User talk:Jdforrester/Old Archive 1

This is an archive of my talk page, the current version of which is located here.

Note that I am likely to reformat, delete, or otherwise alter what appears here...

Introduction
Heya. Nothing to say, really. Oh, except that this is my second account on the Wikip[a]edia, as my last one seems to have been deleted after some non-inconsiderable length of inactivity. --James F. 02:15 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hello. So what name did you go under before, just out of interest...? -- Oliver P. 03:52 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)


 * Good question - I have no idea, and I was told that my email address didn't feature in the database, so I created a new one. However, given my latent creative abilities, I would have thought that it would be 'jdforrester'... :-)
 * I assume I first found Wikipedia through [LMS' K5 story], which would put my first account creation date in mid-2001...
 * -- James F. 05:28 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

East London Line spelling corrections
(Re ELL) No problem, you're very welcome. :) Nevilley 09:44 Apr 20, 2003 (UTC)

University of Warwick student list
Wouldn't it be sensible to put notable Warwick students on the University of Warwick page? There can't be that many of them. Evercat 01:51 May 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * Perhaps there aren't many notable Warwick students right now (I can't think of many), but the list will grow over time and it seems prudent to put the infrastructure in now, rather than later, and make the structure used here common with that of other large universities.
 * James F. 02:10 May 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I'm not sure I'm convinced by this logic. Wikipedia is always a work in progress, and the question to ask is not "what will be the right format in 6 months?" but rather "what's the right format now?". You can always move the content over when the list becomes too big. Evercat 12:14 May 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * OK, agreed, and changed.
 * James F. 12:40 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Sleep-induced vote loss
I don't think anyone deleted your vote - not according to the page history, anyway. Maybe you had a edit conflict? Martin 12:58 May 15, 2003 (UTC)


 * No particular accusations flying around; I assume that, at 05:00 this morning when somewhat deprived of sleep, I merely didn't notice that a conflict had occurred :-)
 * James F. 14:33 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Accidental minor-edit flagging
Hi I liked the info that you added to listed building but I noticed that you marked all your edit's as minor, when clearly they were not. As a general rule, I would say that an edit is minor if it doesn't add any new content. Otherwise it is not. E.g formatting, spelling changes, wikifying. That sort of thing. The reason I say this is that I, like many others have my user preferences set so that I don't see minor edits in recent changes, but I do want to pick up on content changes.Theresa knott 07:40 20 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Whoops, my mistake. Generally when I remember to de-select 'minor edit', I've written a dozen paragraphs offline... :-)
 * James F. 00:22 22 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Fair enough :-) Why don't you select your user preferences to have the minor edit box deselected, so that you have to tick it if the edit is minor? ::Theresa knott 14:59 22 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, many of my edits are somewhat minor, so...
 * James F. 21:20 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Sysop-hood
Congratulations, you have just been made a sysop! You have volunteered for boring housekeeping activities which normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops basically can't do anything: They cannot delete pages arbitarily (only obvious junk like "jklasdfl,öasdf JOSH IS GAY"), they cannot protect pages in an edit war they are involved in, they cannot ban signed in users. What they can do is delete junk as it appears, ban anonymous vandals, remove pages that have been listed on Votes for deletion for more than a week, protect pages when asked to by other members, and help keep the few protected pages there are, among them the precious Main Page, up to date.

Note that almost everything you can do can be undone, so don't be too worried about making mistakes. You will find more information at Administrators, please take a look before experimenting with your new powers. Drop me a message if there are any questions or if you want to stop being a sysop (could it be?). Have fun! --Eloquence 19:18 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Ooh, wow, thank you. To everyone, indeed. I'm honoured to be accepted.
 * James F. 23:13 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

-

Current events wording confusion
What is "after encouragement to do so from American forces overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure" supposed to mean? Are you implying that the American forces have some sort of responsibility for the attack? If so, please elaborate -- otherwise I do not see what relevance this has. Also, if you originally wrote that item (I didn't check), please cite sources in the future. --Eloquence 20:37 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Well, two different news reports both said that the US forces said that the formal march of the police officers should go ahead; that is the 'encouragement' I'm commenting on. Sorry about English not having a good enough pronoun system  :-). And I'm sorry about the lack a reference; it slipped my mind at the time.
 * -- James F. 21:51 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

