User talk:Chris Day/Archive 5

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022. ——————————————— Chris' Talk Page ————————————— I am an editor in the biology workgroup | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Current talk page (94,080)
The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.	The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022. Useful links on Citizendium Myths and Facts Biology Workgroup How to get started How to Edit The current policy outline Forums for discussion Biology forum News Community blog

updating the main page

Given that the main page is the most important page of CZ and it is being updated at least twice a week for the article of the week updates, it seems that we need guidance for people to do this without leaving a mess behind. Can we draft some rules? It is not easy, because there are a lot of things which need to be checked and dealt with. I can try to list some, and perhaps you can help with the technical guidance [you seem to be good at that!], Many thanks, --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 20:42, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

Have people being leaving a mess? I think what I cleaned up was a problem that was external to the main page. I have not tracked down the relevant change but it appears as if the approved tick image was deleted? Chris Day (talk) 21:11, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

Yes, this particular problem seems to be the loss of an image, although the history shows that someone changed the name of the link to the image... Generally, people are updating half of what is needed for the ARticle of the Week etc and forgetting the rest. I am continually correcting the links to the previous week's article, or no links at all, etc etc. There are occasional other problem with the page, but it is mostly the updating for the Article and New Draft things. We do need guidance and rules for the Main Page editing...--Martin Baldwin-Edwards 21:17, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

If I get a vote, I'd suggest using transculsion- create a "Main Page/NDotW" and a "Main Page/AotW", then just add them into the main page. Since they'd only be edited weekly or so, it wouldn't be much of a performance hit (if any). That way, people will know what they should be changing and what is part of the Main Page in general.

If you were feeling really ambitious, we could make a template with "picture", "caption", "title", and "text" parameters. That would almost entirely remove risk of errors, and wouldn't be a performance hit if we lock the Main Page. --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 16:42, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

draft

.. is showing up in the cats.. [1]. Matt Innis (Talk) 19:16, 8 October 2007 (CDT)

Not for me? Chris Day (talk) 19:39, 8 October 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure if this has been discussed yet

but having to do something four times to each page is making me want to figuratively stab the article in it's face. Have any ideas been tossed around on how to automate this yet? --Robert W King 21:09, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

re tl|subpages

Not mentioned in Start article with subpages. ? --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 22:03, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, I'm confused, what is not mentioned? Chris Day (talk) 22:53, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

subpages

... are looking really good. The <show><hide> was a nice touch. The PMUA dots disappearing almost had me concerned till I realized you did it by design.. Really looks good, CHris. --Matt Innis (Talk) 20:09, 11 October 2007 (CDT)

Are we using this?

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CreateArticle

 —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 00:07, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Not that I know of, although we are using the inputbox on the start article pages. It is the precursor of CreateArticle.

With respect to automation, I have been using urls directly since one cannot use magic words as input for parameters in these extensions (at least I have not figured out how to do it). Here are some examples of what I have been using to allow automatic creation of specific subpage and namespace types.

'''Create "[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?action=edit&preload=Template%3ASubpages_name&title={{BASEPAGENAMEE}}%2FApproval approval]" page.'''

'''Create "[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?action=edit&preload=Template%3ASubpages_name&title=Talk:{{BASEPAGENAMEE}} Talk]" page.'''

'''Create "[http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?action=edit&preload=Template%3ABlank_metadata&title=Template:{{BASEPAGENAMEE}}%2FMetadata the metadata]" template.''' 

Create "approval" page.

Create "Talk" page.

Create "the metadata" template.

This code creates new pages at a specific namespace or subpages for any pagename by hacking into the url code. Chris Day (talk) 00:23, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Also see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CSS_Dropdowns  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 00:59, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

That's a nice location in the sitenotice box. I remember we were trying to figure out how to do that when we originally started down the sugpage route. Also notice that they have the same problems with IE and have not even bothered to try and solve it, instead calling them dumb browsers. How true :) Chris Day (talk) 01:03, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

I see that, too. --Matt Innis (Talk) 19:47, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Simple_Forms  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 02:10, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

unused pages

Am I safe in assuming that we no longer need to add the {{subpages}} to unused pages? --Matt Innis (Talk) 10:22, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Basically, I see no advantage in having the unused subpage. It is just as easy to have that information available on the talk page and takes away one layer of complexity from the subpage cluster. So i had thought we should just abandon the unused subpage altogether. Does anyone object? Chris Day (talk) 11:14, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

A long as the list remains at the bottom of the template in the talk section the change seems innocuous enough. If the list dissappears then we probably need to run it by Larry. --Matt Innis (Talk) 11:59, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

That's what I was thinking; we definitely need the list. But I see no reason to have a long discussion about whether to make it simpler or not. If you remember, we had originally floated with the idea of having these unused subpage links in the talk page. At that time the collapsible boxes did not function. now this space saving device is functional it makes a lot more sense to finally go this route. I have tried to update all the relevant policy pages but I may have missed some. if you see any mention of unused pages please update it to reflect this recent change in phiolosophy. Thanks for keeping up with all these changes. It's great to have someone to bounce these ideas off. Chris Day (talk) 12:05, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, get rid of it, no need to ask me! Just happened to look in here. --Larry Sanger 12:09, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Well you'll notice we alredy did it. See you're losing control already. :) Chris Day (talk) 12:10, 14 October 2007 (CDT)

Bone tools

One of my students has put up the article Bone tools - as always, I would appreciate encouragment and feedback! Lee R. Berger 01:38, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

I saw bone tools, I was wondering if it was one of your students. If they would like feed back I'll be happy to weigh in. The changes i just made were all stylistic rather than content oriented. Chris Day (talk) 01:47, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

Please do (re: above) by the way - are you suggesting that there are two ways to spell archAeology?? Why I never!

P.S. could you maybe suggest that both Bone tools and Leopards as taphonomic agents could add some images? Thanks -

Lee R. Berger 14:21, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

I can go with either way, but the CZ workgroup is with an A so everytime it gets put in the category without the A it comes up with a red link. Best bet might be to have redirects in place for the "correct" category. Chris Day (talk) 17:26, 15 October 2007 (CDT)

CD\anj you fivgure out the swubp\avgesw iswswue

I have to go buy a new keyboard, i spilled coke all in mine \anjdc i/'m off to beswt buy. --Robert W King 14:20, 16 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for volunteering for wikiconverting

Any ideas what file formats we should accept? Any other idea about this human wikiconverter project?. Will you convert a MS Word ".doc", say, directly yourself or will you utilize some intermediate converting program? If the latter, what program(s)? Comment on my Talk page, in the section asking for comments, so commenters can share ideas. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 19:31, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Wheat
Common wheat, Triticum aestivum L.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Liliopsida Order: Poales Family: Poaceae Subfamily: Pooideae Tribe: Triticeae Genus: Triticum L.
Species
T. aestivum T. aethiopicum T. araraticum T. boeoticum T. carthlicum T. compactum T. dicoccoides T. dicoccon T. durum T. ispahanicum T. karamyschevii T. macha T. militinae T. monococcum T. polonicum T. spelta T. sphaerococcum T. timopheevii T. turanicum T. turgidum T. urartu T. vavilovii T. zhukovskyi References:   ITIS 42236 2002-09-22

generic subpages

Chris, is it possible to create the subpage from within the metadata page? As in subpage i <button:add subpage i+1> Where each can have its own name etc etc. Seems that would become handy for subpage creation where these can be manifold. - nevertheless - thanks for now Robert Tito |  Talk  19:35, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

I had not considered that as an option but i see no reason why that could not be included. Chris Day (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

Hair pullin'

I added {{Gallery}} and {{Gallery/Sub}}.

Can you figure out why the Add caption here is displaying not translated?

The really maddening part is that it is a pure rip from here and here but does not display at CZ as it does there.

Stephen Ewen 22:49, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

I'm intrigued, is there any reason not to use <gallery></gallery>? Chris Day (talk) 22:53, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

never mind I just figured out that it can be variable in the number of pictures in each row, depending on the browser size. A definite inmprovement. Chris Day (talk) 22:54, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, Chris. Stephen Ewen 23:58, 18 October 2007 (CDT)

Article contrib functionality test

Chris; I've created Fire/Contribs to figure out how to functionally generate contribution values based on article-byte sums, if you want to weigh in. --Robert W King 14:22, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

What did I do wrong here?

(Other than not doing the required article cleanup.) Template:IUPAC_nomenclature_of_organic_chemistry/Metadata --Joe Quick 21:33, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Nothing, it's that bug again. Only this time it won't allow the metadata template to display. in fact this article is the worst case of the bug I have seen yet. There is clearly something very wrong with the subpages template. i have tried to track down without success. Chris Day (talk) 21:36, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Ah, okay. I hadn't noticed that conversation. So it's appearing in places that were previously okay? --Joe Quick 21:42, 23 October 2007 (CDT) P.S. I laughed when I noticed that your talk page is categorized as a "no approval page" :-P

I see you noticed Origins and architecture of the Taj Mahal - the subpages bug is also causing some templates further down the page to malfunction. Thanks for the revert, btw, I was testing whether it was an unclosed bracket issue and hit the save instead of preview button, then wandered off for a few minutes. --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 21:46, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

No problem, i having been thinking about this for a few days now. i have also being checking for open brackets and i can find none. Actually this is not that surprising otherwise this problem would be evident on every page. it is the erractic nature of this that makes it very hard to pin down. One possible issue is that it is just so big that it shuts down prematurely on some pages. Is that at all possible? It sounds crazy but froma few tests this seems to be the case. For example if I remove code from the templates (stuff not used on a particular page) i can often restore function without any obvious reason. Chris Day (talk) 22:08, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Moving discussion to the subpages talk page. -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 22:16, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Protein Structure

Thanks Chris, I just type whipped it out this afternoon, from scratch. Give it a good read and write back with any suggestions. To me it is all so obvious that I need to know what is not clear. However, I am headed for vacation so I might not be able to make fixes for awhile. I have been meaning to make nice pictures for each of the amino acids, but that will take some time for all twenty, in both "chemdraw"-like wire versions and nicer neon bond versions (like WP has for all twenty). David E. Volk 16:31, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Core articles

I added more to 'linguistics' such that we now have 99 articles, all with points. However, I've only just done this, so others will need to take a look. Perhaps you could check what stage we're at. Thanks. John Stephenson 08:30, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Architecture Core Articles

Hello. I was surprised to find that the Great Wall of China was not present in the list of Architecture Core Articles. Is there any way to know why? --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 13:52, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Clearly that should be on the list, not that I'm an expert. Try the architecture forum or go ahead and add it removing one you think to be less important. An editor can always revrt you if they disagree. I doubt they will though. Chris Day (talk) 14:07, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks; I'll do that now. --Eddie Ortiz Nieves 14:08, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

To Approve section of subpages

Hi Chris, another piece of the puzzle. We were working to add the ToApprove section for Symphony and noticed that the green template worked on the article page when he put his name in, but as soon as I put in the article url, I got the #ifeq error. It goes away if I take the version out (though the error still shows up on the talk page). Darned if I know. --Matt Innis (Talk) 20:24, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

I did this edit and it may be OK now. I think we are maxing out on the allowable amount of template transclusions within the subpages template. Obviously the metadata template is transcluded quite a few times so too many additions to that will put the whole thing over the top. Adding that url put it over the top but cutting out the hidden comments brought it back to an allowable size. Maybe :) Chris Day (talk) 22:43, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for catching the CZ Live thing Chris. Most of the articles I posted were from Wikipedia with minor edits. I planned to work on them this week, but misunderstood the deal with putting in the CZ Live category. So do we never need to worry about manually adding CZ Live if we use subpages?

