User talk:Mike.lifeguard/Archive 3

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page.
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Contents

Copyright held by Kelvin Seifert

Is that why the page suddenly disappeared on me, or did I just push the wrong button?

Let me think about this. When I went through getting a release of the rights in 2003 when the book went out of print, the publisher provided me with a signed contract releasing the rights to me, so that I could do what I'm doing now. I now have that contract in my file. Using the boilerplate will mean going back to them a second time, which is both a pain and annoying to them. It may be easier simply to delete this chapter--though it will reduce the value of the book to others if this happens.

KelvinLeeSeifert 21:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

If this person owns the copyrights and chooses to upload content to wikibooks, we shouldnt make them jump through any hoops. The only time we need to worry about permissions really is when a complaint is raised. If User:klseifert has the signed contract that he claims to have, dealing with issues of copyright later will be a cinch. Maybe an uploaded scanned copy of the contract here will be an extra layer of protection? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:24, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

On Further Thought...

On further thought, let's delete all of Chapter 13 (though I realize the history will stay). I do not like the large "copyright violation" notice that has been posted at the head of Chapter 13--it creates a negative impression of the entire book.

For now, ASAP, I will try to make the editing changes needed earlier in the book. I'll think about whether to write the Houghton Mifflin editors again.

As you might imagine, I am annoyed now myself. Maybe I will change my mind later after I think about it more, but for now, my feeling about Chapter 13 is "forget it."

KelvinLeeSeifert 21:28, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

@WK: My concern was that he's not the original holder - the publishing company is. So we're taking his word that they transferred the copyrights to him in some year "around 2003." If that's satisfactory for you, then it is for me too. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
@KLS: I wasn't aware you already had some sort of release. That should be fine. I don't think tagging the page would make it disappear though - you must have pressed the wrong button ;) I'll make sure it's still there and remove the tag. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Copyright issues can be tricky, and sometimes just trying to do a good thing (donating content to a non-profit) means jumping through hoops. He may not be the original holder, but if he is the current holder that's good enough. For safety, he could probably upload a scanned copy of the document that says he's the copyright holder, but then again there would be the problem of verifiying that the letter is genuine and that this is the person he claims to be. The problems can continue ad infinitem, especially if we dont trust somebody eventually. If a copyright problem arises in the future, we can worry about things then. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks (to both of you). For more information about me, you can check my (rather simple) home page at <home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~seifert>, which has my complete C.V. Or check the brief, but official university biography at <www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/education/directory/eafp/seifert.shtml>. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Klseifert (talk • contribs) .

A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology

Thanks for the encouragement. I will contact you if I need further assistance.Rosser1954 13:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology

Hello. I am puzzled as to what has happend to this article. I was literaly in the middle of modifying it and Darklama made changes which have left me very confused as to what is going on. Can you help - revert it or whatever? Rosser1954 11:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually what DL did was a good idea. He moved content from the page A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology onto subpages, then transcluded them. If you look in the wikicode for the page, you'll notice {{/Further reading}} for instance. That takes the page A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology/Further reading and transcludes it onto the page. Transclusion means that where the {{/Further reading}} is, the wiki software will substitute in the content of the page A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology/Further reading. When pages are very long, it gets difficult to edit easily, and some browsers can't even handle loading them. By moving some of the content to subpages and then transcluding them, no content moves (or at least it seems that way) and the wikicode gets broken into smaller chunks. You should be able to edit the page as normal. If you edit a section being transcluded, you'll be taken to the edit page for that subpage instead, where you can edit as normal. When you save, you'll be looking at the subpage; you'll have to return to the main page to see how it fits in with the rest of the content there. I'd suggest continuing that process to further decrease the size of each page. IMHO, an even better idea would be to break that page into subpages and link to them instead simply because the size of that main page is so big. As well, since your dictionary is secondary and auxiliary to the rest of the textbook, it shouldn't be the first thing you see - it should probably be linked to as a subpage. If you need anything else, feel free to ask. I'll probably be around for most of the day (except about 2 hours starting now.) – Mike.lifeguard | talk 12:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I guess it can be a bit puzzling or confusing at first. Books unlike articles on Wikipedia do not consist of single pages, except maybe early in there creation process. Wikibooks makes extensive use of subpages for dividing a single book up into multiple pages, while remaining part of the same book. Try reading the naming policy to get an idea of how its done and you'll see I was following conventions used here. I transcluded to minimize any effects of the change for now. Mike is right that it would be better to link to each subpage instead. What this means really is that the first page of the book becomes the table of contents. --darklama 14:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I will read it several times :-) Mike - you are now on my watch page. Rosser1954 19:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Civ:Alpha Centauri

