User talk:Robin Patterson

(See archives:
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2005-04 to 2005-10
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2005-11 to 2006-10)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2006-10 to 2007-06)
 * User talk:Robin Patterson/archive 2007-06 to 2007-09)

PhloxBot is now operational
It is ready to do all cat moves / spam scans / whatever.

You probably will want to put a bot flag on PhloxBot so bot changes can be filterred out. As far as I know, the flag doesn't do anything more than that. -Phlox- (formerly Mak) 03:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok- I set PhloxBot to work on it. I changed the task description per your note. let me know asap if it is doing anything wrong. -Phlox- (formerly Mak) 07:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Completed. I took the liberty of doing the redir and set up the mainenance structure like we did in commons.  If you want it done some other way, feel free.  Regarding the surname template, it's only sets up the category, so I supposed it was for some future purpose of doing something else fancy.  But with a bot you can generate those on pages at any time later by walking the surnames tree.  My call?  I'd investigate with the author and ask around but if I didn't hear anything compelling I'd say nuke them all, replacing with Category Surnames.


 * By the way, if you turned on the bot flag, it isn't working, becuase this morning I finished up a pass, and when I try to hide bots from the recent changes list, it doesn't hide phloxbot changes.

-Phlox- 20:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That's weird about the flag... As bureaucrat on another site, I just had a screen like the one for user preferences, and I could assign admin or bot status from a pull down list. No template, no tool.  Odd.  Ohhhhh.... Wikia accounts are global to all wikias.  I get it.  They probably want to have it so that such powers would be local to a particular wikia, but the rest of the user attributes would be global.  Yep.  That's probably why it is different than other wikis. Regarding admin attitudes, I left a response on my talk page. Oh and check out the Category:Requested moves.  I think that ought to make such cat manipulation a lot more streamlined.

-Phlox- 05:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Template commons et al
(replies to points on Phlox talk page)

"1. I doubt if we need "alsoWP" on a page that links to that WP page in its acknowledgment; but if you like the extra link I'm happy with it (coz I luv that shimmering globe)"
 * Yeah- I kind of went off the deep end for a while last night. But there is something about it- I like it because it boldly calls the users attention to high value.  Leveraging connections with WP gets folks in the Wiki groove.  We are competing with some entrenched sites, and we have to make some pretty good arguments for getting them to spend time here.  The more they think about interconnections with non-proprietary content, and the the success of "Everyone can edit" approaches, the more they will see it is goodness and light.


 * Excellent! Robin Patterson 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"2. What's the advantage of changing "commonscat" as you did?"
 * I didn't change commonscat, maybe Commons? Commons had no cat whatsoever, so I couldn't find it.  added +  so it would appear along with the other interwiki templates.  I never can remember all the names of these templates, so I use the rely on the cats for templates to find them.


 * Understood; you did replace the simple one; see below. Robin Patterson 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"3. Are you sure we don't want a main article on the subject, from a genealogical perspective?"
 * Lost the context- main article on what subject? In general, some of my new articles are just work in progress and I have no idea how to properly organize it during the data gathering phase.  I don't know if subpages is a great idea to encourage.  Haven't thought about it a lot. It is a little obscure....  Maybe one of those is what you are talking about?


 * Yes, that's template:catmore, (which gives "The main article for this category is ..."); restored. I'm not very keen on subpages either, because the category system is so quick and versatile. Robin Patterson 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"4. What's the value of adding "nowiki" to a category link that starts with a colon?"
 * I nowiki'd the link to an example category- because the red text made the page look unprofessional. I was too lazy to look up a good (blue text) live link.


 * Fine. There possibly isn't a live link in that series yet (unless I've done one for a census year). Robin Patterson 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * -Phlox- 19:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Might have been better on your talk page! Anyway, I've just looked again at http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:History_of_the_United_States&curid=15410&diff=45821&oldid=38597. I've restored templates commonscat (a simple way to link to a commons cat of the same name without any pipe) and catmore (ditto for main internal article). Study them if you like. Robin Patterson 06:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah. Now I remember.  The formatting looked odd and I started to look at using something a little more nifty looking that formats both interwiki links tidily- like wikipedia:Template:Commonscat1A.  Then I looked at our copy and it was broken and I didn't want to figure out what was going on with that- really the whole thing was a side track- I only wanted to cat my Ohio history article was all then I kept seeing stuff that was a little wonky.
 * So what is going on with those cat moves in that maintenance category Category:Requested moves I set up? Do you want me to just set the bot churning on those, or should I hang loose? -Phlox- 08:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

United States Census
I know you were copying what WP had, but you violated the placename rule. ~  Ph l o x  16:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

"Object of [Placename]"

Proposal- the way I had it. Most significant differentiator first. Time. Use accepted abbreviations UK instead of United Kingdom, same with US to shorten cat names.

