E-mail is enabled on my account, but before using it to contact me please be aware that:
- I think that, on principle, all wiki communication should be open for all to see
- Therefore if you send me an e-mail, you should assume that I will publish it on an appropriate talk page, in order to reply to it there
- If you think there is a good reason to contact me, in confidence, by e-mail, you should first ask for my agreement not to publish it.
- I will only agree to this for a very good reason, for example copyrighted material which cannot be freely published.
In any case, I am likely to respond more quickly to a request on my talk page than one by e-mail.
Don't worry if you want to send me an e-mail that has nothing whatsoever to do with Wikipedia; if that is the case, then there is no reason why I should publish it here.
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Index to this page and its archives (last change) |
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Contents
- 1 Oliver Kamm
- 2 Books & Bytes New Years Double Issue
- 3 Christopher Zeeman
- 4 Books & Bytes - Issue 15
- 5 For your assistance in Operation Stuttgart
- 6 Books & Bytes - Issue 16
- 7 Warning
- 8 Thank you
- 9 A pie for you!
- 10 Another plea from the headache man, with apologies in advance
- 11 Books & Bytes - Issue 17
- 12 A barnstar for you!
- 13 Help with tidy up
- 14 Couldn't really care one way or another
- 15 Thanks
- 16 Refs over one line to over many
- 17 Books & Bytes - Issue 18
- 18 You & Me (Marc E. Bassy song)
Oliver Kamm
I appreciate your comments on Oliver Kamm's talk page. Although I have other pressing tasks to attend at the moment, I'll eventually return to the discussion. Also, don't let TJive intimidate you. He's nothing but a bully. Sir Paul 06:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
- It's ironic, though. I have long regarded Kamm as a pretentious fool who isn't worth a minute of anybody's time trying to read him -- which is why I've been reluctant to get drawn in. Yet I'm still wasting time on him...--NSH001 15:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Books & Bytes New Years Double Issue
Volume 1 Issue 3, December/January 2013
(Sign up for monthly delivery)
Happy New Year, and welcome to a special double issue of Books & Bytes. We've included a retrospective on the changes and progress TWL has seen over the last year, the results of the survey TWL participants completed in December, some of our plans for the future, a second interview with a Wiki Love Libraries coordinator, and more. Here's to 2014 being a year of expansion and innovation for TWL!
The Wikipedia Library completed the first 6 months of its Individual Engagement grant last week. Here's where we are and what we've done:- Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of 400-600%
- Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC
- New pilot projects: Started the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Wikipedia researchers
- Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors
- Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration
- Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting
Christopher Zeeman
I only heard about Christopher Zeeman;s death from your edit to his bio here. Can you point me to an official announcement?Billlion (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Billlion, I added a cite to the announcement by the Mathematics Institute, which is the best source I could find, but seems official enough to me. No doubt obituaries will appear in the newspapers over the next few days. Very sad, he's far and away the most brilliant person I've ever met personally. --NSH001 (talk) 20:35, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks.Billlion (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Billlion, I see you found the Christ's College announcement (pity they can't spell "Principal" correctly). The recent photographs are very different from how I remember him, when the Warwick maths institute was new and exciting. --NSH001 (talk) 21:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks.Billlion (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 15
Books & Bytes
Issue 15, December-January 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs), Nikkimaria (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - Ships, medical resources, plus Arabic and Farsi resources
- #1lib1ref campaign summary and highlights
- New branches and coordinators
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
For your assistance in Operation Stuttgart
![]() |
Calatrava Medal of Merit |
This Calatrava Medal of Merit is awarded to NSH001/002 for creating Template:Districts of Stuttgart and thus participating in Operation Stuttgart. Vami IV (talk) 22:51, 12 April 2016 (UTC) |
- Vami IV, thank you very much, it's appreciated. (though I do have some reservations about the military overtones of the word "Operation"!) --NSH001 (talk) 08:03, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Books & Bytes - Issue 16