That sums it up. Good luck with developing those articles, and thanks for picking them up. Chris Day (talk) 00:08, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Subpagination bot

Hi Chris. I've been away for a couple of weeks but I'm ready to start the Subpagination Bot again. As far as I can see, nothing has changed so the same code should work. Is there anything I should be aware of? Cheers, Jitse Niesen 09:14, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Subpages for Systems biology

Chris: I started Systems biology before the 'subpages' concept emerged. I fear I will botch the job putting them in now, and take forever. If you say so, I'll give it a try. If you feel you can do it between heart beats, I'd use my time to try to bring the article up to nomination-quality. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 18:50, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

About an hour later...

Chris: I tried it, seemed to work. Will you check. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 19:34, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

Jack Kramer plaque

Hi Chris, thanks for uploading a much improved (edited by you?) version of the plaque. The strange thing, however, is that it doesn't show up in either the Jack Kramer or Tennis article! The old one is still there. I've tried fiddling around with the edits in various ways but unsuccessfully. Or are my poor old eyes just seeing things this morning? Best, Hayford Peirce 12:07, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

It will show up in time, there is always a lag while the server catches up. I cropped it a bit and squared the corners, I hope that is not too presumptious on my behalf. Chris Day (talk) 12:13, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

Gotcha. The editing was perfect! Thanks! Hayford Peirce 13:07, 1 November 2007 (CDT)

r Template bug

I am not sure if you are the person for this, but check out United_States_of_America/Related_Articles. There is a bug that is not displaying George W. Bush and American English correctly. Matt Mahlmann 17:21, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Did you note the edit i made on the metadata template. That seems to be the cause of the bug. A real fix is no the way, when I get time. Chris Day (talk) 17:49, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

new tennis template, a quickie

Hi! Would it be possible for you and/or Robert to spend 5 minutes (or less) designing a *very* simple template that we could insert between the existing templates at Famous tennis players? Right now I'm alphabetizing the list so that it starts with Austin, Borotra, Brugnon, and Budge. Next up will be Casey. What I'd like would be a simple template that I could stick in between Budge and Casey, say. All I want to then put into the new template would be something like: "Bob Cane, American, September 23, 1940—December 13, 2005" In other words, we could take all of those other players who are listed below the players in the tables and put them into some sort of order amongst the tabled players. Many thanks for considering this! Hayford Peirce 17:26, 4 November 2007 (CST)

History

Hi Chris, I added a Catalogs page to History but 'Catalogs' doesn't show up on the subpages on the article page. It does show up on the talk page, though. Do make sure I didn't do anything wrong if you would. --Matt Innis (Talk) 15:54, 5 November 2007 (CST)

I can see it now. Are you still having problems seeing it? Chris Day (talk) 20:45, 5 November 2007 (CST)

I see it! Can we say cache:-) I can't believe I bothered you with that one. --Matt Innis (Talk) 21:45, 5 November 2007 (CST)

Linguistics core articles

We now have the 99 articles and I don't think anyone is interested in adding any more. For reference, it's been done by Joshua Jensen and me (both authors), with advice from Richard Senghas (editor). John Stephenson 01:34, 6 November 2007 (CST)

Games core articles

The Games core articles are now at Stage 4. Unfortunately, I've done all the work myself - there have been no responses to my request for help on the workgroup talk page. I doubt I qualify as the most active author in the area, so could you find out who that is and give them a poke to check the list? Thanks. --Peter Blake 19:43, 8 November 2007 (CST)

That area has never had too much activity. So i'm really not sure who is best. Do you feel your list is not definitive? Chris Day (talk) 23:03, 8 November 2007 (CST)

My concern is that, despite my best efforts, the list may reflect my personal preferences too much. Peter Blake 23:51, 10 November 2007 (CST)

One other thing is that there is only supposed to be 99 listed to start with. Chris Day (talk) 23:04, 8 November 2007 (CST)

Really? CZ:Core_Articles says "...Games ... may nominate 198 topics (66 per column)." Peter Blake 23:51, 10 November 2007 (CST)

Yes, you're exactly right. Not sure why I didn't notice that. Chris Day (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2007 (CST)

No problem. I'll leave you to "Stage 5" the list at your convenience. If anyone else makes changes before then, that's all to the good. Peter Blake 13:47, 11 November 2007 (CST)

Print, approved

I noticed when I printed Symphony today to use to evaluate a student for reading miscues that there is a no indication that the article is approved. I wonder if there is anything we can do about that. Stephen Ewen 16:02, 13 November 2007 (CST)

This is alterable in the CSS. It would be possible to add a CSS class that is visible only when printed, and then use that to add a tasteful template to the printed approved pages. This would have to wait for the new subpages template though. I'll grab my CSS reference tonight if I get my homework done. -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 13:39, 14 November 2007 (CST)

approval template

Chris, I cannot get the approval template for "Competition policy" to register in the articles to be approved listing or the relevant workgroups. I had a lot of difficulty with this template, and made multiple saves, including deleting the info-data to stop the #feq nonsense from appearing. Can someone check it out? many thanks --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:23, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Let me know if I fixed it Martin. --Robert W King 16:29, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Well, it doesnt appear in the ToApprove listings. Is this something which takes time for updating? --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 16:32, 13 November 2007 (CST)

If you look at Competition_policy/Approval it in the category. I thinking updating categories is low on the job queue so it will take a while to update. Chris Day (talk) 17:10, 13 November 2007 (CST)

subst:

I'm rather stuck figuring out how to get subst: variables to work at Template:Image_notes_ownwork-new (also see Template:Sign_three_tildes). Basically, on the Citizendium Author section I am trying to make the template self-sign and date for the uploader. Can you maybe have a quick look? Stephen Ewen 23:11, 13 November 2007 (CST)

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>Sign_three_tildes}} This is the bit that does not work? I have not come across subst: before so I'm not sure I'll be any more informed than you here. One thing I'm not sure about is what is not working. Is the problem you get three tildes instead of the signature when its used? Where is a starting point for me to see how it works? Do I upload an image? Is there another way to test it? Chris Day (talk) 09:45, 14 November 2007 (CST)

I'm pretty sure that subst is just for templates. I remember trying to do something like this (self signing) last year, bashing my head against the wall for a bit, and then quitting. --ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 10:50, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Glad to know I'm not the only one to hit this wall with his head. This difficulty is why I (reluctantly) concluded that {{CURRENTUSER}} would be needed to provide the self-signing function, especially when lacking User name brackets. I think if it can be made to only work as a subst: it would be fine. The payoff would be nice: for self-authored images, uploading them is a matter of mere clicks, and filling in one line to describe the file ("A 2-year-old male Great Dane"), perfect to make uploading easy-peasy for all. Yet the uplaod page would provide much fuller info than only what is typed. Stephen Ewen 15:47, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Unused

There are a lot of /unused pages. I'm under the impression that we don't use /unused anymore. --Robert W King 13:28, 14 November 2007 (CST)

We don't use it anymore, its part of the talk page now. One less page to create is always a good thing, especially if creating clusters is not automated. Can a bot be programmed to go through and delete them all? Chris Day (talk) 13:30, 14 November 2007 (CST)

A lot of them are at the orphaned pages link, some of them are at the subpages9 "what links here" page. I would think a mass delete would probably take care of them all. --Robert W King 13:33, 14 November 2007 (CST)

I think after the subpagination bot has finished we should ask Jitse to programme it to delete them all. If possible. Chris Day (talk) 13:35, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Can't someone go into the server side and just run a unix script or whatever to perform a huge delete? --Robert W King 13:36, 14 November 2007 (CST)

I have no idea, I'm illiterate with computer stuff. Chris Day (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2007 (CST)

It is preferable to work through the wiki software where possible. In a sense, it provides a level of security or sanity. If Jitse's bot went bonkers, we could still undo everything it does, but if a techie does something in the database and screws it up, we're back to backups. -- ZachPruckowski (Speak to me) 13:45, 14 November 2007 (CST)

I'd be more worried about me going bonkers than my bot going bonkers. ;) But it will be easy to delete all the XXX/Unused pages with the bot. I probably need to be reminded later. -- Jitse Niesen 11:15, 15 November 2007 (CST)

The bot finished its run, finally. The only articles which do not use subpages are now: articles without checklist (there are quite a number of them), protected articles (which include all approved articles), articles using one of the old templates, and any articles missed because they were created after the bot started.

