User talk:Mike.lifeguard/Archive 15

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Prealgebra for Two-Year Colleges renaming

Sorry about the misnamed files. I cannot yet delet files. Will you please delete/move them for me?

Please delete

Please move

Thanks, and sorry for the trouble!

--Dr.enh (talk) 20:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

No problem; sometimes people like to do things themselves. Also, many like to learn by doing best. In any case, consider these done. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

RE: sig

Your signature should be put into the signature field of my preferences. That should work better, as ~~~~ will work nicely then. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 04:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know that, but I'm an interesting fellow and what I have in my signature field in my prefs is {{subst:user:penubag/sig}}. That way when I type ~~~~, my signature is different every time I sign. See: --penubag (talk; w) --penubag (talk; w) --penubag (talk; w) 01:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

huh. Well I think that's probably a trivial server load, and very, very cool =D – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Agh, I can't get my signature from taking less than 3 lines. When I subst my signature, it puts some unusual breaks in it forcing 3 lines of sig. I know this is against policy so I may just go back to the simplistic one. --penubag (talk; w) 05:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, technically we don't have a policy, but it is a tad annoying. I don't know how to fix it, but the preprocessor introduced some new behaviour, so this may be a bug, or it may be a feature :P You might want to ask at m:Migration to the new preprocessor. For now, WB:TECH is the place to post. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 05:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, before the new preprocessor, I didn't really notice this problem. Since you mentioned that it was anoying, I'll just change back to the defult sig, I really don't care that much about a sig. Although it is beautiful --penubag (talk; w) 16:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to Mathematics

Impossible to learn all the math necessary for college in a year? On the contrary, it's been done.

I wish I remembered more details, but the story goes something like this. The new administrator for the New York State school system, about 1900, introduced a new mathematics curriculum. In the first three grades, there was no mathematics at all, excpet learning the numbers from one to one hundred. Then in fourth grade teachers began to teach mathematics by introducing a small number of rules (essentially the commutative, associative, and distributive laws, though I don't believe he called them by those names). After that, his curriculum went on to what today look like fairly advanced problems in business mathematics.

The experiment was a total success. Immigrant children, who most educators at the time thought were incapable of learning, mastered basic mathematics in record time.

Needless to say, as soon as this administrator retired, the new administrator dismantled the successful system and installed the unsuccessful system that is almost universal today.

There are plenty of other examples in the history of education. Harvard freshman in the eighteenth century generally didn't know any arithmetic at all (beyond counting), and were taught it all in a Freshman course.

People overestimate the quantity of content in elementary mathematics because of the way it is taught, at least in the United States, by boring repetition without understanding, a mile wide and an inch deep.

I teach college math, and my calculus students often need to be taught basic arithmetic before we go on to calculus. It usually takes about ten minutes out of four or five lectures. If they had been taught the right way in grade school (and, of course, given practice every year) this wouldn't be necessary. But it is surprising how little you need to know to do calculus -- the multiplication and addition tables, adding and subtracting fractions, a little bit of factoring, minus times minus is plus, and a few other elementary facts.

Rick Norwood (talk) 12:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

If you say so! I'm highly skeptical, but it's up to you. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

About my User Name

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your comments about my username. (Hyundai). Can you please rename me from the present name to the username Armchair , first letter capitalized; the rest not.

If it is possible to retain credit for my edits, then so much the better.

By the way, have you ever found a way to put a hit counter onto a page. Specifically, I would like to know whether or not pages worked on are popular. I do not mean to count users at their editing , but to count surfers as they pass through.

Thanks,

--Hyundai (talk) 13:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't rename you, but I will ask a bureaucrat to do so. You will retain all your edits.

I don't think there is any way to get such statistics currently, although many attempts have been made in the past to figure out how to do it. Part of the problem is that we are constrained on both the technical side, and the policy side. I'll ask around though. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Nomination

I'm a little disappointed in your withdrawl, I won't deny that. I disagree with Withinfocus (and I mentioned this point in the nomination itself) that we have "enough" bcrats right now. I don't believe that we have a quota, or that there is ever a point where we have "too many". I also don't think that good candidates should be turned away because we have good people doing the job already. Maybe being a bcrat is nothing more then the tools, the ability to rename users or to promote admins, but maybe there's something more too it. None of the bureaucrats that we currently have are "full-time" members here. Withinfocus and I have both been busy in real life. Derbeth and Johnny, while both still technically "Active" here have their focus in other projects. We're all available in a pinch, but I would like to try and avoid the "pinch" if possible. I want to nominate and promote candidates for admin and bcrat based purely on the merits of the candidate, not on the numbers and availability of existing admins/bcrats. Maybe I'm in the minority here in that viewpoint.

Anyway, I won't harp on the subject anymore then that. Feel free to email me if you want more information about my position on this. I also won't push the subject any further then to say that I don't think you should have withdrawn the nomination. It's not for me to decide, of course, so I won't say anything else about it.

