User talk:Mith/2011: Difference between revisions

From Tolkien Gateway
< User talk:Mith
Latest comment: 21 June 2011 by Mithrennaith in topic Date restructuring
m (→‎New signs: I've done it!)
(→‎Date restructuring: new section)
Line 161: Line 161:


:I was going to say, "''For you, anything.''" but it seems as if [http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AEdittools&diff=158285&oldid=147497 someone else got there first]. --{{User:Mith/sig}} 15:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
:I was going to say, "''For you, anything.''" but it seems as if [http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AEdittools&diff=158285&oldid=147497 someone else got there first]. --{{User:Mith/sig}} 15:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
== Date restructuring ==
I’m generally in agreement with what you’ve been doing in reorganising the date articles. Unfortunately you seem to have overlooked one fly in the ointment, namely that those articles cover Middle-earth events as well as real world events, and in consequence have been doing actual damage. Our coverage of Middle-earth calendars is a shambles at the moment, but that’s no excuse to make it even worse, by upsetting about the only bit of it that is good, viz. the coverage in the date articles of the events in Arda of which the actual dates, taken mainly from {{App|B}}, are known.
When just over a week ago you nominated [[30 February]] for speedy deletion, I assumed you had had a temporary black-out and had actually not read the article at all before putting up the template, because I couldn’t believe you would not have understood your mistake had you actually read the article. So I summarily removed the deletion template, giving very brief enjoinder to read both the article and {{App|D}} in the edit summary. As the delete nomination did not reappear, nor did any question about it appear on my talk page, I assumed that you had understood.
But now that I’ve seen what you’ve been doing to the date articles in February and March, I’m afraid I was mistaken, and that you seem to have actually no clue why 30 February has a perfectly genuine and proper existence on TG, and that you have been doing the wrong thing with the right intentions. So I very much regret not having put a note on your talk page about 30 February when I removed the deletion template.
The facts of the matter are these:
#The date articles actually were set up to fulfill two functions at once: aggregate Tolkien-related events in the primary world by Gregorian Calendar dates, and aggregate events in Tolkien’s secondary world by the calendar dates essentially given in {{App|B}}.
#Although in {{App|B}} Tolkien uses the same month names as in the Gregorian Calendar, he is, as he explains in {{App|D}}, not actually using the Gregorian Calender, but applying the Roman month names to the [[Shire Calendar]].
#In the Shire Calendar, all the months have 30 days, so there is a 30 February, but no 31 January, March, May, July, August, October or December. There are, however, 5 (in leap years 6) days outside the months:
##2 [[Yule]], before January,
##1 [[Lithe]], [[Mid-year's Day|Mid-year’s Day]](, [[Overlithe]]) and 2 [[Lithe]], between June and July, and
##1 [[Yule]], after December.
That the date articles contain '''both''' the events on Earth according to the Gregorian calendar '''and''' the events in Arda according to the ‘renamed Shire Calendar’ has an important consequence: In organising the date articles and everything that ties in to them, such as month and year calendars, calendar navigation boxes, categories, etc. account '''must''' be taken not only of the structure of the Gregorian Calendar, but also of that of the Shire Calendar. That means:
#That your persistent campaign to suppress 30 February from the month navigation boxes (and everywhere else) has been misguided and ill-considered. I have reverted all those changes.
#That the ordinal calendar date (the running count of days within the year from 1 January) that you use for the sorting order in the [[:category:dates]] should accomodate both Gregorian and Shire Calendars, so that it is actually wrong to count 29 February as 060 and 1 March as 061, leaving no room for 30 February in between. In your count, starting with 1 January as 001, 2 Yule can be accomodated as 000, so that the ordinal dates already set for January and February need not be changed. But 1 March should be 062, and the subsequent dates following that adjusted accordingly. Also, 4 places should be provided in between June and July for the four Lithedays, and the numbering end with 372 for 1 Yule.
So I hope you will take these facts into account, when you continue with your otherwise very proper and useful revision of date articles. — [[User:Mithrennaith|Mithrennaith]] 06:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Revision as of 06:06, 21 June 2011

Archive
Archives
Nuvola apps edu languages.png
Welcome to Mith's talk page.
  • Please post your new topic at the bottom of this page, including a ==Descriptive heading==.
  • You should sign and date your posts by inserting "~~~~" at the end of them.
  • Please indent your posts with ":" if replying to an existing topic (or "::" if replying to a reply, etc.).
  • I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, rather than replying via your talk page (or the article talk page, if you are writing to me about an article), so you may want to watch this page.
  • If I have left a message on your talk page, please continue the discussion there; DO NOT reply here. This is ensure that discussions do not become fragmented over several talk pages.
⇒ Start a new talk topic.