Books & Bytes
Issue 16, February-March 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), UY Scuti (talk · contribs)
- New donations - science, humanities, and video resources
- Using hashtags in edit summaries - a great way to track a project
- A new cite archive template, a new coordinator, plus conference and Visiting Scholar updates
- Metrics for the Wikipedia Library's last three months
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:17, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
Warning
I am officially asking you to stay away from me. If you have a problem with me, take it up with an administrator. Otherwise, I will file a complaint for harassment.WikiEditorial101 (talk) 02:52, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
- WikiEditorial101, I gave you some good, and I think, very helpful advice. You should heed it, otherwise you will just get into trouble. Your work on Lydia Canaan is appreciated, by the way. She deserves a good article. --NSH001 (talk) 06:09, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
- Actually, just by reverting my deletion of discussion on the article Talk page, you were informing me, teaching me, that it is against Wikipedia Policy, as I had no idea, and I'm not embarassed to admit that I'm still learning. Even your therefore redundant message on my Talk page was ok by me, except that you falsely accused me of trying to hide an honest mistake, and by doing so were not assuming good faith. Were you actually the careful, logical, and fair personality that you present yourself as, you wouldn't have done that. Not only was it a false accusation, but an absurd one: the only way I've learned what little I've learned about editing has been through countless mistakes. How else does anyone learn anything? I constantly correct my own edits, stating that I've made an error. Silly of you to think I'd want to "cover up" a mistake, hateful for you to imply that. And not that I owe you any explanations (because I don't), but I don't like a dirty Wikipedia. My intent is always that things be clean and astetically pleasing. Yes, I understand the concept of archives, etc., and how they are helpful to editors, so please don't use this as an excuse to condesendingly (and pointlessly) masturbate on WP. I'm explaining my intent and disposition in general, only. I also don't like unnecessary tags that vandalize and discredit articles for readers who are not editors and don't understand. Call it OCD, but I also like a pure User Talk page. This feature was designed for practical communication, and there is a reason why editors are allowed to blank it for maintenance purposes. I'm interesting in editing only, and not making Wikipedia my nerd social networking site. But even I were interested in strengthening some ego identity by advertising political views or talking about what kind of pies I like to bake, I'd have still removed your messge on my Talk page, as I choose not to allow such negativity into my personal space if I don't have to. You further slandered me right here on your Talk page by implying once again that I had knowingly done something wrong by tellling me that I should heed your advice. And then you tried to sugar coat the entire thing my complementing me. Positivity and goodwill are helpful, but not so much after the fact, and even less so when insincere. So allow me to give you some helpful advice, aspiring administrator that you are: assume good faith, as is Wikipedia's policy. Otherwise you'll just end up getting into trouble.WikiEditorial101 (talk) 17:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
- Please learn to read carefully what people write to you. You can do whatever you like with your own talk page (well there are some exceptions, not relevant to this discussion, see WP:TALK), and I never said otherwise (my first words were "With the exception only of your own talk page"), so much of what you've written above is based on a misunderstanding, and is therefore irrelevant. Perhaps you misunderstood me when I referred to "your own comments"; I assumed it would be obvious from the introduction that I was referring to said comments on talk pages other than your own. Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough. But I make no apology for my comment on your talk page. Explaining a revert on a user talk page is just a common courtesy, and happens all the time on Wikipedia. Whether or not I regard your behaviour as dishonest is irrelevant, I merely pointed out that other editors certainly will regard it that way, therefore it's best to avoid problems in the future. Your other insults above are not worth a reply. Regards, NSH001 (talk) 19:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
- P.S. You will note that I don't remove negative material from my own talk page or its archives (vandalism and a few standard automated messages excepted).
