User talk:Matthewedwards/Archives/2008/12

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

List of World Rally Championship Drivers' Champions

Hey if you have the time could you take another look at the list as I have addressed the comments you made at the FLC. Cheers NapHit (talk) 21:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of ECW Television Champions

I known you cant vote, but I just wanted to let you know that I responded to your comments.--S R X 21:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Robert Falcon Scott

You recently edited this article, removing the word "However" from the beginning of a sentence. This was justified, and the sentence reads better. However, I disagree with the general assertion you make in your lengthy edit summary, that it is incorrect to start a sentence with the conjunction "however". "However" is a sentence connector, that needs to be at the front of its sentence to do its job properly. Your suggestion that it should be used mid-sentence following a semi-colon is an alternative use, not one that I would normally recommend because I find it stylistically awkward. Brianboulton (talk) 15:37, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take the sentence "He told me not to do it however I did it". If however means "in whatever way", then there should be no punctuation. When however is used as a conjunction meaning "although" it should be preceded by a comma, because conjunctions should never be used to begin a sentence: "He told me not to do it, however I did it". If however is being used as a conjunctive adverb meaning "nevertheless", it should be preceded by a semi colon and followed by a comma: "He told me not to do it; however, I did it".

However always appears between the clauses it connects; it should not appear at the beginning of a sentence because it doesn't introduce a true subordinate clause that can be moved to the start of an independent clause -- a conjunctive adverb cannot do that. This is instructed in The Elements of Style, which says that however, in its sense of "nevertheless", should be avoided at the beginning of a sentence. There are other style guides that argue that however is overused in this sense, whether or not at the start of a sentence, by the way.

However should really only be used at the beginning of a sentence such as "However much you prepare for the exam, there will still be a few questions on which you won't be sure of the answer", meaning "no matter what" or "to whatever extent", or as in "However did you do that?", meaning "in what way". Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 21:03, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FLC

Hi Matthewedwards, good to see you back. Just ~~a few~~ some updates:

We seem to have agreed on a barnstar design, but after looking through some stuff, I think it might be better to have a "medal" instead, so I'm going to take a crack at adapting the current design into that.
We have agreed on a speedy closure criteria for FLRCs. I doubt it will be used often, but it's useful to have.
I've done a six month stat comparison. Huge growth in music and sports, but the rest of the categories were pretty minute, which is disappointing. Even some of the larger categories like politics and geography only grew by one or two lists.
Speaking of which, I've redesigned the WP:FL page and ripped off (or as it's known in the television comedy world, "paid homage to) the WP:GA format.
I'm working on a dispatch column here and will be interviewing Sephiroth, Woody, Gary and Hurricanehink and getting their perspectives on the process. It'll hopefully be done by the end of the year.
There were a record number of promotions in November.
One of my FLCs, the List of Nobel Laureates, will be up for closure tomorrow. Can you take care of that? I can do the rest of the closures.

All in all, you didn't miss much. Welcome back. -- Scorpion ⁰⁴²² 03:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I've caught up on most of the happenings, I think. I missed closing the Nobel Laureates page as i was out of town at the time. i don't think there's any harm in keeping it open til Saturday, but I could close it manually without using the bot. I'm planning on working on a few lists in the new year, that won't be Degrassi related. I'll try to keep away from music and sport and go for some of the lesser represented topics. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks Great (Flywheel)

Hi, it looks great (the Flywheel Shyster Flywheel entry) Sorry for not responding before, not used to using this method. I did send you an email two days ago, and just saw that you only look at that infrequently. Tjmayerinsf (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)tjmayerinsf[reply]

Yeah, I don't check my email as often as I should. I just read your message you sent though, so thanks. Thankyou for the encouraging words regarding Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel, too. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:55, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Imperial Triple Crown jewels

Thank you for contributions to the project, Great work, especially on The Boys from Baghdad High - meticulously well-sourced and covering many aspects of the subject - well done. May you wear the crowns well. Cirt (talk) 00:14, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm looking to take it to GAN soon, but am unsure about whether it needs a "plot"-type section or not. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 00:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas

_David ^WS _(contribs) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding {{subst:User:Flaming/MC2008}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Happy holidays! _David ^WS _(contribs) 19:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re:List of Nobel Laureates

You didn't have to do that, I could have waited a little longer. -- Scorpion ⁰⁴²² 16:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hear you're the guy to come to...

... when I get bored. Which happens a lot. Apparently you often have "behind-the-scenes" stuff going on that needs editing/updating and other Gnome-ish stuff. Let me know on my talk page at any time when you have such stuff. Regards, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I always need help. Lots of help. Or more accurately, we need your help... I'm continuously building a team of editors who can handle anything. Our primary focus is developing Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge, which has been under development for about 3 years.

Since last spring, we've been hard at work on the country-related portion of the outline, which consists of topic outlines of countries, but this project continuously exposes us to many country-related content problems that need fixing which we repair along the way. After all, an outline of knowledge that leads to junk pages isn't of much use. We clean things up and standardize sets of pages that are critical to the functioning of the outline (even though they are not part of the outline), which makes it a lot easier for other editors to further develop those pages.

But more importantly, this portion of the outline can be thought of as a conceptual map of the world, helping readers to find their way around the world, topically-speaking. Because of this, they double as site-maps of the encyclopedia's coverage of country-related topics, and this makes them an integral part of Wikipedia's Content System.

We use power tools, a lot. And advanced wiki-methods. You should familiarize yourself with WP:OTS, WP:AWB, Mozilla Firefox, WP:LINKY, WP:WikEd, and WP:TIPS. You should also be able to find your way around Wikipedia like the back of your hand, so you might find these pages useful: Wikipedia:User Page Design Center/Navigation aids, and...