1850 Census of the US etc, then subcats for thus and such state & County.

What you will see on the tab list of your browser is Category 1850... Category 1900...  Your proposal Category:United S...  Category United S....

Sorry, but you must have thought about this before you did it. Just because WP does something doesn't mean we should. In general, if you want to look at some well thought out categories, take a look at the european cat structures. The US one went first and so they made a lot of mistakes that the others benefited from learning from. We can too. ~  Ph l o x  16:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

no precedents
As far as I know, there are no precedents on placenames specific to census's. There is very little categorization of them on wikis. The precedent I was stating was that the europeans generally have much more rationalized categorization schemes. Not that they are not without peculiarities. For example for some odd reason the French categorize all their art by century using roman numerals, but then mix it with a french ending eg XXieme epoch. Anyway- my main point was "United States Census" does not follow the placename pattern. There are censuses. So in the case of censuses do we have an exception? So is it the France Census (Noun form oddness) and the Luxembourgian census (adjective torture)? ~  Ph l o x  05:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * thanks for letting me know my mail was not enabled. I put it in at set up but didn't know it had to be validated before folks could send mail to me.   ~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   08:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

common.css
I think we are good to go for a first cut. What I want you or bill to do is in Forum:Hey Robin or WM- edit MediaWiki:Common.css. You have to have sysop flag to do it.

User:Phlox

Person names and searching
On the person name convention, I don't understand why you felt what I said was unresponsive to your inquiries. What you were asking questions about has to do with the wikia engine, but this isn't about the wikimedia engine at all. It is only about how easily folks can find us. As I pointed out, a lot depends on how we name things. Maybe Yahoo or MSN search works better, but just as no one formats pages so they look ok only on Macs, we can't "format" our articles so they are effectively invisible to the search engine that most folks use. If you think I was being evasive on some point, give me a concrete list of things to answer and I will answer them directly, point for point. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  04:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * good point. I never thought about why the edit reports looked so grungy- yeah it's trivial to put something in the summary.  Now, all I have to do is remember to do it.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   15:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Common.css.
Not a right-hand sidebar on my screen for the example page: almost plumb in the middle. OK, it's to the right of the text, but no way "right-hand". Cologne Blue has its good points and its bad points. I guess a page with no infobox would see it further to the right.

Seriously, now, let's have this template, but let's not make it a Wiktionary - we don't need to read the actual page names the other WPs use.

Excellent work in principle!

Robin Patterson 07:59, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Robin. Robin Robin.  Please fix Common.css.


 * COMMON.CSS COMMON.CSS. I am not kidding. Everything will look screwed until you bring this site in line with WP style sheets.


 * This is extremely important. Don't fiddle with tagging some new templates with cats.  Just follow my instructions and copy my monobook.css to your monobook.css.  Then you will see that the table works just fine.  Put it in common, and everyone will get it too. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   09:02, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


 * RE: Monobook.css


 * Changed mine as begged. I suppose I have to logout and in again before I notice anything. Please remind me where you brought the matter up. Robin Patterson 11:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Forum:Hey Robin or WM- edit MediaWiki:Common.css 21 Sept.  Reminder: User talk:Robin Patterson 2Oct.


 * Go to William I, King of England (1027-1087)/ biography. Now log out and refresh the page.  You should see a big difference.  This is what I am talking about.  It is a huge problem if data cannot fluidly flow between the wikis because we have dissimilar CSS's.  You will notice towards the bottom that Some of the templates are still messed up.  We can bite off more of the css later.  Thanks for taking this first step in verifying what I say is true.
 * - <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  15:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Today, AMK wasted his time trying to "Fix" the William I article because the Common.css fix is not yet in. Could you give us a timeframe on when you can get this in place?  I don't want to waste any more time hacking templates that would work perfectly well if the CSS was fixed.  It really pains me to see AMK struggling with edits on William I simply because he doesn't have a functional monobook.css.  He shouldn't have to understand any of this junk.  It should just work for everyone.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   04:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please also copy over wikia:MediaWiki:Common.js. This is a straight wikia thing so I would think you would not have any reservations about that one.  After moving that over, you will notice that Template:Hidden and other collapsible boxes have a functional Hide/show button.