US County map discussion
Looks like we're going with 300x300. Don't forget to hit those new maps with pngcrush ;-) Let me know when they are good to go, and I'll inform our friend doing the uploading. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 17:45 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Leaving hanging dates on Current events
leaving the unused day is an excellent way to encourage somebody to add something. Pizza Puzzle


 * No, it's an awful thing to do. It looks terrible. People should add news because it's news, not because there's an empty space for them to put something there.
 * James F. 03:53 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * There is news everyday. Pizza Puzzle


 * No, there ends up being news (almost) every day, but that often only gets added some days or even weeks after it occurred. Leaving a hanging date around is inelegant.
 * James F. 04:06 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * This site is a work in progress - elegance is not the goal. Pizza Puzzle


 * It's not the primary goal; it is still a goal, and one reached with surprise regularity for a 'work in progress'.
 * Either way, there is now a news article for the 19th, so the discussion is moot.
 * James F. 04:14 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Priv abuse comment

 * Continue and I will protect the page.

You may wish to review Eloquence's comments above, regarding protecting pages. Martin 20:02 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Indeed; it was meant semi-sarcastically, and 'said' in a fit of pique, but nonetheless, I probably shouldn't have said it. Of course, protecting one's own talk page is somewhat different from anything else; howver, I apologise.
 * James F. 06:27 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * That's cool - sarcasm doesn't come over terribly well online. No apology necessary, and thank you for the explanation. Martin 14:49 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

London postal codes map
Wow, that image of the London postal codes is very useful, though perhaps we might want to shrink it. Where did you find it? James F. 04:46 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I found something similar on a website somewhere and basically traced over it using paintshop pro adding my own colours and text. The size is a bit of a problem. That's about the smallest you can get it whilst allowing EC2 and EC3 to still be readable.
 * Mintguy 17:18 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I've uploaded a smaller image for London postcodes.
 * Mintguy 13:52 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * And I've just run pngcrush on it to save the last few bytes of peoples' bandwidth ;-)
 * James F. 16:24 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I've just saved another 8362 bytes/23%, courtesy of careful depth reduction and optipng version 0.4.1. JamesDay 09:20, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Maybe I should have investigated the crushing more properly :-)
 * James F. 12:48, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Please delete my images
I uploaded images with incorrect filenames ( and ) - I have since uploaded the correct ones, can you delete the crap ones, oh wonderful sysop. Ed g2s 11:27, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Done, o little one.
 * James F. 11:31, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[[Media:Bruce_sterling.jpg|Bruce Sterling picture]] cropping
cross-posted to each others' talk pages - James F., Kingturtle

You said:


 * photo needs to be reduced

... for Bruce Sterling; do you mean in colour depth, size, compression, noise, or something else? I'm happy to crop the picture (which, personally, I think you mean, but can't be sure), but don't want to do something others don't want :-)

James F. 11:03, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * i was referring to the size of that image. thanks for asking. have a good day :) :Kingturtle 14:03, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * Right. Done (uploaded to [[Media:Bruce_Sterling_cropped.jpg]] and altered Bruce Sterling). Thoughts?
 * James F. 21:59, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Programming languages
Would you be willing to join WikiProject Programming languages, we could really use your help. &mdash;Noldoaran (Talk) 04:10, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Speration of sucession tables
cross-posted to each others' talk pages - James F., Lord Emsworth

I really think that we should be making a visible separation between the sucession tables for offices (e.g., Prime Minister) and titles (e.g., Baron Kevesten), and the tables shouldn't fuse together. Indeed, really, I think that the tables should be completely seperate per office or title. Some examples:

Currently:

Should be:

... or, possibly:

