User talk:Eric Corbett/Archives/2018/May

A barnstar for you!

 * You wrote a very nice article; WP could do with lots more of the same. I'm pleased to hear that it's now an FA. Hopefully you didn't find the process too stressful. Eric   Corbett  11:56, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Style-nt
Template:Style-nt has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Wish you were dead
I'm getting more than a little pissed off with what seems to be becoming a regular thing now, IPs posting messages on here telling me what a pity it is that I didn't die when I was ill last year, or wishing that I would die now. That this kind of thing happens is a direct consequence of WP's crazy "anyone can edit anonymously" article of faith. It's bad enough seeing that kind of venom on sites such as wikipediasucks without being subjected to it here as well. Eric  Corbett  23:02, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I whack and delete them when I see them...Ealdgyth - Talk 23:07, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've noticed you doing that Ealdgyth, and I thank you for it. Eric   Corbett  23:14, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Would you like the page semiprotected for a while? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Somebody (I know exactly who but cannot prove it) has repeatedly threatened to kill my six month old granddaughter because of my Wikipedia editing. This creep even scraped a photo of this innocent little baby girl off my Facebook page to put in his threatening emails, along with "local color" to make the threats more plausible. As for you, Eric, it was very nice to hear from you, and I wish you good health. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  05:21, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That's pretty disgusting. We're grown adults, we're supposed to able to deal with that kind of thing, but a young baby ... Talking of adding colour, an administrator on this site once threatened me by sending me a picture of my house, as a demonstration of how much he knew about me. Despicable really. He also compared me rather unfavourably to the shit on his shoe, but of course it's perfectly acceptable to go around bullying unpopular lowly editors in that fashion in this best of all possible Jimbo-worlds. Eric   Corbett  06:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Is that admin still adminning? Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  13:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * He was dealt with eventually and is no longer around, so far as I know anyway. But who can tell given the anonymity here. Until he was dealt with though, other admins were just standing around watching with their hands in their pockets, while I was getting blocked right left and centre for reacting to the abuse. Eric   Corbett  14:04, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think that might be a good idea. Eric   Corbett  06:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok done. Presumably the IP is either a blocked editor or a bad-hand IP account. Either way it's not on. And now can be ignored. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Eric   Corbett  06:31, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What does Template:style-nt do?
What is this edit about? Was something wrong with default H3 behavior? Dicklyon (talk) 03:58, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * What was "wrong" was that there was no edit button when using h3, but with style-nt there is, except if it's chosen to suppress it. style-nt is also more generic, in that it can be used to format any text heading, not just level 3 headers, as in : Eric   Corbett  08:25, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Did the triple-equal-sign usual way of doing headers not work right there for some reason? Dicklyon (talk) 21:54, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I just did an edit to test the "usual" way; seems OK, no? Dicklyon (talk) 22:01, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course the "usual way" seems OK, but it doesn't offer you any formatting options such as altering the size of the header, which is what it's used for in the SSEM article. It also doesn't offer the option of suppressing the TOC entry or the edit button, which it's also used for in that article, and lots of other things that style-nt template does. But if you're happy with the basic agricultural look, then sticking a few equal signs in front of your header is fine. I'm not, I want finer control over what the article - and particularly the References section - looks like. Eric   Corbett  22:37, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that's a bad idea. It makes the wiki source text relatively uninterpretable, and thus hard to maintain, by others. Dicklyon (talk) 22:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you're wrong, so can we please move on? How about you write your own article on an early computer and stop hassling me about all sorts of trivia? Eric   Corbett  22:43, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Since your format tweaks were unusual and undiscussed, and I reverted them, it's up to you to try to persuade editors via discussion, not just revert my revert. I don't see why you'd be getting pissed off that I restored the long-standing formatting that worked fine before. Dicklyon (talk) 00:39, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * It's your reversions that haven't been discussed, except here. Have you looked at the version that passed FA? Does it look like your agricultural version? All I did was to replace the h3 template (which had been there for some time, and certainly while you were pointlessly arguing over the article title), with its updated equivalent, style-nt. Is this kind of targetted harassment how you habitually spend your time at WP? Eric   Corbett  02:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Per WP:BRD, I'm ready and trying to discuss. I see now why I didn't recognize Template:h3. You only just created it in January.  So not clear what you mean by "for some time".  Seems like a recent idiosyncratic hack of yours.  I've never seen Template:style-nt before, either, and don't see why you'd want to fiddle with such obscure details.  Does anyone else do that?  Oh, no, I see that's an even more recent hack of yours.  Why?  Why not use the same kinds of formatting and wiki markup that everyone else uses?  Dicklyon (talk) 03:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Eric, long time no html. I'm a little concerned about this too. Mainly because the template's functions are not transparent. Is it the kind of operation you tweak all the time? Does it follow site guidelines (especially MOS) and policies? How can we verify this? My best. Tony (talk)  03:35, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Good to see you back Tony. The article in question was promoted to FA on 24 March 2009, when it looked like this. (Ignore the citation access date errors, they were introduced by a subsequent change made to the citation template.) You'll see that the headings in the References section look exactly like they do now, so I've been doing this for at least nine years now. Towards the backend of last year someone objected to that use of pseudo-headings as not being MoS compliant, and claimed that the MoS mandated the use of "proper" level 3 headers. As I wanted to keep the same format while using level 3 headers, the h3 template was born, and used quite widely. But one problem with it was that it did not produce edit buttons, hence its replacement by style-nt, which can be used to give a fine degree of control over any header or pseudo-header; it is currently transcluded on 366 pages, not all written by me. All I did over the weekend was to replace the use of h3 with style-nt, which is completely MoS compliant for the reasons I've said. Eric   Corbett  04:36, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So the point of cooking up and using an idiosyncratic template was just to match the look of the heading style from 2009? Weird. Dicklyon (talk) 04:45, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You seem to have missed the point. That article has looked the way it does now for at least nine years, until you came along. And the point is to improve on the way that look is implemented by doing it in a MoS-compliant way. I really don't know how else I can explain it to you. Eric   Corbett  04:49, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Eric, I just noticed that my latest revert might be counted as a fourth, if the two parts of the first time were counted separately, and I didn't want to have a 3RR situation thrown in to complicate our discussion, so I put it back to your version for now. Let's keep discussing, and see if there's any reason for articles that you edit to not use the same standard formatting idioms and styles as the rest of Wikipedia. Notice that the optional spaces between heading text and their equal signs have been stable in the article for many years (since June 2010), so that's a simple RETAIN issue. The other is, I don't know what. Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