- Please learn to read carefully what people write to you. You can do whatever you like with your own talk page (well there are some exceptions, not relevant to this discussion, see WP:TALK), and I never said otherwise (my first words were "With the exception only of your own talk page"), so much of what you've written above is based on a misunderstanding, and is therefore irrelevant. Perhaps you misunderstood me when I referred to "your own comments"; I assumed it would be obvious from the introduction that I was referring to said comments on talk pages other than your own. Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough. But I make no apology for my comment on your talk page. Explaining a revert on a user talk page is just a common courtesy, and happens all the time on Wikipedia. Whether or not I regard your behaviour as dishonest is irrelevant, I merely pointed out that other editors certainly will regard it that way, therefore it's best to avoid problems in the future. Your other insults above are not worth a reply. Regards, NSH001 (talk) 19:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
- Actually, just by reverting my deletion of discussion on the article Talk page, you were informing me, teaching me, that it is against Wikipedia Policy, as I had no idea, and I'm not embarassed to admit that I'm still learning. Even your therefore redundant message on my Talk page was ok by me, except that you falsely accused me of trying to hide an honest mistake, and by doing so were not assuming good faith. Were you actually the careful, logical, and fair personality that you present yourself as, you wouldn't have done that. Not only was it a false accusation, but an absurd one: the only way I've learned what little I've learned about editing has been through countless mistakes. How else does anyone learn anything? I constantly correct my own edits, stating that I've made an error. Silly of you to think I'd want to "cover up" a mistake, hateful for you to imply that. And not that I owe you any explanations (because I don't), but I don't like a dirty Wikipedia. My intent is always that things be clean and astetically pleasing. Yes, I understand the concept of archives, etc., and how they are helpful to editors, so please don't use this as an excuse to condesendingly (and pointlessly) masturbate on WP. I'm explaining my intent and disposition in general, only. I also don't like unnecessary tags that vandalize and discredit articles for readers who are not editors and don't understand. Call it OCD, but I also like a pure User Talk page. This feature was designed for practical communication, and there is a reason why editors are allowed to blank it for maintenance purposes. I'm interesting in editing only, and not making Wikipedia my nerd social networking site. But even I were interested in strengthening some ego identity by advertising political views or talking about what kind of pies I like to bake, I'd have still removed your messge on my Talk page, as I choose not to allow such negativity into my personal space if I don't have to. You further slandered me right here on your Talk page by implying once again that I had knowingly done something wrong by tellling me that I should heed your advice. And then you tried to sugar coat the entire thing my complementing me. Positivity and goodwill are helpful, but not so much after the fact, and even less so when insincere. So allow me to give you some helpful advice, aspiring administrator that you are: assume good faith, as is Wikipedia's policy. Otherwise you'll just end up getting into trouble.WikiEditorial101 (talk) 17:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps it is you who should cultivate the skill of good reading comprehension by rereading both your comments and mine. I'll assume good faith, as surely you would never purposely assert something incorrect. First of all, I referenced both the Talk page of the article in question and my User Talk page. If you'll reread above you'll see that I purposely made this distinction very clear to avoid any confusion. I only mentioned my own Talk page to illustrate my general approach, as to facilitate your understanding, as I assumed that you had been presumptuous rather than outright insidious, and to also indicate another source of slander. So secondly, you're asking me to believe that you were merely anticipating that others would violate Policy by not assuming good faith rather than you yourself not assuming good faith? What a convoluted rhetorical fallacy. It would appear that, ironically, you initially projected on to me your own reluctance to admit error, and thus the spin. Look, I don't have the same desire as you to be "right"; I have simply defended myself against false accusations and what I perceive as a biligerant attack by a seemingly authoritarian personality. The reason it took me so long to respond to you is that I consider it an utter waste of time, and did not want to dignify your slander with any response at all, though I did decide to reply, as bullying in general makes me uneasy, and I feel that it may beneficial to others who encounter you that I not lend my strength to any future mishandling of any other new editors, as bullies tend to be emboldened when no one stands up to them. But had I known that you wouldn't even read my comment carefully enough to understand it, I'd probably have reconsidered wasting even more time. With all due respect, as far as your Talk page (or any of your activities on Wikipedia), I am not concerned. I tend to take a greater interest in my own activities and conduct; I find that my time and energy are better utilized that way.WikiEditorial101 (talk)
- This is now getting seriously weird. Let's just summarise the course of events:
- You unilaterally promoted Lydia Canaan to Featured Article (FA) status. No consultation, let alone going through the (very long) FA process.
