Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2022 July 31

= July 31 =

How are the nodes numbered in a numbered-node cycle network?
A question on Talk:Numbered-node cycle network. The article says who assigns the numbers, but not how. Does anyone have any sources? Non-English-language sources are fine. I think answering this one might need e-mailing experts, tho... HLHJ (talk) 01:27, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Talk page oddity
This has suddenly turned up on my talk page:
 * Welcome to your talk page
 * People on Wikipedia can use this talk page to post a public message for you and you will be notified when they do.
 * [Along with some peculiar illustration titled "emptystate.png"]

Where did it come from? Does anyone know? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)


 * This is what I found when I searched commons for "emptystate". It's a sort of symbolist drawing of a talk page in which Wikipedians are insects and their delightful interactions are represented by flowers. It has a link to this brief mention of the graphic as a way to get new contributors to "create empty talk pages". In fact after nosing around your talk page a banner popped up - at the top of the page - with the same graphic on it, saying "Try out the new talk page experience", which linked to this page about "testing design changes ... an effort to make talk pages easier for people to recognize and use. I'm not sure why the "welcome to your talk page" message appeared at the bottom. I think they need to do more testing. Card Zero  (talk) 10:00, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * OY! More busy-work for the WMF developers. I could kind of see it if my talk page were blank - which it ain't. "Easier to recognize" - for those who are fooled by the word "Talk" at the top of the page. Thank you for the explanation. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:24, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * To misquote Mark Twain: "The only thing worse than a room full of over-paid developers doing nothing is a room full of over-paid developers doing something. 2603:6081:1C00:1187:49B4:94C7:A931:F855 (talk) 22:48, 3 August 2022 (UTC)