The above discussion made me think. Do we need all the empty XXX/Approval pages? Why don't we create them only when necessary? The circles A which would normally lead to the Approval page could go to a pre-filled edit form if the approval page does not exist. -- Jitse Niesen 09:36, 16 November 2007 (CST)

Template question

Do you know the command for getting a section of something from a template? I'm trying to extract just the name of the file from a special:random/image call (which gives me a random image), so if something is Image:Test.jpg I want to extract just the "Test" part. --Robert W King 20:14, 16 November 2007 (CST)

Cut and paste this table into the page you are interested in and see which magic word gives the desired answer. Chris Day (talk) 21:23, 16 November 2007 (CST) {| width=100% |style="background-color: #cccccc"| <nowiki>{{../../Metadata|info=pagename}}|| {{../../Metadata|info=pagename}} |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{{{BASEPAGENAME}}|info=pagename}}|| Template:Chris Day |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Metadata|info=pagename}}|| Template:Chris Day/Metadata |- |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{SUBPAGENAME}}|| Archive 5 |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{FULLPAGENAME}}|| User talk:Chris Day/Archive 5 |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{BASEPAGENAME}}|| Chris Day |- |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{PAGENAME}}|| Chris Day/Archive 5 |style="background-color: #cccccc"| [[/]]|| User talk:Chris Day/Archive 5/ |style="background-color: #cccccc"| [[../]]|| User talk:Chris Day |- |style="background-color: #cccccc"| [[../../]]|| [[../../]] |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{/}}|| User talk:Chris Day/Archive 5/ |style="background-color: #cccccc"| |- |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{../../}}|| {{../../}} |style="background-color: #cccccc"| {{NAMESPACE}}|| User talk |style="background-color: #cccccc"| || |}</nowiki>

Not sure if I was clear on what I was asking, but also it seems like your caught up, so clarify later. --Robert W King 20:32, 16 November 2007 (CST)

OK I was just looking at your recent edits and I'm not sure i can tell what you're up to although i think I know what you are trying to do. However I'm still at a loss as to how you can mine that info. Chris Day (talk) 22:02, 16 November 2007 (CST)

If I can capture the image name part of the image from a random page call (for images), then I can just include that in any old page. --Robert W King 21:04, 16 November 2007 (CST)

"IF". Even if you can get the url, I assume that is what is being generated, you'd have to crop it out. i think you'd need a script to do it. I'm not even sure how you'd get access to the url, since I presume you'd have to click the link and then you would leave the page. I should stop now since I have no clue what i am talking about. Chris Day (talk) 22:08, 16 November 2007 (CST)

work around

I found out that if I disable page cache in my preferences, the Talk and "?" show up now. Thought you might want to know!

work around fix for subpage template dysfunction

--D. Matt Innis 21:03, 16 November 2007 (CST)

Interesting, what does that do? Any unwanted side effects? Chris Day (talk) 22:05, 16 November 2007 (CST)

So far so good. I just found this out, so I haven't been able to see if it slows me down when returning to pages, but I will let you know as soon as I notice anything. --D. Matt Innis 21:08, 16 November 2007 (CST)

Electric motors

Hi Chris. I just wanted to bring up three issues regarding the article Electric Motors:

1. I think it should be moved to Electric motor (I can do this but not sure how that will effect the subpages).

2. It is written by someone (George clinkscales) who does not have a bio and with a nonconforming user name (could be one of those self-registered accounts), so I think the user needs to be quizzed about his status.

3. The article is badly written, I mean it doesn't try to tell the readers what an electric motor is, and makes claims like "There is much confusing and contradicting published material about electric motors. Also, motors bridge the skills of electrical and mechanical engineers as exemplified by the equation p = iv = Γ ω." without any references.

Thanks. Hendra 18:24, 17 November 2007 (CST)

I agree with all of these points. I could see the article was heading in dubious direction and had already deduced that electric motor is a natural home. Regardless, this topic is worth having in citizendium so i thought at least building up the subpages might be worthwhile. Chris Day (talk) 18:29, 17 November 2007 (CST)

The subpages are fine I guess, it's just the main article doesn't read very well. Okay, I guess I'll put this article on my "to do" list ... but it's been a very long while since I took a course that covers this special topic. Hendra 21:46, 17 November 2007 (CST)

I was just going to write a stub-like article and then wait for someone with a real interest to expand it. Chris Day (talk) 07:09, 18 November 2007 (CST)

Unchecklisted

Hey, thanks for the help. I've got a headache, so I'm gonna quit now, but at this rate, we could get the list down to zero in no time!

I think we might need to think about how to better educate incoming authors about the necessity of filling out the checklist. --Joe Quick 02:23, 20 November 2007 (CST)

I beg to differ. The stats are that more articles are being made and less are being checklisted. There are still articles dating back over eight months that have yet to be checklisted and the list is growing rapidly. 268 new unckecklisted articles in November alone! Unless we make a simple and obvious way to checklist (such as forcing the checklist before the new article can be saved) then we will continue to get further and further behind. Derek Harkness 08:21, 20 November 2007 (CST)

I think we all agree what is needed but can we get someone to program it? Preferably, anytime someone starts an article on hitting save the author is take to a page with drop down menus. One cannot save until the menus are filled. The pagename should be filled automatically as is the authors signature on the checklist. Once the fields are filled the author hits save again. This time four pages are created, the article, the talk, the metadata template and the approval page. We need this yesterday. Chris Day (talk) 11:21, 20 November 2007 (CST)

I just started a thread in the forums http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1382 Chris Day (talk) 11:30, 20 November 2007 (CST)

check this out

Could you take a look at this? --D. Matt Innis 08:59, 26 November 2007 (CST)

subpages problem

Chris, everytime I add the subpages deal at the top of a new page, I get crazy looking output. Is this because I have the catagory tags at the bottom. That is the only thing I see different between my version and your version, for Geographical center of North America. I have the same problem on other pages when I try it. I must be missing something.

David E. Volk 09:38, 28 November 2007 (CST)

You need to create the metadata template. Without that the subpages function will not work. For example see Template:Geographical center of North America/Metadata Chris Day (talk) 09:40, 28 November 2007 (CST)

Recent contributions on the Vitamin C article + Transport section

Thank you for these edits. This French mindset I have often makes my English writing overly complicated, sophisticated or heavy. Now, the TOC is much clearer. I worked a little more in this direction, in part to make the intro and the TOC "match". The chem box is now in the talk page (for future use, if absolutely necessary -- the potassium page doesn't have such an info box and it's pretty okay as it is; also see the talk page).

I am about to propose a tentative summary for the Transport section that we worked on recently. Please stay tuned!

--Pierre-Alain Gouanvic 12:48, 6 December 2007 (CST)

Checklist allows for only three categories

Chris, what if the article requires five categories. For example, I'd like the main article Oxidative stress to show categories Health Sciences, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and History. How can I arrange that? Thanks. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 13:56, 11 December 2007 (CST)

How come the category :food science catalogues

shows up as a red link? I clicked into it, just to check, and there are eight pages in the category.

So, do I need to type something redundant in there like this contains lists of...? Aleta Curry 20:26, 11 December 2007 (CST)

Subpage question

One more thing, while I'm at it: I remember Rob King asked a question about whether every single topic warranted subpages. Do you recall if this was ever decided once and for all? I'm asking because I just did a micro-entry on parmigiana--dash it all, do we really need a cluster? I'll happily do it, but I feel a little silly creating one.... Aleta Curry 21:14, 11 December 2007 (CST)

Re 'wiki-converting'

Chris: Regarding your volunteering to 'wiki-convert' word-processor files from subscribers, please see: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Wiki-converting. For tracking, use section with your name as title. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:42, 18 December 2007 (CST)

subpages and categorization

Hey Chris, check out the huge category following "z" in the list of live articles: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Category:CZ_Live&from=Z Those are the articles for which the "abc" field isn't filled in on the metadata template. I assume this isn't how the template was intended to work. Do we need to fill in the abc field for all of those or can something be changed in the template? --Joe Quick 18:11, 24 December 2007 (CST)

Hi! I just came with the same question but Joe was here before :) Aleksander Stos 08:38, 25 December 2007 (CST)

PS. Needles to add it'd be great if we could fill just one field in most cases. Now, the (numerous) articles with the field "abc" filled by "nbsp" are listed at the end of the appropriate category (categories) in no particular order. Category browsing is somewhat broken (link "next 400" points to something like "%C2%A0", regardless the actual entry). Perhaps it's easy to fix (important e.g. for unchecklisted articles). Just to let you know :)

Being nice to the dial-up folks

See {{editintro}} and the usage notes. Am I right? Stephen Ewen 04:15, 27 December 2007 (CST)

BASEPAGENAME

Any idea why {{BASEPAGENAME}} is not working as stated at at this documentation? I created MediaWiki:Newmediatext so as to load as an edit intro here through an <inputbox> form at {{Image_notes_flickr3}}. Yet as can be seen in #5 in that example, the code to place the image, {{BASEPAGENAME}} is calling the subpage as well, hence [[Image:Test Image 5.JPG/credit appears when the subpage "credit" shouldn't. Bangin' my head here, and clue? Stephen Ewen 23:16, 1 January 2008 (CST)

Check the bugtrack for MW? Give me an example and I'll try to look at it? --Robert W King 23:23, 1 January 2008 (CST)

Ah! Alas! I deduced what MUST be the problem: Subpages for the Template namespace are not enabled in LocalSettings.php! The proof is at Template:Test_Image_5.JPG and Template:Test_Image_5.JPG/credit. If subpages were enabled for that namespace then the subpage there would show a link back. Stephen Ewen 23:40, 1 January 2008 (CST)

The logical question here is, would enabling it break any of the templates Chris has made. Stephen Ewen 23:43, 1 January 2008 (CST)

Party! You're invited!

Hi Chris — Your neighbourhood Mistress of Ceremonies here. Don’t forget to come on over to the party and sign in at one of the categories! Aleta Curry 16:24, 9 January 2008 (CST) say ‘hi’ to me here.

This is what happened

See these posts on CZ-Tools:

• https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-tools/2008-January/000207.html
• https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-tools/2008-January/000209.html
• https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-tools/2008-January/000210.html
• https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-tools/2008-January/000211.html

I assume it happened right then and there. --Robert W King 17:07, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Great, thanks for keeping on top of that. It looks like a cosmetic problem not a functional problem. I'll try and fix it. Chris Day (talk) 17:52, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Is this a response to the same thing you asked on my talk page? I just noticed the problem a couple of days ago. Monday maybe? Maybe before - I've been looking at metadata pages an awful lot recently... --Joe Quick 22:17, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Yes, I asked you both since you are the two who'd most likely pick it up. Chris Day (talk) 22:19, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Unexpected error with subpage template

Hi Chris, wasn't too sure who to ask on this one ... I have just started a page on Prague and received an 'unexpected error' after filling out the template, instead of the usual approval page. Not too sure where to go from here. Could you please advise on what I did wrong here and how I can fix it? Thanking you ... Louise Valmoria 18:29, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Hi Loiuse, here is our problem. When i get the new streamlined version of this template finished it will have error messages so this kind of error can be spotted more easily. Chris Day (talk) 21:12, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Ahhh, thank you very much for that, and for fixing the page. I'll keep a closer eye on how I'm filling out the templates in future! Cheerio.Louise Valmoria 21:25, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Are you on cz-tools?

