User talk:PartTimeGnome/Archive 1

Welcome!
Hi, PartTimeGnome! I noticed the work you've done at the Typo Team; nice job! Anyways, it looks like no one's given you a formal welcome yet, so I hope you don't mind if I say...

Welcome! (We can't say that loudly enough!) ''' Hello, PartTimeGnome, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:
 * Be Bold!
 * Learn from others
 * Be kind to others
 * Contribute, Contribute, Contribute!
 * Tell us a bit about yourself
 * Our great guide to Wikipedia

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

Please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

We're so glad you're here!  Sophus Bie  (talk) 08:21, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Wicca
This is a notice to say that I have started a discussion here about the Wicca portal which you may be interested in. Kim Dent-Brown  (Talk)  21:16, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talkpage discussion
Good day! Please see here Many thanks! Mootros (talk) 04:18, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Question
Hi PartTimeGnome, I have a question about this edit here on this page: Why do we need the old links? What is being broken, where by the new names? I was trying to tidy up this array of old and continually re-modified names. Thanks! Mootros (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The main thing that concerned me at the time was the Service awards template, which was still using the old names (I have since corrected it, so that is no longer a worry). However, I have found a few user pages where an editor has subst'd a service award template, so the link on their page won't have changed when you edited the templates. To find and fix these links would involve checking literally thousands of pages, to find just a dozen or so to fix. It's easier to just add an anchor template so the existing links keep working.
 * As for tidying up, I only left an template for the most recent previous name for each award, not for every name the award has had. I figure active editors will update their service awards from time to time, so subst'd section links will eventually get updated.
 * BTW, in some of your edits, you set to use the same name as the section heading text, which is a little redundant&#160;– MediaWiki allows any section heading to be used as the destination of a section link without an  template. The  templates are only there to provide an alternative name for old section links. New section links should use the heading's current text, of course. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:21, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you kindly for this detailed explanation and the useful links. This makes sense! Mootros (talk) 04:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for catching that on Service awards. When reading it again I mist have missed the "Neither" and thought I forgot a "not". Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 10:12, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to have been of help! – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;| contribs) 20:45, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your help
Good morning PartTimeGnome,

Thank you for your help last night on Village Pump (technical)

I have removed my posting.

Sincerely, -- Gareth Griffith-Jones / GG-J's Talk 07:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)


 * No problem. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 21:24, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Formatting of captions
Hi, you replaced a period I removed and in doing so revealed to me that you watch the Service Awards templates and perhaps know something about their engineering. Excellent! Pleased to meet you. And I won't touch any more periods for now. However, if you could, please comment at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style where I have opened discussion of single sentence periods. Thanks! --Rogerhc (talk) 00:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Service Awards, thumb or frame?
Hi again, I also changed "thumb" to "frame" in the Template:Signator and see you changed it back to "thumb" to constrain it to 150px. Thank you for your clear edit summaries which help me a good deal in understanding your intentions, which is rather helpful in this collaborative endeavor.

I did notice that the "thumb" to "frame" change made the image larger and was puzzled by this. My intention was to remove the little gray frame icon from the caption area of the image, not to change the image size. So I looked at the template's size parameter and was further puzzled: "frame" is an invalid value for "size" and may be an error in the Template:Signator, which contains this:. A valid default size value would look like this:, right? (The value after the | is the default.) Perhaps the Service Award templates could use some refactoring, something you would be better at than me, and that I would rather stay out of.

I also note that thumb size is a user preference that a user can set in his My preferences. So it might be best to avoid thumb in the Service Awards. Consider: user A's general thumb size preference might not be the best way for A to view B's userpage if user B has worked out a Service Awards display layout there that works for his own thumb size preference but not for A's thumb size preference. And neither is likely to know this, unless they are master editors of course.