- Foolish because, as an editor of 21 months' standing with 2,500+ edits, you should know better. It strains credulity that you were not yet aware of the existence of the procedure for getting an article to FA.
- You completely blanked her article's talk page. Also foolish, because it's against policy (WP:TALK). But it would still be foolish regardless of policy.
- I posted a comment there noting that the article had been inappropriately rated as FA.
- You then blanked that comment.
- I restored that comment, and gave you a short, friendly warning about your behaviour.
- I restored the rest of the material that you had earlier inappropriately removed from the talk page, and then set up the talk page properly.
- You should be grateful for this, since if (as appears to be the case) you share my high regard for Ms Canaan, you should be happy that she now has a proper talk page. Not least because no GA reviewer (let alone any of the experts at FAC) is going to pass an article with a blank talk page.
- Instead, you post the above "Warning" on my talk page, accusing me of "harrass[ing]" you. BTW I have no "problem with" you, except for the waste of time I have to spend dealing with your rants here.
- Based on a total misunderstanding of my friendly warning, you:
- accuse me of "masturbat[ing] on WP"
- accuse me of "making Wikipedia [my] nerd social networking site"
- accuse me of "slander[ing] [you]"
- saying that you assumed I "had been presumptuous rather than outright insidious"
- accuse me of "not assuming good faith"
- accuse me of making a "biligerant[sic] attack"
- accuse me of insincerity
- ... plus a few more unpleasant things
- all this despite saying "I'll assume good faith, ..."
- Now, do you seriously think that little lot is going to persuade me or anyone else? All it says is that you have (badly) misunderstood my message.
- I warned you that your behaviour "will be seen as trying to whitewash and cover up your own mistakes". That remains the case, despite your OTT reaction. It is still good advice to tell you to avoid doing things that will be seen badly by others.
And so now I'm on trial in your court, guilty until proven innocent as to my intent? And basing your unfounded judgement on what you think I should or shouldn't know about Wikipedia after 2,500 edits?? Really??? Again, I don't know who you think you are or why you think that I should answer to you personally for anything or explain myself to you, but most of my edits have been to Lydia Canaan's page. I unfortunately have not had the time to learn the many workings, facets, and rules associated with Wikipedia. Yes, I really was so completely ignorant regarding who can rate an article and how it can be done that I thought that I could rate it, and give it the highest rating possible. As I'm the only major contributor to the article in question since 2009, having done numerous major rewrites and revisions and have been the only one working on the article and thus there has been no discussion at all since I turned an error-ridden, subjective stub into what I think is a decent article, I had only even looked at the Talk page probably twice in two years. So I'm guilty of being ignorant, and probably guilty of all sorts of things from the perspective of your particular branch of Wikipedian philosophy, but I am not guilty of knowingly breaking any code of conduct. And as for your accusation that I was trying to hide my mistakes, might I remind you that all of the other discussions removed (besides your comment) were from years before I edited the article and thus had nothing to do with me or my edits or my errors? And that I removed them long before you came along and corrected my mistake? Further proof that your charge against me is false is that when you made me aware that nominating the article for a GA rating was the next step, I immediately took that step. Had I known otherwise, I'd have already done so. And therefore I actually am grateful and thankful that you:
- made me aware that I must submit articles for rating if I believe that they deserve a certain rating
- made me aware that I cannot "cleanup" article Talk pages the way that I can my User Talk page
- added the other things to the article talk page that improved it, things I didn't know needed to be there and things I wouldn't have known where to retrieve the code for
- rated the article as "B" so that I could nominate it for GA rating
I just wish that you had done these helpful things while assuming good faith rather than attacking the integrity of my character based on some editing blunder.
