User talk:Geocachernemesis

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[edit] Cookbook vs. Wikipedia

For anything kitchen-related, it is best to avoid linking to Wikipedia. In general, Wikipedia is not focused on cooking and does not provide links back into the cookbook. (there are rare exceptions) We need a Cookbook:Blender article. If you change blender links to go toward Wikipedia, then it is less likely that someone will write the Cookbook:Blender article. Since links to Wikipedia do not go to missing pages in en.wikibooks.org, the Special:Wantedpages page won't find them.

[edit] Links Fixed

I've changed all of my links to Wikipedia to link to Cookbook instead. Cheers, Donovan. 22:32, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] see if you can tell the difference

To me, it's looking like the main distinction is that a bain-marie goes in the oven. This suggests that the cookbook's "bain-marie" picture is actually a double-boiler, and that we don't have a bain-marie picture. AlbertCahalan 04:13, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought. The picture of the bain-marie really does look like a double boiler. As the two are so similar, they could easily coexist on the same page. Cheers, Donovan. 13:02, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] really obscure names

According to Google, "cookie sheet" is 38.7 times as popular as "baking tray". Now, come on. It is quite unreasonable to use a name that most people around the world are unfamiliar with. I just asked my wife what a baking tray was, and it took her half a minute to guess.

I'm sometimes OK with the non-USA terms if the US audience would surely know the term, the US term is ambiguous, and the US term is obscure. I'm OK with "Waffle Maker" (ugh), if you insist.

I know it must suck to kind-of sort-of share a language, but be trained in a minority dialect. Try not to blame me for all the pain and suffering this must cause.

AlbertCahalan 23:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Leaving duplicate names in a list is very annoying to someone who wants to read about each item in turn. They'll go to pages more than once. Putting the alternate name in parentheses is reasonable. AlbertCahalan 23:24, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As far as naming standards go, I have been giving the matter some thought. I find that consistent use of titlecase ("Fish and Chips") is extremely helpful when linking ingredients and recipes. I know the name I need for creating the link. So that's an argument for consistency. Then, what of the best choice? Well, link target names serve only one use outside of editing. They form the page title. This is a strong indication that titlecase is correct. I can also see an argument for pure lowercase, based on readability and allowing the occasional uppercase letter to indicate a proper noun. Switching the whole cookbook to pure lowercase would be a tremendous task, so I think this is not a good option unless there is some huge benefit which I am currently unaware of. Thus I have come to prefer titlecase. It's all over already; the equipment section is one of two main violators, the other being stuff like "East Asian cuisines" (where "cuisine" or cuisines" is always lowercase in spite of everything else being uppercase). Switching to titlecase happens to be the least effort if consistency is desired, which is I'm fairly sure true. AlbertCahalan 23:43, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Baking sheet greatly bothers the ears, but at least it is understandable. Oven tray means nothing to me.

The problems for you are different from the problems for a US citizen. Because of the way the USA exports culture through movies and TV, you are likely to find US terminology understandable. It may annoy you greatly, but you can at least understand it. New Zealand might have wonderful culture, but it isn't being exported to the USA. A wee bit of British makes it over to the US, but not much. This means that cookbook readers in the USA will be left completely clueless by New Zealand terms.

Google constitutes a majority unless you can demonstrate that the search terms are picking up unrelated junk. In the case of "oven tray", I'm pretty sure you are getting this advantage. Over here, "oven tray" might refer to the storage drawer commonly found under an oven. It might refer to something used with industrial ovens, including ones used for drying timber (dead trees) or curing paint.

I suppose that I do dislike linking to your page titles, but that isn't one of the significant issues. I tend to create a new duplicate page when the expected page is missing. This has been done many times. I dislike seeing your page titles at the top of the page, which is a very different problem that is unfixable by adding redirects. Also, adding all these redirects gets tiresome.

There are some definite written guidelines actually.

AlbertCahalan 02:23, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Do notice the date on those definite written guidelines; they are (just barely) old enough to prove that I didn't create them just to argue with you. :-) Also, they have been edited by someone who is British.

2/3 of the world's English speakers use American English. India may use English for government and upper-class business, but the rest of the country speaks hundreds of other languages.

"cookie tray" is not used much. I doubt such an item would be for cooking at all; it sounds like something for serving cookies at a party. If you really don't like "cookie sheet", then please use "baking sheet". Both "oven" and "tray" are uncommon in the names of such objects. It's a sheet, either "cookie sheet" or "baking sheet".

