User talk:Phlox

It would help some of us to know how you discovered this site.

Robin Patterson 01:18, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I was going to install a wikimedia engine on my family's site, but when investigating, it seemed to me that the scope would be too much for my site, due to the tree growth to other families. A general genealogy wiki would be ideal but I didn't want to fund/administer/arrange the ads to sustain it.  So when I discovered wikia was doing it, I was in with both feet. -Knife Maker 01:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

(I hope you transferred or memorised other places to find all the helpful links in the welcome message! - Robin)

Emigrants etc
I'm pleased to see some more bunches of migratory people being categorised. We had a flurry of them (in July, I think) when Bill was tinkering with the Mayflower and Jillaine was working in the same part of the U.S. I managed to keep a little way ahead, frantically copying Wikipedia categories (with a few from Commons where I thought they were more logical) and adding new articles or categories to them. Bill tends to add categories as an afterthought, and Jillaine was very new and willing to be guided. Mostly British and Swedish there. Now you give us some Swiss. Of course you know that immigrants are to somewhere, not from the named place, but you must have overlooked the precise terminology in the excitement of getting everybody categorised. Now that I've almost caught up, you'll notice a "category redirect". I think there's a bot that can redirect affected pages semi-automatically; but if we can't find one I may be persuaded to spend a few minutes correcting the pages manually - relatively simple to highlight "Im" and type "E". Please continue using category:Emigrants from Switzerland and consider creating subcategories of it, as is now suggested on a couple of relevant pages.

Robin Patterson 14:15, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah- Bots are perfect for this sort of thing, and it is a relief because it is trivial to do changes (even massive ones) for whatever reason- after novices have come in and made messes, or that it was decided that there was a better way of naming/ organizing.  After they are set up, it is no big deal.  If you can handle a wikitext table, you can do a bot.  Setting them up is a little bit of a hassle.
 * If you wish, I will dust off my bot scripts and install the latest and greatest pywikipedia bot code on my machine. I'd be happy to do whatever other cat rename tasks that have been piling up.  Perhaps you have a page listing maintenance tasks? Seems to me that Adjective placename pattern is a bad idea. EG:


 * swedish emigrants -> emigrants from Sweden
 * english emigrants -> emigrants from England
 * australian people -> people of Australia
 * dutch americans -> Ancestry from the Netherlands (?)
 * two problems here. Someone from Brazil is an american too, but imagine the edit wars when some folks accurately start Brazilians "portugese americans" cat too.  Second problem is that the cat says two things- where they came from and where there are now.  So really, the where they are now should be in some neutral non pov kind of name like Resident of [countryname].  Resident because if you use citizen then you alienate huge migrant populations in the US and Europe.  Sure you can combine them into a single cat, but it would get torturous.  So what do you do with Portuguese American?  Resident of USA with ancestors from Portugal?  Jeez.
 * Anyway- No big deal if you don't want to do anything on it. As a guy with swiss blood running in his veins, I like things to be tidy and uniform, but I see the opposite side of the argument. I don't care enough to engage in the endless debates over cat names but really there shouldn't be multiple ways of naming particular classes of category names.  A lot easier to establish the pattern now, and head off a lot of work downstream.
 * So look, Robin- if point me to a list of To Do maintenance tasks, I'll take a look at them and see which might be well suited to bots. My general practice was to put up a warning message with a pointer to a discussion page.  Leave the message for two weeks and if no raging debates, do the cat rename.  Later, run the bot to undo errors / exceptions for intrasigent/lowd complainers that inevitably crop up.
 * I guess we have a super small population now, so I could skip the warning message bit.
 * I'm not signing up for running such a bot on a regular basis, but I wouldn't mind knocking off some tasks on your list if they aren't super complicated
 * How does that sound? -Mak 17:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Progress by October 2007
Discussed to some extent elsewhere. Now several of us seem to be harmoniously creating categories for migrants and similar classes along the lines hinted at above, falling into the following groups (not always respecting Wikipedia's names, which are not a perfect set of standards in this area, particularly where they confuse nationality with locality as you have noted above): Maybe it's time for a Forum:Categories for people by place starting with most of this section and some of what preceded it. Robin Patterson 12:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) People from X (whether or not they stayed; in accordance with the scheme you led me to on Commons and I adapted then I got reprimanded for violating it and apologised )
 * 2) Emigrants from X (obviously they were not among those who stayed)
 * 3) Immigrants to Y
 * 4) Combinations of the above, eg Immigrants from Europe to the United States - or is it the other way around? - maybe we could standardise and remove ambiguity by instead calling them Migrants from X to Y; of course their category will be a subcategory of both #2 and #3 above
 * 5) Locational subdivisions of any of the above, eg [*]migrants from Switzerland to Ohio - these can arise whenever we have a decent number of folks in such a group, and the "parent" categories could all have a short intro inviting the creation (and defining the form) of such subcategories.

