User talk:MSGJ/2009

Wales Map
Hi, While trying to tweak the coordinates for your Wales map, it did notice one odd thing, there seems to be an extra island to the left of Marloes which doesn't appear of Google or |14|4&bd=useful_information&loc=GB:51.73166:-5.1979:14|marloes|Marloes,%20Haverfordwest,%20Dyfed,%20Wales,%20SA62%203 Multimap. -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:49, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry I know nothing about a map of Wales. Have you got the right editor? Martin 20:51, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No I've got the wrong editor, sorry. It was Jza84 I was after. You've got J in your usernames, which must have confused me. :) -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:02, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:Milligan College alumni
I created this for you. However as a registered user, do you know you can create categories by yourself? Martin 11:15, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I tried, but it didn't work. Can you direct me to the right URL? I'm apparently not getting there. Rammer (talk) 21:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the title of the category I created? I wikilinked it on your talk page - it's at Category:Milligan College alumni. Martin 21:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Article history
Just a note:   One of the advantages of the articlehistory template (over the older single templates) is that it links work if article names change in the future. If the full name of the page isn't used, the link could be lost if there's ever a name change. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 23:55, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Surely, the review page should be moved as well, if the article were ever moved? Martin 00:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Happy New Year!
Happy new Headcheese!- hexa Chord 2  00:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Veronica Mars Template
Thank you for your recent edits to. I reinserted the includeonly tags on the main article since the documentation produces the template and there is no need to duplicate the material. I reverted your edits on the documentation page, as the inclusion of the full template text rather than a simple call for the template is to circumvent the 's error message when the template is called on it's own page. If you have any questions reguarding these matters, please feel free to bring them to my attention on my talk page. Thank you. hornoir (talk) 18:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. With those edits I actually sorted out both problems for you! The parameter category=no stops the error message appearing. I'm going to reapply the edits now. Cheers, Martin 18:13, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

I see the information banner still comes up on the documentation. This shouldn't happen. I'll fix it shortly. Martin 19:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Martin, but I already had category=no in place. The problem that occurs is that the template doesn't error on the documentation page but it does when applied to template page (which is where it is most likely viewed).  This occurs because the  template assumes that a template won't be used on it's own page.  The workaround for this is to write the template again in the documentation.  If there is another workaround, then please apply it.  As long as there is not error message on the template proper's page.  Thanks again.  hornoir (talk) 20:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was a bug which I have now fixed :) Cheers, Martin 22:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I prefer the includeonly tags since there is no conceivable need to duplicate showing the template, but if it is required for better care then please feel free. Though I do not understand why the inclusion of the includeonly tag would hamper a template category from being displayed.  hornoir (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I reverted your edit to this template, since without the category=no option within noinclude tags, the shown template displays the error message.  hornoir (talk) 14:41, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not an error message!! That information is supposed to be shown on the main template so that people can see how the template is constructed. Martin 14:57, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I reverted it back, but would strongly recommend altering this display method. It makes it appear as if using the template produces that secondary information box.  Perhaps there is a way to reformat that information into the documentation rather than the template display?  Sorry for the troubles.  hornoir (talk) 15:34, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The task force template
Hi there! Since you changed the template we have a problem on our page: WikiProject Guitarists/Buckethead task force. I really tried to fix this but don't know where to put this "category=no" thingy. Thank you!--Avant-garde a clue- hexa Chord 2  06:22, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. But I still think you should rename that template ;) Martin 08:49, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your quick response! Strange, that was the first place I put this "category=no" parameter but maybe my browser cache fooled me. I don't mind renaming it if I don't have to change 200 pages. If it's only a RDR it's useless I guess. Also its name shouldn't be longer than now, I type this in too often. Additionally there's three templates, they should follow one line I think.Avant-garde a clue- hexa Chord 2  09:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Actually it was my fault - I hadn't passed that parameter through the template, so no matter where you put category=no it wasn't going to work! Might I suggest Template:BHTF - it's quite short. You won't have to edit 200 pages, the redirect will work. And I don't know what you mean by "follow one line" ... the three templates you have do completely different things and I don't see the logic in calling them the same! Martin 09:11, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Let's see what happens.Avant-garde a clue- hexa Chord 2  22:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeogo goedam
WP:AFC Yeogo goedam

Ok, I've changed it to single links. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 11:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: AfC Userbox move
That is perfectly fine, although thanks for asking! Sorry I didn't get back to you, I've been out for over a month for various reasons. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 14:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Enough of you bugging me to tweak WPBM...
<div class="boilerplate metadata" id="rfa" style="margin: 0 5%; padding: 0 7px 7px 7px; background: #FFFAEF; border: 1px solid #999999; text-align: left; font-size:95%;"> Happy-melon would like to nominate you to become an administrator. Please visit Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact Happy-melon to accept or decline the nomination. A page for your nomination at Requests for adminship/Msgj. If you accept the nomination, you must state and sign your acceptance. You may also choose to make a statement and/or answer the optional questions to supplement the information your nominator has given. Once you are satisfied with the page, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.

Your work at AFC is really impressive, and there are clear carryovers into a number of admin tools that should stand you in very good stead. After looking through your contributions, logs, activity, etc etc, I conclude that you'd make a great admin, and I'd be delighted to nominate you if you want to consider it. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the offer. Replied by email. (Short answer: yes but not right now!) Martin 06:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Re:Wrestling (and Wrestling mythology)
Thank you for your valuable time. And your previous edit. No fiction pls (talk) 19:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:WP Criminal
It took me a while to figure out what you were asking me, this issue came up some time ago. I think that what you took as a reference to a discussion was from the edit summary I left which said "note on project page the inclusion of separate criminal template for biographies:, an alternate project banner specifically for criminal biographies." I meant to please note this was stated on the project page, not referring to a discussion. The point about a separate banner for WP Crime articles vs. WP Criminal Biographies is an important one. Something has come up in the last few days that clarifies it. The discussion noted here is a question that has come up before. While a defendant in a case is on trial, he or she has not yet been convicted, so it does raise certain WP:BLP issues for living people, and simply questions of validity for those who are not, but who were suspected or assumed to be involved. In the case of Bernard Madoff, the article is certainly of interest to WP Crime, and if he is convicted, the template WP Criminal will become valid. If not, it would remain of interest to WP Crime. If there is a way to incorporate all of the parameters in to one banner, then fine, but it does leave the door open for mis-application. One issue I have with the present WP Criminal banner is that the listas function still doesn't work and I have no clue how to fix this. The project doesn't have a lot of active members so lately I've tried to pick up things pertinent to the project which gets no response. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

David Patchen
Hi there. I notice that you removed the tags and the  tags from this article. I also note that you restored links to commercial websites solely offering the subjects work for sale. Could you please explain your rationale for these changes? Best regards. --Chasingsol<sup style="color:darkblue">(talk) 23:29, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was a mistake. I have reverted myself. Martin 12:48, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Expression error
I felt encouraged to have a play with the #expr parser function (not something I've ever had to use in the past) and was wondering what I'm doing wrong here:

Cheers! PC78 (talk) 19:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Many thanks. :) PC78 (talk) 22:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Regarding "Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Submissions/Albino_Fawn_Productions"
Dear Msgj

I certainly understand your concern in verifying the importance and significance of our company Albino Fawn Productions, but I'm hard pressed to figure out what exactly it is you want. I spent a couple hours writing this short article because I wanted to follow all of the Wikipedia rules, so I cited my sources, my references, redirected links back to pre-existing Wikipedia pages, and even added a little company info and why we exist. I used the format of an already accepted independent production company as a model.

Thus, I believe you should reconsider including our organization into Wikipedia as our company is, indeed, important and of significance. Our films have been reviewed by upwards of 60 film critics from reputable sources like Variety, The Onion, Film Journal International, etc.. 40 of them can be found on the IMDb page for Imagination. In addition, Albino Fawn Productions was FEATURED (our own full page) in the May 2008 issue of Animation Magazine which sadly is not in digital form, but if you want to check out a back-issue (we own many), we are featured as a "Day In The Life". That itself should qualify us, as Animation Magazine is an internationally circulated magazine.

Again, I appreciate your effort to quell the amount the unreputable companies, but please understand that we just aren't one of them. I can supply a plethora of internet links to satisfy that end, or you can search google yourself to find some. We are also listed in Yahoo business (don't have the working link on hand) and elsewhere,

The reason it is so important for Albino Fawn Productions to be included (obviously you've gathered by now that I work for them) is that we are about to announce our 4th feature films project in the Hollywood Reporter and elsewhere (as we did with our last film) and are going to receive an amazing, overwhelming amount of responses from actors, crew, etc.. and need the respectability of a Wikipedia page. We are also about to release the new and improved website, which will feature our Wikipedia page (should you accept it).

So please, reconsider included our company page and let me know what else you need. Thank you

- FilmFawn —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filmfawn (talk • contribs) 21:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi please could you take a look at Conflict of interest. It is not a good idea to create or edit article you are involved in; therefore I will not be creating this article. Please edit some other articles. Thank you, Martin 15:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

But shouldn't the article itself be deemed worthy based on it's own neutrality, not the creator? This does not make logical sense, given that I have supplied unbiased information to an editable article. Will you not include it until someone else fixes it, then? How is this being proactive? Our company has already been featured in circulated print and elsewhere. Please judge the article on it's own merit, and edit accordingly. Rules are important, but so is logic. Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filmfawn (talk • contribs) 19:49, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I do NOT appreciate the personal vendetta, even though I am not the person you think I am (Eric Leiser). To go and put that tag on Eric's page after denying my Albino Fawn Productions article is highly immature and against what Wikipedia stands for. You have acted in bias and are lording your Wiki-power over me. This isn't high school, but I still feel like I'm dealing with a high-schooler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.125.32.173 (talk • contribs)
 * Replied on User talk:Filmfawn. Martin 14:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I am trying to get links together for the awards Eric has won. The problem with Wikipedia is that there are so many facts that cannot be verified online (for instance, Albino Fawn Productions was featured on KBOO radio in Portland, plus Animation Magazine, which was only in print). I apologize if I seemed uncivil, but your actions of late seem to be more motivated to removing a respected artist because of lack of "awards" and not seeing that art shows in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, London (recently at Goldsmiths, the largest University for art in England - he had a ful week of events - not to mention the films which are internationally distributed and have premiered at almost every major city in the US and beyond (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Olympia, Chicago, New York, London, plus the film festivals - are good enough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.125.33.33 (talk) 23:36, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If you can verify some notable awards then that will go a long way to putting my concerns at rest. Martin 01:02, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * KBOO is a volunteer-run community station, BTW. ~ <font color="#206080">JohnnyMrNinja  01:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

line which you've just removed? PC78 (talk) 18:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No. That parameter is no longer needed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:24, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, what do you think about the new linking style on the assessment scales? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:26, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good, a change for the better I think. :) Cheers! PC78 (talk) 18:52, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Completely unrelated request: can you delete WikiProject Films/Assessment/Taegukgi (film) for me plaease? PC78 (talk) 18:54, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Anonymous and the Internet
Feel free to make the change, now that the coloring is not contested there is a consensus for the other minor changes. Cirt (talk) 17:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you! :) Cirt (talk) 17:44, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:Swabian League
you write: "(that is not a valid criterion for deletion. please edit the template to correct the problem. thank you.)" Correcting the template won't suffice. The template mixes up fish and fowl. It is probably used whereever fish or fowl applies. If the template is corrected to fish, it will be wrong whereever it is used because fowl applies. But it needs expertise and rearch to check every instance where the template is used, to find out wether fish or fowl will be the correct application. So the only sensible thing to do now is to delete the template. But perhaps you have the expertise to delete a corrected Template:Swabian League from every instance where it should apply to a Template:Swabian City League --Wuselig (talk) 21:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There are only about 30 transclusions so it shouldn't take long to go through them ;) Unfortunately I know nothing about this at all, so can't help with it. But deleting a transcluded template is definitely not good because it would leave a redlink on the page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I have edited the template as it should look if it applies to the Swabian League. I am afraid that the content of the template also applies to the Swabian City League, so therfore the incorporation of the template in some articles will now be wrong. But I won't know which ones without research. So the safer way would have been to delete the template and every application of it and start from scrap.--Wuselig (talk) 21:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Old AFC requests
Very old AFCs have often been deleted as maintenece to keep things neat at AFC. This is only done if there is no chance that the submission will be reopened.--Ipatrol (talk) 22:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Featured image
i would very much like to have a featured image! my only problem is due to security reasons i cannot give exact locations of Field Artillery. cant have the Taliban putting the kabosh on our guns! oh and how do i put references to other wiki pages? like for example

10th Mountain Division in support of Operation Enduring Freedom during a live fire mission in Logar Province, Afghanistan

10th mountain has a wiki so does OEF and Logar province.

oh and i have a video on my flickr showing the artillery in action. can that also be added?

what would make a winning description? im trying to provide but I have to comply with OPSEC

Thanks Jonathan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanmallard (talk • contribs) 13:54, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * By "reference" do you mean "caption"? If so, you can type something like

which produces the picture and caption to the right. I understand the concern about not giving the location! If you could write a caption without that, then it should be okay. Just write what the gun is, the rough location, and what's going on, and I'll try and fill in some extras. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

well i mean like when words are blue and they are links to other wiki pages —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanmallard (talk • contribs) 15:29, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, well you just put them in double square brackets. You can look at Cheatsheet for more information. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:40, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again for the help!
how does this look? M777 howitzer

Jonathanmallard (talk) 17:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Shall I nominate it, or do you want to? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:02, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Gunnar Landtman
Whoops! TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man  20:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Killing a Harp Seal.jpg
Hi MSGJ, It would be nice to have this powerful photo in an article, I tried to find the original photographer. It seems to be IFAW.org but I am not sure at 100% could you confirm this ? Sorry for the sharply deletion Greudin (talk) 18:57, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Damn! My page has been deleted!? This is a first :) I feel like a newbie again ... For your information, this was in response to a request at WP:IfU, so I have no real association with this image. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

IRC
Hi Martin, I hope I have the right editor here. Have a couple questions. I saw several entries (in #wikipedia-en IRC) that said: I'm sorry if I'm approaching the wrong person here, it was pure speculation judged by the username in IRC, and a couple connect messages that lead me to guess it you and that user were one and the same. Thanks for any info that you can provide, and I understand if there is some info that it's not appropriate to discuss as well. ;) — Ched ~ (yes?)/© 19:00, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * "sets mode:" followed by a string of text which included a user name.
 * 1) did that have the affect of blocking (so to speak) those particular users from being able to type in that particular IRC channel?
 * 2) or was it a way to just "ignore" their comments?
 * 3) I'm even newer in IRC than I am here - I'm gathering from what I've seen though, that users are expected to conduct themselves with the same dignity, respect, and civility that's required in WP.
 * 4) I'm guessing that the "+b" is essentially a block, but what is the +o and the -o?
 * 5) Am I right that only admins can do that on the wikipedia-en channel?
 * 6) I heard about one user that was banned from WP, but I see a user name in IRC that matches - does that mean that there is no "direct" correlation between membership here in WP and being allowed to use the IRC channel?
 * No, sorry, I'm a complete novice with IRC and don't know about these commands so it can't have been me! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * See . &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 19:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Carl, I'll have a read. You're not on IRC are you? Of all the people I know round here, very few of them seem to use it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:51, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I am sometimes on, but not as much as I once was. My nickname is carl-m. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

re: AFC welcome
Raven1977 <sup style="color:blue;">Talk to me <sub style="color:purple;">My edits 21:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

updated featured pics
i havent been able to get online in a couple days wow! quite a converstion. i updated it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/M777#Photograph_of_a_M777_howitzer_in_action —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanmallard (talk • contribs) 12:37, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Cat class
Regarding your recent update to this template, do you think you could restore the #ifexist checks to List-Class, C-Class, A-Class & FL-Class, as these are not used by all projects. On reflection, perhaps it would be prudent to extend this to all class types? Cheers! PC78 (talk) 19:39, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I think it would be a waste of time for some (e.g. stub-class) because every project does use that one. Another possibility is to use PAGESINCAT>0, so if there are any articles in a category (even if that category doesn't exist) then it will display. What do you think? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So the category wouldn't be displayed if it didn't have anything in it, you mean? I'm not so sure; I think a link is useful if the category is used, even when there isn't anything in it. Perhaps just the four I mentioned above, then? PC78 (talk) 20:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, AbQ checks for both actually, using the code

so that if the category exists or there are pages in the category then it will display. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:32, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, to indicate where a category should be created? That sounds good. :) PC78 (talk) 21:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

(Friendly nudge) This is really something that ought to be fixed sooner rather than later. There are quite literally hundreds of transclusions of cat class now linking to undesired categories. PC78 (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And I added the or-pages-in-category check you suggested. Looks good! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks guys! :) PC78 (talk) 18:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:D&D/importancescale
My bad, looked like it wasn't being used. You might want to check D&D/Importance and D&D/Unknown-importance which I tagged as well. Regards. PC78 (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually I think it's /Importance that is used, not /Importancescale. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:22, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * There was an /importance subtemplate which I think was the one in use, but I could be wrong. PC78 (talk) 22:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, what does D&D/importancescale actually do? I'm rather curious as to how you got the meta to accept "Bottom-importance" in the D&D banner. PC78 (talk) 18:56, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Nothing, it's left over from a previous version of the banner, which used it as a hook. I've deleted it.   uses a fairly complicated manipulation to implement a custom importance mask, which is to say the least bizzarre, but it works. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

My RFA
Since I already preemptively thanked everyone who participated, you're the only person I'm going to explicitly thank. Thanks for nominating me. And considering that you have started two very one-sided RFAs in your first month on the job, you may want to reconsider the magicalness of your nominations. Anyway, it's about time I got to work blocking you some vandals and deleting every AFC page some copyright violations. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply. I am sure that your work as an administrator will bear out the confidence that the community has shown you. Please feel free to ask if you ever need a second opinion on something. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Your holiday
How was it? TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man 11:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! Friend of mine got married. The meal afterwards was 8 or 9 courses and I had to roll out of the restaurant afterwards :D &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a blast. I have a friend getting married in October, but I doubt there will be an 8-9 course dinner. :( TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man  11:53, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Welcome back. Could you have a look at Template talk:WPSchools? Cheers, Amalthea  13:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've commented there, thanks for letting me know. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

RE: Backlog
Okay, I think you may be right so I reverted myself. That category page may be better without the template adding onto everything already there. Fun Pika  18:30, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Purge cache
Purge of protected pages apparently doesn't work for those of us that don't have a certain bit flag on our user accounts. Maybe because the purge imposes a server hit due the refresh of all pages using the template? Who knows. Anyway, could you also purge birth date and age? Thanks. -J JMesserly (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you sure? I just tried it with my alternate account and it seemed to work without giving an error. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep. Check Category:Templates generating microformat date and age.  Birth date and age template does not appear.  -J JMesserly (talk) 20:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, then I think I can explain. The link I provided does work from all accounts, but purging is not what is needed to refresh the category. On Template:Death date and age I actually performed a null edit instead of purging and this is obviously what is needed here. So yes, you are right that only admins can do it on protected pages which is a bit odd as nothing is changed! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Misunderstanding of WP:PROD
Replied on my talk page, of course. Flyer22 (talk) 18:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied again. Though you probably have my talk page on your watchlist for now, anyway. Flyer22 (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Composers
Hi. As a member of the Composers Project, can you tell me what your change means for this template? Thanks. -- Klein zach  09:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly, my change was just maintaining the status quo due to a minor change in the way we handle assessment links. With that link in place, your banner will display "This page has been rated as XX-Class on the project's quality scale." (my emphasis) and it will link to your own assessment scale instead of the generic one. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:38, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology
After the portal fields don't work. You can see that in User:MSGJ/Sandbox2. Gimmetrow 14:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I see. Sorry about that. I know the cause of it, and it's not in the code at WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology but a more general issue. It will be fixed as soon as possible. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:13, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed now. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Important question
Why are you moving articles out of mainspace into WP:AFC? At what point do you judge that a new article "should" be in AFC? If you want to judge it as "not good enough", why not just delete it? DS (talk) 23:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sometimes, a registered user accidentally creates an AfC article in mainspace. We know it's an AfC submission because it's got our template on the top. If it's not ready for mainspace I'll sometimes move it to its correct location in project space to give the submitter some time to improve it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:37, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: WikiProject Norse history and culture

 * P I know... It will be a fun night! ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 23:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Coding query
I'm trying to write some banner code that does a check to see how many task forces are assigned to a particular article and categorises article three ways (0 task forces; 1 or 2; 3 or more). This is the code I've written:

Although it works well enough, I was wondering if there was a simpler way of coding something like this that involved less repetition? PC78 (talk) 21:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This might be better. Msgj (talk) 13:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I'll give that a go. I knew there must have been an easier way. :) PC78 (talk) 15:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I've incorporated this code into Film/Checks but it only adds pages to the default category. PC78 (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That second #switch should probably be a #expr. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:47, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Red link user page
Re the redirect, I've actually been keeping my user page intentionally red linked for a number of reasons. One reason is I've never liked the way some people tend to assume red link users are newbies or vandals and often revert them without first checking to see if their contributions are actually valid. I also don't care for the attitude and comments I've seen regarding "people with large elaborate user pages are unproductive people who spend all their time editing their own user page". I also don't much care for the way the userbox migration mess played out and I honestly think that mess only served to run off lots of good editors.

So...I guess my decision to intentionally keep my user page a red link could be considered a form of silent protest :)

I may eventually create a user page at some point, but I don't really see the need for one right now.

I have considered creating one with just a trout or the output from Cyde Weys' Wiki Userbox Generator but I figure someone would try to tag it as a WP:CSD or nominate it for WP:MFD and turn things into a great big drama fest.

--Tothwolf (talk) 08:35, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In that case I apologise for interfering. But it was precisely because I know that a redlinked userpage can affect other editors' perceptions that I thought I would try to help. My userpage didn't exist for quite a long time also, and eventually I worked out that it probably wasn't the best idea. It's unfortunate but true that perceptions can make a big difference here. For the same reason, you would find it difficult to gain respect as an anonymous editor. I appreciate the silent protest though; maybe I'll join you ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries, I actually wondered how long it would be before someone tried to create a user page for me. I'm just glad it wasn't something elaborate otherwise I might have felt compelled to keep it ;) My editing pattern tends to take me all over the place (from small template changes to large sweeping edits of 100s of pages at once) and the red link hasn't seemed to cause much trouble. I edited as an anonymous user for a few years before creating this account so I'm unfortunately all too familiar with how anonymous users are sometimes treated. I finally got tired of reverts and link removals from page/vandal patrollers who didn't check the changes before reverting them. Prior to editing as an anonymous user I had an account for quite a long time but I had to give it up due to an online stalker who got a little too personal. Because I worked as an anonymous editor myself I tend to give both anonymous contributors and new editors a little more leeway when I see that they are trying to improve an article compared to some editors who do page patrolling. Btw, no need for a talkback template, I tend to watchlist pages when I post. Tothwolf (talk) 11:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Christianity banner
The meta template itself says that it might not be particularly useful for projects with complicated templates, which is why I didn't really consider using it. You seem to know more about it than I do, though. Given all the things the Christianity banner is expected to do, would the meta template be able to do them? John Carter (talk) 13:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I think it can be done. Give me a few days and I'll see what I can come up. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:16, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Tracking lost submissions

 * 1) Go to the web address: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&apprefix=Articles_for_creation&aplimit=500&apnamespace=5&apfilterredir=nonredirects&format=xml
 * 2) Copy-paste entire page into MS Word (or another suitable program)
 * 3) Add &apfrom=  to the web address. For me this resulted in: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&apprefix=Articles_for_creation/Submissions&aplimit=500&apnamespace=5&apfilterredir=nonredirects&format=xml&apfrom=Articles_for_creation/Submissions/Agatha_Kryst
 * 4) Copy-paste entire page into MS Word
 * 5) Replace the subpage name in the previous address with the one from the bottom of the new list
 * 6) Copy-paste entire page into MS Word
 * 7) Repeat previous two steps until you reach the bottom of the list
 * 8) In MS Word, Ctrl-F, click the replace tab, Find: title=" Replace with: [[
 * 9) In MS Word, Ctrl-F, click the replace tab, Find: " /> Replace with: ]]
 * 10) Copy-paste entire document into notepad, save with unicode, not ANSI, encoding
 * 11) Open AWB and go to Tools>List comparer
 * 12) Create list 1 from the text file you just saved. Create list 2 from Category:Declined AfC submissions (Wow, was I confused before I figured out you deleted the old cat)
 * 13) Unique in list 1 contains potential lost submissions, save this as a new text file (By the way, Unique in list 2 also contains the wtf pages that somehow didn't show up in the API search. Perusing this is worthwhile if it can be useful to tweak the search criteria)
 * 14) Clear the current lists, and create the new list 1 from the newly saved text file, and list 2 from Category:Pending Afc requests
 * 15) Once again, unique in list 1 contains the potential lost submissions, and unique in list 2 is worth perusing. Save list 1 as a new text file
 * 16) The list is small enough at this point that I just go in and remove the false positives, which include a slew of talk pages for ancient archives, as well as Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Submissions/
 * 17) Make your list from the final, heavily pruned list of lost submissions, and run AWB on them using Someguy1221's patented AFC tracking script, which is hidden within this post as it doesn't display well.