Also, I wasn't referring to your User page in particular — most Wikipedians are into that; that was perhaps a less relevant element of my rant meant to defend/explain my compulsion for deleting things, citing my roguish desire to have a Zenlike User page as an example. As far as User pages go, yours is actually rather cool, and I found that I agree with your politics 100%. I've lived in both Israel and Palestine, and have seen first hand the brutal oppression and outright attempt at genocide of the Palestinian people, who I found to be the most loving, peaceful, and hospitable peoples I've ever encountered. Thank you for the loving work you pour into their cause. And I'm sorry that I said that your compliment was insincere.WikiEditorial101 (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for that, we seem to be getting somewhere now. You're not (and never have been) "on trial" in anyone's court. I'll offer you another piece of advice (this applies to everyone, including me): if you form an opinion about another editor's motivation, keep it to yourself! I suppose that's included in WP:AGF. Regards --NSH001 (talk) 08:50, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
You are most welcome, and advice noted. Thank you for the tea. It will remain :) WikiEditorial101 (talk) 20:08, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you
You've inspired me to put something on my User page, too.WikiEditorial101 (talk) 20:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
A pie for you!
I suppose even a rogue nerd like myself can get with it a little bit. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 20:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Another plea from the headache man, with apologies in advance
N. What the hell have I done wrong to get that message under Simon Szyszman in the Khazars bibliography? Best as always.Nishidani (talk) 19:23, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
- Duly fixed as requested. I also let my little baby fix some errors and make the cites nice and easy to look at. Some of the cites are missing the publisher, which looks especially odd when "location" is specified and "publisher" isn't, so you might want to take a look at that. Google shows the page numbers for Petrukhin 2010 as 151-163 but I left them as 149-161 in case you're referring to a different version. Petrukhin 2007 had a wikilink in "last" which caused it to sort out of order, so I fixed that too. You might want to take a careful look at the two cites I templated (Kovalev and Petrukhin 2010) since it's easy to make a mistake in that process. Anyway, all the red error messages have now gone. It's always a pleasure to help a good editor! --NSH001 (talk) 23:40, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
A daimen icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request;
Books & Bytes - Issue 17
Books & Bytes
Issue 17, April-May 2016
by The Interior, Ocaasi, UY Scuti, Sadads, and Nikkimaria
- New donations this month - a German-language legal resource
- Wikipedia referals to academic citations - news from CrossRef and WikiCite2016
- New library stats, WikiCon news, a bot to reveal Open Access versions of citations, and more!
