User:Mendel/Talk Archive 6

I reserve the right to edit section titles to coincide with the section content. =Comments=

RfA
The RfA was placed by Shadowphoenix on 18:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC). --◄mendel► 05:29, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi stinky [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 05:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Correct naming
Looking at Aggressive Hippopotamus, I was thinking of making a Hard mode only category, but I don't know if there are any other monsters that would fit the bill, or how to name the category, can you shed some light on either? If you don't know of any other monsters, then it's irrelevant, because there's no need for a cat for just one critter. &mdash; Powersurge360 Violencia  08:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know of any, but then I don't know much. I'd put a note on the hard mode article (Monsters section?), may "The AH only appears in Hard mode". Can you confirm that the agressive hippo has the same skin as the defnct pygmy hippo? If not, could you please upload a current screenshot? Thank you for your support on the RfA. --◄mendel► 08:36, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 'll do it tomorrow, as I doubt it is the same, as the pygmy was causing "problems". &mdash; Powersurge360 Violencia  08:38, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It is, in fact, the exact same model. See this link. Unable of finding the exact page where she said it, though. I really wonder why there were problems with a tameable version but not with a monster version. Hug Wub Banana 16:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * They fixed the graphical bugs it caused. The shoulders would rocket up into the skies when attacking or something weird like that. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  16:27, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the reason they didn't let people charm them as pets was something like, the skeleton it uses is unique, unlike other pets which share models (Dune Lizard, Iguana, Crocodile; Melandru's Stalker, Lynx, Lion, etc.) Apparently the skeleton was too complex, and would cause additional loading time. Why this is a problem, who knows. I could be wrong, that's just what I saw on a few talk pages on GWW.
 * lol, after typing all that I clicked on Hug Wub's link and saw someone said the exact same thing -_- --Macros 18:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Iron Arch
Have you ever been in Sorrow's Furnace? Iron Arch is not a real location, in fact, it's only spoken about between players, and perhaps in a dialogue or so. It's not on the map or anything akin. --- -- (s)talkpage  19:57, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I haven't. It's not clear from the article. Could you reword it to say that this is a fictional location, and cat it for Lore? --◄mendel► 20:03, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Link you wanted (Podax Vandal)
Random Time  20:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, ty. 2 weeks would've been ok. That means I still disagree with Warwick, though. --◄mendel► 21:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Re: Vipermagi#preaching to the
I read the wrong end of my watchlist first, then ran out of time when it came to replying to this one, and now I'm more than a day late in replying. The most important thing to write is that I notice people trying to be more kind to strangers, including you, Viper, and that I really appreciate your support both in getting my admin notices attedned to as in fixing my mistakes and pointing out some of my other errors. It really helps knowing to have someone dedicated checking your work. Whatever you may feel you are in RL, here in the wikisphere you are doing fine, and I'm sure if you manage to extend any of that into your RL (as you likely have already), you'll be doing fine there as well, and eventually manage to convince yourself that you do (sometimes that's the hard part).

The other comment is the one about the banning. Not sure if the second admonishment was worth it - it was a judgment call, and yours to make, and it did get the vandal to stop, so I guess it was. So what end did the ban achieve? Wikipedia admins seem (from what I read) have come to the conclusion that punitive bans make no sense. If you ban, you ought to have an end beyond punishing, like getting vandalism to stop or to get NPA violators to cool off. I've raised this issue before on the admin noticeboard, and it is a big issue that alienates me from this community - I've felt some progress because some people seem to care more about being satisfied with simpler solutions that don't involve the ban stick, but if Entropy is actively opposed to that, it'll stop.

The other things that alienate me are a total lack of standardization as regard the databasey stuff (but that's just a lot of work and effort to set right) and of course the wikia hash of laggy, ad- and bug-riddled presentation of our hard work. So despite the good experiences I've had on the wiki, including the fun getting to know some of its citizens, and learning a lot very quickly, I am still insecure about whether it is wise for me to continue my involvement at this level.

I'm trying to not come across as threatening to leave the wiki (and I won't respond to anyone who takes it as such) - you were doing fine two months ago before I came along, and that'll continue to be the case even if I go away again, so there's not much of a threat to be made anyway. I wanted to air these feelings thogh, for whatever that was worth. Now my watchlist awaits. --◄mendel► 22:13, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I shouldn't do admin stuff when I am tired. That's all I will say on that particular occasion.
 * A ban is a tool and it can be good or bad in any situation depending on how you use it...I think the important thing is that you do use it when needed, not as a sort of "you have left me no choice" measure. In other words it is not so great and terrible a thing that it should be avoided whenever possible. It's great if you can manage to stop a vandal without a ban; it's really awesome when you can turn an anon into a regular user. User:Lost-Blue and User:Mr Ex Vandal are two cases you may want to look at. Finally, "some people seem to care more about being satisfied with simpler solutions that don't involve the ban stick, but if Entropy is actively opposed to that, it'll stop." Please don't demonize me more than I deserve... [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 07:51, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey
Don't vandalize me 07:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I did? --◄mendel► 07:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 07:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Get your attributions right next time and I won't do it again. --◄mendel► 08:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * ur fat [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 08:44, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * no u --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  08:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