The only problem I notice is that if someone has accepted a submission in between when you run the API query and when you run AWB, you might wind up tagging the article that resulted, so it's good to check back through your edits to make sure. I've been running this since the new system went into use, and on average, I think there is one or two botched submissions a day. As you may have suspected, this is extremely tedius but very accurate, although we could probably hand this over to a bot one day. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, I'm going to need to think about this. A couple of quick points:
 * I noticed you tagged a few false positives. One of these was in Category:Project-Class AfC project pages and I think there is no reason why all these should not belong to that category.
 * Is there any reason why the tag cannot be added directly to these submissions?
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn't directly adding the pending tag because so many of the uncategorized submissions turned out to be proper submissions that were improperly closed by the reviewer, and many of these just needed to be redirected or properly declined. The proportion of these was about 50% when the new system was implemented last year, and has steadily declined to what I suppose is about 0% now. I presume this is as AFC reviewers have gradually unlearned the old system. So they probably could be directly tagged as pending now. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:55, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I wish I could help you sort through the new batch, but I have to go now, won't be back until tomorrow morning. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:59, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Random drive-by comment: since you're an admin you have the <tt>apihighlimits</tt> permission, so you can query the API in batches of 5,000 rather than 500. So you can set <tt>&aplimit=5000</tt> in the address, and probably get the whole list without having to use <tt>&apfrom=...</tt>. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:18, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I haven't tried this method out yet. I must give it a go sometime. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:33, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

User-Class?
I'm curious: what's the deal with User-Class? PC78 (talk) 15:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Haha, a kind of experiment to see what was entailed in creating a new class. I was happy to find that only an edit to classcol was involved. But actually it could have uses to keep track of userfied material of interest to a WikiProject (as Category:User-Class AfC project pages does). &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:26, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Portal-Class colour
Can you also update the colour at MediaWiki:Common.css and Template:Portal-Class (don't think it needs doing anywhere else)? For the latter you can just remove the background entirely, as it will be defined by the common css. Cheers (and now I can think about changing a few more)! PC78 (talk) 14:50, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * While you're at it, do you want to get the importance templates using importancecol, then we'll have a full house. :) PC78 (talk) 22:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've got to leave something to do tomorrow! ... By the way I asked you a question on 14 March and I don't think I've had an answer yet ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh? Oh, that. Nah, I'm too chicken! :) PC78 (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Had a dig around and found that. If anything, you should have an even easier run than Martin here, and the worst he got hit with were nasty questions about his music tastes :D. If you can be persuaded, I'd be more than happy to nom or co-nom; your work here has been tremendous.  Seriously, you should give it some thought. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:46, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not as if he has a choice in the matter ... we're just going to slowly increase the pressure until he relents ;) Although personally, I would find not being able to edit my own templates as enough motivation in itself! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It certainly did it for me, and DG, and you... perhaps we should go round and protect every page he edits until he relents? :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:47, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * All ✅, and definitions removed from MediaWiki:Common.css as unneeded. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Susan Boyle
Hey Martin, hope this note finds you well. I noticed a couple things on the Susan Boyle talk page that made me scratch my head. With all due respect: Project Television? .. kind of a stretch I'd think, maybe a "Britain's Got Talent Project" if there is one. C-class? I don't see how we get to that classification when we don't even have a referenced birthday for the lady's BLP yet. Oh well, maybe I'm just being a nit-pick. I didn't change anything, but I think some of it may be pulling at strings a bit. Best — Ched : ?  14:46, 16 April 2009 (UTC) (and I think you're doing a fine job as an admin, but then again, I didn't have a doubt when I !voted)
 * Hi, I couldn't find anything more suitable than television, but if you can please change it. Same with the rating. It is generally well sourced in my opinion. And thanks for the vote of confidence! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:50, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Meh (hope I used that right) - if I run across a better portal or project, I'll change it. As far as the article rating, it's still showing as stub on the article page, and I suspect that we'll have enough improvement to match the C-class fairly soon.  — Ched :  ?  18:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

LDSProject title
LDS is different from Latter Day Saint project; the name you changed it to. One is focused on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the other is focused on the much broader Latter Day Saint movement. Doctrines are different, at times significantly so, within the movement. Why did you change it and why the name choice? --<font color="01796F">Storm <font color="1C39BB">Rider  20:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll reply on Template talk:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:04, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Freshmeat template
Re "no need to includeonly", I always use tags when I create an external link template with a doc subpage. It keeps the template from displaying pointless/confusing output on the template page itself: Freshmeat. I'm about to expand the template anyway as this version only handles projects. Tothwolf (talk) 20:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally I always like to see the output of the template, even if it is "rubbish". Otherwise I feel the need to look into the code to see what the template does! But I guess this is a matter of personal choice ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The example on the transcluded doc subpage is a live example with real output. Not a huge deal either way although when I put the new version up it will probably have the tags :) Tothwolf (talk) 22:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

re: Civility
I will not apologies to someone who continues to play dumb. There are a number of articles wikipedia have that are about former national teams, now there might be inconsistencies which have their own and which dont, but right now all those articles he's always removing clearly cover former teams, at therefore fit into the description "former teams". I don't see why he thinks its so important not to help readers do different articles which clearly indicate former. Even during the beginning he would cast aside all attempts to giving him sources such as to show that the articles we have about former teams, are former. He ofc started to edit "Teams considered foreign by [this website]" as if that was somehow the way it was done at wikipedia. Stuff like this "for the massive ex-Soviet confederation, who were playing their last match as a unified team." didnt seem to matter in any way to show that they dont play anymore. chandler ··· 07:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

NovelsWikiProject banner
Surprisingly painless as far as I can see however it is not quite right. "Redirect" is not catered for see Talk:The Knights of Myth Drannor Trilogy. :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  09:32, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for pointing this out. I had not realised you were using this class. I have added a custom class mask at Template:NovelsWikiProject/class to support this. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:37, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for fixing that - latest problem is the "peer-review=yes" and "old-peer-review=yes" tags are not working - supported. :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  10:26, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not sure if you have seen this message - urgently needs fixing. :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  12:19, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added the peer review hook. Does everything now work? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems there was an error with the PR hook. I'm replying on the template talk. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Central Asia template
I'm not sure what happened, but the ratings aren't showing up now on WikiProject Central Asia banners. Otebig (talk) 23:35, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Apologies, my mistake. User:WOSlinker seems to have fixed it for me. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Ireland
Your edit to this template Template:WikiProject Ireland today has completely screwed up the importance ratings. Now 23,276 articles out of 23,294 show Unknown as the importance rating with few other ratings showing up. Rating now show: Top shows none, High show 2, mid shows 3, Low shows 38, NA shows 5,430 and Unknown shows 23,276 and yet the statistics show. Please revert until you figure out how to do this properly without messing up the whole project assessments process. Thanks you. ww2censor (talk) 16:04, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I see this has now been sorted. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah User:Happy-melon seems to have fixed it. All looks good now. ww2censor (talk) 01:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Previously blocked user
Hi, I noticed User:Conjohn had the Manchester United article. I went to post a message asking not to vandalise again, and noticed this was the account's first edit since being blocked for previous vandalism. Don't know if that's enough to nominate the user for another block so thought I'd mention it to you. Stu.W UK (talk) 01:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

template loop
I have found template loops on Template_talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive_4 and Template_talk:WPBannerMeta/Archive_3. I do not know if there is any connection with your recent edits to Template:WPBannerMeta. Could you please look into it? Debresser (talk) 11:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think I would have found the cause. Debresser (talk) 12:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject GeorgiaUS
Your edits to template:WikiProject GeorgiaUS seem to have messed up the WikiProject banner. I may revert to a previous version. Perhaps you could try out your template changes in a sandbox? doncram (talk) 17:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll reply on Template talk:WikiProject GeorgiaUS. Please don't revert until yet. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, i can't revert, it is protected. Yes, discuss there, i'm watching there now. doncram (talk) 17:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

RE: Obama
Yes, it's quite fine. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the barnstar!
Raven1977 <sup style="color:blue;">Talk to me <sub style="color:purple;">My edits 19:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Expand list template at List of Phi Beta Kappa members
The new "expand" template at List of Phi Beta Kappa members looks nice; is it OK if we move it to the top of the page to make clearer that both sections of the list are incomplete"? (I'm asking first, in part, because of the small size of the template, which maybe was designed for a 3-column list.) Best,--Arxiloxos (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Certainly. I think those "section message boxes" are usually used at the top of a section, but if you think it would look better elsewhere, feel free! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Bittorrent Tracker Software
Hi. Do you think this is acceptable for the review process yet? I did the best I could by using references that are straight from the project pages. Thanks for the help. :)

Articles_for_creation/Bittorrent_Tracker_Software Firefly2442 (talk) 18:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. I'll take a look as soon as I get a chance. I may be busy for the next couple of days, but you are free to resubmit it for the attention of another editor before then. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

NovelsWikiProject banner
The HMD stuff (nice and proactive) does look ok if you are confident in if - put it in. I have just finished putting the categories in so we should be ready. :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  14:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok - but all is ready as far as I can see. Thanks :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  14:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Answer
A couple of years ago I was reading about admins, and RfAs. It advised to get involved in many areas of Wikipedia to get broad experience. I thought that was a good idea, so then I discovered AfC, which was also recommended to Admin candidates. There was such a big backlog there that I have put in a lot of effort and stopped checking out other areas. So my planned development to being an admin sort of stopped. Then I also considered, do I want to put up with the pressure that may be placed on an admin? Most of what I want to do I can do without being an admin. However there is another point of view, that a lot of what I do is helping other people, and that matches what admins are supposed to be doing.

I would very likely accept the nomination if someone nominated me. I have seen several of the AfC helpers become admins recently. I think you may have something to do with that! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thankyou for your nomination, I had better start studying for the interrogation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:27, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Michael messenger
It may have been advertising but have a quick look at James Dysons page!!! By the way James was Michael's best man at his wedding. Copyright certainly was never an issue!Paulwest (talk) 18:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declines
I was very suprised to see that you declined several of my speedy deletion requests, even though they clearly met the criteria to be deleted. Your decline reasons did not seem to be supported by Wikipedia policy, but rather by subjective judgment on if you personally felt the category should been deleted or not. For instance your declines here, here, and here were all because the empty category was populated by a template. You say this in your decline as if this actually had any bearing of if the category should be deleted or not, which is mistaken. There is absolutely no exception to keep empty categories that are populated through use of a template, see WP:CSD. Your decline here is also problematic. You say there is "no reason to break a complete series of useful categories" - Deleting a category in a "series" does not break the other categories, and being "part of a series" is, once again, not an exception in the C1 speedy deletion criteria. I'll also note that this category has since been tagged by another user as empty, with the intent to get it deleted after 4 days (the category had been empty for 4 days when I tagged it, so waiting an additional 4 is unnecessary IMO). Your decline here is, once again, problematic. Your decline reason was that it "will start populating soon" - When? When 2010 comes around? That isn't by any means soon. The idea of waiting 4 days before deletion is to stop categories that are created and will be populated "soon" from being deleted. The wording of C1 does not support keeping this category. Your next decline was IMO flat out absurd, with the reasoning of "what's the point? will need to be recreated in 10 years time". Are you serious? Perhaps we should create categories all the way out for the next hundred years. After all, we will just have to create them 100 years from now. I think declining this goes against the very reason why the C1 speedy criteria exists. If this gets to stay, then not much would be deleted. Finally, we get to your last decline which IMO is the most egregious of them all (narrowly beating out the last one). Your reason for declining was that "i'm sure something happened in 1949 in scotland" - This basically creates a standard that would keep every category that likely could have something in it. This is completely subjective and, once again, goes against the very heart of the reasoning to have a C1 deletion criteria in the first place. Once again, this category has since been tagged as empty for future deletion. It seems that you don't support the C1 speedy deletion criteria, but I would ask that you don't ignore policy by declining valid C1 speedies as a form of protest. I urge you to reconsider these deletions, or to at least seek out a second opinion from another (hopefully impartial/random) administrator. 70.150.94.194 (talk) 22:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi there. I have to say that your post made me laugh a little, although I appreciate that probably wasn't your intention. I'll make a fuller reply tomorrow (if you like) but my basic points are:
 * I stand by my decisions. In my opinion there was no benefit to be gained by deleting these categories.
 * The fact that a page may meet a speedy deletion criterion does not mean that an administrator is obliged to delete it. We are here to exercise our judgement to better the encyclopedia.
 * Best wishes, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol! It's really not hard to populate categories like these. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:20, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Brilliant. I was actually planning to do this, and I see you've left me some. Finding something to go in Category:2019 in transport might be harder, but I'm sure I can find a village in Shizuoka. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:WPRocketry
Just to let you know that WPRocketry seems to have gone and copied over the whole of WPBannerMeta into Template:WPRocketry/core & Template:WPRocketry/core2!!! If it's going to stay that way, I think at least the category needs changing back to Category:WikiProject banners. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:11, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh no, that's crazy. Could you start a thread on the template talk to ask what the problem was and what they want to achieve? I'll come along and comment as well. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yikes! All hands on deck, I think! As best I can determine, GW Simulations did it purely so they could use a custom importance mask.  All they needed to do was use HOOK_ASSESS and (at worst) write their own /importancescale code. If you want to start a discussion, I'll be there too :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

How do I make a "leave a new message behind" section?
can u help me i have o idea how to make one of these boxes —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikipayer (talk • contribs) 17:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the blue box at the top of this page? Just type Message. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

hdm and the NovelsWikiProject
I notice when this went in the hdm-task-force parameter has been coded as "hdm" can this be changed to "hdm-task-force" please. We are trying to maintain some consistency across task forces. :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  11:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow - what service! :: Kevinalewis  : <sup style="color:#C90">(Talk Page) /<sub style="color:#C90">(Desk)  11:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Sorry, in my edit summary, I got you mixed up with another editor whose name is a string of capital letters starting with M. Thanks for the info! 71.182.187.38 (talk) 12:11, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. I have created the redirect for you now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

P=NP Problem/Resolution
Please see my message called on the P=np page for your answer as to why edits should be allowed a,d the pages split to two separate pages due the nature of computational complexity and quantum physics. Martin Michael Musatov 206.53.144.23 (talk) 01:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Please use on the talk page of the semiprotected page you want edited, and please make it more clear what edit you want done. Thanks, fahadsadah (talk,contribs) 08:51, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, I hope I am not disturbing anything by posting here, but I think what perhaps the intention of the poster might have been were to recognize that if indeed Wikipedia itsek can differentiate the the difference between P=NP] and [[P=np then perhaps arguably the "most important problem in theoretical computer science might observe this difference and allow the two pages separate existence (each of course still respecting the arguments and discussion presented. It seems to me that since this question is so heavily debated and since the stakes have been now raised to include protein folding which may impact treatment for cancer patients and H.I.V.then we owe it to the spirit of Wikipedia to honor such a request for dual existence between these two pages. And Dear Martin, Sir, I do put this request to you ever so humbly as this is your place and position which you have earned the responsibility to judge justly. My specific request is that the pages begin as identical clones. Copy the P=NP Problem page to the P=np page, if you will. I do understand this may be out of sort or rather seem moreso to some than others but there is real merits as demonstrated by Wikipedia's inherent computational ability to discern between the two. If Wikipedia is a model for computing and it recognizes the differentiation then so should we as that would be most true and verifiable if held to scrutiny. Thank you for reading my hopefully too not long post. I hope I did not bore you to tears laboring over details. Sir, I will honor and respect this single request. Sincerely, anonymous man seeking a cure for cancer through computational complexity.206.53.147.227 (talk) 18:16, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have very little idea of what you're asking or why you're asking me. Currently, P=np is a redirect to P=NP. This is usually the case for different capitalisations. There is no point in having a separate page for each because they are referring to the same problem. Perhaps you would like to read about redirects for more information. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:30, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Phd?
Congratulations, Doctor Martin! That's quite impressive. TN <b style="color:midnightblue; font-size:larger;">X</b> Man 11:47, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Finally got the wretched thing finished ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations from me too! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Something in the Water
I'm not too sure to be honest. Notability seems to be pretty borderline, a bit of local interest but not much else. I tried googling it but couldn't really find anything that isn't already in the article. At the very least I would suggest trimming the external links. I'll see if I can get a few opinions over at WT:FILM. Regards. PC78 (talk) 18:32, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll add your comment. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

ʤunjɚ ˈseɪ.o/
Not following you on this one; is that a useful redirect? (Watchlisting) - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 00:06, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * When I read the target of this redirect it seemed to me that this might be his actual name. I remember being surprised (and delighted) when I found the article Sḵwx̱wú7mesh! On re-reading I see that it is the pronunication in IPA. So probably not very useful, but not doing any harm either; no big deal either way. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:35, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed, thanks. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 13:57, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

#4
Two and a half million, eh? Not bad for something I threw together the other week on a bit of a whim. :)

As for the other, I've already left a comment on my own talk page, but the answer is no. It's a nice thought (and one much appreciated), but it's not really something I'm interested in pursuing at this time. Sorry! PC78 (talk) 00:29, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

RE:Question
A joke, of course :)  Keegan talk 14:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

regarding notability issues for SUMMER TIME (NEWS single) article
Dear MSGJ,

I'm not sure about what additional input is required for this article which was commented as: "According to WP:NSONGS, singles do not usually get their own article unless some special notability is established, which is not the case here". Several other singles have been published, for instance, articles on singles such as Happy Birthday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_(NEWS_song)) by the same celebrity group as well as Resuce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_(KAT-TUN_song)). Additional help in providing more specific guidelines on the requirements for acceptance for such articles would be greatly appreciated.

Regards Postthem —Preceding unsigned comment added by Postthem (talk • contribs) 15:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll take another look (if someone else hasn't already). But just because there are other articles which don't meet our notability criteria, doesn't excuse creating another one! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Army Aviation Corps (India)
Hi mate, I fear that I have stepped on your toes. I came across an article called Army Aviation Corps (it appeared on the Military History project page needing attention to task forces) and when I read it I felt it needed to be renamed to Army Aviation Corps (India) in order to disambiguate it. I put a message on the talk page to see if anyone agreed with moving it and got an affirmative so I moved it. I didn't check the history well enough. If I had I would have seen that you had performed the opposite move only a couple of days earlier.

I just wanted to say, I didn't intentionally set out to revert something you'd done out of spite. I just thought I was doing the right thing. I still believe that the article should be called Army Aviation Corps (India) as otherwise it would be a bit confusing as to which one (as many countries use this name), however, I would like to discuss the matter with you as you must have had a reason for changing it in the first place and I would like to hear it. You may have a better understanding of the issues at hand than me, so in the interests of being constructive I'd like to hear your opinion.

Thanks in advance. AustralianRupert (talk) 05:28, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's not a problem. As there was no article at Army Aviation Corps I felt that the disambiguator was unnecessary. But if you say it will be confusing then I'm quite willing to believe that! My only question though: if there are many countries which use this name, why isn't there a disambiguation page as Army Aviation Corps? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, mate. From what I can see, this issue has been dealt with by using country names as disambiguators in the names of the articles. I am not quite correct in saying that many other nations use the exact name Army Aviation Corps, but many use a very close variant, for example Army Air Corps (United Kingdom) (slightly different name), or Australian Army Aviation (which is an incorrect name, as it should be Australian Army Aviation Corps, but anyway)... — AustralianRupert (talk) 07:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:ISO 639 name
I've added an option to your ISO 639 name template to allow for a different "error message" if the lang code is not matched. The reason for this is that it would then allow the Lang template to be updated from what it currently uses ... |#default = ... (how horrible! The current method stops the "What links here" option working properly) to be changed to ... |#default = ... what do you think? -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine. I'm just trying to get my head around category intersection though, so I shall digest your change later! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You'll need to add a few more to ISO 639 name though to make sure all the existing ISO 639 name xx templates are covered:

-- WOSlinker (talk) 18:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ags=Esimbi
 * ang=Old English
 * cho=Choctaw
 * cz=Czech
 * grc=Ancient Greek
 * ja-Hani|ja-Latn=Japanese
 * mo|mol=Moldovan
 * sco=Scots
 * sga=Old Irish
 * syr=Syriac
 * wlm=Middle Welsh
 * zh-Hant|zh-t=traditional Chinese
 * zun=Zuni
 * Okay. I will be looking for a possibility of a template will can take the string ISO 639 name XX and give me XX. Then I will be able to use AWB to point all those templates to the new one ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Just looking at a few pages at random, it looks like most of them eventually go through the lang template, so there might not be that many left over to change after lang was done. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * what do you mean? There are hundreds, e.g. Template:ISO 639 name fr. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * When you do a Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:ISO_639_name_pl on Template:ISO 639 name pl for example and then look at any of those articles, then see what templates are used in that article, then it's usually going to involve lang (sometimes not directly, Lang-pl -> langWithName -> lang -> ISO 639 name pl), The Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:ISO_639_name_fr doesn't have very many links as fr is one of those hard coded into lang, so it doesn't need to call ISO 639 name fr, so there are just a few links to transclusions, a couple of categories & the Beingtranslated template (which could be changed to use ISO 639 name as well. (I'm not sure if I've explained all this very well.) -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks, I think I understand now. So what's our next step? Do you have any comment on my points on Template talk:ISO 639 name? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:17, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've now added some comments on the talk page. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There are also these templates which might be worth deleting as well. They don't seem to be in use. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've marked them all for deletion under T3. I might suggest WP:TfD for all the other ones, and then we could delete them in one go. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Note the hard coded items were something I avoided removing because I didn't want to edit Lang un-necessarily. I have deleted the "sub-page" templates which were the remains of someone's earlier attempt to do something similar. Rich Farmbrough, 19:13 30 April 2009 (UTC).

not sure of submission status
Martin, I submitted an article for consideration on 4/20/09, entitled "[x+1]" (with brackets, part of the company's trademark name), but I realize now I may not have been logged in at the time, so it doesn't show up on my contributions. Any way to check on the status? Thanks. Mike —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michaelob (talk • contribs) 18:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * If it was on 20th April then, unless it was created, it should be in Category:AfC submissions by date/20 April 2009. I don't see that title in there though ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Help in creating a messagebox
You kindly offered some help with creating a messagebox using ambox. I had in mind a template with a name like that says something like, "This article or section contains unsourced assertions as to the symbolism of a flag, coat of arms, seal, or other emblem. If these cannot be substantiated by reference to reliable sources, they must be removed. This is a field in which much misinformation persists; you may wish to consult the WikiProject on Heraldry and Vexillology for help with these technical matters." An image of a shield bearing the image of a flag (like the one on the Wikiproject's main page, but much simpler and without the puzzle piece) would be nice. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  14:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, give me a couple of days and I'll see what I can come up with! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I have created Template:Symbolism as a first effort. I tried a few different images and this one seemed to fit best. I trimmed a bit of your wording but feel free to put it back in. And of course, if there is a more appropriate name for the template, please move it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, and if you want the template to populate a category, let me know. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

You've done a great job; but, given the frequent accusations of cultural bias here, I'd rather the image be one that doesn't reek of American symbolism (what is the black object in the middle, anyway: an eagle?). It would probably be a good idea if the template added the tagged article to the category "Articles with unsourced statements". -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  14:26, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No I think it's a leaf. Could you have a look through Commons:Category:Coats of arms and see if you can see anything better? About the category, it might be an idea to create a new category specifically for heraldry issues so that WikiProject members can help out. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A version of File:UnknowCoat.png, stripped of its crown, might work; perhaps with a generic flag such as File:Red flag II.svg on the other side for symnetry? -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  16:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've changed the image as requested and added the image on the right side as well. Unfortunately I am not able to edit images, so I wasn't able to remove the crown. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Marvelous! -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  17:39, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

BannerMeta & Template:Ice Hockey
Not the biggest deal, but after you switched to the new form, the items like needs-photo and needs-infobox are always listed in the banner, whereas we used to have them hidden so you had to click show to view them. Is it possible to configure it to do this somehow still? -Djsasso (talk) 15:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It certainly is possible. How does that look now? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks great. Thanks :) Love the idea. Only suggestion I have is the minimum 5 task forces, if there is a way to expand that. It's not an issue now but I could see it being an issue in the future as we have a few players that are in the area of 4 task forces already. -Djsasso (talk) 15:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't understand. You've got 8 supported at the moment and adding more is not a problem ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh I thought I read on the WPBannerMeta documentation that you could only have a maximum of 5 task forces. I am hopped up on cold medicine today so I am a bit slow. -Djsasso (talk) 16:09, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You didn't misread that. The template will support 5 "out of the box". Additional ones are implemented using a "hook" as in your banner. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

ISO 639 templates
OK when I created these templates I looked at the possibility of having one big FO switch statement, and in fact started out doing just that with Lang. Trouble is * The Lang templates are extremely widely used and the #ifexist: function is "expensive" so any page using Lang would become Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls - a well as being actually expensive.
 * Any additional language codes would mean diving into a huge switch statement - one typo and a zillion articles would break. And there are a lot of language codes - especially as the existing structure is not necessarily limited to ISO 639-1 ( a few hundred) but the other parts of 639 - I think a couple thousand currently in the standard, script variations are actually  used (zh-tr ?), and non-code entities are permissible, e.g. "French".

The other question of course is, what is broken that needs fixing?

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 16:15 30 April 2009 (UTC).
 * I believe there are significant advantages to the "big switch" approach. Keeping the code centralised (and now fully protected) makes for ease of maintenance and security from mistakes/vandalism. No one would likely notice/check an edit to Template:ISO 639 name pl, but they certainly will on Template:ISO 639 name. Additionally it means that Special:WhatLinksHere will actually work now - in the other system where the templates were called via Template:ISO 639 name, it gave the impression that these templates were unused. Nothing broken as such - but if I can see an improvement then I find it difficult not to :) Cheers, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That is why there is documentation on the template pages to explain the usage. And argument from "If this breaks it's gonna be such a mess no-one can ignore it" seems odd. Rich Farmbrough, 13:09 2 May 2009 (UTC).
 * ALo the "what links here" funtionality is a bit irrelevant, there is a category. Rich Farmbrough, 13:36 2 May 2009 (UTC).

Esimbi is real. Rich Farmbrough, 13:06 2 May 2009 (UTC).


 * Using to replace the string "Afar" ... that is a little strange? Rich Farmbrough, 13:38 2 May 2009 (UTC).
 * Yes well done for spotting the special case. However the exception belongs to the way Lang utilises the "ISO 639" structure, for code reuse reasons we don't want it in the ISO639 templates. Rich Farmbrough, 22:54 2 May 2009 (UTC).


 * You might want to look at User:Rich Farmbrough/another user page for parameters of Lang explicitly used. Incidentally the last section took a long time to save/render, compared with the penultimate one. Rich Farmbrough, 23:53 2 May 2009 (UTC).

Question
I have a question here for you, perhaps you are willing to answer it for me! Since my previous account has been closed, (the bold guy) and permanently blocked from editing, I can no longer edit with it. I can, however, edit from my IP adress which I am currently doing. The block on my IP has recently expired, so that's the case. Since my IP is still linked to the banned account, will that mean that when I create a new account, it will be banned right away for being connected to the first one? 86.89.146.118 (talk) 07:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you User:-The Bold Guy-? Looking at your talk page, it seems that in October you were still claiming to be innocent of the sockpuppet accusations and lying to Graeme. Therefore I don't really feel any inclination to help you ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:13, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

How was I lying then? The IP was shared. I told that numerous times. And how was I lying to Graeme? 86.89.146.118 (talk) 17:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Requested edit to template:f/
Thanks for doing the edit on f/, but you omitted a trailing slash in the text to be substituted, which causes the template to render incorrectly. See template talk:f/.--Srleffler (talk) 13:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It's still not right. The slash goes outside the css span. This is part of the format change in the template: It was previously inside the span but now should be outside. --Srleffler (talk) 14:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Time parser function
That was a marvelous edit to Monthyear+1. Where can I read more about how to do this kind of thing? Debresser (talk) 10:50, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The time function is quite marvellous. Have a look at mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions for details! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank a lot for the edit and the link. I'll study it. And use it!. Debresser (talk) 11:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW, I also created Monthyear-1 now. Analogously. Your way. Debresser (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But typing is only 7 characters more. What's the advantage of having a template? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I also created Monthyear. When I created Month_year I came to that same conclusion. Since that last one was for my private use, I db-self-ed it.
 * The use is that using a template is simpler than using the time parser function. Take me, for example. I have done quite some work on Wikipedia, but didn't know how to do this. Agree? Debresser (talk) 11:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair point. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:32, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * BTW, I think you can rewrite almost all of the templates in Category:Date-computing templates and its subcategory Category:Date-computing templates based on current time with this time parser function. Debresser (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I updated two of my old templates with it now. Debresser (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

ABC of Getting the MBA Admissions Edge
Hi, Martin, I am trying out speedy delete. You just deleted ABC of Getting the MBA Admissions Edge, as a copyright violation, but the website hosting the original it says it was copied from wikipedia. Should I restore it myself or get you to do it? What is the custom? (probably fails notability anway) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:57, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. Where does it say that it was copied from WP as I can't find that? And there are no previous versions of this article (unless it was under a different title) so I don't know how it could have been copied from here as it was only up for a couple of hours. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * When you click on the text on the supposed original, it expands a bit and says source wikipedia (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_the_MBA_Admissions_Edge). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh well spotted. Well in that case G12 doesn't apply, but it could be deleted under G4 because that one went through AfD. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Investment Model
I teach the Investment Model in my interpersonal class because of its usefulness in understanding some of the ways that individuals make their stay/leave decisions in their relationships. I learned it in grad school. Unalph (talk) 22:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, so it's widely used and mentioned in many textbooks, is it? If so then my concerns are satisfied. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been declined by another editor, but I'll create it if you can satisy me that it meets notability criteria. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleted Wiki
On May 3rd you deleted a Wiki entitiled "Captain Greber" for vandalism and patent nonsense. Let me assure you it was both. It was a joke played on my commanding officer and we were well aware that it would be deleted quickly. The Captain has a great sense of humor though and now wants a copy of the Wiki. I'm not sure if it is possible at this point to send me the text that was deleted but I would very much appreciate if you could as I have no other copy.

Thank you for your time, SGT J.R. Perdue U.S. Army

CptGreber (talk) 16:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. In light of our policies on living people and attack pages I would be unhappy about restoring this content anywhere on the site. I would however, in return for an assurance that it won't make a reappearance, be prepared to email it to you. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic. I have no desire to see it reappear on the site. I'm sure my Commander feels the same way, great sense of humor or not. If you could, email it to me at jason.r.perdue at (@)us.army.mil. Thanks for being a good sport about this.

Perdue —Preceding unsigned comment added by CptGreber (talk • contribs) 18:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:06, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

HTML markup vs. Wiki markup
Hi MSGJ. I noticed the edits you made to WP:FL? and WP:FA? and wondered how it makes for better transclusion. WP:MARKUP doesn't mention using <li> over #, and LIST seems to prefer the Wiki markup, saying, "Notice the rendered HTML in which there are as many <ul> tags as <li> tags. This can adversely affect machine-readability of the content if a continuous list is expected."