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:36, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
![]() |
The Technical Barnstar |
Thank You very much for tidying-up the Template:Chief of the Naval Staff (India). Actually I wanted to create the template the same way as it now. But I couldn't and I was looking for assistance. Thanks again for your help. KCVelaga ☚╣✉╠☛ 00:22, 26 June 2016 (UTC) |
Help with tidy up
Thanks for tidying up Template:Chief of the Naval Staff (India). I need some help with Draft:Template:Submarines of Indian Navy. In the under construction and de-commissioned submarines sections, the Nuclear-powered submarines and Conventionally-powered submarines sections are joined without any white separation strip. I was unable to fix the issue, please correct that. KCVelaga ☚╣✉╠☛ 00:53, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
Couldn't really care one way or another
But seeing Muhammad Najati Sidqi rated as Start Class gave me a laugh tonight. Jeezus! Nishidani (talk) 20:56, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
- Well, neither could I, really. So you can blame me for the rating. I tend to be quite harsh in rating my own articles (I don't think there's a single one of the articles I've written that deserves a "Good Article" rating) and pretty much automatically rate any new article I write as "Start". I'd rather rate my own articles harshly, and let someone else upgrade it if they think it deserves it. I pay no attention to "C" grade, but will upgrade articles to "B" if I've spent a lot of work on them and they meet the criteria (Chrissie Wellington, for example) and that's as generous as my ratings get. The Muhammad Najati Sidqi article is obviously worth something better, but I'd rather let someone else assess it. --NSH001 (talk) 22:33, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
- Oops, Mea culpa - here's one article I did rate as "C", after re-writing the whole thing from scratch. --NSH001 (talk) 07:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks, Hmains (talk) 22:18, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
Refs over one line to over many
Consensus at WPMED is to keep refs generally over one line. Please do not switch them to over many.[1] Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:13, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
- Doc James, I am thinking very long term here. Most larger wiki articles are effectively rendered uneditable by the presence of numerous long, horizontally formatted templates; the only edits feasible on such pages are trivial changes such as spelling corrections, or automated edits where the script/bot doesn't care about the formatting. Of course this is just my opinion, but I do know several other editors share my dislike of long, horizontally formatted citation template clutter. As well as making the wikitext unreadable, such templates also make it very difficult to find and correct errors in the citation templates, or indeed in anything else.
- It doesn't surprise me that the Wikimedia Foundation finds it necessary to spend large sums on things like Visual Editor, given that the mess resulting from long, horizontally formatted templates makes directly editing wikitext so user-hostile. I want to see a wiki that is clear of all this clutter, but that is going to take several years to achieve. In the meantime I am effectively banned (without having commited any offence) from many, perhaps most, articles because of citation clutter. Hence I am (slowly) developing a private script to help in this task. I call the script "ETVP" for "Easy To Visually Parse", because wikitext should be nice and easy to read. I aim eventually to make it easy, using the ETVP script, to switch to short-form referencing, or to LDR, or to some combination of the two, or indeed to anything else that will reduce or eliminate citation clutter. It was not originally my intention to leave ETVP templates in-line, but when I first tried it I was surprised at how much more readable the wikitext became, so my current thinking is to retain it as an option (the main disadvantage appears to be that it is too easy to turn it back into horizontal formatting, as you have demonstrated!).
- I am relaxed about not edit-warring with you on this, although I do think making the wikitext harder to read is irrational. Partly this is because the ETVP script is still a long way from being finished, but the main reason is that my focus is on the long-term, and edit warring on individual articles is of no benefit in that aim. I have always anticipated there will be some resistance to in-line ETVP templates, simply because people don't like change, or just get upset by unexpected change, or by anything surprising. I note that most WPMED articles are of a scientific or academic nature, where short-form referencing is the natural style. Once I've got the ETVP script working for that style, then I believe it could be very useful for the WPMED project.
- --NSH001 (talk) 21:18, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
- The majority of the editors at WPMED like the references over one horizontal line rather than over dozens of lines.
- Yes there is a minority who like it over dozens of lines. I find having it over one horizontal line is easier to edit not harder.
- What we need is an option / gadget so that those who want it over one line when they hit edit get it over one line and those who want it over many lines get it over many lines. That means win-win for everyone as everyone gets the way they find makes it easiest for them to edit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
- Look more carefully. ETVP is not "dozens of lines" (per cite). I think you might be referring to the (not very wonderful) "vertical" format that you get in the template documentation; even then (provided you eliminate the blank parameters), it rarely amounts to "dozens" of lines. The ETVP script has been carefully thought through to give you what it says on the tin: it uses the minimum number of lines and white space while still maintaining clarity. Roughly, items that logically belong together go on the same line, important items go at the top (title, authors) and references (for example, identifiers) go at the end (a bit like wikipedia article layout). The aim is to take advantage of the human visual system, which works orders of magnitude faster than the rest of the brain. This makes it very easy to spot errors, often instantly; in addition, you'll often spot errors you weren't even looking for in the first place. This is impossible to do if the template is strung out over two or more lines (by lines, I mean lines on the edit window, not the single line you're referring to), buried in a mass of other wikitext. I think one reason why cite templates are so badly infested with errors is precisely this difficulty of spotting errors in the horizontal layout. But what makes the horizontal layout even more annoying is the difficulty of spotting the beginning and end of the same template, especially if there are large numbers of horizontal cites buried within the same paragraph. With the ETVP format, the eye can again spot the beginning and end of a template instantly. So not only does the horizontal format make it difficult or impossible to spot errors in the cite templates, it also makes it difficult or impossible to follow the "flow" of the article text itself. To see this, try an experiment: (a) open in edit mode the version of the article before my edit, and try to read out loud the article text from the wikitext, then (b) do the same with the wikitext after my edit. Notice how much easier (b) is!
