User talk:Thumperward/Archive 83

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Free software, Stallman and advocacy/promotion by these

Hi there Thumperward, I feel you may have misunderstood the paragraphs (which you cleared), about the advocacy/promotion of the ethical and social rationale behind Free Software, a topic which is one of the most defining things about Richard Stallman. In including these paragraphs in the relevant articles, it is not I who is doing any adovcacy or promotion. Rather: the article mentions the strong advocacy, promotion and activism of Richard Stallman, who coined the term "Free Software" particularly to refer to ethical and social reasons behind the freedom rights that Free Software grants its users. To make it clear, I refer you to the following speech by Richard Stallman:

What your views are[,] that’s for you to decide. You might agree with the FSF, you might agree with the open source movement, you might disagree with us both; it’s up to you. But I’d like to invite you to support the Free software movement. After you’ve had a chance to think about the issues. and if you _do_ support us, please wave our banner. Our banner is the term “free software”. If you support the movement free software, say so by using the term free software. Its one of the ways to keep us in the public awareness so that our views and principles will be visible to people and they will have the chance to think whether they agree or not. Because the open source movement tends to get more support and businesses and those businesses tend to use their terminology and because they don’t criticise the practice of proprietary software their views are easier. They are less challenging ethically. So they get a lot of supporters who are not prepared to consider the ethical issues that we in the free software movement raise. So the result is that their name is heard more and we often get forgotten. If we were to raise this ethical issues so that people can think about it we need to get heard and you can help us with that by raising our banner the term “Free software”.

"Transcripts from the Speech of Richard M. Stallman at the Madras Institute of Technology, Chromepet, Chennai; 13th, March, 2002"

source (original source)

Richard Stallman founded the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and his advocacy and activism also permeate those two organisations (well one is a project, but it also has strong views). So it most definately is important to mention this stong activism and advocacy. In fact, because Stallman and Free Software push ethical issues so heavily, they are heavily criticised for this by some people such as ESR ([1], [2]).

So I hope the articles can be polished up to show this. Thanks. Hnfiurgds (talk) 21:52, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and articles on people and organisations are not supposed to be written from the point of view of those subjects. I am intimately familiar with the FSF's positions and with the rather uniquely boilerplate way in which they are officially represented. It is entirely possible to explain what Stallman, GNU and the FSF stand for without having to fill articles with large sections which are either direct quotes of or extremely thinly paraphrased from the FSF's official documents. That is how we treat every single other biography or organisation. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, ok. But wouldn't you agree that Stallman's (FSF's) very strong activism and promotion are missing from the article's lead? I mean: it's the defining thing about him, right? So we need a way of mentioning it. Of course we can say it in ways that are not from FSF's own documents, or not from Stallman's own words. But on the other hand: do consider that we should source things, and when trying to describe what an organisation of person thinks, it's best to source (WP:V) information from there directly (as references). Of course we can write it quite differently, combining it with ESR's criticism (as linked above) for example, and others' views, etc. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

So my reply to your statement "articles on people and organisations are not supposed to be written from the point of view of those subjects", is: ok right, but the articles should describe and characterize the point of views of those subjects, thus allowing the reader to realize the views that these subjects have. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

If there is one single thing that our coverage of free software does not suffer from, it is underrepresentation of the official positions and goals of Stallman, GNU and the FSF. Our coverage can certainly be improved, but we do not lack for long paragraphs explaining what free software is, how much time Stallman and the FSF have spent fighting for it et cetera.. Nonetheless, the material that was added to the GPL article, for instance, has proven of great use in improving it once taken out of the lead and incorporated more closely into the article. So thanks for that. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Well I just searched the article Free Software for the word "ethic", "social", and "cooperation" and did not find it. And Stallman's goal and activism/promotion of social and ethical cooperation (in computer use) as rationale of free software (the four freedoms) should be in the lead of the Stallman article. What else do you think Stallman is about anyway!? Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

But there are some articles on that can possibly be merged. Examples are Free Software and Free Software Movement; or GNU Project and GNU. Hnfiurgds (talk) 22:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we probably need more personal insight into the ethical motivations behind free software somewhere. It's a balancing act. We also have too many articles on overlapping subjects (although personally I like having two separate articles on GNU and the GNU Project as I feel that the former should more directly concentrate on the historic desire for a once-unknown 100% free software system, while the latter is on a project probably more widely known for individual components). Feel free to start proposals where you feel improvements are required. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Templates: vertical vs horizontal

