David Göthberg is taking a brief break from his wikibreak because of a lack of willpower to stay away from Wikipedia.

[edit] David's talk page

Archives

Archive 1 (2005-2006) Archive 2 (2007) Archive 3 (2008 Jan-May) Archive 4 (2008 June-Oct) Archive 5 (2008 Nov-)

I dislike seeing only one side of a discussion on a page. If I put a message on your talk page, I will be watching that page for a reply. If you leave a message here, I will reply here. If you want me to leave you a short notice on your talk page when I have responded here, then just tell me.

Put new messages at the bottom of this page or under the appropriate heading if there already is one. And don't forget to sign with your user name!

    .../David Göthberg

Contents 1 David's talk page 2 Template:Example images 3 fmbox-warning in Common.css 4 Petty stuff 5 Infobox / ambox 6 Template:Vertical images list 7 Template:Infobox Indian Jurisdiction/doc 8 String lengths 9 CodeFixer 10 Talkback 11 fmbox 12 Searching 13 No help 14 Signature 15 editnotice loader 16 On using summaries as a substitute for conversation 17 I'd like you to have a look 18 Protect search link? 19 I made a new template 20 script documentation 21 You ok? 22 Defined parameter testing template 23 Vertical Lines sometimes missing from Template:Filmography table head 24 Something to cheer you up? 25 DavidClock modification 26 Wikibreak 27 Public-key cryptography diagrams 28 Women's Project 29 Template 30 Cascading protection 31 Wikibreak 2 32 Editnotice groups 33 New templates 33.1 Other comments 34 Wikipedia talk:Category suppression 35 str len 36 Animated GIF scaling 37 Archive template reworking 38 Olá David

Leave a new message

[edit] Template:Example images

I wasn't just deleting that because I thought it didn't fit (although as the text read at the time, it didn't fit). I deleted it because it was added by a persistent sockpuppeting vandal and because it didn't fit. As it sits, the template now kind of has the wrong name, since it contains a sound file along with the images. :) Flopsy Mopsy and Cottonmouth (talk) 07:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Odd that a sockpuppeting vandal comes with a good suggestion like that. Ah well, even they have their good moments.

Anyway, I think it was a good suggestion to add the Ogg file there. And as I wrote over at File talk:Example.jpg#"Example images" notice box: "We could move this template from {{example images}} to {{example media files}} or {{example files}}." I am not sure which of the two alternative names I prefer, so I'd like your input about that. Could you perhaps respond over at File talk:Example.jpg#"Example images" notice box with what you think about the changes I made to the template and what name you prefer?

--David Göthberg (talk) 14:15, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Done.  :) Flopsy Mopsy and Cottonmouth (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input. So I have moved the template to {{example files}}.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:38, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] fmbox-warning in Common.css

Re this, I'm a little confused. Why would we have divs with the fmbox-warning class? We have messages created using {{fmbox}}, which uses a table, and we have messages that are already wrapped inside divs, which we explicitly name and style. I'm not aware of any messages that are wrapped in divs that we can assign classes to, without being able to use fmbox; can you give examples? Even if div.fmbox-warning is needed, is there any reason not to have table.fmbox-warning too? I'm not really sure why all the mbox styles have the table. prefix anyway: is there a reason for that high specificity? Happy‑melon 13:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Hehe, I was just about to save a message I had written on your talk page when I got the big orange "You have new messages" banner. Here is my message:

Hi Happy‑melon. I see you stumbled on a thing I expected someone to stumble on sooner or later. You changed "div.fmbox-warning" to "table.fmbox-warning" in MediaWiki:Common.css, so I had to revert you. See explanation at Template talk:Fmbox#Div based warning messages.

I should note that that explanation is rather old and has some errors. I will update that explanation with my latest findings and conclusions. That means I will respond over there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll look for an update there. I see from the system messages linked there that we do in fact still have div.fmbox-warning in use, in MediaWiki:Editingold. Although I can't see any reason not to do to that message the same as the others and use {{fmbox}} directly. Happy‑melon 14:32, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Petty stuff

Hi, David! Just so you know, I don't have a 21" monitor with 1600x1200 resolution either, but simply find it confusing when identation jumps back and forth for no reason. I obviously have no control over this when it comes to comments of others, but mine, at least, I am trying to keep in orderly fashion. Nothing personal. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:08, April 8, 2009 (UTC)

No worries. I was supposed to be out almost every night this week with some of my smart/fun/hot/cute/good-dancing female friends. But instead I am home with a slight cold. So I guess I am a bit grumpy today.

But still, that deep indentation doesn't work well for us with really low screen resolutions.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Just how low is yours? I mean, on a PPC with 640x480 screen, I have no troubles with the identation whatsoever (although I need to scroll horizontally, of course). Anyway, I am a bit grumpy today myself, so let's close this silly thing—feel free to re-ident any of my comments the way that works best for you ;) And get well soon!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:46, April 8, 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox / ambox

Thank you. I removed the change from my monobook.css file and everything works great. Have a good day --Trödel 19:20, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Vertical images list

Hallo, David. I don't know if you know the template Template:Vertical images list. But I translated it some days ago into the Upper Sorbian version: hsb:Předłoha:Wertikalna lisćina wobrazow and added there a new parameter, that isn't in the English version (yet). What do think about this adding? I also translated the Upper Sorbian version into German: de:Vorlage:Vertikale Bilder and some other languages (dsb, eo, sk). - The added parameter defines a background colour for the box. But it was a little bit tricky, to make it work. - I just saw, that the author of the English template was active in 2008, but not any more in 2009. Greetings --Tlustulimu (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

(+) I just created a testing page at User:Tlustulimu/Template:Vertical images list. The the background colour formatting works very well. Greetings --Tlustulimu (talk) 18:57, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I have seen that template before. I was only aware of a template that could stack two images on top of each other (but don't remember its name). I have often had a need to stack images on top of each other in a compact way, so I think this template can be very useful.

Technically your addition of that colour parameter works pretty well. But I guess some will complain that such boxes should have one look only.

But the code of those boxes are scary. I would not code them like that. And the current code has an obvious bug (but that bug is not your fault): It sets the whole box width to 200px and the image inside it to 200px too. That means that in several browsers the image sticks out of the box. It looks pretty bad in my Firefox 2.0.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:49, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Indian Jurisdiction/doc

This template document page needs both a {{Reflist}} and a <references/> tag to show all references. I wouldn't have though of it, but Wuhwuzdat fixed it. Do you know why this is, and how it can be fixed? Debresser (talk) 01:27, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know much about the references and reflist system. I took a look and did some tests, but I have no idea why that happens. My guess based on my experience is that something further up the page causes it, so you have to do like programmers always have done: Remove things above one by one until you get a change, then study the item that caused the change. Since it is many items then we usually use a binary search = Remove half of the items, if that doesn't help, remove the other half, and then when you know which half, remove half of that and so on.

