, no problem.--Kotniski (talk) 15:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Bili Sarny detention centre

Can you take a look at that article? It should be renamed, at the very least (per my comment on talk).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:10, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking about a prod first, but AfD may generate more exposure. I think it is a real entity, doesn't look like a hoax. Please do a prod or an AfD, whichever one you feel is better. Thanks! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Settlement rank fields for pop & area

Hi Kotniski,
Hope all is well.
Can you do me a favor and add two optional population total and area total "rank" fields to {{Infobox Settlement}}? I can see a need for them. I'd do it myself but lately I'm not on wiki very much or for very long. I'm asking you because it should be quick and easy for you and I know you'll double check to make sure there aren't any bugs. Thanks in advance. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 03:09, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S., any admin can turn off the protection when ready. User:52 Pickup is a good template admin and is on the same timezone as you (CET?), if that helps. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 03:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, all's well thanks, except that I've ben getting drawn into too many pointless arguments lately. Anyway, I'm happy to put in the rank fields, but tell me exactly what it is you have in mind. You mean something like in {{Infobox Country}}, with just a rank in parentheses after the total figure, linked to a relevant list? Or something on a separate line, with more information visible? The situation with settlements is a bit different from that with countries, since with countries it's pretty obvious what the ranking refers to, but for settlements it might need to be stated explicitly (i.e. is it the nth largest in the world, in the country, in the state...?)--Kotniski (talk) 11:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was just thinking of something like infobox country's setup—rank in parentheses after the total and linked to a relevant list. As you point out, due to the nature of Infobox Settlement, we'd have to instruct editors that they can't just put down ranked nth without any kind of a link to a list showing the context of the ranking. For example, in Burma, Rangoon (Yangoon) could have "(ranked 1st) after the population figure and have it linked to List_of_cities_in_Burma#Largest Cities, so that it is clear that it is the most populous city in Burma and not of a smaller division of that country.

I think that explicit instructions need to state that unless a link to a relevant list is given the rank fields should not be filled in. No link, no need to fill in the field. I don't think that we should have it say "(ranked 1st in Burma)" because that may clutter the box too much, at least for some infoboxes. —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 12:31, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is such a great idea. Like you say, putting "(ranked 1st in Burma)" would clutter the box too much; however just putting "(1st)" would be potentially misleading to readers who aren't insipred to click the link. If someone gets used to seeing ranks per country, and then comes across an article which happens to give rank by region or state, they're probably just going to make a wrong assumption rather than click the link to find out what list it is. --Kotniski (talk) 12:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I guess that you're right; damn uninspired no link clickers! The reason I bought it up is that I have been seeing them more lately and there is not a direct way to translate that into Infobox Settlement. But if we're unsure, then it's best to leave it alone. Thanks, —MJCdetroit ^(yak) 13:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it would be possible to leverage the population_footnotes and area_footnotes fields for this purpose, at least if they're not otherwise used in a given article.--Kotniski (talk) 14:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Re:

in fact voivodeships are very often called provinces, and this alternative name is certainly in use. Where for example ? Lothar25 (talk) 08:53, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You can find it on Google (admittedly far fewer hits than Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship - possibly thanks to the great unifying influence of Wikipedia - but still a significant number). And we should certainly mention that voivodeships are sometimes called provinces (and indeed are provinces for the average English speaker), otherwise many people won't understand what the article is about.--Kotniski (talk) 08:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I see the point. Still need some references (as far as WP:VER is concerned). Thanks, Lothar25 (talk) 09:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Clesh Input

Many many thanks for taking the time to help interpret the Polish article references for Clesh. mk (talk) 13:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi - I'm not commenting in the Clesh AfD because of Conflict of Interest - but am interested in knowing what this Polish article actually says. It is not included in the article, but looks like a substantial review and it may be a useful independent source of information about how the system works. It doesn't seem to be a blog (it doesn't appear to be self-published), so could be a useful reference. Would it be possible for you to translate it? Or if it looks OK but is is too long or detailed to translate, perhaps you could add some of the important points to the Wikipedia article, if that is appropriate. Stephen B Streater (talk) 18:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. This is a different reference from the two I deleted, and is certainly much more relevant. I don't really have time to translate it all, but it's a very positive review, which ends by saying "decidedly the best editor in its class". I'm not sure it really contains any new encyclopedic information though.--Kotniski (talk) 07:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It may be worth adding during the AfD phase. And I can certainly use it on my own website :-) Stephen B Streater (talk) 13:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Explain