It might help you to know that I got a rather bad impression of the community too when I showed up several months ago. Admins seemed to regularly delete pages without discussion. When a page did go to a vote for deletion, an admin would often be the prosecutor (placed the item up for deletion), judge (counting the votes, throwing away many as being suspect), and executioner (performing the deletion, without waiting for objections). An admin accused me of being a "sock puppet" (ask if you aren't familiar with the term) and also accused me of using sock puppets.

Perhaps a "truly international" wiki is more trouble than it is worth. Very very few American cooks can deal with a British recipe. The big problem is that kitchen scales and balances do not exist in US households. Then there are the unavailable ingredients, etc. This wiki is a cold and hostile place for Americans, but you probably can't see that.

AlbertCahalan 03:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sugar formatting

What was the problem with <br clear="all"> ? With browsers that don't support it (should be rare), it shouldn't do anything. This bit of code is used all over the place to ensure that pictures don't wind up in the wrong section. I know of no other way to properly (independant of font size and window size) prevent pictures from ending up adjacent to the wrong text.

Also note that the order is very wrong now. The brown sugar picture was next to the brown sugar. Now, brown sugar is white and white sugar is brown. AlbertCahalan 23:57, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So, it worked fine. I use Firefox too, and I see the vertical gaps too. The <br clear="all"> code ensured that everything above and everything below will be separate, thus keeping an image from one section from slopping over into another section. It's like having an invisible line across the page. This is required to align the brown sugar image with the brown sugars, and the white sugar image with the white sugars. I did put those two images there specifically to be adjacent to the text, not to give a general impression. Shrinking the images should be enough to eliminate the gaps, but I'll put the white sugar up top. Having white after brown in the text did kind of bother me anyway, but the image perspective didn't bother me at all. AlbertCahalan 01:02, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] firm vs. hard

Quinces and unripe tomatoes are more than just "firm". I think you could drive nails with a quince! Typical low-cost commercial tomatoes are firm when they get to the store, but they are quite hard when picked. They're like apples. Some kinds of tofu are considered to be firm. AlbertCahalan 08:10, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree that firm is not a great word to describe green tomatoes, but neither is hard. I would call the shell of a nut hard, but not a green tomato. Quinces are more like a firm pear when totally ripe (though a slightly sour one). I took a bite out of the one pictured, and I could probable get used to it (it wasn't all that sour). Anyway, I don't totally disagree with the use of hard, but firm works too. What we really need is another word that means something in between, I simply used firm as it was the first thing that popped into my head when I was editing the page. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 11:52, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
So now the quince has a toothy grin and you need dentures? Get about 5 next time, and try the quince crisp recipe. It ought to be pretty good; most apple varieties turn to mush but the quinces should hold up even better than Granny Smith apples. AlbertCahalan 22:47, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
My grandparents gave me four off their tree, that's why they were ripe. They are slowly being reintroduced to supermarkets, but those ones are pretty green and hard (as most supermarket fruit is). Yeah, quinces don't disintegrate like apples when cooked. I stewed mine. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:38, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] titlecase

When I showed up, it already looked like titlecase was the standard. There were of course deviations, but many recipes were already in titlecase. I figured that the others were mistakes carried over from Wikipedia. Apparently lots of people prefer titlecase, Wikipedia be damned.

If we actually think about this though, we should be using default (natural: "shoe", "April") case in Wikipedia. By forcing the first letter to uppercase, we can't tell the Polish (people) from polish (stuff for shining shoes). It would be good for users to see that August is capatalized for a reason, and pH is not capitalized.

Wikipedia is very different from Wikibooks. Link renaming is nearly universal on Wikibooks. Wikipedia relys on a software hack to make the wiki appear to be case-insensitive to the casual observer, but this hack doesn't work for Wikibooks. (the software uppercases the first letter automatically)

So a technical hack (kludge, really) on Wikipedia leads to Wikipedia policy, but that hack doesn't apply on Wikibooks.

AlbertCahalan 06:47, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I understand your position on the naming of pages from our previous discussions. To prevent newcomers getting the same impression as you did, I've added the other side of the story to grunt work. I know that you don't agree with it, but it's a guideline in Wikibook's manual of style. Maybe you should add comments to its talk page, then if the guideline is changed through consensus, I'll happily fall into line. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 10:46, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
De-facto consensus is to ignore that nonsense. Looking at the recent changes page just now I see:
  • Engaged Tenderness - Handbook on Homosexuality
  • Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Mountains Out Of Molehills
  • HSE Discrete Probability
  • How To Build A Computer/Table of Contents
  • Theoretical Mechanics/Vector Algebra
  • Wikisolutions/About Wikisolutions
  • Physics with Calculus
  • FHSST Physics Waves:Practical Applications Electromagnetic
  • Network Plus Certification/Media and Topologies
  • World History:Ancient Civilizations
(and that's not half of them)
There are also hybrids, like:
  • Movie Making Manual-Linux in film production
  • (etc.)
AlbertCahalan 16:37, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure if a de-facto consensus is the same as an overall consensus in this case. It's possible that the creator and contributors to manual of style don't represent the opinions of the majority. I see that you have added to the discussion over on its talk page, we should continue it there, that's so we can get some sort of consensus on which policy to adopt. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 04:01, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] hmmm