I'm just curious. It seemed a bit odd to me. Matthewedwards : Chat  16:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Matthew. Using HTML is a lot more robust and predictable. For example, the # only works if it is at the beginning of a new line; the HTML tags don't have this restriction. Therefore when a list is being transcluded it is a lot less messy to use this method. For lists in articles, I would agree that the # method is preferable: it is more user-friendly and the code is easier to follow. However I think, for the reasons given, that HTML is better for a list like this in project space and which is being transcluded in several places. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:Wikiproject Greece
Could you have a look here, at this problem, and help us to fix it? These banners have become too compicated for me, and I don't think I can figure out what goes wrong! Thanks in advance!--Yannismarou (talk) 09:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

talk page Nilofar Suhrawardy- MSGJ you have done a great job
I think MSGJ, you have done a great job in editing the article on Nilofar Suhrawardy. And also thanks for accepting my contribution. chotee Chotee (talk) 16:02, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'm going to reply on Talk:Nilofar Suhrawardy. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

cat importance
Now that you've changed cat importance, you may want to protect impor & importanceicon. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you really think that having a template for importanceicon is necessary? Where is it being used? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not all the the importance levels even have icons in the importanceicon template. It's only called from impor at the moment (to match class I think). Could probably be removed from the impor template. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:13, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree and I've removed it. But is it just me, or are the words no longer centred in their cells? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * . &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

AFC
Hey there! Got your message about AFC. Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the mixup. Are you, by chance, referring to the AFC for 2009 in Anime? I couldn't find a category that really applied, so I used the "reason" tag. In the end, it turns out that it already existed as a category, but is there a better way to do this when none of the options seem to fit? Thanks for your help!--SharkxFanSJ (talk) 11:06, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi! Not only 2009 in Anime, but also Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Anna Ashton. When you declined it, you removed three other parameters from the template. Can you see? Of course it's fine to give your own custom "reason" if you have the time and if you think it's worth it. Keep up the good work, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, OK... got it now. I'll make sure not to do that again.  Thanks again for the help!--SharkxFanSJ (talk) 11:42, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Article creation wizard
Hi, thanks for your message, I agree VP isn't very good for developing proposals which is why I started WP:PROJPOL. The article wizard suggestion is here WikiProject Policy and Guidelines/Suggestion Box. Feel free to comment or turn it into the wikiproject's first proposal or ask me to do it. cheers, Rd232 talk 15:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikiproject template
Hi, Thanks for taking an interest in User_talk:WOSlinker. Could you have a look at Template:Chess-WikiProject/sandbox, this is how far I got yesterday. The isssue with this sandbox version is the category naming is making the word chess start with a capital so Category:FA-Class Chess articles rather then Category:FA-Class chess articles, this is despite a lower case chess in the ASSESSMENT_CAT. Template:WPRocketry does NOT have this issue because the categories for them start with an uppper case. Your input is welcome! Regards, 17:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Should be now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help. It's appreciated. SunCreator (talk) 18:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject banners with formatting errors
The check you added for the use of importance doesn't seem to be working in WPBannerMeta/templatepage. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I know. I just removed it about 5 secs before you posting here :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Editnotice-14
Replied to you there. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll reply there later today. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation
Hello, I hope you are doing well. I am sending you this message since you are a member of the GA WikiProject. I would like to invite you to consider helping with the GA sweeps process. Sweeps helps to ensure that the oldest GAs still meet the criteria, and improve the quality of GAs overall. Unfortunately, last month only two articles were reviewed. This is definitely a low point after our peak at the beginning of the process when 163 articles were reviewed in September 2007. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. All exempt and previously reviewed articles have already been removed from the list. Instead of reviewing by topic, you can consider picking and choosing whichever articles interest you.

We are always looking for new members to assist with the remaining articles, so if you are interested or know of anybody that can assist, please visit the GA sweeps page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. If only 14 editors achieve this feat starting now, we would be done with Sweeps! Of course, having more people reviewing less articles would be better for all involved, so please consider asking others to help out. Feel free to stop by and only review a few articles, something's better than nothing! Take a look at the list, and see what articles interest you. Let's work to complete Sweeps so that efforts can be fully focused on the backlog at GAN. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 08:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
For fixing those odd updated transclusions on my subpage. I wish we had a __NOCAT__ magic word to override such things.  MBisanz  talk 20:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

EarwigBot II
Hi, Martin. I just wanted to let you know that I fixed the bot's code&mdash; it now has the ability to put an article on hold instead of leaving it at pending, and has a blacklist feature for articles that it won't add the template to. The main reason I'm telling you this is because I just feel as if a huge weight fell off my shoulders. I was stressing out because I didn't know how to make two operations happen simultaneously (I seriously doubted my viability as a programmer), when the answer was right under my nose: combine the core into the template modifier, not the template modifier into the core. Now it should work better. I haven't been able to test this yet, but I feel like I've finally made this work as it should. Regards, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contributions) 03:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Redirecting talk pages
Hi Martin,

The reason for this particular bot function in the first place was that one of my bot's other functions was looking at the article page and trying to find a sort tag on there, but was instead being redirected somewhere else and grabbing a sort tag off of another article. This isn't quite such a good idea when, for instance, you have Funky Green Dogs redirecting to Murk (band). I've also seen other bots tagging redirect talk pages with new banners, effectively destroying the redirect in the process. I personally don't see much point in keeping these pages, as they don't seem to be looked at other than by bots. However, it was brought up at the BRfA that there could be some useful content on the talk page, so the bot is designed such that if it detects anything other than templates and whitespace on the page, it will post the talk page's former contents to User:ListasBot/old talk pages, so that someone can review them. I've gone through there regularly and done merges, page moves (where either 1. I ask for the new talk page to be deleted and the old one moved into its place, or 2. I move the old talk page to an archive subpage of the new talk page, where it's a little more visible), and even found instances where history merges needed to be done on the articles.

I hope this eases your mind a little bit, but if not, you're in luck, because ListasBot 3 has been suspended for the simple fact that I can't have it running while ListasBot 5 is doing trial runs. Lemme know. :-) Matt (talk) 17:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. For WikiProjects which have decided to keep track of redirects, their banners are useful content, so I cannot see how this practice would be supported. I think the best solution is not to do anything with these talk pages with the bot. I cannot help you with what to do with the sort tag in these cases, but redirecting them does not seem to be right method. Is there an official place (like the BRFA page) where I should submit these concerns? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm...well, there's the bot operator's noticeboard, but I don't know how much help we're going to get there, since this isn't specifically a bot-related problem. Perhaps the village pump and/or requests for comment?  Matt (talk) 17:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As there were only two of you involved in the initial approval discussion (I know you tried to get more people involved) you can't say that this practice is supported by consensus. I think I have given a very valid reason of why it is not a good idea. So please can you not run that function again unless you obtain consensus? Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * FYI, I posted a notice up at the village pump. Someone brought to light WP:WikiProject Redirect, which seems to have gone inactive, but also shed light on this discussion, where some editors felt that there shouldn't be any banners on talk pages of redirected articles.  Matt (talk) 19:15, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, once again, the topic has gone stale and nobody is commenting on it. Would you be OK with the bot skipping over articles that are tagged as redirect-class?  Matt (talk) 19:58, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, yes I noticed. Maybe no one else cares or maybe you didn't ask in the right place! Personally I would be unhappy about the bot removing any WikiProject banners from a talk page at all, unless that project has specifically decided that they don't want redirects tagged. Removing a banner takes a page out of that WikiProject's assessment and that action is irreversible, because of course there is no way of finding out what pages used to be in a category. So no, I don't think a bot can make that call. As Listas Bot is concerned with the WikiProject Biography banner, it would be a good idea to check with them that they are happy for banners on redirects to be removed, and if so then fine. But I don't see any advantage in touching other projects' banners. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * FYI, I've moved this discussion to User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay thanks for dealing with this so professionally. I shall comment there later today. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity...
What does changing the "ns" parameter in the AFC submissions template do?--SharkxFanSJ (talk) 19:59, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah. The ns parameter is the number of the namespace in which the submission is created. So if ns=0 then it means the submission was created in mainspace (by a registered user) and so it is categorised as a "misplaced submission". This allows the created box to be displayed at the right time! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:01, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Fancy. Thanks!  --SharkxFanSJ (talk) 20:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I must get round to documenting it somewhere. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

church disambig tfd close
Hi, I think your closing of the tfd on church disambig is probably mostly a good solution and/or expression of consensus, but I wonder if you could clarify a matter or two in your closing note.

Your closing note is: "The result of the discussion was use Template:Disambig. There is agreement that having a category for disambiguation pages in a certain topic is useful. An effective way to do this is by using Disambig-Class on a WikiProject banner on the talk page. However categorising the page itself may also be helpful and the duplication is not harmful. This functionality, as pointed out by several participants in the discussion, may be achieved equally well using the existing template Template:Disambig. I will make the required changes there shortly and will point this template there. I suggest there is no advantage in editing translusions of this template to point there directly, and there is no benefit in deleting this template."

The functionality is not in fact fully achieved by using disambig rather than church disambig, because disambig does not include the associated category. Checking one or two cases, i see the church category is still implemented, and then I see that you revised the template:church disambig code to be instead. So your note should say that using disambig with that option specified, is what can achieve the functionality. And your suggestion that there is no benefit in editing transclusions could clarify that there is no benefit to editing transclusions to use directly (while there would be a loss from replacing the church disambig template by simply disambig template).

Sorry if you may be making such an adjustment to your note already, in which case my comment here would be redundant, but I'd rather see it clearly stated sooner. Several of the participants (including perhaps me) are not super-well-informed about how templates and tfd's work in general, and we certainly are not informed about "disambig|1=church", so spelling it out more would be appreciated. Thanks, doncram (talk) 17:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Actually "disambig|1=" is not documented at Template:Disambig, so further explanation of your use of this undocumented feature would be helpful to avoid confusion. doncram (talk) 17:45, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, sorry if my note was not clear. I did try my best. But you seem to have understood pretty well. The syntax disambig|1=church has the same effect as disambig|church, which I have now added to the documentation. I'm not sure if I need to add to my explanation there - people don't have to understand it all in order to use it! They can carry on adding church disambig as before. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for your help with the template I was trying to fix (User:Killiondude/template test). You responded to me on Happy-Melon's talk page, but I wanted to make sure you saw this note of thanks. I was getting frustrated with it for awhile. I really appreciate your help. :-) Killiondude (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

FAR/FAC
there's a time lag after the arching of the review before the bot comes round. However, WP:FA is done manually so I do it imeediately  YellowMonkey  ( cricket calendar poll! ) 01:46, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Pittsburgh Penguin Templates...
You closed out the Pittsburgh Penguins 1991 Stanley Cup Champions TFD as delete. The bot seemed to clear out the links for the 1991 template, but did not do any of the deletions for the 1992 template which was also included in that TFD. Neither template has been deleted as of yet. Just wanted to give you the heads up as the closing admin. -Pparazorback (talk) 16:50, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's because I forgot to do the 1992 one! Thanks for reminding me. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:56, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

WP Council -- Wiki User 68
Hi Martin, Thanks for the edit, I think you're the first person EVER that's edited my personal pages (laughter) and I like it! I actually wanted to keep the code for Dev. purposes but no matter, I can ref the Diff to get it back. But, I'd like to thank you for allowing me access to more code on your page which now resides appropriately on the same page as we're talking about. I genuinely "like" pro-active people who aren't afraid to edit personal pages where appropriate. Thanks again Martin...and can I invite you to contribute to the Cape Verde project?! :-) Wiki User 68 (talk) 00:51, 14 May 2009 (UTC) Take care and all the best.
 * (Laughter) - Martin, I've just scoped your msg's above and noticed that, basically, are you a coder?! (MLOL) I had no idea old chap, sorry. Well, now I'm here,(laughter) I've never really been able to get to the bottom of the news feeds that should feed Portals. I won't bang on, I'll await your response patiently. Wiki User 68 (talk) 00:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Glad you liked it. I also like when people edit my user area, but it rarely happens! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Fixes required
Template talk:Infobox rail, The electrification fails to appear in the sample (Any RR) box and in that of the Rhaetian Railway. In Template talk:Infobox rail the website fails to appear in the box of the Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield Railway. What is the Problem? In the Rhaetian Railway article you'll see that I had to use an additional box (template) to convey the electrification data! Peter Horn 16:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I moved my comments here. Peter Horn 17:01, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox rail & Template talk:Infobox rail Peter Horn 16:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) "old_gauge" is usefull in Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia which was changed from  to . There may be others that were changed from one gauge to another that is not standard gauge.
 * 2) Please try to make "| website" work in this template. (Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield Railway)
 * Oh yes, "minimum_radius_of_curvature", "maximum_incline" and "rack_system" are also usefull, but "Website", "old gauge" and others could be added to "Infobox rail line" instead. Peter Horn 16:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC) I made a substitution. Peter Horn 17:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC) See Rigi-Bahnen and Template:Infobox rail line. Peter Horn 18:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The eletrification does not show in the infobox of the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon railway. Peter Horn 22:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have added the infobox of the Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield Railway. The missing info, website and/or electrification, does not yet show up in any of the boxes. Where is the "bug". Peter Horn 14:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Add the electrification of the Austrian Federal Railways. Peter Horn 16:51, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Phi Beta Kappa list
Dear MSGJ, can you help straighten out a glitch? Daniel Tsui, a Nobel Scientist, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1962, and thus listed on the list, but when I added him to a Phi Beta Kappa category, on his Wiki page, I found that empty. Please reconcile. Much Obliged. --EJohn59 (talk) 23:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59
 * It's because List of Phi Beta Kappa members is a list and not a category, so you can't use it like that. You actually have to edit List of Phi Beta Kappa members and add him manually. There used to be a category but it was decided to delete it. (See the discussion.) Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:03, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarification. --EJohn59 (talk) 20:16, 17 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

Category:Undated AfC submissions bot
Hi, Martin. I'm just dropping by to tell you that the BRFA for the bot task that we were discussing on my talk page has been filed here. Regards, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contributions) 02:09, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Commented there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:59, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Film
Left you a comment. :) PC78 (talk) 11:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Coming to look now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Travel response
Responded here. <b style="color:red;">De</b><b style="color:green;">Fault</b><b style="color:blue;">Ryan</b> 15:26, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't understand you
Why did you keep Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Template:Jimmy Petruzzi? We already have Jimmy Petruzziello, which is the same guy. Debresser (talk) 14:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not "kept", because it's not in template-space anymore. It's an AfC submission and these usually get declined and archived rather than deleted. I have asked the author not to create any more of these. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I see. Debresser (talk) 16:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Question
You declined my answer patrol entry. It was not meant to sound like an advertisement, but the previous person who reviewed it said it needed to have more information "why" it should be included. So I supply the information he requests but then you misinterpret it as an advertisement. Not sure how to fix that to satisfy both of you and your different requirements. It seems like you guys should be on the same page. I am a neutral point of view, I am not the owner of the site. The site itself is a neutral site and has a place within the industry and within the encyclopedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bluediamond77 (talk • contribs) 01:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I'll take another look, but I doubt that it will meet out notability criteria. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Ron Larson article
Thanks for the suggestions on improving the article. I tried to address the suggestions this morning.


 * Changed most of the "Ron" to "Ron Larson" or simply "Larson".
 * Removed or rewrote the subjective "peacock" language.
 * Added references

Sr1111 (talk) 14:07, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, I'll have a look at it again shortly. You've done really well. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:WPRocketry‎‎
Your edit seems to have broken the template. The link to the importance scale on the project page seems to show as raw code. See the transclusion at Talk:Ares (rocket). --<font color="#115566">G <font color="#496636">W … 10:45, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Should all be working well now. Let me know if there are still any problems. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fine. Thanks. --<font color="#115566">G <font color="#496636">W … 11:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you
Hi MSGJ ! I just wanted to say thank you for the work you do on WPBannerMeta, e.g. the recent addition of the Bottom-importance and No-importance. I imagine how frustrating it can be when people use funny non-standard parameters in a template, and then complain that the template does not work. Thanks also for taking the time to explain what's happening and what should be done. Keep up the good work ! SyG (talk) 10:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! Glad to be of service. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

LSR and LPR templates
I saw you've merged my changes for LPR. Could you get LSR as well? Template talk:LSR/Archive 1 I posted those at the same time. Tothwolf (talk) 15:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay. I have replied there now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I followed up on the talk page yesterday... These should output no text at all if the  parameter is unset or empty. This is by design due to how the Infoboxes use the templates. Tothwolf (talk) 13:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't really have anything to add. I can see what you're saying, but I still think the template should be giving some feedback in the case of an error. Gibberish at least draws attention to something wrong. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This isn't an error condition though, null output if the  parameter is unset/empty is the desired behaviour as this is a valid condition. See Talk:Pidgin (software) and Templates for deletion/Log/2009 May 25, as well as Templates for deletion/Log/2009 May 14, Category:Latest stable software release templates, and Category:Latest preview software release templates Tothwolf (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I also changed the underscores to spaces in the sandbox version of LPR which I noticed you had changed in the sandbox version of LSR. I missed that in both of those when I was reworking them since that was part of the original code. MediaWiki doesn't really care but it does make them easier to read. Tothwolf (talk) 16:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Rv
Bad Things:

Then a banner that doesn't call any of the notes gets an empty collapsed section... <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Umm, if a banner doesn't call any notes then HOOK_NOTE is empty, right? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:56, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec)Wait, hang on, I do see what you're getting at. I think the outcome is then dependent on the vagarities of the preprocessor... I can't remember off the top of my head which way it swings... <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think it's ok, the contents of HOOK_NOTE are expanded when the preprocessor is expanding the call to WPBM on the actual banner page. False alarm :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just checked on the sandbox, all is well. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I was interested in knowing just how many seconds you considered the merits of my edit before reverting but unfortunately the revison history is not precise enough. Anyway, no worries. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Surprisingly long, actually, I remember sitting there trying to work it through in my head. If I'd been certain I'd have hit rollback :D From the toolserver, the timestamps of the two revisions are 20090528104901 and 20090528105052, so there's a shade under two minutes there. Looks like I must have hit my watchlist at 10:49:02! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:35, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Can I ask you to have a look at my stuff in /core/sandbox and /bchecklist/sandbox for this?? I think I need to sync the whole sandbox architecture to find this bloody IE-collapsing bug (which is now spilling to the shells as well). <tt>:S</tt> <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:34, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ouch. Is this all happening since you changed the nesting code on WPBM? If so, might be worth reverting that. I'll check the b-checklist now, but I really want to get out into this sunshine! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't blame you, isn't it glorious?!? Unfortunately I'm honestly not sure when it started, so I don't really know where to revert it to!  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Recent template changes
I had to revert changes you made to Grading scheme/row and oldid as they were not compatible with the case where oldid=cur, used to link to some non-article entries on Grading scheme (and probably in many other locations). If you altered other templates to rely on not passing the page name to oldid, they might also need to be changed back. GreenReaper (talk) 00:28, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, good catch. I'll have a think about it more. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've found the best solution to this now. Please check me edits. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

HexaChord
Should we do anything about User:HexaChord SD markings? I undid many SD nominations yesterday because it was not exactly good faith, but instead exasperation with User:Stifle finding yet another fair use situation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:34, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've reverted some today and warned him/her (think it might be "her" but I really wish English had a non-gender-specific third-person singular form!). Hopefully this will be the end of it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary
Comments invited at Template_talk:Wiktionarypar.Rich Farmbrough, 14:53, 30 May 2009 (UTC).

Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/taskforces/sandbox/core
Hi Martin, I was just using Schutz's tool to patrol for broken redirects (among other tasks) when I found the above page (which you created) was a broken redirect. Could you please explain your reasoning behind its creation? Thank you very much, &rarr;  Dylan 620  (Toolbox Alpha, Beta) 15:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Undated AfC submissions bot
Hi, just dropping by to tell you that, if you weren't already aware, the bot has been approved. The task is currently underway (see Special:Contributions/EarwigBot I) and the logs will show up here when the bot is done. Regards, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Editor review) 17:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's fantastic, thanks for your work. I have to say, the task wasn't really worth all the hard work you put it. But hopefully you have learnt things which will be helpful in the future :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Cquote malfunction
What you did at Template:Cquote is causing it to malfunction. Material within a cquote now is shown as one continuous line instead of multiple lines. On some articles, I have changed "cquote" to "quote" in order to compensate for the malfunction. SMP0328. (talk) 02:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Stuff is running amok and I've asked that this be reverted for the moment on the template talk page and on wp:ani (I saw you were not editing, so I went straight to where it should get noticed quickly). Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Pauline Léon
Hiya Martin. Thanks for expanding the above, and letting me know. I'm new to WP:NPP, and I and another learner were being shown the ropes. May have been a little hasty with that tag, but it seemed that the original creator hadn't found any refs, so the person's WP:notability seemd dubious. Now that you've taken the time to search and improve the article so much, I can see our fears were unfounded. Nice work sir. Trafford09 (talk) 11:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, addressing the national assembly and being president of a revolutionary society does suggest notability. I normally do a quick search in these cases just to make sure. Thanks for the compliment. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:55, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Image or Media Permissions
Thank you for uploading an image or media.

Whilst, the image or media appears to be licensed, It would be helpful if you could confirm the photographer, author or copyright owner of the media concerned, has granted release under the licenses shown. You can do this by getting them to make a formal release,or by confirming any permission you obtained, by writing to the OTRS permissions queue as detailed in WP:COPYREQ.

If you have already approached OTRS, then please get an administrator with OTRS access to update the image information to confirm this. Files affected: File:DERM.gif Sfan00 IMG (talk) 12:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

RE: Another notice-posting AWB task

 * Seems that a lot of these WikiProjects either don't exist or have a different name. You have created a lot of inappropriate pages, e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject the United States and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject the Cayman Islands. Would you be willing to clean this up? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi there, regarding this, I was following instructions given to me by another user. I'm not sure about removing the "inappropriate pages" as I don't know what this user, The Transhumanist wants to do with the pages, which is why I have left a message at his talk page, and will be pointing him to this discussion. Hope this helps, The  Helpful  One  09:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't catch those on the list. Sorry.  You can speedy delete them (they're typos).   Th e Tr ans hu man ist    21:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Transhumanist, please create a list of those talk pages of non-existant WikiProjects so that they can be deleted in one batch. Amalthea  22:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi there, yes, this has now been done, please see User_talk:Thehelpfulone. Thanks, The  Helpful  One  17:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, thanks. At least two of the examples that Martin and I listed still exist as orphaned talk pages though, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Macedonia and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject the United States. I'd assume that there are more. Amalthea  17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I assume that the 'problem pages' are the ones for which the corresponding subject pages don't exist? I've thrown a quick Excel hack into transhumanist's sandbox so you can easily see which ones are orphans; I assume this is what's needed to identify the ones that need to be deleted? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Infobox Software
I was just starting to look at Infobox Software after dealing with LSR and LPR and noticed you made some recent changes there. Is there a reason why you've moved the "preview" version above the "stable" version? The "preview" (hence unstable/test) version really should not be featured more prominently than the "stable" version. I'm not sure if you saw the changes I made to these parameters for Infobox OS but some of the code I rewrote there might be applicable to Infobox Software too.

Would you also have a look at my comments on Talk:Pidgin (software)? I'm currently thinking on how to better handle those cases. On one hand the preload feature makes the latest stable software version and latest preview software version subtemplates easy to use and deals with some of the past gripes (such as this), on the other hand, there may be someone who complains if the links are always enabled when say  is set. It seems like whoever implemented the preload support was working towards this anyway.

While I can understand the reasoning for having some of these templates protected due to usage, this certainly does make updating them a hassle...

--Tothwolf (talk) 12:42, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * In the meantime I suppose I'll try a few things with Infobox Software/sandbox. Tothwolf (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * See the changes and edit summary I've made here Tothwolf (talk) 13:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, I'll have a look there tomorrow. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:02, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't forget about the code in Infobox Software/sandbox. I didn't want to put an editprotected on it since you were working on it recently. Tothwolf (talk) 15:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I did forget! I'll come and look now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. Won't removing these prevent the #ifexist checks from being done though? Tothwolf (talk) 15:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Im sorry, it wont happen again.
This whole thing started mars 21th when he changed the article from how it had been for several years.

Original: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&oldid=278391483

His edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asmahan&oldid=278831082

Please revert it to how it was from the beginning.

Also notice how much stuff he added to the article may 4th and further without any kind of source. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry if The wrong version has been protected, but I don't feel confident to choose the "right" version. But if there is consensus on the talk page about it, I will happily change it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Economy of Tasmania re
I agree with the first dot point, but I don't get the point of the second. For example I created and article on the Climate of Launceston, Tasmania but that shouldn't mean deleting the climate section of the Launceston, Tasmania article.  Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 01:31, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied on your talk. Let's keep the conversation together. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep thanks for voicing your concerns. Best,  Aaroncrick (Tassie Boy talk) 08:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:Articles belonging to WikiProject Outline of knowledge
Ouch. WikiProjects don't own articles. Perhaps you'll consider renaming this category. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Good point. What is the standard wording for this type of category?   Th e Tr ans hu man ist    22:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅  Th e Tr ans hu man ist   19:52, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Optimization
Hey there. I was just wondering if you could take a look at this Transhumanist AWB task that he gave to me and if there was any way to optimize it so that there would not have to do as much work after the bot runs. Thanks, <b style="color:navy;">NW</b> ( Talk ) (How am I doing?) 22:23, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Another task for you to look over
I've posted a task for User talk:Thehelpfulone, and I was wondering if you'd like to take a look at it to see if there's an easier way.

User_talk:Thehelpfulone

 Th e Tr ans hu man ist   19:56, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

AFC template merging
(cross-posted)
 * I'm doing good. I said to subst: afc mm just to match the other templates. I think the reason for it was just site performance, which shouldn't matter much. I think your change might have messed up all the archive pages, the entries there aren't closing properly.&#32;-- kenb215 talk 04:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you give me an example of a page which isn't closing properly? It's looking okay to me. Which browser do you use? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Wipower
I have left a message for you on Talk:WiPower, thanks. Gigs (talk) 12:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Conservative v. Conservatives
There is no context that I am aware of where the word 'Party' is automatically inserted after party name. 'Conservatives' is the party name. The possible addition of the word 'Party' is irrelevant here.

To demonstrate the impossibility of this series of templates being used to give a list parties, with the word 'Party' being inserted afterwards, I would draw your attention to the fact that the metaname for the SNP is Scottish National Party.

I don't see therefore that there is a valid argument against making the switch to Conservatives. Also, how can we gain a meaningful consensus when there are only two of us involved in this discussion.

Respectfully, &c. Orthorhombic (talk) 13:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The word "party" might not appear directly after the term but it was the header of a table, and so it didn't seem natural to me. You could try posting at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: stub/doc
Hi Martin - I've nominated stub/doc for deletion at WP:SFD. I've done this not so much through personal feelings towards it (though I do feel that there are strong reasons for not having one), but more for procedural reasons, as the same document has been deleted in the past. It will also be a good opportunity to debate whether such a /doc page is a good idea or not. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've commented there now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:07, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Stubs again
Hi MSGJ - i've replied to your comments at WP:SFD - by the way, please don't convert templates to asbox format - it's generally hated at WP:WSS, as it makes more work for us. Several members of WP:WSS are trying to remove that format whenever it appears, so adding it isn't helping. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  02:26, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied again. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

AfC statistics bot
Hi. Before running this by the other folks at WT:WPAFC, I want to get your opinion on this bot idea. You mentioned something similar to it here, and I added on to your general suggestion. Below is a basic summary:

The bot will function by retrieving all current pages in Category:Pending Afc requests, and do some calculations based on them. It will produce a chart listing all of the pending submissions (submissions using AFC submission/pending) that would list the submission name, creating author, time since it was created, and a few other optional things, such as size in bytes, or if it was previously declined. It would have a separate chart for submissions on hold (submissions using AFC submission/onhold), that would list the above information, as well as the reason the article is on hold, the user that put it on hold, and a note if the article was on hold for more than 48 hours (generally the threshold between allowing a submission to stay on hold, and denying it because the requested changes haven't been made). It could also compile useful statistics for declined submissions, such as the most common declining criteria (ranked in order), the percent of submissions that are accepted, and maybe even a graph of submissions over the past month. The bot would auto-run every hour by updating a page, maybe something like WikiProject Articles for creation/Statistics, and that page could be transcluded (in part, probably) to the main WPAFC page, WikiProject Articles for creation.