rfa/irc
Have you been on irc today? Auron wants to know whether you officially accepted/rejected your nomination (it's the topic in irc atm.) --Shadowcrest  22:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I am a little puzzled why you would ask me this here when he could have done the same. --◄mendel► 08:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I am a little puzzled why you won't answer the question, clearly Auron isn't able to get on the wiki. Hug Wub Banana 10:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Huh? Why not? Random Time  10:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I am a little puzzled why mendel would be under any obligation to accept or reject the nomination anyway. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 12:40, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hug Wub, I am little puzzled because I have answered Shadowcrest and Auron, too.
 * And clearly Auron's throttled to 2 GuildWiki edits per day on weekdays.--◄mendel► 12:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops. Sorry, I didn't check this page after you posted here - I was thinking it'd be better to answer here, so yeah. My bad! Hug Wub Banana 14:03, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * He wasn't on when I asked you. I asked of my own free will. --Shadowcrest 16:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, own free will and all that, what struck me as odd is that your question was "Have you been on irc today?" and not about the RfA. Anyway, I forgot to thank you for the heads up, anyway, so thank you. --◄mendel► 18:40, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It was an inquiry as to whether you had seen the topic, which pertained to your non/acceptance of your RfA. --Shadowcrest 18:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I understand that. I suspected you of ulterior motives beyond being friendly and telling me it's there. I shouldn't have. --◄mendel► 18:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Then that would explain why I sensed your message as a bit more hostile than it should have been. We'll call it even. --Shadowcrest  18:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Skills used/Items dropped
S&F has the second word not capitalized. Many users have been changing it to fix this, such as here. I won't revert it because of GW:1RV, though. Cress Arvein 23:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the bestiary S&F needs to be corrected. GW:ULC mandates standard English, and as far as I can tell, title caps for subheadings is that (source in GuildWiki talk:Use lower case. Anyway, fixing this is relatively minor; if you were to go at it, you'd have to change more than 1000 articles either way, and maybe we should decide whether this is a level 2 or level 3 heading before we did that because that varies as well. Or leave everything as it is. --◄mendel► 00:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * ( Might want to move/copy this discussion to ULC talk eventually... Never mind, I really should read all the way through RC before commenting anywhere.) I'm going to say we follow Wikipedia on section headings - Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters), which says to only capitalize proper nouns.  This follows rules for articles in scientific journals (I published a couple in grad school), where section headings within an article, like "Experimental setup" only have the first word capitalized.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 01:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Interrupting your regular logical discussions with the following:
That is all.--ìğá†ħŕášħ 11:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ooooh nice! A care-lion! Thank you! --◄mendel► 11:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

galleries
what are you thoughts on implementing this and how to go about it? what is this "SMW" you refered to? &mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 18:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
 * Semantic Media Wiki
 * I think we can do without, though - DPL (Dynamic Page Lists) is probably enough.
 * Have I already complained that the mediawiki search engine does not index 3-letter-words? --◄mendel► 18:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

temporary Wiki break
for health reasons. Seeing this because of this makes my blood pressure rise. --◄mendel► 15:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Break over. --◄mendel► 22:21, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand what is upsetting about the first link. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 23:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Because it changed. A better link would have been this. --Shadowcrest  23:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * That was a short break mendel. Get a leech treatment for the blood pressure? [[Image:Rsz_PLSig.jpg‎]] 23:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Ah, thanks, I had tried to get that but failed because I hadn't added "User". So my first link was intedned to be this. Well, I guess I should be thankful that Auron didn't just say "wiki disruption". --◄mendel► 23:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Nah, seeing Jon, Dr ishmael and Entropy perform calmed me down. --◄mendel► 23:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Magical. [[Image:Rsz_PLSig.jpg‎]] 23:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