I just noticed your revert war with 217.33.207.195 on the main page. Y'know, if you could support my admin request in spite of our differences you wouldn't have to repeatedly revert stuff so often. It's not as if I'd be abusing admin powers to get my way in our numerous disputes; I think I've shown elsewhere that I can be trusted with such things. BTW, 217.33.207.195 is probably also "Mann Ltd". AlbertCahalan 15:19, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it was pretty pointless. After a while, I decided the best thing to do was to walk away. I doubt that 217.33.207.195 is going to reform any time soon. I thought that you were asleep at the time. Some vandals seem to wait until a time of day when the bulk of the admins are inactive. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 22:27, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I think I was asleep, but I'd noticed him the day before and would have blocked him then. He had been trying to make the main page redirect to a gay web site. See this edit. AlbertCahalan 23:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey Donovan: Could I persuade you to reconsider your vote for Albert? I think both of you would be great admins, so it's kind of troubling to see the two of you blocking each other like this. (If not an outright support, how about an abstain?) MShonle 20:34, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from. But, strategically, it would have been better for Albert to appeal to my better nature, and to support my adminship, I would most likely have supported him then. As it is, his negative vote appears to have held thing up needlessly. Even without his support, I was seriously considering supporting his next bid for adminship (the current one was never going to succeed). But, since then, he has been virtually inactive. Before support his next bid for adminship, I would really like to see at least a month of moderately active and helpful editing over the whole of Wikibooks (mainly in fighting vandalism). BTW, I was under the understanding that to gain adminship, I only needed four votes of support, with no more than one in opposition, where abstains counted as neutral votes. I'm currently at seven to one, eight if you count my nominator. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 00:53, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Beware of editing large pages

Your last edit to Jokebook:You have two cows cut off most of the page (see edit diff). It would appear that your browser has trouble editing pages over 32K in length. Don't worry about fixing the problem; I've already done so. Just wanted to warn you so you can be on the lookout for this problem in the future. - dcljr 22:28, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wow it really did chop off the most of the page. It doesn't look like a 32K problem, because the page is cut at about 8K. Something went seriously wrong somewhere. Thanks for the advice. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:10, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

I've nominated you for adminship. Thanks for your help in dealing with spam and vandalism. Guanaco 03:20, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the nomination Guanaco. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 03:45, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] my Adminship

Thankyou for votting support for me, i'd like to note that the reason for my minimal edits is because of many of my edits are to revert spam, because wikipedia is rather large ans extensive and i really can't find anything i can contribute to, other than fighting vandalism, and then on wikinews, i am not the best writer although i want to contribute more article, mainly ones with original reporting if possible, and wikibooks, well even though my spelling isn't the best i love the idea behind Wikibooks and think i could contribute more to actual books and wikiversiry but also in fighting vandalism wich admins powers really help make it less stressful i've noticed, since its much easier with the rollback button and i'd have the ability to block vandals myself without having to find an admin, especially on wikinews this was a problem, cause some vandals would come out when no admins were online, i was though, and that really was a pain since i couldn't block them and no admins were around to do it. Again thankyou for your support.--Ryan524 15:58, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. Your spelling isn't anything a spell checker can't sort out. Any remaining mistakes will be ironed by your fellow Wikibookians in time (that's one advantage of wikis). (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 00:44, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Of Mice and Men rv

Geocachernemesis, just to let you know, not all of 195.144.131.4's edit on Of Mice and Men were misedits; some actually did make sense (if I remembered the book correctly). The contributor just got bored halfway I think. I was scratching my head on what to do with that mass/ mess.

No biggie, I'll go back to fix it later. Thanks for the rv. Lynx7725 09:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I didn't feel so bad about it, because many of 195.144.131.4's previous edits have been pretty inane (basically vandalism). I wasn't about to spend an hour sifting through extracting out the good information. It's been a while since I read the book, so it would be difficult to decide what to keep and what to leave out. If 195.144.131.4 wants to do it, then that's fine with me. I left an introductory note on their talk page pointing them to the sandbox, so we'll see what effect that has. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 10:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Having me revert the whole lot does make it easier to pick out what was actually added, because you can just look at my diff. But, at the time 195.144.131.4 was stuffing around adding and removing vandalism with each edit, making it difficult to see what was really going on. Maybe I'll use that strategy again in future. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 10:39, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Aye, it worked out well. Alternatively, I can just look at the last good edit (in this case I cleaned up this article the last time, so I simply looked for my own edit there). Either way, just diff'ing the last good edit and 195.144.131.4's last edit save me from wandering through the whole load -- I can ignore the strange stuff (s)he had in between. Lynx7725 10:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GTA:SA Removal of redundant pages

We've been restructuring the San Andreas guide recently. We're keeping a track of all the pages in a metadata page.