Hello. Please don’t change template code from vertical to horizontal format. That makes the page code less readable (it’s harder to find where something in the template begins or ends), and a giant diff with that. Leave at least some line breaks in. --AVRS (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

If you're not going to provide any indication of what template you're talking about then I can't provide specifics, but in general the hlist format has been widely accepted and in general results in far more compact and therefore readable templates (particularly on lower-resolution devices). If you're talking about breaking hlists up in the middle with line breaks (again, I don't know, because you haven't deigned to tell me what template you're talking about) then that breaks the markup; instead of having a relatively sane single list element per table row there are then several. In that case they should be split to separate data rows, not simply fragmented with arbitrary line breaks. Happy to provide more details if you point me at a template that concerns you. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I am talking about your “general wikification throughout” in [3]. --AVRS (talk) 14:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh right, whitespace in citations. The previous revision used a mix of both spaces and line breaks: I simply standardised on one of them. Presumably we can agree that articles should be using one or the other rather than both. FWIW I strongly prefer using spaces as it ensures that all line breaks in articles are meant to be line breaks in the article (outside of things like infoboxes) as my editor can then easily identify where a paragraph has accidental extra whitespace. What can help is to move all of the citations out of the article body using named citations; I've now done that (a bit of work naming ~100 citations, but worth it), which means that it's trivial to reinsert the line breaks if you really want. Cheers. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I am using the default MediaWiki’s editor without highlighting, so it is difficult to find the beginning of a particular template or its property (e.g. “title” or “accessdate”) sometimes.
In a paragraph, line breaks help me find a paragraph by its size (if a short paragraph has many refs, with “horizontal” templates it does not look short). Also, it is easier to see the end of the paragraph text even if there are templates after it.
Sometimes I use a mix of spaces and line breaks in a template use, so that it takes less space (when there are multiple multi-line templates), but still can be parsed visually and helps diffs (although I notice diffs break if you convert templates from one format to the other). But that’s often only to appease those who use the horizontal format.
Named citations are an interesting idea, but if all refs are at the end of the article, editing a section is inconvenient (or at least feels unusual).

--AVRS (talk) 10:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Named citations are the best compromise anyone's found for this so far. They're not usually a good idea while an article is still being developed as they're harder to insert initially, but for long articles with lots of citations they significantly improve the readability of both the article body and the references themselves. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

User:Dogmaticeclectic

Hello, Chris. Happy new year. How do you do?

I was reading the guideline on dispute resolution and it says non-cooperative users who cause problem should be reported to an admin. Well, I hate to say it but I have one on my hand: User:Dogmaticeclectic. He persistently removes information regarding WinSxS ("Windows Side-by-Side") from Windows XP article. Three users have so far contested his edits but not only he has a passion for hitting revert button, it is very difficult to get a single word out of him as to why he reverts. He is irritatingly economic with words.

Eventually, today I discovered that the reason for his reverts are because some limited form of Side-by-side is implemented in Windows 2000, so I went ahead and only included changes in Windows XP. But surprisingly, he reverted again. His edit summary reads: "read my response at User talk:Dogmaticeclectic#WinSxS and XP" but he has not added any such response. (One must appear after this edit: [4])

I will be pleased to talk and resolve our dispute, but if he does not say what is wrong, he will be no different from a vandal.

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 19:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello again

Well, this is embarrassing. Just when I decided to ask your help, he decided to stop reverting: [5]. Sorry for bothering you in the first place.

Best regards,

Codename Lisa (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Talkback at WP:ANI on the issue of personal attacks. Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Since you were the one who made the change in the first place

You might be interested in this. — Francophonie&Androphilie^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 15:07, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Done, cheers! Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Settle Hydro

Chris-I don't follow the logic of the two warning tag. This was an easy stub to write- three easy references - so merely a paraphrase. - OR hardly, and each para is supported. I was chasing the red-link mill actually- after my content there have been a few minor edits? --ClemRutter (talk) 19:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

"it is difficult to determine how much carbon was used in the construction of the screw and the transportation from Germany"? To be fair, that should probably just be removed, which would obviate the OR/SYN problem. I'd prefer more references to work with, but I suppose everything that's currently in the article is cited and so that's probably overkill as well. Thanks for the response. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Thumperward. You have new messages at Pigsonthewing's talk page.
Message added 22:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

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Template:Infobox power station

Hi, Thumperward. Is there any specific reason why you removed the background color from the Template:Infobox power station? Beagel (talk) 12:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It's superfluous and there's no obvious colour key. I've no strong objections to it returning, but most infoboxes these days don't have hard-coded colours. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Infobox station

