User talk:Lee Carre

Any comments here must be authored (both text content and produced code) in an accessible way, and in-keeping with general good-practices.

Welcome!
Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some articles that you might find useful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place  on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! — M e ts 501 (talk) 17:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
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Thanks for the very warm welcome! ☺

I’ll have a good read of those pages you linked, they’ll be very helpful as I’m an editor of the BOINC Wiki, and they don’t have much about editing there, so many thanks ☺.

My main reason for editing the wikipedia is for content about BOINC, and links from the BOINC Wiki, but it’s always nice to be welcomed and shown where to start rather than having to guess and search for help and tips, so it’s much appreciated ☺.

I have a question actually, is it possible to have my signature added to comments I make on talk pages automatically? Because I often forget LOL — Lee Carré 01:42, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don’t think so ☺. Just do your best to remember; if you forget, it’s not the end of the world. It’ll become habit after a while though. — M e ts 501 (talk) 02:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh well, thanks anyway, I’m sure I’ll get used to it ☺.

It’ll be easier than my current attempt to learn the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout, everything takes so long to type at the moment — Lee Carré 02:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard
Let me know how that goes ☺. I wanted to learn it too, but then it makes everything so difficult at libraries, Internet cafes, other people’s houses, etc. where they have QWERTY keyboards. — M e ts 501 (talk) 02:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

It’s going well, my speed has improved even since writing here yesterday, and generally is improving much quicker than I thought it would. The first problem was relabeling the keyboard, I found that transparent scotch tape works well. It allows you to see the QWERTY keys if needed and you can write on it. I suggest using a bright coloured ink for the Dvorak keys so they are easily distinguished and stand out from the QWERTY keys (my first attempt was with black ink, which didn’t work too well because i kept seeing the old QWERTY keys instead). You may also find it helpful to place another, smaller, layer of tape over the layer with the key written on it, to avoid the ink from smearing.

As for other keyboards, you can just change the key mapping in the OS, which is what I’ve done. It’s recommended to not use QWERTY while learning, otherwise it will take longer to learn, however it’s possible to use QWERTY while learning Dvorak, it’s just the same as with spoken languages.

My speed has actually increased over the course of typing this (although it still takes a while), so that goes to show how easy it is to learn.

I’ve found some Web-based Dvorak typing courses, which you may find helpful for getting started; A Basic Course in Dvorak and DVZine Typing Tutor. However there are software packages available, but I’m not sure how good they are. — Lee Carré 15:30, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice ☺. I think I’ll eventually try Dvorak out and see how it goes — Mets 501 (talk) 12:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

An Update on Dvorak progress
It’s going pretty well now, I’m much faster than i was the last time i commented here, I’m somewhere between 50% and 75% of my QWERTY speed, and still increasing rapidly. A strange effect at this stage of my conversion is that i think my brain is finally beginning to instinctively learn where the keys are, and i can type some common words and my passwords with ease (not having to peck the keys, or even think about what my hands are doing, which is good because that’s how i was with everything before, when on QWERTY.

My error-rate has temporally increased due to the fact that all the key positions aren’t quite instinctive yet, but the actual cause of my increased error-rate is probably because of trying to go too fast while I’m in this fuzzy “gray-area” between the two, this is due to my amazingly bad memory, hence why i try to be quick so i don’t forget what i wanted to type LOL.

But at certain times when i don’t think too much about what my fingers are doing, that i suddenly have a burst of speed, but if i don’t think about what they’re doing at all then i make quite a few mistakes, not even using the QWERTY keys instead, this is the strange effect i mentioned before, my brain seems to be somewhere between the 2 layouts, but as long as i pay attention then it’s good, and I’m able to type at an acceptable speed for quite a while now.

I’ve noticed that I’m significantly faster if I don’t look at the keys at all and try to touch-type using the key positions from memory. However, your experience may be different.

One of the main things I’ve noticed is that the slight sensation in my hands after a couple of hours of typing is no longer present with Dvorak, and i find Dvorak a lot more comfortable to use. The alternation between hands is noticeable, and helps to improve speed from the beginning, because i noticed that with QWERTY i was using one hand a lot more than the other (which hand depended on what i was doing, for code it was my right, and for regular typing it was my left), but now the separation is much more even.