I hope you have checked that {{reflist}} still works on other pages?

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:40, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Fixed it!! There was another {{Reflist}} somewhere inside. I removed it, and made some minor fixes along the way. Debresser (talk) 17:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] String lengths

Hi, I've just been admiring your string length templates and I have a question.

When using characters with accents, it seems that two bytes are needed sometimes. Therefore the length of a string is not always the number of its bytes. Therefore the following code can sometimes say "not equal":

 {{str ≠ len|{{TALKPAGENAME}}|{{PAGESIZE:{{TALKPAGENAME}}}}|Not equal!}} 

I'm wondering if there is any way of

1. counting the number of bytes used for a string; or
2. comparing the length of two different strings.

What I am actually trying to do is to determine when a page is a redirect to a particular page. If it is, it's normally 14 bytes more than the string length, but that only works without accents as far I can see!

Many thanks, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! And I have copied your question to Template talk:Str ≥ len#String lengths and responded there. Since I think our discussion might be interesting for others that will use those templates.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CodeFixer

I have a question for you at User:Drilnoth/codefixer.js/doc, if you could take a look (and watchlist the page until the discussion ends, if you haven't already). Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:44, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Talkback

-- IRP ☎ 22:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Note to self: I have responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 01:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] fmbox

There are two more MediaWiki pages that you may want to convert:

• MediaWiki:Titleprotected
• MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext

-- WOSlinker (talk) 11:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've just done these. Any more you can spot, WOSlinker? Happy‑melon 12:34, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Searching

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		For going above and beyond the "call of duty" when answering questions on Wikipedia Talk:Searching! Plastikspork (talk) 03:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! You had a good question which would result in useful knowledge on that talk page, and I knew I would be able to answer it. So I thought it was worth spending some time on figuring out how it worked.

And thanks for fixing my "Leave a new message" URL at the top of this page. Now it gives the correct URL for users that log in through the secure server. I had forgot about that. So using the {{fullurl}} magic word is much better than using hardcoded URLs. (But I guess you perhaps already know that.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] No help

this page was no help for me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.99.36 (talk) 15:42, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Signature

Many thanks. I did not realize what was wrong. --Bramfab (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] editnotice loader

David, Please see User_talk:Xaosflux#enot_response. Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 12:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply, and again apologies for any inconveniences caused by this oversight. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] On using summaries as a substitute for conversation

David,

Despite your repeated assertion that I "don't have consensus" for this, I have not yet been pointed to any indication that there is anything other than sporadic disapproval for it, what with it having been rolled out over practically every highly-used ambox by now. I've spent month trying to reason with you on this and all I've gotten back is casual dismissal, or indeed outright reversion with snippy edit summaries. My time is not worth less than yours and your opinion is not worth more than mine. You do extensive work in templatespace and you are well aware of the best places to coordinate work like this, so throw me a frickin' bone here and try to point me in the right direction instead of derisively using edit summaries to knock back things which you don't like. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I was just writing a longer comment about this at Wikipedia talk:Template messages/Cleanup#Standardisation of template styling. As you can see there Ipatrol and I are disagreeing with you. And Quiddity is not sure about point 5 there, which is kind of the main point. There is also a comment from ViperSnake151 further down on that page, but I can't figure out if he agrees or disagrees with your new style. So I see some users disagreeing with you, and no user fully agreeing with you. So you don't have consensus for the new article message box style you are enforcing.

And regarding me reverting your edits: I think I have mostly reverted your edits when you have broken the boxes. And you have broken the boxes on several occasions. Sure, I could spend time fixing the part of the code you have broken, but why should I? I have no reason to help you deploy a new style that I disagree with and that you don't have consensus for. So it is simpler and faster for me to just revert your edits back to the previous version of the boxes, thus fixing both the code you broke and restoring the traditional style. But then you have again added your style, thus enforcing your own new style. Then I have on some occasions reverted you, since you should not enforce a style for a template when you have already been reverted.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll follow up on that talk page. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] I'd like you to have a look

I'd like you to have a look at my question here. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 12:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

If I'm already asking for your help... At this page there's a template loop too. Caused when the second parameter is invalid. Could you add a fix to this template so that in such a case it shouldn't loop but report the error, e.g. "invalid parameter", just as it does when an invalid first parameter is used? Debresser (talk) 12:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Protect search link?

Hi David. I believe you are an admin, so I was wondering if you could protect {{search link}}? I am planning to deploy it on WP:list of common misspellings, and before I do so, I think it would be best to have it protected. If some bug should arise, I can always have it unprotected to fix it, but it appears to be working well. Thanks again for all your help! This is going to make those pages much more readable. Plastikspork (talk) 00:07, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Y Done I was able to solve my own problem after my RfA passed. Plastikspork (talk) 17:07, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] I made a new template

I made a template {{Monthyear+1}}, showing the name of the month and the year as they will be in another month. I checked it, and it's working fine. I made a small documentation page to go with it. Since you had a look at my previous templates, {{Currentdaymonth}} and {{Currentmonthday}} and their documentation pages, perhaps you'd care to have a look at this one as well. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 09:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you just use {{#time:F Y|+1 month}}? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:13, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Now implemented (by MSGJ). Very nice edit! I updated the remark inside the template. I also created {{Monthyear-1}} analogously. Debresser (talk) 11:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I also created {{Monthyear}}. See User_talk:MSGJ#Time_parser_function for a discussion about the use of these templates over using the time parser function itself. Debresser (talk) 11:32, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I updated those two old templates with this time parser function now. Debresser (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I knew randomly looking through user pages would eventually pay off! I'm in need of some expert assistance and you seem like the right editors to ask. I've been a registered user on en.wp for about 5 months because I'd had enough of looking at pages with spelling mistakes and other errors. Anyway, Tomorrow has a bit of code that tells you the day tomorrow. I think it's a bit of fluff but people keep adding something back, but it doesn't always work. Could Debresser, MSGJ/Martin or David himself please have a look at the page and insert some code that works for all browsers at all times, as looking through the page history readers are still having trouble with it... Thanks in advance, sorry to interupt your work! Bigger digger (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] script documentation

Hi David.
I hope you enjoy your break. :)
I seem to remember that you posted some thoughts on .js documentation somewhere, but I don't remember where (and neither really what you said). I was thinking that we can abuse MediaWiki:Clearyourcache to check if there is a /doc subpage, which it can then display in the normal {{documentation}} style at the top of the script. It can't of course be used to categorize or interwiki or something like that, and it isn't super efficient since it won't get cached, as far as I understand it, but it can show usage information which is currently not handled consistently.
Cheers, Amalthea 10:21, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] You ok?