It appears that articles that do not specify the |image_size= parameter can no longer display their |image= images (or their captions). I recommend a rework or a revert. 2001:558:6045:A0:1947:F371:FD3B:B1F8 (talk) 15:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I've made a change which should have resolved that. Can you check again, or provide an example page? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for making the change, it appears to have fixed the problem. Earlier today I browsed to a few station articles and noticed the problem. For articles that specified an image_size I saw no problem. For articles that did not specify an image_size the inbox contained slightly garbled text instead of a display of the image. As best I can recall from this morning the articles I tried were:

article appeared ok (image_size)	article that could not display image (no image_size given)
Grand Central Terminal 288	Moffett Park (VTA)
Diridon Station 300	Bayshore-NASA (VTA)
Downtown Mountain View station 300px	Middlefield (VTA)
Santa Clara Station (California) 300	Whisman (VTA)
	Great America – Santa Clara Station

that was the extent of the station browsing I carried out this morning when I noticed the problem. I hope it helps you further troubleshoot the problem. Thank you again for the quick fix. The station articles that exhibited the problem, for example, Moffett Park (VTA) exhibited text something like: [[file:Moffett Park VTA 1087 04.JPG|]] within thier infoboxes, instead of the thumbnailed image, when the problem was present. 2001:558:6045:A0:1947:F371:FD3B:B1F8 (talk) 05:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I would have expected to happen given the fix. There's ongoing discussion on the template talk page regarding exactly how to move forward from here. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

summary

Wondering if [6] got lost in the unilateral discussion? NE Ent 16:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

It took up a significant proportion of the discussion. I didn't feel it would be honest to just ignore it. "concerns were raised" is perhaps a bit weaselly: if you can think of an appropriate rewording which still avoids getting personal I'm all ears. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

My concern is that it would lead to ... well, what's going on now between two of the participants. Too late. I thought the summary was a great idea if it could focus/keep the discussion on track without it devolving into personal back and forth. Ce'st la vie. NE Ent 16:37, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

WP Infoboxes in the Signpost

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Recent changes to Camouflage template

Hi Thumperward,

I note your recent changes but am not at all sure they are improvements. I have cropped HMS Argus to remove the escort, so we can keep it and Yarra in the top section - we should have a pic of people like Kerr or Wilkinson in the Camoufleurs section.

The arrangement of the Camouflage template without collapsing is interesting, but it does make the navbox much larger, and this causes problems in many other articles (not so much in Dazzle as it happens) so I'd like to revert that now if that's ok. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:29, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't particularly mind where the images are positioned so long as no more are added: until today the article contained ten images, which is well beyond what is required to illustrate the subject. I see you've already done a wholesale revert of the sidebar template: in my opinion the collapsing option should only be used where the sidebar would otherwise be unmanageably huge, as otherwise it's used to paper over all sorts of problems with placement, suitability and inclusiveness. The new version is a little over twice as long as the collapsed version, and only a little over half as long uncollapsed (which is what readers with Javascript disabled, or on mobile devices, see by default). I'd rather that the condensed version be restored and those articles unduly affected (which are bound to be articles overstacking their leads as it is) reworked so as to obviate the problem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Dazzle is quite heavily illustrated, not my doing... there are even more in the list of US patterns, which seems a better home for them. But camo. is a visual topic, so perhaps we needn't apologise for illustrating it in some detail. I don't think there's imminent risk of more being added. On the template, the list is already quite long and will grow as it contains the camo. patterns which are growing like Topsy (mostly without refs.....). It's quite a handful, and collapsed does seem best. I'm sure mobile device browsers will continue to improve; and if people have JS switched off, that's their choice, isn't it. On inclusiveness, I've been very selective, and others have added only very sensibly, so it seems things are quite well-behaved at the moment. You're certainly right about the need to watch out, AfD is full of absolute nonsense, and templates and lists are certainly no exceptions. All the best - Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Thumperward, I'm a bit surprised that you've gone ahead with a different set of undiscussed changes, especially as we had this discussion under way. Right, this version is not as disastrous as the last one, but it looks a whole lot less appealing than the original, and I'm much minded simply to revert - I don't understand why we've abandoned the nice clear clickable bars for each menu, nor why we've gone for centred lists; nor indeed why the current generation of mobile browsers and devices are proving such a big limitation or such an important target, certainly I've never heard of it from anybody else on this or any other corner of Wikipedia. So, is there evidence that many Wikipedians share your views, or that a sizeable percentage of the readership are having difficulties, and that they in fact demand more mobile navigation of the camouflage articles? --- Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:27, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Rather than making this personal, or going through the usual kabuki of "show me your consensus", "I've never heard of this before" et cetera, why don't we simply discuss the changes one by one? The header colouring is distracting (IMO) and arbitrary (there's no strong association between the tan colour used and the subject matter). Whether the lists are centred or not is a trivial stylistic matter; it happens to be the default layout, so I didn't feel the need to override it. So what exactly are the problems with the more compact layout? How does it inconvenience editors or readers? Why does this template need to override the default values for width / font / justification provided by the base code? What parts of this do you feel we should compromise on, and why? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 16:13, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I haven't made any personal remarks and I hope I will not do so. However I do feel that it looked well before, and I'm a believer in if it aint broke dont fix it, so I will return your "what exactly are the problems..." with "Why exactly do you feel the need to change this?" I don't believe, in short, there is any good reason for change. With the logic of the paragraph above, you can change anything at all, and then demand reasons for reverting, plainly not the usual Wikipedian position. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I explained my rationale for each change in the reply above. If you disagree, you need to explain why; "it was like that before" is only a good argument if you can explain why it was like that before. Along those lines, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" implies a reasoned argument that it "ain't broke", while I've given a concrete argument for why it is. Again, I'm perfectly happy to compromise here if there is a rational basis for doing so. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