Hey, please notice my edits on Civ:Alpha Centauri. The standard procedure (which isn't 100% across all external links here) is to use the {{external link}} template and protect the page from editing by only allowing sysops to move or edit the page. If you've got a question about this, please reply on my talk page. Thanks. -withinfocus 12:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. I actually used Special:Prefixindex/Civ: to make sure I got all the necessary pages, so I think I got everything needed (also followed every link in the ToC's). -- Prod-You 19:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi Mike! Thank you for the hearty welcome you have given me. I have some questions... At Talk:Latin I asked where I could put some certain pages. I'm guessing you don't do much latin, but it's just the fact that I don't really know my way around yet and the pages seem ordered in a way that a prefix and suffix chapter would look out of place. Is is acceptable to put lists (like at Here in WikiBooks? --Harris Morgan 19:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

What you're proposing would be acceptable as an appendix; it must be secondary and auxiliary to the textbook. Since Latin is already a featured text, adding another appendix will be fine. There is an entire section devoted to appendices to the textbook here; I've created an appendix for your prefixes and suffixes called Latin/Prefixes and Suffixes. It is a redlink for now; when you click on the link you'll be taken to the edit window so you can start adding content. Sounds like it'll be a useful appendix to the text. If you need help with wiki markup, layout, or anything else, come back and ask here, or at the staff lounge. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 20:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Re:Cool award

And I don't have anything to give in return! I've been watching your contributions, you certainly deserve an award yourself for all the hours and work you've been putting in! Thanks. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

On another note, maybe making a few additional "awards" like that would be a nice thing? We dont really have barnstars like wikipedia does, but that doesnt mean we can't reward people who do good things around here! Are there any other "award" templates out there that we can salvage, or do we need to create a set from scratch? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:30, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
WP definitely has some. I'm going to periodically import one and give it to someone. If you want, I could do a whole bunch at once, but I thought they'd be nice little surprises this way. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 00:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, don't let me rain on your parade. A gift is always sweeter if it's unexpected. I may do the same thing from time to time, sorry if i'm playing the copycat! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

sorry

didn't know it was inappropriate—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.226.65.163 (talk • contribs) .

Question about a deleted Lucid Dreaming page...

I'm the user who flagged the duplicate articles for deletion, but I see that you merged the edit histories. I'm a little confised as to if this modified the current article, as I and other users already moved any important changes from the old page to the new one. When you merged the pages, what happened to the differences between the pages? Later I see a (restored current version) Does this mean that the merged changes were removed?

Basically, I already put everything important from the old article into the new one, so there was no need for a merge, just a deletion. This also goes for the other 5-6 pages that were flagged for deletion by me per request of the author. User:Erik212 03:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the tagged pages in Lucid Dreaming, then re-created them as redirects to the real pages in the book. For some pages, edit history merges were needed (since you manually copied and pasted content, which doesn't give proper attribution to the author of that content, which is required by the GNU Free Documentation License), which I did. Some pages didn't require history merges, so I didn't bother doing it for them.
If you see an edit summary "restoring current version" then that means that the version you see was whatever was there before I began the process. If more edit history merges are required, or if you have further questions about what I did, please let me know. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 03:58, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
The discussion page for Lucid Dreaming explains what the author (r3m0t) wanted done, just to clarify why I made the change. It was not me that copied and pasted, but I understand. Thanks! User:Erik212 04:05, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I assumed you had done the copy-paste moves. The history merges fixed the licensing issue, so it's really a matter of "Do you see the right content on the page?" I'm fairly certain the history merges were successful; if you think they weren't, we'll have to sort it out. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 04:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
PS: Your signature doesn't seem to include a link to your userpage or talk page; it's considered good form to include links to those pages. When you sign with four tildes ~~~~ the software automatically substitutes your signature and a timestamp. The signature can be edited in your preferences. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 04:10, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
No problem, the only edits between the pages were mostly grammatical corrections to the official page(did those stay?), but one or two had some new content. I'll go look and see what the status of that is. As for my sig, it was set to raw for some reason...should be fine now. Erik212 04:16, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, any changes you made should still be there. The only thing that I changed was that the edit history from the "old version" is now included with the edit history for the "new version" - again, this is to satisfy licensing requirements. Good work on the sig ;) – Mike.lifeguard | talk 04:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
OK, (this is like an instant messaging) the changes I made (E.G. adding a new induction method) are just fine. Everything seems to be in order! Sorry about this whole discussion, I just didn't know how much the "merging" affected the pages. Thanks for the help! Erik212 04:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

