User talk:MattGagnon

Hey Matt, welcome to Wikipedia. I am a reader of your website, Pine Tree Politics.--TM 05:39, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion regarding Maine gubernatorial election 2010 article
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Maine gubernatorial election, 2010. BMRR (talk) 05:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC) (Using )

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Template Infobox politician
Dear Matt, I am willing to help you, rather than as it seems to me the experts cast you off as oh this is all been done before, which of course it has but is a nightmare doing templates when you first start doing them. So if you have any trouble, I am not saying I can give you the answers, but I am certainly willing to help answer any troubles you have rather than jsut say "this has done before" without giving any guidance to where it has been done before.

I am not sure quite what you are trying to accomplish with this template so I cannot give any advice specifically on how to go about it. If you could tell me more what you are trying to do, why you want to implemnent this template (on what articles etc) then I could perhaps give you advice farther. As for general template construction advice, I advise get a large toothrbrush, insert between upper and lower teeth, if you have any, then grip hard and type fast.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 00:26, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Matt,


 * There is a trick here for not displaying the fields you do not want. It is rather cunning and I will find it for you, the trick is not to blot the thing on the right hand side on the left hand side but to blot out the field itself on the left hand side. Give me a bit and I will try to find you an elegant example from my own code. I jsut wanted to reply quickly so you don't give up hope. Si Trew (talk) 00:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * You are my new personal hero, Simon. Thank you so much.  MattGagnon (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Matt,


 * There is a trick here for not displaying the fields you do not want. It is rather cunning and I will find it for you, the trick is not to blot the thing on the right hand side on the left hand side but to blot out the field itself on the left hand side. Give me a bit and I will try to find you an elegant example from my own code. I jsut wanted to reply quickly so you don't give up hope. Si Trew (talk) 00:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I mean you can always do

but then you add the variable  which may be empty if there are no official_number_of_guns,  but does it is not that it is nonexistent, just empty. Often that does not matter, but if you do, you must circumlocute thus:

i.e. put the definition itself on the right hand side of the ifdef.

Does that make sense? Excuse any typos, I am on a Hungarian keyboard which is fine for most uses but all the special symbols are in strange (to me) places, and for added pleasure whenever I switch to another application it goes onto a British English keyboard, so I make even more typos than I usually do.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 01:08, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I THINK that makes sense... is there any way I could trouble you to maybe show me how that would work with what I built already? i.e. could you insert that code in there as an example to show me precisely how that would work there?  I want to make sure I do it right and seeing it in practice would really be helpful.  If not, don't worry about it - just would be nice to see.  Thanks again so much.  MattGagnon (talk) 01:41, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes I can, but actually pretty much does what you want, which is why I asked why did you build it, what is it for? At the moment it seems like a problem seeking a solution. But the solution is anyway as was said in main, not to do all the table stuff, but to  build on  and customize it to your needs. I was assuming it was just some technicality of syntax you wanted, but if you just want to repeat the work others have honed already, go ahead but I am really unsure what your aims are, and without that, I cannot really help much. If you want Infobox Republican or Infobox Tea Party or Infobox Shirtlifter or Infobox CanadianTire or whatever you want, I am agnostic about that, I just am not sure what it is you are trying to achieve here, if you tell me that, then I can help you towards it. Si Trew (talk) 02:14, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I may have jumped the gun rather, when you said "for another media wiki site" I assumed you meant something under the WikiMedia umbrellas. Other Wikis work differently, since the MediaWiki software is kinda honed for Wikipedia in all its various languages. If it is for another site under WikiMedia, my advice is good, but if it is a totally different wiki, you are on your own and that won't help you, since the parser functions etc are built for WikiMedia sites, with customized versions of the bbasic Wiki server (Two cheers for the backroom boys who do all the server work!)