Why do you add German names in article about mountains in Poland and Czech Republic ? Shouls we add Warsaw(Warschau), Poznań(Posen) to list of Polish cities ? There is no reason to have German names in this article, the mountains are not in Germany, only place for German names in historic context. Performing such moves will lead to situation when we have Wrocław(Breslau) listed as city in Poland. Not to mention Polish names for Czech mountains aren't mentioned despite the fact they are the border. Germany hasn't a border yet its names are mentioned.For what reason ? I see no explanation and no reason to use them in this article. Thus they shall be removed.--Molobo (talk) 15:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

They were in Germany not so long ago; people might see the German names on maps etc. If people want to know the German names for Warsaw etc. they can find them in the articles; but most of these mountains do not have their own articles, so this is the only place for the information. --Kotniski (talk) 15:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Poznan, Warsaw were in Germany not a long time ago just as well. On what Wiki policy do you base your decision ? They are established naming conventions, there is no place for German names in articles about modern Poland or Czech cities or locations if they are not within historic context. Once the articles are made the name used Germanisation of Poland and Czech states can be mentioned. Please do not insert German names into modern articles or locations which could suggests this name is valid and not historic. As no Wiki policy has been mentioned as basis of this decision and no logical reason the names will be removed. Also you added obsolete German names to mountains that have their own articles where the no-longer valid name is mentioned. If your rationale is indeed as you claim it would be good to remove those names, as readers can find the name of Germanisation period in proper article-see Chojnik for example. Will you do that ? I am ready to compromise on this issue.--Molobo (talk) 16:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Better to keep the same format for all the items on the list. It's made pretty clear elsewhere in the article that the range is in PL/CZ. This isn't about any policy, just common sense and how to present information so that readers can make the best use of it.--Kotniski (talk) 16:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand you.You said these names from Germanisation period are because they are no articles to move them. Yet when faced with the fact that articles exist you don't want to move them there ? Why ? Will you agree to remove names from Germanisation period once all of those mountains have their own articles ? Of course there is no common sense in confusing the readers that Polish and Czech states use names from Germanisation period for their territories, but that is another matter. --Molobo (talk) 16:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if all or most of them had their own articles, there wouldn't be any need for the German names here. It just looks strange to me to have most of the German names present and to omit the others; readers wouldn't necessarily get why. And having a German name in brackets clearly marked "German" is hardly going to mislead anyone; that's perfectly common practice in Wikipedia (like we have Polish names in brackets after names of places now in Ukraine etc.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#Proposed_change_to_policy

I was reading some of your comments at Wikipedia_talk:Protection_policy#Proposed_change_to_policy, and ran across "It's the current policy which enables administrators to protect the page they like best, by timing their protection accordingly. Or to simply not care. The proposal would force admins to explain their actions." I think you have a strong point with that case, for I think that if administrators are simply waiting to protect a page until it reverts back to a version they like, we should attempt to quell that attitude right away - they are not being unbiased, and they're being sneaky about it. I first hope that there are few administrators who do that (is there evidence of it?). Forcing them to explain themselves is a good way to stop that practice, but it seems like the current proposal opens whole new cans of worms. Could there be alternative options to still address that problem? -- Natalya 15:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I don't know of any evidence of this happening, but knowing human nature, it no doubt does from time to time. It was actually suggested in that discussion as a valid method of ensuring the right version gets protected, and given the current policy, I think it would be justified sometimes by common sense. But clearly it would be better if such techniques were neither needed nor tolerated - one reason for the change in policy (sadly rejected). If I come up with any other ideas to solve the problem (i.e. ideas which might actually stand a chance of getting approved), I'll let you know. Cheers,--Kotniski (talk) 15:46, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Your hard work is appreciated, even if so many people objected to the idea. Way to stick through it. -- Natalya 15:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Wrong interlink

I removed the pl interwikilink from Protected areas of Poland, as the pl:Ochrona przyrody w Polsce is something related but different.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 14:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Chyba nie ma - odpowiednikiem byłoby coś o terenach chronionych w Polsce. Ochrona przyrody w Polsce powinna byc przetlumaczona do osobnego artykulu jako Conservation ethic in Poland.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Your anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian POV edits on List of Ukrainians and Stefan Banach

You made a number of anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian edits on List of Ukrainians and Stefan Banach.

