User talk:Timwi/Archive/Feb 04

Question Delete[edit]

Did you really mean to delete the link on Racism to a Japanese article on Racism? The article in Japanese appears to be just a stub now, but it looks like someone is planning to go ahead with it. P0M

The link went to ja:人種差別, which is at the time I'm writing this still an empty page. -- Timwi 09:29, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

German states[edit]

Hi Timwi! About the Lists you are creating... What about linking them to the state, and say that they are German states, as we are at it? And antecipating your comment... I'm not in the mood :) Cheers, Muriel 11:32, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that these lists are good ideas. For instance the List of places in Lower Saxony: In the Lower Saxony article itself there is a list of all district-free cities, which are all the larger cities of that state. And if one is interested in smaller towns or villages, they can follow a link to a district, where a new list of towns belonging to that district appears. Or, if they don't know the district, they can have a look at the very comprehensive List of cities in Germany. I don't think that we should maintain many lists in parallel, all with (almost) the same content. I would vote to delete those pages, but perhaps you had a good reason for feeling a need to have these pages? -- Baldhur 11:52, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Not useless, I'd say. These lists could and should be linked from the articles for the respective Bundesländer - they have a place in between the details given at the districts and the general overview at the list of cities in germany. I would not cry many tears if the lists went away, but if we care to keep them updated and properly linked, they might be a useful tool. Also they are lists of places, not cities, so islands, mountains etc. might be included - not sure though if that's a good idea.Kosebamse 15:13, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A reader finding a list of places in Lower Saxony might think that it is a complete listing of all towns with articles in Wikipedia. I don't like new lists with only two or three entries if there are alternative lists (as the list of cities in Germany) listing about fifty towns in Lower Saxony. But I agree that the lists could make sense if mountains, lakes etc. are included. In the current form they are completely useless, offering redundant information only. I would rather encourage every user to expand the List of cities in Germany than starting new lists with the same information. -- Baldhur 15:24, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi everybody. Thanks for your opinions. I was looking for List of places in Germany, not knowing that List of cities in Germany exists. Sorry. Other than that, I think this discussion should go to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion instead. Mainly I did this only to give people an incentive to start creating more or less complete lists. Maybe the lists you mentioned that already exist in articles like Lower Saxony should be moved. Maybe List of cities in Germany should be split into lists for each Bundesland. I don't know. -- Timwi 15:10, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

No problem, Tim. I hope, things like this won't happen anymore when we have the search function back. I don't think that we should split the list of cities in Germany. Some readers might not know to which state a city belongs. What about:

Option 1: Making List of places in Germany a redirect to List of cities in Germany, listing the sublists on VfD

Option 2: Keeping the lists you made and turning them into lists of towns, mountains, lakes, rivers, nature parks etc.

-- Baldhur 15:24, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't mind either way :) Regard the pages I created as suggestions, not as claims to their right of existence. Discuss their fate on their Talk pages. -- Timwi 15:33, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I copied this discussion to Talk:List of places in Germany. You may delete it from your talk page if you want. -- Baldhur 17:24, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks :-) -- Timwi 17:32, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Deleting a bunch of pages[edit]

Thanks for deleting the rest of those pages. I just came back to finish them and they were all done! -- Ams80 22:52, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I should probably be the one to say thanks, because it was good fun! :-) -- Timwi 14:27, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thumbnails[edit]

Timwi, please stop deleting thumbnail images until there is general agreement that they are no longer required. (In view of the significant image quality issues with auto-generated thumbnails, this may never happen.) Tannin 18:09, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I see. I would have thought there was agreement to generally use the automatic thumbnails. I don't see any image quality issues, much less "significant" ones. I was rather thinking that disk space has become an issue lately. :-p But anyway. I'll stop it for now. Thanks for letting me know. -- Timwi 18:13, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

File:Black-necked Stilt-252.jpg
Manual thumbnail.