I want to make sure you see https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-tools/2008-January/000213.html which is different from what is talked about above. Stephen Ewen 23:30, 9 January 2008 (CST)

Core Articles Earth Sciences

Chris,

some core articles in Earth Sciences were written, but authors didn't claim the points. I didn't "approve" so far because I wasn't asked to do so. Should I, and should I decide who gets the points? Note that in most cases it will be straightforward, as there is only one author per article. Ciao, --Nereo Preto 03:01, 10 January 2008 (CST)

That was on my to do list and if you want to do that it would b great. I am way behind in smoothing the core articles along. i think most people are not playing the point game but just writing. Nevertheless, once it gets going it might get some momentum. Chris Day (talk) 05:48, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Great. I'll take care of it, for Earth Sciences, in the next days. Yes, I believe most authors are just writing. This is not a bad thing though, and attributing unrequested points shouldn't harm. Thanks, Aloha. --Nereo Preto 04:07, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Two quick things

First, please don't edit the subpages template during the Write-a-Thon. It wound up not being a serious problem yesterday, but it's probably best not to do high-load maintenance like that on days known to be specifically busy. That said, you don't get enough kudos for all the excellent that you do with the subpages template. I'm not trying to come down on you, just suggesting that waiting a few hours would have been a bit easier on things.

Second, I found a useful page which might help you out as Core Articles Coordinator. Special:Wantedpages is a page which lists the most common redlinks. While I recognize that Core Articles is more about important articles than popular ones, you might want to spread it around to the relevant editors.

Thanks --ZachPruckowski 15:24, 10 January 2008 (CST)

I completely forgot about the lag time issue. Its a good thing I didn't do more than I did. Thanks for the wanted pages link too. Chris Day (talk) 18:37, 10 January 2008 (CST)

New Skin for CZ

Chris- you may want to get involved with whoever is thinking up a new concept for the CZ skin, being that there's an interest (and frankly, I agree that it should have been in from the get-go but that's not the way things go ;) ) of building the subpages template concept right into the MW skin, so it becomes a part of our MW implementation by default. --Robert W King 13:35, 15 January 2008 (CST)

I agree, from the first day subpages were discussed the goal was to have it as part of MW. Not sure how well I can help except to answer questions on the current set up. Chris Day (talk) 23:19, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Standardizing subpages for medical and drug topics

Could we create a standard list of subpages for medical topics? Perhaps:

• Etiology/cause/pathogenesis (how ever you like to word this)
• Classification
• Diagnosis
• Treatment
• Prognosis

There are probably other pages, such as those listed at Wikipedia: Template for medical conditions, but this would get us started. Can we launch medical articles without subpages, then use then only then the article gets bulky? Eventually, doing the same thing for drugs might help, eg a subpage for biochemistry and for listing brand names. Also, tutorial I think is a current standard subpage. What does this label mean - an introduction to a topic? If so, it seems there might be a better label than 'Tutorial'. Thanks. - Robert Badgett 16:22, 23 January 2008 (CST)

Sorry I missed this before Robert, I'm just going back as figuring out what I missed on this talk page. You will need to put a proposal together for these subpages; see CZ:Subpages. It sounds like a good idea and it would be easy to add to the subpages template when the time comes. Chris Day (talk) 01:21, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Table in Bacteriophage draft

Hi. I see that on Sept. 25 you deleted a table I had formatted in Bacteriophage/Draft. I searched for your name on the talk page and didn't find anything. I'm just curious as to why you deleted the table. --Catherine Woodgold 19:22, 27 January 2008 (CST)

I put it in the catalog subpage. See Bacteriophage/Catalogs Chris Day (talk) 15:09, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Subpage problem

Aleta Curry suggested I bring this problem up with you. On the following page:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Olympic_Games/Catalogs/Olympic_medalists_in_cycling/Olympic_medalists_in_cycling_(women)

I have been unable to get the subpages to display properly after several attempts (both Aleta and I have tried). She suspects there may be a problem with the number of sublevels (the Olympic Games cluster really needs that many though). I think it may be the line length of the path. The latter could be solved by choosing shorter filenames. Hope that's all it is. Anyway, could you look at it and let me know what is wrong?

James F. Perry 10:25, 28 January 2008 (CST)

I think you sorted this out. For the record, three levels is it. I could not figure out a way to make it work any deeper. Besides, i don't think you want these going deeper than three levels. The catalog page needs to be designed in a way to allow the location of all the available catlogs to be obvious. How many olympic catalogs are you planning? Chris Day (talk) 15:17, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Check this out for a chuckle

[2] --D. Matt Innis 19:58, 29 January 2008 (CST)

It's an entry at CZ:Humour. :-D Stephen Ewen 20:11, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Interesting. Not sure how that happened. I thought I was adding a four day default approval, I had not realsied it was four days from todays date. Chris Day (talk) 15:20, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Party, again

Aw, Chris--where you been, amigo? Aleta Curry 22:00, 6 February 2008 (CST)

CZ:Proposals/Ad_hoc

Hi Chris, Have a look at: CZ:Proposals/Ad_hoc and please give your comments. Supten Sarbadhikari 22:50, 13 February 2008 (CST)

Re Life/Draft

Chris, Gareth Leng indicated his willingness to approve Life/Draft as replacing Life (see http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Life/Draft#Thanks_Anthony ). I believe you originally aproved Life. If you agree with Gareth, will you set up Life/Draft for approval. I believe I have responded to most of the feedback critiques I received. Thanks. --Anthony.Sebastian 13:41, 18 February 2008 (CST)

Chris, I still remain eager to replace Life with Life/Draft. Will you put the to approve banner on Life/Draft with a one week waiting period? I should finish checking vitality of the external links by then.

Thanks. --Anthony.Sebastian 14:57, 21 February 2008 (CST)

---

Chris, still hoping you'll nominate Life/Draft to replace current version, Life. --Anthony.Sebastian 14:52, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Problems with moving a page

Chris, Matt Innis told me that you might be able to help with this:

Yesterday I moved an article so as to rename it. The main article was moved but none of the subpages were ... even though I had checked the box asking to have the Talk page moved.

It took me about an hour to find the unmoved subpages (Talk, Related Articles, Bibliography and External Links) ... and then it took me about another hour to copy and paste each of them into the renamed article.

That was just too laborious and took too much time!! Is it possible to devise a way to move all of the subpages when moving an article?

At the very least, the Move page should warn us that the subpages will not be moved and it should tell us how to find the unmoved subpages.

I will watch for your reply here on your Talk page. Thanks in advance, - Milton Beychok 11:55, 21 February 2008 (CST)

The only soltion is to change the media wiki code. I expect it can be done but is a low priority. I certainly could not code it. Chris Day (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Table?

Hi, Chris, I need to make a table, and I can't work out how it's done. User:Hayford Peirce suggested I ask you. Thanks for your attention - Ro Thorpe 13:00, 1 March 2008 (CST)

But we cracked it. Cheers - Ro Thorpe 15:23, 1 March 2008 (CST)

image issues

Hi Chris,

Any idea why the image File:Stone walls palau will not appear even though the coding is correct in my article on Palau under the Archaeological & Palaeontological Research section?

Lee R. Berger 06:30, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Thanks Chris! you would think I would pick something so basic up after all these articles... Thanks a lot - won't let that happen again!

Lee

Re: the references - convention in the various journals I have published in would tend to place the references after the full stop. I think this is worthy of taking to the editorial council for adoption if you are in agreement.

Lee R. Berger 03:18, 4 March 2008 (CST)

TOC-right, TOC-left

The standard TOC does not produce inline content, instead it forces everything past the TOC. I developed TOC-left based off of TOC-right which is inline. --Robert W King 15:13, 3 March 2008 (CST)

I'm being a bit slow here? Is this in relation to this edit? Chris Day (talk) 15:21, 3 March 2008 (CST)

I think I'm retarded. Nevermind. --Robert W King 15:35, 3 March 2008 (CST)

LOL, I did like the one you added to DNA, if that makes you feel any better :) Chris Day (talk) 15:36, 3 March 2008 (CST)

DNA and Life are just so... inherently bonded I guess I confused them for a minute. --Robert W King 15:50, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Subpages, documentation, etc

Hi, I actually did manage to mostly work out how it all worked before I posted in the forums - my post was actually to ask if there was some documentation I hadn't found, because if not, I was proposing to write some (provided people would find it useful). Yes, I undertook to clean up the errors in the existing documentation because I figured they would horribly confuse any naive users (especially those who are not computer people). I was planning on writing a bunch more documentation, and rationalizing what's there, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet; been busy catching up with other stuff.

Anyhoo... One quick question I'm curious about (because I didn't see a compelling reason to do it this way): why did you all decide to put the meta-data (and photo credit stuff) in the Template: namespace? It's going to make a listing of all the entries in that namespace less useful (although I suppose it's easy enough to automatically filter out entries ending with /Metadata). It would have been easy enough to use another namespace, no? (Although I guess there's no immediately obvious candidate.)

Anyway, thanks for the note. I'll see if I can do something about the documentation. -- J. Noel Chiappa 19:32, 3 March 2008 (CST)

Location of references in text

Chris, the examples in Citation style show <ref>...</ref> after the punctuation mark (e.g., after a comma if within sentence, after the period at end sentence.

With successive <ref>...</ref>s, I often separate them with a non breaking space (& n b s p;) for reader's ease. 

cf.

If the Harvard style used, put ref before punctuation (Day 2008; Sebastian 2009). --Anthony.Sebastian 14:16, 4 March 2008 (CST)

References Cited

Day C. (2008) My best book. Wherever & Co., New York.
Sebastian A. (2009) Themes on schemes. Journal of Retractable Results 100:1-8.

Notes

--Anthony.Sebastian 14:16, 4 March 2008 (CST)

I

Thanks for the table, Chris, it's perfect - Ro Thorpe 09:07, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Exccept that it's not...sorry, I was so impressed, I should have had a closer look. Ro Thorpe 09:25, 5 March 2008 (CST)

More tables?

If you're in the mood, there are 'list of irregular' two-column tables needed at the top of A, O and U now. I'm sending this same message to Robert. Thanks - Ro Thorpe 15:51, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Sailing approval

According to the recently revised approval process, before doing the honors sysops should:

"Examine the talk page. Make sure it's clear that there are three editors who are in agreement about the approvability of the article, or, if it seems there is an individual approval going on, make sure that the person approving the article has not worked much on the article. (For that, examine the article's history.) Also ensure that at least one editor currently supports the approval of the article version mentioned in the approval metadata. If there is any reason to doubt editor support, request clarification before doing the honors. Reasons to doubt editor support include the nominated version not being the latest one and/or the existence of unanswered author critiques."

