User talk:RexxS/Archive 14

You might find this amusing
Hi RexxS, You might find this webcomic amusing in context of recent discussions. http://xkcd.com/978/ Cheers, Peter (Southwood) (talk): 05:37, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, my son is an avid xkcd reader, so he proudly showed that to me yesterday . Unfortunately, it's not fiction. Did you work out who the mouseover popup refers to? --RexxS (talk) 14:40, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No idea, do tell... Peter (Southwood) (talk): 17:17, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hehe, I was asking – I haven't figured it out yet! --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

New attempt to sort out old problems on DIR
Hi RexxS, I am trying to improve the DIR article, See Talk:Doing It Right. You have previously contributed to attempts to improve the article and may be interested to comment or contribute. Cheers, Peter (Southwood) (talk): 09:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts, Peter. I'm afraid that as you can see from Talk:Doing It Right, it's difficult to make any progress, and my intemperate outburst from 2009 starting "No in fact it's not better than nothing ..." exemplifies my frustration. Anthony Appleyard is really nice guy whom I've met on several occasions at wiki-meetups, but we don't see eye-to-eye on some issues of sourcing. I do not believe in forcing an issue without first establishing clear consensus, so I've taken it to WP:RSN for outside opinion. Hopefully that will help us towards a resolution. By the way, here's a tip: if you substitute the 'citation needed' template or one of it's aliases, such as fact (like this: ) it will supply the date automatically so you won't get edit conflicted with AnomieBot trying to add the date. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Clarification
The citations that Diannaa objected to were the Harvard templates. It's much easier to handcraft the 200 than to put in templates. If they want to put back the Harvard templates it's fine with me - I've opened a thread on the talkpage to that effect. I did try to open discussion with Alarbus and was rebuffed, repeatedly. And I am very very tired of taking the blame for what essentially is a lack of communication and the inability to achieve consensus through discussion. Furthermore, if templated styles are to become the desired "house style" I'd think it would need more advertisement. I'm happy to comply, but I have some strong arguments against if any one were ever interested in listening to a person whose formatted long pages using both styles. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, you've used both templates and raw cites (as have I), but I don't find much difference in ease of writing " " or "Reynolds (2000), 17–18". What I do find is that with templated cites, I can get error messages alerting me if I make a mistake, and anyone can use a script to check over them – those are desirable features to me. But look, I don't want to rehash that argument. I think it's settled - you ought to have the main say in deciding whether an article employs templates or not if you're the principal editor. Nevertheless, I expect you are willing to listen to other views and weigh them for what they are worth.
 * I'm sorry your attempt to offer an olive branch to Alarbus was rebuffed. He's just as zealous about proper structure as you are about good prose, and had just spent time . I can understand his mood at that moment.
 * More importantly, if I may say so, this sort of argument should never be the sort of thing that Wikipedia loses a valuable editor over - or any editor for that matter. You have the potential to make a lot more contributions, and hopefully to actually enjoy doing that. If you're not enjoying it, take a short break, and come back refreshed. The articles will all still be here. If you still have problems with scripts then, I'd be happy to go through User:Truthkeeper88/monobook.js with you to see where the solution lies.
 * As for templates, I'm very aware of the problems of editing pages with multiple citation templates, and I sympathise. I only have one FA to my name, Oxygen toxicity, but it has 125 citation templates. You can see my conflicted views in this discussion with SlimVirgin last year at User talk:RexxS/Archive 6. I'm generally a fan of making maintenance easier, but I know that page loading is a nightmare when editing any page with a lot of templates. Until we have a solution like Centralized discussion/Citation discussion, you can be certain that nobody will be rushing to impose a "house style". Anyway, I've not said all that to give ammunition in a dispute, but to try to suggest that there's plenty of common ground if everybody can get onto it. Please do your best to encourage Ceoil to look for cooperation, not conflict. Regards, --RexxS (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I have no clue why the script won't work - I've tried, refreshed (I run Safari), restarted, but it's not running. It does look useful though. Regarding the templates, SlimVirgin removed over 200 harvard templates that I'd added from Ezra Pound because of load time issues. I think there are arguments for using both. I don't have an issue formatting them; each is easy to me. The problem as I see it is that they require citation templates for the targets - and I was really shocked to find how badly those had degraded on Hemingway. On a page with as many as 30 to 40 sources it's much easier to keep track of the sources without the templates and to fix the degradations. It's also easy to copy sources from one page to another for subarticles when the same sources are used. If there were a way to render the harvard style without the use of the citations templates I'd be more of a fan. But I do dislike citation templates; formatting difficult sources is easier without templates in my view. Anyway, that's my take on it. I think Ceoil reacted badly to seeing the olive branch message summarily dismissed. Unfortunately there's not much I can do to restrain a hot-tempered Irishman, but he seems contrite. Truthkeeper (talk) 02:53, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * TK, might wikicite be a possibility? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:05, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nikkimaria - I've played with those. I find that a lot of these things work well for books, but when journal articles or book chapters or multiple titles written by the same author in the same year, it's gets a little complicated. I really have thought about this and have found that free-hand is the most flexible. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay. I thought that one was meant for use with freehand, but I've never actually used it myself, so I'll defer to your experience. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:51, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If you want to get away from citation templates for the full references in a Bibliography/Sources or similar section, you can with a little HTML because Harvnb generates a link to a target so that (for example)   creates a link that looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#CITEREFBrubakkNeuman2003 . Normally you use the |ref= parameter in the citation template (as "harv" or "CITEREFBrubakkNeuman2003" explicitly) to create an anchor (i.e. a target for the link). However, you can write your hand-coded reference and enclose it in  ...   or equivalent tags to achieve the same result without the use of templates. Disclaimer: I'm not encouraging the wholescale removal of templates from articles, just suggesting ways of reducing the load time when editing articles with hundreds of templates in them! For what it's worth, the deployment of WP:HLIST will remove massive numbers of templates from navboxes, and do more for editing page load-time for most articles than us struggling to prune citation templates. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Just one other clarification. There were never any broken references on the Hemingway page. It gets a lot of traffic, despite the semi-protection. Since July there have been two Hemingway pages on the main page which pulls a lot into the biography and I tend not to bother to tend when that's happening because it's a time to let people edit. Since July I've put through four FACs, and have had a very busy work schedule and just haven't gotten over to Hemingway to tidy. All that was missing were dates in a few of the refs, and some had been added by other editors and I had to track down the sources - some of that I'm still doing. Anyway, as the main contributor and the person with all the sources, I'd prefer to see these discussions taking place on my page or on the Hemingway talk pages, because people are getting the sequence of events wrong. Honestly I don't think it's right for you and Maunus to be talking about me, or anyone else for that matter, on a page where clearly responses are unwelcome. I'll ask the same thing of him. Thanks for your understanding. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm really sorry I had to mention you, even obliquely, on a page where you couldn't join in. I sincerely hope I did not mischaracterise you in any of my comments there, so please tell me if I did. I trust you understand though, that I was only posting in reaction to Maunus' distortion of reality there; I didn't raise the subject and only replied to correct his errors. I'm afraid I have to differ with your assessment of the state of the references at Ernest Hemingway, as I don't have to look any further than Diannaa's to see her fixing an invalid ISBN number (0-521-45479-X isn't Cambridge Companion). If you look at the References section in that diff, you'll see no.178 is "Baker, pp. 101–121" which doesn't link to a target because the year is missing (could be 1969, 1972, or 1981). It would seem that some of the Sources (such as Baker 1981) weren't in use as references. Those sort of difficulties would qualify for me as "broken references", although I do accept that others are free to disagree with that phrase. If other editors had been unable to format the refs properly, then gnomes like Diannaa are just the people to find those problems and list those that they cannot fix themselves. I've read and re-read her opening post to Talk:Ernest Hemingway and, try as I might, I just cannot see what was there that deserved such vitriolic responses. If you look through her contributions, it is exactly the sort of cleanup she does all the time, and nobody deserves responses such as these:
 * "Diana, offer trivial complaints to sate sour grapes often? listed in the bib but is not referenced in the article. O for fuck sake. Get a life. Such moral superiority and arrogance from a person who has not interest or knowledge of the subject matter. You are the enemy, you are the problem; an admin who is now persuing an editor from bitterness over a seperate and equally trivial argument. Nice."
 * "Your just cross fire TK, dont worry about these pricks. The edits were even unnessary; biblo does not equal sources."
 * Truthfully, that sort of rhetoric (complete with elementary grammatical and spelling errors) only serves to drive divisions between editors - and the ignorance of the importance of Bibliography to Harvard referencing is breathtaking. Ceoil obviously looks to you as a role-model and friend. I really hope you can somehow explain to him that the only enemies on Wikipedia are the ones we create in our own minds – we have all taken up this hobby with the same purpose of building an encyclopedia "in an atmosphere of collegiality, camaraderie, and mutual respect among contributors." Regards, --RexxS (talk) 01:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * A couple of things, and then I think we should let this go, but I appreciate your point-of-view. First, as you know, it spilled over from another page. Second, of the 10 points Diannaa raised, 5 were sources that other editors placed on the page - not placed there by myself. I felt attacked by Diannaa's comments. Is there a rule that I have to drop what I'm doing (and I was working up another page which I haven't been able to return to since) to move a source from the article to bib? Could she not have done that? Of the other five points, most would have been easy to sort by a quick sortie to WorldCat to see what's what. That editors who work on these large pages are stuck with constant maintenance like a millstone is not something I realized when I wrote the page, but is something that will prevent me from writing other such pages, despite my content knowledge and expertise. Which is a shame. As for Ceoil - please bear in mind that spelling mistakes often have more than one cause. I can't put a leash on him, and won't.  But I will ask him to tone it down a bit, if that helps. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, a request coming from you is likely to be worth a hundred leashes (lashes???). I have a reasonable grasp of sourcing and access to a decent library, so if you're snowed under at any time, I'd be happy to help out in any way I can. --RexxS (talk) 01:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll talk to him when I'm back. I've decided to take a break. I've been thinking about all of this, and it's ironic that it started with something to do with accessibility which I honestly have a great understanding of for a variety of reasons. I have fairly bad vision, had an unsuccessful eye surgery last year, which combined with severe astigmatism when letters look like this, make editing in an edit window very difficult. Curly brackets all blend together for me. In long citation templates I can't make out one field from the next. So that's my story. Anyway, I think I need to be gone from Wikipedia for awhile. Truthkeeper (talk) 03:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Template talk:TFLcontent
Template talk:TFLcontent, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template talk:TFLcontent and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of Template talk:TFLcontent during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Bulwersator (talk) 17:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hat
Thanks! Hold on to it for now, please, and I'll get back to you about it. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe someone who lives in or near Manchester can hold on to it and I can see them sometime to collect it. Or maybe someone can post it to me: if you let me know who has actually got it I can email my address to them. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hehe - sorry James, that was a joint effort using Julia's mobile and was brief. It turns out that Harry had been sitting on your hat. as a responsible local took charge of it and promised to get it back to you. Give him a poke when he gets back from the meetup. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot. I must remember to find ways of getting back at Harry, like trying to get him desysopped or something. JamesBWatson (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, we'll just get him elected to ArbCom next year - that's a far worse fate. --RexxS (talk) 22:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hah, I second that idea! Nice to see you both yesterday, hope you had good journeys home. the wub "?!"  20:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * My warning came --RexxS (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

