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User talk:Phil Boswell

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Hello Phil, welcome to Wikipedia. I answered your question at . Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

You can also ask questions at the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 17:04, Oct 2, 2003 (UTC)

Timelines

Hi Phil, of course I would welcome any added flexibility, but I think there is no easy solution here. Apparently mediawiki extensions are invoked after template replacement has been executed. I know nothing of MediaWiki internals, and doubt any developer who is, whould give this any priority. Thanks for pointing this out. Erik Zachte 23:48, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WikiUser RfC

Thought you may wish to know that WikiUser has called for your comments at his RfC to be deleted, thinking them to be an attack on him (as he thinks most things are) - . violet/riga (t) 23:09, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

unicode for empty set

Hi Phil, can you explain to me the difference between, and or the advantage of, using {{unicode|∅}} instead of ∅. They both display the same thing for me (Safari, Firefox or IE, on Mac OSX). I know that IE on windows often (always?) fails to render ∅ will this fix that? Thanks in advance. Paul August ☎ 17:16, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

You hit the nail on the head: on my browser (IE6 on XP-Pro) ∅ displays as an empty box (“∅”), whilst {{unicode|∅}} displays as the empty set (“”).

You're probably lucky and both display the same.

--Phil | Talk 09:18, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Will this work for everyone using IE on windows? Or are there still font issues? I would dearly like to get rid of the ugly "{}" notation used in some places on WP, see: empty set and talk:empty set#The empty set symbol. Paul August ☎ 19:24, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

Hugo Awards formatting as table

Got to say, I don't like the look of the current table. This may just be pride of authorship, but what's the advantage over the simple indented list? If you thought the winners weren't emphasized enough, how about just bolding them, or sticking <br/><br/> after them? —wwoods 17:49, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Logo contest foundation

Thanks Phil, I'm flattered.

Angela's response on her Talk page made me chuckle. I've given similar advice to newbies in other volunteer communities myself. "Someone should make a really cool XYZ." "Oh yeah? Make it yourself!"

I took a half-hearted stab at planning a contest but threw my hands up after viewing the labyrinthine structure over at News. Seems like there are three periods of a few weeks apiece - organizational discussions, nominations and voting?

So that means at least four pages to maintain:

messy nominations
edited nominations
messy voting
winner announcement/vote tallies

And a month-long commitment on my part of about 40 hours. Does that sound about right?

Discworld Template

Yeah, I get to be the 100th message! Anyway, I was wondering why you haven't changed the DW template over to your new version. I'd do it myself, but I'm sure you have a reason. -Litefantastic 00:31, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

A combination of "lack of time" and cowardice :-) If you reckon there's sufficient agreement on my new format, I would have no trouble with you doing the switch yourself. If I remember later in the day (RL allowing) I'll have a go myself. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 09:42, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Done! Great work there. violet/riga (t) 10:13, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. --Phil | Talk 10:22, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Robin McKinley

Hi Phil - thanks for the message - the article sounded interesting and then seemed to run straight out of puff after about 4 lines - just leaving a lot of bullet point/listy type stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of intereting stuff to be added - and I would like to read it. Not being a subject I know anythin about - I can't add anything myself. Kind regards Brookie 15:34, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

LOL

That didn't even occur to me when I was listing it. I should have put it in brackets. :) Rick K 05:20, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Road-stub in motorcycle articles

Phil- I don't think {{road-stub}} is the right stub for the Yamaha motorcyle articles. The Category:Road stubs contains roads and highways, and not much else. What these articles really need is a motorcycle-stub—the regular stub should do just fine until that occurs. --Milkmandan 16:49, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Geo-stubs

Hi Phil,

You wrote: You appear to be (sort of) following my fumbling attempts at sorting geo-stubs and refining them.Thank you for doing a good job. I seem to be working off an out-of-date list of geo-stubs: do you know where there is a more up-to-date list?

Thanks for the kudos! There are two that I know of - at the top of Category:Geography stubs, and on one of my user pages (User:Grutness/Stubs), which lists all the stub categories. I'm hoping to get the latter completed and into the Wikipedia proper as soon as I can! As to "geo-stub fumblings", just adding geo-stub is a big help, although learning one or two of the most common geo-stubs (like UK-geo-stub and US-geo-stub) would help more :) Grutness|^hello? 07:44, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Those ones I can just about handle :-) I hate to feed the "systematic-bias" trolls, but it does seem that North America and Europe are very well-covered...

You're right, they are... there are considerably more articles from some of those places... but the systematic bias is at least in part because the English-language Wikipedia is bound to have more people from English-speaking countries. Go to the Japanese Wikipedia, say, and you'll probably find more Far East stubs. As to remembering which one is what, if in doubt try 'Countryname-geo-stub' and preview. If it doesn't work, then just leave it at geo-stub. That will still cut the workload down by a huge amount :). Grutness|^hello? 08:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ISO 3166-2

Hi Phil,

nice that you do some work there and add sorted by name and so on. Do you think having it bold is a good idea? I do not like it, in other places we do not have bold codes neither regards ;-) Tobias Conradi 18:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ideally the key column ought to be bold, since that is the column you search on. So actually in the tables "sorted by name", the name column ought to be bold. That, however, can be sorted out later, in true wiki fashion. For now just constructing the tables and shoving the articles into the new category is enough to be getting on with. (BTW I'm going to continue putting them into category:ISO 3166: I don't think we actually need to break that down further.) HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 10:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

I would like to have it in ISO 3166-2, because there are three parts of the standard and they have really diferent focus. Especially part 1 and 3 are different to part 2. The cat for part 1 (or the general) can include one day ISO 3166-1-derived standards, making this cat much bigger. To have extra cat for ISO 3166-2 therefor is not that bad?

ok, maybe bold is fine, even if I (currently) do not like it. But there shold be the html-tag for /code/ around it. Making it same lenght for xx-mm and xx-ii. Because no the stuff is centered and not really fast readable, because not aligned. best regards Tobias Conradi 15:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ISO 3166-2:DE is an ISO standard which defines geocodes: it is the subset of ISO 3166-2 which applies to Germany. It covers the 16 states (Länder).

that is not true. If at all than ISO 3166-2 is the standard. This writing with :DE is just something I created some years ago.