Category redirect
Thanks for all of that, Mak. You and I will get on like a house on fire.

I presume the bot runs without supervision on any task you set it to.

First task (after the Immigrants from Switzerland, which you may have done already) : please look at http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category_talk:Lists_of_People_by_Surname#We_could_do_without_this_category and leave it a week or two (as you suggest above) then see what you can do. (Remind me to check those "templates" and fix any that still have that cat. There are some "decade" and other cats I want to add to them, so I'm not inviting you or AMK to do that.)

Robin Patterson 15:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

As discussed later, no need for a warning on this one. Impressive work, bot! One hit every 10 seconds - faster than a human could do on dialup, and I was pleased to see that it covered the duplication problem.

But the final "redirect" looks like an attempt to see if I'm awake. I'll switch it to a standard "category redirect"; and it or that link will lead you to my reasons why. Robin Patterson 04:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[Shortly after:] Hmmm - you've done it your way (a way I thought was impossible), which looks as if it may have advantages as long as we do have that occasional bot run to fix new miscategorised pages. My email said "The summary of the edit is: "Redirecting to Category:Sculptors from Germany", which is something of an understatement or red herring. If I'd been half asleep it would have woken me.

Category:Wikia maintenance
Robin Patterson 15:25, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Adieu, Mak the Knife
Doubtless you will remain at the cutting edge. Your ranking on Wikistats will be understated unless you can get Mak's contributions reattributed! Robin Patterson 01:15, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You probably guessed I care very little about that sort of thing. Now if the beer doesn't come in a red and black can, then there is something to care about. -Phlox- (formerly Mak) 02:01, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Before forgetting Mak entirely, can you confirm that everything on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Makthorpe can be tentatively assumed to apply to Genealogy wherever relevant? Robin Patterson 03:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you mean Bot Policy on the MakBot page or my user page? In any case, yes to both.  If user page, I don't know what on there you are refering to, but it should be accurate.  -Phlox- (formerly Mak) 03:09, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Not bothering to go back there just now; the bit I noticed particularly was the desire NOT to be an admin. OK! Tell us if you change your mind here. Robin Patterson 04:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh that. It had to do with Commons politics and preempting any nomination from a few hooligans who would have enjoyed nothing better than to embarass me with a popularity contest vote/ and airing their grievances of my transgressions on Commons. If Commons needed admins that would be one thing but they didn't so my name was off the list. Besides, if you are an admin, it tends to be constraining if you really want to spend most of your time doing the kinds of radical experiments I liked to carry out. It's a lot harder to be an outlaw and challenge existing conventions if you are also a cop. Another thing I detested was how a lot of new folks with good opinions tended to shut up once someone with admin flags has spoken on a topic. It's just a bunch of horse manure and I wanted folks to speak their minds about what I was doing/saying. Here, all of that big wiki stuff is irrelevant.


 * It is very kind of you to think of me that way in so short a period. If you need an extra admin around to keep I'll pitch in, but with 4 kids below 7 years of age, I oftentimes will disappear for months at a stretch. -Phlox- 05:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Wiki's mailing list
If you are a subscriber to the list you will see or have seen a copy of the reply I got via the Central mailing list explaining why I couldn't find Special:Makebot. Wikia doesn't have it yet. So there may be an occasional swamping of "Recent changes" until we have that. Ho-hum. Robin Patterson 05:03, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

U.S. history can enlighten at least one of us!
See http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:History_of_the_United_States&curid=15410&diff=45821&oldid=38597


 * 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)
 * 2) What's the advantage of changing "commonscat" as you did?
 * 3) Are you sure we don't want a main article on the subject, from a genealogical perspective?
 * 4) What's the value of adding "nowiki" to a category link that starts with a colon?

Kind regards and continued thanks for all your improvements.

Robin Patterson 14:18, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * (Responses back and forth at http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Robin_Patterson#Template_commons_et_al)

Category talk:Requested moves
Category talk:Requested moves - please hang loose until more people have commented? (Way past my bedtime, so don't expect more from me in the next 7 hours!) Robin Patterson 15:57, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok- if you have an organizer/ weekly minder, could you put an entry to a few weeks or month out and post me a note when it is ready to go? I can't believe someone won't comment at least two of the transformations.  Anyway could you send me a note when the appropriate time comes- I am going to forget all about this subject in about 3 days.  -Phlox- 16:47, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


 * My desk diary has reminded me to post you a note accordingly. But you're busy with much more exciting and impressive things, so don't hurry on my account. I forget whether I looked at all of the proposals. This wiki was once slow enough for me to study every edit that was not on an individual's page or a surname category, and a few that were too. Robin Patterson 11:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Template:Ahnentafel/doc
Template:Ahnentafel-doc on Wikipedia now redirects to Template:Ahnentafel/doc. So I've made ours match, carrying over your "category:tree templates" improvement. It's a fast-changing world!