I'll be back in town on thursday, so I should see you online thursday, friday, or sometime next week. Talk to you then. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Outdoor education

Thanks Mike, I've started expanding Outdoor education. Appreciate any pointers, it's my first time around here. Sincerely, Jtneill (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mike, Could you help me out with creating a table of contents for this book, with the stages of development indicated? I probably just need a template to get me going. I had a quick read of Wikibooks:Template messages/Maintenance and it looked promising. I removed the {{query}} tag, but feel like something else should take its place. I like the idea of a table of contents which indicates the stages of completion. Appreciate any help. Jtneill (talk) 15:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I tweaked a few things. It looks like you've got a good start there. I also added {{Subject}} to categorize the book. That's fine for now, but you might want to add one or two more later. All in all, it looks promising. I'll be watching, but if you need help with anything else, come on back! – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 16:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

NP, as ever

I was actually just about to set it to indefinite... IP has a very long history of vandalism on multiple projects, and there are no associated users (I checked). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 17:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I was just about to take a look myself. I don't like doing indef IP blocks, but perhaps long-term would be ok -- five years? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 17:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Admin offer

Mike, I thank you for the vote of support... but if it is offered, I would have to turn it down. I've posted my reasons on SB_Johnny's talk page.

If RB is limited to 20/min, then I likely did hit that limit; once I got into the flow of it, I did about ten in twenty seconds before the throttle hit. It is quick: contributions page, hit Rollback, hit the IP address, find the next Rollback... with a gaming mouse (which I didn't have), I could probably do about one a second. Chazz (talk) 18:51, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. I wanted to have rollback be unlimited. I'll see what the devs say. As for an RFA, no pressure, but you're around enough that you know what's what. See you 'round. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Transwikis to Wikt:

I think I'm done now. --Connel MacKenzie (talk) 20:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks;

deleted – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Syntax error

Mike, do you know who to talk to about an apparent code change breaking Recent Changes Linked? The error I'm getting is:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden)

from within function "wfSpecialRecentchangeslinked". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '<<<<<<< .mine rc_new_len ======= rc_new_len, rc_log_ty (10.0.0.101)".

Chazz (talk) 00:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I have notified the developers. Thanks for the bug report! – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it's working again. Thank you. Chazz (talk) 03:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Few requests

So there are few things that aren't used anymore. All of them are actually added Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Only images. Also can Image:75%.png be reverted to the latest version by Karl Wick? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Soeb (talk • contribs) 13:22, March 20, 2008.

Yup, I saw those, but had to run. I need a deletion reason please. You can provide one, or by adding it to the images you want deleted like {{delete|reason}}. And I think you can revert images yourself, but perhaps not a good idea without checking, especially with images so widely used as Image:75%.png, so I'll take a look shortly. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Would you please link to the new version of each image? Thanks. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 21:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. So here are they. First link is old, second is new:

Why? Because older ones were blocked, and I wanted to update screen from new version or smaller. Also because older ones was in jpg. I can't revert 75%.png because it's blocked too. In svg it's yellow in png violet but it should be yellow too. Soeb (talk) 10:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I reverted 75.png yesterday, so that should be fine. ~~For these images, I just wanted to specify which image to use if people are looking at a page saying it was deleted. Consider it done.~~ Webaware did it already. Thanks! – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Screenshots

G'day, thanks that is better language. English is my primary language, but not my forté :) Webaware ^talk 00:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Glad you like it. Precision/legalese is a strong suit as my parents are lawyers :P – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikiworld

Hi mike, yes go ahead and delete (I have the text). Someone else had suggested I do this (put it on wikibooks) and I thought the license dodgy, but figured I'd try converting and see how it went (not good from pdf to OO Writer to MW syntax). That's good to know that an intact book belongs on WikiSource. Appreciate it. And thanks for you help all round. Jtneill (talk) 01:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

US History/Contents/Chief Justices

I'm beginning to change my mind about this. It didn't have any real content, but what is the harm in having a timeline of the SC justices? Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk | email | contribs ) 04:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't complete, but feel free to restore if you like. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 04:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I've trimmed W Bush a bit, see if you think this is suitable enough to remove the cleanup tag. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk | email | contribs ) 20:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks a lot better. I'd like to leave up a notice for future contributors though as a reminder that Wikibooks is not Wikinews. I'll figure something out. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:33, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Cool, I've removed its nomination for removal from featured status now. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk | email | contribs ) 20:44, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Imgage on "Signs for Selecting..

Mike, I just wrote you a long message which appears to have gotten lost, so I will try to make this short and hope it gets through. The images I uploaded are are original and permission has be given by the photographer to post. I gave credit to each phot as far as I know. You may contact the photograher if you wish at SmithD40@michigan.gov. I did read the material and did what I thought was right. Will be out of town until March 26. Rod Rod (talk) 18:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Emailed both – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:00, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Re:Javascript

Sounds like an interesting idea. I assume you want to have a "vfd" tab at the top of the page, so that you can click it directly without having to go to some kind of separate form page? The problem is that when you open a separate tab to create an edit form, you can't really use javascript from the first tab to edit what goes in the boxes on the second tab.

