User talk:AMK152

Haeremai, talofa, Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome, welkom
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Enjoy!

Good to see some more from Europe.

--Robin Patterson 09:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back! Robin Patterson 12:28, 27 May 2007 (UTC) in New Zealand

Save yourself some time
Don't bother changing to. Functionally it achieves nothing, because the software automatically capitalizes the first letter of every pagename (and of whatever follows a namespace prefix). Except in the search box!! Robin Patterson 15:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Another small point - instead of "nowiki" for a category,, you can just insert a colon -  Category:Smith Surname; less typing/clicking, and another advantage being that it's a clickable link in case your readers want to look at the page. Same idea as quoting images pages. Robin Patterson 01:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Genealogy:Surname category template
Genealogy:Surname category template is as easy to paste as a category (which it includes), and it gives much more scope for developing the surname links. Maybe you just haven't found it (although it is listed near the top of the "Create a page" page)? I've recently applied it to a few surname categories which you had created which were shared by my relatives.

To make it fully meaningful, one must change "Unknown" to the particular surname in three places. Not altogether very much more work than pasting the bare category.

I commend it to your attention. If you think it needs improvement, well, it's not set in stone!

Robin Patterson 01:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary categories?
I'm pleased you are standardising on Category:Surnames and getting rid of that more wordy one that was once thought to be a good idea but has not come to anything (and is in title case, which always irritates me).

But please don't delete recently-created categories unless there's a consensus among active members. The birth and death "decade" categories are expected to have value even for people whose birth and death dates are known. For example, if one researcher gives a person a precise birth date, the decade entry will reduce the chance that another researcher of that person will give an approx date that's different and start duplicating the page, possibly never finding the match.

Robin Patterson 10:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, didn't know. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 17:57, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Happy anniversary!
One year since your first edit.

Many happy returns!

Robin Patterson 13:50, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 14:01, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Can I save you some more time?
Please see http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category_talk:Lists_of_People_by_Surname#We_could_do_without_this_category

Robin Patterson 15:08, 6 September 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)
 * Robin got a little loopy last night and posted this on my talk. Think he meant it for you.  Interesting template. BTW  ~  Ph l o x   16:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot
I saw your questions about pywikipedia on the general wikia site. I can give you the family and user-config files that will work with genealogy if you like. ~  Ph l o x  00:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 22:08, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok. Try this.  User:Phlox/pywikipedia setup.   Let me know if you run anything funky.  Please feel free to improve the help on it.  It would be nice to have something that anyone from any Wikia can use.

Mabel?
Response here: Talk:William Albini (1165) ~  Ph l o x   23:55, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

if template
Wikimedia help for parserFunctions explains how to check for an undefined parameter. You can read it for yourself on meta.wikimedia, but here it is:

= undefined

Or do I misunderstand what this If template is for? If I don't, this template should be nuked as should the one on wikia, because such logic templates are a huge load on the servers. Reduction of server loading is the main reason why the parserFunctions were written, and why such logic templates are now deprecated. ~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  03:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:17, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

County pages
Please see http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:County_Pages_Idea#.22Model_County.2C_Statename.22_articles if you haven't already.

I mentioned it on the email list, nearly two days ago, but few people see that, apparently.

Robin Patterson 13:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Deaths and births by decade, etc
Please see Template talk:Deathsbydecade before doing lots more work in that area. Robin Patterson 07:02, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

changing names
The existing article for William's mother was Matilda of Flanders (About 1031-1083). Created in 2005 with that name by John Kenney.

You changed the info page, but didn't move the article so the link would work.

It would be a pain to always have to look up all the places that might have used the old article name, so I have fixed it so it is unnecessary to update Info pages at all. I reverted your fix of the info page to illustrate this.

If you look at William I, King of England (1027-1087)/info, you will see it has the old name, but the article doesn't use this value. Instead it reflects whatever the current article name. So really there is no need to go back and mess with info pages to correct their links because the link values work even if they reflect the former names. If you see a bad article name, just click the link, move the article, go back to the article where you saw the bad name and voila- the article has adapted, and is using the corrected name. That is, if both articles had info pages.