I've not checked back to see what that does to the "transclusion" note that appeared on your "compact5" (which alerted me to a possible problem). Tomorrow is another day...

Robin Patterson 14:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

US Census
Sorry I didn't consult widely enough before making some category names match the names of the existing articles that were going to be their main articles. Please add some guideline recommendations to Forum:Census pages, including links to the European cat names that you say were an improvement on the US ones. Robin Patterson 04:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Moving onwards and upwards, you should be pleased to see Genealogy talk:By location category scheme. Robin Patterson 05:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

People pages - what should follow YOB?
You as an upholder of naming conventions may like to look at things such as what we put after the "(YOB" for a person whose death date is unknown or who is presumed or known to be still living. A couple of contributors have suggested that "-)" is better than "-?)" for people known to be still alive (though, as you know, we don't encourage pages for living people anyway). It could be a good idea to get a recent consensus before giving PhloxBot more jobs related to person names. See Genealogy:Page_names. There may be other things on that page that could benefit from a viewing by your fresh pair of experienced eyes too! Robin Patterson 04:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Email
Bill and I correspond by email occasionally so as not to risk embarrassing other contributors. I would (and others might) welcome the same arrangement with you whenever appropriate. You can keep your address hidden while still allowing people to email you, if you enable the appropriate email box(es) in your Preferences. Robin Patterson 04:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Copying templates from Wikipedia
Great work you are doing with that copying (as far as I have checked, which is not far)!! Robin Patterson 14:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Edit summaries[,] please
Small quibble - if you were to put something brief in the edit summary, such as my usual "From Wikipedia", the Recent changes page would be shorter and easier to scroll through, as would Special:Contributions/Phlox. (If your computer/browser combination works like mine, previous edit summaries will appear on a clickable menu when you type the initial letter(s).)

Later: thanks for replying. In our Preferences there's now an option to be reminded if you try to save without an edit summary. Mine's turned on. Robin Patterson 11:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Clickable Maps
Thank you for the note on Clicable Maps. Also works with images. I've used them in the past, though the precision limitations makes them less useful than they might be. Bill 22:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

Done the js thing but his infobox is still on the left. See my talk page. Robin Patterson 03:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

CSS problem solution?
...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. ~  Ph l o 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)

Template
Thanks for coming over to Psychology wiki and helping out on the templates. It is much appreciated. I will get back to you with any problems Dr Joe Kiff 15:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It is a pleasure to be of service Joe. If you have any need of an Bot runs (any tedious chores requiring renames- search and replace terms in all articles or mass category moves) let me know.   ~  Ph l o x   16:39, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

GEDCOM
I'm pleased no huge problems are foreseen. So I guess the answer to my question about pasting my gedcom into a wiki page and having the wiki turn it into individuals' pages is a tentative "yes"? (But now you can do the pasting etc?!!) Robin Patterson 08:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Timezones
What time is it at your place?! Robin Patterson 08:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Internal links to dates, places, and people
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)

WP link backs
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)

Categorizing birth and death year pages
More than half of the wanted categories at present seem to be "Births in ...." or deaths ditto (derived from people page "templates"). We may later change all the names to match Wikipedia's ambiguous but simpler ".... births" etc, presumably easy for PhloxBot to change. Meantime, the desired parent categories deserve to be created, because they can match WP now, I think, as I have been recently doing with the NZ Wikia - eg http://newzealand.wikia.com/wiki/Category:1921_births. May I prepare a set of layperson-language instructions for you to translate? Any preliminary ideas?

Robin Patterson 02:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

PhloxBot difficulties working with WP and Wikia together
Thanks for the tipoff there. For the case I was talking about, we have an easy workaround: If that's workable, some time in the next few weeks after any domestic essentials, let me know and I'll start hunting for lists. Robin Patterson 11:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) I copy a WP "List of counties in Xyzz" to here and tell you its name
 * 2) bot can:
 * 3) create pages (possibly by running through "wanted pages" looking for "County, Xyzz") for all its redlinks (unless some zealous fellow has turned them all back to WP!!!!)
 * 4) give them our standard model content (which makes use of magic words and thus probably needs little or no tweaking, though it will need to include the category that WP had).