Featured Quotes

So I justw ant to udnerstand, since you deleted our conversation instead of answering my question, why we don't use the "Nominations page" for nominations and why the "History" page is used instead? Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).

The conversation was moved to here. Also in future please end talk page posts with "--~~~~", this will add a timestamp to your comments. Thanks! -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  03:16, 22 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
As KingAragorn points out - and if you had checked either the article's history or Recent Changes you would see this - I moved our discussion to the talk page as it shouldn't have been cluttering up the archive of featured quotes.
I have already answered your question:
"It [the quote] was on the Nominations page and was moved to the History page when it became the current quote on the homepage. See this edit and this one. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 11:27, 19 January 2011 (UTC)"Reply[reply]
You then preceded to completely ignore what I said and tell me that my response was irrelevant. And now, I shall answer your question again: we did not use the "History" page for nominations - the quote was on the "Nominations" page but was moved to the "History" page when nominations were no longer required as it became the current Featured Quote on the homepage; I had directed you to the two edits which showed this. It is difficult to have a conversation if one of the participants does not read what the other has written. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 12:31, 22 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Obviosuly the quote was moved to "History" after it was on the "Nominations" page - I understand that. But whay wasn't the other quote on the "Nominations" page used first? That's what I don't udnerstand. Anyways, I'm done. Thanks.Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).

NO. Do not make out that I am not answering your questions: I have answered every question you have asked when you have asked it. You asked me: "So I justw ant to udnerstand why we don't use the "Nominations page" for nominations and why the "History" page is used instead?" I answered that and now you claim that you understood this all along and that I was not answering the question.
I have answered your question twice. Not once, but TWICE. Here is my first answer:
"There are only three other in the nominations queue: the first has two disagrees and an undecided; the second has one agree; and the third has two agrees and an undecided. This had the joint-most agrees whilst being unanimously positive (only one other was unanimously positive but had fewer votes). Although the rules state that we need five votes in favour, so few people were voting that we decided in the meeting to update the quote in order to keep the homepage fresh (the previous quote had been there for 14 months, with no prospect of it being changed). --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 17:40, 12 January 2011 (UTC)"Reply[reply]
Here is my second answer:
"I've already answered this question, but I shall again for clarity: the selected quote was a) older, b) received universal agreement and c) was decided by a meeting of seven people. If you didn't like the quote that was chosen you should've voted against it, or else made an effort to attend the meeting: it has been no secret that I have put the need to update Featured Articles and Featured Nominations on the agenda of subsequent meetings. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 17:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)"Reply[reply]
You either am not reading this or you are trying to wind me up; I'm assuming the latter as I'm sure no individual can be this dense. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 19:17, 22 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]


You know what they say about assuming...Unsigned comment by breragor (talk • contribs).

No, I don't. Why don't you elaborate on your pointless comment on my talk page? Also, do you accept that I have answered your question? --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 12:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
One would assume that you actually read the replies people give to your questions? I am right Breragor? -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  12:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
"I am right Breragor?" That is not a question. Do you mean "I am right, Breragor" or "am I right, Breragor?"Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).
Alas, if only you were so observant to read the answers people give you. -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  10:44, 26 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Again, an assumption. You're assuming I did not read them in the first place. Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).
In that case we can only assume that you are either failing to understand the sentences we are using in our responses or you are purposefully trolling. I should point out that continued trolling is a bannable offence. -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  11:58, 27 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
So getting angry at someone who potentially doesn't understand the responses is okay here? Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).
There's no anger here. But I should tell you that you are displaying clear signs of trolling, I've seen it a lot elsewhere on the web. -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  10:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Not once did you say you didn't understand. In fact, quite the reverse: you said you did understand but tried to tell me that I was answering the wrong question. E.g. "Yes, but isn't the Tolkien Gateway:Featured quotes/Nominations page where we should be getting the quotes from? That is what I'm referring to." then "Okay, but that's regardless." and finally, "Obviosuly the quote was moved to "History" after it was on the "Nominations" page - I understand that." --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:54, 28 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

We are having an argument, no one is trolling. Plus, you say it's an offence punishable by banning, yet niether here nor here is "trolling" mentioned. Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).