My home made scotch tape labels have been perfect so far; no peeling or anything. I think they’ll last quite a while ☺.

With regard to games handling the OS key remap; some follow it, but some don’t. Considering most key-assignments for games are based on layout and position rather than the actual character i didn’t find that changing the key-assignments in the game was much of a problem. The exception being that in one game so far; “Q⃣” or “'⃣” key (usually for leaning/peeking left) refused to be assigned to the apostrophe/quote key (Q in QWERTY), but I found that the tab key was a good substitute. Some games don’t seem to check the keymap used, and just assume QWERTY, which isn’t a problem unless you need to type, or id keys by character, for most games it’s the position of the key that matters. — Lee Carré 16:21, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

An update to the update
My error rate has decreased significantly, so perhaps it was just due to being tired (I’m not sleeping well lately for some reason).

My speed has also increased quite a bit since the above update, I’m able to type at an acceptable rate now; so it’s just a case of improving my speed more and more to be able to abandon old, deprecated, QWERTY forever! — Lee Carré 23:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

That’s great! I hope I can make the same jump as you someday [wink] — Mets 501 (talk) 19:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Experience after a year
My speed on the Dvorak layout is now significantly faster, and consistently faster than it ever was on QWERTY, my error rate has plumeted, my hands, fingers and wrists no longer ache after only a few hours of general keyboard use.

It seems that even Scotch tape eventually moves around on the keys, and peels off leaving a gunky residue on the keys. It worked well for a long time, but perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. I suggest just sticking with a printed diagram of the layout to help while learning, which also removes the need to look at the keys, thus aiding the ability to touch-type even further.

In my general computer use, I’ve not encountered any significant, unsolvable problem switching a computer to Dvorak for me to use it.

Overall, I’m very glad I switched to the Dvorak layout, it’s been a very good investment of time considering the amount of time etc. I’ll gain back, and general speed & comfort benefits — Lee Carré 22:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

“title” attribute for wiki links
Do any of the more experienced editors know if it’s possible to add a title attribute to a link using wiki-code. I’ve seen the use of HTML span elements wrapping the link, but that presents a semantic problem, because the title is for the link, not the span which contains the link. — Lee Carré 15:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, do you mean having a title as would be in a link like <a href=" http://web.site.tld/ " title="description">link</a>? <p style="margin-left:2%">If so, I don’t think it’s possible to be done by an editor, using the wiki-markup. The program changes internal links like link to <a href="/wiki/link" title="link">link</a>. For external links, a similar thing happens, with the external ink in full being used as the link title. There is no way to change this using wikimarkup. Hope this answers your question — if not, just ask on my talk page or leave the helpme tag again. M a  rtinp23  18:09, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">Thanks for the reply Martin. Your interpretation of what I meant is correct, I apologise that it wasn’t clearer.

<p style="margin-left:4%">Would it be appropriate to make a bug report/feature request  for this on the MediaZilla site? The reason I ask is that titles are quite an important usability feature (for more info on where a link goes to). If the title text is always the same as the anchor name, it would actually be better to not have the title attribute at all, as it’s then redundant. — Lee Carré 21:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">Yep — MediaZilla is probably best for a feature request, and I agree with you — the title is made redundant by the current software. The people on IRC #wikipedia-tech (freenode) might be able to help too (I think ☺). M a  rtinp23  16:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Category Problem
I seem to be having an issue with adding myself to the Aspergian Wikipedians category. I’ve been added, but under U (User:Lee Carre) rather than L for my actual name. Is this a problem with the way I’m adding the category, the category scripts, the template used or something else? Because this problem doesn’t seem to affect just me (have a look at the U section of the category). Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this. — Lee Carré 16:24, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Fixed [cheeky smile]. Although, the last category that you added on your userpage does not exist, you’d be better off removing it. If you need any more help, feel free to re-use the helpme template. — Nearly Headless Nick  {L} 16:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">Thanks very much ☺ didn’t know about category parameters. <p style="margin-left:2%">As for the Dvorak keyboard category, it’s a sort-of standard one, at least it’s been proposed on the Talk:Dvorak Simplified Keyboard page, and i think there are a few people who’ve joined it, it just needs to be created. Unless there’s an official category already…? <p style="margin-left:4%">Are there any negative effects of using a category than doesn’t exist? I thought that’s what was meant to happen, that is, create links to desired pages so that they appear on the relevent “wanted” special page. — Lee Carré 16:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">Visit WP:CAT to know more about categories. As of this particular category, I am no wiser than a daw. [cheeky smile] — Nearly Headless Nick  {L} 17:12, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:8%">Thanks ☺ — Lee Carré 17:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

