User talk:VinculumMan

Greek medals
Hello! You are quite right, nice spotting! There was no medal called "Military Cross" (Στρατιωτικός Σταυρός) in Greek, however the War Cross (Πολεμικός Σταυρός) could be (very) loosely translated as "Military Cross", in this case (seeing as the recipients are all British/Commonwealth officers) probably to conform more to British customary usage. So feel free to go ahead with the category shuffle. Cheers, Constantine  ✍  11:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

AFD
Hello. I have recently nominated an article that you have contributed to for deletion at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Fingerpoke_of_Doom_(3rd_nomination) Seeker of the Torch (talk) 15:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Sandy Creek, New South Wales listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Sandy Creek, New South Wales. Since you had some involvement with the Sandy Creek, New South Wales redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Whoops, my bad - see my !vote at the redirect discussion. Thanks for catching VinculumMan (talk) 15:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Disambig cleanups and tags
Hi, VinculumMan. After cleaning up a disambig page tagged with disambig-cleanup, please remove just the "-cleanup" part, leaving a disambig tag, instead of deleting the template.. Cheers! -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Noted! Thanks for flagging. VinculumMan (talk) 16:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

listas
Hey... I've come across some edits of yours to the listas parameter in the WikiProject Biography banners. For example:
 * 1) It should be listas=Lencek, Rado and not listas=Lenček, Rado
 * 2) It should be listas=Fitzgerald, Lord John and not listas=FitzGerald, John  (also notice the "G")

There are alot of special cases and I've messed up waaay more than my fair share of them.... I won't go near a three or more word Arabic name with a ten foot pole... I've yet to see the pattern to some of those with my western eyes. A couple of places with documentation are WP:SUR and the beginning of the missing listas talk page. If it is a special case for listas, I'll bet $10 that the DEFAULTSORT value on the article's main page is also messed up (or missing), especially with Chinese and Japanese names (plus add that some asians "westernize" their name by putting their surname last... AHHHHH). So, I usually have two AWBs running at the same time, One with the talk page and another with the main article page. This way I can fix DEFAULTSORT and Persondata at the same time. As User:Mandarax is the master, look at his Special:Contributions/Mandarax page to see how he does it. Yell if you need help. If I don't know the answer, I get to learn too. Bgwhite (talk) 07:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for feedback. You may have noticed that I'm gradually realised how many gotcha's there are out there, and so have started ignoring anything but the vanilla western names. Sounds like that was a good decision and I'll stick with it for the moment. Advice and pointers gratefully noted! VinculumMan (talk) 13:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I forgot... I had to look up what vinculum meant. As there are different meanings (I vote for this one), what does vinculum in your username mean? Bgwhite (talk) 07:07, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * See User:VinculumMan, but the Borg story is much more impressive ..... VinculumMan (talk)
 * Sometimes you get lucky and one of the authors of the article is familiar with the relevant naming convention but only added the sort value on the DEFAULTSORT. The Biography banner was most probably added by a bot whose owner either did not know about listas or did not care.
 * The object of the category is to insure that each article has a sort value in DEFAULTSORT. At some point one or more of us is going to have to master Arab naming conventions and take care of all those.  Happy editing!  JimCubb (talk) 02:04, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey JimCubb, I got your message and it is nice to see another person having fun with listas... I've been finding it kind of addictive.  When I fix a listas, I've been running around 75% of the main articles having missing DEFAULTSORT, wrong DEFAULTSORT or problems with Persondata.  So, I FEEL like I'm making a difference... if I am or not is another story. Plus, I'm starting to get a clue on arabic names.  My favorite names are Burmese names... no last name and they change their names often thru life.
 * I add musician-work-group and the other groups to the banner, plus class=, but after reading your User page I will be adding the priority too if present in another banner. I had been hesitant.
 * I see you add WikiProjectBannerShell at two banners. My quirk or pet peeve is spelling out the banners and putting them in alphabetical order.  They should be in alpha order (except biography), but the spelling out comes from my programing background... not spelling out causes a redirect to the spelled out version.  Redirects are cheap, but its a pet peeve of mine to cause any extra compute power.
 * I had been putting the bio banner first, but I found out last week that other banners will use listas IF it is present in a banner before it. So, putting the bio tag first ensures that all other banners will also use listas.
 * It doesn't appear that your or VinculumMan are using AWB. It is a great tool that makes the work go faster because it does some of the routine work for you.  For example, it will put in a value for listas and DEFAULTSORT if they are missing.  If AWB gets it wrong, you can correct it before pressing save.... so it cuts down on typing.  Goto the AWB page, look it over and put in a request for approval if you want to use it.  I can show you how I use it if needed.  Bgwhite (talk) 07:07, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks both of you for comments above. For the moment I'm sticking with the vanilla examples of Western names. When we get through those I may try to get my head around the rules for Ancient Roman names - I do have a Latin O Level from a long time ago - I've noted a number of Roman names without listas. AWB - yes, will apply eventually; but wanted to get some sort of track record established first. VinculumMan (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hello, both of you.
 * I hope I have not been putting a shell around two banners. I fought too hard to get the folks that reprogrammed the meta banner to follow the original guidelines of WPB for more than five banners and WPBS for more than two banners.  I could never convince the reprogrammers that the reason that WPBS was on five times the number of pages that used WPB was because it is a rare article that rates more than five banners.  These days it is a rare biography article that does not rate at least three banners -- Biog, Country of origin and the project that covers the notability of the subject.
 * While I share your concern about redirects, the developers have said we are not to consider computing time or space. I find the redirects useful.  I don't have to remember the WikiProject Handball redirects to WP Sports.  If the article is about an Argentine handballer I can add WP Argentina, WikiProject Handball, wrap the whole thing in a shell and be done with it.
 * Because I burn out much too easily, I have been doing the items in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter in specific sections, mainly the ones that have special characters as their first or second letter. I have also started on the Koreans as I do know what is going on with them and I really do not want some of the bots that have been doing sort values to screw up more of them than they already have.
 * The listas in the Biog banner is the one that controls the talk page. Most of the other projects have removed the template from their banners but if it is on a banner that is not Biog it should be removed.  It does not matter what order the banners are put, the listas in the Biog banner will take care of all the other projects.
 * Now for a tip that may or may not be helpful. Icelanders' names are "Given-name Patronym" but because Iceland has become more prominent in the English-language press many are allowing their patronym to be used as a surname much as Scots' clan names became surnames.  I mentioned somewhere that I had noticed that many articles about Icelanders had the main sort value, the one in DEFAULTSORT, as "Patronym, Given-name" but in Iceland-specific categories a pipe was used to make the sort value "Given-name Patronym" and the sort value on the talk page was the same as in the DEFAULTSORT.  Maglioladitis asked about this at WP Iceland.  The feeling there is that, while no one is really happy with the plan, it is the best way to do things.
 * Just in case you think that once Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is empty your work is finished, I am more than certain the there are many articles where the sort value is wrong. Finding them will involve scanning each page of Category:WikiProject Biography articles and looking for the ones that are out of place.  There are 118 that begin with a lowercase letter right now.
 * Happy fixing! JimCubb (talk) 01:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Howdy again. I'll emphasize that my QUIRK or PET PEEVE is to use full names instead of the short in order to save on redirects.  I completely understand anyone writing HMM instead of "WikiProject Hard Metal".  It is just a funny quirk of mine and should in no way mean anyone else should do the same.  Using WikiProject Handball even though it redirects to WP Sports is different. Someday Handball may become its own separate project and will no longer redirect. I misunderstood your User page about WPBS.  You said "more than two" and I read it as two.  I apologize.  AWB and bots use WPBS on four or more banners, yet the specs say three or more.  Heck, I use it on pages I care about at three banners.  I was just noticing your quirk.  We all have our weird idiosyncrasies.  Now I must stop.  My imaginary friends with me are getting jealous talking to you. Bgwhite (talk) 06:40, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