Alt father
Regarding alternate fathers/mothers. I think I understand the motivation for this, but sometimes there is more than one alternate theoretical fathers. For spouse, I just went spouce2, spouce3 etc instead of 2nd spouse 3rd... So for alternate fathers, why not just call them Father2, Father3 and so on? Also make Mother2 correspond to whoever the theory says was married to Father2.

Or have I missed the intention and this is for indicating biological versus adopted father? I have always associated genealogy with biology, but geez- maybe it is perfectly valid to think of it as a kind of tribal linkage that is actually stronger in most respects to biological links. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  04:09, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I had seen Template talk:Person and so I made adjustments to include alternatives. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 19:52, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, you think that is the way to go? Maybe it is the simplest way to handle the most common kind of disputed piece of information.  I really never really made up my mind if it was the right way to go about alternates, because some alternative reality scenarios can be quite elaborate.   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   21:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

discussion on person naming
I know you are not much for debating stuff, but just to let you know, there is a reason for my minimalist attitudes about how much junk we put in the titles of articles.

It's in the discussion on person article naming conventions Genealogy_talk:Page_names. It's pointless to store data in the names, and make them needlessly long. It's overspecification.

So just to let you know, I will continue to name things deliberately omitting the death date, and I do not regard it as an error. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  21:21, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What about for people whose death dates are known and their birth dates are unknown? - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 21:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * response here Genealogy_talk:Page_names <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  18:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Our Common.css and Common.js do not match Wikipedia's
Ever wonder why Template:Hidden doesn't work, or why WP articles look so wonkey when they are imported here? EG: William I, King of England (1027-1087)/Biography? For example, what you see is the infobox flush left, then text following it. The interwiki thing I made was floating in the middle. If you go to the end of the article the template English Monarchs is in a single narrow column and then there is all this PERSONDATA junk that should be invisible but isn't. It's because our .CSS doesn't match wikipedia's.  To fix: You can revert both of these changes if you don't like them to blank pages and you will be back to what you had before, but there are no additional undesirable features. These are just copies of the wikia and WP common CSS and javascript files. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  03:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Copy User:Phlox/monobook.css to User:AMK152/monobook.css
 * 2) Copy wikia:Mediawiki:Common.js to User:AMK152/monobook.js
 * 3) Go back to William I, King of England (1027-1087)/Biography and you will see the infobox flush right, just like a WP article, and none of the junk mentioned at end.
 * Hmm. It didn't do anything. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 03:52, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Did you do the instructions at the top of the .css page?

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  03:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, it works now. Article looks much better now. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 04:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

OK. I am reverting your "Fix" then. By the way, when you log out, you will see things the way they used to be. For example, now you will see a hide/show button below:

After you log out, you will see no button. When Robin is convinced this is good for the site, everyone will get these features regardless whether they are logged in or not and you should probably nuke your monobook.css and monobook.js files. Regards. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  04:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Reminder- robin copied my common.css and .js fixes, so now you need to blank your monobook.css and monobook.js. Otherwise you will be seeing double- for example with the hide buttons on the box above.


 * Also I noted you were curious about WP porting issues with wikitext affected by the lack of htmltidy. I have demo'd a conversion at template:Navbox/core. Compare to WP template of same name, or you can wait for the tutorial I will eventually write for wikia central.  The ancestor tree templates are nasty though- I would recommend you modify the perl scripts that generated these- you can probably hack it for your goal of 10 gens.  Take a look at the author notes on wp- he posted his perl script as I recall.  Regards,  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   21:39, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Info pages
You were brave to try them out, I am surprized that anyone could understand how they worked. Personally, I think that novices will not want to go to the bother of using them. That is fine. I think your person template is simple enough for anyone to use, and if we encourage its use a bot could simply come by and do the conversion when the article was no longer actively being edited. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  19:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

clear template
I think maybe your browser is displaying something different than what I am seeing. When you inserted the clear into the William I article, what it does is insert huge amounts of white space so that there appears to be no more text in the article after "Name variations". You don't see Siblings section unless you scroll down to the end of the interwiki list. Are you seeing that? Maybe I should take a screen shot because I don't think you would regard this as a fix if you saw what I am seeing.