ISTJ move
Would you mind indulging my curiosity about the rationale of moving of the ISTJ page to its expanded form? It seems to have been the only one of the MB types to have been expanded in such a way. And I thought the naming guideline indicated that the preferred name would be the most popular one (and the types certainly seem to be [from my perspective] more well known by their acronyms). — GargoyleMT 20:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Certainly; the main reason was usability, the acronym doesn’t mean much to many people, where as the full name would would somewhat more, as is the naming convention with many other articles (for example BOINC), in-line links use the acronym, which links/redirects to the full name. <p style="margin-left:2%">An acronym is easily deduced from the full name, but the reverse is rather difficult. Considering Wikipedia is in essence an encyclopedia, it would follow that the names used should be those most appropriate for the majority of people; typically those investigating a new subject. As I’m sure you’re aware, if the acronym is referenced, it simply redirects to the full name. <p style="margin-left:2%">My own personal view is that if there are many other articles named by their acronym, they too should be moved to their expanded version, again for usability. <p style="margin-left:2%">If you feel that using the full name is incorrect, please move it back. — Lee Carré 13:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">I understand your reasoning. The naming guidelines say to prefer spelled out versions to acronyms, but acronyms do seem permissible if they’re widely (and more popularly) known in that form. Which to use as the page name seems to boil down to a difference in perception or experience. I don’t have any qualifications on this topic, but I know the personality types more by their acronym than the spelled out version, and this may be typical of those familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types. I prefer the acronym, due to my familiarity with it, the length of the spelled out phrase, confusion about the tenses/forms of each of the individual words, and casing issues (which, from testing, don’t seem to exist). (I am watching this page, thanks for the heads up on my talk page.) — GargoyleMT 18:09, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">I completely agree with the use of acronyms in conversation and articles if nothing else but to reduce the space which would be otherwise used by the full name. In conventional writing, the first instance given should be the full name (so readers are familiar, and can search for the term elsewhere if they’re interested in learning more) followed by the acronym in brackets. However after the first instance, the acronym is usually referred to for easier reading (and writing). <p style="margin-left:6%">So in this case, I fully accept that the acronyms of various terms are used more frequently, from my own experience of subjets I’m familiar with, in the web world HTML is used 99.99% of the time and it’s very rare to see the full HyperText Markup Language version in regular articles (that is; articles which are not technical specifications). <p style="margin-left:6%">So again, as Wikipedia is intended as an encyclopedia, I would strongly suggest that the full name be used initially (especially for the title) so that the reader immediately has some insight into its meaning, even from just reading the title. Also as a significant percentage of people who would read such an encyclopedia article are those who wish to learn (more) about the subjet, it’s most appropriate to initially give the full name, and later refer to it by its acronym. <p style="margin-left:6%">A redirect from the acronym can be (and is) put in place to refer those searching the acronym to the full named page, similar to a “see: [alternative]” in traditional paper formats. <p style="margin-left:6%">As you seem knowledgable about the subject(s) in question, perhaps you could discuss this naming issue with others who are familiar with the topic, and get their input on what the articles should be entitled, keeping the distinction between what’s used in general writing and conversation, and what’s appropriate for an encyclopedia. <p style="margin-left:6%">Oh, I changed the instances of “ISJT” (which i assume was a typo?) to “ISTJ” — Lee Carré 06:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:8%">Thanks for noticing and correcting my typo. Considering the case where Wikipedia could be (or is planned to be) printed like a conventional encyclopedia does put different weights upon the various concerns. And I’m coming to terms that having the article under the full name “feels” wrong (partially because so many will reach it through the redirect, instead of by typing