User talk:Thumperward/Archive 14

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Template:General VG Character

I'm getting a third column appear on some (but not all) of its usages. I don't know whether its the infobox or the inuniverse template, but can you take a look? S@bre 18:15, 28 January 2008

Should be fixed now. Let me know if you catch anything else. Chris Cunningham (talk) 17:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Its gone. -- Sabre (talk) 17:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

While you're at it, how about matching up the theming with Template:Infobox character? -- Sabre (talk) 17:21, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to go fix all the inuniverse templates at the same time and haven't really got enough time right now. It's simple to change the style to the consistent version now that the markup's clean; I'll do the whole lot once I've got time. Chris Cunningham (talk) 17:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks good! However, can we get shaded dividers in a similar style to Template:Infobox character, with the "information" and main template title being highlighted with the "#DEDEE2" shade of grey? I tried it myself but I don't know what I'm doing. Never mind, I got it (eventually)! It also seems to have been shortened width wise. I can't find why, all I know is looking at Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, the position field has spilled over an extra line, and it doesn't look quite right, causing other column headings (game series) to be staggered over two lines instead of on one.-- Sabre (talk) 10:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Seeking your opinion on Cross-platform

Hello. I noticed that you tagged Cross-platform with the tooshort template. I have re-written the introduction to the article a little bit, and I wanted to seek your feedback before clearing the tag. I made the introduction a little more complete in terms of coverage of the issue at-hand, though I am not sure if it can really be expanded much more without getting “too deep” in the technical content of the article itself.

Thanks! —Michael B. Trausch • Talk to me 04:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Much better, thanks! Feel free to de-tag it. Chris Cunningham (talk) 09:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Have a Barnstar!

		The VG Barnstar
		For your great help in modernizing the VG templates including {{Infobox VG}} and {{General VG character}}, here's a barnstar. David Fuchs^(talk) 22:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Spacecraft

Hi there. I noticed you modified Template:Infobox Spacecraft, but now it is broken for e.g. Explorer 1, Pioneer 5, Mariner 2. Van der Hoorn (talk) 17:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It should be okay in a couple of minutes. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Richard Kingson

Hi, I noticed your edits to Mr Kingson. Re the piping, I'm a little confused by your edit summary we don't pipe the "football club" bit out of teams from other countries. Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but the only ones I changed were the British Birmingham and Hearts, and I think it's fairly normal in British-English football articles to pipe out the F.C. bit.

As to the surname, before removing the unsourced addition I did spend some time trying to find a decent source for it, and couldn't. The one you've added is a forum, on which one post says his bro Richard (fairly crap Ghana & Brum City 'keeper) was acidentally recorded as 'Kingson' on his birth certificate, but they are both s'posed to be Kingston. As far as I know anyway and another lower down says It was Laryea who was accidently registered with FIFA as Kingston instead of Kingson and thus it has remained for his career. I think. Apart from having two versions of the story, anecdotal postings on a music forum can hardly be considered reliable sources. So I'm removing it again, but if you do find a decent source (for either version) I wouldn't mind knowing the truth of it. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 20:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd heard anecdotally from a few sources that it was a birth certificate error, but I don't mind it being removed. As for the piping thing, I don't think the football project has gone as far as to stipulate dropping the F.C. so far, and it seems like an awful lot of piping for the small gain to me (on top of which, it's rarely done for non-UK teams, who aren't really any different). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Dieselpunk

As I just informed Ottens, J Milburn has deleted the Dieselpunk article with the reasoning "recreation of deleted material." I believe that his reasoning is specious and that we should very aggressively pursue a deletion review and have this article reinstated. If you have any thoughts on this matter, please contact me at your earliest convenience. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 16:21, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The first step should be discussing it in a calm manner with the editor in question. Let's see if we can settle this amicably before going to formal deletion review. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Why Linux and not GNU/Linux?