 * If you are not comfortable with this level of technical stuff, I'd be happy to do it but will need a sysop flag. I'll faithfully follow whatever restrictions on rights usage/ whatever process guidelines you want for changes to css and js. But we need to get moving on this.  I know you have a life in the real world, but it's been two weeks since I brought this up.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   00:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

OK: looked fairly hard at William I; logged out; looked at him again; noticed no appreciable differences; looked carefully through the article again to try to memorise it all (!); logged in again; looked at him again; no real differences apparent. Please specify things that I should see differently. Maybe you should first check my monobook thingy to see that I copied it right. Robin Patterson 02:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The instructions were to go to William I, King of England (1027-1087)/ biography. The difference will smack you in the face- it is not a subtle difference.  The infobox will be flush left with the body of the article following it- really an ugly mess.


 * Log it, with the css code, and it will be flush right, with all the text nicely on the left just like a WP article looks.   You don't see that when you log in?  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   02:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * See it?


 * I don't know whether I need to know what "Log it, with the css code" means. I've now followed the original instructions twice right through. My views of that page, logged out or logged in, have the infobox flush left (with a big blank to the right of it, which I thought might be something to do with the tabs thing), which is admittedly ugly, but it's not a "difference". And the other page I talked about (above) - Adela of Normandy (c1062) still had that interwiki box almost slap in the middle either way as mentioned, last time I looked.
 * Meant, log back in, and with the css code, you will see a nicely... <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   03:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Have you invited AMK to change his monobook thingy?


 * Robin Patterson 02:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Now copy wikia:MediaWiki:Common.js to your User:Robin Patterson/monobook.js. Refresh this page, and you will see a hide/show button on the test wikitext below:


 * Cool huh. Put it in common.js and the css in common.css and everyone gets it.  Find some glitches?  No problem, just revert.  This shouldn't be like pulling teeth here.  You can revert it after 1 minute.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   02:38, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Your CSS is fine. Do you see the difference now after loggin out or don't you?  If not be sure and refresh the page.  If not, tell me your browser- Both Firefox and IE6 and IE7 work just fine with this CSS.  And it's not just infobox but Navboxs- look at the end of the biography article.  The English Monarchs template is messed up in a long thin column, the PERSONDATA junk is showing and should be invisible- it's just a fricking mess without the WP css.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   02:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, I went over to Knife Maker account and danged if you aren't absolutely correct. I saw what you saw.  Apparently you have to do your monobook.js as well.  So copy the wikia common.js to your monobook.js as described above.  Then go back to the william bio article.  Hit refresh (Cntl-F5 if in IE), and you should see the pretty version of the article.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   03:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Losing threads, maybe. Starting at the bottom here. I did the js thing. Refreshed this page twice but no hide/show button on the test wikitext. Maybe you now expect that. Awaiting further advice but will go to William anyway. Robin Patterson 03:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What browser are you using? If IE, did you press CNTL-F5?  The instructions on the .js and .css page gives the commands for the other browsers.  Did you do them?
 * Mozilla / Firefox / Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload, or press Ctrl-Shift-R (Cmd-Shift-R on Apple Mac); IE: hold Ctrl while clicking Refresh, or press Ctrl-F5; Konqueror:: simply click the Reload button, or press F5
 * <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  03:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

AMK confirms it- check his user talk page. Guess what- half of those templates you imported that never seemed to work- most of them work now. I don't know why this site has been struggling for so long with incompatible .css's and .js's. Maybe you need to get a good technical advisor. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  04:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Please explain the problem and the solution at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Using_Wikipedia_Template:Navigation_generic. It shouldn't, presumably, be something 3,000 Wikia administrators have to do when one Central staff member could do it. Robin Patterson 04:33, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Do I understand from your response that you see that what I say is true?


 * It appears that the folks on the Wikia forum understand the problem and the solution. The Psych wikia's Navbox generic has been altered to work without WP's tidyhtml thing.  The psych site understood about the CSS and .JS thing- as you will see from examining their's.  However ours is superior.  For example if you copy over their common.cs and .js, you will see that the PERSONDATA stuff appears at the bottom of the biography page.