-
-
- Take a look at Muhammad Najati Sidqi#References and Khazars#References. These are examples of the the work of the ETVP script on articles that were already using short-form referencing. Notice how easy and pleasant it is to read the citation templates there. Although I intend to implement LDR first, my aim (eventually) is to make it easy to switch articles to short-form referencing, with all templates in ETVP form. This is my preferred referencing style, and the most natural for scientific, technical and academic articles. But basically, the ETVP script will eventually let editors use any referencing style they like, as long as it doesn't involve long, horizontally formatted templates.
-
-
-
- Note that ETVP is not the same as "vertical". Short templates are actually easier to visually parse if they are "scrunched up" (eliminating all unnecessary spaces) and kept on the same line. The ETVP script recognizes this, using a cut-off of 50 characters (this seems to work well so far, but it could be easily tweaked if necessary). Perhaps the fans of horizontal templates are aware of this, but then wrongly assume that it applies regardless of length. The general principle is that short templates are fine if they're kept on the same physical line, but the longer the template, the stronger the case for a vertical or ETVP format. For example, see this egregious edit, which I don't think anyone would want to defend.
-
-
-
- One might also note the contrast with infoboxes, which are already, mostly, more-or-less in a vertical format, with one parameter per line. Editors don't have any problem editing infoboxes. So in my view, the difficulty some editors say they have with editing ETVP or vertical format is imaginary, not real. Probably they've just gotten used to the default that they get when they click the "cite" button on the edit window or from using most of the standard cite-generating tools. And why should they care? For most editors, adding cites is just a tedious but necessary chore, to be done with minimum effort; they care about the info they're adding, not the errors they're creating or the messy wikitext they're leaving behind.
- --NSH001 (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
- P.S. The idea of a gadget seems like a good one, except I'd want it to appear in an ETVP format, not the vertical one.
-
Books & Bytes - Issue 18
Books & Bytes
Issue 18, June–July 2016
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi, Samwalton9, UY Scuti, and Sadads
- New donations - Edinburgh University Press, American Psychological Association, Nomos (a German-language database), and more!
- Spotlight: GLAM and Wikidata
- TWL attends and presents at International Federation of Library Associations conference, meets with Association of Research Libraries
- OCLC wins grant to train librarians on Wikimedia contribution
The Interior via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
You & Me (Marc E. Bassy song)
@NSH002: Just letting you know, I've changed back the referencing style to define references where they are invoked. The page is now up for WP:GA nomination, and perhaps somebody will point it out there, but it's prohibitive to section-editing to define all the references at the end. It forces editors to either load the whole page where they would only normally need to edit a section (which can lag for users on slower connections or even if the page becomes longer), or makes them edit two sections, which can be time-consuming depending on what it is. It might look neater to some, but it gets very complicated if the page gets longer and more detailed. I'll raise it at the GA nomination too, because this isn't a very common referencing format on music articles on Wikipedia anymore due to the nature of charts and their constant updating, and thus it would require multiple section edits when it need not. Ss112 07:44, 2 September 2016 (UTC)