User talk:Steelpillow/Archive 2018-19

Thanks for all the work on Reusable launch system
I noticed you've been changing a lot on that page recently. I was impressed by the improvement to the page since I last read it.

Thanks for all the work!

Rmvandijk (talk) 09:02, 16 February 2018 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. There's still a massive amount of improvement to be done. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:44, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

A page you started (Hans Amtmann) has been reviewed!
Thanks for creating Hans Amtmann, Steelpillow!

Wikipedia editor Enwebb just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:

"Nice work!"

To reply, leave a comment on Enwebb's talk page.

Learn more about page curation.

Enwebb (talk) 21:24, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikiwings

 * Thank you, much appreciated. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:20, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The recognition is well-deserved, you did a lot of great work making that merger happen! - Ahunt (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Negative Energy edit
Hi there!

I apologize for my wrong way of editing, I am new here and I should have been informed before the edit!My bad! I will do better! I will open a discussion on the topic soon as I consult it! Thank you! PapAngelos (talk) 10:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Coptic Polygon?
I realize this edit is from 11 years ago, but do you happen to remember what your source was for, in this edit, the sentence "Branko Grünbaum calls these coptic, though this term does not seem to be widely used"? In the papers I've seen by him, the term he uses is "nonacoptic", and then only in reference to polyhedra. -Apocheir (talk) 23:53, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, it may have been in private discussion. He had introduced "acoptic" so it would seem the obvious root to describe what he later preferred to call "non-acoptic". It probably needs either deleting as insignificant or, if other authors have adopted "non-acoptic" (as opposed to mere namechecking), in which case it should be updated and referenced. As far as polygons vs. polyhedra are concerned, that is not significant - any such descriptive term applies to any appropriate polytope and there is no need to source every possible combination. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:18, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Villagepump
I just wanted to say thanx for your efforts on ideas for doing a better job dealing with rude behavior. You still have my support. Let me know when things get posted wherever they are going and I will say so--maybe actually stay on topic. :-) Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:21, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I will let you know as things shape up. By the way, I notice that you copy-pasted most of Template:Gentle editor into your home page. Why not use the usual transclusion code, simply ? This would also list you in Category:Gentle editor, which is in the bit you did not copy-paste. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:41, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Your initiative
Very interested in your initiative here.

You might like to see mine at User:Andrewa/gentle editor and User:Andrewa/A personal plea. Andrewa (talk) 01:02, 29 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Being me, the first thing I did was to adopt your userbox and then to start working up a change to its content. That sparked something in my mind so I went looking and found the loosely related Kindness Campaign, which looks to have a very large membership. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:43, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The kindness campaign has lots of members but there seems little recent activity. It's one of many initiatives over the years. Maybe I should compile a list of them.
 * I'm wary of diluting the template, which all of your changes do. Firstly, I wanted to focus on NPA, rather than involve civility. It's often observed that civility is in the eyes of the beholder. NPA on the other hand has relatively little wiggle-room. But in my experience NPA discussions often get sidetracked into discussions of civility, and that I see as part of the problem. It's easy to be civil while also being highly and deliberately disparaging.
 * Similarly, abide strictly by both the letter and spirit is a lot stronger than your rewording. However I have no objection to removing the last two lines if you think that helps significantly. I can't see a problem either way. Removing that clause again weakens the commitment, but not significantly IMO, and it does get it down to three lines.
 * But there's no point in recruiting people to a campaign which gives back all the wiggle-room! Andrewa (talk) 23:46, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, maybe a review of such campaigns would be a good way to promote the fact that this issue is never going to lie down.
 * I take your point about watering-down the template and I will see if I can do better there. But I don't think that all my changes do that. WP:CIVIL includes a statement on NPA, so I see its inclusion as making the template stronger by adding all the other aspects of civility as well. To me, it is rather limiting to imply that a "gentle editor" is concerned only with avoiding personal attacks but does not rule out being uncivil in other ways. The "seeks to" bit keeps pushing the text length onto a fourth line. How about "honours" in place of "respects" or "seeks to abide by":