in the full name). That doesn’t mean it is, however, as your arguments have highlighted. I’ll think about the subject for a couple of days and then pose the question on an appropriate page (perhaps MBTI (ah, another acronym redirect)), to see various schools of thought on the subject. — GargoyleMT 16:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:10%">Again, I completely accept your point that using the acronym as the title would be theoretically more efficient (although MediaWiki does a good job of negating this through efficient redirects), another consideration is searchability, in that if more people are going to search for the acronym it would make more sense — purely from a searchability point of view — to use the acronym as the title so that it achieves a higher ranking. However the original argument that the acronym doesn’t provide a clear indication of the subject matter is still significant — lets assume someone searches for the full name, if one of the page titles is the acronym rather than the full title, they’re less likely to click it regardless of its relevance. <p style="margin-left:10%">I suppose a well constructed document, preferably with a description in the HTML, to allow a summary or even just the full name to be displayed in search results would be a good compromise on both fronts; the acronym title would be ranked higher in the results, while also informing the user of the subject. <p style="margin-left:10%">But then usability guidelines for authoring microcontent says that a title should be “pearls of clarity”, which correlates with link text; if link text is just the acronym with no further indication, there is great uncertainty about what the user will find there, and most content authors don’t use title attributes for descriptions. <p style="margin-left:10%">However, most of this is negated by using a redirect, especially in the style MediaWiki uses them (processed internally, so the target content is displayed when the redirect URL is requested, rather than say HTTP redirects, which point the User Agent (Web Browser) to the target URL, adding another step) in that the redirect isn’t just a blank page, it has the full content, so shouldn’t suffer any ill-effects with regard to searchability. So I’m still lead to believe the full name is a more effective, and descriptive title. <p style="margin-left:10%">Choosing a good title is not an easy task ☺ — Lee Carré 22:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:12%">Another thought, the full name/title helps distinguish abbreviations with different meanings; two meanings of IP are Internet Protocol and Intellectual property — Lee Carré 06:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: My signature
I have responded on my talk page. — Nearly Headless Nick   {C}  18:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Thanks for the notification. I’ve been a bit busy over the past week or so, hence having taken a while to reply :p — Lee Carré 22:05, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">You can edit it here — User:Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington/Sig. — Nearly Headless Nick   {C}  16:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Request for additional user-boxes/categories
The userboxes are not really mine per sey, I’ve just adopted them. But I’ve made the new boxes, which you can find at User:Royalguard11/userboxes/hpbook and User:Royalguard11/userboxes/hpbookonly. Feel free to use and/or edit them to your liking. -Royalguard11 (T·R!) 00:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Question about “Comments” on the Psychology template
I’m quite confused about the “comments” section of the template for the Psychology wikiproject Template talk:WikiProject Psychology. It looks like you’ve put a lot of work into that template, so I thought I’d come to you with my questions. Aren’t the article talk pages designed to contain all comments about an article? I ran into the template on Talk:Ideomotor effect. I tried to use it to explain why I changed the status of the article from stub to start, but my comment got deleted. Perhaps by RHaworth, who is also confused about the need for a comments section. Is it working correctly on other pages? Are other wikiprojects using the same concept? Subversified 02:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Appologies for the delayed response, I’ve not logged into wikipedia for some time. Thanks for the complements, I did spend a considerable amount of time trying to fix some of the issues on that template. However, unfortunetly I’m unable to provide you with any kind of meaningful answers, most of my changes to the template in question were code-related (it wasn’t working properly), as for its purpose, particularly the “comments” section; I know as much as you I’m afraid.