You've been away for quite some time, without any sort of announcement it seems. Are you ok ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, where are you? Just having a nice holiday, I guess! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I also looked for some notification about a wikibreak. You are highly valued. Debresser (talk) 22:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Amalthea's message above would seem to indicate David's on a break, but my being unable to find any mention of it here or on Amalthea's talkpage/archives (not that I searched very hard =) ) would suggest that perhaps David told him on IRC or email or something...? I dunno, I'm just throwing ideas out there. ;) To David: I echo the above people's concern; where you at? =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 05:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

No, just a reasonable assumption, David has gone on unannounced wikibreaks before. I guess those are the ones that work best. :) Amalthea 23:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Who authorised this holiday? That's what I want to know. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:25, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes I am on a wikibreak. I don't know when or even if I will come back to Wikipedia. But I might come back at least temporarily to tie up some loose ends. The main reason for this wikibreak is:

1: I had too many incidents lately where people made my work here on Wikipedia unnecessarily hard. There are too many naysayers and fools around here. The latest incident of many is this one: Template talk:Pgn#Titleparts

There are also some additional reasons:

2: I should probably get back to the work where I can be of the most good for humanity. The last two years here on Wikipedia has really just been a break from my work in serverless p2p networking. I needed a break from that since one gets pretty dizzy when researching randomised algorithms.

3: I have a new girlfriend.

4: It is summer here, which means there are a lot of nice outdoor activities to do. My female friends keep my fully booked this time of the year...

And thanks for the concerns guys. And as always: Feel free to help out and answer any questions that people put on this talk page, since I might not be around answering them or I might not even know the answer.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:55, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Aww David, we do miss you, hope you come back in the future. MBisanz ^talk 11:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Lol, I felt sorry for you when I read #1, but after reading 3 and 4 I don't anymore :) Good luck and come back if/when your girlfriend allows it! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It will always be a pleasure to see you around. Have fun and lots of success. Debresser (talk) 17:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Good to hear you didn't drop off the face of the planet; enjoy your break! =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{(Dinoguy1000)} 17:16, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Defined parameter testing template

Hey David, when you get back (if you ever do ^_^ *fingers crossed* ), you might like to have a look at {{ifparadef}}, a template I just cooked up that takes a parameter and returns whether it's defined or not. It can also differentiate between an empty defined parameter and a nonempty defined parameter, although I'm not 100% sure on whether the logic there is correct. Enjoy your wikibreak 'till then! =) (and to everyone else watching this page who has the slightest clue what I just wrote, beyond talking about a template, you may like to play around with it too ;) ) ···「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? Talk to Dinoguy1000} 07:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Just thought I'd drop an update to say I got the functionality for its intended use working correctly, but there are some uses that are specifically not supported (direct use on articles and other "top-level" content), or simply not tested yet (used with two or more template levels between itself and the top-level content, or used to test unnamed (numbered) parameters). I've also successfully deployed it on {{Infobox animanga character}} to test for some bad parameters, if anyone wants to see it in action (not much to see, though ;P ). --Dinoguy1000 (talk · contribs) as 66.116.12.126 (talk) 05:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

*poke* After seeing how efficiently you (and others) have done some of the things you have with templates, it wouldn't surprise me if there were a more efficient implementation of this template... Thoughts? 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 07:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I just wanted to take a look and change the way it handles an empty fourth parameter, but seems like I was late to the party. :) Amalthea 11:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, I had forgotten to answer here. I already checked the code of your template some time ago, and at first look I thought: "Hey, good code, seems to do what it should."

But since you poked me, now I took a second really hard look and saw two minor issues. So I wrote up a longer answer with new code over at Template talk:Ifparadef.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I saw, and wrote up a decent-length (though nowhere near as long as your initial explanation! =) ) reply. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 11:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vertical Lines sometimes missing from Template:Filmography table head

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		your Template:Filmography table head is a great idea! 74.178.249.77 (talk) 07:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Vertical lines are sometimes missing from tables. Fixed Template talk:Filmography table head by the way.

It only happened if: row 1 cell 1 is linked to BOTH row 1 cell 2 AND row 2 cell 2, as shown below. The fix does NOT negatively affect tables with one row to one cell correlation.

[edit] Something to cheer you up?

bug 18437http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18437 got fixed. We have subpages in Help, Help talk and Category talk now. Woot! Happy‑melon 22:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] DavidClock modification

I just added your clock addon, and I gotta say it's pretty neat. I've got two questions, and I'm sure you must get them a lot:

• If I wanted it to be in a different timezone, how would I accomplish that?
• If I wanted the static clock only but I wanted that to be the edit section 0 link, how might I do that?

Much obliged, it really is a nice script. ~ Amory (talk) 22:15, 6 June 2009

Feel free to make changes to meet your objectives or remove. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.151.112.37 (talk) 03:35, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

For others who read this: Here is the DavidClock documentation and the DavidClock source code.

The above unsigned comment wasn't left my me (David). No, don't edit my scripts in my user space. I made those scripts primarily for my own use, but documented and shared them so others can use them too. But if you want other functionality then anyone can of course copy my scripts to for instance their own user space and then modify their own version. By the way: All .js pages are protected so they can only be edited by the user himself and by admins, so most users could not modify my script anyway.

Amory: The whole point of the DavidClock and other similar Wikipedia clocks is that they do not show your local timezone, instead they show UTC time. That is the same time as the Wikipedia servers use. That is the time shown by default in your watchlist and in user signatures and so on. These Wikipedia clocks help us keep track of that time.