 * &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:11, 30 June 2018 (UTC)


 * In my bitter experience, civility is a common and unproductive distraction. That's why I want to focus on NPA. Allow NPA discussion to wander off into questions of civility, and there will be further discussion of wp:notcensored, differing social environments... a perfect storm. Civility is a dead duck IMO. NPA is the radical Wikipedia answer to that. It gives no wiggle room. And it used to work well, while the civility policy never has had and, in my opinion, never will have any effect on user behaviour. Andrewa (talk) 02:15, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. How about this then:


 * Squeezing the second sentence into one line is hard, is it too awkward now? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 06:10, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Quite happy to drop the last clause if you think that improves it. Andrewa (talk) 13:50, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Now that's behaving strangely. When I posted it, it fitted into three lines. Now it is taking up four. Somebody or something must have updated a style sheet or a master template somewhere, but how, where and why is something we will probably never know. Yes, I do think that three lines is a significant limit for userboxes, it doesn't matter if it drops back to two. Can we treat the following as final?


 * &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:08, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see you have already done exactly that, except for the bold text. That's a stylistic option some user templates adopt and others don't, I'm happy to leave it up to you. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:21, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Ways to improve Cruciform wing
Hi, I'm Onel5969. Steelpillow, thanks for creating Cruciform wing!

I've just tagged the page, using our page curation tools, as having some issues to fix. Nicely done article, could use some more footnotes in the first section.

The tags can be removed by you or another editor once the issues they mention are addressed. If you have questions, you can leave a comment on my talk page. Or, for more editing help, talk to the volunteers at the Teahouse.

 Onel 5969  TT me 13:01, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 11:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I strongly recommend reverting your close. That is the classy move here. It's not at all straightforward, and there will be a shitstorm either way. Several of us know quite a bit about UK railway history, and your close is objectively wrong on that basis, but that is irrelevant: the only valid NAC here would be "no consensus". There si no shame in putting your hands up to a good-faith error. Rather the opposite in fact. I have you on my "RFA one day" list, this is a test :-) Guy (Help!) 19:09, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the advice, it is appreciated. I was pretty much going the road you advise, though I would have clarified my close as a "no consensus to split from MOS" rather than ask someone else to do that. Frankly, I have been pleasantly surprised at the mildness of the shitstorm to date. Anyway, it looks like someone else has moved in now, so it is not my problem any more. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 21:17, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Booklink
Template:Booklink has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:55, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

wing walkin´.
good point... (not a gallery, spammy, adds nothing)  Fenway fender  TT me 21:08, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: A-18C simulator has been accepted
 A-18C simulator, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. If your account is more than four days old and you have made at least 10 edits you can create articles yourself without posting a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer. Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia! Legacypac (talk) 05:07, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * If you have any questions, you are welcome to ask at the  [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:AfC_talk/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=A-18C_simulator help desk] .
 * If you would like to help us improve this process, please consider.

New Skylab controversy RfC proposal
Hi! I have drafted another RfC at Talk:Skylab_controversy. Please comment on how best to get appropriate input from the Wikipedia editor community. -- ke4roh (talk) 14:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Mediawiki2latex on Windows
Hi Steelpillow,

The is some good news for those in need to PDF versions from Wikipedia articles.

I just wrote an installation instruction for mediawiki2latex on Windows. Its here: https://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Benutzer:Dirk_Huenniger/wb2pdf

If you find time you are very welcome to correct anything about it you feel like. Especially the language might need to attention since I am not a native speaker.

Anybody else is of course also welcome the try the installation an correct anything s/he feels like.