For a little more detail, I've created a collection of sample charts that the bot would compile at User:EarwigBot/Temp/AfC StatisticsBot. If you think this has any chance of being a useful bot, please tell me, and I'll post a note on WT:WPAFC so other users can weigh in on the concept and refine it. Thanks, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Editor review) 03:17, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, nice. Let me have a think about it and I'll reply properly, probably tomorrow. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:49, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, why not post it to WT:WPAFC and you'll maybe get a better and quicker response? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:50, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

move request
Hi, just wondering if you could move the Wikiproject Punk music template to WikiProject Punk music. The destination already exists so I can't do it myself. Thanks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You should be able to, because it's a simple redirect. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:33, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Now I need to turn that link blue, but I can't find anything relevant ... I'm sure that's the common term for a redirect with one entry in its history. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * So I can. I didn't think I could move to a page that already existed. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Help, please
Hi, I'm not sure whether you can help me, but I would probably help me even if you just had a look. I've tried to edit Template:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/sandbox such that |bycountry = yes add the Taskforce (tf_1). However, trying it out in a lot of combinations, etc. yields nothing on User:Grandiose/sandbox. Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:54, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Question
Why are we keeping the article Cewen nan, I am renominating it under db-bio as no notability is established whatsoever and no sources either. Do you disagree? Hell in a Bucket (talk) 14:41, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The speedy deletion was declined by User:Backslash Forwardslash. Please take it up with him/her if you like. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe I do not need to when the content is obviously unsourced and does nothing to establish notability. May I ask what in this one sentence article makes you think it is Includable? under the rationale he is notable beczause he is a professormeans I can start writing meaningles articles about my Community college professors, no? I'm not going to only illustrating that this appears to be nothing but a selfpraise page that brings nothing to wikipedia. Perhaps you disagree, buit I read backslash fowardslash reasoning, subject claims to be notable. remember wp:bold Hell in a Bucket (talk) 14:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would agree with you: being a professor is not a claim of notability. (If it has said "a pioneering professor" or such like, then it might be a different story.) However admins should not revert other admin's actions without discussion (it's called wheel warring) and so the best place for this issue is User talk:Backslash Forwardslash. By repeatedly replacing the tag, you run the risk of being accused of edit warring, so not a good idea. Hope this helps. Oh and by the way, any editor can remove speedy deletion tags, except the author of the article. In fact you are encouraged to remove them if you think that the article does not meet the speedy deletion criteria. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:10, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, it seems we agree that the person is not notable, I did consuklt an outside party and was suggested to add the AFD tag which I hope i snot taken for edit war violition as it is not my intent only to follow the appropriate protocol advised to me. Either wway I can be wrong, it has happened mopre then once. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 15:39, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I would agree with you that Mr. Nan is not notable, and does not deserve a Wikipedia page. That said, the article is not speedy-able. If you read speedy criterion A7 you will see that "The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source." That was the case here. The page had said that Nan was a professor at Tsinghua University. You may not take that as a claim to notability, but IMO admins should avoid IAR speedy-ing an article - particularly when dealing with a field that doesn't 'advertise' every detail about themselves on Google. \ Backslash Forwardslash / {talk} 21:41, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. In my opinion this fits A7 perfectly. Being a professor is not a claim of significance in my opinion, so maybe you are being slightly consevative here. Anyway, better too careful than too hasty, agreed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:46, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree people aren't required to share every detail about himself. My main interezt was that we had prrof this person existed and was notable. It will work out in the end either way I won't stress it. Still new here after all. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 21:44, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * it seems we do have consensus on the Afd can someone delete the page? Is that appropriate? Hell in a Bucket (talk) 22:09, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. We got there in the end. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:17, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. No harm was done taking it to AfD. :) \ Backslash Forwardslash / {talk} 03:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Block
I did but its not working —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShanRaj 10 (talk • contribs) 16:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if you can post here then you are obviously not blocked anymore :) Welcome back &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

AfC
To be perfectly honest, because I was new and didn't understand the idea of backchecking the article. Will not happen again. <b style="color:green;">MacMed</b><sup style="color:red;">talk <sub style="color:black;">stalk 10:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, no worries! Feel free to help out if you have any free time ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey
Can you check the Philippines talk page again? The bottom sections on religion and the revolution. Thanks!!--23prootie (talk) 09:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You'll need to establish a consensus before I can do that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I found two earlier versions of the Philippines article ([|here] and [|here]) the show more coverage on the Philippine revolution than what is seen now on the article. Since there is no discussions on the talk page about that content, it can be nferred that such information is generally accepted as relevant. Besides the Template for the History of the Philippines clearly show the Katipunan and the Philippine Revolution there.--23prootie (talk) 03:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Your Userbox edit
Hi, your edit to Template:Userbox apparently broke it. See my user page for an example. <FONT COLOR="green">M<SMALL>AN</SMALL>d<SMALL>ARAX</SMALL></FONT><FONT COLOR="6600FF"> • </FONT><FONT COLOR="999900"><SMALL>XAЯA</SMALL>b<SMALL>ИA</SMALL>M</FONT> 08:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I've undone my edit for now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:32, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the speedy action! <FONT COLOR="green">M<SMALL>AN</SMALL>d<SMALL>ARAX</SMALL></FONT><FONT COLOR="6600FF"> • </FONT><FONT COLOR="999900"><SMALL>XAЯA</SMALL>b<SMALL>ИA</SMALL>M</FONT> 08:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

== <font color="#CCFF00">SLJCO <font color="#CD00CC">AAATR <font color="#009A63">4 6 8 15 16 23 42 108 305 316  ==

Quite alright. Feel free to have them deleted. I no longer edit here, and have no use for those anymore. <font color="#CCFF00">SLJCO <font color="#CD00CC">AAATR <font color="#009A63">4 6 8 15 16 23 42 108 305 316  00:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Johan Robeck listed as a Stub
I have noticed your recent edits to Johan Robeck. You have added the template. This is fine and your contributions are appreciated. But in future, to aid in the expansion of articles, such as this one, please use a more specific stub template. A list of stub templates can be found here: WikiProject Stub sorting/List of stubs. Thank you. -- <font color="0000FF">Patchy1 (talk) 10:39, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Custom importance
Thanks. Good to know for future reference, although in the case of WikiProject Video games I think we're leaning towards changing uses of importance=No to importance=Low. —TKD  [talk]  [c] 10:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Regina Rheda entry
TRYING TO RESPOND TO YOUR DOUBTS. THIS ENTRYFOLLOWS PUBLIC STATEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR AT AN EVENT AT BROWN UNIVERSITY, BRAZILIAN LITERATURE IN AN INTER AMERICAN CONTEXT, MAY 2009.

CATEGORY: "Creative professional WP:AUTHOR ... authors, ... filmmakers, " The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors. // PER CRITICAL RECEPTION IN BRASIL AND RECENT ATTENTION IN USA The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique. / ORIGINATOR OF ANIMAL RIGHTS LIT The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews./ YES THERE IS A CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, AS CITED

STYLE POINTS WILL BE ADDRESSED NOW TOO.

OBLIGED AGAIN.

SIGNED Charlesaperrone (talk) 16:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'll reply to you over at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Regina Rheda. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:55, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Rheda reply three, prize data
Please let me know if the following is what you are seeking. I can work on the formatting after content is approved. thanks again

In English:

General information with a link to the Wikipedia Brazilian entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabuti_Award

Preface of Rheda's translated works (University of Texas Press) which mentions the Jabuti award: http://books.google.com/books?id=l7FEXHfSVdwC&pg=PR8&lpg=PR8&dq=Regina+Rheda+Jabuti+prize&source=bl&ots=y_mECK8uIx&sig=Icm7z0GY_jLac3xPkN1oVEUVieQ&hl=en&ei=mQQ0SsmcGYTEM5ij-YkK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5

Another Brazilian who lives in US who won the Jabuti and (in another categry): Marcelo Gleiser SEE SECOND LINE BELOW THE TITLE "HONORS AND AWARDS": http://www.dartmouth.edu/~physics/faculty/gleiser.html

In Portuguese:

General information: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prêmio_Jabuti_de_Literatura

List of award winners of Jabuti: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Lista_de_ganhadores_do_Prêmio_Jabuti

Charlesaperrone (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, I've copied your reply to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Regina Rheda. Shall we talk there, to keep the conversation in one place? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Rheda verification 4
RE: No, not really. The Wikipedia links are not what we call reliable. What we need is a reliable source which verifies that she has won this award. This could be a newspaper article, or an official website of the organisation. English is preferred, but Portguese would be fine too. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello Martin. The website for Jabuti began in 2000! and does not backsell. In Portuguese, I have a book of the history of the prize which I can cite to you, or even SCAN the relevant page. Also I can scan some news from infancy of Internet. (I found one link of an old article but it is about a different book and only mentions nthe prize en passant). Finally, the link to UT press book in English goes to the introduction which, as the my earlier descriptor indicated, does mention the prize. That should be "reliable", no? Let me know if you can receive scans to be able to verify visually or just go with Prof. Dunn's mention. Obliged. This time I remember to sign. Charlesaperrone (talk) 21:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Turkey
Hi! I've uploaded a new logo for WikiProject Turkey but I couldn't add it to the template. Because it has a protection. Could you add File:WikiProject-Turkey-Logo.svg to it? Could you also add File:Nuvola Turkish flag.svg as portal image? Thanks! -- <font face="Comic Sans MS" color="lime">Turkish Flame <font face="Comic Sans MS" color="lime">☎  09:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Dates section at MOSNUM
Thanks for your edit and quick response. Could you remove the old template, located underneath the autoformatting section? Thanks. Also, I'm going to discuss the possibility of adding a footnote to MOSNUM that gives examples of date delinking that don't qualify as mass date delinking. If consensus is for it, there will be another edit request soon. Thanks again, Dabomb87 (talk) 17:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, if you have time, could you find a way to neatly fit a footnote into the box? Your expertise would be much appreciated. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 17:20, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. I don't think there will be any problem with putting a footnote reference in the box. Do you suspect otherwise? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Having fun
Glad to see your making use of the chess Quality and Importance template. Making it useable for all projects is a great idea. I look forward to when another project have it in use. I came up with the idea on wikibooks a year or so ago because there is no bot available to update the figures, so thought PAGESINCATEGORY would do just fine. SunCreator (talk) 20:34, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

WPBannerMeta substcheck
There are just under 70 protected banner templates that need substcheck adding to them. Just wondering if you fancy doing it or I may have to go mad with the editprotected.

There are also about 30 protected banner templates that could do with ASSESSMENT_LINK adding. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll see if I can get AWB to do it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:17, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done all the substchecks now I think. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:00, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks that way. It's actually less than 30 for the ASSESSMENT_LINK, more like 20. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Gosh you're a hard task-master. Okay I'll get down to them now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Rheda 6
Martin- I am too on the road. Dori in your absence moved my submission from pending to rejected because of time elapsed. She referred me back to you to answer the doubts about verification in my previous message. Ill await your reply. No big rush. Happy holiday. 201.17.98.51 (talk) 19:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look shortly. Don't worry about it being declined because you can always resubmit it when the required changes have been made. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

rheda verification 7
Martin- My host's son has just arrived from Manchester to show off his new IMAC 24 inch screen and all. I am still striving to figure out the different channels in Wiki here. I added the Prize reference if that helps; info from previous post still stands too. Thnks. Chas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlesaperrone (talk • contribs) 16:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Colours
Hi. I don't like the colours on the Australia map. Red and orange look almost identical on my monitor. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't come up with the colour scheme, so I'll bring up your point with the others, who are also maintaining the maps. (Graeme Bartlett and Markhurd) See if we can decide on a new scheme. 70.29.212.226 (talk) 04:02, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Cats for WP
I'm not sure what you mean. I clicked on the create category link and the categories were created. The instructions aren't very clear and this is the first WikiProject I've created. What exactly needs doing? Mjroots (talk) 16:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look what I did here you should be able to work it out. Otherwise please ask again. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:55, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. I think I've done them all. Mjroots (talk) 17:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Arab World tags
Hey MSGJ! I noticed you recently edited Template:WikiProject Arab world. I'm not sure if you made a mistake or if this problem existed before, but in any case do you know how to fix an issue that I noticed with the tag? The issue is that the project tag doesn't display the importance parameter of an article, but instead just shows the class parameter twice i.e. B-class B-class. See Talk:Izzat Darwaza, Talk:Gamal Abdel Nasser, or other articles within the project scope. Thanks. --Al Ameer son (talk) 19:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, as far as I can tell, that template has never supported importance ratings. There are none of the categories and there is no mention of it in the documentation either. Of course, if the project decides that it wants them then it is easy to add. The lower "B" that you are seeing in the template is the B-class checklist. This was also in the template before (which was mainly copied from Military History I think!) but can be easily removed. Let me know if I can help with it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you could help out that would be wonderful. I think the project certainly needs importance categories (I don't know why we didn't have them in the first place, that always puzzled me). Also, if you know how to remove the B-class checklist please do, it would be very appreciated ;) Of course do this whenever you are not busy, I would hate to bother you. --Al Ameer son (talk) 03:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've removed the checklist. I've also enabled importance ratings on the /sandbox version. If you go to that page it shows the categories which need to be created. As soon as this is done, we can synchronise with the live version. There are also several other features which don't seem to be used:
 * A-class review
 * Peer review
 * needs-infobox parameter
 * auto parameter
 * I have removed these for now. They can easily be added back if necessary. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I will look at the sandbox version and apply it to the actual template. As for the other features, I don't think they are necessary, but I will ask other project members what they think. Thanks so much for all your help. Cheers! --Al Ameer son (talk) 19:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Error when using your "New Message" at the template at the top of this page
I was trying to leave you a message regarding another matter and discovered the link (to post a new message) at the top doesn't work. Seems like the message template is broken, it complains about having a | in the URL and there also seem to be a couple rogue }} brackets at the end. Looks like it's a small fix that just need the | changed to a ? right after the username, and the 2 }} brackets removed at the end. I still don't know how how to do this, nor do I think I'd even have permissions to do so yet.
 * I added a section to the message discussion regarding this including the proposed fix I mentioned above, hopefully someone will get to it soon. MiloKral (talk) 17:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's been fixed now. Well done for spotting that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, my real question was regarding your suggestion on the WP_Talk:User_Page: "You're right, it's a confusing mess and a lot of that could probably be trimmed. I suggest you go ahead and improve it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)" I see that the page is semi-protected, so I can't as of yet make my proposed changes. I'll do so if they haven't been implemented by the time I get autoconfirmed (or if I can get some kind of temporary edit permission for that page in the meantime?) --Milo | MiloKral (talk) 16:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, there's no technical way you can get autoconfirmed any quicker. I would consider lowering the protection on the page to let you work on it, but you're nearly halfway to the 4 days now so it's probably not worth it. You can always work on a copy of the page in your user area, and then synchronise it when you get autoconfirmed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

cat class
Hi there! I'm just a little confused, since cat class automatically adds the categories, and I did delete the manually added FL-Class category that was put there by someone else, wasn't the edit actually necessary? I think you may have reversed the logic in your answer, because I removed the manual cat BECAUSE the cat class template was already there and already categorizing the page, so the manually added cat was unnecessary, and should have been removed, as I did. Just wanted to clarify my point!! And yes, not only do I have a lot to learn in order to be an admin, it also must be very time-consuming. I really don't need another full-time job!! :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Is the sortkey added there by a bot? So the sortkey and manually added cat should be left there, or not?? Please clarify! --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:50, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll reply on your talk page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:01, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought so!! That's okay, I'll forgive you. :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:05, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: Go on
Hi. I'm mostly concerned about spending too much time inside (again) this summer! However, if in the future you would still like to nominate me, I'll let you know when I'm ready. Thanks again for the vote of confidence. ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, sure thing. Enjoy the summer! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Featured stubs
I know you were joking when you mentioned featured stubs… But I did actually propose the idea as a replacement for the featured article system a few months back! Not entirely seriously, of course, but it would be great for article development, don't you think? :P We could even get the software to display a random stub every time someone visits the mainpage, just to get more eyes on the articles which really need improving! Physchim62 (talk) 12:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Shells (On your Talk Page for a while)
I see your point about the show button and, although I never bothered to use it and will never use it again, I agree that the current WPB version is ugly. It is also counter-productive. I think the idea should be to facilitate discussion about how to improve the article and I think the uncollapsed project banners intrude on that.

If it is possible, could you change the programming of WPB so that it calls WPBS with collapsed set to "yes"? I think that will give us the best of all possible worlds and leave the impossible for others.

It will also allow for a discussion to be opened at the Project Council, guided by the Delphi technique in its worst incarnation, as to when each should be used. A guideline or policy should result from the discussion.

Does that make sense? If so, can the necessary changes to WBS be made quickly?

Thank you. JimCubb (talk) 05:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a sensible proposal and I would fully support it. I suggest one of us starts a thread on Template talk:WPB to make sure others are happy with it. I have one comment though. There are many instances of WPB on pages with small numbers of banners. Just one example: Talk:Harlesden has two banners on it. To me it seems excessive to fully collapse the shell when there are so few banners there. For example

only takes up a couple more lines than

So would you be happy to convert WPB to WPBS if there are, say, 4 or fewer banners on a page? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that the original limits were good. One or two banners don"t need a shell, three through five benners get an un-collapsed shell, six and up get a collapsed shell. However, I would not remove any existing shells, such as the one above, but I would un-collapse any like that.

I believe in cleaning up my own messes rather than rely on someone or something else to clean up after me. Once it sunk it that I was going to type the same thing over and over I just set "" in a text file that I keep open so that it can be recopied it needs be. I have found talk headers one-third of the way down the page but not recently.

I saw that you had put something on Template talk:WPB. I cannot imagine anyone not supporting it.


 * JimCubb (talk) 19:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Jackson
Okay, fair enough. I don't agree, but I've reverted myself. SlimVirgin talk| contribs 08:33, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I asked on AN/I if there was a good reason we didn't want a separate page, and if not, could someone unprotect. And someone did. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 08:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay fair enough. And Redirecting is obviously the right thing to do in the long run, but better to put one discussion to bed before confusing it with another! Cheers &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:36, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's where I asked about it. I wouldn't have created it through protection myself. I do think we need a separate page, because with the funeral and the investigation, the main page will be completely overwhelmed; it is already, I think, and becoming very long and hard to load. Plus, it's an FA and is probably deteriorating with all the edits. Best to direct them to a new page in my view. Just my opinion. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 08:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Infobox/row
I'm wondering,, what does this line of code?, by the way, could you get rid of all whitespaces and all other stuff. Maybe, probably the code could look like this: Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 05:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll reply over there shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:08, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, wait a minute. Why does the label parameter use a &lt;th>, shouldn't it be a &lt;td>? It is suposed that &lt;th>s are limited to table headers, and the label parameter is not a header. But changing this, will put a normal font-weight to the text of the labels. So, it should have a font-weight:bolder just before the . Does this sound right to you?

--Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 19:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there anything wrong with using th there? It seems to be working correctly without any undesired side-effects. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:51, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know th is working well and also I know they have the same output, but th was desined to be used in the headers and the label of Infobox are not headers. Locos epraix ~ Beastepraix 23:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Citizendium Porting
Hi, thanks for helping out with the template. However, I had opted against using the meta template because I wanted to customize the template in a way that does not seem very easy to do with the meta template, namely add a date field to it. However, since you say the meta template is quite superior and are apparently familiar with it, I was wondering if you could offer any advice regarding how to add the date field. It looks like it would involve creating a hook, but I'm not at all sure how to go about doing that... --Cybercobra (talk) 19:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Please tell me exactly what you'd like it to do and I'll be glad to help. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks a bunch. Just want to add a parameter, e.g.  and display a line of text with the given date in the box, e.g. "Current with its counterpart article as of: (given date here)". --Cybercobra (talk) 19:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's easy. I've made an edit to the template. Let me know if you need any further help. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thought it would be more complicated that than. Hm. Anyway, thanks again. --Cybercobra (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to trouble you again, but would you know how to get the date to show in the collapsed version like the ratings do in the other templates? --Cybercobra (talk) 23:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added something; you could probably tweak it a bit. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:57, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, many thanks. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

ANI
Hello,. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toddst1 (talk • contribs) 00:32, 21 March 2009
 * Please archive this. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Automatic signing
Hey, I just noticed your update to my user page. Thanks for that. I'm going to intentionally not sign this and see what happens. -- Keepscases — Preceding undated comment added 18:37, 2 April 2009
 * Please archive this. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

asbox
Please stop changing stub templates to asbox. As another editor has pointed out in an edit summary reverting one of your changes, "Rv to last versiom by Grutness. WP:WSS has repeatedly ruled out the option of using metatemplates for stub template purposes. " Asbox causes far more problems for WP:WSS than it is worth, and doesn't do the required job in all circumstances anyway. this has been repeatedly debated at WP:WSS, and the suggestion of using asbox has been repeatedly turned down. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to disagree and will continue to convert these when I come across them. WSS does not "own" these templates and despite the many editors who have tried to point out to you the advantages of using a meta-template, you have still not put forward any convincing arguments to the contrary. Furthermore it seems to be only you who has a problem with this template and not the project as a whole. I suggest you listen more to other editors and be less opposed to change. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Then you will no doubt continue to be reverted. Not just by me, but by the other stub sorters who disagree with you. It is not just me, either. I pointed out another editor's comments (and if you'd like to check their ISP you'll see they are in a different continent to me, so it is not me under another name). You may also note other editors who have pointed out in the past that asbox has major disadvantages for stub sorters. That is a fact, pure and simple. I have previously pointed out several reasons why it doesn't work, as has Alai, and as have other stub sorters. Each time we do you reply that those precise, specific examples which we have given are vague and imprecise, and continue to ignore those protests. Certainly, WSS does not own those templates - but neither do you, and changing them in the face of valid reasons why you should not, againsst the wwishes of the Wikiproject which has to deal with any problems you are needlessly creating, is disruptive in the extreme. I ask you again to stop. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  10:26, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * (pitching in here) If you've posted several reasons why asbox doesn't work anywhere, you haven't done it on WT:WSS (at least not since you were last asked). You have ignored requests to make edits to the template which would address the category problem; you have also continued to assert that "other stub sorters" dislike the template for whatever reason, while conveniently distancing yourself from such. If these other stub sorters are prepared to engage in dialogue on WT:WSS (which several editors have been trying to negotiate for months) then there is no reason that asbox cannot be adapted to accommodate them IMO. Right now it is simply a falsehood to suggest that the current WikiProject talk has anything like consensus to "rule out the option of using metatemplates". And using edit summaries like "fixing template" (or indeed no summary at all) in reverting these changes is obviously not a good idea. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I never once suggested that I wanted to rule out the option of using metatemplates, nor have I ever suggested there is a consensus to do so. Just this particular metatemplate, which doesn't work as well as the ones we currently use. Alai for one has pointed out to you on numerous occasions that the current metatemplates do everything that asbox does and much more, with far less fuss - I see no reason why we shouldn't continue with them. Pegship has also expressed her dislike of the asbox template and has frequently been known to revert asbox in favour of the former, more effective metatemplates. Both of these editors have "engaged in dialogue" as you put it, and their comments have been repeatedly ignored by you, who instead seem to insist that your method is right irrespective of the views of those who have to use it. I have never distanced myself from either of these two editors. Almost all of the discussion on the various WP:WSS talk pages has been you attempting to ram down our throats a form of template despite several prolific stub-sorters giving you details of why it isn't as good. As to not recently psoting reasons why asbox doesn't work, why should I endlessly repeat myself? I have posted those reasons in the past, and you have ignored them. Why should I bother to post them again? You will no doubt simply ignore them again if I do. I have ignored your requests to edit the template, because there is no reason to do so - the existing method works well, so why try to create something else to do exactly the same job while simultaneously causing more work? If someone presented you with a square wheel and said "here -fix this and it'll work just as well as a round one", would you try to fix it, or would you continue to use the circular wheel? And given that I am fixing the template, which has been moved to a less effective coding, I am indeed fixing it. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  11:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I see a lot of gainsaying there and very little else. Combing through it:
 * Alai's only comments on the asbox issue are this invective-filled, zero-content rant, and its followup which does nothing to elaborate on the alleged "wacky image sizes, sorting and oddball categorisation" which are its sole pertinent contribution to the discussion.
 * Pegship's contributions were a whole lot more contructive; she said that the asbox version was tidier, and agreed with many of the points raised. Her issues were that it wasn't easy to see how to use the template (which I resolved by rewriting its documentation) and that she "wasn't sold on" the need to migrate to it. That is hardly a damning opposition.
 * You have not, in fact, repeatedly given constructive feedback on the issue. What you have done is repeatedly attempted to kill off the discussion by saying that it was unwanted, that "other editors" disagreed with it, and that you gave your reasons in the past - which isn't helpful if nobody can actually find said points to raise them.
 * If you're not willing to use your admin bit to help edit the template to accommodate changes (which is, after all, what you've got it for) then I suppose I'll raise an editprotected for the changes in question.
 * Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Echoing Chris here. If you would actually engage in a constructive discussion then I'm quite sure the concerns of the project could be satisfied. But you have never been open to compromise and have opposed these proposals outright. I am here to try to improve the encyclopedia and the templates that support it. Recently I have tried to engage with you on several (admittedly minor) problems: In all cases I have experienced a complete opposition to any kind of change. Unless you can be more open to change and enage in discussion, I feel that Wikipedia will cause you more stress than enjoyment. Finally, this is a bit immature, isn't it? In all of our disagreements I have been entirely civil with you, and this personal attack along with the edit summary 10 minutes later are not helpful. If they continue I will have to seek action against this behaviour. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:14, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Inability of non-admins to add interwikis to protected stub templates
 * Lack of concise documentation on templates
 * Inconsistencies between different stub templates
 * I've tried entering into a constructive discussion. Whenever I try - or whenever anyone heavily involved in stub sorting tries - it does no good, because you seem convinced that your opinion is right no matter what, and ignore all comments to the contrary. Yes, that was an immature comment I made, and I never intended to save it. I find that the easiest way of not getting angry with someone on their talk page is to type in an angry response on my own talk page then delete it without saving. Unfortunatekly on this occasion I did accidentally save it, and I apologise unreservedly for that. However, your comments are to a large extent accurate. I am getting very little enjoyment out of Wikipedia at the moment, and that is largely thanks to editors like you who don't seem to understand what discussion is. I joined Wikipedia in order to try to make a difference, feeling that cooperation between editors could build a great project. However, I find there are far too many editors who ignore the comments of other editors without trying to engage in discussion with them. This thread here is a perfect example. I ask you to stop doing a particular kind of editing, and explain that it is generally disapproved of by the most-concerned wikiproject. Rather than attempt to understand why it is disliked, you reply by unilaterally declaring that you will continue to edit in exactly the same way, and that - despite the fact that this wikiproject is heavily involved with the templates concerned, it doesn't own them. Well, that is correct, but what would happen, say, if you changed all the infoboxes relating to astronomy without checking with WikiProject Astronomy first? Would they be annoyed? Of course they would. There's no ownership, but there is serious input to be considered from involved projects. Then Chris says accuses me of not posting responses when I have posted exactly those comments previously and he has ignored them. That isn't discussion. It isn't consensus. It's single-minded disruption. You have to understand that that is not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia is a place for cooperation, not for bull-headedness. I've tried, but I can see no evidence that you currently understand the concepts of cooperation or of listening to those who have opposing opinions. There's little point, if any, of me pursuing this any further. If you ever have a change of attitude, let me know, and perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  11:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I accept your apology. (I would be more ready to accept the explanation as well if it wasn't for that edit summary 10 minutes later.) There are various indications that the problem lies with you rather than with other editors. Various people have tried to engage with you and the project on the meta-template issue including myself, Chris, User:TheDJ and others. Most of them have been frustrated with your uncooperative attitude. As for myself, if you look at my contributions you will find many examples of successful discussion and compromise on other pages, the latest of which concerns the WikiProject banner shells. I would ask you to consider withdrawing from some of these discussions in the future and letting other WSS members take the lead. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If I may comment? There are others who share Grutness' assessments of the issues above; it's not just himself. I know that I limit my comments of these subjects because (a) I am not willing to spend large amounts of time on trying to convince anyone, and (b) G says it so much better than I could. Please don't think he's the only one. He's just our point man. <g> Pegship (talk) 19:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Your note
Please see my reply. Thanks, Crum375 (talk) 14:22, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. Crum375 (talk) 17:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