Instead of creating a second tab, what if we created an edit window at the bottom of the page or something. If we keep it on the first tab, we can use javascript to modify the crap out of it. Plus, I already have a lot of library functions that we can hijack to do this exact thing quickly. Here is what I envision:

Click "Vfd" tab at the top of the page.
This opens an edit window somewhere on the current page (either at the top, at the bottom, or as an overlay)
The javascript inserts stuff into the fields automatically, and you can preview/modify it and click "save".
Once you click "save", (or maybe a separate "close" button), the edit window disappears from view.

I could get started on this later today or into this evening, if it's the kind of thing you are interested in. The benefit to keeping everything on one page is that the scripting becomes very easy (especially if we use some of the libraries I already have written), and we can do a lot of expansion/customization easily. Let me know. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:18, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Almost. It's a hack of Twinkle, so you get a "speedy" tab at the top, and then there's a bunch of options, one of which is VFD (which currently just adds the template). The other thing is that since it's a hack of Twinkle, you have morebits.js to work with. I can barely make heads or tails of it, but I'm sure there is a function in there somewhere that can be hijacked to perform this function. OTOH, if you can make it work some other way that's fine. There's a function to notify the user, which I tried to use. I basically tried to trick it into notifying WB:VFD as if it were another user, but I messed something up. I think that'd be fine, but I don't understand enough of what's going on to make it work... but I bet you would :) – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:22, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I forget if I told you already. The script is MediaWiki:Gadget-twinklespeedy.js and uses MediaWiki:Gadget-morebits.js. I have a development version at User:Mike.lifeguard/TSdev.js where you can experiment. The manual is at User:Mike.lifeguard/Twinkle Speedy documentation. The MediaWiki version is good enough that I'd be comfortable adding it to Gadgets after a day or two of testing from more than just me... interested? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:25, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, let me take a look through all this nonsense, and I'll let you know what I come up with. If you are interested in heavy modifications to Twinkle, maybe you should contact the Twinkle developers on Wikipedia and see if they can do the work for you. If we start modifiying Twinkle for our own needs, and then Twinkle gets major upgrades later, we won't be able to merge our changes and the new upgrades together. That may not be a big issue for you. If we don't modify Twinkle, and instead just hijack some of the necessary functions from morebits.js, that shouldn't cause a problem. However, i need to read through morebits.js and figure out what functions are available to hijack. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:41, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Why not simply have the script notify the author(s), and open up the VFD page with a new section, the title filled in with a link to the book/page being nominated for deletion and waiting for you to fill in the rest? --dark lama 16:23, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

That'd by just fine, but I can't do that, apparently :( Can you? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 12:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikijunior:Famous Inventors

Thank you Mike for heads up on the wikibook I started. I didn't realize how wikibooks and wikijunior were related. I thought I had created a wikijunior book. I'm trying to set up a wikibook for a class project with my third graders. After reading through the help pages for a couple hours I have a better picture of how to organize our Wikijunior books. I'm trying to do a lot of the organization for our book ahead of time. If this goes well, we'll probably next year add more to it and an start another one on habitats.

Would you please move the Famous Inventors wikibook to Wikijunior:Famous Inventors?

Thanks, --Jsigler (talk) 22:29, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Done – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 22:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mike

Thanks for the welcome. No questions at the moment :) Jtico (talk) 23:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

AQA Business Studies

Info - contributor to the above (you placed a qr-em) was prevented from contributing for a while because of a hard block I'd placed on an IP. I had mail & sorted it - my bad. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like this one is coming along well :) – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Deletion

Hi, you had left a notice on my talk page regarding Wikibooks:Votes for deletion/Common phrases in various languages but it really would have been nice to have been notified somewhere I would have had a better chance to have seen it. I know that's not required, but I only come to Wikibooks periodically. I do however have some things I'd like to work on and I strongly feel that Common phrases in various languages is something that is perfectly suited to be published in a book. In fact I can't even see why people wouldn't. I guess it's moot as long as it was able to be imported to Wiktionary and used somewhere. Actually it should be imported directly from Wikipedia, that is where the content actually originated. Anyway keep up the good work that you do here, I'm just a little frustrated since I don't like to see that much content lost. - Taxman (talk) 04:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the content was not lost. Wherever we had a language text, I merged that section as an appendix to the text, as should have been done from the beginning (since our inclusion policy states that we are not Wiktionary, and such things are acceptable as a secondary and auxiliary resource). Everything was copied to Wiktionary as well, which is a project specifically for resources like this. So there was no content lost, and the stuff we kept is where it should be. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Speedy?

Hi, can you also delete Category:Medieval Total War Guide? Thanks. -- Prod (talk) 13:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, yes;

deleted. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

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