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 13:15, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Your Teahouse question
Did you find the solution for this problem? If not, WP:VPT may be the place to ask. Sorry, I'm way behind reading the archives.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:39, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

P-40 Variants Discussion
Please review the discussion between myself and the other editor on the talk page of the article, if and when you have the time. I am starting to think maybe this is a young person a little out of their depth. LankhmarJoe (talk) 04:11, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I will do my best. I am afraid that I can only move rather slowly, as I have very little time to spare. I will focus on the encyclopedic/collaborative processes rather than the content itself, as I think that will help most. Also, I think that small, slow steps should help to build that collaboration better than a heavy engagement could. Please do not expect miracles! &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right, I am younger than average. But age doesn't apply to Wikipedia, I read somewhere that admins under 10 years old exist. -  ZLEA  Talk \ Contribs 14:50, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * We appreciate your youthful exuberance. - Ahunt (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I do too in theory but the erratic impulses of youth can be pretty disruptive to the quality of an article about a rather complex historical subject. Not to mention the patience of an old historian. Steelpillow I appreciate your help but you aren't the only one with limited time, I have a rather demanding day job. I'm trying to save this article from being ruined but it's all starting to feel pretty Kafka-esque. I've already spent something like 60 hours on this. LankhmarJoe (talk) 00:02, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Your definition of ruined is much different from the community's. Why fight change when you can contribute constructively?  Change can be good.
 * It sounds to me like you think youth should make large contributions. Just for the record I'm not that young, and I'm not like other people my age.  People my age would usually vandalize Wikipedia in their free time, whereas a large number of my edits are reverting vandalism. -  ZLEA  Talk \ Contribs 00:22, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Steelpillow, this will be my last comment on your talk page, I'm sorry for bringing the argument here. I think you and MilborneOne made an honest mistake in approving the rewrite of the wiki. Superficially it looked like a more organized article, but he actually just copied data from another (non wiki) page and doesn't actually know the subject. The article was substantially diminished of content (not to mention references) and is now a far less useful article. I would still like to save it but I'm running out of time to deal with this. Perhaps you can communicate to me on the article talk page how this can best be rectified. LankhmarJoe (talk) 04:14, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I have been doing that, taking it step by step. Have patience and take it slowly. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:21, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

"But age doesn't apply to Wikipedia, I read somewhere that admins under 10 years old exist." - Yes, in fact we do have some admins that are definitely under 10 years of age. And I believe I know exactly who they are ;-) Hey, thought I would stop by, say hello. And, let you that Joe indicated he was going to take some time off. His last post was somewhat upbeat, he had some nice things to say about you guys. I believe that ZLEA if free to continue working on that page now, on their own. Probably good idea to have Steelpillow check in from time to time. Certainly could've been a worse outcome. Maybe if/when Joe returns, the rest will result in better collaboration. Anyway? Just thought I'd share that bit of info. Say, SteelP... you going to be running soon? ;-) -  wolf  06:54, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I will keep it on my watchlist, should be able to check in most days but cannot spare a lot of time. I wonder what proportion of editors are over 65? ;-) &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:48, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Xmas

 * 2018 XMAS.pdf FWiW Bzuk (talk) 01:41, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you
And Merry Christmas to you as well, my friend. I hope you and yours have a great holiday. - wolf  17:09, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Request
I'm looking for some impartial assistance. I'll state just basic facts, and leave out the histrionics. Recently, the "controversies" sections were split off from the FBI and CIA articles (the CIA more recently than the FBI). They're now at List of FBI controversies and List of CIA controversies. Both the list pages have basic one or two sentence leads. The main pages still have a "controveries" section header with a hatnote to the list page. The "controversies" section has a a copy of the list page's lead as a summary. Some editors are satisfied with that, others want to see more detailed summaries in the "controversies" sections. Would you be willing to take a look and perhaps propose a pair of brief, neutral and properly written summaries for these two sections? This has been dragging on for awhile, I'm hoping that if someone experienced but uninvolved were to basically say "Hey, how about this and this?". Those involved will let the matter drop and move on. Thanks & Cheers - wolf  21:20, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi. Mi first thought is that the list format is potentially the wrong way to go. It lacks perspective and this raises two problems. Firstly, the article presentation is flat and arbitrary. Secondly, it makes it really hard to give a meaningful and balanced summary, especially where there is editorial PoV gaming in play (i.e. the issue that brought you here). IMHO a better approach would be to group the controversies broadly by some thematic subdivision, such as domestic vs international, finance and fraud vs. spooks unbound, or whatever. Doing this first should both make the article far more readable and meaningful, and would offer an obvious structure/focus to any summary. Even better if the "List of" meme can be moved away from and titles such as "Controversies about the CIA/FBI" or similar adopted. I am at the end of a long day right now, will be descended on by relatives tomorrow, so I don't know when I will be able to take a longer look. Meanwhile, I hope this is not too discouraging. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 21:37, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Community maintained Books -> Cached PDFs
Hi,