 * Why does the Wikia staff not give everyone as a default, a Common.CSS and Common.JS that closely matches Wikipedia/Common's? That's a process question for wikia.  There is probably a good answer.  If I had to take a guess, maybe it had to with an estimation that folks would be better off starting with a clean slate and would like to build radically different looks and feels than Wikipedia.  Who knows.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   05:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Pretty, and hideable too.
... etc etc.


 * I recommend you use the copy of monobook.css that I gave to AMK. When you save to Common.css (by the way- can we set a day?), it won't look grungey like your copy.  I also put in a few comments about what I did.  Your .js is fine and you can copy that right over.

<font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  09:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * More work remains. The errors due to the absense of HTMLtidy have not gone away- any templates that use html tables in a conditional statement is going to be screwed up.  For example- Navbox collapsible.  I can hack them by hand, but it is rather tedious.  All that is required is to convert html table tags to wikitext table notation- except you have to use | for all the pipes.  These are not trivial templates and it makes you go cross-eyed just looking at all the parens... One little bracket missing and you are debugging an exceptionally boring piece of code.   Anyway, enough whining from me. I think it will be a lot more fluid bringing material over from WP from now on... <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   09:24, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * They look very good. Overwhelming. But I'm a bit disappointed that you're not prepared to tackle Central Wikia about it all. (Why didn't you tell me instructions on a css or js file might be for me to read, not just for a computer to read? "Refresh", you said; so I used my one-click IE6 "Refresh" button as always.)

Tomorrow. Robin Patterson 10:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Robin, just step back for a moment here. We are working on nothing less than the seed of the collective world history of every family in the world.  The mountain of work we have is staggering, and it is imperative that we focus.  We have one heck of a lot of foundation work to do here.  Sure we are in a larger community- wikia's problems are equally staggering and we carve some time out of our duties to help out there too.  After I get more conversant on porting WP, I will take time and write some help for wikia central.  How does that sound.
 * As for the poor communication on refresh, it was my error. When I started this, I saw no difference between a refresh and a CNTL-F5.  I was wrong about that.  What we call a refresh just refreshes the page- it will not get a new copy of the css and .js.  Cntl-F5 does this bigger refresh and will also request a new copy of the CSS and JS.  I suspected the difference was important by the time I was speaking to you, but I still was using the term refresh to refer to both.  To be fair though, I did spell out that you had to perform the "refresh" by doing cntl-F5 if using IE.


 * Anyway, don't worry be happy. We'll have some more mountains to climb tomorrow.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   18:36, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yay! but a little oopsie there. There is a reason why I said "I recommend you use the copy of monobook.css that I gave to AMK."  It's because I have been running experiments with mine.  The .js you copied is fine, but the css you copied from mine was not good.  Please copy the .CSS from User:AMK152/monobook.css to common.css.  Also- When you are finished, you should delete your monobook.js and monobook.css.  Otherwise, you will see stuff like double hide buttons if you don't.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   23:33, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

CSS now on MediaWiki from AMK's version as requested
From a plethora of instructions I managed to pick the second or third instead of the one after. Now got it right. That's enough hard work for one day. I may look for double hide buttons just to see what differences we get. Robin Patterson 03:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that Robin. We just took a big leap forward in capability.  When you get tired of seeing double, blank your monobook.js and monobook.css.  We might like to put a warning on the css and jss pages, like what commons does on theirs.
 * If you have been directed here because of a note on your talk page, please be very certain you know the user who left it for you. If not, the code may contain malicious content, which can compromise your account and lead to your being blocked.
 * <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  05:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the data. Don't see any huge problems there.    <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   08:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's always hazardous to say something will be a piece of cake, but I cannot say that I saw any major areas of difficulty when I scanned the file. However, I can't do anything substantial with this for a few weeks.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   08:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

11PM here. Kids are up at 6 so it's off to eyelid theater for me. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x 

WP link backs
Please don't change any internal link "back" to Wikipedia unless certain that the world's best genealogy wiki will never want a page by that name. A considerable number of links that I have just reverted have had their own page here for some time. Pages we don't yet have, but should, are mostly easier to create from such links (eg from Special:Wantedpages or by an interested reader) than any other way. And where a WP link is in the standard piped format, please don't convert it to the clever template, because that's much harder to redirect internally when the time comes to do that (two highlights and two pairs of brackets - sometimes more if there's punctuation adjoining either end - as against a single very easy highlight and delete). Robin Patterson 12:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Red text is good. But too much red text means our site looks, and in fact is, broken because it is useless to visitors.  I don't like sending visitors away any more than you, and that is part of the reason why I bury the biography article.  But sending them to wp is better than the visitor concluding they should never click on genealogy.wikia links or hits because they think the site is useless.  I want them to get a big payoff every time they visit.