Thanks, Timwi. See for yourself with these examples at left and right. Tannin 18:15, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I understand. However, it begs the question: If it's possible to make better thumbnails, why doesn't the automatic thumbnail generator do that? -- Timwi 18:21, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It would be possible to include any desired amount of image sharpening in the thumbnail-generation code (that may be a very difficult or a trivially simple programming task—which I don't know, it depends on the software method used and the availability of a suitable plug-in), but—alas—no computer software is currently able to replace the human eye and human judgement. Different images require different amounts of sharpening. Without a human being in the loop, you just can't do it properly. Tannin

If it really takes that much effort, then I really don't think it's worth the hassle at all. Although I can see the quality difference in the above two pictures, I would not call it "significant". I'd certainly not notice it if I hadn't seen the "better" version. Besides, they are just thumbnails! If someone needs to use the image for a purpose that requires good quality, they will use the full-size image anyway, and not the thumbnail. -- Timwi 18:31, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ahh, but you are not a photographer! To me, the difference stands out like dog's balls. Tannin

Well, but what proportion of casual visitors to Wikipedia is going to be photographers, or generally people who will care? Is this proportion really high enough to justify the intricate effort of producing "good" thumbnails for every image on Wikipedia? -- Timwi 20:03, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Of course. What proportion of visitors are grammarians? Should we therefore abandon attempts to spell stuff correctly? Quality is quality. We already produce good thumbnails as routine. Hell, I imagine that I've made several hundred myself, and guys like Arpingstone do more than I do. -- Tannin

Yeah, your grammar argument makes sense, so I'll give up on that one. However, I'm still rather dissatisfied with the complex and ugly HTML that the manually created thumbnails currently require. I suppose the thumbnail feature could (should?) be extended to allow for manually created thumbnails. -- Timwi 21:54, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

msg:Table_Unicode[edit]

Hello, I have just noticed you have added {{msg:Table_Unicode}}. Isn't it really nice idea? I would like to use the same technique for other series of articles. Do you have any info about this feature? I mean I did know things like {{msg:stub}} can be used for boiler text but can an individual wikipedia implement such a text without developers' help? And I have also noticed that links in the table change depend on where it appears. How does it work? I will appreciate if you just give me a point or some. -- Taku 19:49, Feb 14, 2004 (UTC)

Just create a page in the MediaWiki namespace, like MediaWiki:Table Unicode. Please be invited to do the same to other series of related articles! It would be especially nice if you would copy the format to ensure consistency. -- Timwi 23:39, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Revert from 250px to 180px[edit]

Hi Timwi! I'm very puzzled by your revert on Wing to 180px wide thumbnails from my 250px wide. You could be forcing the reader to view the large pic when he/she might well be happy to just view the thumbnail at my larger thumbnail size. In any case, 250 or 300px wide thumbs have become standard on WP.
Please explain why you want to go against this "standard".
Best Wishes,
Adrian Pingstone 20:06, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I have posted about it on the mailing list. 300px is completely overboard. They are thumbnails! Thumbnails are supposed to be small. You can perfectly well see that the pictures have an aeroplane and a bird on them, respectively, even at 100px width. If you want to see the image in detail, you click on it to see the full-size image. People view the article mainly for the text. Especially people with low resolutions and slow connections. Please attempt to stick with the default sizes of thumbnails (i.e. not specifying a width in the tag at all). Thanks. -- Timwi 23:43, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You talk above as though you had personally set an agreed standard. Well, you have not, you are only expressing an opinion and not stating any agreed Wikipedia standard. When the standard is set I will abide by it. For now 300 or 250px is what most other people on Wikipedia work to.

I have read the Mail List and disagree with your arguments. I think you are forcing people with slow connections to download a big pic. Here's the current policy from Image use policy

# The ideal image width is 300 pixels (this seems to suit common screen resolutions) but use smaller, down to 100-150 pixels wide, if that's what you've got.

I do agree that 300 px looks too big with the new image code but I do think 250px is a good compromise between speed of loading the article page and not forcing a load of the big pic. So I am staying with 250px. It looks like we'll have to agree to disagree!