<p style="margin-left:2%">One reason might be that the “comments” are ment to be about the rating of the article, and the talk page is for discussion article content (I assume). Another (possibly related to the previous) might be that it’s technically easier to transclude the coments in the template than a talk page, but now I’m just guessing.

<p style="margin-left:2%">I suggest you consult the help section, ask on the template’s talk page, or on your own talk page and transclude the “helpme” template (wrapped in double {} characters — I’m not sure how to produce it correctly without actually transcluding the template here).

<p style="margin-left:2%">You can find out which other pages the template is included in by following the “what links here” link while viewing the template’s page: what links to WikiProject Psychology.

<p style="margin-left:2%">The other wiki-projects I’ve come across seem to employ the “comments” system too. — Lee Carré 07:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Autism Jersey
Another editor has added the  template to the article Autism Jersey, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn’t believe it satisfies Wikipedia’s criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also What Wikipedia is not and Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at its talk page. If you remove the  template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. BJBot (talk) 01:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Thanks for the notification; I’ve added my thoughts agreeing to the deletion on the talk page of the article in question.

Roman numeral Ⅱ
Please don’t use that roman numeral font you put into the Siege of Malta article. It appears as a small, rectangular box of garbage in my Mozilla Firefox browser. Binksternet (talk) 04:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Then I suggest using a more suitable font. DejaVu fonts are quite good. — Lee Carré (talk) 04:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">Don’t try to make everyone in the world use a specific font. Binksternet (talk) 04:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">Err, I’m not. Use whichever font you like. I was merely bringing to your attention that most fonts are lacking (which is the cause of your problem in this case), but there are many available which cover a much wider range of characters. Use of DejaVu fonts was just a suggestion, use others if you prefer; besides it’s up to you if you wish to view characters correctly or not, perhaps try a browser with more capable font substitution. Aren’t you trying to force your preferences/work-arounds on ‘everyone in the world’? I take it that you’re unaware of the accessibility implications; in its previous form, a screen-reader would pronounce: “World War eye-eye”, rather than the desired/correct “World War two” — Lee Carré (talk) 04:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">Please respect my userpage and refrain from removing my comments or reverting my changes. If this was a genuine mistake, then fair enough, but do be careful and check what you’re actually reverting in future please. — Lee Carré (talk) 04:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:8%">My earlier revert of your reply was a mistake that I immediately remedied. Sorry about that. My changing of the talk entry title back to my original intent (Roman numeral 2) is not a mistake, though this is your user talk page, so do what you will. I don’t agree with what you are doing to article names and I don’t appreciate your instructions to me on how to properly view such fonts as Unicode (U + 2162). My point is not about me in particular, it’s about everybody else who can’t see the font correctly. Article names here should be as simple as possible. Also: screen readers for the blind ‘ride’ on top of the user’s browser. If there’s a rectangular block that says 2162 instead of the Unicode font for Roman Numeral Two then the screen reader will burp audibly just the same as the browser fails to render the font visually. Another point about screen readers is that the users expect and become accustomed to such things as hearing “double ewe double ewe two” or “double ewe double ewe eye eye”. They adjust by necessity when the application isn’t smart enough to do it for them. At any rate, please stop your obfuscations of article names with unnecessary complexity of font choice. Binksternet (talk) 05:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:10%">Fair enough, mistakes happen. no problem ☺. I am attempting to move this discussion to the talk page for the article in question, however, I will respond to the specific issues you seem to be having here. You seem to be mincing terms (“view such fonts as Unicode” — reality is actually closer to the reverse of this statement), and (understandably) confusing very different subjects (characters, glyphs, fonts). I will try my best to address/explain what I assume to be the underlying issues (rather than just the symptoms).

<p style="margin-left:10%">The change I made to the article was nothing to do with fonts (that was only apparent to you specifically, the character exsited, and was likely downloaded sucessfully, but the font in use didn’t have a glyph to display it — the solution is simple: use a better font if you wish to see the glyph for the character). All I did was use the correct character (further discussion on the article talk page once I finish typing it).

<p style="margin-left:10%">Unicode is the standard character encoding these days, all others are now considered legacy. US-ASCII and ISO 8859-1 can both be treated/processed as UTF-8 (a character encoding for Unicode). Notable operating systems, and major applications in their entirity now use Unicode as their character encoding of choice, adding/allowing backwards-compatibility where needed (at least in good quality products/packages). This includes the majority of Microsoft products. U+XXXX numbers are Unicode code points, an easy way to referrence specific characters without ambiguity, and need not concern the average person browsing the web. Wikipedia pages are sent to you as UTF-8 (Unicode), so you’re ‘viewing them as Unicode’ anyway. Fonts for US-ASCII/ISO 8859-1 are inter-changable in modern operating systems. The software with which you’re viewing this page is very likely written using Unicode character encoding (operating system & web browser).

<p style="margin-left:10%">Part of the reason for using the actual character natively in headings (on talk pages at least) was so that others could easily determine if their default system/browser configuration supported a more suitable range of characters, in order to be able to provide feedback about said character. It’s not like a missing glyph is causing an application failure (in which case I could understand your concerns).