Therefore I don't think sailing should have been approved. Can you undo the approval? Warren Schudy 09:55, 8 March 2008 (CST)

I thought that was one univolved editor that approved? I guess I was going on what I had seen happen in the biology workgroup where one univolved editor could approve or three involved editors. I had not noticed the thread you linked to, I'll go and read about the changes.

Is there any reason why other sports editors are not signing on? Or is it a critical mass issue (i.e. not enough editors?) Chris Day (talk) 11:59, 8 March 2008 (CST)

The only sports editor who has edited the wiki since sailing was nominated for approval is User:Gary Giamboi, and he's made only two edits since then! So yes, an extreme case of not enough editors. I just asked him to comment. Warren Schudy 12:22, 8 March 2008 (CST)

But Michael Grey is listed as a sports editor? Chris Day (talk) 12:59, 8 March 2008 (CST)

OK I just read the changes made to the process. I was assuming approval had not occurred due to the date bug mentioned above by Matt. I thought this was one that had fallen through the cracks. In that case i think the best thing is to remove the approval tag with the stated reason as "No editor available to confirm approval". The {{approval}} template can be used to document such an occurance on the approval page. Chris Day (talk) 13:07, 8 March 2008 (CST)

I just partially undid the approval pending the comments from another sports editor. If no response I will delete the draft page too. Actually I just went ahead and deleted the draft page, so the cluster is back to its original state except for the approval page. Chris Day (talk) 13:14, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Thanks! I modified the metadata template to remove the to-approve banners; you documented why approval was terminated but didn't actually cancel it I think. Warren Schudy 14:03, 8 March 2008 (CST)

That's the way it should be, thanks. Chris Day (talk) 14:06, 8 March 2008 (CST)

Eduzendium template

Argh! I thought the -auto one was the correct one to use, as it added the article to the Eduzendium category? What gives? J. Noel Chiappa 10:17, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Never mind! I just worked it out! J. Noel Chiappa 10:19, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, exactly - as soon as I saw you'd only changed the sample invocation, and not the instructions, the penny dropped... J. Noel Chiappa 10:35, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Life ver 1.2 Approved!

Good work! Keep going, --D. Matt Innis 22:20, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, congrats! --Larry Sanger 12:30, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Empty subpage category

Hi Chris, did you notice that Category:Subpages is now empty? That shouldn't be...were you perhaps fiddling with the templates? --Larry Sanger 12:30, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

I made one change recently to add a category to the approval page. I don't believe i changed anything else, and off the top of my head I don't see how the change I did make would have had such an effect. I'll review my edits and try and figure out what happened. Chris Day (talk) 12:33, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Could this have anything to do with why the draft for Phosphorus ended up in the Approved Category? --D. Matt Innis 12:45, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

No. Give the server time to sort it out. I see no category on the draft page so it should not appear in the category. Chris Day (talk) 13:01, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Talk page link in sig

How do you do that? I thought raw signatures were disabled? Or have they been turned back on? Or are you doing subst: with a template? J. Noel Chiappa 20:58, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Originally it was possible to do it. Then there was a media wiki upgrade and the feature was lost; don't know why. For some reason my signature is still in the system though. I have been told that if I make a change to my preferences I will lose the signature and it will revert to default. This thread might be of interest to you. Chris Day (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Cluster/sub-page hackery

Hey, looks good. I particularly like the metadata page display. (And you'd a lucky SOB with your signature! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 10:45, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks it's a goliath and I'm trying to vastly reduce it's size. The current metadata used to work that way too but in the media wiki upgrade something changed (along with the signatures). Possibly some of the magic words? I'm trying to get it back to where it was before. Chris Day (talk) 11:12, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Hi, I would rate myself as a 'beginner' at 'advanced template hackery'; I've only been doing it for a week or two, and it still makes my head hurt to read the documentation! Still, I have have some useful bits.

The material at Template_talk:Subpage_style#reminder is from an old version of that help page; it has been rewritten with the deployment of the new preprocessor. I believe this particular behaviour was caused by the semi-infamous bug-5678 (see also here). I looked at Special:Version to try and see if we have the a version of MediaWiki with the new preprocessor, and it looks to me like we should, so perhaps the thing that was worrying you (at #reminder) is no longer with us?

I don't guarantee any of this, because like I said, I'm just getting into this now, but perhaps there are some useful dribs and drabs above. J. Noel Chiappa 12:40, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

I don't think we're (CZ) on the new preprocessor? --Robert W King 12:44, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

No, we're not - I just ran a test (here) and we're still getting the buggy behaviour. The same thing works fine on Wikipedia. I would suggest it's not worth a ton of effort trying to work around this, since it's likely only temporary. J. Noel Chiappa 12:48, 13 March 2008 (CDT)

I don't think anything like {{ {{ #ifexpr:.. |a|b|c}} parameters}} (actually, {{ {{ #ifexpr:.. |a|b|c}} | parameters}}) is going to work, because I don't know of any #if statement (#if, #ifeq, #ifexpr, etc) that allows for three possible outcomes; they all have only two (partA if true/etc, partB if not). It would have to be something like {{ {{#if <something> | a | {{ #if <something_else> | b | c}} }} | parameters}}.

The only way I can immediately think of to do it in one step is to use a #switch, i.e. something like: {{ {{ #switch: <selector> | <case1>=a | <case2>=b | <case3>=c }} | params }}, which is pretty clunky, longer in fact than the one above.

Is there a problem with the {{ {{#if <something> | a | {{ #if <something_else> | b | c}} }} | parameters}} formulation? I used something much like it here and it seemed to work fine. Let me try it, and report back. J. Noel Chiappa 00:41, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Take a look at this template and this caller; that seems to do what you want. It only evaluates the params ({{{2}}}} once, and picks one of three different templates ({{MW}}, {{WM}} and {{WP}}) to call, based on {{{1}}}.

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for? Obviously, the #ifeq: can be replaced with #if: or #ifexpr: depending on exactly what you are doing. J. Noel Chiappa 00:58, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

BTW, if what's behind all this is that you're trying to minimize the number of times {{{param}}} is evaluated, don't worry about it; the new parser (above) only evaluates arguments if they are actually needed (or so I gather; I'll find where it talks about that tomorrow - off to bed now). J. Noel Chiappa 01:29, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

It's not that important but i was interested as I came across the problem. It's not to do with the parameters but rather the expansion on the templates. As currently written the subpages template is massive since all the associated templates count towards the page size regardless of their use. This code trick, that Zach pointed out to me, means that only those templates actually used on the page count towards the page size. Chris Day (talk) 01:44, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Ah, got it! Your "a|b|c" stuff made me think you had three different alternatives you wanted. I don't think there's any special character you need; in fact, you don't want anything at all in there, just something like {{{2}}}{{{3}}} because you want the two parts of the template name to be run together and wind up as single token, which they won't if there's a ' ' in there.

Now I'm just trying to remember if there's a bug in the old parser where {{{2}}}{{{3}}} didn't recognize the output of the two as a single token; I saw something about something like that, but I can't remember what (or where) now. Let me just try it and see... J. Noel Chiappa 01:34, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I just assumed it would read as one template if they are together, how would it know where to chop the string? Chris Day (talk) 01:39, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Now you have me confused again! I thought that what you wanted was you had three strings, A, B and C (say, "aaa", "bb" and "cc"), and you want to call either template "aaa" or template "bbcc". No? I don't get why it would need to "chop the string" - or did that mean 'between "aaa" and "bbcc"?

If that is what you want,take a look at this template and this caller; that seems to do what I thought you wanted. It picks one of two different templates to call - either {{MW}} (which is hardcoded, but it could have been an argument), or the template whose name is the concatenation of {{{2}}} and {{{3}}} - based on {{{1}}}. J. Noel Chiappa 01:48, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I see where you're coming from. The problem is the big picture of the subpages template. It places templates on various pages each page being distinct. So I want either A or B+C templates on a page. I could have B and C as one template but that does not work since on some pages i want only B and on others only C. Instead of having two templates I could use three, a BC hybrid along with B and C. The reason i will not do that is i only want one location for each template to be edited. Which now makes me realise the solution! Just make a template that includes {{B}} and {{C}} and call it {{BC}} . Thanks for jogging my thoughts on this. I'm not really computer literate so I sometimes miss the obvious. Chris Day (talk) 02:13, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Ah, OK, now I finally get it. You want to call either template A with <params>, or the two separate templates B and C with <params>. Yeah, there's no way to do the second part without at some point having (effectively) {{B | params}} {{C | params}} - or your hack, a template BC, called with <params> (i.e. {{BC | params}}) which just contains calls to B anc C.

Mind, I'm not sure (especially with the old parser) that it's going to make much of a difference how much memory is used (at the point of maximum expansion) either way; they pretty much amount to the same thing. As long as all the terms are evaluated/expanded before the #if: is evaluated (which is what the old parser did, if I understand it correctly), you're going to get maximal expansion. It's only when the #if is evaluated before terms are evaluated/expanded, and unused terms ignored (which is, again, what I think the new parser does) that you'll get any significant savings.

Although now that I think about your BC case again, maybe not... too tired to think straight about complicated things like this!

Anyway, probably the 'right' thing to do is push for installation of the newest Wikimedia release, with the new parser. Too bad I don't know more about PHP and MediaWiki, or I could offer to help there too. Oh well, maybe I just need to turn to and read up on all that too! J. Noel Chiappa 02:46, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

The key here is that the subpages template is never even close to maximum expansion since it is used for many different organising tasks with a unique role on each page of a cluster. The subpages template was so huge that the it was exceeding the 2MB pre-expand limit of each page and Zach had to bump it up to 4MB. The knock on effect before being bumped up to 4MB was that other templates (such as citation templates) in the article stopped working once the 2MB limit was exceeded. So a smaller subpages template is important for the articles that have a large number of citations or a high usage of other templates. Ideally, according to Zach (I don't know why it's ideal) the limit will be brought back down to 2MB if the subpages templates pre-expansion size can be reduced. Chris Day (talk) 11:59, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

My guess is that it's because the larger the maximum size of the page during MediaWiki-markup -> HTML processing (i.e. during the template expansion/evaluation phase), the longer it takes to render, i.e. more computational load, and slower to serve pages. If so, I wouldn't worry about that too much - a lot of this stuff we're doing with templates is going to have to get replaced with hard-coded support (e.g. in PHP) anyway, if this site ever takes off the way Wikipedia did. J. Noel Chiappa 13:16, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

By the way, can you think of any reason I should not be using the {{BC|param}} hack? It seems to work well but there might be some unforeseen problem? I bump into those regularly given my low breadth of knowledge in the code area. Chris Day (talk) 12:02, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

No, as far as I know, there shouldn't be any problems.