If you see none of this and it all looks ok to you, please let my know your platform and browser. Thanks. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  22:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The child list was squeezed so it looked messy. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 22:46, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * better to put the interwikis at the end than have a half page gap in the article, no? In any case, with any article that has a famous enough subject that it would be on enough non latin text wikipedia's to justify an interwiki box, there would be far more text in the opening section, so this shouldn't be a frequent problem.
 * I bulked up the William I article with some typical sort of text about William's life from a family perspective and although I only got up to Harald, it had already filled the gap.  <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   03:26, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

fixes
OK. date and place should be separated noW with a br. Take a look- feel free to modify these templates. 2nd spouse is a bug I know the fix on- I will take care of that later. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  00:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * On the Thomas Putnam (1615-1686) article, I have included the  However, it creates an extra break between date and place. Also, if I disregard the   on the info page, it would not make a space between date and place on the showinfo children template. Am I putting the   in the right place? I'm sure I am or does the showinfo children template need to be modified? - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:18, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I am confused. I changed the showinfo person template so it would put the place on a new line from the date. Now, it matches the desired layout you specifed on  So I don't know why you are trying to add another break.  If you can use the person template to mock up what you want it to look like as opposed to what it looks like now, I will fix it to do that.


 * Note- the bug with the extra space after 2nd wife is dead now. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   07:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about this. The date and place need to have a break between them also. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:04, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Template:Showinfo_children let me know if that's not quite right. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  20:58, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Birth and Death Bot run
Robin thought it would be nice to have all the birth and death years moved over, and asked PhloxBot to do it. I think it is exactly correct to get all the time and space framework worked out before the crowds arrive. Anyway, he won't stomp anything you have done- if any decade or year category already exists, he won't write over it.

Since you have been heavily involved in the time scheme, I'd like to know if there are any additional things you'd like PhloxBot to do with these cats as it moves these over (eg adding parameters to templates, additional cats).

All it does now is add usedcommons in small text and strip the language interwikis (they would need to be refreshed later anyway when/if we do languages that way.) An example the bot did last night was Category:1001 births‎. If I hear nothing from you, I will proceed on this later in the evening. The bot can always go back and tweak stuff if it didn't get it right the first time. <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  16:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I like the naming of these categories (Category:1001 births, etc.) better. Perhaps adding Category:Births by year. Well, basically the categories are generated from the template which can easily add categories. About using it from commons, doesn't exist and there is not page history. - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * A question. Is the bot going to create the categories or is the bot going to create the categories and adjust the categories on the person pages? Such as changing Category:Births in .... to Category:... births? - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The bot is only creating categories, and yeah, I did mess up about them coming from commons. They are of course coming from WP.
 * Subsequent runs can take a stab at auto cating all person pages for births and deaths. If you have thoughts about what the bot should do on that score, please create a subpage on Phlox and link it in from the page listing possible bot runs.  I suspect there will not be anything controversial, but if anyone wants to put in their two cents, they can before all person articles are upgraded with your changes (as carried out by Phloxbot).   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   20:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, so when are you starting the bot run? And how far back are you going? - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The bot is only creating categories, and yeah, I did mess up about them coming from commons. They are of course coming from WP.
 * Subsequent runs can take a stab at auto cating all person pages for births and deaths. If you have thoughts about what the bot should do on that score, please create a subpage on Phlox and link it in from the page listing possible bot runs.  I suspect there will not be anything controversial, but if anyone wants to put in their two cents, they can before all person articles are upgraded with your changes (as carried out by Phloxbot).   <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x   20:27, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, so when are you starting the bot run? And how far back are you going? - AMK152 (Talk • Contributions 20:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I am doing all year and decade births in the cat tree on WP. I think it is 2,100 or so cat pages, and unless Robin wants some big changes, I will be running it late tonight after the server load goes down.
 * By the way, when telling me stuff about PhloxBot, feel free to be direct in your statements. EG: I don't want it to do X, I want it to do Y.  When folks get wordy, sometimes I can't figure out what folks want, because they are trying to be polite about how they put things.
 * Also, when describing a Bot proposal, it is best to provide a mock up of the transformed page, so I can see precisely what you want done.
 * Oh yeah- I can rip images from commons easily now. If you need any bulk moves (eg all images under commons category x or y, let me know). <font color="#0A9DC2">~  <font color="#0DC4F2">Ph <font color="#3DD0F5">l <font color="#6EDCF7">o <font color="#9EE8FA">x  20:40, 26 October 2007 (UTC)