readable Templates
Thank you for making templates more user-friendly and readable. I've tried it before with formidable opponents like the Skill Box template, but always either broke something or made more of a mess. (T/C) 10:15, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, "Skill box" is the monster of them all, the ultimate endgame boss, and I believe the only template that needs a "draft" to work on.
 * Usually one thing on the wiki leads to another, I started out today working on the nonorphans, ran into the Getting started (Factions) subpages, found minor bugs in those, stumbled across IcoV, rewrote that, made a category for that and an overview in an attempt to get closer to the long-term goal of making our templates more accessible, and just now found out doing the change to IcoV breaks its use on the run-on-column style of tables. Sigh.
 * Anyway, I'm always happy to work on templates users may point out to me. --◄mendel► 10:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hehe, that's pretty typical Wiki for you.
 * I see that you almost reinvented the wheel, err, scanf, but I can think of other uses beyond counting asterisks (although probably forget when I wake up, tired now). What would make it a more useful template is the user being able to specify their delim as an argument in the template. For example say I want to "count A's", then I do.
 * I know that there are other truly monstrous templates like Skill box, if only I could remember them right now. Let me get back to you on that. (It's great that you enjoy these kinds of things :> ) [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 10:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, count* was my first attempt at doing the birthday drop rate fully automatically, but the processing load was too great. If you do want to count something else, the template is simple to modify, but the issue hasn't come up (and the performance penalty remains). --◄mendel► 10:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Entropy/1. I'm surprised I got it right on the first try. Now to run some testi. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 11:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is not going to work unless you modify count directly, because the recursive calls only work through redirects - that is, redirects Count**, Count*** etc. are necessary. That's what the second unnamed parameter is for, by the way. So you'd best modify Template:Count* itself, it's not used on the wiki anywhere, and make the * (the right *) a named parameter, e.g. "needle". You'd then use . --◄mendel► 12:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S.: The really simple way to use count without modfication is to #sub all * away, and then #sub all "1" into *, and then count that. See the Parserfunctions extension for the docs on #sub. --◄mendel► 12:15, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If I ask it to tell me the number of occurrences of standalone character "a" in the Nika article, it returns the correct number (3). Same for Raptor, Ceratadon, Vizunah Square (mission), etc. I don't understand anything you said except for recursion...and since I copied Template:Count*, it still does that. Right? [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 12:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You're only using half the functionality. The template counts to 5 without recursion. To count higher than that, it splits the text in half and calls itself twice to count the halves separately. Mediawiki prohibits templates calling itself to prevent endless loops. So to call itself, count* has to call a different redirect to itself each time, and it does that by appending one more * to itself on each call.
 * Take the Nika article, rip out all *, replace all A with *, and count* that, is my suggestion. Use #sub for the ripping and replacing. --◄mendel► 12:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll come back when I have had some sleep. It's been a long night morning. I can see what you mean now...but sifting through technical docs when you can't barely type is bound for failure. I just need to stick the in all the right * locations, and...fix redirects...Say, how come you can't have Count*** redirect to Count**? Or is MediaWiki too smart for that double redirect. Could also use a hard redirect? [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 13:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * When you fail at understanding redirects, it's indeed time to go to bed. ;-P Count*** -> Count** -> Count* means a double redirect, and double redirects never work on Mediawiki. Oh, and you really ought to use, not , and don't forget adding needle= twice, and don't bother doing it on the sandbox, work with count* directly (saves you setting up redirects). --◄mendel► 13:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thinking of Special:Doubleredirects which are not always broken. Why use a symbolic constant? Most people are used to templates with etc. Maybe I could understand making it "term=" and "article=" though. Or perhaps I can change directions and use implode instead! ...it's too bad there aren't many places on this Wiki to use either function to extract info. Lack of standardization and all that, a single space or typo could throw you off...
 * Hmm, could be cool too!...but would fail at all those conditional or DoT skills.
 * Or returns the second comment I made on this page (when it was called by the template - use subst), complete with formatting. Probably relies on ipcheck/Checkuser/a reliable sig icon or such though...
 * ...Yeah, going to bed. Ideas are leaking out of me, as you can see. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 13:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Damage calculations are the stuff of dreams. Make function that takes a skill bar as input and returns dps as output (or a team's worth of skill bars), and we're ready for a new build section...
 * Working on comments means you need to use the "(UTC)" string to break the page up, and even then identifying the authors isn't easy. The way to solve it is to examine the situation that makes you want such a function and find another solution... :-P
 * The problem with not using a symbolic constant is that people (like me) will confuse the order of the needle and the haystack half the time. Infoboxes have always used them. Furthermore, for positional parameters every space counts, while on named parameters they are stripped = less possibility for errors. --◄mendel► 13:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Why does this work?
except for this:
 * Wouldn't that stuff there be .css territory or something? --Gimmethegepgun 18:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * All the codes mesh together when they're used on the same page. CSS sees the name of something and then formats it. If you were to type then it would apply the codes relevant to the code. If you were to name it, for example, then it would apply specifically the div.dialogue codes. I don't know anything about javascripting, but I assume that the javascript writes a new paragraph each time you press enter, and gives it a name to correspond with the wiki-code. If that is true, than the CSS can recognize the name of each "paragraph" and format it accordingly. &mdash; Powersurge360  18:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Give me some time to reply on these difficult questions, people! Sheesh! --◄mendel► 19:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

placing images in text
I don't suppose you would know some way to force an image/text/box/etc. to a certain fixed position on a page, such that other text would flow around it? Using thumbs for images is awkward plus ugly, and div positions for other things too...One example is when you put an image directly and then put text next to it - it starts at the middle of the image and finishes that line, and the next line starts at the bottom of the image. So it works for smaller images, but for large ones...you could look at the copy of my userpage in your namespace for some examples. Things just look awkward. (T/C) 07:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If you float the image, it is often ok. No, I don't know offhand, but I'm going to have a look at it later. Since it probably requires some experimentation, it may take some time (possibly days). --◄mendel► 07:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not quite sure what you want to achieve, but I've made some changes to M.mendel/Users/Entropy, so if you could tell me if that is what you need, that'd be good. For a 3D effect, see Drop_rate, but the color should really be the surrounding background color for best effect (I think Ishy didn't do it that way when he reedited the page). --◄mendel► 08:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I just copied the code you had for the image borders, I didn't realize until know that they were colored (rather than gray). &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 13:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)