The only downside I can think of is, like I said in my long note, because it's string expansion, not code execution, anytime you wind up doing: {{A|args}} {{B|args}} , then in either parser you're going to wind up expanding 'args' twice (I think :-).

I'm not sure if there's any way to get around that, in either the old or new parser; I'd have to better understand how things get evaluated. It might be that if you had an 'AB' template (i.e. the text of both run together into a single template) it might help (especially in the older parser, where arguments are expanded first). However, it all depends on exactly what order things are done in - i.e. what forms that long string (which is the template expansion) goes through as it gets processed.

I'll go read the documentation (such as it is :-) on how the parser operates again; hopefully, I will understand it better now, and will then be better positioned to answer questions like this for you. J. Noel Chiappa 13:16, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

WP bug

 :-) I did originally try {{localurl: }}; I ditched that in favour of {{anchorencode: }} because localurl didn't handle embedded spaces properly - it turned them into '+'s, not '_'s, so attempts to call {{WP}} with page names with spaces in them (that weren't manually converted to _'s) didn't work. Only now I find out that anchorencode bashes '#'s and '/'s! I can't win! Extension:StringFunctions will let me win easily, but that package isn't installed here. I've asked Zach if we can get it. J. Noel Chiappa 01:29, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I asked for that a while back. I think i sent an e-mail to the technical guys and I can't even remember why I wanted it now. There might be something in the forums too. Chris Day (talk) 01:31, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

More on templates

Interesting numbers. I forget which term means what, but isn't there also a number you are given for the maximum size reached during expansion? E.g. if I look at the HTML output from looking at one of my tests, I see:

Pre-expand include size: 3775 bytes
Post-expand include size: 606 bytes
Template argument size: 224 bytes
Maximum: 4194304 bytes

and I would think the last number (the maximum reached during evaluation) would be an equal concern. J. Noel Chiappa 12:12, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Dohh! I just realized the "Maximum" number is the largest it's allowed to get to (i.e. the parameter Zach tweaked). Never mind! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 12:54, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes, that's the 4MB I was talking about. Chris Day (talk) 13:47, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Also, I wrote up a magnum opus on this whole expansion thing, trying to clear my brain and understand the stuff I alluded to last night (above) about it not mattering whether you did A and B directly, or via AB. I'm not sure if it's any use to you (or if you have the patience to read all the way through it :-), but it so, it's at: User:J. Noel Chiappa/TemplateExpansionNote1. J. Noel Chiappa 12:12, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I have not read it yet but it looks great. Thanks for the help, if nothing else for an academic interest. You're right that the subpages template should disappear into the hard code as soon as possible. However, who will do, or find the time to do that, is a problem. One of the reasons I stopped with the improvements was I thought it might be around the corner, but I guess not. Chris Day (talk) 13:45, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Alas, as shown herewe're still using the old pre-processor.... J. Noel Chiappa 14:29, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Cool tool

Hey, did you know about Special:ExpandTemplates? J. Noel Chiappa 15:56, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

News to me. Returning to the theme of the using the {{BC}} hack, you might be interested that i just tested the two version of the template i was playing with:

NewPP limit report for small template (using {{BC}} hack):

Preprocessor node count: 20/1000000

Post-expand include size: 36/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes

NewPP limit report for large template:

Preprocessor node count: 16/1000000

Post-expand include size: 20/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes

With two templates expanded of six NewPP limit report for small template:

Preprocessor node count: 27/1000000

Post-expand include size: 9368/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes

With two templates expanded of six NewPP limit report for large template

Preprocessor node count: 24/1000000

Post-expand include size: 11684/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes

As far as I can tell there will be no advantage with the new processor, the post expand size is very similar, as you predicted. The {{BC}} hack requires more nodes but it is trivial stuff with regard to the limit. Chris Day (talk) 16:24, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

Interesting data. Also, I found these, which are useful (although tough sledding):

• Help:Expansion
• Help:Recursive conversion of wikitext

The second definitely caused my brains to liquify; I've merely noted it, and will go back to re-read it later.

No luck so far finding documentation on how the pre-processor (as opposed to the parser - found two sources on that) operates inside, although I seem vaguely to recall seeing something about it somewhere a couple of weeks ago; probably somewhere in TimS's spaces. J. Noel Chiappa 20:32, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

I should point out that the above numbers are not directly comparable with the templates I tested at citizendium. The content was different and so the post-expandsize is not comparable. The relatively small reduction in the post expand size is comparable with the values I tested here; in this case a modest reduction to 80% of the original size. I have no idea why the template argument size came out as zero. Also of note was that there is a limit of the number of #ifexist statements that can be used, up to 500. From our respective, if we get the new preprocessor, that means there is a theoretical limit to the number of subpages that can be managed by a template. Since we currently have less than twenty flavours, I suspect that limit might not be something to worry about. Chris Day (talk) 00:37, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

"Start article" user problems - for Chris or Steve?

Hi, Chris,

We seem to have identified a bit of a problem with starting articles. To me, it now looks simple enough for new users to jump in, but people who started at CZ with the pre-cluster subpages ('old' method - using the checklist) might be in a bad way. They can no longer find the checklist, and if they try just putting 'subpages' at the top of the Talk page, they get that huge green mess. Paul Wormer said, for example, that he didn't feel like reading pages and pages of help material to be able to figure out what was going on.

When/if you have time, can you look at:

• http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,1632.0/topicseen.html

which was prompted by:

• http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Count_Rumford

Thanks!

Aleta Curry 17:15, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your concern

An old dog is finding new tricks hard, that's all. If I have a problem next time I start a new page, I'll get back to you with the specifics, OK? - Ro Thorpe 17:51, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I understand both, so 'houseplants' is American, then? Ro Thorpe 18:04, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I guess, or potted plants, when I told my friends here I had pot plants they thought I was growing marijuana. Chris Day (talk) 18:09, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I *think* "houseplant" has just about taken over, although I wouldn't swear to it. Hayford Peirce 18:11, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I'm totally confused. Could one of you handle the botany, please? Ro Thorpe 18:17, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Chris, you're a Brit in America, is that right? Ro Thorpe 18:21, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes. Chris Day (talk) 18:24, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

See the article for the scoop on "houseplant" etc. Hayford Peirce 18:28, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Will do, Hayford. So where are you exactly, Chris? I've finished my little store, and you have some nice ones, so would you like to put them in, or shall I? Ro Thorpe 18:33, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Store? Don't Brits say Shop where we 'Merkins say Store? As in, "I'm going down to the S...."? Hayford Peirce 21:04, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Wisconsin. Make sure you keep those with double meaning together. I'll let you add them in. :) Should be a fun article, as well as helpful. Chris Day (talk) 18:35, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Messed up article?

I was looking at Category:Incompatible editor status and I noticed Metabolism was listed. I tried to fix it, and got it partially fixed, but i) the article itself contains a duplicate second (old, I gather) approval header template, and ii) the talk: page wasn't moved to /draft. I can't fix either of these, can you? Thanks. J. Noel Chiappa 20:53, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I fixed the DNA one, there was no approving editor. I also looked at metabolism and I could not figure out what had happned. I'll track down Matt, since he might have some institutional memory. It may just be the absense of the approving editor and oversight at the time of approval. It was one the first approved so the format may reflect that subpages did not exist at the time. Chris Day (talk) 21:41, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I got the {{subpages}} header to work OK for metabolism by editing the metadata, which I have access to. However, the article page contains: {{approved|editor=Pedro Silva|group=Biology}} (the old approval method) at the head of it (underneath the {{subpages}}), and that's what's producing the second 'approved' header, and I can't fix that because I'm not a sysop (yet :-). We also need to move Talk:Metabolism to Talk:Metabolism/Draft, but I can't do that either because the target already exists (with trivial content) - ditto on sysop comment. J. Noel Chiappa 22:38, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

PS: What's up with all the entries in Category:Incorrect metadata pagename‎? I looked at a lot of them, and most seemed OK. J. Noel Chiappa 21:00, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Some I have corrected and are still there, it takes a while for them to clear. Some are there as a realised a problem there was a problem I had not encountered before and I changed the test. They will clear from the category soon too.

If i compare the pagename field in the metadata page with {{BASEPAGENAME}}, my original test, it turns out that "Metabolism" vs "metabolism" will be flagged. Of course, as far as the template is concerned, "metabolism" is just as good as "Metabolism" so i didn't want to populate the whole category with such examples. A worse problem is encountered with a pages like "Ampere's rule" which is actually correct in the pagename field but for some reason the test fails. Same with "Hans Küng". So I changed the test to use the pagename value and ask if that page exists. So basically this is an imperfect test. Any page that is moved will leave behind a redirect. So if a metadata page is moved but the pagename is not corrected, my original target for this error check, it will pass fine since the redirect still exists. I'm currently mulling over how to redesign this test. Chris Day (talk) 21:39, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I seem to vaguely recall something about testing for redirects. I'll try and find it tomorrow. J. Noel Chiappa 22:38, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Template doc error?