I'd take you seriously if you would only end you posts with your signature: --~~~~. Thank you for pointing out that trolling is not mentioned in our 5 year old Policy page, Mith is planning to update it, I'm sure he will mention trolling when he does. The Manual of Style has nothing to do with talk page discussions. Furthermore trolling is not accepted across the web (in the same way that spam is not accepted), why would we tolerate it here just because it is not mentioned on an old unspecific policy page? -- KingAragorn  talk  contribs  edits  email  14:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]


You'd tolerate it here because this is a very sophisticated website, and despite that page being old, people here like rules and reg.'s to be followed. As you can see, this debate has been entirely about policy for nominating "Featured Quotes." Unsigned comment by Breragor (talk • contribs).
Quote from top of this page: "You should sign and date your posts by inserting "~~~~" at the end of them.". Quote from Tolkien Gateway:Policy: "Sign your posts on talk pages". I don't understand why you continue to fail to sign your posts, considering the effort you went to create a signature; would your continual failure to sign your posts count as a breach of the rules?
And, for the record, I shall be updating our policies to include trolling. This is just a pointless argument now. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 09:48, 30 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

References/Notes

I remember you were working to include Notes in the Template:References. Did you manage to get it to work, and if so - how does one use it? Thanks! --Morgan 19:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The limitations of the References extension prevent me from implementing it the way I want. At the moment, if you write {{references|{{{1}}}}}, with anything as {{{1}}}, it will display Notes then References as separate headings; to put a note in the page, add 'group="note"' to the reference. E.g. '<ref group="note">This was the year that Faramir's younger sister, Fíriel, was born.</ref> {{references|note}}' (something similar to this is currently in use in Faramir (son of Ondoher)). It's a bit... awkward, but at least it works. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 19:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Apportioning Blame

I apologise for ruffling your feathers, but I would be obliged if you would think before leaving misjudged snorters on my talk page.
‘Bots are stupid’ is not blaming bots, it is an observation of fact. Bots only mechanically carry out their instructions, regardless of whether the result they leave is any better than what they found. They are not capable of making intelligent decisions. ‘Computers are stupid’ is the first axiom of computer science.
That is not to say they shouldn’t be used. On balance I appreciate what your bot does, and I think you should keep it up. But in a number of cases the results need cleaning up, and these cases will keep turning up. When I happen to come across such a result, I do so. I always leave an edit summary, and I usually keep edit summaries ‘telegraphically’ short, and so regularly prefer pithy axioms. You are free to expand this one into ‘needed more work than the bot did/could do/could be expected to do’, there’s no call to turn it into me blaming the bot.
However, we need to be aware that there will always be cases where bots don’t/can’t/can’t be expected to do all the work, and cleaning up after them will remain necessary. I’ll do my bit, if I come across an instance, but that’s only incidentally. Although your bot is not the cause of the problem, it makes it stand out — it’s only after it has changed the link to the redirect that the multiple links show up. You are aware that that is a side effect of your bot’s proper work, you know on which rounds you have sent it, so you know where the ‘cleaners up’ need to go. It’s not fair to expect the editors whose work has been changed behind their backs to pick up all responsiblity for cleaning up.
And finally, although you’re correct that editors cause multiple links, you do need to be careful to distinguish which editors. What you posted on my talk page is in itself contradictory. If editors can't check where their links go ..... points the finger at the editors who put the links in the article in the first place. However, they are mostly caused by linking to two originally separate articles and then, at a later date, one of those articles being redirected to the other actually shows they cannot be blamed for putting in what were at the time links to two different articles, what caused the problem is that one of them was later changed into a redirect.
That is why it should be made clear that when someone changes an article into a redirect (or into a disambiguation) the onus is on him to fix all the links that link to the new redirect. The ‘What links here’ tool is provided to make this relatively easy. That your bot cleans up after editors who neglect to do this is only a mopping up operation; and it should not be relied upon to automatically do the work that is necessary after a change into a redirect, for of its nature only part of that work can be done automatically. — Mithrennaith 00:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The word "stupid" is not a perfect synonym of "unintelligent": stupid has a more derogatory air about it and if directed at a person it is usually with the intention of discrediting or causing offence (e.g. "George Osborne is stupid."). In calling the bot stupid it felt like a dig at me as the person who issues said instructions.
As far as I'm concerned - unless mistakes caused by my own error - the bot always leaves things in a better state than how it found them: I would also prefer a superfluous link going to the right place to a superfluous link going to the wrong place.
I don't consider my statement contradictory: some people do, persistently, link to redirects - which is why I have to go over certain articles again and again, e.g. Frodo Baggins, Quenya and Middle-earth (incidentally, this was the case with Hithaeglir/Misty Mountains) - but most of the problem is caused by people moving/merging articles and not clearing up after themselves. You're preaching to the converted when it comes to "What links here", redirects, etc., unfortunately, it's a difficult policy to enforce as other editors can't be compelled to clean up after themselves. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 17:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Amen! (When we’re talking of preaching and converted ...) That is, agreed. — Mithrennaith 19:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