S-new
Hi, first of all thanks for the implementation of my request. Secondly I've seen that you unbolded the results shown in the succession boxes. This causes a inconsistency to other templates like s-non or s-vac, so please would you revert it. Best wishes  Phoe  talk  12:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops, that wasn't intentional. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * ... Quick action! Many thanks  Phoe  talk  12:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Alaibot
You might just check and see if Alai and his bot are available to do a batch replacement. I hate that part of the job. zzzz.... ! Pegship (talk) 19:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

German pin maps
Hi see my proposal on the German location template talk page. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 11:55, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Lol
Hehe. However, when I said "functionality is too different" I really meant how it's used, not how it's constructed. WPMaths uses its two banners (the plurality itself being a significant difference) in a fashion totally unlike the other projects; I honestly think they quite like their distinctiveness (and really, there's nothing wrong with doing so). I notice they've incorporated most of the more important upgrades that WPBM offers (like tmbox, etc), like MilHist, they seem to be pretty on-the-ball about keeping it up-to-date. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:27, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I will consult the project (again). I quite like the compact style of putting class, importance and field in one row, actually. But overall the current banner is quite ugly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:30, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Cat class
I've made another change to the sandboxed template and left a reply on the talk page. Can you do me a favour and check out the following categories, which do not appear to be supported by their respective projects: I'm less sure about the firearms ones because although they are both empty and not included in the projects quality scale, the project does appear to use C-Class which is also omitted from their quality scale. Cheers! PC78 (talk) 12:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There was a discussion about whether to use C-Class within WPM, although I think I recall that the conclusion was indecisive. I have no idea about Firearms. Was there a definite decision not to use List or FL-Class, or have they just not got round to updating their documentation? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:28, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I skimmed over the archives for WP Maths and found a few discussions for introducing C-Class, though none of them seem to have come to anything. I culdn't find any discussion over at Firearms, but I looked at their old banner code and C/FL/List were only added when it was converted to the meta. Might be best to ask the projects directly? PC78 (talk) 09:27, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * C-Class, there's a case to ask them, although it's now sufficiently well-implemented that only a handful of projects still have a 'thing' about it. FL and List are, IMO, just paperwork tools; their use is utterly uncontroversial and objective, and is generally Good Practice.  I went Category:FA-Class articles a while ago and tried to make the numbers at WP:1.0/S match up with the number of FAs listed at WP:FA; apart from some wierd random categories (quite a few Image-Class categories in there, for some reason!) most of the discrepancy came from FLs that had been marked as FA.  There's absolutely no need to do that when it's more trouble to not support FL-Class than it is to do so!!  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Tags for Michael Pillsbury aritlce
I recently created an article on Michael Pillsbury. The editor who edited the article left 6 tags and gave a C-class grade. Could you please review the article and let me know what needs to be improved to remove those tags. I am willing to learn and make this article an A-class article if possible.

thank you! --Artdriver (talk) 16:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll take a look shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:57, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

WP Canada # of articles assessed?
Hi- Just wondering why does the AbI show about 300+ more articles assessed than AbQ for WPCanada? --Funandtrvl (talk) 22:13, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's an interesting question, possible due to a bug. I believe there was a short period of time when deleting a page didn't remove it from its categories. This was fixed fairly quickly, but some of the categories were never updated. Therefore some of those numbers may not be accurate. Another possibility is that someone has been adding the categories manually. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Doesn't it have something to do with the project/dab/redirect, etc. cats in the custom class template of the WP template that need to be directed to NA class? See: for an example. So, the importance categories would be filled up correctly, but maybe the class categories of dab, etc., are not yet populating the NA-Class category? Maybe you could test this out? --Funandtrvl (talk) 22:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, all articles should have a class and an importance, and it doesn't matter if a wikiproject has decided not to use Project-Class because they will appear in NA-Class instead. So your edit to Template:WikiProject Caribbean/class is entirely unnecessary and negates the whole point of setting up the custom mask! I'd ask you to check with me before making changes like this to banners which I have set up. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Response:
 * 1) Of course, if all 17 categories are used by the project, then the custom mask isn't needed (obviously); but it is necessary, if the 18th category, "Redirect-Class", is used.
 * 2) Referring to your point above, I don't understand why the Redirect-Class was not included in your initial conversion of WPCaribbean to WPBM, since the project had used that class since Jan. 2008.
 * 3) Also, I have re-read the applicable talk pages of the WPCaribbean project, and cannot find any mention of not wanting to use the "Project-Class" category. In the previous version of that template, granted, it wasn't used; however, since the "Project-Class" is a relatively new implementation, it follows that it wasn't used simply because not everyone knew it existed.
 * 4) Also, a week has passed since you queried WPSchools, about whether or not they wanted the attention & comments parameters added to the WPSchools template. No one has responded, except myself, and I'm in favor of adding the 2 parameters mentioned above. Probably, I'm the only one who cares, and I would like to have those parameters implemented soon.
 * 5) In addition, for Template:WPSchools, is there a way to prevent a red-linked category showing up for Category:School articles by quality, everytime it gets deleted, due to being a redirect, or does one have to manually re-categorize the quality cats to fall under "School articles" by quality, instead of "WikiProject Schools articles" by quality? --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Old AfC pages working poorly
Old AfC pages are currently working poorly, for example Articles for creation/2007-12-11 where one more section becomes visible each time "show" is clicked at the bottom. The text of each section gets smaller and smaller, and the TOC links only work if the section is visible. My template skills are poor but I guess something isn't closed properly. I see you changed Afc r in. I don't know whether that caused the problem but could you look into it? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ouch, that's terrible. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll look into it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the problem on that page; see here. I replaced all of the ugly s with plain Afc bs using this, and it seems to have worked. However, the problem still persists with the other old archive pages, so we'd better find an easier way to fix it. Anyone have an idea? I'm not writing a bot for this, by the way. It would be too pointless. The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 01:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Importance scheme/sandbox
I've had a go at rewriting importance scheme based on your code for grading scheme. Since I'm not overly familiar with HTML table code, do you think you could have a look to make sure everything is in order? Cheers! PC78 (talk) 23:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made quite a few changes. The main one is to use impn so that any importance scale name can be used (e.g. Priority or priority). Let me know what you think! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:11, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've reverted the navbar on the right, partly because I prefer it like that but also to keep it consistant with grading scheme. A few other queries on the changes made:
 * Categories: Do you think these are unnecessary? I have no opinion myself, I only put them in because grading scheme uses them.
 * Trigger: I put the second trigger in for consistancy with grading scheme. There aren't that many uses of this template though, so I can always do a manual fix.
 * Looks good, though! On a semi-related note, do you think it's possible to push through the changes to cat class? I've already sandboxed a version of cat importance with the reversed order. Regards. PC78 (talk) 09:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

&mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I quite liked the navbar on the right. But more importantly, the large square brackets around the small navbox look pretty ugly to me.
 * I think the categories are unnecessary. If you want to know which projects use Bottom-importance, you can look in Category:Bottom-importance articles. Similarly, the ones on Template:grading scheme could probably be removed, but I didn't want to risk upsetting someone.
 * I wonder if NA- and Unknown-importance need to have a trigger, because I think every project needs these.
 * I think the default wording of some of these importance ratings are a bit weird (with talk of "international notability", etc). I wonder if a simpler version such as the one here might be better?
 * I'll take another look at cat class now.


 * The sandbox version looks good to me. The priority option is a great addition. Morphh   (talk) 16:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've implemented it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Re:WVTP
>_< Oh no....That's the second time I've done that in a two months. I must be getting old :( Thanks for letting me know - I'll watch out for that in the future.  And, thanks for the advice - will do.  Best,  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 03:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:ISO 639 name
apparently we've duplicated efforts here! –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 20:16, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've responded there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:20, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Glad to see you around!
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:AliceBlue; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

—Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say has given you a fresh piece of fried chicken! Pieces of fried chicken promote WikiLove and hopefully this piece has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a piping hot piece, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Bon appetit!

Spread the tastiness of fried chicken by adding {{subst:GiveChicken}} to their talk page with a friendly message. —Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say 14:19, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Looks tasty. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:54, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Adrian Van Anz Article
Hi there, I was wondering if you could give me some pointers on the "not reliable sources" I think the only one not linked is the Vanity Fair article, and the Elemente article is a full five pages on the designer. I couldn't find the Vanity Fair article online, but I subscribe and after reading an article about him years ago and requesting more info I got nothing and decided to try myself. I can keep working on it but if "not notable" is keeping it out I can leave it alone. Not sure what establishes that, but before I wrote the article I read the notable warning and searched to find a lot of pages like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Britten it seems that every source link is to something he or his company created so I thought Vanity Fair, Elemente, Luxist, and Cool Hunting would suffice?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greatlakesgrl (talk • contribs) 04:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Carl Brizzi
Brizzi has an 80% conviction rate in one of the roughest cities in the country.

Brizzi is also rumored to be getting close to announcing his much anticipated politcal future. He is a favorite to run for Congress, or possibly the Governor of Indiana. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Indyfactguy (talk • contribs) 15:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

DYK
Martin, have you edited any of the critical DYK pages in the last few days? I notice you edited the DYK time template some days ago and I wondered if you edited any other pages. DYKadminbot has stopped working and we are trying to figure out why. Gatoclass (talk) 10:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, not really. There is just the Template:DYK-refresh which I was trying to tidy up a bit, but I can't think that could have any effect. It was reverted by someone anyway. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Your attempt to change formatting of Template:AFC statistics
I'll fix it if you want. The Earwig (Talk &#124; Contribs) 14:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Haha, I was just writing a message to you about that! Another thing, do you think you could run your bot on undated created submissions? They should soon be in Category:Undated AfC submissions. It should be the same algorithm as the current one because the creation time of the talk page should be the creation time of the article. I would suggest that you wouldn't need to ask for separate permission for this, but of course it's your judgement. Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I fixed the small template detail (I'm not sure why you wanted to convert the chart to HTML, but okay), and I was planning on doing that undated created submissions task pretty soon. However, I disagree that it won't need approval. This one would work in the talk namespace, and that's much more "open," so to speak, than our own project. From the bot policy:

"Should a bot operator wish to modify or extend the operation of a bot, they should ensure that they do so in compliance with this policy. Small changes, for example to fix problems or improve the operation of a particular task, are unlikely to be an issue, but larger changes should not be implemented without some discussion. Completely new tasks usually require a separate approval request. Bot operators may wish to create a separate bot account for each task."
 * It really is that "but larger changes..." part that get's me worried; I'll file for another approval. The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 14:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, two questions. First, do you want me to get the bot to fill out the new <tt>|reviewer=</tt> parameter that you gave the banner as well? This might be an interesting feature that we could use to see who has accepted the most submissions, et cetera, but I'm not sure if you want to put it on every single page. Second, on a completely unrelated note, what exactly is the purpose of this? I stumbled upon it, and I have absolutely no idea what it does. Thanks, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 15:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Using HTML table code is generally a good idea in templates as it's more robust and all the pipes don't interfere with each other. I know it was working before, but I had no confidence to work with the wikicode without breaking it!
 * Yes, it might be safer to get explicit permission. It does no harm I guess.
 * The reviewer parameter would be great. I'm not sure how easy that would be. Normally it would be the editor who created the talk page, but occasionally the WPAFC gets added later ...
 * That script is explained on Category talk:Uncategorized Afc requests, but it probably needs putting somewhere else! (I think that category is no longer needed anyway.)
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

So we got speedy approval on the bot, and I'll keep it running for the rest of the night to get the task finished. Everything looks fine right now, but there's over 4,500 pages to work with, so it could take a while! Thanks, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 03:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Lepidoptera
Thanks for the edit, but please change the category name to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of lepidopterans. In its standard form "Lepidoptera" should be capitalized like other taxa. The parent category should be renamed "insects" rather than "insecta", but I haven't got around to this. Richard001 (talk) 05:40, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:31, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

About your editprotected edit
Hi, on 22 June 2009, you responded to an "editprotected" request. The request was to add a shortcut, but you instead replaced the existing one. You may have done this because the request contained a typo and gave the incorrect existing one. It listed "WP:MOSDB" (which points elsewhere) when the correct one is "WP:MOSBD". As the section linked to is Dates of birth and death, I feel that the original is more accurately descriptive (WP:MOS Birth Death versus MOS:Dates Of Birth). Plus, most of the other shortcuts on the page, 23, are WP: and only 4 are MOS:. So, would you please restore the shortcut WP:MOSBD (in addition to the current one) for WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). Thanks, <FONT COLOR="green">M<SMALL>AN</SMALL>d<SMALL>ARAX</SMALL></FONT><FONT COLOR="6600FF"> • </FONT><FONT COLOR="999900"><SMALL>XAЯA</SMALL>b<SMALL>ИA</SMALL>M</FONT> 23:25, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Will look into this later today, sorry for the delay. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:19, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:38, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! <FONT COLOR="green">M<SMALL>AN</SMALL>d<SMALL>ARAX</SMALL></FONT><FONT COLOR="6600FF"> • </FONT><FONT COLOR="999900"><SMALL>XAЯA</SMALL>b<SMALL>ИA</SMALL>M</FONT> 19:49, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Cricket
I see that you started Template:WikiProject Cricket/sandbox a couple of weeks ago. Well, I've added in a few more of the options. Looks like it's all done now & just needs a check over. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll have a look. Cheers. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

HUH?
RE this, what discussion? We were never told of this? <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Template talk:ScoutingWikiProject, off and on since last December. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Prior to today, no comments since early Jan, hardly "off and on". It only came back up a few hours ago, hardly due notice. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there anything that's bothering you in particular? Feel free to revert and we can discuss some more. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's just that it was so sudden after 6.5 months of nothing. It does have advantages I'll admit.
 * Category:Scouting templates → Category:Template-Class Scouting articles
 * Category:Scouting categories → Category:Category-Class Scouting articles
 * Category:Scouting image pages → Category:Image-Class Scouting articles
 * Category:Non-article Scouting pages → Category:NA-Class Scouting articles
 * → Category:Portal-Class Scouting articles
 * → Category:Project-Class Scouting articles
 * → Category:Disambig-Class Scouting articles
 * 1) Got a bot to move everything over?
 * 2) Add portal, dab, and project classs pls. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess I could have waited a little longer! But I wasn't seeing any objections to the principle.
 * 1) They'll go automatically, just need to wait for the job queue to catch up.
 * 2) It's done.
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Everything is still in the 4 old categories. Can you list the names of the portal, dab, and project class cats here? <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Partly figured out, what's the dab class spelled like? Job queue needs to catch up.<span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I got a little testy before. I was caught off guard. Nice features with this new setup. It's really late where you live, go to sleep ;-) <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 01:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. And yes, I think I'll sleep now. You're just waking up, right? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 01:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, going to bed soon, US East Coast. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 01:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of DreamHost
An article that you have been involved in editing, DreamHost, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Articles for deletion/DreamHost_(2nd_nomination). Thank you.Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Judas278 (talk) 17:17, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Bot, please archive, thanks. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

class
Just wondering if you have any thoughts on my last comment here? Regards. PC78 (talk) 20:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Responded there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Happy 's Day!
For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it.<span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 00:05, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Nifty trick. You taught me something new - thanks! –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 20:46, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Rollback
Oh sorry. But thanks for letting me know it. I'll use it carefully now. –<font face="Verdana"> Nickin/ShifterBr ( talk ) 19:57, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, good to hear. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:08, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Strange turn of events
Well, completely unrelated to that brief discussion we had about a possible RfA, it seems I've been nominated for adminship by. Now, while Impala is a trustful user and has done good work in the counter-vandalism sector, as well as throughout Wikipedia, he's rather new here. I'm most likely going to accept his nomination, but I'm afraid that his credentials won't bode well with the RfA community, and could potentially be harmful. It is for this reason that I'd like to know if you're willing to co-nominate me. It's entirely optional, of course, and I won't be offended if you decline. But, I think that if I have the support of a trusted admin who has made good choices in the past (1, 2, 3), I'll have a better chance of being successful.

Be aware that I'm not going to start this until early or mid-August (as I told you on my talk page), so if you do accept, please don't write the co-nomination statement just yet. I simply wanted to let you know in advance, and if you accept, I'll inform you when I'm ready to let the RfA begin. Thanks, The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 04:21, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll email you. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:12, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And I've replied by email as well. The Earwig  (Talk &#124; Contribs) 15:44, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Reply
I think having two images of the same topic can be tolerated. (More than two can be a problem though) It is quite common that we have two similiar looking old portrait images of "dead white males" on Main Page. I don't see why we should apply a different standard for planets. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:25, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, having stared at them again, I realize they don't look similar at all. One is reddish and the other is yellowish, with distinctly different marks. Of course, they are both spheres, because they are what they are - planets. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hehe. I think, unless you're an astronomer, they look quite similar :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh yes and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin look quite similar to a non-American... Another reason to re-design US currency (Sorry, no offense... Just trying to be humorous.) --BorgQueen (talk) 15:51, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Just don't put two sheep on the main page because there are probably not many shepherds reading. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

stub template
Hi, I see you've edited the stub template - and it now gets listed in Category:Stubs, which means we'll never see that category empty. Could you fix this? PamD (talk) 18:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi there. Every other stub template lies in the category that it populates so I thought that would be okay. If it's really not okay, then I think I'll have to revert my edit as I can't see any other way to fix it now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:14, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Category:Biography articles with listas parameter
Hi, Martin!

I see you have reprogrammed the WP Biography so that it no longer will populate this category and the category is being depopulated as I write. I assume that this is because of the discussion a few weeks ago on the templates talk page where User:Gurch declared the category useless, User:Magioladitis agreed with him and I indicated why it was useful (it is the only way to find incorrect listas values).

I can find no evidence that anyone has disagreed with me. Neither of the other users addressed the issue again and we were the only ones in the discussion. Although I am biased I consider the consensus that was reached in that discussion to be that the category does indeed serve a purpose and should be kept. There is no discussion of the category's usefulness on the category talk page or on the talk page for Category:Biography articles without listas parameter. Was there a discussion elsewhere that I missed?

It may interest you that when there were 8,911 pages left in the category, 4 pages out of the first 200 pages of the category were sorted incorrectly and 5 pages of the first 200 pages under Z were sorted incorrectly. If the first ratio is valid (it is in keeping with the level of rigor throughout Wikipedia to make that assumption) then roughly 12000 Biography Talk pages are sorted incorrectly and, because the DEFAULTSORT on the article page should match the listas value, as many articles are sorted incorrectly. Add to that number the hundreds of pages that will have invalid characters in their listas values and the error level may grow to a universally unacceptable number.

Will you to reconsider this action?
 * JimCubb (talk) 22:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Change to Template:WikiProject Biography
Hi there. I've left Biography&diff=304018727&oldid=303984436 this comment at the discussion about the change made to Template:WikiProject Biography to depopulate Category:Biography articles with listas parameter. Since you made this change, which I am objecting to, would you be able to comment there? Carcharoth (talk) 22:13, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Just looking into this issue and will respond over there shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Archiving NPWatcher requests
Hi there, you deleted a number of requests from NPWatcher and Autoreviewer request pages with the edit summary "archiving", but I couldn't see you archiving them anywhere, and you hadn't edited the archive pages, so I added them there for you. Hope that's okay, and in future please do add them yourself. As to the rollback page and account creator, these were meant to be archived by User:DustyBot, which we both spotted an error with some time ago, and it seems it has been turned off since the 4th of July. And the bot archive page seems to be pretty difficult to navigate (it is meant to archive to sub-pages of Requests for permissions/Approved & Requests for permissions/Denied). So I haven't yet added the deleted requests there, as I'm thinking it might be simpler to create archive pages in the same way as NPWatcher and Autoreveiwer, do you have an opinion on that? Cheers :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess my edit summary could have been misleading ("removing" would have been more accurate), but what I was actually doing was archiving the requests to the page history. In fact I had no idea that there were any archive pages. (I don't believe that the bot used to add rollbacker requests to any archive.) So I will be sure to do it next time, although it would be better if all of these were consistent. Why do we even need archive pages? It seems unnecessary, as everything can be found in the history if it was really needed. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:41, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I personally believe that archiving all discussions, in a way which is easy to navigate, is important. History isn't easy to navigate, and takes a long time on slower computers (as you have to load each page revision to see if you've got to the request you are looking for yet. Also archiving is quick and easy, so why not? I'd be happy to change all our RFPERM archives to be consistent (i.e. archive all requests, regardless of their result, at a subpage of the request), and to maintain them. Since you seem to think this is a good idea too, I will propose we do this at WT:RFPERM, and notify DustyBot's op. - Kingpin13 (talk) 10:29, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

By all means no stub
Do you seriously think the article Dulari Qureshi still qualifies for a stub. If not then I assume I am talking to a computer programmed bot. Nefirious (talk) 14:10, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. I am not claiming that the article is a stub. I was just objecting to your removal of a relevant WikiProject banner from the talk page. I have no problem with you reassessing the article (e.g. class=start) but please do not remove the WPAFC altogether from the page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:13, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Michael W. Higgins
Thanks for your thoughtful response to my email. I can certainly understand that there will be different interpretations of something so extreme and unusual as a university lockout, but I was troubled by the deletion of factual, citation backed information. Thank you for restoring the section and for explaining the process for further changes.Les Battersby (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Convert Bug report
See Template talk:Convert, there is no bug. Peter Horn User talk 01:41, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there, thanks for letting me know. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:47, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Memorial Plaque.jpg
What is all this about disputed copywrite on this image. I own the copywrite to this image which I have given to Wikipedia for free. As for the image being over eighty years old, well that is nonsense, they did not have high resolution digital photography then. Anyway thanks for trying to resolve this issue about copywrite on the image. It would have been courteous for myself as the original uploader of the image to be contacted before my original version was edited. Regards (A. Carty (talk) 08:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC))
 * Sorry I can't help you, I have no idea about the issues involved here and I'm no expert in copyright. I only got involved when I noticed that an editor had uploaded a completely different image on top of yours. This I reverted leaving your original version intact. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:53, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

New succession
Can you please add my requested new parameter at ? Thanks, Adabow (talk) 05:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:47, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

WT:TFA
Hi Martin,

Thanks for commenting at that thread a few weeks ago. The page was so dead for so long that I forgot I'd written anything there, and only stumbled across your comment today. I've replied, and would appreciate it if you'd take another look. Also, if you have any advice on a more appropriate place to propose this than WT:TFA, I'd appreciate it; in retrospect, that seems like the least active of all pages I could have chosen. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just saw this. Thank you. --Floquenbeam (talk) 03:04, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Olympics project banner cleanup
Hey there. Just wanted to thank for your contribution on your edit to the Olympics project banner. Cheers. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:23, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Glad to be of service. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:43, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Back at It
Chapman93 is back at it, making up discographies on his talk page. TheJazzDalek (talk) 23:01, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * They can only edit their talk page while blocked, so I would be inclined just to ignore it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:28, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. TheJazzDalek (talk) 12:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Weird behaviour
Any chance I can pick your brains here? I'm wondering why the template is throwing up an expression error at Template:Infobox Korean settlement when it is fine on the actual doc page and on all transclusions. The problem seems to be with convert but as far as I can see there is no reason why this should be happening. Thanks in advance! PC78 (talk) 18:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that is pretty weird. I have seen something like this before when convert is used with documentation. See Template talk:Convert/Archive March 2009 and Template talk:Documentation for related discussions. I'll look into this more when I get a chance. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:31, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, that past discussion makes some sense, though if a solution was found there then I have no idea what it was. That discussion suggests that the cause lies with conditional statements such as, which I think explains why this did not occur previously with this template, but only after I converted it to infobox. Cheers! PC78 (talk) 09:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the conclusion was unclear to me also. It might be worth asking User:Droll about it. I think the basic answer is likely to be that convert is quite poorly coded and full of bugs. If you could construct a minimal example of the bug then that would probably help in the debugging process. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:37, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've directed both and  to this discussion. I've isolated the code from one of the problem parameters at User:PC78/Sandbox11, but it seems to be fine on its own. Perhaps the problem occurs when convert interacts with infobox? PC78 (talk) 11:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Think this is beyond my abilities. Upon substituting the infobox template the problem was resolved. I can see no reason why this should make a difference though. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No worries. :) At least it's not a major problem. PC78 (talk) 23:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge Infobox and Infobox2
If you have not strong opinion on the issue being discussed, could you act as an third party in the discussion at Template talk:Infobox. If you do have a strong opinion, then please chime in on either side. I just don't feel good about where this seems to be going. Maybe I'm just being paranoid or too sensitive. If you think I am then please respond here. Thanks. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;
 * I've commented there now. I do think you were over-defensive in your remarks, but I see you have addressed this now. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:18, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So now I'm hoping you can make a comment at WP:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 August_15. The template is currently transcluded on over 700 pages in the main space. I'll see if I and modify Infobox Protected area. I also have another template in the works at Infobox mountain/sandbox. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;

Category:AfC submissions by reviewer
I'm considering nominating this category tree for deletion before it gets too large. Any category tree that has individual users' names in the naming scheme automatically sets off an alarm in my head that it probably isn't a good idea. Can you explain what encyclopedic purpose maintaining these categories has? I guess I don't really see the need to track articles by what user reviewed and created them. Thanks, VegaDark (talk) 02:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's simply to help give some recognition for the work done by members of WP:WPAFC. I don't think the encyclopedic value of Articles for creation is in any doubt. And these categories were made hidden. I hope this clears up any concerns you might have. If not, then perhaps you can clarify what harm you think these are making. Cheers, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The harm is that categories should be used for encyclopedic purposes, not for giving out recognition. I don't want to see categories like this start to pop up on every talk page. "Categories suggested by User:xyz", "Articles significantly edited by User:xyz", "Articles nominated for FA status by User:xyz", even "Articles created by User:xyz" - I don't really see how any of those would be different from this. Couldn't you maintain a list in Wikipedia space at WP:WPAFC instead? I think that would be a much better idea than creating a category scheme that has potentially thousands of new categories to create, and more categories to clutter article talk pages with. VegaDark (talk) 14:49, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I do understand your concern. But the fact that (a) they contain talk pages and not articles, and (b) they are hidden so the only people who can see them are those who have specifically chosen to see "clutter" mean that in this case I think they are doing more good than harm. If you still don't agree then I highly recommend starting a thread on this at WT:WPAFC to see what others think and to bounce alternative ideas. I would certainly request that you use this avenue before going to CfD, which of course is the other option. Best regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:41, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Your suggestion is noted, but I don't really see the point of bringing a discussion there at this point. I'm 100% convinced now that this tree should be deleted, and bringing a discussion there is just likely to garner responses of "I think we should keep it because I like recognition", rather than the more unbiased views I would expect from a CfD discussion. Alternatives to maintaining this tree can be discussed on the CfD, or afterward if deletion is the result. I plan on writing up a CfD for this shortly. VegaDark (talk) 03:14, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Airport
I've commented out the "focus city" on a temporary basis. Looking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports the discussion appears to be ongoing and not really in favour of having the focus city addition. Cheers. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 21:41, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, sure, let the discussion continue. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:43, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Your edit to Template:Asbox
Just to let you know, the last edit to the maintenance categories has caused them to categorise all articles instead of just the templates. Borgarde (talk) 10:37, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sorry about that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Rating for Ron Larson (mathematician) page
Hi Martin,

You initially rated the page for Ron Larson (mathematician) as a "C". There has been a considerable amount of improvement since that time (which was shortly after it was posted). I am wondering if you would consider checking the page again.