Hi Chris, many marketers refer to the operating system of GNU and Linux as Linux, and many others refer to it as GNU/Linux or GNU + Linux. I'm not sure I see a strong reason to call it Linux and not GNU/Linux, other than some companies have gotten people to use one phrase over another. I do see a compelling reasons why one would argue that the system be called GNU/Linux. I'm sure you know many of those arguments, but, please consider an additional argument that you may not have heard of yet. If we swap out the Linux kernel, which has and can be done and many are looking to do again, then we will be left with a system that to most people looks exactly as it did before. The core of the system will remain the GNU libraries and the GNU System, along with other software, but the Linux kernel will be no more. Another argument has to do with the goal of the GNU/Linux operating system. Each distribution, flavor, and version of the system is different from one another -- yet, we give it the same name. Philosophically, the name Linux, doesn't stand for much. Linus's goal was to create a useful kernel that could run on a system. He eventually made it as portable as the rest of the GNU System already was. But, the GNU project stands for more. It stands for the creation of the copyleft license and the most widely adopted of those the GNU General Public License. It stands for the four freedoms that most people agree make up the defintion of free software, and those four freedoms are defined in the GNU philosophy pages. It stands for the idea of user freedom and the creation of an all free operating system -- a goal that most distributions value and strive for. Linux is a catchy name, and over the past couple years many have adopted it. The GNU project and its libraries and programs has been working slowly and steadily at its goal for over 25 years now, and it will continue to do so, whether or not the kernel Linux continues to do so.

I agree with you that a common name is usually a better choice than a more complete name, but I argue that this is not the case when the common name is both ambiguous such that it names part of the system as being named for the whole system, and when it is misleading for the sake of conforming to a marketing phrase, alone. Also, there is a large group of people that argue for the phrase GNU/Linux, and continually use the phrase GNU/Linux, so it doesn't seem that "Linux" is a definitive name.

Mistakenly left on your userpage by User:66.92.78.210. Sarah 13:54, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

We should pick one or the other. Given that "GNU/Linux" is a minority term, that there is no authority to judge it to be more "official" or accurate, and that even with Wikipedia's systematic bias towards editors with heavy involvement with organisations such as the Free Software Foundation it has failed to gain common support, the best choice would seem to be "Linux". I've heard all the ideological arguments a hundred times and remain unconvinced. Meanwhile, the practical arguments favour the most common term. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This is false. The community has spoken out against you Chris and you maintain that your opinion and your heavy editing somehow constitutes "consensus". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.132.78 (talk) 19:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

This IP has only two edits, so I can't even see where any potential argument to the contrary has been made. If you'd care to point to the summation in question I'd be happy to read it. There certainly doesn't appear to have been any movement of the sort on Wikipedia; perchance is this User:Midnightcrow making an edit while not logged in? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

What color is your bikeshed?

It is a personal question for Thumperwald. Thanks -- carol _Commons 20:38, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I can't see anything in either of our recent editing histories which would tie this to a particular editing discussion, so I assume this is the same kind of ideological bickering accurately summed up by this blog edit two and a half years ago. I'm not interested in having this kind of debate on Wikipedia. If you're planning on posting messages on my talk page in future, please make them non-cryptic and directly relevant to the editing of a referenced article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it was more of a reference to my own web log which is called 'Yet another bikeshed'[1] which is more recent than Daves web log thing; he spends most of his web log time now pushing some cell phone thing -- politely and without much character which was the reason we became friends way back when. I think that people would like to perceive that I am difficult to deal with. I am sometimes, actually -- I am homesick and it is difficult to be nice about that. I am very unhappy with the circumstances that caused me to be relocated -- it was as if every possible negative thing that I had done was uncovered and made an issue of with none of the positive things. The bike shed color idea is a very Linux (pre-GNU/Linux) idea, btw,[2] possibly another reason that I am confused by you being so willing to perceive this as me being negative or otherwise to you. It is simply that I have the article GIMP on my watchlist and thought it would be fun to make a non-GNU/Linux reference to/for you; something like a unixy handshake | grep curmudgeon, possibly too pre-GNU/Linux for you, eh? The discussion of GNU/Linux or just Linux is a nice distraction for me watching Photoshop prostitute itself there on the article GIMP sad stuff. And it seems as if Photoshop users are learning more about graphics (instead of button pushing) from GIMP howtos -- and that is sad also.

Sorry for the misunderstanding! Let me know when (and if) you catch up or back! -- carol _Commons 05:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey - sorry for the misunderstanding. For what it's worth, I got the reference; it's even got its own article, and it comes from waaaay before the days of free software, even if that's what it's most commonly associated with now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:03, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

This is one of those harmless questions which is also a thinly veiled suggestion if the answer is no. Have you compiled a kernel yet or at the very least run through make menuconfig? When using makmenuconfig, there is a way to read help for determining if the option is wanted for the kernel or even more finely tuned as a module. I suggest that running makemenuconfig on both a modern kernel source and on one from before, perhaps a 2.0 or 2.2 kernel source would take the theology out of the argument of what is Linux and what is GNU/Linux and replace it with the understanding of the reality. Once I read in makemenuconfig help that there was an option that was perfectly sitting on the line between the GNU include the source and you can't use it because it is not free.... As with all theological evolution, the GNU thing is smelling like other ideologies where there is a 'trusted group' who uses the compiler and determines if it is free or not (like in the pre-Luther days) for a group of people who are 'not trusted' and not encouraged to use gcc themselves.

