User talk:WMWillis



People templates
Bill, I have used and improved the standard one, but I know that most of the recent contributors haven't.

I like some of the ideas on yours. Probably worth commenting at its Talk page some time; probably not today.

Adding a button on the sidebar isn't too hard but I've never personally done it. You could read w:Help:Sidebar to see. It needs sysop status, so I have plans for that!

Robin Patterson 01:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It may be a while before I can arouse the interest of someone with power to make you a sysop; so I'll tinker with the sidebar myself. Robin Patterson 03:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Admin nomination
Four tildes at Genealogy:Requests_for_adminship, please! Robin Patterson 02:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

See User_talk:Robin_Patterson and invite Margie and a couple of others to put a word in for you. Robin Patterson 20:20, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As you may know, Bill, I invited Angela to use her powers to give you the "status", but she bestowed the anointing power on me (not the first time she has made me a wiki bureaucrat). I checked out the other nominators: good reliable contributors, apparently. So you now have some extra capabilities, including such timesavers as instant rollback of spam and obscenity. I have every confidence that your use of the powers will be considered and responsible. --Robin Patterson 00:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Formatting tips or reminders
(That's just in case you hadn't caught up with those.)
 * 1) Hash at the start of a line creates a numbered item.
 * 2) Paragraph straight after a starred or hashed line will be new paragraph without needing "break" code or blank line.
 * 3) Star and hash lines can both have sublists using two or more of said symbol.
 * 4) How many do you want?!
 * Don't overdo it; the hash ones in particular can get their numbers wrong if too much gets inserted...
 * 1) Clear as mud?

Bibliographic references can be done as footnotes with clever MediaWiki template coding (which produces superscript numbering in the text and lists the detail at the bottom if you're lucky). We have some of that already copied to this wikia, used for my great-...-great-uncle Lord_Protector_Oliver_Cromwell_%281599-1658%29, but I can quickly (and anyone else can theoretically) do more of that sort of thing if it's useful. Find a Wikipedia page with lots of them, look at and below its Edit box, and you may get enough ideas to see whether we need better systems.

Robin Patterson 03:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Page creation and sidebar link to it
I can probably do the button today. I spent some of yesterday (along with major work on making the anonymous but excellent Shivas page much more useful and dealing with New page!) making the button's intended target really comprehensive; and with one addition that came to mind last night it should be ready in the next 5 hours (allowing the employer 4 hours!). See Help:Starting pages. Robin Patterson 20:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)