On more than one occasion, you deleted the references to sourced facts without any explanation on the talk/discussion pages.

You attempted to archive the discussion page Talk:Stefan_Banach, thus attempting to prevent the participants of the discussion from arriving to the NPOV.

You attempt to camouflage your anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian POV edits as pro-Polish.

Please stop.

Wikipedia is not the right forum for manifestation of your anti-Western and anti-Freedom views. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.210.14.5 (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I needed a chuckle.--Kotniski (talk) 06:31, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Advertising the NCGN discussion

I think it may be a good idea to advertise it at Czech, German, Polish and other affected regional noticeboards.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 10:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Dabbing

Dabbing is being done by hand for places, and I would welcome anybody who can help out ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 10:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

What exactly does the task involve? I could probably do it for Poland.--Kotniski (talk) 10:59, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

We need to dab all the articles for towns and villages at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places befor the User:FritzpollBot runs. But I thought your KotBot created all the articles on towns in poland. I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 15:13, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, for Poland we'll probably do it a bit differently - somehow combining the two sets of data generated by the two bots. Will solve that problem when we come to it.--Kotniski (talk) 06:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

tennis names

How come then Ana Ivanović was moved to Ana Ivanovic? There is consensus only for Serbian players or what? If you reverted all my moves then I expect you to move Ana Ivanovic to Ana Ivanović too. --Avala (talk) 13:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't reverted anything, but if I did have that power, I would certainly be moving Ivanovic back to Ivanović as well.--Kotniski (talk) 19:18, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

your wikipedia proposal

I've moved it to Wikipedia:Use diacritics; proposed policies shouldn't really be in the mainspace. sorry to be a bother! i'm looking over it at the moment seeing if i can help/comment in any way. Ironholds 05:09, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, sorry about that, I need a coffee or something.--Kotniski (talk) 05:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Haha, no problem. It was a good faith edit and it's not disruptive or anything. I cant give you a coffee, but have a cookie. Ironholds 05:19, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Ironholds has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy munching!

Spread the goodness of cookies by adding {{subst:Cookie}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Please stop archiving the on-going discussion on Stefan Banch

Please stop archiving the on-going discussion of Stefan Banach.

This discussion page is not large enough to justify archiving.

You will not be allowed to censor the discussion by moving it into the archive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.210.14.5 (talk) 00:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion policy

Thanks for the clarifiation of my objective at Deletion policy. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

could you please do me a favor?

Hello,

I am a master student at the Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Currently I am wrapping up my master thesis titled “Can Wikipedia be used for knowledge service?” In order to validate the knowledge evolution maps of identified users in Wikipedia, I need your help. I have generated a knowledge evolution map to denote your knowledge activities in Wikipedia according to your inputs including the creation and modification of contents in Wikipedia, and I need you to validate whether the generated knowledge evolution map matches the knowledge that you perceive you own it. Could you please do me a favor?

1. I will send you a URL link to a webpage on which your knowledge evolution map displays. Please assign the topic (concept) in the map to a certain cluster on the map according to the relationship between the topic and clusters in your cognition, or you can assign it to ‘none of above’ if there is no suitable cluster.
2. I will also send a questionnaire to you. The questions are related to my research topic, and I need your viewpoints about these questions.

The deadline of my thesis defense is set by the end of June, 2008. There is no much time left for me to wrap up the thesis. If you can help me, please reply this message. I will send you the URL link of the first part once I receive your response. The completion of my thesis heavily relies much on your generous help.

Sincerely

JnW^talk 05:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)