Can you delete all the pages under the section entitled Orphaned Redirects? Obviously I mean the redirects themselves, not the pages they redirect to. :-)

If you could also update that section to indicate when this has been done, that would be nice too.

Thanks...

Aya 01:08, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an admin yet, and I'm pretty busy at the moment. But, you can easily mark those pages for deletion yourself. I've done the first one to show you how. First add the delete tag to the page with an explanation, see Template:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Header. Next, you must add a note to the end of the Speedy deletion candidates section of the Wikibooks:Votes for deletion page, otherwise it won't be deleted. That's it, an administrator should come and deleted them within a week (not very speedy, I know). (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:34, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Eep. Sorry. I could have sworn you'd been admin'd already. You certainly deserve to be, since you seem to regularly spot and revert malicious edits. Anyways. Disregard my request. Be careful, by the way; the page you added the deletion notice to, was not one of the pages on the list. Aya 13:17, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that, I must not have been concentrating, at least the page wasn't deleted. Anyway, you can see that you can easily add pages to the VfD page yourself. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 14:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] You're welcome!

I just happened to be the person who noticed the live vandalism had moved over to wikibooks, so I got delegated to clean it up. Since the twits doing it took the opportunity to say hello to me in IRC, I figured I'd better watch for a while and while I was RC patroling I took the time to clean out the speedy deletions. (I was going to also do the VfD, but I got a little lost in the policy and couldn't find if it was simple majority or some form of super-majority.)

By the way, there is an excellent tool which monitors changes on the Wikibooks in real-time, irc://irc.wikimedia.org/en.wikibooks This is an IRC chat room with a bot who is connected to the database and announces all the database changes. There are a couple of software written to use this stream of changes to help people monitoring the recent changes to wikimedia sites as well.

You may want to take a look at the many new pages being created by 80.56.38.110, who seems to be creating a medical dictionary or something?

<grin> Must go, will build a user page and then request to be de-admined. - Amgine 16:13, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'll look into your monitoring link. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:04, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Medicine pages

Hi, I'm the one who edited the Medicine section. I'm going to write more there. I added the links to create at least something. Before seriously writing, I'm placing some external links to begin with. I'm in no way related to the Merck company. The Merck Manual is the world's most used medical reference book and is highly respect, written by several hundred mostly American top physicians. While the pages are lacking any actual content, this is a temporary beginning from which, hopefully, books will come forth. Also check the Medicine page, which I redirected to Medicine_Bookshelf, and see the discussion page there. If you're interested in participating, we could talk further there. In the meantime, please note that I just started working on this section of Wikibooks yesterday morning, and I'm not quite finished yet. In fact, the whole section on Medicine currently consists of only one single book (Radiation Oncology), and the book on Emergency Medicine is under construction. I edited the front page of Medicine yesterday, and made a beginning on the Neurology, Cardiology and Pediatrics sections. Anyway, let's keep the topic-related discussions to the Medicine discussion page, if you're interested?

Oh good, carry on then.;) I just had to check with you to ensure that you were aware of how it looked. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. It should be an interesting book when it fills out a bit more. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 15:13, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] While you were gone...

I did some patrolling over the Independence weekend; you'll notice that the Sandbox has been moved around by Asseca.. My brain is not up to unravelling the covoluted edits there. Also, seems like everything is done by the same user, so I guess there's no harm done.. Even the Sandbox move was good as it cleared the Sandbox out. - Lynx7725 4 July 2005 11:02 (UTC)

[edit] Cheers

Thanks for the early imput. I've tidied up the Wikiversity portal site quite a bit, adding content in places where I can. Thanks again --Abc123

[edit] Re: Thanks

Thanks for helping to fight vandalism while I was away. Keep up the good work, because every bit helps. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

No worries. It's not just vandalism, but general stupidity. Obviously the newbies can't help it, and when they create new subpages for existing books, they're not always following naming conventions, and creating their new pages in the global namespace without indicating that they're part of an existing title. Other users are then just adding them to VfD, when it would be far better to convert them to the correct naming convention, and make sure the user in question is aware. To be fair, the site policies are much too difficult to locate for new users (it took me a few weeks to find them all), and incomplete in places, so I'm gonna have a go at improving that. Anyways. Glad you're back. The Wikibooks community needs more users who are prepared to be bold. - Aya 15:59, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Votes for deletion