SR1111 (Sam) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.20.231.2 (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I will certainly check it out. Give me a couple of days. Have you checked the 6 B-Class criteria? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, it took longer than a couple of days but I have now assessed it and left a few comments. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki synchronization
Hello! Please, continue started discussion. DixonD (talk) 19:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I will when I get a chance. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Asbox images
If you change a stub template to use Template:Asbox, you need to set the pix parameter, or many of the images will become gaudily large. It would be better not to convert it at all. —Centrx→talk • 06:15, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Could you give me an example? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at his recent edits, I'm guessing he refers to this, this and this. I fail to see how any of them could be descibed as "gaudily large", especially when they were using the asbox defaults. PC78 (talk) 09:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes. I suppose his version might look slightly better, but "gaudy" does seem an excessive description. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:11, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Infobox
Not sure if you saw my comment on the talk page, but do you have any more thoughts regarding compatability with Infobox Protected area? At most I think it would just require the addition of another subtitle, but I'm not sure even that is really necessary.

Also, in IE8 the text for the label fields is aligned centrally unlike FF and IE7 where it is left-aligned. I thought this had already been taken care of, but apparently not. Any chance you could take a look? Cheers! PC78 (talk) 23:50, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: On a related note, any ideas on how to centralize the map in Infobox Museum/sandbox (see also Infobox Museum/testcases)? PC78 (talk) 01:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Looked at both of these now. You're a hard taskmaster! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot! :) Regarding the latter, it was looking fine in IE7 but not FireFox. I could get it to float left or right but not centre. I'm guessing some sort of conflict between the map template and Infobox? Anyway, you appear to have cracked it, it looks fine now. PC78 (talk) 16:27, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Protected area
I'm working on a new code for Infobox Protected area and it will not have two of the fields that have raised concern. was the result of a request but apparently never used and I never documented it. It just stayed around like an old ghost. I never did feel good about it. will be merged with. If an editor wants the text bold and italic then they can use wiki markup. IMHO using the word native reflects a POV.

I'm going to remove the deprecated field names from the documentation. There are very few examples of editors using them and no recent examples. I'll leave code alone for a while longer. I will clean the old names as they apear in the maintenance category with AWB. If you have any other concerns I would be grateful if you were to share them with me. Thanks – droll  &#91;chat&#93;
 * Hi Droll. I do have other concerns. The main one is that you seem to be using the live template as a testing zone and although you have a lot of enthusiasm and your hard work is much appreciated, your template coding skills seem to be weak in some areas. I have corrected some pretty awful code in recent days (and "please leave it alone" in an edit summary is not welcome). I would strongly request that you work in the sandbox and do not be afraid to ask someone else to check your code before implementing!


 * Your ideas for this template sound good, and if you could keep me and others informed on the template talk page, we can probably share ideas and help out.


 * By the way, I did find one usage of designation, in False Cape State Park. There may possibly be others. Best wishes, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)


 * See . It seems that the subheaders are used a little more than I initially thought. PC78 (talk) 23:29, 21 August 2009 (UTC)


 * My edits to the live template as I remember concerned the maintenance categories and nothing else. I'll check. My "pretty awful code" did not break anything. Your commenting out the white space was a nice idea but accomplished nothing. If I had used a double line feed that would have been different. Actually the whole template should be rapped in as a include only section. I don't know why you didn't do that as it is standard practice. Your substitution could have waited a little while. There was no rush and it would have been civil to mention what you intended to do it on my take page as I have been the major contributor to the template. I understand that I have no propitiatory rights but civility is expected especially of admin. I only point this out in the hope that it will benefit you. I do not intend to get in to running dispute about this. I will just take a wiki break, except for work in my user space, and leave you to it if your attitude continues. I do not mean that as a threat. Its just not worth it to me. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  01:31, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok. I did ask if you had any concerns but try to be a little more gentle next time. Sorry that I didn't react well to constructive criticism. Thanks for the advice. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  03:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think I have a working version of my idea. The code is at User:Droll/sandbox/code. This needs to be copied in to a sandbox and saved. Mine is at User:Droll/sandbox. After the code is saved in the sandbox the documentation code needs to be added. It's kind of like compiling or linking code in another language. The code needs to formatted a little differently so that the sandbox looks better. You can find test cases at User:Droll/sandbox/testcases and a local copy of the documentation page at User:Droll/sandbox/doc I would be thankful if you could look over the code and I'll try not to react negatively. It would be helpful if you could comment on my talk page. I might also ask Happy Mellon to take a look. – droll   &#91;chat&#93;  05:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi droll, I apologise if my message came across too strongly. I did not mean it in that way and there is no dispute here that I can see. I'm glad you were able to take it constructively as it was intended. I haven't had a look at your code yet, but I will do soon. Best wishes, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:44, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

AfC/JCSS
Hello MSGJ, I noticed that you had put Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Journal of Computer and System Sciences on hold. gives the highest ranking "A*" for JCSS. includes JCSS among 20 "top journals in computer science". shows that we could have dozens of Wikipedia articles that link to JCSS. I think the articles-for-creation request could be safely accepted (and I have no idea how the process works, so I won't try to do it myself). Thanks! — Miym (talk) 00:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right. There were a lot more sources than I first realised. I have now created the article. Feel free to move it yourself next time! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI
I am planning on getting to those xenobot trial pages to add name= (as well as other asbox pages that Xenobot hasn't touched), I've just been really slacking off this task lately ;> Thanks for the assists. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 13:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I thought I might do 100 or so, just for fun :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:25, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Knock yourself out ;> –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 13:27, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Heck, if you want, I'll send you the AWB settings file to convert the remaining 2383 "corner case" non-asbox stubs... Most of them might require manual review... They contain stuff like image captions which don't show as a caption but do translate into an undesirable alt text, which we've decided to eliminate. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 13:29, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure. I'm not going to do all of them, but I'll help out with some. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:32, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Send me an email and I'll shoot back the attachment. I'm actually going to start working on some of them now. Stuck at work on a Saturday, lol. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 13:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not getting much from that attachment. AWB seems to be skipping every file. By all means give me a list of ones which need manual attention. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, some crud had to be removed from the skip criteria, or you're hitting the ones I've hit this morning. The regex neede tweaking as well. I'll give you a more refined list and .XML later, if needs be... –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 14:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * These aren't as complicated as I thought. Might as well just let Xenobot give them another pass. Whatever's left after that is really going to be the corner cases (weird code in weird places, etc.) –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 14:05, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you done testing yet? –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 05:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit summary
Thank you. Lack of edit summaries is laziness on my part. I will try and add them in future Francium12 (talk) 15:40, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

 * I do have one of these. But another is always welcome :) Thanks! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

/mad with power!
Thanks for the new user rights, I appreciate what that says about my contributions. I have a couple of questions though, if I may: Again, much thanks! —  pd_THOR  undefined | 20:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've read up on rollback and am now familiar with what that confers, but what exactly do "trusted editor" rights grant me, if anything?
 * What brought me to your attention as warranting such rights and powers? I'm just curious, is all.
 * Hi pd THOR,
 * There are no "trusted editor" rights, that was just my rationale for applying the rollback right to your account!
 * I just noticed that you didn't have it and thought it might be useful to you on occasion.
 * Sorry I have no further ideas about your image issue. But I'm sure someone knowledgeable will be along soon.
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:06, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I see! Gotcha.  Thanks on all points, again!  —   pd_THOR  undefined | 20:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

$ per square foot conversion
I need a template for converting $/square foot to $/square meter. Can convert be adapted for such a purpose? I need such a template at Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) and I doubt this is the only place it could be useful on wikipedia.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not really that familiar with this template. Hopefully someone will answer your question on Template talk:Convert. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:10, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Michael W Higgins page
I try to stay out of things, but ... the edit by user Markhenick for Michael W Higgins is not at all neutral. He provides anonymous sources (e.g., "some viewed ...", "one student wrote ...") and makes statements not backed up by fact. Many of the user's sources are blogs and facebook - hardly factual. The user also uses opinions of one side of the labour dispute (the management side) as though they are fact. Many of his citations are from a website put up by the management during the lockout and strike that is intended to dispute the union position. It is the position of the management during a labour dispute, not fact, yet this user presents it as though it is neutral and fact. It would be just as inappropriate to use materials from the union's website that were put up during the dispute.

Please remove these edits or the entire section. I see another user has made a complaint under the discussion. Thank you for your consideration. Sal Map (talk) 14:56, 21 August 2009 (UTC)Sal Map

FOLLOW UP: Some references are dead links and have been removed by the blog users. This is a bit of a mess (see for example footnote 32).

Other footnotes provide no evidence in support of claims. See for example footnotes 57, 58, 59. How do these show that "The deal eventually handed down in binding arbitration was almost identical to the University's original offer." They do not. This is biased opinion attempting to masquerade as fact and neutrality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sal Map (talk • contribs) 01:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Michael W. Higgins page
FURTHER UPDATE: I am sorry if I am addressing this problem in the wrong place.

I have found more information on this page that is blatantly false and it violates Wikipedia rules of "verifiability" and "neutral point of view." There are outrageous claims, such as "January 2, 2008: the Union invited the Employer back to the negotiating table. The Employer agreed. Meetings began on January 3, 2008 (with conciliator Rick Merrill, who would later make recommendations against the Faculty Union)." The information about the mediator is completely false. Both sides of the dispute were not permitted by direct order from the mediator (Mr. Merrill) to report anything he said so the user made this up - and thus it is not verified. I can't seem to edit the page and so am writing to you.

Please delete MarkHenick's revisions or allow others to modify. The false information is harmful and, in my opinion, slanders the union. Thank you! Sal Map (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)Sal Map
 * Replied on your talk page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I have responded there as well. Sal Map (talk) 23:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)Sal Map

Barnstar

 * RE User:Hexacord, thanks for reverting that. Ikip (talk) 16:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well thanks very much for the barnstar. In fact, you'd probably find it much quicker to use AWB for delivering that newsletter. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Protected area/sandbox
If your finished with Infobox Protected area/sandbox please leave a note here. I have a completely functional and backward compatible version that uses Infobox that I'd like to move there. I will need to find consensus to move it into the the active template I believe. Thanks. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  16:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome to overwrite the sandbox (although I think my version there did the job pretty well?) I'll certainly take a look at your code when you are ready. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * OK. I put my code in the sandbox. There are probably very few differences between your code and mine although I changed a few things. It looks good to go. I don't understand what happened to the bug with Convert. Its still occurs in my user space. See Droll/bug. There are minor differences when compared with the active template. I padded the name field and the line spacing is a bit different but I think the sandbox version looks fine. This template should be protected. AutoWikiBrowser says it is transcluded on 3180 pages in the main space and I understand the criteria is usually 500 pages. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  03:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Many thanks for correcting the spelling of Pakistan in the article Marwat. However, I just wanted to let you know that the rest of the message didn't belong to me and an unknown IP address tried to insert his contentious demand through my simple edit request. This is just for the records and I have also corrected the same. Xoxo.--<font style="color:#00FF00;background:#191970;"> MARWAT  03:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Metal
Take a look in this template talk page please.--<font face="Tahoma" size="3"> C  anniba loki  03:54, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Banner question
WikiProject Prem Rawat is a new mediation group which doesn't want to be particularly well publicized. All the material in the Category:Prem Rawat is also within the scope of WikiProject Religion/New religious movements work group, and I was asked if it would be possible for the Prem Rawat project to receive assessments on articles relevant to it while keeping only the NRM work group tag visible. So, basically, if the Template:WPReligion could be adjusted to include a section allowing for assessment of the Prem Rawat articles for that group, while only having the banner (and possibly the visible categories) show the relevance of the NRM group, it would allow the members of the Prem project to be better able to keep track of the articles relevant to their subject while not getting too much unwanted outside attention to the ongoing mediation attempt. If you know how to do this, I would be more than grateful. Thank you for your interest. John Carter (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bit confused. If the scope is the same as the NRM group, could they not just use those categories? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

DYKbot missing queue 1
FYI,

DYKbot appears to have been operating properly. At 21:49, August 25, 2009 (UTC) the bot left a message at Administrators' noticeboard reporting a problem with the next queue. Unfortunately by the time I noticed and corrected the problem (the queue was missing the needed DYKbotdo at the top) you had already begun the manual update. Hopefully this information may save you some unneeded effort in the future. --Allen3 talk 23:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, so this was 's fault? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Refactoring of my comment
I've restored it per WP:TALK. I would at least expect a note to me beforehand explaining why. Could you please explain now?

My explanation is simple. I've twice asked him to refactor personal attacks. He's escalated the situation in both cases, continuing with his attacks. --Ronz (talk) 00:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If I may, I suspect MSGJ removed the warning as it is more of a threat, and thus a personal attack, than anything either of you has said so far in that discussion. The argument you and Quiddity are involved in has become petty and ill mannered, but it still does not fall near the realms of personal attacks. Just back away from the argument for a while, let cooler heads prevail.
 * Likewise, your complaint against MSGJ's removal is not quite in the realm of the guidelines you are citing. The WP:TALK guidelines refer to removal of other contributor's comments and content, not standalone warnings. Dinobobicus (talk) 03:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree. How about some WP:AGF? And somehow comments created via templates are different that other comments?  Sigh. --Ronz (talk) 15:53, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Ronz, I think I did explain why I removed it on the talk page concerned. It is clearly inappropriate and will not help to resolve the situation. Quiddity can be quite blunt with his words, but these are certainly not personal attacks. You seem to be looking for some satisfaction from Quiddity, but you will not achieve it this way and your behaviour is becoming quite disruptive. I will remove your comment again and I ask that you leave his talk page alone for a while. Dinobobicus, thank you for the helpful comment. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding:
 * "but these are certainly not personal attacks" Nonsense.  Read WP:NPA.
 * "You seem to be looking for some satisfaction from Quiddity" No, I'm trying to get him to follow basic behavioral policies and focus on improving Wikipedia.
 * "and your behaviour is becoming quite disruptive" Nonsense.  WP:AGF.  I'm the one following WP:DR here.
 * "I will remove your comment again" So now you're edit-warring to remove my comment.  Nice!
 * " and I ask that you leave his talk page alone for a while." Sorry, no.  I'm happy to discuss better ways to deal with Quiddity's disruptive, uncivil behavior.  I expect some AGF when doing so, or some very good reasons for anything else.  So far, I'm not seeing rationale for anything else.  --Ronz (talk) 15:59, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Ronz, I see you are making more friends. MSGJ, you should get to know User:Timeshifter and compare notes. Ikip (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Clearly, you've a lot to learn from our basic behavioral guidelines and policies. --Ronz (talk) 16:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

taken a quick look at the above category, will try to get round to sorting some later (probalby weekend). It looks like those under E are not stub templates most appear to be tests, may be worth someone with experiance of templates outside of stub templates looking at thes (though I think tey probably want the articles written and then these templates deleted) Waacstats (talk) 15:35, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, E and W are waiting for proper support for category opt-out in the template. Hopefully we can fix those soon. It would be helpful if you help with C and N though. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:36, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

DJ Cash Money
please review again. i have made changes. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tippyturtle (talk • contribs) 16:32, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, it is just about possible that this person is notable enough for inclusion. I see a few reliable sources which mention him. Perhaps you could add some of those? However you can't write things like "... is one of the most influential DJ's ..." because it's subjective. Please read WP:WEASEL. Hope that helps &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:37, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

ok here's another shot. please review. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tippyturtle (talk • contribs) 17:08, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay that's looking better. Still needs better sources though. And if you could wikilink it, it would be even better. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:12, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

i added another source and linked it to other wikipedia articles (some which already referece the artist). please take a look. i would think that the LA times, NME, billboard are as reputable as Im going to get for sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tippyturtle (talk • contribs) 17:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm away for the weekend but will check it later. Feel free to resubmit it and another reviewer will look at it. Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Request
Hi, you may not remember but you made a very helpful change at Template:Km2 to mi2. Could you implement the same change at Template:Pop density km2 to mi2? Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 19:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll put this on my to-do list, but I don't think it's going to be quite as simple as the last one. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:27, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

ITN/C
Hi there! When creating at new day at WP:ITN/C, before removing discussion older than seven days, would you mind archiving it in an archive. Thanks (enjoy Cheltenham), <font style="color:#000080;">Cargoking  <font style="color:#f9f9f9;background:#000000;"> talk  09:13, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry I had no idea there was an archive. I'll do it next time. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Caribbean
When you converted WikiProject Caribbean over to WPBannerMeta, you didn't include Bermuda. Just wondering if there was a reason for this (if you can remember back to June). -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's probably because the documentation didn't mention Bermuda. I'll take a look now at the previous version of the template and fix if necessary. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * . Hope I didn't miss any other subprojects ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I just noticed it while checking for unused quality categories to delete & spotted that Category:Bermuda articles by quality was totally empty. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Spanish Louie

 * Whoopie! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Template:Importance
Is effectively orphaned. Rich Farmbrough, 02:59, 3 September 2009 (UTC).
 * Wow, thanks a lot! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Be nice if Importance icon and Importance col were two words each. Rich Farmbrough, 01:46, 5 September 2009 (UTC).
 * I would tend to agree, but I was already reverted when I moved the latter template, so maybe start a proposal over there? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Territorial evolution of the World
I suspect that this talk page needs to be reverted to the redirect, then perma-protected. The article itself has been redir/prot already but I guess the admin forgot to do the talk page too, and it appears that it will continue to be reverted... Arakunem Talk 20:14, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Protecting talk pages is generally not a good idea, in my opinion. If disruption continues then blocking may be an option though, but hopefully it won't come to that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Understood, thanks! Arakunem Talk 20:27, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!
RE: Village_pump_(technical)


 * You're most welcome. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

BLP
Hmmm, hopefully I wasn't too hasty in getting rid of the text subtemplate. It strikes me that it may have been of value to BLP editintro, though it was never actually used there. PC78 (talk) 17:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * True. Shall I restore it? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You could do, I suppose. I don't have any strong feelings on the matter, but it would keep the text for these two templates in sync. PC78 (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Closure
I have a right to withdraw my own nomination which is what I had tried to do. This is what was intended. You people infuriate me the way you push me around. This is bullying, you did not even see I had tried to self-withdraw the nomination yet it is OK to overide my self-withdrawal. All that needed doing was to alter my original closure to a withdrawal. If anyting is disruptive it is the way you all overode me without asking me to reword it to a withdrawal. Do people not have a right to withdraw their own nominations?? Now it looks like I couldn't give a damn about trying to appease the situation and somebody else had to close it as I was unwilling to withdraw. You've shown me completely disrespect by doing this. Then you label my good faith attempts to correct what actual attempt to withdraw I had done initially and dismiss me as some sort of disrputive vandal. What is your reasoning that I reserve no right to withdraw from a nomination I started??? My intention was actually close it myself asap to show that I meant good faith and accepted their reaction. However I got my wires crossed and marked it as a self closure rather than a self withdrawal with keep which is what I had intended. Now I try to at least make it acknowledge that I did try to withdraw it but you rudely strike out my comments and dismiss it yet I am somehow disrupting? Please respond. Himalayan  11:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

As you feel unable to speak to me, I've brought up the issue nominations here. It is avery bizarre thing to do so overide what I had stated as a clear consensu to keep and ended the dispute. Himalayan   12:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * As I tried to explain to you, it is not acceptable to close a discussion by withdrawing your nomination unless there have been no "delete" votes. I suggest you read the link in that post, and then drop this matter. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * OK I see, but I thought the outcome was going to be inevitable. If you believe that the debate should have been allowed to continue because of delete votes then you should have let it resume not cloased it prematurely and overidden me with another close. As it stands nominations typically should last a week. This was closed within a few hours because 99% of people who voted strong keep were those with a self-interest in the template turned up soon after it being reported to protest. Hardly a fair turnout but I just wanted to end the hostility. I feel I have been mistreated amongst all this as people always assumed bad faith, even when I tried to end the conflict myself. I hope you try to understand how I feel. If you look into those who actually requested speedy keep you'll find they are all AU wikipedians who turned up to protest, with virtually no neutral comments on both templates. Technically, if my own withdrawal was not acceptable, this TFD should still be open to give a more fairer turn out after the initial protest. This site at times can be very unfair. Formal TFDs and AFDs without withdrawal should last much longer than a few hours that this did.  Himalayan   12:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I did not close the discussion. That was . His reasons for closing the debate earlier are detailed on the ANI thread.
 * I have no assumed no bad faith towards you. I understand what you were trying to do. But you should have listened to the many people who told you why it wasn't appropriate.
 * I have no comment on the actual discussion itself, except to say that I agree that TfD is not the best place for these discussions about deprecating templates to take place.
 * I would like to ask you again to drop this now.
 * Kind wishes, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, sorry to go on at you but your comment about me disrupting annoyed me as I believe I have a point. I think it is clear something is wrong here. If my withdrawal is unacceptable, I accept your reason, then it should have been allowed to continue for that very reason, especially if you take into account the people who influenced the quick outcome. To me that is not a formal, fair procedure and the only way that nominations should be closed within a few hours if the turn out is clearly in self-interest rather than neutral is for the nominator to withdraw. Anyway, I have articles about the Valley of Kings (Tibet) to write..... Himalayan   12:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

blocking User: 75.47.135.49
I rolled back my warnings to this user because he kept deleting a large amount of text from an article without leaving a reason why. After looking at why he was doing it, I realized to was a cat page and not an article Category:X1. I also saw that it looked like test data posted to the wrong page. Also, it shows his edits are less then two days old and he may not know to do this. I also rolled back the warnings I left believing these were good faith edits User talk:75.47.135.49. I believe he deleted the warnings because he felt they were unjust, which seems to be the case. If this is the reason for the block, I ask you to remove it. It it is for another reason, then disregard this. Thank you for your time &spades; B.s.n.   &hearts;  R.N.   13:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The block was made by not myself, and was because of [ this]. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:22, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. Ok nevermind then. Thanks &spades; B.s.n.  &hearts;  R.N.   13:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, wow ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ITN
What do you think about my tweaking? I would prefer not to mention the country's name twice in one blurb. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I think this is the best wording. Thanks! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw, it seems that you've skipped some of the posting process... Could you fix it? --BorgQueen (talk) 15:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Re:Category:X1
Thanks, I wasn't aware at the time that it was a test page and seeing as how the IP just undid my reverts after blanking the page with no reason given whatsoever I miscontrued the edits as acts of pure vandalism, I did warn the IP though but instead of messaging me or using the edit summary they just undid my revisions. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 21:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ITN
Thanks for posting. I hope by "persistent" it wasn't misread in a negative or disruptive way (if so I apologise). I was trying to make sure each type of sport had a fair chance (I did the same for badminton, snooker, table tennis, etc.) One thing though, it should be "beat" instead of "beats" in this case but I'm guessing "beats" is the American way? -- can  dle &bull; wicke  13:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Not at all, that's what the smiley after it was supposed to imply. All ITN items are written in the present tense, even though they happened in the past! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:03, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah sorry, yes I see the smiley now that I've had time to reread it properly. :) By "beat" I meant there are possibly some differences between American and Hiberno-English. I would phrase it as "X beat Y" when it comes to two groups or teams even in the present tense. I think the same is done for British sports, perhaps "defeat" would be a better choice of word as in this cricket example I've unearthed. Indeed, that example itself replaces a rugby ITN which uses the same format with no "s". Thanks again. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  16:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * See here. Another has enquired. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  19:01, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I did misunderstand. My understanding and usage is that a team is a singular thing. Anyway I've changed it. Cheers, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:20, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you (again). -- can  dle &bull; wicke  19:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Think I've made the mistake again. You would claim that "Germany beat England" is preferrable to "Germany beats England"? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that's how they say it in England but I see it has been changed now. Do you think I've made too many nominations? I'm not sure how to proceed. I believed all to be justified... -- can  dle &bull; wicke  13:28, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you!
Thank you for the Kakapo award! It's much appreciated. And while I'm on your talk page, a belated apology from me for the heated arguments over asbox :) Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:38, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I hoped you would like it. I saw a programme on the television about these amazing birds. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Many thanks for posting the ITN credits to me, I do like to keep track of them! - Dumelow (talk) 14:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

New ITN image format
I've noticed that you have changed the image format. The problem is that now I don't know if I can still use the "border" parameter. Is it possible to use it? --BorgQueen (talk) 16:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've fixed this now. (Wasn't sure if it was being used.) Hope that's okay now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a question for you. Is this removing/restoring items to "improve main page balance" necessary? Given that DYK updates every 6 hours is it not a little futile to try to maintain this balance using ITN? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:32, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is not futile at all, because when DYK is updated I or someone else (usually David Levy) can adjust it again with a few clicks, if necessary. It is a fairly convenient way of maintaining Main Page balance, I think, and actually I do the same trick on the OTD section as well. Is there any reason that made you think it might be unnecessary, besides the DYK update interval? As far as I recall this is the first time anyone ever questioned this. --BorgQueen (talk) 18:39, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you.
Thank you for the welcome message on my talk page. --Carriden (talk) 18:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Ron Larson (mathematician) Page
Hi Martin,

Thanks for taking the time to review this page.

I tried to attend to each of your comments.

(1) Moved two of the long lists of books to the end of the article so that the prose is not so disrupted.

(2) Removed two sentences about "becoming more involved".

(3) Changed the title of the section "Commitment to Education" to "Continued Involvement with Education".

Personally, I liked the original heading title more ... I got it from another Wikipedia page about a famous Calculus Author. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Thomas. But, I am happy to take the suggestion of someone with so much experience in Wikipedia.