If you want the static clock only but want that to be the edit section 0 link, then you have to copy the script to your user space and modify it, sorry. I might of course sometime in the future add an option for that, but at the moment I am on a long wikibreak. However, a better option is to enable "my preferences - Gadgets - User interface gadgets - Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page". That gives you an edit section link that is shown the usual way right at the top of section 0.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:39, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibreak

Does this mean you are back? I thought your reasons for taking a wikibreak sounded quite healthy, so I hope there weren't any problems. All the best. Plastikspork (talk) 17:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Based on his above comment, it sounds more like he's just dropping by to check his messages. Still, it's nice to see he hasn't forgotten about the rest of us poor, deluded blokes doing all this work for free... =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 19:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Public-key cryptography diagrams

Thank you kindly for the beautiful diagrams. An anon has pointed out something in the diagrams. Please see here. Thanks, Skippydo (talk) 20:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Women's Project

David,

Could you please look over the Women's Project page again. We have made changes, added links, and made it seem like less of an advert. Looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you!

-Julia M

[edit] Template

Hi Dave. Would you have time to please assist me in creating a new template for the African Movie Academy Awards? I'm rather reluctant to use the already existing Academy Awards template, since that template is reserved for the American Academy Awards. The new articles I want to create are similar to this one, and will be about the various past AMAA ceremonies from 2005-2009. Any tip, help or advice on how to create the template for the African Movie Academy Award will be highly appreciated. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 17:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Cascading protection

I have anthologised your protected items page to Wikipedia:Cascade-protected_items, to do this job centrally rather than in disparate user pages - thanks for the work yo put into creating it. Unless there's a good reason your user page should be unprotected now I guess. Rich Farmbrough, 22:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC).

I have copied this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#Cascading protection and responded there.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibreak 2

This section was cut out of the section above. I somewhat edited my first message below for clarity. --David Göthberg (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

A note to everyone: I am still on my Wikibreak. I do check my messages here from time to time, but don't expect any answers or work from me.

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:27, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see you're still around a bit, I'd started to miss those totally-comprehensive edit summaries :D Best of luck with whatever is keeping you away. Happy‑melon 13:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It is hard to hide from the all-seeing eye. XD 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 20:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

May I also say how good it is to see you back. Maybe you would like to remove the wikibreak notice now ;) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Guys, I am not really back. I am just back for some days to handle some things. I do watch my messages here, and I noticed that some things I care about needed some assistance. And I happened to have the time this week.

However I am still very annoyed with Wikipedia. I left because people made my work here way harder than it should be. I spent much more time defending (arguing about and explaining) my code than actually coding templates. For instance, the final incident that made me leave was that Happy-melon stopped me when I was coding meta-templates we could have used to make the talk page archiving much better. Meta-templates are just tools, if you don't like how I make a tool, then code your own variant instead of wasting my time in days of arguing. I had only just started out those templates, just coding for 5 hours, when Happy-melon tied me up in days of arguing.

And this week I again got several harsh reminders of the terrors of trying to be a Wikipedia template programmer: For instance, I was going to continue with some coding and testing of my suggestion for a much more user-friendly and more robust editnotice system. But Cenarium had deleted many of the pages I was working with here in my user space, and edited some of the rest. He left no message about it, so it took me several hours to figure out what had happened. I often code and test things in my user space before I show them to others or deploy them. (Or in template space but marked with a big message box saying: "This template is still in development, don't use it yet.") And after I built them I document them properly. Then I usually give others time to check them and test them before I deploy them. I find that much less disrupting and much more professional than doing test editing to already deployed things. That's a habit I got when I worked as a programmer for a major TV company. We didn't do test edits on running code that would affect millions of TV viewers, we instead tested off-line first. I can only guess why Cenarium deleted my test pages: Perhaps he is a fool, or perhaps he doesn't like that I was building a different solution than the one he is building, or perhaps he wants to hide the fact that features he is now adding to the editnotice system was already working in my demo-system a year ago. I wasn't allowed to deploy my editnotice system back then, for reasons unclear to me. But now they are adding pretty much the same features one by one. But they still haven't added the features that would make it much more user-friendly and more robust.

--David Göthberg (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Well that is a great shame. I've made my apology for that particular incident, all 666 words worth; if you don't wish to accept it, that's obviously your prerogative, but I'm not going to repeat it. Working on Wikipedia is not like working for a corporation or company; one is not working with people universally as skilled and experienced, but with a much broader and, IMO, richer body of people with a wide range of interests, skills and personalities. Being successful here requires more than just technical proficiency. I guess it's an environment that suits some people more than others. Happy‑melon 12:07, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Hu? What apology? Where? I haven't seen one.

/me goes searching.

Ah, found it. It is the last message on Template talk:Pgn#Titleparts, signed "Happy‑melon 14:43, 21 May 2009". And it literally is about 666 words according to my text statistics tool in my editor.

Well, I missed that message since you didn't mention it here on my talk page. And I was already on my wikibreak since one month then, thus not watching my watchlist.

Anyway, that's just one of many incidents. To illustrate my reasons for going on wikibreak, here's a quote from what I wrote on that talk page back in May 2009:

I don't want to go back to what I did in the old days: Develop my templates in secret pages in my user space, without any links to them from anywhere. So people wouldn't deploy them before they were ready, so I wouldn't have to answer a zillion questions about them since their documentation wasn't ready, and so admins wouldn't delete them "since doesn't work" or so admins wouldn't protect them before I had finished them. And even that didn't always help, since some people checked my user contributions and found my user-space test-pages. There have been cases when admins blanked pages in my user space, since they didn't like (didn't understand) the templates I was developing there. At some points in time I considered getting a secret account that I would only use for template development in that account's user space. But I decided that if it would go that far, then I'd better leave Wikipedia instead.

That text is still very valid. Sadly it seems I might have reached that point. So I am on a wikibreak while pondering this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 13:19, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

This is all very disappointing. It seems you prefer to work alone, and while the evidence of how well you work in this way is plain to see, Wikipedia will never be like this. However I have also witnessed countless times when you have successfully collaborated and reached a solution to a problem through discussion, so I really don't understand what went wrong this time. Happy-melon can certainly be pig-headed; hopefully he won't mind me saying this ;) (Perhaps the reason this occured is that you're both quite similiar in that when you know you're right, you won't back down!) But his qualities far outweigh any shortcomings, and you have to look for the best in every editor here or you'd go mad with all the foibles.

Regarding Template talk:Pgn, I do think you might have been more gracious and accepted the olive branch, as the message did seem to be sincere and heart-felt. It is a shame that you seem to be still annoyed by this relatively minor incident six months on. Surely it is time to move on?

Regarding Cenarium's deletions, I would have thought that the best person to ask would be him ;) Although I note that it was pages in the MediaWiki namespace and not in your userspace as you seem to suggest, and I suppose it is reasonable to assume that a page not edited for several months is no longer being used for testing ...