LDR fan here
Just a shout out because I see you are a fan of LDR. They are obviously far from perfect, but I'm using them on articles I start, and occasionally converting some existing articles.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  14:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I've always been amazed that anyone would think that writing out an entire reference in the middle of the article content was a "good idea". I try to use sensible names for the named references: author_last_name-year-page is currently my favourite as it allows me to match up any Harvard referencing quickly as well. The only caution I'd urge is that some editors consider the upgrade to LDRs to be a "change of style" and therefore a forbidden change (while in fact they are merely a variation of the implementation of a given style). I've found it's not worth having an argument about, as there's always another article where improvements will be welcomed! Regards --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Your warning is too late :) I got my hand slapped here, so now I propose at the talk page, and wait a little longer to see if there's objection. My biggest accomplishment was Reelin with almost a couple hundred refs.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  15:23, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hehe - at least Dabomb understood and it turned out right in the end. Reelin is an excellent advert for LDR, and I'm jealous as that's a much bigger job than my biggest (Oxygen toxicity). If you're still familiar with the refs at Reelin, check out the References section as I think some extraneous duplicate named refs are in there? I'm not sure, so I won't mess, but I'm guessing a bot probably consolidated a few dupes. --RexxS (talk) 15:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice work on Oxygen toxicity, which, being a featured article, can be used as a nice club positive example if there's pushback. I'm still sorting out how I feel about a canonical ref naming convention, have taken a more eclectic approach so far, but will take a look at your suggestions and see if it works for me. I haven't looked closely at reelin recently, will take a look to check out dupe refs.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  17:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I may not be following what you mean when you referred to dupes in Reelin. My original interpretation was that a reference to a single article was listed as two difference references, with different reference names. I sorted all the refs by title, and I believe every title is unique. I reread your comment, and now think I'm not quite getting it. I realize it was some time ago you looked at this, but if you could give me an example, either real or hypothetical, it would help me search for problems.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  20:01, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * They were cleaned up in just after we'd discussed it. The named refs were like this:  and a few had crept in among the full refs in the References section (usually a sign that a bot has consolidated duplicates), whereas named refs should never be in that section, only the list of full references. All fixed now, so nothing to worry about :) Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 01:28, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh good, I was worried I was either missing something or not understanding. Glad it was cleaned up.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  02:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Frohliche Weinachten und Gluckliches neues Jahr
Photo from Baden_Wurttemberg, Germany. Pumpkin Sky  talk  12:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Viele Dank' mein Freund! --RexxS (talk) 12:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Bill Gaede
Thanks for attempting to assist me with the Bill Gaede article.