Adrian Pingstone 10:28, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am honestly having extremely great problems seeing how the thumbnails that are currently on Wing are "too small" in any sense of those words. I cannot see anything on the bigger thumbnails that I can't also see on the smaller ones. By contrast, on 640x480 your size of thumbnails is wider than half the width of the text viewport! The images aren't the most important part of an article, the text is. -- Timwi 15:43, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand. You want the thumb to be OK for a 640 by 480 screen. But I thought we were not expected to cater for such an outdated screen resolution (I use 1024 by 768). So I can understand why you so dislike 250px. I'll raise this matter on the Pump then we get the resolution and thumb size sorted. It's obviously very unsatisfactory for all of us not having any rules to work to.

Adrian Pingstone 16:49, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, the resolution is one thing that gripes me about it, but not the only one. I did mention this in my mailing list posting, though. ... Anyway. I think the discussion should proceed and a concensus should be reached on the default value of the thumbnails feature. Most thumbnails should then use this default width (by not specifying one). Specifying a width should be an exception, not a rule. -- Timwi 17:44, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

WC[edit]

On reflection, i'd say "Veh Tseh" if i had it to do over again. (And your talk page supports my 2nd, calmer, thot, "I 'spose his German could be better than mine!") I assume you think no pronunciation is better than an approximation, or better with a "homemade one", and i'm not sure you're wrong. (I note, tho, that IMO the Sampa ones are nearly worthless.) --Jerzy 02:56, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

Zero-byte image[edit]

Hello; I just deleted an image you uploaded back in June 2003, because it was zero bytes. It was Image:Scrabble tournament game 22.png, and had the caption For Scrabble tournament game. It's quite possible you already re-uploaded it or know about the upload error, but I thought I'd let you know just in case. --Delirium 09:41, Feb 17, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Yes, I remember this. There was a bug in the software (maybe it's still there) that it will create a zero-byte image if you enter a local file name that doesn't exist. Since I wasn't sysop back then, I couldn't delete it. -- Timwi 20:10, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Lucid dreaming[edit]

Since you seen to have done some editing aeons ago at lucid dreaming, could you come over to Wikibooks and work a bit on the Lucid dreaming wikibook? Or have you lost interest in the subject? r3m0t 13:55, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Me? Editing on lucid dreaming? :-D Seriously: I've only corrected spelling mistakes! :-) The articles listed on my User page are my only substantial contributions; everything else is just spelling and grammar fixes. :-) (and consistency issues, and formatting, and fixing links and that sort of stuff.) -- Timwi 14:08, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Calendar layouts[edit]

I like your Mediawiki calendar layouts, but I have one question: are you taking into account the change in layout from year to year? by which I mean is someone going to have to go and change a whole load of pages next year because February starts on a different weekday, or have you solved the problem of making it automatic? Just curious. --Phil 15:40, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

I have taken it into account in the sense that I'm aware of it, and I don't mind changing them (it's only one little table per month). I have not, however, automated it. I could write a Perl script to do it, but I don't think that's worth it, because this is so easy to do manually. — Timwi 17:18, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Image tags[edit]

Hi. When I am uploading a bunch of images at once, I usually wait until I've done them all until tagging them, because that way its much quicker. Morwen 14:50, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

OK, sorry. I wasn't paying much attention to Recent Changes; I just happened to see that upload and thought "Oh my, something I can tag. Whee." -- Timwi 15:42, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Community Portal[edit]

Why are you moving the Wikipedia:Main Page without even discussing it? It needs to be named consistently with the actual Main Page. There are a lot of links to this and people have been talking about recoding the side bar to link to it, so it is a really bad idea just to go off and rename it without agreement. Please have a vote on this on before making such a large change. Angela . 13:50, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Angela, I wish there was a way to include an Edit Summary with a move, because then I would have pointed you at Talk:Main Page. A lot of people are finding the title similarity in Main Page and Wikipedia:Main Page extremely confusing, most notably people with dyslexia. I have not done it without thought; I have considered existing links to it, and it seems there aren't many. I had already fixed all redirects to it. — Timwi 13:52, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Main Page would have been a better place to mention the move than talk:Main Page. I don't like it but I can't be bothered arguing about it. Angela . 14:31, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's not you that's causing me stress - well not much ;) Angela . 22:11, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)