Can you please refrain from adding speedy deletions to this page. I've changed the rules to try to keep the page short and managable. Providing you've added the 'delete' template, the admins can see the speedies in the page Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. An admin will move it to the VfD page if they believe it requires a vote. Please re-read the VfD page up to the TOC, and the page Wikibooks talk:Votes for deletion for details. - Aya 13:28, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

It is quite a major change to the way things had been done, and not particularly well advertised. But, if that's how it's done now, then so be it. My only concern is that it makes it far easier for pages to be listed for speedy deletion, and that could be abused easily. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 23:29, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I did put in quite a bit of thought before making this change. The deletion policy states that speedies are optional to add in. I guess I should change that to say they should never be added. If you're not certain, use a VfD instead. Just seems like reducing the amount of house-keeping required to keep this site running means more problems can be addressed more quickly. All you have to do now is add the template include, and move on to the next one. And to be fair, speedies could always be easily abused. There's no guarantee that users will add speedies to the VfD page anyway. Besides, so many of the pages I add as speedies are just newbie experiments. There's really no need for a vote on them. You're right in that it's not well advertised. I should've made it more obvious. I'll see what I can do. I just figured taking a more pro-active approach would be good, since Wikipedians seem to want to discuss everything for ages. If I find my stuff getting reverted, then I'll know there's a problem. - Aya 00:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

The old procedure was pretty ambiguous, but the way I read it was that it was expected that speedies would be listed on the VfD page too, although some contributors didn't do it. I don't have a problem with your change, but you have to be cautious with changes to policy (yes, I know it's frustrating ;). That is, you should be bolder in your edits of individual books than with Wikibooks policy pages. My own disagreement over the correct naming of the ingredients pages in the Cookbook with AlbertCahalan caused unneeded friction, and rather than getting into a move war, I just walked away (but, you may not be so fortunate). (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:21, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Well. It was slightly ambiguous. This is one of the problems I'm trying to address, but there's a lot of content here, and it's gonna take time to sort out. It's obvious that Wikibooks != Wikipedia, and the policies copied from Wikipedia to Wikibooks aren't gonna work here (particularly with naming conventions). If you wanna see what's going on in my head, take a look at User:Aya/Wikibooks. As for the page Wikibooks:Deletion policy, the section entitled Procedure for deletion states:

Pages (and images) to be deleted should be listed on Wikibooks:Votes for deletion for a week before deletion takes place. That way, other Wikibookians can have a chance to argue for and against the removal of the page. There are a few, limited, exceptions to this rule:
1. No meaningful content or history (eg "sdhgdf").
2. Test pages (eg "Can I really create a page here?").
3. Pure vandalism (see dealing with vandalism).
4. Very short pages with no definition or context (eg "This guy is great!") or that only have an external link.
5. Reposting previously deleted content, where the page was not listed on votes for undeletion.
6. A user's own user page or his/her own user subpages.

I intepret this to mean that any pages meeting the numbered criteria should NOT be added to the page Wikibooks:Votes for deletion, but should instead be either deleted immediately (if you have the privs), or added as a speedy candidate if you don't. So this is the way I have re-worded the page Wikibooks:Votes for deletion, merely to keep it consistent with policy. I may re-word the policy page to make it clearer, but I felt I'd just try changing the page Wikibooks:Votes for deletion to match policy before changing it, just to see what reaction I got from other users. To be honest, I don't think many other users care that much at all, and there's only a very small hardcore of 'power users' such as yourself and Lynx7225 who even read these pages at all.

By the way: check whatever template it is you use to sign your name. I had to change <sub>Donovan<sub> to <sub>Donovan</sub> to prevent subscriping of all following text. - Aya 15:52, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I've fixed the typo in my signature, I think. Yes, Wikibooks is not Wikipedia, but it's still a Wikimedia project. It is desirable for all Wikimedia projects have the same policies wherever possible, because that makes it easier for users to move between projects. If we make our policy different, just because we can, then we will forever be confusing these new users, and we will have to clean up their mess. Metawiki is there for deciding policy that affect all Wikimedia projects, and it's only a matter of time before we will be asked to conform. Some policy that will always differ from Wikipedia and other projects is that to do with what Wikibooks is not, we must clearly define what belongs here (and enforce it). If we don't, then it makes the job of administration far more difficult. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 22:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I had considered using Meta, but I was only trying to solve the case for this site, since it's scope is far broader than any other. Take a look at User:Aya/Wikibooks/A critique of Wikibooks, and direct any further comments to its talk page. Thankyou. - Aya 00:55, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] welcome template

Hi, I modified the Template:Welcome to match your welcome message and I also made Template:Cookbookwelcome which includes the welcome template but also has an area for cookbook-specific messages. Use it like so: {{cookbookwelcome}} ~~~~ See User:134.10.24.231 for an example usage. Kellen 06:44, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks I'll try it out.:) (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 06:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the assist!