I've brought this up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, to see whether the MOS has anything to say about going your own way on such styling issues. Dicklyon (talk) 04:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As the point doesn't seem to be sinking in with you, I've just modified the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine to achieve the same result in the References section as was achieved by style-nt. All the template does is to make such formatting - and a great deal more - easier to use and to read. So deleting the template would achieve absolutely nothing except generate a good deal of ill will and make the article text more difficult to edit. Eric   Corbett  14:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I get the point that you are dedicated to keeping the text styling as it was in 2009 when your article achieved FA status. Dicklyon (talk) 20:17, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Courtesy notice -- Laser brain  (talk)  14:30, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

DYK for Aartswoud
Gatoclass (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Summer reading for the poolside?
If you need it. Hope this finds you well EC. Just letting you know about this, if you're interested. It would be greatly appreciated if you could look in sometime perhaps? Told you, summer reading! Take care, —SerialNumber54129  paranoia / cheap shit room 09:26, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:H4
Template:H4 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Alsee (talk) 06:32, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Walter MacFarlane
The modern sources have him with lowercase "f". You may note there is a discrepancy--our article on the clan has the 20th as the last one; according to the History of the Clan cited in the article, the last was the 22nd. It's from this guy's Geographical Collections that you get the Ly Erg, I suppose: "An unknown writer in MacFarlane's 'Geographical Collections', vol. 3, speaks quaintly of "Kairne Gorum, a famous hill which is four miles high. Gold hath been found here. The hill aboundeth with excellent Crystall. There is much telling of a Spirit called Ly Erg that frequents the Glen More. He appears with a red hand in the habit of a Souldier, and challenges men to fight with him as lately in '69 he fought with three Brothers one after another who immediately dyed thereafter.'" (Cited from ) Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:17, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Monte Testaccio
Eric, and friendly talk page watchers, I could use some MOS expertise and common sense on this talk page. Turns out also that this article is a GA, with the briefest GA review I've ever seen, and maybe some of you are inclined to have a look. Drmies (talk) 15:09, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Precious six years!
I looked again at our exchange back then, - those were the days. Wildflowers to your wife, hoping you are both well. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:42, 31 May 2018 (UTC)