Well, enough details. Cheers! --Rogerhc (talk) 01:10, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I just read in mw:Help:Images that, "An image with frame always ignores the size specification, the original image will be reduced if it exceeds the maximum size defined in user preferences." I hand forgotten that. --Rogerhc (talk) 23:12, 12 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hello. Sorry for reverting two things you did so close together. I've got nothing against you personally&#160;– honest!
 * You seem to have figured out why the thumb-to-frame change made the image larger for yourself. It is unfortunate that the little "Enlarge" icon is visible on this service award (and a few others) but not the rest. Ideally, all the service award image templates would use thumb for consistency (and frame is obsolete). I'm not too keen on making this change without a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Service awards, though. Given the number of templates that would need to be changed, I don't want to pursue such large scale changes at the moment.
 * Template:Signator does not contain ; I'm guessing you meant one of the other service award templates, since most others do contain this. In the service award templates, the name of the size= parameter is a little confusing, since it is really a "miscellaneous options" parameter. It could have been done better, but would be hard to change now due to the widespread usage of these templates. (While looking into this I noticed that  and a few other templates didn't actually accept the size= parameter, though their documentation says they should. I have now rectified this so size= will work.)
 * When a width in px is specified for an image (e.g. the 150px on Signator), this overrides the user's preferences. Hence there is no need to worry about preferences causing thumb to display other than intended so long as an explicit size is specified.
 * I'm glad that you seem to be learning so much about Wikipedia! :-) – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 00:40, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Aha, Very kind of you to share that Picture tutorial link with me. I had not found that page and it is very informative and well laid out. I like the part about Picture tutorial and especially the part under that about Picture tutorial. It is starting to get too complex for my liking. But a good read. "upright=1.5" would make an image 1.5 times as wide as the viewing user's thumb size preference, for example, while just "upright" would make it 0.75 as wide thus fitting tall upright images into a user's page well. Very interesting. Wikipedia is complex but as you have pointed out I learn things here. ANd I meet nice people. Thank you for being so helpful. --Rogerhc (talk) 04:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help on autobiography
Thank you. I wanted to fill in a pointer from a list of systems biology research groups. I tried to be as factual and professional as I could. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frederic Y Bois (talk • contribs) 15:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * No problem. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 22:10, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

List fix on Template:Opentask-short
Thanks for fixing the formatting of the bullet list there, didn't know that kind of hack would work! I learn something new every day. Cheers, Nettrom (talk) 21:12, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to help! I wasn't certain it would work either; thankfully "Show preview" lets me test these things before saving them...  – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 21:20, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: Template talk:User Wikipedian for
— Preceding unsigned comment added by הסרפד (talk • contribs)

VPT fix
— Richardguk (talk) 00:03, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks
Best regards, --Finding dead links (talk) 10:45, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * (I hope this is the place for this continuation of the dialog!)

Remotelysensed (talk) 09:46, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is the right place . Each time you leave a new message for me on your talk page, paste another Whisperback here to let me know. BTW, the 2nd parameter to is just your username (i.e. Remotelysensed), not a full signature. Your signature should go at the end as usual. I've corrected the Whisperback templates above, so you can copy-and-paste one of the ones above if you leave me another message. (I've not left a Whisper/talkback on your page for this message, since I figure you don't need to see the above unless you come back to give me another message...) – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 14:39, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

noreferrer rfc
Thanks for that, I feel into the confusion and thought that Wikipedia currently didn't refer. James086 Talk 10:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay; I figured something like that had happened. Hopefully the RFC can run more smoothly now I've straightened out the confusion. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 14:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

template size
Any thing we can do to make this more like the normal size? Moxy (talk) 8:46 pm, Today (UTC−4) —Preceding undated comment added 00:52, 22 March 2013‎ (UTC)

Even other ones with bigger text and three lines of text are smaller


 * There have been various discussions about the sizing of the service awards. Some people like to stack their userboxes vertically, while others line them up horizontally. Since the service award images are not square, it's hard to set a size that looks right with both arrangements. Hence, I have just been through the userboxes and added a  parameter to allow users of the awards to set the size that best suits their user page. Here's your first example with a   parameter added (i.e. set height to 45 pixels):


 * – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 21:32, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * As per the norm your get it done attitude is an example all should follow. I am so glad you reverted me on that edit - now all have a perfect solution.Moxy (talk) 21:56, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Bingo
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1495 for details of how close you were to right.&mdash;Kww(talk) 23:10, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's the kind of thing I was hoping they'd improve for a while. It's a pity they didn't quite think it through... Hopefully 46579 will be fixed soon. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 22:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I knew I should not edit using the !@#$%^ tablet...
Thanks for ... the whole thing was somewhat funny: User:Krinkle wrote 27698 instead of 27698. as happens, "bug" is the language code for the Inggris language, so in effect, he created a new interwiki that connected WP:VPT to the aritcle "27698" on the Inggris wikipedia. a diligent bot arrived shortly after and concluded that this was an accidental interwiki, so it changed it to bug:27698 : in effect removing the interwiki and replacing it with a regular link to the page in Inggris (curiously enough, even though the Inggris wikipedia has less than 14,000 articles, it *does* have an article about "27698"). when i saw it i was somewhat amused, and replaced it with the intended link to bugzilla, but i did it from my android thingy, which is way too prone to fingerchecks, so in the end the joke was on me... thanks for fixing it. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:23, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No problem. I saw most of what happened through the page history; thanks for the further elaboration. Accidental typos are very easy, especially on a touch-screen keyboard. I'm guilty of a few accidental insertions myself due to an improperly configured mouse (now fixed) that randomly pasted my clipboard contents into wiki pages.
 * I thought "bug" was the language code for Buginese. I think "Inggris" is the Buginese word for "England". I can't find 27698 on either the Buginese or English Wikipedias. It would have been a hilarious coincidence if it had existed, though . – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 22:55, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Talkback
Werieth (talk) 13:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

More thanks
Thanks from me, too; as you saw, I used your selector once I figured out that Classic was weird. :) Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 16:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you both! I'm always happy to help in ways like this. I quite enjoy mucking around with CSS. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 17:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

BillboardID
Just to let you know I used your idea as the basis for implementing the new BillboardID. I wound up splitting it up only at the first character level. I was glad to see that the trick doesn't cause problems with change detection: Wiki software is still well aware that the article that uses actually depends on BillboardID/L.&mdash;Kww(talk) 06:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. I'm glad you liked it. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 20:21, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Barnstar

 * Thank you very much; that means a lot to me! We do seem to have a lot in common, though you do so much more on Wikipedia than me. I don't have the time to edit anywhere near as much as I'd like, though hopefully I'll have more time for Wikipedia at some point in the next few months.
 * Do you remember that you were the one who to Wikipedia? I didn't reply at the time but I'd like to thank you for that, particularly for personalising your message to refer to things I'd done. It might seem like a little thing, but it made your message so much more personal than if you had just used {{subst:WelcomeShout}} without anything else. Thank you! – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 15:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)