Thanks again,

Sam (SR1111) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sr1111 (talk • contribs) 14:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Food and drink Articles by Quality and Importance
Martin, can you amend the Template:WikiProject Food and drink so that it populates both combination of Quality and Importance categories. It's the example given in Template:Articles_by_Quality_and_Importance documentaiton. Would attempt myself but that template is to complex for me to understand at the moment. I doubt if bottom is actually required, so you don't have to do that. I'll create all the categories when your done. SunCreator (talk) 12:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, has there been some discussion with the Food and Drink project about this? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:01, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Checking with User talk:Jerem43 now. SunCreator (talk) 14:56, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

2009 Sierra Leone shipwreck
Hello, what do you think of the 2009 Sierra Leone shipwreck nomination from several days ago? There are a lot of people dead or missing and unfortunately it seems to have been overlooked. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  14:00, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there. I wouldn't mind it going up, but I don't see enough support currently. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:34, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Articles for creation
There are a number of failed AFC submissions in. I was going to go through them and remove the WikiProject Biography banner, replacing it with BLP. I'm not sure if it's ever been discussed before, but I don't see any reason for these pages to be tagged for the project. Thought I'd double check with you, since I know you're involved with AFC. PC78 (talk) 14:42, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right, there's no reason for them to tagged with WPBIO. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:02, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. You may want to check Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Auckbaraullee, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/LaPret (rapper) and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Thyago; I noticed that these pages didn't have the AFC submission template. Also, do you have any idea what's going on with the WikiProject Biography at WikiProject Chinese-language entertainment/Templates? PC78 (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no idea. But I note that this problem doesn't happen with the previous version of WPBS, so if you find any more examples like this then I'll be reverting that change. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Would that be related to the switch to HTML code? It also doesn't happen with WikiProject Biography/sandbox, so it could be a problem for non-meta banners. PC78 (talk) 14:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess so, but don't understand why. And if you try the same code in a different namespace there are no problems. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:57, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * (e/c) Curious: moving WikiProject Biography further down the shell makes the problem go away. Same thing happens if WPCHINA (another non-meta banner) is moved to the top. There's no such problem at Talk:Martina Hingis, though. Odd. PC78 (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Some more background to this may be found at Template talk:WikiProject Biography. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:12, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

See Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell, if you haven't already. It seems this problem with the banner shell is occurring in Talk namespace. PC78 (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Reply needed
can you reply to Template_talk:Infobox_Bilateral_relations thanks 86.42.86.114 (talk) 17:19, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Still need a little help
Your edits fixed almost everything, except one little thing... Template talk:Infobox Former Country &mdash;   .`^) Paine Ellsworthdiss`cuss (^`.   10:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll reply over there shortly. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I know you're busy, Martin, so this is just a gentle reminder to see if the right Infobox on the Template:Infobox Former Country/testcases page looks okay in FireFox, and if it does, to alter the 2nd width down to 92%. This slight change will completely resolve the Disappearing Flags problem.  Thank you in advance!
 * &mdash;  .`^) Paine Ellsworthdiss`cuss (^`.   04:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Image flip
Hello! While having a human subject face toward the page's text is stylistically preferred, such modifications of photographs generally are frowned upon (because they reduce accuracy and distort reality). And in this instance, a logo and text were flipped too. —David Levy 06:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, okay. Thanks for letting me know. I didn't notice the logo! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:29, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, perhaps you can tell me something. Is there any easier way to transfer an image on Commons, than downloading and re-uploading it here? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Why would you want to upload an image from Commons here? PC78 (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The purpose is to enable local protection (to prevent vandalism while the image appears on the main page). —David Levy 23:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Could the image not just be protected at Commons? (Eh, don't mind me and my questions!) PC78 (talk) 23:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure you could, if you happen to be a Commons administrator. Then it's easy. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I'm being hopelessly naive then, but does that level of coordination between Wikimedia projects not exist? PC78 (talk) 10:35, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Not at all. User rights on one project are not relevant to other projects. Although there are several admins in both places, I believe. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I'm not aware of an easier method. Perhaps someone has written a script to automate the process, but I'm not familiar with one.  —David Levy 23:05, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, just thought I'd check. Sometimes the images have old deleted versions on en.wiki which can just be restored. Otherwise it's a long process. Thanks anyway &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
... for this. I tend to be a little hasty :) How did you notice though? ≈ Chamal talk ¤ 09:34, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Haha, you were in one of our many tracking categories. I've just made some big changes to the code of this template so I'm watching these categories like a hawk :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:35, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah... I'll try not to mess up again :D Trouts self. ≈ Chamal talk ¤ 09:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey.
What do you think so far? - Zhang He (talk) 18:55, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

So...
How am I doing? Do you see any edit that you do not agree with since our talk? - Zhang He (talk) 00:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * All your recent reversions look fine! And your user warnings all look appropriate too. You seem to be marking 95% of your edits as "minor" - is that intentional? Don't forget to use edit summaries as much as possible. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:44, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I have Mark all edits minor by default checked off. Is that against the rules on certain edits? - Zhang He (talk) 15:18, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Table
Regarding this edit, I recall you had removed it before and someone restored it, saying it is "very convenient shortcut". I would tend to agree with the editor that the table is useful because we can check the current status of the ITN template and edit it while browsing the candidates page, without having to go to the template page. What do you think? --BorgQueen (talk) 14:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I had a feeling that I had removed it before, and I did look through the history to try to see if this was the case. So apologies for that. I think I might move all the top stuff to a separate /header file so that this doesn't happen again. I don't have a strong feeling about the table, but the alignment was all out on my monitor and it looked pretty bad. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅, and table replaced. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

WPBannerMeta QUALITY_SCALE award

 * Wow, thanks a lot! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you may want to protect Template:WPBannerMeta/b -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well spotted. ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:05, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, but I think I may have an issue. The B-class checklist information has dissapeard from WPAVIATION. See Talk:1986 Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 crash. -  Trevor  MacInnis   contribs  21:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:52, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's completely messed up my method for detecting auto-demotion to Start-class. Anyway hopefully, and sorry for the inconvenience. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:04, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, I'm still amazed at how you guys have created such a complex and robust template. -  Trevor  MacInnis   contribs  01:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

WOS, I think passing QUALITY_SCALE=subpage on /bchecklist would have been sufficient, because a subpage mask is the only way, currently, that a B-checklist can demote to Start-class? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

My talk page.
I've replied on my talk page. - Zhang He (talk) 15:30, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

José Manuel Barroso at ITN
Hello, would you like to post the José Manuel Barroso nomination from several days ago before it runs out of time? Thank you in advance. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  22:52, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I just had a look, and I fear it is too late now :( &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:33, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Banners
There is still a FULL_QUALITY_SCALE in a hook on Project Catholicism. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅, thanks. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

In case you didn't see my previous message...
I replied to you on my talk page on Sunday. - Zhang He (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I did see your reply, but I don't have anything to add at the moment. I'll reply more fully when I have time. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * All right, thanks. I'll be waiting for it. - Zhang He (talk) 17:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject China banner
Hi, I've finished off a new banner for WikiProject China in the sandbox. Could you have a look & see if it's ok and then copy it over to live? Thanks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:51, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To keep discussion centralised ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Maintenance tag templates
Hi MSGJ, I think that I fixed the code for Template:Inappropriate tone, and I replied at Template talk:Inappropriate tone explaining such. I'm not really sure how to test it to ensure that it works. Really, I think that this change ought to be standardized across all of the Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates, or at least as many as could use it (those currently including a talk page link, at the very least). I don't really know of a good way to propose such a thing other then asking someone who can make the change and would likely be interested in making the change (such as yourself). — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 00:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I've now replied on the template talk page. For a general discussion about more sweeping changes, you could try Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes and/or the village pump. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:00, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Good advice re:Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes, Thanks! If I can get this darn template fixed I'll post something there. — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 17:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Errors
In reply to this, do you mean like I did here, here and here? Tbh, it all depends what time it is when I go to bed, since I don't normally manage to spot mistakes while I'm asleep! <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 18:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * True, but if you looked at tomorrow's main page your corrections would be live for a whole day. And if you work two days ahead and you will probably be able to make most of the changes yourself. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:03, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

AFC/status documentation
Hey MSGJ. I only just noticed that the example status templates at Template:AFC status/doc are showing the actual number of current submissions instead of the sample number, I believe since you changed the code back in June. Not a serious issue, but I thought you might know how to fix it. I'm sitting here scratching my head over it. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, nice to see you back! I've fixed the template. Sorry about that, I removed a parameter which I didn't realise was being used. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thankspam
I shall try to use it prudently. --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Check, please!
Can you do me a favour and check what I've done at WikiProject Lists and WikiProject Lists/class? I think you may have unintentionally botched things when you tidied the custom mask. ;)

Also, can you have a look at what I've been attempting at Cat class/sandbox and Cat class/column/sandbox? Clearly I'm doing something wrong because it doesn't work properly, but for the life of me I can't see what.

Thanks as always! :) PC78 (talk) 18:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes I may have botched it, but the previous version was a mess. I also decided that the namespace detection of other classes was probably copied from another masks and not intentional, since it was classifying the additional classes by namespace but not by parameter. But, assuming it was intentional, your version looks fine :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, there's some funky stuff going on in that banner (no unassessed articles?). I left some comments on the talk page and left a note at the project, but no reply so far. PC78 (talk) 15:49, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed your cat class thing. But that doesn't necessarily mean I think that this is a good idea :S &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it was Dinoguy's idea, not mine (though I do think it's worthwhile doing). ;) You can certainly voice your lack of enthusiasm when I get around to proposing it, though. :) Cheers! PC78 (talk) 00:16, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Typhoon Ketsana
Posted a personal photo. --Exec8 (talk) 15:50, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Palau shark sanctuary
Palau is ready under September 25. Also, the Aruba election above it appears ready too. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  10:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, how rude of me. I forgot to say please. :D -- can  dle &bull; wicke  12:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Candlewicke. I do happen by WP:ITN/C occasionally and will post an item if I see the support. But I am busy doing other things as well. I guess it can be frustrating when there are good nominations which are not being posted. We do desperately need more admins who are active in this area. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I know only too well. ;) I'm going to ask someone else as the posting of the Aruba nomination has now been requested by another user as well. Aruba and Palau don't often get a chance so I'll see who I can find. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  21:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello.
Sorry to ask you again, but can you reply on my talk page? It's been more than two weeks, and I'd like to know if my edits have been good enough to earn rollback rights back. Sorry, I'm not trying to be pushy, I'm just a little anxious about it. - Zhang He (talk) 22:59, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is an admin making protected edit requests?
I can answer this question for User:Gadget850. Because he feels he is not fluent in the intricacies of this template. Debresser (talk) 18:22, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, but this is not the purpose of the editprotected template. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge templates
So far you have done my editprotected request for only one of the three templates of the merge-trio. Was that per way of test? Debresser (talk) 15:21, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it's my fault. It put all three of them on Template:Mergeto/sandbox. Debresser (talk) 15:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you put the warning on the top, while I had it one the bottom. I like your way better. The other two templates are Template:Mergeto and Template:Mergefrom. Debresser (talk) 15:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I had no idea that you wanted me to make that edit to three different templates, because you didn't tell me! You also didn't mention that you had the code in the sandbox, so I had to decide by myself where to put it :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The talkpage is for all three remaining merge templates (all other merge templates have recently been redirected to these). I am so used to considering them as one. Perhaps I'll work on a united template. Good idea you just gave me. Debresser (talk) 15:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay I'll do them now. Please bear in mind that I am not a mind-reader ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:42, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Stub Talk Page templates
I am receiving conflicting advice about these templates from yourself and PC78 (talk). Until such time as I receive clarification about these templates, I will be creating stubs without talk pages.

When it becomes clear which template is actually the one needed, I will return to those stubs and create their talk pages.

Given the fact there are 500 to 600 of these potential stubs, I would much prefer a "copy and paste" template.

Georgejdorner (talk) 19:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Plants
I notice that the transclusion of this banner at Template messages/WikiProject banners is defaulting to Project-Class. Is this behaviour intentional (I notice that you wrote the custom mask)? PC78 (talk) 00:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's because it uses the SUBJECTSPACE rather than simply the NAMESPACE which other ones use. I don't think it really matters; feel free to change it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 04:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion you participated in
I got to the root of the problem and suggest a change to the talkback template at Template_talk:Talkback. Debresser (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

ITN/C
Would you mind updating ITN? There is a pile of stuff waiting to go up! Thanks, <font style="color:#000080;">Cargoking <font style="color:#f9f9f9;background:#000000;"> talk  16:49, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I will when I get a chance. I only look over there occasionally and I'm pretty busy currently. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, there's no rush. I will find someone else :). Thanks, <font style="color:#000080;">Cargoking <font style="color:#f9f9f9;background:#000000;"> talk  17:16, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Problem
This recent edit of yours seems to be the reason that Template:WikiProject China sorts certain categories into Category:Category-Class Chinese cinema articles. That goes against the talkpage discussion at Template_talk:WikiProject_China, and the subsequent edit. Do you have any solutions? Debresser (talk) 00:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be just about possible to change this behaviour, but I would not recommend it. All other China workgroups use "articles" rather than "pages" for this and at least 99% of all WikiProjects now follow this convention. Films are also likely follow suit shortly. (I realise that it is not intuitive and occasionally proposals are made to change it, but I think a systematic approach is needed, not a piecemeal fix.) Regards, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. I have copied it onto Template_talk:WikiProject_China as well. Debresser (talk) 11:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Tlsp
Hi Your input would be valued at Template talk:Tlsp Cheers, Amalthea  23:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay I'll check it out when I get a chance. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Unassessed Kerala articles
Hi! What's up with Category:Unassessed Kerala articles? I noticed it in the CSD backlog, and it seems you've just undeleted it with the speedy tag still on. Is the category going to be used for something? I removed the speedy tag for now so that the category doesn't get deleted. Jafeluv (talk) 15:15, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. Yes, I forgot to remove the speedy tag. I think it will be used soon because I am planning to update the WP India banner. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:46, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine
'as the big warning says, this template should not be used here' Sorry, where was warning? don't want to make the same mistake on other articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SpringSummerAutumn (talk • contribs)
 * Don't worry about it! If you look at you'll see a big yellow box which says The WikiProject banner below should be moved to this article's talk page. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Ideas.
Hey, just curious. Why does it take you so long to reply? Are you, like, extremely busy, or do you not see my replies?

Anyway, what are these ideas of yours? Respond either here or on my talk page. - Zhang He (talk) 23:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Wayne Eder
Hello! I read the comments on Wayne Eder and the submission. I believe that he has made significant contributions to the United States Fire Service. What else would you like to see? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Trainingchief (talk • contribs) 16:18, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Wayne Eder
Hi. Thank you for your comments. I submit the following for your review:

http://osfm.fire.ca.gov/training/training_instructorsdata.php (use drop down menu to find Wayne Eder) http://www.lrc.fema.gov/ (enter Wayne Eder on search) http://peter.cyberhungary.net/news/Oct16_quake70.htm http://www.city-data.com/forum/arizona/235921-looking-buy-good-cheap-land-around-2.html http://legacy.co.mohave.az.us/pw/Emergency%20Mgmt/LEPC/PDF/LEPC%20Contact%20List.pdf http://resource.co.mohave.az.us/File/PlanningAndZoning/Metal_Bldgs_Plan_Review_Requirements.pdf http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jan-11-Wed-2006/news/5302049.html

Please advise if this is enough or any suggesstions to get this article published. Thanks!!! 107ps (talk) 23:17, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I will take a look and get back to you soon. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:07, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

British royalty articles
Might be as well to replace yes with yes rather than remove it outright.

(unrelated) Don't suppose you know much about svgs? PC78 (talk) 21:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Too late!
 * No, nothing, sorry.
 * &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:31, 11 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm an amateur Inkscape-ist, when the need arises. What about SVGs?  Happy ‑ melon  21:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I've been dabbling with Inkscape myself over the weekend and created an updated version of the WikiProject Biography icon at File:Crystal personal2.svg. I'd like to have the original icon updated with this new version, but the comment I got here suggests that there is something wrong with the file. I have no idea what that comment means, but since I've only edited the file in Inkscape this is presumably something I've done and hopefully something I can fix. I have asked the user on Commons for clarification, but am still waiting for an answer. Do you have any ideas? PC78 (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

PC78, In your svg file, edit it with notepad and remove. <inkscape:grid type="xygrid" id="grid4628" visible="true" enabled="true" /> -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:35, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Will do. How do I avoid that in future? PC78 (talk) 22:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Problem with WPBio note1
See here. Cheers, –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black;">talk 20:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Listas issue too, if you didn't notice the below commentary. I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure a fix out =) Now that you're here, I'll hand it off to you. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black;">talk 20:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hopefully fixed that now. I think I'll leave PC78 to sort out the other issue! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:50, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Gents

 * Well thanks very much, although I can't take much credit for the WPBio template. And I think WOSlinker should get the other half for WPIndia ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

FUR templates
As per you request - in sandbox. I have two more requests on FUR templates. Shall I add them there for you to copy as well? Debresser (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done for Template:Album cover fur. Debresser (talk) 23:34, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done for Template:Logo fur. Debresser (talk) 23:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ The changes have been made and are working as expected. Debresser (talk) 06:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

21st-century classical music
I would be interested to get your feed back on this page that I created. There are several questions surrounding it's validity on Talk:Contemporary classical music and Talk:21st-century classical music. Thanks. Jubilee♫ clipman 03:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

What do you think?
I've gotten more active now in reverting vandalism without rollback rights and Huggle. How are my chances at getting rollback rights back now? - Zhang He (talk) 03:51, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm a bit busy now, but I will get back to you sometime this week. I see you've had a few complaints on your talk page. Just make sure you take them constructively, okay? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have been. And okay, I'll be waiting. - Zhang He (talk) 15:37, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:ITN/C
Hello, I know you might be busy but if you wish could you please look at the John O'Donoghue nomination under 13 October? ITN has been quite slow this week and there was even one day without any nominations at all. -- can  dle &bull; wicke  08:35, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I have little time for Wikipedia these days and so my ITN work has stopped for now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:03, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Template bugs...
If you have a moment could you have a look at Cite IETF? I've been working on it for several days and it is shaping up pretty well. I've added a Cite IETF/testcases subpage and right now 3 of the test cases are failing. Test case 8 fails to insert a  in the text passed to "At ="; "p. 7sec. 3.1."; works in test case 5 where an empty pages = is not present. Test cases 11 and 12 fail to add the "#page-7" anchor to the url passed to "IncludedWorkURL ="; works in test cases 1 and 2 where an empty section = is not present. I know this has something to do with nested parameter checking with #if but I can't remember now how to correct this particular issue. I've also tried #ifeq but that had other issues due to whitespace. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC) --Tothwolf (talk) 08:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I finally remembered how I worked around this issue before :)

Thank you for fixing the syntax of my monobook.js
Best regards, BNutzer (talk) 20:03, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Question Regarding Customizing Signature
I have a question regarding how to customize your signature. Could you please tell me the steps on how to make a new signature? Oh, and thank you for the welcome that you left on my talk page! I really appreciate it! --Jhessian Zombie (talk) 18:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you can find this information at WP:CUSTOMSIG. Best regards &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Thankyou for the vandalism reverts on my user page! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:Biography articles with listas parameter
I saw your note about this on the WPBM conversion page. You may recall that an editor who had it in his power to depopulate this category and did not understand a need for it changed the reprogramed the banner to depopulate it. When I noticed that the category was shrinking I objected and managed to locate the admin who had caused the category to be created who also objected to the depopulation of the category. Therefore, you do not have consensus to eliminate the category. There appears to be a pair of editor / programmers, you and PC78, who are determined to destroy what you do not understand.

Consensus is not a majority. It is not even an overwhelming majority. To have consensus there must be complete consent with no dissent. There is serious dissent.

JimCubb (talk) 21:46, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but you're wrong. Consensus can be difficult to define, but it certainly does not mean unanimity. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit late to the discussion, again, but could you point me to where this was most recently discussed? Carcharoth (talk) 13:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been continuing in the same place, i.e. Template talk:WikiProject Biography. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid my patience with this issue is wearing rather thin. The sandboxed changes look good to me, so it would be good to make an update and hopefully we can all move on. The new category should serve the same purposes as the old one but with the added benefit of completeness. PC78 (talk) 22:34, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's amazing the things which people get worked up about. The reason I suggested using a new category is that you're going to lose all of your subcategories in Category:WikiProject Biography articles. Unless you want to give them all a sortkey of * or a space or something. I'll look through the other changes later today and then update. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, yeah, each subcategory should have a sortkey which keeps it on the first page. It is the obvious place for a top level category. PC78 (talk) 15:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Would you mind describing the changes you have made and the reasons for that? I am finding it a little difficult to work out what you've done just by looking at the diffs and edit summaries. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, you shouldn't pay too much attention to my edit summaries in the sandbox, it's mostly just me jabbering away to myself. :) Lemme see...
 * Biography%2Fsandbox&action=historysubmit&diff=319944656&oldid=319941194 This is just me cleaning up after myself. The filmography parameter was a late addition and I forgot to add it here, while the perr review & A-Class checks were pretty much redundant to the checks in the hooks.
 * Biography/sandbox&diff=prev&oldid=320885288 This should be pretty obvious, though perhaps it should go by pagetype and filter out dabs and redirects too?
 * Biography%2Fsandbox&action=historysubmit&diff=320889587&oldid=320885288 This is me revising the last minute code I wrote for the auto parameter, which was pretty poor. Support added for size in anticipation of a future bot run to assess articles in the <1500 category, and a rename of that category to correct a typo.
 * Biography/sandbox&diff=next&oldid=320889587 This moves the code for notes 9 & 10 down to the category hook at the end, since they are just categories and not notes per se.
 * Biography/sandbox&diff=next&oldid=320891507 Ditto for the priority replacement category, plus the addition of a subcategory for articles with two or more work groups. The pagesize check was modified to add a tracking category for articles rated Start or higher (a suggestion by Xeno).
 * And that's it. Which reminds me that the changes to note 1 need to be duplicated for each work group, which I'll see too now. PC78 (talk) 16:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay.
 * This is a probably a question for JimCubb. Do you want the top level category to include disambiguation pages and redirects as well, or just articles?
 * It seems to me that size is still not supported, because it won't trigger note 1. Or maybe I'm missing something. You could probably make the code a bit clearer if you put a switch on auto first ...
 * Okay, but goodness knows why you decided to renumber everything because it makes for an awful diff!
 * Ditto.
 * What about the priority parameter replacement category? I made an adjustment. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding #3, size only needs to work if Stub, so in that respect it's covered by yesno. Regarding priority replacement, I had that covered in cat 4 so you don't need both if you're going to stick by the change. Depopulating the existing category doesn't make much sense to me though, because it's still something that will need to be resolved sooner or later. PC78 (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Re: #2 — I believe disambiguation pages and redirects had been excluded from the Category:Biography articles with listas parameter. It would be nice if they could be excluded from whatever replaces it.  JimCubb (talk) 23:03, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I've changed MAIN_CAT so it goes by pagetype rather than namespace. I'm also in the process of sorting out the sortkeys for the subcats of Category:WikiProject Biography articles; looking at the category talk page, it appears that it was at one time used as a top level category anyway . PC78 (talk) 23:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't Run Away (RE: Category:Biography articles with listas parameter)
The discussion has continued. User:Roman Spinner has not only rejoined the discussion but has provided examples of the use of the now depopulated category. User:PC78 posted that he had established a category of all WP Biography articles but then admitted that he had not done so. JimCubb (talk) 04:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Why have you abandoned the discussion?
 * What reason do you have, other than personal preference, for depopulating the category and attempting to delete it?
 * When will you repopulate the category?
 * For goodness sake will you just calm down? If you look at the post above you'll see that there are some other changes in the sandbox which need to be checked. While I don't doubt that there are fine I do need to satisfy myself if I am making the edit. Hopefully I'll have time to do this today. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:29, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Removal of listed volunteers
I cleaned up the list of participants at WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Participants, removing all indefinitely blocked users from the list. Doing so gives the project a more professional feeling, since nobody wants to have blocked users part of the project. Just a random tangent, I did the same thing when I was cleaning up abuse response. There were tons of vandals listed as volunteers at the time I came. Anyway, do you have any objections to my removal of the blocked users? Thanks =D <font color="#00AA11">Netalarm <font color="#FF9933">talk  04:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, if you reply, could you do so on my talk page? Thanks. <font color="#00AA11">Netalarm <font color="#FF9933">talk  04:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, that's fine with me. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:08, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Anonblock
Good catch. I've updated it to reference http://toolserver.org/~acc/. -- Avi (talk) 16:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:21, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

October 2009
Please refrain from making test edits in Wikipedia pages, such as those you made to Template:WP1.0/sandbox, even if you intend to fix them later. Such edits appear to be vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. Thank you. —Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say 07:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol, the whole purpose of sandboxes is for test edits ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, my goodness. I am so, so sorry, Martin. I got all "Twinkled" up. Something told me I knew this "MSGJ" dude; I'm used to seeing "Martin" on your signature block, not MSGJ; regardless, you are correct, and I think I meant to revert the edit on another page, not that sandbox. Oops! —Mr. E. Sánchez (that's me!)What I Do / What I Say 07:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, I figured it was a mistake! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Sandbox notice
Thank you, Martin! That's the sandbox notice I was searching for and couldn't find. Appears that it was automatically put on the page before your changes..., either by the doc or the bannermeta. And I forgot the "noinclude" tags as well. So thanks, and maybe this will help the bots? &mdash;  .`^) Paine Ellsworthdiss`cuss (^`.   09:11, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You are correct, WPBM does add the notice automatically on sandbox versions. What do you mean about helping the bots? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:07, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Signpost article
Can I poke you to add a few comments to Kirill's Signpost article? I don't want it to be all me... <tT>:D</tt> Happy ‑ melon  11:02, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

D&D banner
The D&D banner is currently split into a main & core. While that may have been needed when it was first developed. It looks to me as though there isn't really any need to split it in two anymore. Thoughts? -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If you can then sure. But if I recall correctly, the problem was doing the quality/importance intersection categories with a custom importance scale. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:28, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Now I see why hooks/qualimpintersect wasn't used. I've copied over that hook code and made a custom version (D&D/qualimpintersect and D&D/qualimpintersect/core). I'll have a look at de-coreing the banner later on. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there anything wrong with how it's currently set up? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:10, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * No. It's just more complex than all the other banners. I won't be doing anything with it soon. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Infobox German location
Hi, thanks for updating the Infobox German location. I see I missed one vertical bar and an error in the autocategorization, and fixed it in the sandbox version. Could you replace it? Markussep Talk 20:00, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

MW:SpamProtectionText
Thanks for commenting here. There's been opposition, though, and I'd like to hear your opinion. Would you take a look? Cheers, Waldir talk 09:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi there. I don't really have much of an opinion I'm afraid. Maybe try somewhere like the village pump for more input? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:09, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not active enough to follow a discussion on VP. I might launch the seed though, maybe it gets somewhere :) Waldir talk 16:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

A recent edit you made might have inadvertently messed something up
Hey there, it would seem that this edit you made to tlrow is the culprit behind all these mysterious "no"s popping up in various entries on the Template messages/Cleanup page.. any idea how to fix this? -- &oelig; &trade; 08:49, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, thanks for drawing this to my attention. I've reverted this for now. The problem is that we have two different ways to supress categories using the same parameter. WPBM requires no and some of those templates require category (i.e. blank, which seems rather unintuitive). I think I'll talk to about this and see what he thinks. What we really need is a Wikipedia-wide system which all templates use. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:07, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've changed all those templates to work apart from those that were protected. See for an example. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, nice work. But this is still quite messy; do you have any suggestions for an overhaul of category suppression? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The only simple thing I can think of is change Tlrow so that if you use <tt> </tt> it will pass through category=no rather than category= . -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Well it does depend on the clean-up template: there are a bunch of category protection mechanisms, all the dated ones use DMCA if they are article space only - this can be used for undated categories just as well, but the name is less meaningful. ns0 is a succinct method for doing the same thing. If we are looking at a new mechanism I might suggest overloading the demospace parameter. Another option is to end-sort Template messages/Cleanup and not worry about it - despite WP:PERF this seems attractive because it removes a decision point from every wiki-code page interpretation that uses one of the templates. One cliché I have used for that is. Rich Farmbrough, 15:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC).