File talk:Auto insurance 4292.jpg‎

You might like to reply to this comment, requring email conforimation to upload files (which only logged in users can do). --  Myrtonos  forum  c   ec  10:52, 9 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

wiki scripting

Hi there. If I recall correctly you are the writer of some scripts used in this wiki.

I also maintain a personal wiki (Mediawiki) and I discovered some huge mistake. I typed a word wrong in 100 articles and I guess there are better ways than editing all them again manually. I know that you have written such scripts in the past.

DO you have any guidelines for me? Sage 01:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I used a bot (Mithbot) to do many menial tasks automatically (and, with nearly 8,000 edits, Mithbot has saved a lot of work!); the benefit of using a bot (i.e. an account in the bot usergroup) is that its edits don't appear in RecentChanges - or on people's watchlists - and the bot is unaffected by technical constraints of users. The downside to this is that they only do exactly what you tell them to do, so if you give them incorrect instructions they will follow them blindly.
I use DotNetWikiBot: once your bot has the appropriate permissions, all you have to do is edit the botscript.cs file to something like this:-
using System;
using DotNetWikiBot;
class MyBot : Bot 
{ 
	public static void Main() 
	{ 
		Site site = new Site("http://tolkiengateway.net", "Mithbot", "PASSWORD"); 

		PageList p = new PageList(site);
 		p.FillFromGoogleSearchResults("Frood", 150);
 		p.LoadEx();
		foreach (Page i in p)
			i.text = i.text.Replace("Frood", "Frodo");
		p.SaveSmoothly(1, "Bot Message: fixed Frood typo", true);

	} 

}
This will basically fill in all instances of "Frood" with "Frodo". In actual fact, it did find one! If Google hasn't cached your website all too well, you might want to try something like this:-
using System;
using DotNetWikiBot;
class MyBot : Bot 
{ 
	public static void Main() 
	{ 
		Site site = new Site("http://tolkiengateway.net", "Mithbot", "PASSWORD"); 

		PageList p = new PageList(site);
 		p.FillFromSearchResults("baggings", 150);
 		p.Remove("Tolkien Gateway:Meetings/5 September 2010/Transcript");
 		p.LoadEx();
		foreach (Page i in p)
			i.text = i.text.Replace("Baggings", "Baggins");
		p.SaveSmoothly(1, "Bot Message: fixed Baggings typo", true);

	} 

}
In this example it's the wiki's search results rather than Google's; I'd already checked this particular typo so used p.Remove to exclude the meeting transcript from the list of pages to edit. (The 150 is the number of results to return, by the way.) I think that's all you need to know, really! --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 12:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Just to say your link to a diff (title=Tolkien_Gateway:IRC_Trivia&diff=prev&oldid=144132) above has broken. Of course this may just be a consequence of normal change, but in case it’s a true error, I thought you should know. — Mithrennaith 23:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
'Twas the result of normal page deletions (we no longer have a trivia bot so no point retaining the questions), but thanks for being so observant nonetheless! --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 23:55, 2 April 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wiktionary direct link

