User:Mendel/Talk Archive 2

Talk to me on IRC
While editing, I am often logged in to #gwiki on irc.gamesurge.net. Some Instant Messaging programs already know IRC, or you can use the Chatzilla extension for Firefox or download a free IRC client. This can be a quick way to resolve issues of no lasting importance or for things that don't deserve to be written down. Use /query mendel to talk to me (semi-)privately on irc. --mendel

=Comments=

Wiki Status (¬_¬)
You forgot to remind me that I am valuable xP-- - (Talk /Contribs ) 12:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm unsure what the proper etiquette is: does the more recent member remind the "older" one, or vice versa? --mendel 14:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just incase i failed to convey my sarcasm across t'internet again, i was joking. In an ideal society nobody tells anybody they are valuable since its patronising and annoying to the point where you want to punch the person who said it, however cynicism is frowned upon so generally speaking it's older members reminding newer ones, along with such painful rhetoric as "Hi there valued contributor" and, as on my first talkpage, "Thankyou for your cool input". But yeah, t'was just joking :)--[[Image:Cobalt6.jpg|50x19px]] - (Talk /Contribs ) 18:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Ha, I'm better at deadpan than you, then! "Proper etiquette", I thought that was a giveaway for sure. ;-) I think I had that actually done to me by someone who wrote something along the line of "I'm writing this because of GW:YAV", and that sounds slightly insulting: "you only have value because the policy says so (if not, you'd be scum to me)." I'm sure it wasn't meant that way, though, or I misunderstood.
 * What other rites of seniority are there, then? Having your talk on more than 10 people's watchlists? Do admins count double? --mendel 22:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I try to ignore the wikidrama.. I wasnt involved in the Felix vs R and Banj at all! :o &mdash;[[Image:MaySig.png]] Warw/Wick 15:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * xD, sorry i missed that :P I think that some people seem to perceive number of archives as some kind of status symbol (I have 3 - is that good? probably not), general talkpage activity might be another. I guess obviously sysop/bcratism is a right of seniority, despite people's insistence to the contrary. As for having your talkpage on peoples watchlists, is there even a way to find out who is watching a particular page (short of asking, obv :P)?--[[Image:Cobalt6.jpg|50x19px]] - (Talk /Contribs</B> ) 09:47, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Post controversial content, see who replies. You need a good knowledge of which buttons to push for which people to get reliable results, and even then they might just have been watching Recent Changes.
 * I'm going to fill my archive 'til my PC can't handle the size. --mendel 12:49, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I consider it quite impressive how long I've been here, in comparison to the size of my talkpage. Lord of all tyria 12:59, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You probably have to relate that to the number of edits somewhat. --mendel 13:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's see then...

(I'm taking the liberty to add the Bytes columns to this table. (mendel 17:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC))
 * Conclusion: Number of edits has no direct correlation to talk page activity, but characteristics of the user can be inferred from the data. LoaT is a lurker.  Mendel is new.  Cobalt doesn't really contribute much.  Warwick wins at wikidrama.  I am the least controversial person on the wiki (2 years, 8k edits, and only 1 archive?  Yeah. :P ).  Hooray for scientific reasoning!  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 15:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Builds section stole contributions from me. /sadface. Lord of all tyria 15:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You lost 496 Contribs due to deletions so far, Loat :P --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  15:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I lost like, 700 mainspace contribs from deletions :p  Light   Kitty   15:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You dont even have 700 contribs :p. &mdash;[[Image:MaySig.png]] Warw/Wick 15:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Contribs as an anon, much? --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  15:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * what I was gonna say ;)  Light   Kitty   15:15, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Its a conspiricy! ;O &mdash;[[Image:MaySig.png]] Warw/Wick 15:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm waiting for a redirect to appear for a GW-user page to Lightkitty. Makes sense for a 700+ edit user.
 * Anyway, I added byte counts (edit page - copy& paste everything into editor) to the table - feel free to add yourself if you aren't on the table yet, if it's popular I'll make a page of it. I hope that my bad ratio is indeed "new user syndrome". That said, I think "number of talk page archives" is indeed a status symbol in some circles. As is "number of user boxes", of course. --mendel 17:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * "Cobalt doesn't really contribute much" Plah! I beg to differ! Cobalt just didnt contribute much in his first few months, as such number of edits divided by number of months on wiki doesen't provide a very impressive figure (I also lost some to deletions), but i usually check the wiki atleast 2/3 times a day - i would consider myself to be fairly "active" anyways. I also did an event thing - that must count for something :P Also, a rough count gives me approx. 50 userboxes - TEH STATUS! (or perhaps not) - maybe we should count number of userspace pages/total size in bytes of userspace and/or position in special:Mostlinked/number of links to user created stuff. Still, interesting data, perhaps we can plot "The Maui Effect" on a graph :P--[[Image:Cobalt6.jpg|50x19px]] - (<font color="Blue">Talk </B>/<font color="Green">Contribs</B> ) 18:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If you wanted to measure user activity, you'd have to get the Contributions list and find an average number of bytes per edit, multiply that with edits made. It's a bit hard to get reliable data from the main/non-main ratio, as the Dr has removed numerous redlinks from Userspace (I've been working that as well). Size of Userspace and Mostlinked can be gamed - May had her bot create over 300 pages that link to her userpage and talk page. It's still be hard to figure out how useful the edits actually are. --mendel 20:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