 * WP high quality articles are a major asset, and leaving red text is the right thing to do if our visitors were interested not in adding genealogy articles on their family members but on creating general info articles. I don't think we want to turn those vistors off that way, and the WP template does that.  But it also does not defeat our purposes.  Starting today, where it is used, the template will not forward to WP if there is an existing article on genealogy.  Nothing needs to be changed at all when a new article is added to genealogy.  As for tracking? for us, we can quickly see articles that still have WP links by looking at the WP usage page.  And at any point in time, the template can be turned off entirely by editing it to not redirect links any more.  No bots.  Simple.


 * I don't make it a practice of hunting down existing articles with huge amounts of red text and convert them WP. I usually only use the mass convert on stuff I move over.   Mostly you will see me doing there where there are a couple hundred links per wp article I import, it's not practical to check every one of those links.  It means you are asking me to not use Template:wp at all.  We have this great asset of the WP high quality article, and what does it do for us?  It sends them away.  Most people are interested in adding content on their family members, not for famous people.     it looks broken because everytime a vistor trys to use a link, they get a blank page asking if they'd like to add an article.


 * Not using WP creates an unwelcoming, "under massive construction" feel to the site. With the current method, all of our links are not broken. WP does have the disadvantage of making it appear as if work is done on an article.


 * How about if I only use it on the first page of an article? That way visitors can get a more pleasant reaction from clicking hyperlinks, but contributors will see that much work remains to be done on the article.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   16:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the well-reasoned reply on my talk page. Food for thought. What say you lay off pages I've copied from WP or redirected links on, but do your magic on any others you feel like?

I'll be preparing some requests for PhloxBot to copy (and modify) lots of basic date and place articles from WP; can he do that?

Robin Patterson 01:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Apologies and response on bot request

 * I didn't realize the damage. Please accept my sincere apologies.  I am sorry.  Certainly, I'll not modify former wp articles of yours.  Fortunately we have reverts to quickly remove such inadvertent damage.


 * Bot Please submit the kinds of manipulations you'd like PhloxBot to do. It would be specially easy for me if you could give me an example of a before article (history list link) and an after article (current version).  Give an example of each sort of manipulation you want done.  Then give a list of articles it should be performed on.  Eg- all in category foo or scan every article in namespace 0, or ... whatever.   Thanks  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   01:45, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


 * (GRRR - edit conflict; but your heading is better than the one I had drafted) OK, I'll list them separately on your talk page as requested. Many of them might be basically copying a WP "page name plus categories" only (eg every page in a WP category such as "Ohio counties") and creating a page of that name here using our model. Is that a piece of cake in principle? Robin Patterson 02:01, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Manipulating existing pages on a single wikia with things like where the old article has the birth year and death year in a person template, and the new article has an added category
 * Copying wp pages? Well grumble.  Last I left it, I spent about 4 hours and couldn't get the bot to talking to both wikipedia and our wikia simultaneously.  It's supposed to do it, and the debugger is a little crude, so I couldn't figure out why.  Worst case I know I can unload to a file then re-upload, but I'd rather do it the right way.  Anyway, that is not a piece of cake and so I have to ask that I not do that for a week or so.  My wife is holding a gun to my head on some other things, so I can't press it.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   02:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

We do have SVG support
I don't think we can use SVG here yet. Robin Patterson 11:34, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I pointed out a month ago that you have a mistaken impression in that regard. Image:Flag of Malaysia.svg


 * Personally, I don't see the huge advantage of them and it would be ok by me if we encouraged png rather than svgs. Some folks assume you need an svg for transparent backgrounds, but that is not so.  PNG handles this just fine.  If we thought these pages might go to print publication, then yeah, I can see an argument, but otherwise they are a lot of bother.