<p style="margin-left:10%">Your claim that “My point is … about everybody else who can’t see the font correctly.” is seemingly baseless. Where is your evidence that anyone beyond yourself is having trouble seeing the glyph for this character? What about the people for whom the use of correct characters will help (those using speech-synthisis software)? If you can provide citation/evidence for this rather wild claim, I’d like to read it, otherwise I can’t help but feel you’re merely expressing your own wishes/preferrences/desires, dispite the other issues. What, beyond the issues you’ve encountered personally, are the reasons behind your disagreement with my changes? It seems that perhaps these articles are a little too close to your heart based on the nature and speed of your response(es) to the change.

<p style="margin-left:10%">“Article names here should be as simple as possible.” [emphasis; mine.] No, article names should be as clear as possible, or as simple to comprehend/understand as possible, or provide for simplest readability. I suggest it may be worthwhile to read about the subject of usability (which is the dicipline concerned with making things easy to use). Taking your argument further; should punctuation be removed too, as that would make titles much simpler, although less clear. Removing punctuation would mitigate the need to use percent-encoding in URLs, making MediaWiki itself simpler (although less flexible). I realise my example is counter-intuitive, but it was to emphasise the point that clarity, above all else is actually what’s important, not simplicity. A parallel example is user-interfaces; the most usable are not those which are simplest, but those which display the right information at the right time (clarity).

<p style="margin-left:10%">I’m familiar with how screen-readers function/operate. Not all ‘ride’ on top of the user’s browser. Blind people are not the only users of speech-synthisis software. Besides, you’re confusing the visual rendering of a charater (a glyph) with the character itself, and other representatinos/renderings of it (such as audio/speech). Modern screen-readers access the source-code of the page (the browser itself is just a vehicle to get to the desired page and/or aquire the source-code itself, along with the character encoding). So they’re given the actual character data directly. Your statement “If there’s a rectangular block that says 2162 instead of the Unicode font for Roman Numeral Two then the screen reader will burp audibly just the same as the browser fails to render the font visually.” doesn’t make much sense taken literally. Substituting the terms I assume you ment (‘character’/‘glyph’ for ‘font’ — a font is a set of glyphs, which are visual-only representations/renderings of characters.). That ‘rectangular block’ is your font’s/browser’s attempt at indicating/implying ‘I don’t have a glyph for this character, but I’ll indicate that I’m aware of the character, and that it’s present in this position/location in the string’. Again, you seem to be mincing terms/concepts. That rectangular block (a/the ‘replacement character’) is the character “ROMAN NUMERAL TWO” (U+2161), but the font in use can’t display it because it simply doesn’t have a glyph for it. Just because the font in use may not have a glyph for a character, doesn’t mean the character doesn’t exist or something of that nature. You also make the assumption that rendering/synthisising the character as audiable speech has anything to do with the font in use (if it does then the screen-reader has a bug which needs to be resolved). As stated before, modern screen-readers access the source-code and read the characters as binary data (which they are in computing), then proceed to render/represent that data as a suitable form (ie, audio). Modern Web screen-readers do not perform anything remotely like OCR (as you seem to be implying), so the visual rendering is irrellivent. A screen-reader could quite happily render the character correctly as speech when the font used to display it may fail. The reverse is also entirely true/possible. As Unicode is the standard these days, if software is not able to handle it, then they should be updated, or will become obsolete. A separate, but different, example of how quality typography (and correct use of characters) can improve the experience for screen-reader users in particular (as well as those using a graphical browser), is the effect of proper em-dashes (which is not the same thing as a hyphen) to indicate the proper change of tone/emphasis or pauses/pacing to indicate a the very break in thought an em-dash is intended to represent. Correct/Good typography is akin to correct spelling, quality grammar, and proper/appropriate use of punctuation. If you value these things, then you should also value quality typography.

<p style="margin-left:10%">“… users expect and become accustomed to such things as hearing “double ewe double ewe two” or “double ewe double ewe eye eye”.” True, by ask yourself why? Poor authoring/typography. Besides, why shouldd users have to become accustomed to (and thus expect) such things in the first place? Surely it is much better, in the name of clarity (rather than simplicity, which caused the problem you illustrate in the first place) to use the correct character, causing a speech-synthisiser to convey the intended meaning of two vertical bars close to each other. Adjusting by necessity is no longer needed, and can ∴ (therefore) make the experience simpler, easier, and more usable for newer users. Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn all these such nuances. “They adjust by necessity when the application isn’t smart enough to do it for them.” This assumes that the application is at fault, or lacks the capability. This assumption is plainly false. Capable applications will behave in exactly the same way (because they’re reading two capital ‘eye’s (II), not a roman numeral Ⅱ. Besides, the application isn’t at fault, it’s doing what it’s been told to do. The author is at fault for using/providing inappropriate characters which do not accurately reflect the intended semantics/meaning (simply because they ‘look’ the same). Software can’t magically compensate for all human-error by somehow being able to extract the true intentions / intended meaning of the user/author.