I could make PDFs of all community maintained books on Wikipedia. I could upload them to a cloud and make the accessible via sfp. We could link to the from the Book template via lua. I could update them once a year. Do you think this is a good idea. According to my current calculation I would have to pay 650 EUR for a silent mini pc and 10 EUR per month for the cloud. It would take something between a few month and one year to first populate the cloud, but this could easily be speeded up to one month renting virtual machines for 400 EUR. Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 18:49, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Dirk,
 * That is a fine question. I think that it is good in principle but may not be practicable.
 * Many people will not want to wait a year for their updates to come through, as they will be using them for textbooks the same year. So I think you would need to provide more timely updates. Two options might be:
 * Update your cloud monthly. Perhaps you could check each article in a book to see if it has been updated, and only rebuild a book if an article has changed, but I am not sure how much processing that would save.
 * Index all the books but do not build any particular one until a user requests it. You then either build it for them, or check to see if any articles have changed since you last built a copy. If somebody must wait half a day, that is not so bad. That way, you can keep processing overheads lower.
 * But I do not think the WMF would adopt it, as they do not want to support Haskell. So you would have to pay for it yourself and perhaps charge a fee for each download. But it is hard to make money from downloads and I see that PediaPress do not offer them now. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for you answer
 * I cannot charge any fees because I am employed by the government.
 * An update will cost 400 EUR. So monthly updates will cost 4800 EUR, thats more then I want to pay for that.
 * I am quite sure that updating only books with changes will not save many processing resources.
 * For 650 EUR I can get a totally silent mini computer that will be able to process almost any book, but I see to many IT security related issues, so I cannot make it accessible from the internet, especially since I am a one man show.
 * So if someone wants a large book quickly s/he will have to do in on her/his own hardware, which is quite affordable in western countries.
 * And I really cannot understand that someone does not want to use Haskell. It really easy to solve that kind of task with it.

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi,
 * during the weekend I was able to reduce the memory consumption of mediawiki2latex significantly. I set up a new server with 4 hours max runtime per request. Now nearly every community maintained book on the english wikipedia should compile.