 * My sincere best wishes and I hope I have not led you astray Si Trew (talk) 09:03, 23 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As I said before, it is a template I'm trying to make for another media wiki site that is not Wikipedia, but that I wanted to learn how to do that not only for that, but just to understand how it is done so I could do that when I make future templates for Wikipedia itself, as I can imagine many different reasons I would want lines to appear/disappear depending on content. And the Infobox politician template is SO complex, with SO many sub-templates... I really just wanted to create a simple version of it for use on that other wikimedia project.  Does that make sense?  Not sure if I'm explaining it very well.  MattGagnon (talk) 03:10, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah, I think I have the nub of your gist... you want an infobox where for example a whole section would not be displayed if none of the fields were present? That is fairly simple but longwinded:




 * The thing to remember is that the whole lot of templates work by string substitution, there is no great algebra behind it, literally the back end parser expands the fields and then decides if they are null (empty, or just spaces etc) or not null. So an "or" for example, as you see above, is just whack all the fields together with nothing between them, so that if ANY of them have any content the string will be non empty. I hope I am not patronising you by assuming that you know Boolean algebra from some other languages, but the Wikimedia language parser is very primitive, all it does is whenever you stick in, it replaces   with the actual text, then reads the expression as a whole.


 * This can be quite important, since if the expanded text is quite long, it will be expanded seventeen times if it is used seventeen times in your template, before the parser gets a grip on it. i.e. in C (programming language) terms, you could consider that the C preprocessor expands it all before the #if even sees it. But for your purposes this is probably not too important since the size of the text in the infobox is relatively tiny.


 * Perhaps I should direct you to, a template collaboratively written by me and some other authors, which I think has this kinda bizarre syntax for this very reason (and also, as I presume is your desire, to hide its complexities, which are not much, from the contributor who just wants to use it).


 * What I had jumped to initially is that you wanted the template to change its behavior on the content of the page. Having re-read, I realise that is not what you meant. But to make sure: It is pretty much impossible to write a template that changes its behavior because of the content of the page (rather than because of the content of other templates), for a fairly simple reason: there is no parameter to the template that says "this is the content". Neither should there be, however tempting sometimes it seems ("Render these dates in British or American date order" being a fairly simple example, which is a nest of worms when one starts to think about it, so the Wikipedia community decides, I hope this is no insult, to think about it by not thinking about it, i.e. leave contributors' contributions alone, don't meddle with them).


 * I am not sure I am helping much but at least I am trying. I have gone through the same groans myself and I know that it is baffling at first, then suddenly one day it all makes sense. Not good sense, but sense. We are stuck with what we have, of course, unless we want to edit two million pages on EN:WP alone if we had the foible of changing syntax. Si Trew (talk) 09:53, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Template talk:Etymology would perhaps give you some clues to these rumblings, possibly beter than, which I span off from it to keep it relatively simple. is full of #ifs as that is its purpose, but the discussion at Ety's talk page gives a clue about people who know how to write a template but are not sure what to put into it, a fine example I think of good collaborative editing, and from the links in there I think you will be able to get your head around it. Or be totally bamboozled.


 * I have only been on Wikipedia two years, so I am no expert, and mostly just edit articles and translate them sometimes. (I still have to sort out Voguéo, for example, a complete pile of rubbish I have at User::SimonTrew/Vogéuo, that is a hard one as it moves under your feet). There are far more experienced editors than I, but I hope coming as a relative newbie to doing this, I can at least realise the pain you are going through rather than saying Oh you just do this. Si Trew (talk) 10:07, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

File:MaineGovMap2010.jpg listed for deletion
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2nd Annual Wikimedia New England General Meeting
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Conflict of interest notice
Hello, MattGagnon. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.

All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.

If you are very close to a subject, here are some ways you can reduce the risk of problems:


 * Avoid or exercise great caution when editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with.
 * Avoid linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Spam).
 * Exercise great caution so that you do not accidentally breach Wikipedia's content policies.

Please familiarize yourself with relevant content policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies. Note that Wikipedia's terms of use require disclosure of your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. Safehaven86 (talk) 15:19, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I am well aware of the policies regarding COI. I have no idea why you left this on my page, when the edit (fully transparent, under my own name) to the article you are referring to was a simple infobox addition of physical location and a logo file. I made no substantive edits to it at all, so there is no reason to give me an unprompted tutorial on a policy I have been aware of for years. MattGagnon (talk) 15:38, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

This Friday: Women in Architecture edit-a-thon @ Cambridge, MA
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License tagging for File:1960MaineGubernatorial.png
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Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge
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