There is nothing I would like better than to see you back editing here actively. Just looking at what you've achieved in the past day seems to be more than I do in a whole week! I just hope you can be a bit more patient with other editors, and remember that we're all trying to make things better; otherwise you are going to keep getting frustrated. Kind regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Aah, I am sorry to hear you are still aggravated from old wounds, David - in my own (very limited) experience working with you, you always seemed to be quite amicable and level-headed; just generally a very enjoyable person to work with. Insofar as your testpages being blanked or deleted before you are finished with them is concerned, perhaps you could create a template in your userspace briefly explaining that the page it's transcluded on is a testpage of yours and that if an admin wants to blank or delete it, he should first consult with you on your talk page. One last minor point, I never actually welcomed you back from your break, but merely commented in response to Happy-melon's own comment. I do hope you find the time and determination to return sometime soon, though! =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 17:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

MSGJ: You are misunderstanding me.

Cenarium left no message explaining what he had done, so it took me half a workday to figure out what had happened. And it will probably take at least as much time to restore. Not a very nice thing to experience on the first day when I thought I perhaps was coming back from my wikivacation.

And the Happy-melon/{{pgn}} incident was just one of a long row of incidents. I had similar incidents on an almost weekly basis, costing me several workdays a week. And that had been going on for years. So I don't blame Happy-melon in particular, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

And no, I don't usually prefer to work alone. I love to cooperate with people. But fairly often I have a complex hard-to-explain template system idea, often involving a whole set of templates. But I don't want to spend time writing 5-10 pages of examples, explanations and motivations before I start coding and testing if the idea works. In such cases it is much quicker and easier to first code and test the templates, then document them, then show them to people so they can test them, discuss them and come with suggestions for modifications and improvements. Note that I usually wait to deploy things until others have had a chance to test and comment, especially since people often do suggest very nice improvements.

{{pgn}} was meant to be a part of such a system, involving perhaps 10-20 templates with very differing and very complex functionality, which would simplify talk page archiving and fix many of the current problems in talk page archiving.

I often discard many of my ideas after testing them. And the final result often differs a lot from the initial idea. So writing long explanations and motivations before coding and testing would be a major waste of time. I don't mind waiting for people to test and comment, since I can do other things during that time, I'm not in a hurry. But I do mind wasting man-hours that could be better spent.

I hope there isn't some policy that we have to first ask some committee for permission before testing (not even deploying) some code ideas? If there is such a policy, please point me to it.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Dinoguy1000: I don't think I should have to mark pages in my own userspace with a notice box saying: "This is a test page in David's userspace, please first consult with David if you feel the urge to delete this page." Especially silly since my test pages are named like this: User:Davidgothberg/Test3. But I usually do mark pages in other namespaces, such as in template space, with a yellow message box saying something like: "This template is still under early development and testing, please don't use it yet. --David" See for instance {{pgn}}.

The pages that Cenarium deleted was the standard MediaWiki editnotice pages for my userspace. Marking MediaWiki pages with message boxes is much harder, especially when one is tinkering with the editnotice system. (Well, in this case it might be possible, but might cause whitespace problems in the editnotice system I am building, causing hard to debug situations.) But since Cenarium had been discussing editnotices with me before, he very well knew I was testing and developing an improved editnotice system. From what I can see of the modifications he did to my other related pages he understood exactly what those pages were and why I used them.

And it's not just old wounds. I had three different incidents this week alone. Well, one big and two minor. These things just keep coming... (But I don't want to waste time discussing them, okay?)

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Aah, of course there should be no reason for you to have to tag pages in your own userspace just to keep them from being blanked or deleted. If worse comes to worse, maybe an editnotice would help some, though (yeah, I realize who I'm talking to about using an editnotice ;P )?

You mentioned that it took you some time to run down the pages Cenarium had deleted; forgive me for asking the obvious, but did you try looking through your deleted contributions to find the pages? And since you pointed it out, I could see why tagging those pages is difficult or impossible; the MediaWiki namespace just doesn't work the same way as any other directly editable namespace.

And yes, that would be my fault for not paying close enough attention; you did indeed come back just to face more of the same, and I don't blame you for not wanting to waste time having metadiscussions about your discussions/incidents. =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 18:44, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I had more or less forgotten about the "Deleted user contributions" function. But that wouldn't have helped much, since it seems to list the pages in the order I created them, so it is hard to see what have been recently deleted. Instead after some poking around I found and checked some of the deleted pages and thus saw who had deleted them and what day he had done it. So then I checked his "User contributions" and "logs" for that day and could see that he had deleted several more of my pages, and also edited some other of my pages. But then I also had to spend time to figure out what those edits meant.

--David Göthberg (talk) 22:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I deleted those mediawiki pages - among others - because they were for testing and not used for more than a year, it's not because I disliked your alternative approach or anything else. The mediawiki namespace is more strictly maintained that template space and regularly cleaned up for performance/usability reasons, so it shouldn't contain test pages indefinitely. You helped to develop edinotices and I thank you for that. In case you want to use them again, there are listed here, I also created Template:Editnotices/Group/User:Davidgothberg and made this edit so that your group editnotice still work. I apologize for not letting you know. Regards, Cenarium (talk) 19:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

They were used much more often than that. But I didn't need to edit them since what they contained was a {{transclusion}} of an editnotice loader template. So what I was editing was that template, and its helper files, which are stored in my "User:" space and in "Template:" space. Thus I was only using a handful of bytes in MediaWiki space, probably around 100 bytes in total or so.

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Editnotice groups

This discussion has been moved to Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Flexible editnotice groups. Please continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's any way of defining a Group, for editnotice purposes, in a completely flexible way? What I'd like is to have, say List of pages with editnotice X, and somehow pages listed there get that editnotice. This would make it much easier to apply editnotices (eg to notify of an ARBCOM restriction). Obviously, the list would have to be fully protected. Anyway, there isn't currently anything like that, is there? What do you think of the idea? PS editloader seems like a good idea. Rd232 ^talk 15:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

First of all, in case you don't already know it: We already have a simple group function in place, that can load the same editnotice for a page and all its subpages. For instance on "Wikipedia:Example" and Wikipedia:Example/Test" and so on.

But to answer your actual question. Assuming we code it with template programming only, then:

Technically we could make such a centrally loaded list, that gets checked when you edit any page. Actually very easy for me to code up. But that would have to run on every page edit, on every page. And if we put in many page names in the list it would cost some work to do the list check each time, and thus too much server work in total. We could limit the function to for instance only the "Wikipedia:" namespace and some more namespaces, but not article space, then maybe it would be reasonable. (But I think our server admins/devs would veto it.)