<3
Lol, I forgot to thank you for fixing my userpage :D. --<font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="red">Hel <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="yellow">llb <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="green">rin <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="black">ger 22:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I just got lucky that you're not Gigathrash. ;-) --mendel 22:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Lol. --<font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="red">Hel <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="yellow">llb <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="green">rin <font face="vivaldi" size="3" color="black">ger 23:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The subject stays the same (Tic TOC)
You can force a TOC by mashing in, or you can force-hide it with. Just a reminder (as per "TOC popped up -> named first section "Description"") --- -- (s)talkpage  10:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I know. But the first section won't be listed in the TOC (and won't have an edit link) if it doesn't have a heading, so the heading was needed anyway.
 * I have more of a problem on my talk page. It is ok for the TOC to appear when it does, but if I don't have a section header above the archive, it pops up in the archive box. So it's either have a permanent TOC on the page, or a section above the box - both not optimal solutions. Will the  appear wherever  is written on the page? Only the first occurence. What's community consensus on editing section headings on talk pages? Is it ok if I do it on my own page? Would make the archive more useful. --mendel 10:56, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * If I'd place here, the TOC would appear here, too :P --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]--  (s)talkpage  11:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * No, it won't (unless the preview lies). Not "too". It appears wherever the first occurrence of is on the page, and only there. Since I don't have that code at the top,you could get the TOC down to here, but it wouldn't be at the top any more. If I had  at the top of the page, you can add it down here all you want, there'll just be a blank. At least it works that way on firefox 2. --mendel 11:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Ino. Dunno why I typed "too" behind the sentence, as I knew only 1 TOC would occur >.< I'm an idiot tbh. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  11:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * NP, any thoughts on editing section headers? --mendel 11:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't give a damn, actually. The subject stays the same.... --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]--  (s)talkpage  11:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You know I had to, now, right? ;-) --mendel 11:56, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Yup. But, honestly, it's not like the starting post has a whole different meaning now :P --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  12:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Page Title Doctoring
"Watch Yourself!". Just a reminder of an archived discussion :) --- -- (s)talkpage  22:12, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work that way - all that can be changed is upper to lowercase, if you made the changed title into an internal link you'd still get to the same page, so it can't be used to mislead (although I admit I tried to, and had it worked, the discussion you cited would have applied). BUt really all users that want to have a lowercase username canhave that on their userpage, and that is nice. --mendel 22:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The magic word is much more "friendly" than the &lt;div> overlays that Warwick and others were using.  This actually changes the text that gets displayed at the top of the article, instead of placing new text over it, so that it is guaranteed to not disrupt anything else on the page.  Also, like mendel said, you can't actually change the article name, only how it is displayed.  See here and here for explanation.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 22:51, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Didn't know what it could and couldn't do, so I just brought up something similar, so you wouldn't be flamed about it. Prevention above remedy, amirite? :P --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  14:09, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I noticed ("I admit I tried to"), so thanks. --mendel 15:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Templates
if you;re going to keep making these weird templates, make sure they are fully documented and categorized. Because they are starting to look like a whole lot of gibberish. &mdash;<font color=#ff44aa>♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 02:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll try to remember that. --mendel 15:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Remember that because you have placed your templates in mainspace, they shouldn't use first person and try to avoid sending users to wikipedia to explain it. You should be able to explain it simply enough yourself. Otherwise, the documentation is lacking. &mdash;<font color=#ff44aa>♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 00:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Which template are you referring to? I thought mine were better documented than the average Template on here. --mendel 14:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Unyielding Aura
I double-checked, and there is a period where you added one. Just fyi, since your comment implied that you hadn't actually checked. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 15:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I don't have GW open atm. And thanks for endorsing the coding forum, I expect the others (PanSola etc.) will see it via the community portal. --mendel 15:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup after Maybot
Are you finished working on that now? Your comments on the User and User talk namespaces imply that while there might be more to fix, you're not planning on doing any more with them. I'd like to do the final run of the build bot soon, so please let me know if you do plan to do any more work on that. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 04:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There is more to fix on User:Talk, but I've been putting it off because I didn't have the gumption to tackle the AWB bug that prevented me doing those. I'm going to attempt those in the next 24 hours. If you don't want to wait for me you can do those yourself, of course - I can email you the page list if you want, but it should be clear from my description on the project page. Is there anything that the type of templates should be rewritten to? So far I've just been reverting those when they were damaged. --mendel 08:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Revert them, my script knows how to handle them. &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Nice
I just wanted to complement you on your diplomacy, sophistication in public and general knack for codes and the way things work. So um... keep up the good work! lol. &mdash; Powersurge360 Violencia  23:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)