<p style="margin-left:10%">I hope my response offers enough explanation of background/theory in order to understand the key — and related — issues.

<p style="margin-left:10%">“At any rate, please stop your obfuscations of article names with unnecessary complexity of font choice.” This is unproductive and uncalled for. It is a matter of opinion/reason. If anything I’m unobfuscating/disambiguating the intended meaning of the titles in question. You have no authority over any of these articles, and thus are in no position to issue instruction upon how they should be authored/edited. Many Wikipedia articles are now using non-ASCII/non-ISO-8859-1 characters in their titles (because they are the appropriate characters). Do you plan to revert the changes by other editors too? The most reasonable/appropriate course of action is to reach consensus on the discussion page for the ‘treasured’ article.

<p style="margin-left:10%">The choice of fonts is not complex (much the same as with choice of capable/modern vs legacy web browsers). You have 3 choices: use a font which has support for glyphs for a decent range of characters; help improve Unicode by specifying/developing a character fall-back scheme; or suffer the consequences of your choice of font and unwillingness to use something more capable. Many systems/browsers don’t have these issues even with their default configuration settings. — Lee Carré (talk) 07:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion in WikiProject
Hi, Lee!

There’s a discussion regarding your changes in the Military History WikiProject and your comments would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, — R OGER D AVIES  talk 11:29, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Thanks Roger, I’d be interested in reading what others have to say on the matter. — Lee Carré (talk) 11:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Restoration of historical comments to User talk:212.9.28.9
You recently restored a bunch of thing from an inactive user talkpage. This restoral included an ancient unblock request, which made it an active request. I'm not sure why you would re-add this? Users (including IP's) are allowed to remove content from their talkpages in most cases, and if an admin ever needed to check what he had done, it's clearly all there. ( talk→  BWilkins   ←track ) 10:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">Well, the user is hardly inactive. However, my apologies with regard to re-activating an ancient unblock request, that was not my intention. As it was |212.9.28.9 which removed the history of previous vandalism from their current talk page, I hoped to avoid that leaving the misleading impression of only recent, limited vandalism. The vandalism from this address has been persistent, with almost no constructive edits to balance the equation (I’ve examined the edit history). I was actually about to add some opinion/comments with regard to how this situation might be handled, had I been given a moment’s chance. Ironically, your blanket undo of all my changes also removed some quite valid additions. If I am to be criticised about my own lack of care, need I point out the hypocrisy of others acting in the same way (rhetorical ‘?’). Lee Carré (talk) 10:32, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:4%">Well, as it has been held that messing with other people's talkpages - even problematic ones - can be considered disruptive, and as I noted, any admin worth their salt will look at all contribs should it be necessary to block, and indeed the talkpage is not as important as the history of that talkpage, I'm still not sure what you're hoping to achieve that is not already well taken care of ( talk→  BWilkins   ←track ) 10:57, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:6%">Fair point. I admit my inexperience/ignorance and will know to avoid such assumptions in future. Thank you for your rational explanations. Is there a comprehensive WP-namespace guide/policy over how to handle vandalism etc. (perhaps WP:Vandalism?) as I wish to add notices to the user page for other cases (82.112.144.189 and 81.20.185.100 — These addresses seem to be one particular culprit’s home connection), unless you’re in a better position to handle/co-ordinate such matters… Lee Carré (talk) 11:10, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:8%">One of the benefits of the escalating series of warnings, is that it is just that: escalating. For example, let's say you look at someone's talkpage history, and they were last given a level 3 warning 8 months ago, that probably means that you should not raise him to a level 4 as it's not current (of course, that also depends on the severity of the current vandalism). If you ever follow WP:AIV you will regularly see an admin say "warnings are not current", and therefore take no action. There are some templates around for “regular vandalism from this IP”, and I can try to find them … ( talk→  BWilkins   ←track ) 11:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:10%">Oh indeed; I certainly appreciate the merits of escalation in many other areas, too, simply to account for genuine mistakes. I fully realise that these are only my opinions, and that the