TeX

When your moving the pages from "Programming:TeX <page>", don't forget to add a / in there as well so that its "TeX/<page>" rather then "TeX <page>". I fixed 3 pages you moved, fixed the double redirects and deleted the ones created by you that I saw. --darklama 16:32, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. Got confused by the backslash - those are part of the command name I guess. I left a note on the author's page to have a look through the pages they created; hopefully they'll follow up. Thanks for cleaning up after me. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 16:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

thanks

...for the welcome, Mike. Joe Byrne 17:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

VfD closer

I noticed your closing of Image:Wikibooks German-English Film Glossary.pdf with the reason being "as a glossary out of project scope" with a link to WB:WIW#Wikibooks_is_not_a_dictionary. I'm wondering if you read the exception bit about glossaries. Also as a general rule, you shouldn't close a vfd that you started as WB:DP#Guidelines_for_admins states and there doesn't seem to be enough consensus on what should happen, one person is in favor of keeping, one is in favor of deleting, and one is in favor of transwiki besides your own.

I'm just wondering what your thoughts were when you closed it. I also don't think enough time had passed between my comment on the 9th and your closing it on the 12th for anyone to comment on it. --darklama 18:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. Re-open it if you like. I was trying to be careful not to close anything I had opened - my mistake. Nevertheless, here's my thinking, which seems to me to be in line with the comments made:
The exception is for glossaries that are secondary and auxiliary to a text. I can't find any text that could use this as a glossary. Delete and keep cancel; transwiki is the favoured alternative. Indeed, I (I can't speak for whoever else wanted to transwiki) specifically chose transwiki so the content wouldn't be lost; if we need it back we can have it back.
The file is here. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 19:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Seems to be pointless now to reopen it, since the pdf file was uploaded to commons, its now available to any project. I had offered the German book as a possible place where the text could be used as a glossary, since its a german glossary. However I was perfectly fine with it being transwikied if nobody working on that book wanted it. Which is why I just commented on it rather then picking keep or transwiki. --darklama 19:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't mean to belittle the idea of having a glossary as an appendix to a book, but it should match the scope of the book. Unless German is really German film or Filmstudien auf Deutsch it's probably not a good idea. There's no reason to have a specialized translation dictionary as part of a language learning textbook. I don't know how it got uploaded to Commons, though... *is confused* – Mike.lifeguard | talk 20:07, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
If you don't have an account on Wikimedia Commons then someone there is impersonating you, because it says it was uploaded there by you. --darklama 20:57, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
No, that's me. But the "Upload file" link I clicked was from en.wt... not on commons. That's what confused me. If you look at Commons, you'll see the file, but no edit history on the talk page. If you look at the talk page on en.wt, you'll see the edit history, but the file tab is a redlink. *is horribly confused* I'll just add the history to the Commons talk page and then ignore the issue, hoping it goes away. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:31, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Connell66

Indef blocked him per the long term wp history. No need to keep users like that around ;) --Az1568 (Talk) 00:36, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

For info this was a cross wiki account doing the same elsewhere! --Herby talk thyme 15:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


Cat watch!

Hi Mike - try watchlisting this for a bit - if it doesn't work I'll pester Bryan. If it does I'll make it an admin watch page like the discussion index one (it really is easier to catch up via that than work through each page trying to find the headings). Cheers --Herby talk thyme 13:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Beautiful! Seems to be working just fine. Thanks a bunch, eh? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 15:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Give Bryan the thanks really! Neat tho - anything else you think should be on it? (Works nicely on Commons if there are categories that interest you there) cheers --Herby talk thyme 15:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Btw - only "stays" there about 24 hours iirc --Herby talk thyme 15:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Re:Subject: Templates