 * http://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org


 * Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 17:17, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Good news! Good luck! &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:25, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Dunne and Borges
Hello Steelpillow. I don't think what i added to the article is an unstructured list "without explanation of significance", at least talking about Borges. A chapter of one of his books referes clearly to Dunne's work, and the citations are there, in spanish, yes, but adding influences in a Novel Price i think tells something interesting about Dunne. If i find citations to suport relationship with Jung and the others i'll let you know, by the moment the only thing i can say is that i found it in wikipedia articles in spanish, so i'm agree this is not enought. Thanks anyway for your work. --Viascos (talk) 23:27, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * One more thing. If you want to cite Priestley, please use is book "Man and Time", it's the one I'm reading now, the reason to discover Dunne, previously unknown for me. Chapter 10 is called "Dunne and Serialism", entirely dedicated to Dunne's work. I think it fits very well with this section, so I did it in the spanish version of the Dunnes aritcle. Greetings from northwest Spain. --Viascos (talk) 23:47, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi. Many dozens of writers have referenced Dunne in their works. Mostly we do not mention such writers in biography articles (Imagine how many have referenced Winston Churchill for example). Priestley is significant because Dunne actively influenced him, as is verifiable from several reliable third-party sources. on English Wikipedia we always prefer such independent sources. Borges is a great figure (I have several of his books in translation) but he was not really influenced by Dunne. However he did write an Introduction to the Spanish translation of An Experiment with Time (I think published in Argentina as Un Esperimento con el Tiempo or something like that. I can look it up if you like). &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 05:29, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Dunne's An Experiment with Time and Irréversible
Hello, you reverted my edit on the article about An Experiment with Time mentioning that the book was referenced in the film Irréversible, as a justification you wrote: "No indication of significance". The book being referenced in a high profile film is significant enough, but when you add the fact that part of the book's thesis (premonitory dreams are real) is used in that film, one has to try very hard not to see the significance. Perhaps adding a section is too much so I propose renaming the 'Literary influence' section to just 'Influence' and adding the bit about Irréversible there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Balistik94 (talk • contribs) 19:07, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi. The problem is to find sufficient reliable sourcing from which the cultural significance of the reference to Dunne can be explicitly verified. My understanding is that Irréversible is more notorious for its shocking violence and cinematography than for its use of An Experiment with Time, and despite winning the odd award is hardly the "high profile film" that you suggest - that would need verifying too. For your interest Things to Come, Escape from the Planet of the Apes and (I am told) Melvin Moti's E.S.P. all pay homage to J. W. Dunne in their different ways and the first two are far more well known, and I have personally checked out 48 references in fictional literature alone. But the necessary third-party endorsement of any given example is usually lacking. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:42, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

The Downs Malvern
Hello. I am interested in your comment "we do not reference categories in the main text", as dozens of articles on schools do exactly that. It strikes me as a helpful aid to navigation, although not essential. If there is some general WP policy, or one at Project Schools, that you are relying on, would you please give me a link? Regards, Moonraker (talk) 11:35, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi. Is there a Wikiproject with a consensus to do that? Categories are an indexing tool distinct from main article space, with the equivalent in main article space being list articles and in template space being navboxes. If a list exists, then linking to a category is pointless, it is better to check the category and update the list as needed. A list can also contain information unsuited to categorization, can be made sortable, and so on, so it is an inherently richer solution anyway. I know of no guidance explicitly discussing direct linking from article text, either to endorse or forbid it, rather it is conspicuous by its absence and is clearly regarded as sufficiently at cross-purposes to the way Wikipedia is designed as to be not worth mentioning. I know of no other wikiproject which sanctions such a thing. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:05, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I have raised the question of Linking to categories on the Village Pump. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

 * Thank you, much appreciated. I may take up the existential point with the Dalai Lama if I ever get to meet him. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:48, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

PediaPress Open Source PDF Renderer
Hi Steelpillow,

As you already know I am afraid that the new renderer will be based on mwlib and thus require Python 2 and thus become undeployable due to security issues on 1st January 2020 (9 months from now). I understood that the proton renderer is not affected by the this issue. But on Books you wrote that Proton will never be able to process Wikipedia Books.

Furthermore you wrote that Pediapress is working on an open source renderer that will be able to process Wikipedia Books. I now still fear that this renderer will be affected by this issue. I tired to find the source code of the new PediaPress renderer on the internet, but I was not able to find it. So currently I can not really check whether or not this we have this issue. I could now just could sit back now an see if everything bursts into flames in nine months. But somehow fear this is not the right strategy. I also could ask PediaPress directly but from my experience with companies I know that a company will always say that everything is fine and great, absolutely independent whether or not this is right.

Well, having posted this information here, I can at least refer to this post in nine months. In the German army we got a saying "Melden macht frei und belastet den Vorgesetzen". There is no direct English maybe something like: "I publicly informed about the issue and am thus by no means responsible for any consequently arising harm"

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 20:58, 9 April 2019 (UTC)