I think the documenation in Template:TOAPPROVE stuff (i.e. after the <noinclude>) is wrong; it says "Editors who want to nominate an article for approval should place this template on the top of the article talk page." which I think is obsolete, yes? (I didn't want to go ahead and fix it myself, saving you the trouble, because I'm not 100% sure how it all works, and didn't want to mess it up.) J. Noel Chiappa 22:56, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Yes that is obsolete. Thats what happens when you patch together things from previous versions. I thought I had caught most of the stuff. Thanks for keeping an eye out and figuring the Metabolism problem. I plan to write a more thorough documentation once i have tweeked out the bugs. You can see it evolve at Talk:Test article. Chris Day (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

Yeah, I've been watching that come together... J. Noel Chiappa 23:57, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

variant

I think the real problem is that the variant variable is not descriptive enough. If the variable was say "English_variant", people would know what it means. Also, if we could tidy up the actual metadata initial page to make it more readable, people might read the instructions. I would suggest putting all of the instructions at the top, leaving a crisp clean variable section. Or do this:

variant <- choose AE, BE or CE for American, British or Canadian English->

Putting the instruction on the actual variable line might help. I just don't quite like the current initial metadata page that pops up, and we can probably make it easier for people to follow. David E. Volk 09:16, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

Good point. That would need a bot to go through and fix, which I can't do. We can make the todo list more descritpive. One thing I have done is change the parameters so that if the English variant is the only thing that needs to be done the ToDo list does not pop up. Chris Day (talk) 09:20, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

chem infobox vs. element infobox

We need to make two infoboxes for chemistry, one is for chemical elements, and the other is for chemical compounds (molecules). The two boxes are not interchangeable, because compounds don't have standard oxidation states, symbols, electron config etc. David E. Volk 15:14, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

I understand. My only point was that you could use that element info box as a starting point for your new one rather than rewriting the code from scratch. Chris Day (talk) 15:16, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

I'm already working from scratch! --Robert W King 15:18, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

Suffix table

To me, a deep mystery as to why 'rancor' & 'theater' are misplaced - but I have faith... Ro Thorpe 16:56, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

This edit fixed it. Chris Day (talk) 21:34, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

one molecule

My text says that the evidence indicates the DNA in a chromosome is a single molecule. No time now to review, will look into it later. Thomas Mandel 08:54, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Your text must be defining DNA as being double stranded. I would dispute that definition from a chemical perspective although it may well be the working usage in the biology field, but I think it is more slang than accurate. Biologists do distinguish between single stranded and double stranded DNA (ssDNA vs dsDNA) which makes me think it is wrong from a biological perspective too. Regardless, a chromosome has a variable number of molecules. The useful unit for such a statement is chomatid not chromosome. Chris Day (talk) 09:02, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Editintro lost?

I thought you added {{editintro}} to what got included in the article page? (And probably the talk: page would be good too, for people who stick comments at the top without a header?) However, it isn't showing up at any of the articles I'm working on... J. Noel Chiappa 10:56, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Should be there, I'll check why it's not showing up. I'll add it to the talk page too. Chris Day (talk) 20:47, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

I forgot to add the {{Not Approved Article}} template to the {{To Approve Info}} template. Juggling too many balls here. Thanks for spotting that. Chris Day 00:56, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

fixed!

Hi Chris, hopefully I am not jumping the gun here, but it seems that the recent work you've been doing on the subpages has fixed our 'missing talk tab' and question mark! Also, it sure is nice to see the information in the metadata page without having to 'edit' it! --D. Matt Innis 16:12, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

I suspect I cannot take credit for fixing the missing tab and question mark. If so, it was fortuitous. Not sure if you have really seen the changes yet. One error catch I put in was with you in mind. Now you can't add an approving editor without also changing the status to 0. Other improvements include not being able to type in an incorrect pagename and, I hope, no scenario where the dreaded green mess appears. Chris Day 17:09, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Those will be helpful. It is hard to find some of those misnamed meta pages. So far so good with the tabs. I'll keep my fingers crossed. --D. Matt Innis 17:34, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Status 0 before adding approving editor? Should this value be 1, and only become 0 after the approving editor adds name and the 1 week or whatever time delay is complete? David E. Volk 09:03, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

David, the status value only becomes 0 after the constable moves the editors name from the ToA editor space to the A editor space. It's what turns the template green and changes it from 'ToApprove' to 'Approve'. When you put your name in the ToA editor space, status should remain 1. I do the rest after the 'week' is over and it is approved. --D. Matt Innis 09:31, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

Re the Category:Chemical Engineering Workgroup

Chris, please read my response to your comment on my Talk page. Thanks, Milton Beychok 19:17, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

Note to self: need a subgroup version of Template:Wk gp tbl

[[{{{subgroup}}}|{{{subgroup}}} article]]	[[:Category:{{{subgroup}}} Subgroup|All articles]]	[[:Category:{{{subgroup}}} Subgroup_Draft|Draft]]	[[:Category:{{{subgroup}}} Editors|Editors]]
	Recent changes	Recent changes	[[:Category:{{{subgroup}}} Authors|Authors]]	Mailing list: {{{mlist}}}

in appreciation

Just a note to let you know I appreciate your help and especially how you go about it. I also appreciate being allowed to work on the article and virtually change it all around. These two factors is what makes us so different from Wikipedia. I glanced at their DNA article a couple days ago and can see how there are so many subtle inconsistencies within it. It is obviously written by someone who does not work with DNA. I am beginning to see our article taking shape. My goal is to write it so that one can learn from it. A long time ago I had to learn what the Calculus was about. My professor gave me twenty calculus texts to read. Imagine that! But the one book that enabled me to figure it out was a very small programmed text (which I lost) that started out by asking simple questions that I could answer without having to refer to some other text. If I answered correctly I was asked another question. If I answered incorrectly I was referred to a page which explained the right answer. Calculus is about a series of relationships ending up with an equation that has all the relationships within it. My hope is that we end up with an article that is self instructive. Oh, the reason "translation is the purpose of DNA" sounds so odd is that I made it up. I was thinking in terms of the entire process. That is the purpose (along with replication of course) of DNA is to translate a code into a product. My underlying intent was to include a independant section that will tie together the string of events. Later I want to include recent history too. Again thank you for your patience and help.Thomas Mandel 10:58, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

English spellings

Hi, there, Mr Table Man. I'm making a rather complicated one at the above, which I'll probably make a terrible mess of, so I'd be grateful if you'd keep an eye on it. Thanks - Ro Thorpe 11:46, 24 March 2008 (CDT) - Exactly, many thanks. Ro Thorpe 14:48, 24 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for all your help. Now, what were your suggestions for compressing this page? Ro Thorpe 13:33, 29 March 2008 (CDT)

Subpages and articles with / in them

I see you've been adding {{subpages}} to pages which have an "/" in them, like 1/f noise. Needless to say, all sorts of warning headers appear... Are you going to be fixing this, or should we apply the standard kludgy solution (move the article to a name without a "/", and turn the "/" name into a redirect)? J. Noel Chiappa 14:47, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

I didn't do anything as i wanted to see what would happen. The Linux is the example i gave, I'm not sure i see anyway around moving them to a new name, but what should be used instead of a backslash? The GNU/linux solution is a cop out. Chris Day 14:50, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

Ah. I agree I can't see any other solution than the redirect hack. Well, for cases like Linux, where there is an elegant plausible solution, let's by all means use it. And for things like 40mm/56 caliber gun and 5"/38 caliber gun we could have 5"-38 caliber gun - yes, it's not absolutely correct (we could have a template like Wikipedia has for eBay, iPod, etc), but it will do, I think. Can you think of any cases where "-" for "/" will produce an absolute ugliness? J. Noel Chiappa 15:39, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

Name in metadata template?

Hi Chris,

Is it possible to change things back so that when creating a new article, the new name pops up automatically in the metadata template thing?

Also, I just used this and found it a bit confusing as to which were instructions and which were actually fields to be entered. I think (if I read it correctly) a couple of fields are separated from the others.

Well, hope it doesn't sound too critical, because I think it's fabulous that you've done this much.

Aleta Curry 20:59, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

I have no problem with criticism. But in this case I'm not sure what you are asking, did the new name ever automatically appear in the metadata template? And if so, something changed when I was gone and I must have unintentionally lost it in one of my recent edits.

With regard to the text feel free to play around with it. I think the template has been locked since it is associated with the sub pages but I'll put a version in my user space that you can edit. If you can make it more comprehensible that would be great. See User:Chris Day/Metadata for a version you can edit. Thanks. Chris Day 21:05, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

I think I just figured out the change I made that you'd like to see back. Check out, and edit, the new version here. Is that what you were looking for? Chris Day 21:22, 26 March 2008 (CDT)

Speaking of subpages I should probably mention that somehow the subpage tabs are now approximately 3 times too tall in height. --Robert W King 14:22, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Interesting. Any chance of a snap shot? Larry wanted the letter to be bigger and the tabs not to be a fixed size but to fit snmuggly around the letters. Clearly that is not a good fit with IE. Chris Day 14:31, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Give me like, three minutes. --Robert W King 14:34, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

See!

I see the problem the "nowrap" comamand is not working in the button cells. I'll have to think about this. Can you check the mono? Just to see if its a skin issue rather than a template issue? I'd hate to chase around after somthing that has nothing to do with the templates function. I've already doner that a few times. Thanks for the prompt screen short :) Chris Day 14:43, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Happens in monobook also. --Robert W King 14:58, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

I just changed a few things but I doubt it will solve the problem. It's certainly due to the nowrap style not working and that is a flaw that is hard to fix with out recoding the template. Thinking back to last night there was a change that occurred in the mediawiki around the time I was changing the buttons. What ever changed means that the collapsible boxes do not work now either, in monobook too. I bet it is the same problem. So, for what ever reason, the mediawiki is not recognising the more sophisticated markup in tables. Any idea what might have changed in the media wiki last night? Another thing that has changed is i don't have any edit buttons at the top of my edit box anymore. Chris Day 15:24, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

I still see two copies of edit buttons. --Robert W King 15:26, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

As always, the problematic little "#". Chris Day 15:35, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Interesting the collapsable tables and edit buttons are back! Someone must be working in the background. Chris Day 22:15, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Any idea who, and where? If it's MediaWiki: they are editing, it should show up in Special:Recentchanges, no? J. Noel Chiappa 00:45, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

I looked and could not find anything. I've noticed there are often little upgrades. One that confused me for a long time was the nature of the metadata template. It's properties changed from a template to a subpage with respect to MAGICWORDS. Chris Day 10:23, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Hmm. Well, we need to figure out who it is, and what they are doing, to make sure it's co-ordinated with other work. J. Noel Chiappa 11:42, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Almost!

I just realized another long-standing issue that I don't think I ever brought up; Whatever page that you're currently on has a corresponding tab that is highlighted blue, correct? However, when you switch to a talk page, both the "Main Article" and "Talk" tabs are blue! --Robert W King 15:19, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

That was by design to distinguish a subpage talk from a draft talk from an article talk. It's not great but if you're savvey you can use it to your advantage. Chris Day 15:24, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Oh. --Robert W King 15:26, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

Also, the inventor of the egg mcmuffin died. --Robert W King 15:26, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

dna ready for approval process

Chris, I am going to have to change tracks. There is much more I would like to look at in the DNA article but I need to shift my focus to creating an article on general systems theory. So could you take a final look at it and then submit it for approval? I think the section on translation needs some more detail, and I haven't looked at much below that point. Thomas Mandel 18:20, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

I'll look it over. Good job on what you did. You obviously put in a lot of research. I think it reads a lot better now. Chris Day 22:17, 27 March 2008 (CDT)

CHRIS!!!