It turned out that the IP user who was reverting Gaede's article was not addressing my replies and attempts to find common ground in discovering a policy by which we may guide out edits with on the talk page, but rather just reposting the same thing as if I had not replied: as you can see Though the page appears to have been cleaned by Nohomers48.

As the IP user doesn't seem to have any criticism, besides his distaste for the content, I second Nohomers48's reply. The sources used are completely adequate for the claims made in the article in question, e.g. YouTube is a primary source in the claim that Gaede's ideas have been proliferated via. the internet, and so forth.

Best Wishes Alexoneill (talk) 21:21, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to drop by. I'm really pleased that the article has settled down now; it's strange sometimes that you get editors who just won't communicate.
 * You probably already know, but always be careful in citing YouTube because the content there is all too often uploaded without the copyright holder's permission, and we are prohibited from linking to external content which violates copyright. In this case, it would be reasonable to assume that it is the author who is uploading his own content, so it shouldn't present a problem. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 01:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Accessibility request
Hi RexxS, could you take a look at User:Crisco 1492/List of Ministers of Justice of Indonesia and give me some input on how to best meet the accessibility requirement for Featured List? I've tried fixing the table but... Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Crisco - I've made some edits to the table (hope that's ok) and left edit summaries for each step, so you can go through the diffs to see what I did. Please feel free to chop, change, revert what I did, as it's only meant to be illustrative. At least you can see how the ideas of table caption, column and row headers, and css styling can be implemented, even if you want to use them in a different way. Hope that helps, and please feel free to ping me if I can do anything else for you. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 15:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia talk:Featured articles