 * H Dirk, I share your concerns, though I am not sure we both understand the software roadmap.
 * As far as I can tell the current renderer for single articles is Electron. "Real soon now", this will be replaced by Proton. Book rendering is not available directly and will be done by the PediaPress one (called Collector). I am not sure which of these is dependent on mwlib and Python 2.
 * But I am most worried that nobody is managing the process. The MediaWiki Foundation persistently refuse to resource anything. Developers do nothing but deliver false promises and, occasionally, very late and inherently unusable alpha software. Nobody has produced a viable algorithm for managing the book chapter layout and creator copyright merge requirements, pagination, etc. since the original Offline Content Generator (OCG). All we have are a few hard-pressed enthusiasts doing something – anything – to keep the project alive.
 * We were once told where the PediaPress repos is. I cannot find it now, so I have asked again.
 * Should it be written "Vorgesetzten" with a second "t"? I would suggest, "Reporting frees you and passes the burden to your masters." But I am no master, I am just a dumb user and writer who has in my time supported many projects worse run even than this one. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 06:40, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I give up
Thank you for reverting me twice, I do not believe there has been any assumption of good faith, the remarks you left are  provocative and insensitive. I need a break from Wikipedia. Shencypeter (talk) 14:45, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I try to be factual. My apologies if you feel put upon but the fact that you did not engage in discussion on the article talk pages does not help your case - see the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle for how to approach such reversions in future. Have a good break and come back soon. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:12, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Glad it's all behind us now, Cheers Shencypeter (talk) 02:05, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of aircraft in default format


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of aircraft in default format requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 03:25, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of aircraft in maintenance format


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of aircraft in maintenance format requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 03:38, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Fast PDFs of Collection
Hi,

I made a demo for getting PDFs of collections in a fast way with wkhtmltopdf.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Reading/Web/PDF_Functionality

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 18:08, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Merger discussion for List of active United States Air Force aircraft
An article that you have been involved in editing&mdash;List of active United States Air Force aircraft&mdash;has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Natg 19 (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, this template wasn't entirely correct in its wording. I am trying to inform you of a potential merge into an article that you have worked on: List of active United States military aircraft. Natg 19 (talk) 22:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki2LaTeX
Hi,

I was able to resolve on of the issue you raised about mediawiki2latex. So it is clear that I actively maintain mediawiki2latex:

see de:b:Benutzer Diskussion:Dirk Huenniger/wb2pdf/Requests

Dirk Hünniger (talk) 21:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The navbox in the birch article is now rendered as a single page.Dirk Hünniger (talk) 11:41, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

I invested a developer day in navboxes. I tries with hamburg steinwerder and they look small enough to me now. The only problem is that I cannot commit it to the server seems the access seems to have gone away due to last nights hacker attack. So the server is still running, but not accessible to me for administration right now. You can still check out the source from git and try everything you like, especially checking the navboxes.

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 12:59, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I can acces the shell of the server again. I updated it. You may now try the navbox thing as well as the removed catergories in book mode on the main server. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 20:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I did most web interface changes you requested on both servers. I also answered you questions on the request page. Some things I did not do exactly the way you suggested. Just look if that look Ok to you now, and what you think still needs further improvements. If you got time and the changes are Ok to youm you are of course welcome to update the manual in the wiki. Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 13:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I changed something in your update to the manual. The only point is, that there is no estimation of needed runtime. The rule is simply, if no request is running the new request is accepted otherwise it is dropped. If it is to large a timeout error will be displayed after the timeout has been reached. Thanks for you work on the manual, it is very welcome. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 12:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, thank you. I understand better now. I have also tidied it up again, I hope that too is OK. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, thanks a lot. Thats looks good to me. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 13:41, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of aircraft in military format


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of aircraft in military format requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 02:27, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of aircraft in default format


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of aircraft in default format requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 02:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Let me repeat, Steelpillow, Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 02:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of aircraft in maintenance format


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of aircraft in maintenance format requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the category has been empty for seven days or more and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Liz Read! Talk! 02:34, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Lazair article
Also

Thanks for your ping on the article talk page. I have stopped editing this page and participating in the discussion and I feel after our many years of working together that I at least owe you an explanation why that is, so you can proceed without my input there.