In summary: people are funny and building my own kernel and wrestling a few ideas with one of the Debian maintainers and understanding that if HERD had ever worked, things would be very different -- these things make me not really care about this argument and find it highly suspicious when Debian gives me a broken Xserver, as if I can't work around that -- it is much easier to read the argument here. I suggest that a lot of the problems that Linux and GNU/Linux are having right now is due to the fact that they promoted it and ran their 'companies' with the other os (the first time I got really pissed off was when Ximian hired a girlfriend who ran their correspondence from Outlook Express). Sometimes when people are funny, I am not laughing....

And the next theological problem is with the display. The three levels of a computer using sources that you can read and compile yourself -- the kernel, the display and the gui/applications. I would like to know when 'Jimbo' meets Keith Packard, heh. -- carol _Commons 00:43, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Carol, my opposition to the term has nothing to do with not understanding what a kernel is (I'm a computer scientist and my day job is Solaris system administration). I'm sure a lot of things would have been different if the HURD (or the original plan to use the BSD kernel) had "worked", but it didn't, and while the result was a truly open system that exceeded anyone's wildest expectations it certainly wasn't what was planned for.

I'm not going anywhere near your argument regarding companies using other operating systems. That's not productive at all, in my opinion.

Not really sure what you're on about regarding "levels of a computer that you can compile", but I'm pretty sure Jimbo must have met KP at some point. They're both regular LCA attenders, I believe. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

|kernel|os support|display|applications -- hmm, in addition to misspelling HURD, I also miscounted software layers. Three things now though and then I will go back to lurking. 1) I have spent a few years reading and listening to people who claim to be this or that and when it comes down to it, aren't either this or that, so... sorry if I offended you and your sense of experience and capability (or welcome to my world). 2) I am finding it interesting that in my rambling-on earlier here, I was trying to maintain no opinion but I think that if anyone with an opinion and only a little experience with gcc tries to follow my suggestions that you will get less resistance. I really didn't intend for that to happen and 3) do you know anyone who is as avidly against the way libtool works lately as you have been persistent here with the name change? That ticks me off; thank whoever for bash_history so at least it is somewhat easy to continue to work around.... -- carol _Commons 13:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed parameters for Google_Inc.

16-Feb-2008: See bottom of Template_talk:Google_Inc.. -User:Wikid77

Happy to have parameters added. For now, I've reverted the change to transclusion, in anticipation of the adding of parameters. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Addressing performance without affecting editors

16-Feb-2008: Wikipedia allows too much freedom/power. For over 30 years, there has been an expression in high-tech of "pilot error" (patterned after a jet pilot), referring to the user error when handling high-tech gadgets. Although I agree with the concept of controlling performance outside editor concerns, the problem is the word "controlling" as in "freedom versus control". Wikipedia provides enormous freedom: that's how we can learn so much about structuring mega-article computers here, and that's why some other websites (such as Veropedia) use Wikipedia as a massive slave host to their own agendas (although admins try to discourage non-Wikipedia usage). In a more restrictive wiki, templates are not allowed, or templates would be limited to 1,000 articles to keep people from changing templates used by 20,000 articles, which queues 20,000 page-link jobs to re-index the affected articles. I'm a computer scientist, so I would invent a new kind of template called a "subsect" which would be a shared type of page section, perhaps for a pop-up menu or note-cloud on a page, but not propagating wikilinks, and not requiring all 20,000 upper pages to be re-indexed. Please understand, that for all the hoped ability, Wikipedia, as technology, is still a neophyte system. Consider what professionals would prefer:

frequent typsetting of articles in multiple fonts;
syntax checkers catching invalid template parameters or <ref>;
grammar wizards that list warnings of unusual wording;
builtin spellcheck, with articles connecting to jargon-lists;
abstraction tools: summing link count, word count, etc.
cropped pictures, rather just resizing full images;
renaming of image files (after initial upload);