Flatlist, or maybe hlist. Alarbus (talk) 16:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot, both of you. I'm not very strong on WikiTables (I try and avoid them, for the same reason), but sometimes... Anyhow, thanks. I'll take a look at those links later. Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:57, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for being a "white knight". I agree with your comments and have responded on the Adoption category Talk page. Enjoy your New Year. FClef (talk) 03:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Ouch!
Ouch, Rex, the nerdspeak is defeating me again. Just look at the last section header in the TOC on my talk, would you? It doesn't lead to anything. And then there's the mystery category the page has been placed in. Two connected weirdnesses, possibly? I went to the category page and read the explanation of what the cat is for, so now I definitely don't understand. Help, please? No great urgency, for once (as long as you don't mind listening to my desolate sobs over the desecration of my page). Happy new year! Bishonen &#124; talk 20:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC).
 * It's a copy of WP:STFU that's messing it up. The see also section and template that added the category are from that. Regards, Buggie111 (talk) 21:06, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Buggie. You hatted a chunk of stuff, chère, but inside it was a level two heading See also. That makes an entry in your TOC which has nowhere to go to while that chunk is collapsed. I've nowiki'ed the heading for you, so your TOC has now resumed its usual state of awesomeness. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 03:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. The essay template with three parameters caused the "Category:Wikipedia shortcut box first parameter needs fixing", so I've nowiki'ed that as well. If I were you, I'd archive that section as soon as possible. --RexxS (talk) 03:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. I don't know how I got so stupid. Copypasting a whole article without a care in the world! I despair, I really do. Why archive in a hurry though? Are the templates still leaking something toxic? (I just archived the whole shootingmatch less than two weeks ago. I like the page long. :- Bishonen &#124; talk 13:49, 31 December 2011 (UTC).
 * Having articles in your talk page is a magnet for bots and admin wannabees to come along and "clean things up" blindly. You'll have your page nominated for deletion before you know what's happened.
 * A little known fact is that all articles contain midi-chlorians, which surround and permeate the whole Main Space, binding it together. If the little buggers get loose in the other name spaces, you never know what they'll get up to. Archiving that one section would be a kindness. --RexxS (talk) 14:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Young man, you have been reported to WP:ANI for saying "bugger".  Admin Wannabe  BITE. 15:03, 31 December 2011 (UTC).
 * http://newcastleupontyne.tripod.com/geordie.html#B refers, canny lass. --RexxS (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Back
Copy of my note to Bishonen: Dear RexxS, It's OK, I'm feeling better, I'm back. Mightily cheered and surprised to receive this. Thanks again for help; I will still be bringing you various qs in 2012. Have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. FClef (talk) 00:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Houston Texans Pro Bowl FLC
I've added images, and replied to your other comments. Mind explaining the whole span=col thing, please? I'm not really that keen on it. Buggie111 (talk) 04:31, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's really just a way of making absolutely sure that screen readers for the visually impaired identify the column and row headers in a table. There's a good description of how JAWS (screen reader), one of the most popular ones, can make use of headers to assist navigation in any direction through a table at http://www.freedomscientific.com/Training/Surfs-up/Tables.htm and it's worth a look if you want to know why we mark up tables in that way. I've marked up the column headers with scope="col" for the 2003 table, so if you just need to see how to mark them up, there's an example for you. To be honest, the visually impaired gain very little from headers in short tables, although it's good practice to mark them up properly anyway. If you decide to create one large table for all the years, then the headers would become much more valuable. I'll revisit the article and the FLC anyway after others have had a chance to comment because I suspect that there may be pressure to provide a single list. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 00:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Is WP:FAR an overseas territory of Wikipedia Review?
Hi, Rex. You're being referred to, indirectly and directly, here. Bishonen &#124; talk 17:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC).
 * Comedians. I wonder if he was referring to me in the sense of "work-shy" or "unpiloted"? - or even "monotonic"? Can't say I'm terribly impressed with any of them, but then again, I'm far too mild to reply in kind. Pity we didn't get Famously to do the job in the first place. --RexxS (talk) 00:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can understand that the delegates are worried about the shortage of reviewers at FAR, and don't want to lose any. But I still don't understand how they can be so keen to placate and retain somebody that counterproductively belligerent. Perhaps the Relapse FAR is uncharacteristic or something, I haven't studied the OP's other nominations. Let's hope so, because potential new reviewers will surely shy off from all that FUD. Except Darwinbish, I suppose... there's a thought. She might fit right in. Bishonen &#124; talk 01:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC).

table for Teece?
RexxS:

Any chance you could help me with this illo?

I would like to convert this to more like a table like you did for the turtles in Painted turtle. The nice borders and all. I think I need captions at top and bottom though. Also, the one image on the righ has a different aspect ratio, can we make a column that has a different width?TCO (Reviews needed) 02:19, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Will that do for you? Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 02:40, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. I just want a top title, not individual captions. Thanks. You are a whizz and I appreciate knowing who the heavies are to go to!! TCO (Reviews needed) 03:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Easy to change around - throw another pic in and I'll size it for you. --RexxS (talk) 03:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks good--I will use that version! It is not in article text order any more, but I think the balance is better (and the text is all close).