decision/action taken is for administrators to judge. However, my point with regard to 212.9.28.9, is that this is almost certainly an address used by a school (I discovered WP:AIV via WP:Vandalism, but thank you for the pointer). Considering the nature and frequency of edits (quite regular, from the history) and that, to me at least, the situation seems unlikely to improve; it seems the application of the sanctions mentioned in the ‘school’ template (still allowing edits by account holders, for those who really want to contribute positively) would not be unreasonable in this case (again, to me), rather than having to endure significantly more vandalism before the source is muzzled. If that is not the ‘Wikipedia way’ then I shall not pursue the matter. Although I do think willful personal attacks justify more serious consideration (unsure how to show only edits by IP addresses; please correct link if there is a way). Would I be correct to summise that, in your opinion, it would not (yet) be worth adding this matter (and all the IPs involved) to WP:AIV or otherwise bring it to the attention of the administrators? I am not seeking persecution; just the avoidance of inappropriate behaviour being missed/unhandled. Lee Carré (talk) 11:52, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:12%">Why not just ask for semi-protection on your User page? He's regular-ish, but very sporadic. Obviously a kid that you pissed off somewhere along the line. ( talk→  BWilkins   ←track ) 14:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:14%">I could do; I had not thought of that. However, that only addresses a small aspect of the larger problem. My user page is in the minority, compared to the other edits from the address in question. The fact that my user page (and my extension, I) was specifically targetted played a large part in spurring my interest. Especially as there seemed to be enough clues to determine who it might be. Given other considerations/conditions, I think it is more just a case of immature name-calling (perhaps to provoke a reaction) than anything hostile per-se — I don't recall having ‘pissed off’ anyone who would fit the profile, at least, but who knows. The specifics didn't really bother me (only the larger anti-vandalism issue), and I wasn't offended due to the childish nature of the vandalism/comments. Lee Carré (talk) 10:02, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * (Ugh at the use of non-standard indenting) Well, at this point, the IP's history does not show enough of a pattern and frequency of vandalism - I'm not willing to do a school-level block that would prevent the rare cases of anonymous edits. Warn appropriately; if they attack you again personally, you can let me know, I will try to act as quick as I can - sound ok? ( talk→   BWilkins   ←track ) 10:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

December 2010 — Talk page, nature of discussion of subject
Welcome to Wikipedia! I am glad to see you are interested in discussing a topic. However, as a general rule, talk pages such as Talk:Copyright infringement are for discussion related to improving the article, not general discussion about the topic. If you have specific questions about certain topics, consider visiting our reference desk and asking them there instead of on article talk pages. Thank you. RJaguar3 &#124; u  &#124;  t  18:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

<p style="margin-left:2%">I understand, but one does imply the other. One can not best explain a topic, such as in an encyclopedia, without first understanding that same topic. Context seems of paramount importance, then. Discussion of the neutrality over terms will involve discussion of the terms themselves, how they came into use, their meaning, people's understanding of them, etc. The significance of my points was not in the literal reading of them, but the concepts/perspective conveyed in understanding the examples. If you, instead, refer to my expression of interpretation of the law, I was very careful to indicate that what I said should not be taken as legal advice: “I believe…”, “I am not a lawyer…” [emphasis added] — Lee Carré (talk) 18:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I was referring to edits like this one, which, in my opinion, seem to be more like a rant about the topic than an actual post aimed at improving the article. Just keep in mind that Wikipedia talk pages are not an open forum for the discussion of the topics of the articles, and I think everything should be just fine.  RJaguar3 &#124;  u  &#124;  t  00:53, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

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<p style="margin-left:2%;">Corrected. Thanks, DPL bot. — Lee Carré (talk) 10:59, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

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ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:45, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Controversial topic area alert
How draconian and discriminatory; I take this to mean that unpopular opinions and wrong-think will be censored, since SJW-type opinions seem to be allowed to run rife. — Lee Carré (talk) 23:14, 5 March 2021 (UTC)