But if it is a limited number of pages, then you can make a template with the message, then put that template in the editnotice for all those pages. Thus you can update the message in one single place by simply editing that template. We could even very easily make that template smart, so you can select which of the pages with the template shows what message. (Basically by putting that list into the template itself, in the form of a #switch case.) But as I said, it would only be reasonable to have that template on a limited number of pages. I hope this would be good enough for your needs?

But what kind of pages are you thinking of? That is, in what namespace would they be? And how many pages do you expect might end up on that list?

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds impractical. I've created Category:Editnotice templates, and that helps a bit. But an Arbcom restriction on a topic could easily affect 1000 or 10,000 articles. Which makes me suddenly think, actually, you'd want to be able to add categories onto the editnotice's list, with every page in the category getting that editnotice. Or something - you see what I'm after. I don't think it's feasible without a software change anyway. Rd232 ^talk 21:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ouch, 1000 to 10,000 pages in the same list would be way too much to process from template code. (I'd say a list with tops 100 pages in would be okay to process if we only did it for the non-article spaces. To keep the list short we could have one list for each namespace.) But you say "articles", thus meaning article space. So yes, a software change would be needed, since doing it from the MediaWiki software might be reasonable. And template code can not detect what categories are used on a page, so then it would have to be done from the MediaWiki software.

Of course, if you only rarely need to add and remove such notices, then you could ask a bot owner to add your notice (in the form of a template) to all those pages. The people over at Wikipedia:Bot requests are usually very helpful! They also do other things such as advanced searches on all pages, on off-line copies of the Wikipedia database, and so on.

--David Göthberg (talk) 21:48, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, a bot would work, actually, to do that! You'd have a protected list the bot works from, of pages/categories, and it adds a reference to the relevant template to the pages referenced. I'm going to propose that at WP:VPR. Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 22:27, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and I have joined the discussion over at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Flexible Groups for Editnotices.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you can do a somewhat more sophisticated things in the group notices if you use parser functions. You can for example show an editnotice on all subpages starting with "Archive". There are even two templates to help, {{Editnotice prefixpages}} and {{Editnotice subpages}}.
I agree with you two though that for a collection of page titles without any identifiable and easily testable criterion, bot maintained editnotices driven by lists of pages would be best.
Cheers, Amalthea 14:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I have copied this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Editnotice#Flexible editnotice groups and responded there. Please continue the discussion there. --David Göthberg (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New templates

Hi David, I see you have been busy creating new templates which is great. I am a little concerned however about the preemptive protection of these templates. You fully protected Template:If pagename, for example, two minutes after you creating it. I see this as problematic because it effectively denies other editors the chance the collaborate on the template. It could also be seen as protecting your preferred version of the template, an inappropriate use of the sysop tools. I know you have had problems with other editors "interfering" with templates before, but that is the nature of the beast here at Wikipedia. We have several skilled template programmers around here, and discussing different ways of tackling a problem can only be beneficial. If a template is to be widely used, I would like to see far more consultation and discussion about its implementation, and only when it becomes high-risk should it be protected. Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:05, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

PS, sorry for messing up Template:Ombox/core. Not sure how I did that. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:10, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I personally don't see any problem with it if there are no transclusions, but that's just my opinion. On a somewhat related note, the primary reason why I wanted to become an admin was so I could edit protected templates (i.e., WP:AutoEd). Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Plastikspork: Yeah, I too became admin for that reason.

MSGJ: Regarding {{ombox/core}}: We all do mistakes, and that was a very minor one. You should see some of the things I have screwed up. :))

But regarding the protection: {{if pagename}} is a pagename detection meta-template, which is similar to the namespace-detection meta-templates such as {{file other}}. Some days after I had finished {{file other}} and announced it, people started using it. And literally over night (while I was asleep) that template went from a handful of transclusions to over 300,000 transclusions. The same thing then happened with several of the other namespace-detection templates, although for most of them it took some weeks to reach such numbers. I think it is likely that the same thing will happen with {{if pagename}}. Actually, one of the things I am thinking of using it for will make it instantly transcluded on a couple of million pages. But don't worry, as usual once I have tested and documented it properly I will announce it and give others plenty of time to check it out and suggest improvements before I deploy it. But I haven't announced {{if pagename}} yet, it is still in the "all seems to work, let it sit for some days to see if I come up with any improvements" phase.

Another thing is that those templates are part of a series of parameter compatible templates, which I am building. And if other start messing with them until I have built, tested and documented some of them, then it will cause lots of trouble. Since the other editors don't know how and why they need to be parameter compatible until I have documented it properly. A similar example is the {{talkspace detect}} which was built by another user. It's a well built meta-template, but unfortunately it is not compatible with the other namespace-detection templates, thus it is somewhat hard to use together with the others. And it is already deployed so it is now messy to change it.

But sure, I can do as I usually do with other new templates that I expect will become high-risk: Full move-protect, and semi edit-protect.

Actually, that was the protection I first wanted to apply to {{if pagename}}, but then I realised that the handful of template programmers I know who could understand its internal workings are either already admins, or way too busy with their own template projects.

But for the somewhat simpler {{basepage subpage}} then I admit, I should probably just have used full move-protect, and semi edit-protect.

So I will apply full move-protect and semi edit-protect to both of them. Is that okay?

I hope you and some others will put them on your watchlists, since I am going back to my wikibreak soon. So I will not be around watching them, and might not be here to update their protection level when they suddenly get widely deployed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:18, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and sorry for my late response. Things have been busy for me. Firstly let me apologise if my comment came across more strongly than necessary, but it seems you haven't taken it the wrong way, so fine. Secondly I would like to explain that my thoughts on this matter stem directly from two firmly held beliefs:

• This is a wiki and page protection should be used only when absolutely necessary. (I believe that the advantages of letting everyone edit pages outweighs the risk of vandalism in most cases.)
• Adminship does not confer any additional authority on editors.

I guess you might agree with those sentiments, so I wonder if you can understand the source of my concern about your actions in this case? Now, to respond to your points:

• I think that the responsibility for making sure that a template is adaquately protected lies with the editor who uses the template. Unless you have a crystal ball, how are you supposed to know how well used the template will become? Anyone who edits a template with 300,000 transclusions should be experienced enough to check that the components have the necessary protection. If they fail to do that, it is their fault and not yours. So I still think the "pre-emptive protection" argument is flawed.
• the ... template programmers I know who could understand its internal workings are ... already admins: we have several highly skilled template programmers. (One in particular writes code that just leaves me scratching my head.) So I find this argument totally unconvincing.
• About move protection - why? If people might have good ideas to improve the code of a template, they equally might have a better idea for the name of the template. I see no reason to fully move-protect these until they are in use.
• About semi-protection: my feelings are the same but the issue is less important. Admittedly I know of no skilled template programmers who don't have an account, so it will likely do no harm. However, if the template is not used yet, then leaving it unprotected will also do no harm.