Poof!

On the collapsable table, not only is there a gap between the table title and the table itself, but as soon as you click "Show" the subpage "Talk" tab freaking disappears and doesn't come back (at least on IE6)!!!!!! --Robert W King 15:32, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

And it only does it in the new skin. Argh... --Robert W King 15:37, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Change it back to what works for you. What go you mean by gap? And what could the talk tab have to do with anything, so strange. Does it reappear after you change it back? It cannot be just the collapsable table alone as they are on all talk pages and do not seem to cause a problem for you there. Chris Day 15:38, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Is there another page with the collapsable table and a subpage header? --Robert W King 15:41, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

I Just tried it on Wristwatch by collapsing the TOC on the front page, and it makes the same thing happen. --Robert W King 15:42, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Only the talk pages that I know off. And this page worked well for you when I first introduced it, right? There must be a problem with the embedded tables but even then I'm not sure that is the real problem as that format is on the talk pages too. Chris Day 15:44, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

True the TOCs are collapsable too. So collapsing any TOC makes you lose the talk tab? Chris Day 15:46, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

So the talk tab must get hidden behind the body of the template. But why not the little question mark too? They should be coded the same way. Forget that you did lose that too. Chris Day 15:49, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Chris, the collapsible tables are working fine for me; both the two on the talk: page (unused-subpages/checklis) and the TOC on the main page. I'm using IE 6.0 with security updates. J. Noel Chiappa 16:14, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the info, do you have the same problem as Robert with the text in the subpage tabs wrapping? Chris Day 16:18, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

No, they are working fine. But I wonder if that's a function of the font, window size, etc? I'm using 120% fonts (i.e. standard "large" setting), text size (in IE) "smaller", and the window size looks to be about 800x800 pixels. Oh, I'm using the Monobook skin too. One thing I did notice is that when I expand/collapse the "unused subpage" thingy that the subpages headers all squirm around a bit; it looked to be that the "Main article" tab is a little wider with the unused subpages hidden, and it gets a bit narrower when they show up. No idea if that's anything to do with what Robert's seeing. J. Noel Chiappa 16:58, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

Subcategories in blank metadata

I want ahead and added the subcategories to Template:Blank metadata; hope that's OK, and not premature. J. Noel Chiappa 18:36, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

PS: If they're here to stay, let me know, and I'll update the documentation (e.g. at CZ:Using the Subpages template‎, etc), etc. J. Noel Chiappa 18:49, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

I'm guessing it is here to stay. It will have to happen at some point. So if you don't mind updating the documentation that would be great. By the way, I don't feel any ownership with regard to the subpages template, and you seem to have a lot of great ideas, so don't feel like you can't get stuck in there and change things around. Any improvements would be appreciated. Thinking this wrt your additional suggestion below. Chris Day 22:43, 30 March 2008 (CDT)

Separating page name (identifier) from article title

I've cooked up a fairly simple way (using an optional metadata field, and some small changes to the skins) to allow us to separate page names (identifiers) from article titles (i.e. the large bold name displayed at the top of the page). There's discussion at CZ Talk:Naming Conventions#Royalty and on the forums here. I'd be interested in your opinions... J. Noel Chiappa 22:17, 30 March 2008 (CDT)

Other than go for it! :) Chris Day 22:39, 30 March 2008 (CDT)

Sigh, not everyone is so enthusiastic. :-( J. Noel Chiappa 01:07, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Maybe they need to see it in action? Chris Day 01:28, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Nah, I don't think that's it. I think people are just offended somehow by the concept of multiple articles with the same concept. Go read the thread on the forums to get the flavour of the responses.

From my perspective, the thing that's most unfortunate is that name clashes are endemic to human naming systems. However, instead of designing the system to deal with them, we make everyone lie on the Procrustean computer-bed of 'every article shall have a unique title'. Shades of 'you will enter your first name and middle initial'. J. Noel Chiappa 01:37, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Template for metadata element access

Is there a template to get access to metadata elements? E.g. something like {{GetMDElement|<fieldname>}}, where one passes in the field name one wants, and it evaluates to the value of that element of the metadata? I ask because I was thinking of tackling upgrading {{Authors}} to pick up the editor(s) from the metadata (for approved articles), and it would be a lot easier to write that code if something like GetMDElement existed.

Note, I wouldn't use in in templates that get used a lot (e.g. {{subpages}}) because templates are inefficient. However, one could always code templates with it, and once they were working, do a subst: to replace the call to GetMDElement with the expanded code. J. Noel Chiappa 01:07, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

I have not written a template for that. What i do is call it once with using the {{subpages}} template and then propagate it through all the subsequent templates as a template parameter, i.e. I use:

|A editor={{{{BASEPAGENAME}}/Metadata|info=A editor}}

and in susequent templates I use {{{A editor|}}} to get the value. I'm not sure if that was more efficient or not but my gut feeling was that it would be more efficient. Not to mention, i have to use a trick to call on metadata when on a subsubpage so it slimmed down the {{subpage style}} template by almost 50%, which was also desirable. The subsubpage trick is:

|A editor={{../../Metadata|info=A editor}}

and in susequent templates I can still use {{{A editor|}}}. I'm not sure how "subst:" works, excuse my ignorance, I expect this is something I should know about. Chris Day 01:22, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Rottweiler

Thanks, Chris! Aleta Curry 04:32, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

A better place to start

Thanks from me, too. Daniel Mietchen 09:30, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Subpage template colors

Where do you change 'em? --Robert W King 15:47, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

The're coded into the {{subpage list}} template. Chris Day 16:02, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Fast forward to DNA now

While looking for significance found this. http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/01/23/international_consortium_announces_the_1000_genomes_project.htmlThomas Mandel 01:36, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

Articles by Cheris Carpenter

Chris, I have finished the other articles, just to let you know and we don't redo the same work. See the Wiki-converting page/ David E. Volk 09:37, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the heads up. I was going to tack a few more today. On to other things :) Chris Day 10:18, 2 April 2008 (CDT)

DNA article

Before you get all worried, I wouldn't actually rewrite DNA (unless you asked me to, of course :-). J. Noel Chiappa 21:50, 3 April 2008 (CDT)

Reading some of the back-and-forth, it strikes me that one idea that's missing, in terms of analyzing/expressing the relationships between all the various mechanisms y'all keep discovering (codons/genes/etc/etc), is that the whole hierarchy of stuff just grew like topsy, without someone keeping an eye on it to make sure that it stayed organized and in a proper hierarchy.

So unlike in human information system design (well, any system engineered into subsystems, actually), where we take a bunch of low-level thing and group them into a level-1 thing, and then group a bunch of level-1 things into a level-2 thing, etc, and there's some overall structure, some conceptual framework that everything fits into reasonably nicely, with nice clean boundaries, these biological systems basically don't have any of that.

They weren't carefully built from the top down, or the bottom up - they were coded by a bazillion monkeys writing random programs and trying them, and someone kept the programs that did something useful, and gave them to quintillions more monkeys to mix and merge in all sorts of random ways, etc, etc.

So it's not too surprising that although if you think really hard, you can impose a certain amount of structure on the whole blasted mess, it remains - fundamentally - a blasted mess, and any 'rule' you find is going to have 17,283 exceptions.

Sure, there are some exceptions, some places where there is more order, especially at the lower levels, where there just aren't many options. (The 'characters' in the DNA strand are always one of just four possibilities, for instance.) But the further up the abstraction hierarchy you go, the more exceptions you find, because instead of it being designed, somebody just plugged wires together randomly until it worked...

Anyway, maybe I'm full of it, but that's the sense I get! J. Noel Chiappa 01:38, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Trust me that biologist are quite comfortable working with no absolutes, I guess we are used to it. I can tell you that it drives some students absolutely nuts and they are almost always from an engineering background (biomedical engineering). They can't comprehend a science that can have multiple right answers for a single question. Chris Day 01:50, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

They'd have to be comfortable with it, wouldn't they? Drive them mad (or to another field) if they weren't! :-)

I understand some of this stuff (disorganized growth) because I'm a specialist in very large information systems, and we see all sorts of pseudo-biological behaviours in them over very long life-times (i.e. 10-30 years), so we regularly 'borrow' y'all's terminology to describe what we see - we even have a condition we call 'cancer' (because its uncontrolled local growths). J. Noel Chiappa 19:21, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Elem Infobox

OK, so...how do I get the periodic table picture here:

Lead 207.2(1) +2 +4   Pb 82 [Xe]6s24f145d106p2 [ ? ] Post-Transition Metal: Properties: corrosion-resistant, dense, ductile, and malleable blue-gray metal Compounds: see here Hazard: toxic

to link to the periodic table of elements?--David Yamakuchi 03:24, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Looks like you got it to work. Right? Or am I missing something? Chris Day 03:28, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

No. The current link is to the Image.jpg. I thiink it might be handy if we could link to the article Periodic table of elements from the little picture, and use the "element symbol" link Pb to link instead to the catalog of data for the element. What I was trying to do is something like:

|-

|{{#if:{{{PTImage|}}}|[[Periodic table of elements|{{{PTImage}}}]]

but the #if pukes on the pipe in the link...any suggestions?--David Yamakuchi 03:42, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Thx for fixin the tables in the infobox BTW--David Yamakuchi 03:44, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Try this: |{{#if:{{{PTImage|}}}|[[Periodic table of elements{{!}}{{{PTImage}}}]] although I'm not sure if you can pipe link this way for an image?

The {{!}} template gives you a functional pipe. As far as the picture is concerned, when I click on it it redirects me to the Periodic table of elements, because of your edit here, isn't that what you want? Chris Day 03:52, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Yeah but it's not the same. It requires a similar link for every other element. An implementation in the template standardizes it so they all look the same (if they have a pic)...--David Yamakuchi 04:58, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Something like this might work. But I have no experience using that kind of markup. Chris Day 05:06, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

check please!--David Yamakuchi 05:12, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Check? As in see if it works? Chris Day 05:16, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Nope, as in, ohmygoshlookwhattimeitisgottagoseeyabye :-) Thanks again for all the help.--David Yamakuchi 05:21, 4 April 2008 (CDT)

Chris how big are those little boxes in pixels? --Robert W King 11:52, 5 April 2008 (CDT)