 * You're very welcome! I doubt I actually have that much more output per time than you; your edits tend to be much more substantial than mine, on average. In any case, Wikipedia editing is volunteer work, so you should be commended for editing at all!
 * I did vaguely remember welcoming you; it was my pleasure! And I do mean that! It was nice to see a new user who obviously knew what they were doing, and I'm glad I could brighten your day with a few words. Not to mention, when you become an admin one day, I can point to you and brag, "See that nifty person? I was the first to welcome them!" :P  Sophus Bie  (talk) 13:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You keep saying things to make me smile! You really think I could be an admin eventually? Well, who knows what the future might bring... Adminship is not something I've seriously considered, though I might give it a try some day. There are certainly enough administrative tasks on Wikipedia. If you want something else to brag about, you were also the first "mention" I received on Echo. Face-smile.svg
 * BTW, you're right about the amount of time I spend on each edit&#160;– I spend a lot of time on most of my edits, even some of the ones that look fairly trivial. I'm sometimes a little OCD about making sure there's nothing wrong with an edit before I save it. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 18:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It's all part of my secret plan to solve the energy crisis via mega-watt smiles! "But professor! Smiles do not actually produce any noticeable energy output!" "Vell vhy didn't anyvhone tell me zis before I applied for a grant?!"
 * I do indeed think you'd make a good admin! There's probably some task you're doing that the userrights would make easier. Horray! Echo finally does some good! It's about time, grumble, grumble.
 * Well, the time you spend shows. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Your edits are good, and you should feel good. And you're not the only one around here who's a bit obsessive; I think this kind of work attracts our sort. :D   Sophus Bie  (talk) 20:55, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * BOTH of you really should be admins. ;) -- &oelig; &trade; 07:13, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Coming from an existing admin, that is high praise indeed! Thank you! – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 13:37, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I value your opinion, so that is indeed high praise! Maybe it is time I cleared a couple of afternoons of free time and ran the gauntlet at WP:RfA...    Sophus Bie  (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I am willing to provide a nomination. Whenever you feel ready.. -- &oelig; &trade; 13:58, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, OlEnglish! I think I'll take you up on that sometime in the next few weeks.   Sophus Bie  (talk) 00:18, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:Requests for adminship/Sophus Bie is now on my watchlist... Good luck! – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 00:31, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Editing problems at VPT
Hi, re and, both of which inserted odd snippets of text into other people's posts - any idea what causes that? -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:51, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Not entirely. It only seems to happen after I use "" or if I get an edit conflict. Both screens include a "diff" display, so it might be related to that somehow. The weirdness doesn't show in the diff before I save. I tried to reproduce the issue in my sandbox a few days ago, but wasn't able to; I suspect it only happens on larger pages. For the last day or so I've been checking back over every edit I make to see if it happens again, but thus far it hasn't. – PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 19:43, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Шаблон:Документація/start box
Sorry this is in another languge but I found a template documentation which works like before they removed the code so now you can keep view edit history and purge on the right side instead of being next to template documentation name uk:Шаблон:Документація/start box 86.157.76.203 (talk) 19:57, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess you're responding to this discussion I started at Template talk:Documentation. The template code on the Ukrainian Wikipedia has the same problem if used on the English Wikipedia (i.e. links show on the left before the heading). It works on the Ukrainian Wikipedia because the developers haven't made the same CSS changes there (yet).
 * Since WOSlinker applied the changes I suggested, this is no longer an issue on the English Wikipedia. The change makes the links show after the heading, though left-aligned by default. To make them right-aligned, enable the "" gadget in preferences (it also affects the documentation links). –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 20:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Testing a new template
You are invited to join the discussion at Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 45. Since you're a frequent contributor to Service awards, I thought you'd want to see this. APerson (talk!) 02:19, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Awards articles category
Category:Awards articles is currently polluted - see User talk:Mutt/Sandbox2. GoingBatty (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Yup, and I'm fixing that (e.g. this edit). I'm not sure if it's acceptable to use WikiProject banners on user sandboxes (might be up to the WikiProject?), so I'm leaving Mutt's sandbox alone. I'm concentrating on removing the mainspace uses (just one remaining). –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 18:25, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm done. There are now [//toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/yanker/?db=enwiki_p&list=pages&namespace=0&limit=5000&category=Awards_articles zero uses in mainspace]. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 18:31, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * So sorry about that, now deleted. My thanks for all your work on this. Mutt (talk) 18:20, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Reverted edit
If you would be so kind, take a look at the article Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A where you reverted my removal of the text "nbsp" and see if your reversion resulted in the desired affect. It is always a good idea to, um, actually look at the article after you make a change to it. --Dan East (talk) 18:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Oops... I didn't spot that typo. I've fixed it now. Sorry about that. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 21:05, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Template:User en-gb
It looks like I went to correct my mistake just after you had fixed it. However, we used different methods. I was wondering if you knew of a difference or had a preference between the two: Hyacinth (talk) 23:21, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I was working from the example in documentation at Template:Documentation/doc, just before the "Best practice" heading. The first option allows the "The above documentation is transcluded from ..." text to appear beneath the doc box, with edit and history links for Template:User x/doc. The second option omits this line. My preference would be for the first option. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 23:28, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

One could move User x/doc to Template:User x, and then put its documentation at Template:User x/doc. Would you have an opinion? I created User x, and have tested it at User tr, but it has some disadvantages, such as documentation subpage not displaying. Hyacinth (talk) 05:07, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I've been thinking about this since you mentioned the Category:Wikipedia pages with strange ((documentation)) usage problem in one of your edit summaries. I definitely agree with putting the main template content at with documentation at /doc, as it would solve this problem.
 * As for, where would you expect this to appear? The notice should only appear on /doc subpages, and is suppressed on a template's front page. On a template front page, documentation is instead marked by the documentation green box. Thus far, I've only seen used directly with , with the green box. If it were placed on a /doc page, the documentation subpage notice should show. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 22:28, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Possibilities (Hyacinth (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)):
 * Nice idea for structuring this discussion. I've filled out the advantages/disadvantages column. I'm not sure I've read the table right, so before each list of adv/disadvantages I've added a note of what I interpret that line to mean. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 00:38, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your correction
In the Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles/Editing for the First Time, I'm sorry for my carelessness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhong Fu (talk • contribs) 11:50, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No worries. Looking at that section again inspired me to do a bit more cleanup, so all worked out well in the end. –&#160;PartTimeGnome (talk&#160;&#124; contribs) 17:21, 23 March 2014 (UTC)