I look forward to hearing your response. I'm not going to revert the protection of these templates again, but I would ask you to consider these points before protecting other templates in the future. Kind regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

0: First of all: You are wasting my time. Since English is not my native tongue it takes me a lot of time to write responses like this. Time that could be better spent programming useful meta-templates. Having to spend time arguing about every template I code, with people who don't understand what they are for, is very discouraging. With arguing I mean unproductive arguing. I like cooperation, and I love when people come with constructive ideas for improvements. And I like well meant questions. There's no such thing as a "dumb question" if it is well meant. On the contrary, such questions often lead to improvements, since they for instance show us what needs to be added or changed in the documentation. Unfortunately, the last year I have been forced to spend way more time arguing about templates than actually coding, testing and documenting them. And usually even before I finished coding and documenting them, and before I have announced them, since people like you are watching my every move here.

1: Regarding: "This is a wiki". What we are talking about here are two meta-templates. Meta-templates are higher risk than usual templates, and templates are higher risk than articles. And these particular meta-templates, {{if pagename}} and {{basepage subpage}}, are meant to be plugged into several MediaWiki messages. And the entire MediaWiki namespace is fully protected since it is considered extremely high-risk.

3: Regarding "responsibility for making sure that a template is adequately protected lies with the editor who uses the template" and "Unless you have a crystal ball, how are you supposed to know how well used the template will become?". Actually, I do have that crystal ball since I am that user. As I wrote above: "One of the things I am thinking of using it for will make it instantly transcluded on a couple of million pages." I hope you don't mean that I am not allowed to protect a template before I plug it in to a million pages? I would not like to first plug in, then protect. That would be scary, since also vandals are watching what we do here.

4: Regarding skilled non-admin template programmers: As I said above: They are "way too busy with their own template projects". And those skilled non-admin template programmers usually know how to use the unprotected /sandbox and /testcases pages of templates, and how to contact us admins to ask us to copy an improved version from the /sandbox to the deployed version. Actually, a much more common problem is admins who don't use the /sandbox pages and instead do experimental edits on deployed high-risk templates, often even with edit comments like: "Experimental edit, let's see if this works."

And you mention User:WOSlinker. I recognise his name, perhaps it is time he was nominated for adminship? Since we always need more skilled template programming admins.

5: We have a problem with rather nasty page move vandalism. And renaming templates is a fairly unusual thing, thus requests to move protected templates doesn't cause much work for us admins. And I prefer to protect before we plug in the template, not after. And I think that renaming a template should first be discussed on its talkpage (unless of course if one is the only contributor to that template).

6: Regarding that I use semi-protection: No, leaving a template totally unprotected does harm. Since we have a problem with people adding sneaky bugs that are hard to detect. Such bugs are added both by vandals on purpose, and by accident by less knowledgeable users. Thus if left unprotected, when we deploy that template to lots of pages it might contain such bugs.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Now this was funny. Two weeks after he unprotected these templates, MSGJ himself added one of them to 114,000 pages, without first protecting it again. He did this edit, which added {{cat handler}} that in turn uses {{if pagename}}. He probably wasn't even aware of that he added the unprotected {{if pagename}} with that edit. I think there's a lesson to be learned here...

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Other comments

I have copied parts of the below comments to the talk page of {{if pagename}}. --David Göthberg (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a drive-by comment: that template is insane. Insane in an "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" sort of way. That's an awesome piece of wikicode... again... :D Happy‑melon 17:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep, using parameter logic has gone a bit out of style with the advent of parser functions (Aah, qif ...). It's a pity that it's limited to only the 4-6-8 char prefix matching, but it's probably enough, and anything else would destroy the switch-like elegance. Amalthea 21:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Haha, thanks Happy-melon and Amalthea. Yeah, it is kind of "insane" code.

Hehe, {{qif}}. I had to indent that code and stare at it for about 20 minutes before I understood why it works. Well I think I understand why it works, but not absolutely sure. Scary stuff. :))

And yeah, it is a pity that we have to limit the number of lengths that the "prefix matching" can handle. We can add more but each length costs one line of code, and thus costs more resources to run. So using a handful of lengths like that probably is a good compromise.

And by the way: {{if pagename}} is just the regular version of that template, since I am planning a deluxe version. Probably named {{if pagename showall}} {{if pagename multi}}. It will have the same additional features as {{namespace detect showall}} has compared to {{namespace detect}}. The "showall" function isn't important, but being able to feed the same data efficiently to several matching names is needed.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

End comments copied to the talk page of {{if pagename}}. --David Göthberg (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Category suppression

This edit conflict threw me for a second. :-) Yes, {{tlx|[[Wikipedia:Blah]]}} does work. I prefer to use {{tlu|Wikipedia:Blah}}, which works with any namespace without the clunky brackets. I just hadn't noticed the linking problem until I tried to click through during testing. (I leave waaay too many tabs open with uncommitted edits.)

I also just noticed your Wikibreak's Wikibreak. Too funny. And I've been there before myself. :-) Or maybe I still am? —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 07:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know about or had forgotten about {{tlu}}. There are too many tl-something templates to keep track of... Anyway, I updated that link since it linked to the old redirect from template space. That's the redirect you requested deletion of, and that I had just deleted for you.

Yeah, I was on a long wikibreak until some weeks ago. But I am supposed to go back to my wikibreak any time now, perhaps next month.

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

{{tlu}} is a template I spent a fair amount of time "improving" (which then I rolled back into some of the other tl's). Many hours spent staring at its code. That's why it sticks in my mind so well. :-)

I replied on Template talk:Cat handler#Arbitrary break.