Do we have (or is it possible to create) a direct link to Wiktionary in the manner of our current [[Wikipedia:X|X]] and {{WP|X}}? Then there's of course always the question if we should favour these particular wiki projects over other... --Morgan 07:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm not sure whether you need an extension for it, but I've seen [[wiktionary:X|X]] and [[wikt:X|X]] on other wikis. We could also make a temple {{Wikt|X}} of course. -- Ederchil (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 08:17, 15 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Wiktionary:Tolkien as Ederchil points out! See also for other Wikimedia defaults. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 23:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks, I've used the command line now in an article, and it works. :-) --Morgan 20:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

New signs

Could you please add the signs Ŋŋ to the insert box? The letter appears in the Qenya Lexicon (and are reproduced in PE17). Thanks! --Morgan 10:43, 13 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I was going to say, "For you, anything." but it seems as if someone else got there first. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 15:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Date restructuring

I’m generally in agreement with what you’ve been doing in reorganising the date articles. Unfortunately you seem to have overlooked one fly in the ointment, namely that those articles cover Middle-earth events as well as real world events, and in consequence have been doing actual damage. Our coverage of Middle-earth calendars is a shambles at the moment, but that’s no excuse to make it even worse, by upsetting about the only bit of it that is good, viz. the coverage in the date articles of the events in Arda of which the actual dates, taken mainly from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B: The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands), are known.

When just over a week ago you nominated 30 February for speedy deletion, I assumed you had had a temporary black-out and had actually not read the article at all before putting up the template, because I couldn’t believe you would not have understood your mistake had you actually read the article. So I summarily removed the deletion template, giving very brief enjoinder to read both the article and J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D in the edit summary. As the delete nomination did not reappear, nor did any question about it appear on my talk page, I assumed that you had understood.

But now that I’ve seen what you’ve been doing to the date articles in February and March, I’m afraid I was mistaken, and that you seem to have actually no clue why 30 February has a perfectly genuine and proper existence on TG, and that you have been doing the wrong thing with the right intentions. So I very much regret not having put a note on your talk page about 30 February when I removed the deletion template.

The facts of the matter are these:

  1. The date articles actually were set up to fulfill two functions at once: aggregate Tolkien-related events in the primary world by Gregorian Calendar dates, and aggregate events in Tolkien’s secondary world by the calendar dates essentially given in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B: The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands).
  2. Although in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B: The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands) Tolkien uses the same month names as in the Gregorian Calendar, he is, as he explains in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D, not actually using the Gregorian Calender, but applying the Roman month names to the Shire Calendar.
  3. In the Shire Calendar, all the months have 30 days, so there is a 30 February, but no 31 January, March, May, July, August, October or December. There are, however, 5 (in leap years 6) days outside the months:
    1. 2 Yule, before January,
    2. 1 Lithe, Mid-year’s Day(, Overlithe) and 2 Lithe, between June and July, and
    3. 1 Yule, after December.

That the date articles contain both the events on Earth according to the Gregorian calendar and the events in Arda according to the ‘renamed Shire Calendar’ has an important consequence: In organising the date articles and everything that ties in to them, such as month and year calendars, calendar navigation boxes, categories, etc. account must be taken not only of the structure of the Gregorian Calendar, but also of that of the Shire Calendar. That means:

  1. That your persistent campaign to suppress 30 February from the month navigation boxes (and everywhere else) has been misguided and ill-considered. I have reverted all those changes.
  2. That the ordinal calendar date (the running count of days within the year from 1 January) that you use for the sorting order in the category:dates should accomodate both Gregorian and Shire Calendars, so that it is actually wrong to count 29 February as 060 and 1 March as 061, leaving no room for 30 February in between. In your count, starting with 1 January as 001, 2 Yule can be accomodated as 000, so that the ordinal dates already set for January and February need not be changed. But 1 March should be 062, and the subsequent dates following that adjusted accordingly. Also, 4 places should be provided in between June and July for the four Lithedays, and the numbering end with 372 for 1 Yule.

So I hope you will take these facts into account, when you continue with your otherwise very proper and useful revision of date articles. — Mithrennaith 06:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]