~~Um, no you didn't, the second set of changes appeared without any note here at all, it arrived between my 2nd and 3rd entries above.~~ However, since I too wish to reach a reasoned conclusion, let me say that the original template had a usefully bold main title to attract attention (though perhaps larger than needed), a clear division into the 5 neatly centred coloured boxes contrasting with the white background (though perhaps a deeper hue than needed, and really clear sub-menus (though perhaps taking more space when expanded than needed). In the spirit of compromise, I suggest we go for a main title "Camouflage" that is sized at say 150% rather than 300%; that we make the image a little smaller, say 100px; that the main menu entries ("Topics" etc) are centred, and placed in very pale sandy rectangles (ideally the same colour as the sand in the image: certainly associated with the subject); and that I learn to love the sub-menus as they now are. I hope that's enough explanation... how's that? Chiswick Chap (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

{{Sidebar}}'s default title size is adequate for the majority of its uses; making it larger in this case simply makes the template unnecessarily prominent (somewhat ironic given the subject matter). Reducing the image size is fair enough. I'd rather that we not choose an arbitrary colour scheme for the headings, but it's not a major disagreement. I've implemented this in the sandbox: is that acceptable? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:27, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I see we edit-conflicted here. Your current version is fine to me, though I really don't think the title size override is necessary. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 23:29, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, either colour scheme will do - I'd prefer a slightly larger title. Thanks Chiswick Chap (talk) 23:32, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Tagremover disputes

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Tagremover disputes and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

Thanks, Tagremover (talk) 12:22, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Navboxes

Alright, this is getting absolutely ridiculous. That template is so difficult to decode I've virtually given up. How do I set up my own collapsible template, with the facility to include my own collapsible templates within, for my own use?--90.217.236.85 (talk) 20:56, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I see this has already been answered on your talk. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Uplift

Your summary statement was uplifting, a good example for all the rest of us sinners. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

In your close of a discussion at WP:VPP on deeplinking (in violation of DGM's terms of service) rather than giving DGM-ToS compliant links with precise titles, for easy DGM or Google surfing.

The narrator of The Big Lebowski' uses similar Americanisms, e.g., on his taking comfort in The Dude's abiding. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:54, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

SwiftKey Page

I am curious to know why you marked the SwiftKey page as reading like an advertisement and what you think needs copy editing? When building this page, I based the layout and styling a lot on the Swype page and the Android version history page. Although, it does appear that the Android page has been altered since I last looked to no longer list the new features in each update. It just has a reference to a source that lists the features. I would appreciate your input so I know what to modify. Thanks. G what (talk) 04:48, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Bullet points of feature lists should be avoided in favour of describing what the program does in prose. I'll see if I can work on this myself. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:20, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration case request closed as withdrawn

This is a courtesy notice to inform you that an arbitration case request, named Tagremover disputes, in which you were named as a party has been withdrawn by the filing party. The commenting arbitrators felt that the community was able to handle this issue at the current time and it was withdrawn by the filing party.

For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:48, 25 January 2013 (UTC)