If you are feeling "in the mood", love to have you look at the three other galleries in Fluorine and table-ize them (sections Physical properties, On Earth, and Metal halides). Maybe also the one in Nonmetal halides, although I think that works decent as is. Whatever you think makes sense, artistically. I prefer the table as I would like the reader to hit a scroll bar, not have the images jumble down the screen like a gallery (I use gallery like a poor man's table). Also I feel that the table keeps any rule mongers off my ass who think I'm doing something I shouldn't (think of gallery as just a pen at the end with a grab bag). And I loved how you had the borders and all in Painted turtle.TCO (Reviews needed) 03:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Favour
Hi RexxS, happy new year! Been a while since I've come cap in hand to you, but I was wondering if you could take a look at List of James Bond novels and stories from an WP:ACCESS perspective particularly? Most of the sports lists I see now use row and col scopes etc, these "episode" lists don't. Is it a problem? Could they be improved? Many thanks, The Rambling Man (talk) 10:29, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi TRM, Happy New Year to you too! You know I'm only too happy to pitch in where I can help, and I'm grateful you've asked.
 * The List of James Bond novels and stories has 8 lists and 6 of them use the template book list. That template places a "short summary" section on a row of its own across the full width of the table. The resulting colspan pretty much excludes the possibility of sorting any table constructed with book list, but that's more a usability issue. Nevertheless, it does disassociate the summary from the rest of the information relating to that book. It leaves a screen reader with only the option of sequentially reading the table, rather than allowing free navigation in any direction as a more accessible table would. I know I've introduced a concept of "degree of accessibility" there, but there's no other way of putting it; I think Graham87 would cope with those tables with no problems, but he's probably quite used to hearing them on Wikipedia - I'd have to ask him to be certain.
 * On the other hand, although row headers would be of much less use in a table where information is split across two rows, I think that marking up column headers for scope="col" ought to be done, because we should be encouraging good practice, even when we can't produce perfectly accessible tables at present. This ought to be done in the table headers and reflected in the documentation at Template:Book list/doc. I would suggest compliance with that part of WP:DTAB to be strongly preferred for any such articles at FLC, but it's the sort of thing we ought to seek consensus for.
 * It would be possible to redesign the table not to use book list so that all of the information is presented on one row, allowing greater usability and accessibility, but that would sacrifice the present visual presentation, and would need considerable discussion with the relevant WikiProject(s) to "sell" the idea.


 * That looks ok on my wide-screen monitor, but becomes crappier as I reduce the browser width. It would be a difficult sell until a lot more folks move to HD screens, because most people are going to be reluctant to trade-off visuals for accessibility and usability. I'd recommend small gains that are easy like the column headers to start with. That's before we even start looking at things like "List of (your favourite tv show) episodes". Jack would have taken a hatchet to them all, given the chance! Let me know if you want me to actually edit any articles just to demonstrate the col scope, while leaving book list in place. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Rightyho, I'll need to digest that and see if we can roll out the suggestions. Thanks, as ever, for your time and enthusiasm RexxS. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:29, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

List of Houston Texans Pro Bowl selections
Thank you for your kind words. That's the great part of the featured content review processes – they are truly team efforts. Us reviewers all seem to complement each other well. We all have our own specialities and can add our unique insights. You've done that with your accessibility comments, which have led to widespread changes in how the tables in FLs are made. If you see anything worth commenting on at an FLC, please continue to do so; we need all the reviewers we can get. Thanks again, and I hope to continue seeing you around. Giants2008 ( Talk ) 20:21, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What Giants said. :) The Rambling Man (talk) 20:27, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Announcement

 * Snön lyser vit på taken
 * Endast Darwinbish är vaken!
 * ''Viktor Rydberg, "The tomte" (1881)
 *  little   ankle   biter  15:22, 7 January 2012 (UTC).