Your thoughts? James F. (talk) 00:03, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I have seen the proposed succession tables that you have shown on my talk page. I was of the opinion that the first table, wherein all of the sub-tables are fused together, looks much neater, than the later ones, where separation is depicted. My general policy was to list the titles in order of "importance": first the titles in Government (Gov. General, Prime Minister, etc.) and only then a title in the peerage. Would you not agree that a fused table looks neater? -- Lord Emsworth 00:35, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)


 * Listing in order of 'importance' is wholly appropriate, IMO; however, I think that fusing the tables together looks much less neat. So, in a word, 'no'.
 * James F. (talk) 22:29, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, I felt that the succession table as one looks a little more organized, while the separate tables, with the columns of varying lenghts, looks much more chaotic. But, I am not that concerned about the fusion of fission of tables, so if it is your desire that tables be separated, please do separate them. However, I advocate at least keeping the peerage titles together in one table, as they are very much inter-related. -- Lord Emsworth 22:48, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

The fused tables are visually confusing. They should be kept separate. Adam 23:39, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Right, OK, will seperate tables into a single peerage titles one, and seperate office ones. Thank you.
 * James F. (talk) 10:43, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Lady Temple
cross-posted to each others' talk pages

Could you possibly shed light as to whether I am wrong in the following:


 * Hester Temple was the second holder of the title, so she was the 2nd Viscount Cobham; that she was female meant that she was referred to instead as the 2nd Viscountess Cobham (but, actually, neither, as she had a superceeding title), so he heir was the 3rd Viscount Cobham, and all carried on as one might expect there after.

... and, even though she was the first female holder of the title, she was not the 1st Viscountess Cobham. Is this correct? BTW, many thanks on behalf of... well, me, really, but your input in to the Wikipedia, especially in this rather complex field, has been great! James F. (talk) 23:21, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Hi. You are indeed correct in referring to Lady Temple as the "2nd Viscountess Cobham." In several instances, she would just be "Countess Temple" or "Viscountess Cobham," without the ordinal. I prefer not to do so because the ordinal would imply that she was a suo jure countess, while it would seem, without the ordinal, that the title was through her husband, by courtesy. -- Emsworth 23:36, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * Right. Many thanks.
 * James F. (talk) 23:45, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

St Paul's School
cross-posted to each others' talk pages - James F., Jengod

Is there any particular reason you moved the above article to ... (UK)? Unless you're going to place some more information at the original location, I don't see any reason for putting in ungainly disambiguation characters... Also, it's generally considered Good Practice to change all articles that link to the pages to avoid the created redirect. James F. (talk) 23:18, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Hi. :) I moved St Paul's School to St Paul's School (UK) so St. Paul's could be a disambig page for the U.K. school and St. Paul's School (U.S.), attended by the U.S. prez candidate. Do you think we should do it a different way? I'll be happy to go rejigger the redirects once we get this all sorted out. jengod 23:23, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * Ah, right. You might consider whether an in-page disambiguation might be more suitable, however, if the US one is less 'well known' than the UK one...
 * I might get started on those redirects, in the mean time.
 * I'd imagine that you really want to move St. Paul's School (U.S.) to St Paul's School (U.S.), too...
 * James F. (talk) 02:47, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd imagine that you really want to move St. Paul's School (U.S.) to St Paul's School (U.S.), too... How come? Is that some spelling convention I don't know about? St. Paul's (U.S.) probably should get its own page b/c John Kerry went there. Not as many famous people, but famous enough. jengod 02:56, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)


 * No, I meant that at the top or bottom of St Paul's School, there should be a "This article refers to the Public School in London; there is also an article about the school in North Carolina in the United States, located at St Paul's School (U.S.)." or something similar, as is done, say, on London itself.
 * About "Saint" being shortened to "St" and not "St.", yes, there is a policy about it, an no, I can't find it... ;-(
 * James F. (talk) 03:15, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Protection of UN General Assembly
Why did you protect UN General Assembly? RickK 05:28, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Whoops, must have been a mistaken click. Thanks for spotting it.
 * James F. (talk) 05:30, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Not a problem. I think I've done it myself.  There should probably be a "do you really want to protect this page?" popup.  RickK 05:32, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Agreed.
 * James F. (talk) 05:36, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)