You're an admin, so I guess doing what I do isn't really an option. I just kind of fade in and out around here. Actually it's more like drift from one project to another. I've been neglecting Wikibooks for a looong time. And Meta's getting kind of neglected too. So mostly it's been here, Commons, Flickr, and the wikis that I run (that I hope will one day bring in some money to support my wiki addiction!). Anyway, I did go on Wikibreak for many months in 2007, but now I just tune out when I need to and tune back in when there is a reason to. It makes me feel less guilty than when I checked in while still on Wikibreaks. Glad you're here right now though. You're a great templater and it seems we have a lot in common. :-) —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 08:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am also slowly getting used to "tuning in and out", instead of seeing it as wikibreaks. I just have to figure out some good message to put at the top of my user pages so people understand I might not always be active, but might pop in every now and then.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I use a prominent e-mail link to encourage people to use it if things are time-critical.

Sorry about adding you to the WikiProject list. That was meant to be a demo while I was mocking up the page for inclusion. Since it is hidden below the bottom part of the scrolling DIV, I didn't see it and forgot to remove you. You're certainly welcome to join, and I'm glad you're friendly to the project. I saw your edit summary in my watch list, and I thought "oh crud!" and instantly realized my goof. No hard feelings, I hope? :-) —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 12:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

No worries. And sorry for making you stressed about it. I still am the biggest fan of your category suppression stuff, and you are still very much in my list of very nice people. (That's a list in my head, not on the web.) I actually hesitated to remove myself from the participants list. Even though I do understand your reasons for wanting to have a WikiProject for this, I still think it might be unnecessary. That's the main reason why I don't want to be listed as a participant.

Is it okay if I add myself under a new heading "Friends of the project" at the bottom of that list? That would feel more correct for me. And thanks for popping in, I had forgotten to ask you about adding myself as "Friend of the project". I wanted to ask first since that's an unconventional thing to add.

And is it okay if I start to "market" your how-to guide and your WikiProject? And I think I should start asking people to come look at {{cat handler}} and say what they think, since it feels ready.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Nice to know I'm a "nice person" in your list. :-) Also nice that you find CatSup so cool.

As far as marketing things, sure. But I am actually thinking that a slightly different name might be better. It's not just category suppression that we are discussing, but all things to do with automatic categorization and the suppression thereof. It broadens the WP scope a bit, and that's probably good. If so, then the WP name should probably be changed or tweaked. Any suggestions? Any other related topics that should be included? I don't want to tread on WP Templates, but if there are any other template-category related things that should be considered, it would be better to do so now than later. Once that's all figured out and any rename/moves are taken care of, then certainly any "marketing" you want to do would be appreicated.

Friend of the WikiProject or something like that would be fine. I just copied the headings from WP:MIX, which is the other group I developed. The copy and paste brought over some overkill, but it looks cool. :-) Jeremy (of WP:FOOD) is pretty much responsible for the formatting and many of the templates.

Got to get some sleep now. It's been a really rough past 72 hours or so off-wiki. Time to catch up on my lost Zzzs. —Willscrlt ( “Talk” ) 02:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the scope. I have copied that part to the talk page of the project and responded there.

Ehm, I have to admit I got impatient and did a little marketing. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#Templates that auto-categorize and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates#Templates that auto-categorize. You are probably going to dislike my comment about your WikiProject there, sorry. But with the new larger scope the project is perhaps okay, so I have just edited my marketing comments to reflect that.

And yes, the design of the project page looks very nice.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] str len

I reverted your changes to {{str len}}, they were breaking {{Wide image}} for some reason. (a user of {{str find}} and {{str sub}} —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good that you reverted. I did test the white space handling, and I ran some more tests now, but I can't see any differences when just testing {{str len}} and {{str len/sandbox}} themselves. And I stared at the code of {{str find}} etc for a while, but I can't find any obvious reason. This is weird. We'll have to investigate further.

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Animated GIF scaling

Hello. I know from previous interactions that you might be able to help with this. Could you have a look at this:

• commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard#Animated GIF resizing bug. Fix awaits implementation by admin

Do you know where CommonSettings.php can be found for the Commons? You can reply at the Commons thread if you want. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Timeshifter. Sorry for my late answer. I see others have already given the correct answers over there. And this was a thing I couldn't have helped out with, since I am not a Wikimedia Sysadmin. I am just a regular admin here at enwp, and not even an admin at Commons.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Archive template reworking

Hi David,

You said back in April that you were working on an overhaul of the archiving system. Do you have any plans to start working on this again? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 10:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I might continue doing that overhaul, but it depends on if I will have the time and if I am allowed to do it this time around. Back in April I was prevented by other users from doing that overhaul, and forced to go on a long wikibreak. Now I am back for a while to fix some other things that were on my to-do list.

But I am going to finish some of the meta-templates needed for that overhaul. That's actually the work I have in mind for this week. But I don't know if I will try to do the overhaul of the archive template system. But I might perhaps do it piece by piece, but over a longer time.

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Olá David

Hello David, you did a wonderful job and I'm not copying, I'm translating to my language so that it is also seen in Portuguese and can understand what they say, I think it should be translated into all languages as a model and show work to the world, should also have your signature so that everyone could know who was the author of such fine work. In fact I see the Wiki is unique in several languages. I do not speak English only translate gloogle in order to communicate with you. Please excuse me if I'm doing something wrong, please tell me if I should stop. Jurema Oliveira (talk) 06:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I like that you are translating my templates to the Portuguese Wikipedia. And Google translate is fascinating, I can understand perfectly what you are writing. So have a nice day, and happy editing!

(Google traduzida: Eu gosto que você está traduzindo meus modelos para a Wikipedia Português. E o Google Translate é fascinante, eu posso entender perfeitamente o que você está escrevendo. Então tenha um bom dia e boas!)

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I have much to thank you, in five years in wikipedia I have learn a lot, learned a little of the English language and I'm still learning to make templates, and I am learning many new things. I am a Brazilian grandmother of 61 years who likes to learn everything, I think it is never too late to learn. thank you, I learned a lot with you and with your work. Jurema Oliveira (talk) 07:08, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

And I am a 40 year old Swedish computer programmer. But still I find template programming hard. I too am learning a lot from my Wikipedia work. In my free time I dance samba and tango. And sometimes I work at our carnival here in my city, so I almost feel a little Brazilian / Argentinian. (Oh, and my dance partner is from Buenos Aires! :)) So, keep up the good work!

(E eu sou um programador de computador 40 anos de idade sueco. Mas ainda acho difícil encontrar modelo de programação. Eu também estou aprendendo muito com meu trabalho Wikipédia. No meu tempo livre eu dance samba e tango. E às vezes eu trabalho no nosso carnaval aqui na minha cidade, então eu quase me sinto um pouco brasileiro / argentino. (Ah, e meu parceiro de dança é de Buenos Aires!:)) Assim, manter o bom trabalho!)

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)