SENSOR-Pesticides
Why did you put the SENSOR-Pesticides page back into AfC? Mmagdalene722 (talk) 12:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Because it was created through the project and we like to keep track of these articles. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Toni Basil dispute
As I've pointed out, the user in question has been making various edits to the article which are substantially identical to those made by User:Tbasil930, who identified themselves as "Team Basil." The user in question has inserted a significant number of deadlinks and spurious if not outright phony references, including sourcing promotional claims with a general link to the artist's own website. The appearance of COI is certainly present, and I think it's vandalism for that user to repeatedly remove the template without meaningfully addresing it. I think you should restore the template and allow discussion to proceed. If you take a look at the article history, you'll also see that the bulk of the disputed content (well beyond the COI notice) was repeatedly removed by several established editors, myself included, but added back this morning without consensus. I think that adding the COI notice was preferable to edit warring the content itself; the template was added in good faith and is reasonable, and should not have been removed before the debate is resolved. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Category talk:Biography articles with listas parameter
Roman Spinner has cut & paste the content of this talk page at Category talk:Biography articles without listas parameter to preserve it as a historical record, which is fine, but it would be preferable IMO if the original talk page could be restored and moved to an archive somewhere, perhaps Category talk:Biography articles without listas parameter/Archive/Biography articles with listas parameter. Any chance you could do this? PC78 (talk) 11:47, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirects to AFC preload template
Hey Martin, would you happen to know why some of our submitters are leaving links or redirects to AFC preload? This is the most recent example. I've also seen a few other submissions that contained either a redirect to the template, or the name of it. What really confuses me is that most recent page, because from the edit filter log it looks like the redirect wasn't produced by any kind of autoconversion or substitution, which just leaves me epicly confused. Any ideas? Someguy1221 (talk) 06:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I know that redirects don't work with preloads, so if a preload template is moved then it mucks things up unless the link is updated. But I admit that I can't see where this problem is coming from as all the links seem to be correct ... I will continue checking later. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:14, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've checked again, and the only thing I can think of is that the users had the last page of the wizard open in their browsers at the time I moved the preload template, and so their version of that page didn't point to the right place. Please let me know if you encounter any more of these cases. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It happened again a few hours ago (Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Ramos). Someguy1221 (talk) 00:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * But I have to agree with you. I've been staring at the Wizard, and I can't see how this would occur. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And this was the first one, submitted a couple days ago. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm. There are two redirects to Template:AFC preload, which are:
 * Template:Afc new preload
 * Template:AFC preload
 * There must be another link somewhere, which is using one of these as the preload instead. Perhaps we can search for these? I don't know to do a case-specific search though. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Interestingly enough, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:AfC_preload shows you the other pages that got the redirect instead of the banner. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've added a comment to each of those pages so at least we can work out which one is being used. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This one is weird because it got the submission template as well as the redirect :S &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:45, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * And we have a hit: . Although I still can't figure out how that wound up in there. Maybe someone at VPT might know? Someguy1221 (talk) 18:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, think I it! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:36, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That's amazing; I never would have thought of that. I really hope this is the end of it, but regardless, here's a cookie for your troubles :) Choco chip cookie.jpg Someguy1221 (talk) 00:23, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yum, thanks! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Conversion of comicsproj
Hi, MSGJ. It's probably best to have this conversation now. Is it mandatory to be converted to the meta banner, because I'm really opposed to it, in all honesty. I've been around the pros and cons in my head and come out con. I don't think converting will allow us the freedom to plough our own field. Hiding T 08:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I look forward to the conversation! But maybe Template talk:Comicsproj would be the better place? Short answer: no it is not mandatory. But it is probably a good idea, unless there are valid reasons not to. I'll post over there later today. Cheers &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * We've already discussed the idea at WP:COMICS, so I'm not sure where the best place is. I was hoping just to sound out the idea between us and see what the score was, but if you aren't comfortable with that I'll back off. Hiding T 08:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Aslo, am intrigued by the notion that it is a good idea unless there are valid reasons not to. That's a very loaded statement. Hiding T 08:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics. Hiding T 09:31, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've commented over there. I don't really mind where we have the discussion. Perhaps you misunderstood my earlier comment. I didn't mean that in general things are a good idea unless there are valid reasons not to. I meant that, in this case, there are so many advantages to using the meta-template that unless there are reasons why it couldn't function as your project wishes, it would probably be a good idea to convert it. Best wishes &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've left you a pile of questions. Hope they're not too taxing. ;) Hiding T 20:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll return there in a few days. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Importancecol
Any input on the discussion here? It's a fairly trivial change, though a rather high visibility one. PC78 (talk) 03:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Commented there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Help?
Hi. It's not letting me remove the vandalism from here because the filter thinks my removing the nonsense content is not constructive. Could you use your administrator powers and take care of it? :) - Zhang He (talk) 06:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

OCLC outside linkage to worldcat website
A discussion about whether of not the infobox books template should include outside linkage from the OCLC number is posted here. You are being notified because you posted in a discussion at infobox books about this template functionality. Please stop be and include your input into the issue at the link. Thanks. --69.226.106.109 (talk) 06:52, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Will do, but it won't be for a few days. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

TrainsWikiProject banner
I've contacted the projects about the conversion of TrainsWikiProject to use WPBannerMeta and only had a slight reponse so far. Just wondering if you have had a chance to look at it and see it's all ok or if anything need altering. ( If you have any comments about the banner, can you post on the talk page ). Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well done with this one. Three different quality scales in one banner :O I've left a comment on the template talk. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

"not sure what they do though"
If you want to know, it's all laid out at Wikipedia talk:Article wizard 2.0/Documentation. Rd232 talk 11:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Please help me!
Martin, I'm so utterly frustrated with this. I'm simply trying to upload the Soil Association logo. I can't find where to submit the data you want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Non-free_use_rationale

I've altered my username. This is surely worse than pulling teeth.

Jack —Preceding unsigned comment added by Soilassociation (talk • contribs) 11:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject China
Hi- just wondering what's happening with the Unassessed articles of unknown importance, etc., with WPCHINA, because the populated categories, which are showing up as red-linked, have a lower case "unknown" importance, but you had created categories with an upper case "Unknown" importance, but those are currently empty. See: Category:Unassessed China-related articles. Which way is it supposed to be and could you delete the empty duplicate categories? Also, this cat needs to go too: Category:Non-article China-related pages. Thanks --Funandtrvl (talk) 00:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Funandtrvl, I deleted the category. I notice that WOSlinker a special option for China with a lowercase "u". I assume he did this because the categories did exist. Is this incorrect? Is it better to use the uppercase "U"? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out! I don't know what Slinker's reason was, but it seems counter-productive, and I see his edit was done 23 Sept. and you created the other categories on 29 Sept. I would think that using the upper case for "Unknown-importance" seems like the more common choice, especially since you even prefered to use uc, and the WPECON project, which uses the quality intersects also, uses uc "Unknown-priority". See: Category:Unassessed-Class, Unknown-priority Economics articles. So I prefer using uc also, but again, I don't know what Slinker's reasoning behind it was. --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Slinker? That's a new name for him, I wonder if he likes it. Let's wait for him to comment on this matter. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, did you notify him? One more thing, I see that the lc was used since about Feb. 2007, see:, but since that was a long time ago, and before any standardizing of category names was done, I think it would be reasonable to change it to upper case, since the rest of the WPCHINA categories use uc for the second categorization, see: Category:China-related articles by importance. --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The reason was to match the category code used in the pre-WPBannerMeta version (see and search for "of unknown-importance"). It would be better to be upper case though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Tetracarpaea

 * I only nominated it, but thanks anyway. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:Longcomment
Hello. Thank you for inventing Longcomment, which seems to be doing an important job well. Unfortunately, the final  sometimes fails to appear, producing an unclosed comment. WikiProject Check Wikipedia shows current unclosed comments; that list changes regularly but normally contains a few specimens with text from Longcomment, e.g. C5H14N2, Kähler, TBSA. The template looks perfect (and works in my sandbox) so I expect some editors are using it wrongly. Do you have any suggestions for preventing such mistakes? Is it as simple as replacing the spaces before close-comment by text which is more visible? I'm no template expert and don't want to rush in and break things. Certes (talk) 01:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It wasn't my invention, but I've removed the excess whitespace which might help. Could you check whether the comment is still long enough to prevent it being listed as a short page? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the reply and template change. Wikipedia_talk:Special:ShortPages suggests that the smallest 1000 pages are reported, rather than those below some fixed length.  The cutoff as of last update (two days ago) is 146 bytes, so the reduced comment is long enough to work by itself and the actual page text should provide a margin of error.  Case closed, I think. Certes (talk) 16:37, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Template Protection
Oh, sorry and thank you. I had no idea the template existed.174.3.111.148 (talk) 23:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Is this idea suitable?
When I joined, you sent me a message on my discusssion page with links to pages saying what was (and wasn't) suitable. It didn't mention anything about a particular shop: | Charles Laird Drums. I've got information ready, I'm just not sure if it is particularly suitable and if it's going to get taken off straight away. Please help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rock drum (talk • contribs) 08:07, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi there. You would have to show that the shop was notable in order for it to have an article. From just looking at the website I would think this is doubtful though. And, if you have any connection to this shop then it would be better not to write an article to avoid the conflict of interest. Regards &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, just out of interest, how would I show if something was notable? Rock drum (talk) 12:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Syntax advice wanted
Hi MSGJ. I would like your advice on the syntax for if pagename, since we are now deploying that template among others in the cat handler. I have written up my question and some examples at Template talk:If pagename, if/when you feel like it take a look.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

My signature
I will change my signaure as soon as possible...Sorry for the inconvenience. <font face="comic sans ms" size=4> a r  u  n  k  u  m  a  r  checkmate me  11:33, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

How is this?  a r  u  n  k  u  m  a  r  checkmate me  12:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks good, but the code still takes up 4 lines! At least it doesn't seem to be upsetting the formatting of the page now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I like it. - Zhang He (talk) 16:55, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's too long. Needs to be 255 characters or less. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b><sup style="color:black;">talk 17:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Editprotected at translated page
Thanks, Martin. One more thing, though: there were actually two blocks of code that needed deleting. You got the one with the tracking category, but there's another beginning with  that needs to be removed as well. (The  block in the  request actually contained both, but it spills over the right margin, hiding it.) <b style="font-family:Constantia; font-size:medium; color:#0077bb;">TheFeds</b> 19:55, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. Sorry I missed that. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Userbox
If you are making changes to Userbox, it's also a good idea to make similar changes to Userbox-2 & Userbox-r -- WOSlinker (talk) 00:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll do it later today. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * And some additional page protection may be in order as well. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, all done. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * ROFL! MSGJ you are to funny. Remember this conversation? With the edits to userbox, userbox-2 and userbox-2 you just added cat handler to 130,000 pages. When you did so, none of the templates involved were fully protected:, its two sub-templates and if pagename which it indirectly uses. You at least protected one of them the day after, but you missed the rest. Note that I am not blaming you for a mistake, I myself do much worse mistakes every now and then. (I can probably dig up some links to some of my funny ones if you want to see. :)) What I mean is that this is a good example why meta-templates that are expected or planned to become high-risk need to be fully protected in advance. It is very common that we forget to protect them later on. I hope this example might convince you.
 * Oh, and I am happy that you like.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 00:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you found some amusement from this! But this is exactly the way that it should work. When the template is used, it gets the protection, and no more protection is used than necessary. Okay I hadn't got round to protecting if pagename but then I'm not as paranoid about vandalism as you are ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

categories
Hi. See you restored Category:Unassessed Spider-Man articles and Category:Future-Class Spider-Man articles, just curious as to why. Hiding T 21:37, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Because I thought they were required by the comics assessment scheme. You have all the other required categories in Category:Spider-Man work group articles. Why were these two missing? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Our unassessed categories take the form Category:Unassessed-Class Spider-Man articles, so I deleted Category:Unassessed Spider-Man articles on that basis, I only created it because that's the format hard-coded into AbQ. We've deprecated future-class, I thought, certainly all the other future class cats are empty, and I think I set comicsproj to categorise articles assessed as future class as incorrectly assessed. Hiding T 22:00, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't realise that you weren't using Future-class anymore. I've now disabled this from the banner in the sandbox. However I think you're going to have to conform to Unassessed rather than Unassessed-Class because, as you have realised, that is now ubiquitous and every template is set up that way ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Okily dokily. Ta. Hiding T 22:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm ready!
I think I'm ready to get my rollback rights back! If you look at my talk page, I've improved tremendously! Since your last visit to my talk page, I've only had two speedy deletion notices, but only one was a "declined" notice. The other one was an altered notice. Anyway, I'm ready now, Martin! - Zhang He (talk) 04:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have reapplied rollback to your account. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:49, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Size of Template:WikiProject Food and drink
I do not under stand what you mean by asking to reduce the size of the template. I am guessing you mean the width? I have removed all the changes I made in the last week and the template is still the same. Or do you mean the actual size of the template? Please respond on the templates talk page. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 07:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Replied there. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:41, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect/core
SUPPRESS_NA_CLASS in Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect/core is not currently working (see Category:NA-Class India articles of NA-importance). My change here in the sandbox would fix it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:28, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * , thanks. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:36, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank-you
Sorry you needed to be called in.-- SPhilbrick  T  22:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: Start date
The advantage is that start date provides microformat, making the events more easy to find for searchengines etc. P.S. I note that the date for the wikinews boxes on Portal:Current events are still using the old format. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Your major edit/move: be prepared for feedback.
Hi, this is a whopper of a bold edit to a key Current Events Portal component. Be prepared for feedback on this, not all positive. Personally speaking, there’s now a more-apparent inconsistency amongst the display of various date readouts on the portal, and your new "template", if that’s what it really ought to be called (since it "lives" inside the portal space, regardless of its name) relies on what will now be a heavily-trafficked redirect, but I suppose the portal’s date formats ought to reflect the users’s date display prefs anyway. So you’ve introduced a pertinent topic for discussion and eventual consensus. (ahem) --- (offered diplomatically by) Schweiwikist (talk) 02:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Followup: I checked something: the Month-Day "Day" readout above the calendar on the portal reflects the user's prefs, regardless of my swapping the two variables in the "template" (that isn’t in the template namespace either, btw). Obviously the DateHeaders aren't similarly adaptable. ---Schweiwikist (talk) 02:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Centralized documentation for flags
Please see my proposal to use centralized documentation for all uses of the flag template, alla asbox. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wierd AFC template failure
Hey Martin. Hope all is going well. I've been doing a trawl of uncategorized AFC submissions for the week that filter 167 was inactive (see WPAFC talk page), and I've been coming across plenty of submissions that had the banner removed post-creation. This one just confuses me however. Is the forward slash at the end of the title preventing the categories from working, or something? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the template uses the SUBPAGENAME magic word to sort the categories properly. (Otherwise they would all be under "A".) The final slash means that the subpage is empty I suppose. We could probably think of a way round this problem, using titleparts instead, if it was a big problem. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Empress Chun
Just wondering why you semi'd the talk page. I am considering taking the article for AfD, I keep searching for sources and can't find any. Dougweller (talk) 09:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I changed editprotected to editsemiprotected because the article is only semi-protected and so the request can be dealt with by any confirmed user and does not require an admin. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I misread the popup when I hover over the diff, I see now. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Category graveyard
I've stumbled across no less than 400 empty and unused assessment categories which appear to have once been used by WikiProject Computing: There's no way I'm going to tag each and every one with db-emptycat. Any chance you can take care of them? PC78 (talk) 22:57, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks as though the option was missed out when the banner was converted in Feb 2009. Probably not worth adding back though. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If no one has noticed or complained in almost a year, I'd say not. :) PC78 (talk) 23:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've made a start, but it might be worth just double checking on the template talk page, just to make sure. I'd hate to have to restore all of these again ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems like they were once populated by WikiProject Computing/Categories, which is now orphaned. I can't see any comments about this on the banner talk page, or at the project. It's your call, though. I guess quality/importance intersections could always be re-added to the banner. PC78 (talk) 12:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Posted a message on Template talk:WikiProject Computing. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * From what I can see, part of the WPBannerMeta conversion or something did not take into account all the various categories and taskforces. It seems to be quite a mess. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The talk page templates are still in place and functional so it would be much better if someone were to fix WikiProject Computing to populate the taskforce categories again. I noticed the very same issues while trying to figure out why some of the parameters were no longer functional. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Any particular reason why and its subcats was deleted anyway? --Tothwolf (talk) 19:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As these have been unused for a year without anyone noticing, it seems unlikely that these are of benefit. However if there is a consensus at the computing WikiProject that these categories are desirable, then they can certainly be implemented using the /qualimpintersect hook. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * People noticed, no one had the time or knowledge to fix them. This WikiProject manages upwards of 20,000 articles so yes, the taskforce categories absolutely should exist. I'm wondering why they were broken in the first place. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Just so we're all on the same page here, the various task force categories by quality and by importance do exist and are populated by the banner(s), it's the additional by quality and by importance categories that we're talking about here. PC78 (talk) 20:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, the intersection type categories. How would one hook /qualimpintersect into multiple taskforce hooks? Slight misuse of TF_1_MAIN_CAT and such? --Tothwolf (talk) 21:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't help that some of the above subprojects have their own banners in addition to WikiProject Computing, so quality/importance intersections would need to be added to those banners as well, though it would be easier all round if only the one banner was used. Some of the subprojects have since been merged, so in that respect WikiProject Computing is a bit outdated (I've commented on that elsewhere) and at least some of these categories will need to go in favour of new ones. PC78 (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * True. It would be better imo, to finish depreciating and redirect them, and/or transclude WikiProject Computing directly from them. --Tothwolf (talk) 20:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Future-Class Comics articles and subcats are also unused and deletable, I believe. PC78 (talk) 23:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done these. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:07, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I've made the required changes to WikiProject Computing and these categories should begin to repopulate soon. Please restore and its many subcategories. --Tothwolf (talk) 09:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * These categories still require some attention. All of the "Foo-Class articles of Unknown-importance" are miscapitalised, while the Malware and Computer and Information Security projects were merged and will require new categories. Tothwolf, why are there no quality/importance intersections for the main project or computer science? They seem like an odd omission. PC78 (talk) 10:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I noticed the capitalisation issue too. Can we rename categories yet or is that still going to require a copy/paste/delete? I'm not sure why the parent and computer science projects don't have the intersection categories. Tinucherian originally set these up so perhaps he would know? I'm planning to go through all of these categories anyway after I have a chance to create a header template for them. As for merging Malware and Computer and Information Security, I'm thinking it might make more sense to change the templates to reassign Malware as a taskforce of Computer and Information Security. --Tothwolf (talk) 11:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The two projects were merged about a year ago (nothing to do with me), and having Malware as a seperate task force would seem to defeat the purpose of that merge. I'm not sure what you're asking. If you wanted to re-establish Malware as a seperate task force, then that's something you would need to discuss with the project, but otherwise there is no distinction to make in the banner. It's just something that appears to have been missed in WikiProject Computing until now.
 * I'm afraid it's copy/paste/delete for the misnamed categories. :) PC78 (talk) 11:35, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I could add an exception to /qualimpintersect for the lowercase "u" but it's probably easier to conform to the uppercase. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, and it would be better to keep things consistant. I'm not overly keen on how the hook apparently allows for "Unassessed-Class", to be honest. PC78 (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I forget which project that was built for. If you fancy moving the categories I would be happy to remove that function. However it would be even better and more consistent if we used "unassessed-class" throughout rather than "unassessed"! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If you fancy renaming 1600+ categories then you're on your own. ;) Though I'd argue that Unassessed is the absense of a class rather than a class in itself. Category:Unassessed-Class articles should probably be replaced with Category:Unassessed articles, but that's going to require changing a few templates (Class, -Class, Cat class, any others?). I'm not bothered enough about the hook to want to mess about with things, not at the moment anyway. PC78 (talk) 15:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem with renaming the unknown-importance categories. The reason I wondered if we could just move them is I remember there was some recent discussion of switching on the ability to move categories for administrators but I guess that never was done. If Malware has long since been merged, then I guess its a moot point. If it hadn't, then keeping Malware as a taskforce for the new parent project (WikiProject Computer Security) would have possibly been useful too. Should WikiProject Amiga be listed twice in WikiProject Computing now? --Tothwolf (talk) 12:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why would you list WP Amiga twice in the banner? :S PC78 (talk) 15:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I was trying to figure out. Accidental leftovers from the WPBannerMeta/hooks/tfnested additions? --Tothwolf (talk) 07:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right. I missed that one. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I've finished with and have completely migrated that to the new  and . I will likely tackle  next. I'm still waiting on the restoration of  and its subcategories. The others still need changes for the unassessed and unknown categories and I plan to tackle those a few at a time over the next week or so. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * and all the related Malware assessment categories (~77 in total) have now been dealt with deleted. I'm ready to rework next once those 51 categories are undeleted, I'd rather not have to recreate them from scratch as that is much more difficult than updating them. --Tothwolf (talk) 06:16, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * All the rest except for have now been renamed and migrated to the new category names. --Tothwolf (talk) 12:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ except the unknown-importance and Unassessed-Class ones, which I think you are moving anyway. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ The Websites categories are done now as well. I still need to design a meta-template header for assessment categories. Do you know if anyone has done work on such a template previously? --Tothwolf (talk) 15:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Comicsproj
Hi Martin. I've rolled back the adoption of teh meta banner as there's a wrinkle with the banner not categorising articles by quality and importance per states here, WikiProject Comics/BotStatistics/Grading. Hiding T 14:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you check over what I've done in the sandbox to make sure I haven't broken anything. . Thanks. Hiding T 14:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Obviously, reading the above discussion leads me to believe Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect may have an answer in it, but I'm short on time working out how to implement it. Hiding T 14:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've had a quick bash but I can;t get it to work. Appreciate your help, thanks, Hiding T 15:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've updated the settings in he sandbox version but haven't tested it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Lol, you mean we got all of the workgroup quality/importance categories working perfectly but managed to forget the main ones?! I'm a bit busy now, but I'll take a look later. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I reckon the sandbox version is good to go now. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:39, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it is. Looking at Template:Comicsproj/testcases, it isn't categorising it as Start-Class Comics articles of Top-importance based on the first test. It isn't even categorising it as Top-importance.  Can't work it out, sorry. Hiding T 18:50, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In those examples, the no parameter is being used to suppress categorisation. Try removing it and it should be fine. PC78 (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Am I doing something radically wrong, or is there something else going on? If I place  on User talk:Hiding/X7 it seems to work fine, but the same code at Template:Comicsproj/testcases is playing up, . I've tried purging and refreshing, but nothing seems to jink that out of showing C-Class High with a check on a B-Class criterion.  Weird. Hiding T 15:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, is there a hook for doing the workgroups by quality/importance? Hiding T 16:03, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it's working ok now, though I'm not entirely sure what the problem was. Do you mean you want to add quality/importance intersections for each of the task forces?
 * Martin: Any idea why the meta is showing the old portal icon? I've had a look at the code and it sems to be a straightforward transclusion of portal, so I don't get it. PC78 (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll bring the portal icon issue to Template talk:WPBannerMeta. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me try to explain. On the template page itself, we use a demonstration class and importance in order to show what the template looks like when it is actually used. This is determined by the code on Template:WPBannerMeta/templatepage. The code that is used to determine whether an instance of the template is on the templatepage itself only considers the root page and ignores subpages. The benefit of this is that sandbox versions like Comicsproj/sandbox also shows the templatepage version. However this also means that Comicsproj/testcases are also caught. The way to avoid this is to use the no option, but as you realise this also prevents the categories, so we have the result that it is not possible to test categorisations on the /testcases page, which is occasionally undesirable. What you can do however is to test it in your userspace, or indeed any article talk page (the preview function will allow you to see the categories without actually saving the page).

If you wanted quality/importance intersection for workgroups you can add the /qualimpintersect hook to the TF_HOOK calls. However it's a hassle because then you have to create ~100 new categories. Let me know if I can help. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC) I've switched back to the meta banner, can you just run an expert eye over it for me? Hiding T 15:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a bot account that could do the legwork on category creation, so that's not an issue. It's tasked for tasks related to assessment, so I think this would qualify. I'll certainly let you know. Hiding T 15:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Using the standard class scale with WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect, it requires 50 categories exactly. I've been setting them up manually and it really hasn't been too difficult. --Tothwolf (talk) 16:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That'd be 50 per workgroup, yes? Hiding T 17:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Correct. There will be 50 categories per use of WPBannerMeta/hooks/qualimpintersect. See for an example. --Tothwolf (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Switched back.
 * Looks fine to me! &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:WPFOOD
Thanks for collapsing that. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 19:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. I could also set it up, so that it only collapses if more than one workgroup is used. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:Class and assessment summary tables
Regarding the forthcoming changes to the assessment bot, I was thinking it would be good if summary tables (like this) could be adapted to use class and importance rather than the old style templates. To that end, I was wondering how feasible/desirable it would be to incorporate Unassessed-Class, Assessed-Class and No-Class into class and importance? PC78 (talk) 17:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Good idea, and I wish it was possible. But I don't think the wiki-syntax and HTML-syntax are compatible. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The tables could be entirely HTML, couldn't they? PC78 (talk) 23:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean with a change in the bot's code? Yes, that shouldn't be a problem. So basically, Assessed-class and No-class just need a "delinked" option, whereas we would need a different approach to distinguish between Unassessed and ???. If it became complicated we could always keep them separate, perhaps with a Unassessed-Class td template. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they would be better hard-coded into the tables, since they aren't (to my knowledge) used anywhere else. I should probably direct to this discussion. PC78 (talk) 12:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that sounds like a better idea. We should have a template for these tables, then the bot can just update the data and the formatting can be tweaked by the human editors. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The bot (both the old version and the new version) uses the on-wiki templates to get the formatting of the table cells. It would certainly be possible for the bot to use instead of. The main considerations for the bot are:
 * 1) It makes no difference to me if the bot generates tables in wiki-code format or in html-format. But I think that the wikicode-format is easier to read.
 * 2) I want to avoid hard-coding the formatting (colors, etc) into the bot itself. By reading them off the wiki, the bot makes it easy to keep the automatic tables the same as other tables that people construct directly on the wiki. If I hard code things then I have to keep updating the bot whenever someone changes a template on the wiki, which I don't want to do.
 * 3) The same system needs to be usable not only for standard classes, but also for whatever nonstandard classes people cook up. So if we use  then class will need to contain B+-Class and whatever other classes individual projects use. The same holds for importance.

By the way, I have also created NotA-Class so that the bot has something to use that cannot conflict with Unassessed-Class, Unknown-Class, No-Class, NA-Class, None-Class, etc. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * # 2 and 3 won't be a problem. Why couldn't something like NotA-Class be hardcoded into the tables, though? It wouldn't be used anywhere else, and essentially it's no different to "Total" which also doesn't use a template. PC78 (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Certainly anything could be hard-coded. The reason I would prefer to treat it like any other class is that it looks, for all intents and purposes, like any other class. For example, suppose that I put an article into Category:High-importance Foo articles and not into any quality category. ( Really it would be better if the assessment template put the article into some default quality category by default, but say it doesn't.) The bot has to put that article into some row of the table; the purpose of the NotA-Class thing is to catch those somewhere. I used to call them Unknown-Class but that conflicts with the actual "Unknown-Class".


 * So I could hard-code this special class into the bot, but
 * There's no reason to treat this differently than any other quality class; if I make a template, everything just works
 * By putting the formatting in a wiki template, I give other people a chance to format it with whatever colors and fonts they want. If I hard-code it, they can't do that.
 * I would have to hard-code it in multiple programs: in the project table and the article logs at least. Which means, to keep things consistent, I would want a "master" format somewhere that both of those programs refer to. I might as well make that a template just like all the others, for simplicity. This is different than "Total" because the logs do not need to refer to Total-Class articles.


 * The "Total" rows (and the "Assessed" rows) in the tables are different because those don't actually correspond to a category at all; they are summary cells that add up the values from other cells. But the NotA-Class thing is not a summary, it represents articles that morally should be in a category but, because of some sort of misconfiguration, didn't actually make it into one. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 00:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I think I'm with you. So the Assessed-Class template isn't really necessary then (as opposed to the others)? PC78 (talk) 00:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not strictly necessary, but I have been using it. I have added some debugging output to the new table program so you can see the wikicode that is generated, e.g. . Also, the current version of the bot uses Assessed-Class to format the table cell: . I could just as easily not use a template for Assessed-Class in the new bot. But it would make at least as much sense to create Total-Class, so that none of the label formatting is hard-coded into the bot at all. I am sure that, one day, someone will ask me to change the formatting of the "Total" label, but they could do it themselves if it was in a template on the wiki. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:11, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Regarding using a single template that formats the entire table, that seems to be overkill to me. There are a lot of things that are decided dynamically, so that both the number of rows and number of columns of the assessment table can change from one project to the next. Also, the choice of header cells also changes from one project to the next. The code that creates the tables is RatingsTable.pm. To put the formatting all inside a single template would require, essentially, rewriting the wikicode function from that file into a template, and then rewriting the wikicode function to output a call to that template. If that is the way that people want to go, I would be happy to accept patches to RatingsTable.pm. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Re: New Wiki Project Denmark logo
Thanks for your boldness. Just a quick question. Can we increase the width so it's identical to WikiProject Sweden as seen on Talk:Dano-Swedish War (1658–1660). I also noticed some pages still have the Danish Flag. Will that change in time or is there another reason ? (Ice Explorer (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC))

Military fiction task force

 * added another request... Sorry this is the first time I have worked with 1.0 assessment templates.SADADS (talk) 15:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Deleted subpage
I deleted User:MSGJ/nocommentscat as it was tagged with, which made sense, and I didn't think you would care, but if you do, then just let me know and I'll revert it. MrKIA11 (talk) 13:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

M W Higgins
Markhenick knows Les Battersby and Sal Map (beyond Wikipedia, in person), and knows that their earlier version was just as unfair. Many of the references were to news articles, videos and the original collective aggreements themselves, to balance out the references to Union sources. Can you lock the Michael W Higgins article to ensure that this section stays out entierly, or that a new article is created for it? There is no reason to slander someone like that merely because he was the boss at a difficult time when hard decisions had to be made. I think it's time we let this go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.252.136.250 (talk) 16:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Martin! =D - Zhang He (talk) 19:47, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, and happy new year to you. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:39, 31 December 2009 (UTC)