Just want to say thanks for your work over the last few days -- I'm currently tied up at work and can't do much this week (and probably much of next). - Lynx7725 01:48, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome.:) I know exactly how you feel. I'll do what I can until you have more time. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:29, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for helping!

Just wanted to say thanks for fixing the newbie experiments in the Mambo Open Source-book - http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Mambo_Open_Source%2FCreate_your_own_template&diff=190080&oldid=175973! --August 16:50, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome, I'm glad I could help. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 00:38, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Top 10 active

rv link added to this section by mistake by Chaturganj

This is the 3rd time he's done it. I don't think it's a mistake anymore, but a means to advertise his (arguably inappropriate) Treatise on life and every thing that matters.
He has also tried changing the date on the Template:New to get it to stay in there longer. I've now completely re-designed the template, to allow for personal projects to be listed there (albeit on a separate list).
This means it's now safe to delete that redirect page, so I've added it to speedies. - Aya T C 14:23, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Okay. I had a word to them about it, and they seemed to have stopped. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:04, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

rm edit this section link that is causing confusion

Probably wise. It may be worth both of these SQL data sections on the Main page anyway, since no-one can be bothered to keep them up-to-date, and getting an up-to-date DB dump is not easy. Problem is, only an admin can change the main page. I've been thinking of getting those permissions myself, but I worry that it might be controversial to do so, if I plan to subsequently change Wikibooks policy (i.e. no separation of legislative and executive powers). Is this likely to be a problem, or am I just being paranoid? - Aya T C 14:23, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
I don't honestly know, you would have to ask the admins. In my experience, becoming an admin is virtually impossible here, mainly due to the lack of interest in voting (it will probably take many months). Xiaodai pulled out after only one week, for that very reason. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 02:04, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
It occurs to me that if there's no strict time limits on RFA, or any way to guarantee that the users who are actually able to make admins are any longer active users of the system, then it would be appropriate to assume this site to be devoid of admins, and to make the request on Meta instead. I'm hoping that someone watches that. If not then I may just give up completely. It just seems a shame that there are many trustworthy and attentive users such as yourself who have the best intentions to help out in an administrative capacity, but the system only serves to ensure that it can never happen. I shall investigate how much of this is truth, and how much is speculation. Watch this space. - Aya T C 13:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I just gotta add something here. According to Jimbo, it wasn't supposed to be all that hard to become an admin. The main issues were that a user had to show that he/she had a firm grasp of Wikimedia Foundation policies, and in particular becoming an admin of a particular project had to show that you tended to help out more than you hurt (hopefully much more so). That you should be involved actively in a particular project (like Wikibooks, not just a particular book) to some degree with a substantial number of edits (no specific number required) to show that you understand basic editing policies on the project.
IMHO the process of becoming an admin has been glorified way too much. At this point I don't care if I become an admin, but I don't think it should be a major undertaking. If the real purpose of the voting page to become an admin was a popularity contest, it is a failure anyway. It is more like you have to be an agressive user who has done a good job searching all of the pages here at Wikibooks just to find the darn thing, and even then I for one hardly even take a look at it.
My previous experience with similar social structures involved the Open Directory Project, where the "admins" (or in that case they were called "metas") took their power way overboard and have all but killed the entire concept. Old editors are fleeing and new editors are getting squashed. I tried to get some enthusiastic new volunteers "promoted", but my words fell on deaf ears. The one nice thing I like about the Wikimedia Foundation board is that they are very approachable dispite the huge number of volunteers in all of the projects, and if a particular admin is being particularly harsh (like seems to be happening at Wikinews), they do accept appeals to step in and at least add a couple of more admins if necessary.
I don't have any real beef against the current group of admins on Wikibooks, and indeed they are doing a fair job, but I would like to see a couple more people gain admin status. --Rob Horning 08:16, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, voting for adminship does appear to have become more a popularity contest than simply choosing people who are willing to help out with Wikibooks as a whole, and that don't bite other users excessively. It's a bit like VfD in a way, whereby books are being kept simply because the voters liked it, and without consideration for Wikibook's policy. I think that we do need more admins, to bring up the number that are active at any given time (on the lookout for vandalism and to vote on VfD). I don't have any complaints about our existing admins, and you can't force them to be more active, they are volunteers after all. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 08:53, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
You're both correct, and I intend to spend less time talking about the problems, and more time taking on the responsibility of solving them. As a consequence I'm going to attempt to get myself bureaucrat status on this wiki (I think I've even found someone on Meta who can actually get this done), and get some more admins in place ASAP (I believe you'd both make fine candidates). I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting fed up with having to continually revert these automated linkspam attacks, when I (or others) could just block them. Especially now our beloved 'ass pus' perpetrator seems to have returned again. See Wikibooks:Requests for adminship#Aya for the gory details. I hope I can count on your support, but I'd also understand if you don't think it would be appropriate. - Aya T C 19:43, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