Whenever I make templates like that, I usually include a little message telling where it came from, in case there is an error or somebody has a question. That template is located at User:Whiteknight/Simple Subject. The documentation for using it is on that page as well. All the templates for various purposes that i've created can be found HERE. You are more then welcome to use any of them. If you see something that needs to be changed, let me know, and I can fix it (or, i suppose, you are welcome to do it yourself). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Great; thanks! So I've created Subject:First Aid - but every page in the book shows up. Is the solution to use {{Subject|First Aid}} on First Aid, and use regular categories on the rest of the pages to keep track of them?
Totally unrelated: Do you know how to set the font that stuff shows up in? I imagine it has something to do with monobook.js?? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
The subject template uses DPL to include all the pages from a particular category. In the First Aid book, all the pages are in Category:First Aid, so all the pages show up. A solution would be to make a new category for all books on that topic, such as Category:Emergency Medicine, or something similar. Put the title pages of all books that relate into that category. A lot of what I have been doing with my bot recently has been removing book pages from subject categories, so that the list only shows book titles and not subpages. It's tedious, to say the least.
As to the font, I don't think there is an explicit way to do it. I can try to add some style information to my template, and see if that works for you. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I set it up so you can optionally specify a style for the page lists, such as the font. The updated documentation is at User:Whiteknight/Sibling Subject. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh - I meant just the font that I see on my screen. I could change it in my browser preferences, but I want it to apply just to en.wb... Actually to all wikis, but same difference. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
And if I want to show parts of books on this subject: page, should I tag the main page for the book, or just the appropriate pages/chapters/whatever? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
If you want to change the font that you see, you could change it in your monobook.css page. You can make many changes with your skin, you should see how complicated mine is!
The DPL is going to show all pages that are in a particular category. If you want certain pages to be in that category, you need to tag those pages. One thing that you could do is tag the main page with Category:First Aid, and tag all the sub pages with Category:First Aid (Book). An easy way to tag all subpages is by putting the category tag inside the book's templates. That way you dont need to tag and retag every single page individually, you only tag the templates. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Some additional info: {{subject}} is just a quick way to add up to 10 categories to a page in the proper sort order, while being smart about it. Its "smart" in that it automatically adds the book category to the page for you and doesn't add any of the other categories if its a subpage for the book. I'm assuming you removed them from all the pages because of what Whiteknight said. All the pages need to be in the book category, you just need a separate category for maintaining a list of all books on a subject. Such as Category:First aid, notice the case difference. --darklama 17:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Smart cookie, you are... So I do {{Subject|First aid|First Aid|Medicine}} then First Aid would get added to them all, but subpages would only be added to the first (which doesn't match the Subject: page? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Just use {{Subject|First aid|Medicine}}, Category:First Aid will get added to every page in the book you use it on, the other categories will be ignored except for the main page. Its just as if you added Category:First Aid by hand to every page you add the subject template to and only included Category:First aid and Category:Medicine to the main page of the book. It doesn't check the subject namespace at all. This is separate from working with the subject namespace. It just makes sure subpages aren't added to anything but the book category, so that subject categories aren't full of subpages. --darklama 18:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
K, I think I've got it. The only thing left is to add more books to Subject:First Aid - it's looking sparse :P To add the first aid sections of Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book (for example), should I tag that page, or only the relevant subpages? Also, if I want Emergency Medicine to show up in the "First Aid and Medicine Books" section, it'd have to be in both categories? – Mike.lifeguard | talk 18:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you got it backwards. "First Aid" is the name of your book, so that should be the category all the pages in the book should be in while "First aid" is the category to put the main page of any books on first aid in, including the First Aid book. I think you had it right the first time. Oh well I guess it doesn't really matter which way you do it, since Wikibooks:Categories is only a proposal. --darklama 18:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help w/ CSS. That was a welcome surprise. Is there any way to keep the edit box text as whatever the standard non-proportional font ("Courier new" or something)?
Categories will be changed in a few. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 18:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes check.svg Done I suggest reading CSS to learn more. --darklama 18:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 18:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

AWB

Hi Mike - the spelling page will be well out of date I think - I used to copy over the en wp latest one whenever I ran the bot - cheers --Herby talk thyme 17:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It updates every time, actually. There's no typo list associated with en.wb, so it asks if you want to use the up-to-date default for en.wp, which I did. Thanks tho! – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

A Researcher's Guide to Local History Terminology

response at User talk:Jeepday

hey, ermmm about the edit, we have a shared IP, and this is a college. Its mostly the freshmen that make edits like that and there is no way to prevent them from doing this. I am wondering if it is possible to prevent them from access or somthing ?

any possible information would be helpful thanks again, and sorry for the bother. -- Jeepday 07:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

You should consider having students register their own accounts. Your account should be for your use only; sign out when you're done. This way there will be no confusion as to who is making what edits. We tend to assume that a single username is a single person. That should certainly be the case when someone with access to the account makes questionable edits. – Mike.lifeguard | talk 00:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
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