AWB
Now lets get a list of articles to play with. It will take a bit for AWB to bring up all 52,000 articles in the category. I don't want to work with articles that start with "A"... too many arabic names. I've just gotten done with "V" (no arabic). Highlight the articles you don't want to deal with and press the "remove" button. If you highlight alot, it will take a bit to remove them. Now lets set some edit options
 * 1) In the directory that contains AWB, move "Kingbotk AWB Plugin.dll" out of the plugins directory and into the main directory that contains AutoWikiBrowser.exe
 * Plugins are optional. Moving the dll file upto the main file enables it.  The Kingbotk plugins contains the code to deal with the talk pages. You won't have to move this again.
 * 1) At the top of AWB, there is a plugin menu.  Click on it and then click "Biography plugin".
 * 1) The Bottom left screen area... Where it says "make list"
 * 2) Click on the button (button should say text file) that is next to "Source"...alot of options pop up.
 * 3) Scroll to the option that says "categories (recursive -1)"
 * 4) Right below the button there is a text field called "category". Type/paste/copy into the text field "Biography articles without listas parameter"
 * 5) Click "make list"
 * 1) In the middle bottom section, there are a bunch of file tab/options.... "Options More Disam Skip Start"
 * 2) Click on "Skip" and make sure there are no options that are checked except for "doesn't exist"
 * 3) Click on the "Start" tab.
 * 4) There is a text field with "summary" next to it. Type in "Add listas per WP:NAMESORT"
 * This is the "edit summary" that will be printed on all pages. Instead of you typing it in each time when you manually edit a page, AWB will do it for you.

Now lets edit some pages.
 * 1) Click the "start" button and a talk page will pop up off of the list you already created. It should fill in "listas" for you.
 * 2) You can manually edit the talk page in the bottom right section. I manually edit "class=" field and add the appropriate work-group... "sports-work-group", "politician-work-group".
 * 3) If you are happy with the changes you have made, click the "save" button.
 * 4) If you don't want to deal with that particular talk page, click the "skip" button. So if a talk page comes up that is arabic, asian or you don't know how to deal with it, you can skip it.

That's the basics. There is a help page, but it is out of date. There is a bug with AWB. I've already submitted a bug report. If the talk page has "WPBIO" or "WPBiography", AWB works fine. If the talk page has "WikiProject Biography", AWB won't automatically add listas and you have to enter it manually.

After you have played around with AWB for awhile, give a yell if you want to some more stuff... For example, I have another AWB going at the same time that examines the main article. That way I can add/edit the DEFAULTSORT paramter on the main page and the listas parameter on the talk page at the same time. Bgwhite (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
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