This is the history of the KitPlanes article series. As you may know, I am an aviation writer, with many hundreds of articles that have been published by independent third party publications. Two decades ago, in the late 1990s my late wife and I acquired two non-airworthy Lazair Series IIs and rebuilt them. One was completed and flown, the purple one covered in Hipec that is illustrated in the Wikipedia article. Both the complete and incomplete one were sold in 2000. KitPlanes commissioned us to write a series of articles about the restoration process, which was then run as a series. I researched and wrote them and my late wife edited them. The bulk of the series was about the restoration process, modifications, fabric covering, dual flight training in Lazair II with an instructor experienced on type and first flights. There was historical information on the aircraft type included as well, as background. The historical information came from the best sources available at the time, some 20 years after the aircraft were produced. I did get a lot of information from an employee at the successor company to the original manufacturer, who had worked at Ultraflight as well. He also informed me that the designer was still around, but was not participating in the aviation community at that time, so I was not able to interview him. I acquired original publications and some parts from them. The articles went though the usual editing and fact-checked that a large publication like KitPlanes does. Could some of the historical information be incorrect? Possibly. It was certainly incomplete.

The dual flight training on the Lazair II included lots of single-engine work and the instructor demonstrated, and I flew the aircraft that way at different weights. I was for many years a military test pilot. We flew all possible single-engine techniques, but, as noted, in all conditions the aircraft descends much more quickly at full power on one engine than it does with both engines at idle, as measured on a variometer. This is due to the spacing of the engines and the drag profile of the airframe when in a yawed condition. Because it has its engines closer together and has less horsepower, the single seat versions do not exhibit the same behaviour. This was all described in the KitPlanes article series, as being useful to readers.

When I came to start the Wikipedia article in 2007 there was very little information available publicly, so I made use of the KitPlanes articles as refs. That use is allowed, since I only used them where necessary, sparingly and not to promote my own work (they are long out of print) and they are published in a reliable source.

I have copies of the magazine articles, but cannot post them, nor can anyone else, as the complete copyrights are held by KitPlanes. We had to sign a rather detailed contract assigning all rights to them. Anyone copying, posting on the internet, or emailing copies to people would be committing a copyright violation. I am sure they are still publicly available in libraries, as back issues, etc.

As you can read on the article talk page, I have warned the editor in question about WP:COI and also listed our relevant policies and guidelines and he has stated he intends to ignore them. It is quite clear that he intends to discredit all the cited refs and then re-write the article from his own memory of events from 40 years ago, either uncited or, perhaps cited to some as-yet-to-be created diary. I am sure at some point WP:LEGAL will be brought up again, as it has already been broadly hinted at on the talk page. Once the article has been rewritten the community will then have a choice of restoring it to its cited version or else sending it for deletion. It is an important aircraft type and we should have an article on it, just not a COI WP:PEACOCK one.

Because of my part in creating the Wikipedia article, contributing all but one of the photos and having written some of the refs, I feel I must recluse myself from any further work on the article. I wish you good luck in sorting it out and hope you find a judicious solution to it. - Ahunt (talk) 12:32, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki2LaTeX large documents 5000 pages PDF
Hi,

https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 5000 pages to PDF. Previously this was 800 pages.

I went really crazy this weekend and came up with an extremely wired solution. The memory consumption is now significantly reduced, which strongly decreases the cost for computational resources to run mediawiki2latex.

Yours Dirk Hünniger (talk) 05:45, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 5
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Polyhedral Grottos
I couldn't get the email form on your website to work in my browser. I wanted to share this link with you: http://arandalasch.com/works/grotto/ It seems relevant to your interests. The geometric derivation involves Danzer tiles. Theoh (talk) 12:36, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for the link. It looks interesting, although I have little time to explore it.
 * My email form uses an obsolete code that usually still opens up an email message to send. It has the virtue that modern malware ignores it and does not spam me. I avoid active code. such as javascript, on principle. There seems no other modern way to display or encode an email address, that malware also ignores. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:29, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Season's Greetings
FWiW Bzuk (talk) 01:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)