The part of ISO 3166-2 that applies to Germany provides codes for the names of the 16 states of Germany (länder).

is more correct. I changed it Tobias Conradi 11:35, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Barnstarpages

Heya Phil. I noticed that you merged Template:Barnstars and Template:Barnstarpages. That's very good, but the former template is getting very large, and the latter is quite small. The result is that is a page only wants to list around tha pages, and not the ever-increasing number of stars (such as the Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia pages) is forced to host a bunch of extra baggage. I rolled back the Template:Barnstarpages, but that damn "template for deletion" banner is still there: can we agree to remove it, because Template:Barnstarpages isn't hurting anybody? Cheers! – Clockwork Soul 15:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The problem as I saw it was that both templates were being used on the same pages, and therefore duplicating effort. I therefore merged the small one into the big one on the grounds that the latter was being used everywhere the former one was already and no information would therefore be lost. The current situation is that Template:Barnstarpages is only being used in one place which is not a supportable situation for a template. Unless there are several more places where it might be needed which do not need the full list, it should be substituted into that page and retired.

HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 16:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Babylon 5 Widescreen

I understand that contradicting JMS is tantamount to heresy in the eyes of Babylon 5 fans, however, his words on the widescreen subject are contradicted by the reality of the footage.

I would be doing a disservice to the presentation of fact, to wikipedia, and to the people looking up info here if I was to accept JMS' word over the reality that is staring me in the face.

If JMS said the sky was green, it would, in fact remain blue. Similarly, his words do not affect the reality of the widescreen issue.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments rather than just making an edit.

Ibuki 19:13, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gay Icon Project

I see your point about edit summaries, and I went back today and added to the talk page of every article I categorized an explanation of what I was doing. The list I was merging from seemed to be vandalized, but to what extent I couldn't determine, so except for some ridiculous entries (Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Thatcher), I just categorized EVERYONE on the list and left the work of fact-checking to the people maintaining the articles (who, presumably, know something about those people.) Philwelch 22:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Quarto by email

Hi Phil, a new mailing list has been set up to distribute news about the Wikimedia foundation, specifically at the moment to publicise Quarto. I saw your name on the quarto talk page requesting a copy by email, and I think this mailing list is how we're going to do it for the moment. It'll be a html email, which I've added to the Quarto talk page . Mailing list is called Foundation-news-l (We also need translators!) Cheers

Wikipedia:Official Wikipedia motto

The {{notpolicy}} template is supposed to add the category tag for you. There is an unfortunate edit war going on at Template:notpolicy that has resulted in the tag being removed. I believe the edit war will be resolved shortly. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:28, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe you are correct, particularly given his recent preoccupation with so-called meta-templates. Of course, transclusion is but one of many features that promote organization, consensus, and uniformity of content which he has opposed. The Speedy/VFD process, and the custom of retaining talk page comments both come to mind immediately. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Color info boxes

I thought I'd pop by and mention that your color info boxes are causing some disquiet, with me but others too. I really think the CMYK values in particular should be removed. There was existing talk on Talk:Purple; I also added to Talk:Cyan.

I am thoroughly aware of the problem, and indeed have noted it in several places. The best solution is not to shuffle the problem under the electronic carpet but to discuss it openly. I think the likely best solution is to agree on the appropriate range of values to use for Wikipedia articles, and also make sure we agree on the transformation algorithm. I know that some of the articles talk about values between 0 and 1, but I don't think this displays well; also in most places it is the ratio of values which is important, and the scaling is relatively trivial. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 07:12, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the best place to have this discussion - so let's have it here. The ratios are not really the biggest deal, except that it serves to perpetuate the idea that colors are in the range 0 to 255, which is a world view that can handicap understanding any more detailed discussion. I see several other issues: 1. CMYK conversion. I cannot see anything good in this. I vote to remove CMYK in all cases. By including CMYK values it gives the impression that conversion from RGB to CMYK is some simple fixed function you can look up, rather than a function which needs to take into account the RGB and CMYK properties, printing conditions etc. More harm than good. 2. Color names. For purple, for instance, why THAT purple? Is it a standard? If so, that should be noted. If not, it should somehow indicate "typical" or "exampe". Notinasnaid 08:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! (My signature)

Thanks a bunch for pointing out the error in my signature. I appreciate it! Demi ^T/_C 17:16, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

UN/LOCODE

thx for help and fixing my mistakes :-) There is onw more but I do not knw how to solve. In the change-table I put "I" (capital i) but it should be like in the notes the pipe "|" . I do not know how to put "|" in a table. maybe you? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PlaneShift Screenshots

Captions improved.

Thanks

...for those town coordinates! Lupin 16:52, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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