rv change by Aya. I asked Jacoplane to move their Wikipedia links to the bottom, because it distracts the reader less. I can find the link to the policy section regarding it if you like

A link to policy would be nice, but I still think right-justified stuff looks ugly there. Centered might be more appropriate. - Aya T C 13:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I did read it somewhere, but as you know, it can be difficult to find a specific guideline. Anyway, as you say, it probably would look better in the centre or on the left. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:13, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for the usertalk msg you sent me, im sure it'll help. I've been gonig here for a long time but just made an account and started contributing to the Wikiversity Military STudies page. I hope youw on't have to fix much vandalism around here.

Thanks GACSean. Vandalism can be a problem at times. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 21:47, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for major policy overhaul

As an interested user, it might interest you that I've started to think about changes to existing policy and project scope so that policies are more clearly defined (as suggested by User:Aya, who claims existing policies to be ambiguous) and more open (as suggested by User:Robert Horning over the biography debacle). I've made a post on textbook-l ([1]) as a result, please reply to my talk page for feedback. KelvSYC 05:58, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sysop

I've now granted you sysop access. See Wikibooks:Requests for adminship#Geocachernemesis for justifications. - Aya T C 01:00, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I was wondering what all of those extra rollback and block link were.;) (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Heh. Surprised me too to get bureaucrat access within 2 days of my request. Now perhaps you can sort of some of the 'millions' of speedy deletions you've added. ;-) - Aya T C 01:22, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for helping out.:) I've deleted the remainder. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 03:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Acetone peroxide synthesis

I reverted to your last edit and put a protect on the page. I see your comment though that it's no longer relevant. If so, you can unprotect it as you see fit. MShonle 00:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. On second thoughts, maybe the newest editor chopped out too much information. Maybe, I'll leave it protected for a little while before unprotecting it. (Donovan|Geocachernemesis|Interact) 01:23, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template protection request

Since it would be easy to get an admin to unprotect this... and because they are use so much and in so many place throughout Wikibooks, I am requesting that the following templates be placed under protection:

This was an avenue for vandalism in the last attack that can be prevented, and I don't see a legitimate reason to change these templates without a wiki-wide discussion first anyway that would also involve an admin.

Thanks in advance for considering this. --Rob Horning 11:16, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Done. I don't know if I'm supposed to do it without consulting the others, but it's easily undone. As a rule, however, protecting pages is really supposed to be our last resort. GeoT 11:51, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm pointing out that how pervasive these template is used throughout Wikibooks (I bet this snipped of text is accessed more than just about any other piece here) and the fact that I can't see any realistic reason to even change the format of this template without a major discussion, they do need protection. In the last Ass Pus attack, some well-meaning but uninformed new user went through and deleted this template from Wikijunior Solar System (quite a bit of work BTW as it was used about 30 times there), and I bet that happened in some other areas of Wikibooks as well... which is one of my motivations. I would suggest that the images of 00%.png, 25%.png, 50%.png, 75%.png, and 100%.png should also be protected, but that is more likely to be updated in some expaned guesstimation of the status of a Wikibook. I'll go ahead and take the heat on this one if somebody complains, but I highly doubt that will be a problem. Besides, the protection is also in the logs, and as you've said it can be undone very easy. --Rob Horning 18:41, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback

I can't figure this out. How is it you manage to auto-rollback more than one revision in a page's history? For example, your recent rollback to The Final Fantasy Legend. - Aya T E C 01:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


It doesn't work 100% of the time for some reason. But, you simply go to the history and then check beside the revision that you want to revert to, and then find the diff (handy to see if any damage has actually been done, newbies will often make several edits, and then fix them all). You should have the rollback link on the top right of the screen, and the revision you want to revert to on the top left (if not, then it won't work this time), simply click on the link, and that's it. Geo.T 01:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


Weird. I tested that on the sandbox, to revert all the way back to Pieman's last edit, but it didn't work. I think it may only work when the last few edits were all made by the same user. - Aya T E C 01:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


Confirmed. All edits must have been made from the same user. - Aya T E C 01:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