Wikipedia training
Hi Rexx, as you're an experienced teacher who has done Wikipedia training, I'd be very interested in your feedback on. Feel free to discuss and improve on the WMUK wiki or in email. Cheers, MartinPoulter (talk) 12:41, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

My [deleted] reply to you
Please note the [deleted] reply I made to your comment here. It certainly didn't cross my mind the owner of that page was that precious. But I am surprised you choose such a place to present issues! --Epipelagic (talk) 10:53, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You're just asking me to revisit your poorly designed templates. Alarbus (talk) 11:04, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh you mean the poorly designed options available in the current templates, which force serious users to try and bend things, unsatisfactorily, to try make them work a bit better. Anyway, I note the miserable threat. I'm here to write an encyclopaedia, and I really don't want to waste more time street brawling with you Alarbus. I apologise for posting in your talk page. That was very silly of me. --Epipelagic (talk) 11:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, although Alarbus and I share a common passion for MediaWiki:Common.css – so I'm no stranger to the location – it was Geometry Guy that I was principally responding to. I was really hoping to present an optimistic view to counter-balance his concerns.
 * As my own expertise lies in the fields of electronics, IT and scuba diving, I've seen extraordinarily rapid changes over the last 50 years, so I do take your point about rapidly changing knowledge. A solution has been found at WP:MEDRS: use only the very best secondary sources and keep away from primaries until they have been sufficiently well reviewed. It does make reaching FA that much harder, but I've managed it with Oxygen toxicity, and I hope to do the same for Decompression sickness and Nitrogen narcosis. I should say that I have the benefit of a regular collaboration with Gene Hobbs, who runs the Rubicon Research Repository and can always be counted on to come up with the best sources.
 * But that's it, I believe: the twin principles of collaboration and proper sourcing, the basis for making Wikipedia work. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:41, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

A list for you to peruse
Hi RexxS, just wondered if you had time to take a look at Featured list candidates/List of highest-grossing films/archive1, in particular with regard to the "table-in-a-table" accessibility in the Franchises/Series table. Cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 14:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a tough one. I've left some comments at the review, but to be frank, it doesn't meet WP:DTAB, although it's clearly a labour of love by the nominator, and visually, it works well. The real problem is that HTML and the table structure isn't amenable to sub-tables without a hack of some sort, and all too often screen readers lose out when a sighted editor creates a hack that looks ok to them. --RexxS (talk) 16:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Metalloid A-class review
Hi RexxS. As part of the A-class review for the metalloid article, TCO suggested I ask for your assistance with the layout of the two physical and chemical properties tables. I'm not completely sure what TCO had in mind but am open to any suggestions. The column widths are set in ems to accomodate different font sizes. I was looking at the article last night on an iphone and the tables rendered quite well. Thank you. Sandbh (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I intended to look at this today, but other stuff got in the way. I promise I'll look tomorrow. --RexxS (talk) 02:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Barotrauma stuff on pneumothorax
Hi there. I'd promised that I would add some stuff about pneumothorax due to AGE, and I have relied on your recommendations on the talkpage. I have shortened it very slightly, because we have a main article on the wider subject of barotrauma. Would you mind having a quick look and correct any mistakes I might have made? It's been added to "secondary causes". JFW &#124; T@lk  12:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi JFW, I've modified it slightly because the cause is always barotrauma, while AGE can also result simultaneously from the injury. The confusion is because AGE in divers is serious enough to have incidence data collected, while diving-related PTX seems much less likely to be reported as such. So we can only estimate the incidence of PTX among divers by examining the AGE reports, which is why Bennett & Elliott discuss their epidemiology together. The Wikipedia article Diving, oddly enough, is about the sport of jumping into water, so I've fixed that link. --RexxS (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It needs to move down to the traumatic section. Barotrauma in diving is the same as the over expansion injury from a vent. The difference is that in diving the gas volume comes from the change in pressure (Boyle's law). I get my diving instructor candidates and anesthesia residents to look for the same thing for overexpansion... SPAM - Subcutaneous emphysema Pneumothorax Arterial gas embolism Mediastinal emphysema
 * Are you planning a Society and culture section as well? This was an interesting take for all of sports with the refs provided on talk for controversy in diving med.
 * Really nice work! --Gene Hobbs (talk) 14:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You know, we don't have an article on Contraindications to Athletic Participation as far as I can tell. That ref looks like a fine source to base an article on, and I'm tempted to start one off. I've spent all my limited wiki-time on tables and accessibility lately, but when I've finished the WP:FLC reviews I'm in the middle of, I really must get back to doing some scuba work. If I'm late, you can start without me, Gene! --RexxS (talk) 17:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)