 * That said- we can upload them now and use them in articles. There is a delay between the time you upload them and the time you first use them in an article.  The graphic may appear blank for several minutes- even up to an hour if the server jobs queue is backed up.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   17:05, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Ta. I may check that Central Wikia has updated its list. I don't remember you pointing out the change, but I see that flag. No hint of license... -) Robin Patterson 22:30, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * hardehar. Used commons message makes a statement about licensing, and the fact it is on commons is sufficient to cover any administrative concerns about the image rights. From a user perspective, user can go to original at commons for the original source of the image, and extremely detailed license info.  Perhaps we could add something of that nature to the usedcommons template, eg check if image namespace and add the extra note on being able to find detailed info on license on commons.  Later on, when we have the wp extraction thing working I will be able to scan all images with usedwp or usedcommons (ok ok and that enWP thing you insist on still using), go to the wp or commons page, copy all the source, description, rights and comment info and move it over to our copy. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   21:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It was in Genealogy talk:First Steps/Image quality and description- I said that there is no problem uploading them. You said you couldn't find any. I gave an example on a wikia site.    <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   23:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

SVG - I see now that you did tell the world in general that svg files can appear on at least one Wikia site; then you uploaded one to ours; no longer any doubt. (My old PC probably can't handle them, so I may be one of the activists who doesn't upload any!). I've made appropriate alterations to our image instructions on MediaWiki and added "svg" to the Central Wikia list.


 * Maybe not the world- I was unaware that the central wikia site is where you picked this up, or I would have corrected it myself.

You were, I think, recently grizzling about folks who upload images without proper source acknowledgment. Surely you should therefore be among those who try to obey the official instructions on Help:Image copyright tags, which ask for images to be tagged with the license info so that people who care can keep track of them (not just noting where the image comes from so that checkers have to look there). It's pretty easy: when I copy from Commons I just copy and paste the Commons image info straight from its edit box into ours with a brief intro such as "From Commons, which says:" (and if there's a Commons user mentioned, I prefix "Commons:" to his or her link). Often that gives our image a ready-made subject-matter category as well as the license category.

Robin Patterson 00:22, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Copying as you suggest will result in a broken message 90% of the time because most of their content use license tags we don't have. Forcing the user to do this stuff is pointless busy work.   With all due respect the only interest from an administration perspective is that the license is valid.  It is a trivial click to verify the existence on commons.  That's all you need to verify, because their standards are more strict than ours.  If you want category tracking, then simply add a cat to the used commons template.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   01:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't mind copying the Commons licensing tag for any image I copy that way. I won't stop you doing it your way, and I'm sure you'll have a vigorous response to Wikia management if they criticise you. Robin Patterson 02:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If they insist, that's fine with me. But really it seems like it satisfies their legal, business, and administrative interests, plus it has the advantage of allowing wikia's to bulk up faster on images.  If I can cross the T by getting the two wiki transfer thing working real soon now, then the whole thing is moot anyway.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   03:16, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Our practice should be that if it came from commons, then usedcommons is sufficient. Let a bot copy over that material, as well as cat any that have been subsequently deleted due to copyvio.  Let's not make it super hard to move images over from commons, ok?  It's time consuming enough without adding barriers that are more a convenience for administration rather than delivering any practical or legal value.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   01:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * When your bot is talking to other websites again, I'd be delighted if it could give us all of the county locator maps from Commons. Robin Patterson 02:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the first task on the list, unless you have anything that is genealogy only, in which case I can do a run real fast.


 * It talks to one at a time just fine. I just ran into a glitch talking to two.  It's supposed to do it, and I'm sure I'll straighten it out, if someone else doesn't get their pywikipedia bot working faster than I do.  I gave the instructions to AMD but I guess he didn't have any luck getting his working.  I just need to have more than 2 hours at a time to focus on it- which I don't have right now.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   03:16, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Template:Tnavbar-header
Even though there is only one page using this template and there is zero vandal threat here, I agree these sorts will be heavily used and a case can be made to lock them in advance as you have been doing.

I ask a favor though. Could you eyeball the output first? If you see an html tidy bug as in this one (trailing /div error), please don't lock it- just drop me a note or flag it with Category:Htmltidy bug and I'll try and attend to them. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  07:02, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

PhloxBot's new trick- Image xfer works

 * PhloxBot Image xfer is now working- it moves the text of the image too, so I think I have the hard problems solved with automated transfers from WP, Commons, or any other wikimedia based engine. Looking promising.


 * Can you point me to a WP article and a genealogy version of the same that is representative of the set of articles you want PhloxBot to start off on? EG- with whatever title name change, whatever sections & cats added, with whatever text from sections deleted?   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   09:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)