Wikipedia (and general wiki software) is still a budding technology, struggling to cope with real-world info bullies and still allows crazy article sets. Perhaps you know about the 1,906 lists of 173,100 asteroids ("List of asteroids/end"), that were expanded from data kept simply by Harvard sientists as just 35 large files, but no: nobody was able to stop those people from proliferating 1,906 wikilinked articles from just 35 Harvard data files. Wiki management couldn't assist people who were ignored when they argued: non-notable, copyright-by-Harvard, too many files, and no one reads 1,906 articles. Well, there it is: a huge chunk of Wikipedia is about numbered asteroids. And, I think Thank God, because that helps to see the folly of what happens here, so no one has to feel that Wikipedia efforts are overly important, yet (Wackopedia). Have fun and plan a better tomorrow. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:18, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I regard Wikipedia's freedom as one of its greatest strengths, and it is this freedom which has allowed for such enormous growth over the last seven years. It is totally counterintuitive that allowing anyone, anywhere, to do whatever they like to an article will in the long run improve it, but that's exactly what's happened. The existence of a string of poor articles does not negate this, and in the long run such things are dealt with. In general, I'd rather there were less restrictions on editing and not more. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

DataPortability deletion proposal

Hi,

You'll probably have noticed that I've removed your deletion notice from DataPortability to avoid immediate deletion and allow time for discussion. I've suggested using a less immediate template from WP:TM/DEL instead, if you still feel the article should be deleted. --Duncan MacKenzie (talk) 18:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added a comment on my current thoughts, and made some edits to make the article a bit more presentable. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

History of Pakistan

Hi there. You were concerned that this article was too long. I have removed about 25 KB of content that duplicates the content of more relevant daughter articles. I know the guidelines say about 32KB is right size for articles but that figure was for earlier browser versions that could not handle larger amounts than 32 KB. Since you were pretty specific about the conditions under which you were loading the article, I would be interested to know whether you are able to load the article any faster now. Green Giant (talk) 11:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Your work on shortening the article is excellent, thanks! 32K might have been a hard limit back in the day, but it's still a very good guideline. I'll try to work on this a bit myself. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Dalai Lama

Oops. I were not aware of the discussion in talk page. Your tag seemed quite unnecessary to me, so I removed it. will readd it. However I think the change of position of the image is not needed, present version is better. Thanks. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 18:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Pacman quote

Thank you for that, that was much needed, every time I've tried to find anything out about the quote it's been attributed to everyone under the sun! Doktor Wilhelm 23:23, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Pleasure's all mine. :) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

OR on Binary Search Page

Please join the discussion at Talk:Binary_prefix Original_research. I think you are wrong is your assertion that RFSTs work is OR; it is at worst a compilation of observable primary sources. Furhermore, isn't it improper to revert a disputed session? Tom94022 (talk) 23:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Replied. And no; unsourced facts may, per policy, be removed at will. I really think you should take some time out to read up on WP's reference policy. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Underdog

Let me know if you've any concerns with this.

Yes, I have concerns with all of it. To begin with, dab pages are not articles, so the relevant guidelines are not the regular MoS but WP:MOSDAB. To address each of your points:

Dab pages are not intended to be catalogs of every article title that includes the dabbed term--they are not, that is, intended to be a replacement for the "Search" function. Instead, they are guides to articles that are, or could reasonably be, titled by the dabbed term. If Home of the Underdogs is included, then we'd also have to list One with the Underdogs and Lovesongs for Underdogs, which might not seem like a big deal, but it would be a really bad precedent that would turn some dab pages into endless, useless lists. Also, I'm curious why, if you weren't sure of the article name, you didn't use the "Search" button. Guess what the first result is?
Links on the disambiguated term are never piped to hide the actual link (piping for formatting is allowed, as is piping on secondary links). Underdog (competition) is certainly the original use of the term--and that's why it was placed at the top, as the first entry on the page--but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is, within Wikipedia, the primary use of the term, which is what determines whether a topic should be at the plain title. Underdog (competition), Underdog (TV series), and Underdog (film) all have between 50 and 100 incoming links. Given this split, it makes sense to have the dab at the plain title, as users are about equally likely to be looking for any of the three, not to mention all the other uses.
No, sorting by songs and albums isn't necessary, but why not do it to help users find what they're looking for more quickly? What does it cost to use the extra headers? --ShelfSkewed Talk 04:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Gnu distribution {{prod}}

Hey Chris. Seems that your concerns regarding Gnu distribution have been "affressed" (whatever that means *rolleyes*) and that the {{prod}} was contested... although I can find no evidence for that. ~~ [Jam]^[talk] 21:33, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Meh. Policy says that anyone can remove a prod if they disagree with it. I'll take it to AfD. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've voted on the AfD. ~~ [Jam]^[talk] 12:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)