That would make sense. I've also found that when reviewing a user's contributions, hitting the rollback link beside their final edit to the page will revert all of their (contiguous) edits to that page. I've just tested it on myself, and it works. Geo.T 02:10, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


I also suspect that regardless of which revision you diff against amongst the previous user's contiguous edits, it will always rollback them all. Note that I can't find any documentation about this on Meta at all. Typical. :-)

Perhaps we should use this thread to start the beginnings of an "administrators guide", especially considering the number of new admins that have been added recently, and those still in the pipeline. It also ought to point out when blocking users is okay. I was slightly annoyed when I noticed AlbertCahalan blocked a newbie for 3 days for this edit to the Cookbook. In his defence, he may have foolishly believed the reverter's incorrect assertion that this user was a 'vandal', but admins really ought to check these sorts of things. Luckily I was watching it all on the IRC system, so I could unblock the user within 5 minutes of the block. - Aya T E C 02:34, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

A set of guidelines for administrators would be a good idea. I'm carrying on the way I did before I became an administrator, and it may not be entirely correct. It is understandable that Albert over did it a bit, because he has been out of the loop for a while. I think that we need to reiterate that suspected vandals should be dealt with carefully, just revert their edits without comment, only warn them on them talk page if they persist, and only block them if they ignore a warning. In practice, I silently rollback everything but the most persistant vandalism. We don't wan't to frighten off casual experimeners, and we don't want to encorage attention seeking vandals by overreacting either. Our goal should be to fix vandalism as quickly as possible, so that others can see that the behaviour will not be accepted, and that their efforts are in vain. PS: I see that you are using the Wikibooks indentation scheme. I though that it was being largly ignored. Geo.T 03:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinking something like this for the casual vandal:

  1. For a first offence, just silently revert. If it looks more like a newbie experiment than a vandal, then stick the "test" template on their user talk page. We don't want to encourage attention-seeking vandals by putting messages on their talk page.
  2. If they should continue, warn that subsequent transgressions will result in a block.
  3. If they still don't listen, block for a small amount of time (24h?)
  4. After this, increase length of block, but I'm not certain an infinite block is a good idea for the casual vandal.

Exceptions to this are scripted linkspam attempts - zero tolerance to this, so infinite block. Ditto with this AP vandal.

Although there's still the issue of how to tell the difference between a newbie experiment and a vandal.

I prefer the other indentation scheme, but I use this scheme when the depth of nesting hits about 6 or 7. I think this scheme can get a little confusing when there's more than two users in the conversation. - Aya T E C 14:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

That sounds sensible. It's hard to tell a vandal from an experimenter, but we should err on the side of caution. Geo.T 22:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nice Work

...keeping up with all the newbies/vandals. ThreeE 04:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks.:) Geo.T 04:19, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Geo & User:Geo.

I can rename your main account to one of these if you prefer?. - Aya T E C 13:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, but I would rather stick with Geocachernemesis, because that is what I am known as on many other Wikimedia projects (also, Geo is already taken on Wikipedia). I have made it perfectly clear that Geo and Geo. are the same person as Geocachernemesis, and I don't intent to use them as sock puppets (they are handy for testing page protection, however). I hope that it's not a problem. Geo.T 13:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't be a problem. Initially I was concerned that you'd hijacked these user pages without even creating the accounts, but I checked the userlist to make sure they'd been registered. - Aya T E C 13:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Oops, I didn't think of that. Yes, they are both registered to me (e-mailing them will reach the same address as Geocachernemesis does). Geo.T 13:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanx a lot for fixing my problem and answering my questions. :) --EnaamA 23:24, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] latest vandal

Hey, we did nice work. It seems that you reverted the edits from the top down, and I reverted edits from the bottom up. I just needed to stop when I reached the ones you already reverted. :-) MShonle 04:03, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome.:) Geo.T 04:50, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks talk:Naming policy

Please review your vote on Wikibooks talk:Naming policy. Please take into account that the vote is only about content of the main page and not about possible extensions mentioned on the talk page.

--Krischik T 08:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your De-Adminship

Hello. I would like to inform you that you will have your sysop rights removed here on 1 Nov 2006 due to inactivity. If you would like to discuss the matter, please see WB:RFA. You can re-apply for adminship at a later date if you wish. Thanks. -withinfocus 21:29, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please comment or vote...

Wikibooks:Request for enabling special:import

This would make the transwiki of recipes from en.wp a lot easier (recipes seem to make up the majority of w:Category:Copy to Wikibooks). The folks at meta have asked for a show of local support for turning it on. --SB_Johnny | talk 12:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Acetone peroxide synthesis

I have proposed the acetone peroxide synthesis for deletion. What do you think? Ewen 14:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

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