Community portal

And of course, the tutorials. Just knowing how to find them is very useful for when you need them. You should skim through them so you know what each one covers.

Keep in mind that we're always looking for faster and simpler ways of working on Wikipedia's pages. We love new power tools and tricks. I add the most useful ones to WP:OTS as I learn of (and try) them.

Outlines are a form of list. We also use lists extensively as tools. They are useful for many things on Wikipedia. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Remember always that we need more help. If you can attract enthusiastic and energetic editors to this team, please do so. Experience is not required. (They should however be good at spelling and grammar). We can and will provide the necessary instructions and wiki-training. Simply refer them to me, and I'll be happy to get them started, just like I'm doing with you.

By the way, you'll probably run across the other team members on my talk page (they hang out there a lot), and on the edit histories of the country outlines. They also tend to pop up on each others' (and sooner or later your) talk page when their paths (tasks) cross. We operate "behind-the-scenes" (that is, on our talk pages) because of Wikipedia's auto message alert feature for user talk pages. It's part of our addiction to speed (velocity, not the drug(s)).

Back to our current focus: country outlines...

Our current goal is to get these error-free and functional enough to be useful to readers in general. Once this is accomplished, "completed" outlines are moved to article space. So far, we've moved 29 of them to article space even though they aren't finished yet. They can be found at Portal:Contents/Lists of basic topics (the current name of the Outline of knowledge - as you've probably guessed, we're in the middle of a namechange, which will most likely take another month or three).

I've noticed that you are not a registered WP:AWB (AutoWikiBrowser) user yet. AWB is a fantastic tool for editing entire lists of Wikipedia articles. It is a Wikipedia-editor and auto-page-loader, which means that as soon as you save the current page you are working on in it, it saves the page, then clears itself of that page, and then automatically loads the next page on the list! AWB can generate a list of articles for it to work on in many ways, including building its list from the links on any page on Wikipedia - which allows us to make our own custom task lists for it. :) AWB also has powerful search/replace and skip features which enable you to make repetitive changes rapidly and target the pages you want it to work on very specifically. It also supports WP:REGEX (regular expressions) for searching and replacing, which are extremely useful for search/replaces that have more than one line in them (and many other aspects).

Your first assignment is to request approval for using WP:AWB, and then upload and install it on your machine.

I hope you like going fast. :)

And as for speed, this is just the beginning...

The Transhumanist 02:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Royal Medal

I've replied to your comment here and at the Sylvester Medal page. Regards, Ironholds (talk) 03:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FL updated

See here. I think I did it right. If not, feel free to whack me :) - NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question

I was wondering, Can I capitalize wikilink articles for example, "PETCO Park was the home of the San Diego Padres..." instead of "[[[Petco Park]] was the home of the San Diego Padres..."? -- SRE.K.A~~nnoyomous~~.L.24_[c] 06:37, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be okay in this case. Note that PETCO Park redirects to Petco Park anyway, and that the article says, "Since the retailer spells its name in all capital letters, mere initial capitalization as 'Petco Park' is not correct." Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency in the promotion of FLCs

Hi, Matthewedwards! This discussion might be of interest to you, although it is by no means intended to be a personal attack. Regards. BomBom (talk) 00:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is 1:30 am -- I will respond there after I have slept, either in the morning or early afternoon when I can can think easier and express myself correctly. Thanks for letting me know. Best, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 09:32, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

sorry

I'll change it tonight. サラは、私を、私の青覚えている。 _Talk ^Contribs 23:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup notice

The 2009 WikiCup will begin on January 1, 2009. The first round will run through March 31, 2009. For more information on this tournament, read the "about" section on the main WikiCup page.

This year, we have a different system in calculating points. At User:Garden/WikiCup/Submissions, you will find information about submitting your article (and other) work to earn points. Each contestant will have their own individual subpage for submitting completed work to us.

This year, User:ST47 will also be running one of his bots to calculate mainspace edits and read your submission subpages to calculate the point values you receive based on our scoring chart.

Questions or comment? Ask at the talk page or go directly to Garden or IMatthew's talk page. Good luck and Happy Holidays! -- aye matthew ✡ and Garden. 14:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Baltimore Orioles managers

First off, there is an issue about this sentence in the article, List of Baltimore Orioles managers, which says, "Eight Orioles managers have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including Frank Robinson,[10] the first African-American manager in Major League Baseball,[11] and Rogers Hornsby, who was a member of the cross-city rival Cardinals during the franchise's tenure in St. Louis.[12]" Now, what you said to me in here that, "Surely every player picked is notable?" So in the article, List of Baltimore Orioles managers, shouldn't I say, "Surely every managers is notable?" Also, it would be great if you review this FLC nomination. Thanks and cheers. -- _{signed by} SRE.K.A~~nnoyomous~~.L.24 _{spell my name backwards on} 01:37, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I already took care of it, but there are a couple of my FLCs that could be closed. -- Scorpion ⁰⁴²² 02:25, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Umm...may I ask how you took care of the problem, since I didn't see you do anything on the article or on the FLC?

P.S. Sorry you clutter your talk page, Matthew. -- _{signed by} SRE.K.A~~nnoyomous~~.L.24 _{spell my name backwards on} 02:54, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think Scorpion is just referring to a message I left on his talk page. I haven't looked at the Orioles FLC yet either. But I will. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 02:59, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you going to answer this?

(on my talk page, please).

I hear you're the guy to come to...

... when I get bored. Which happens a lot. Apparently you often have "behind-the-scenes" stuff going on that needs editing/updating and other Gnome-ish stuff. Let me know on my talk page at any time when you have such stuff. Regards, Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I always need help. Lots of help. Or more accurately, we need your help... I'm continuously building a team of editors who can handle anything. Our primary focus is developing Wikipedia's Outline of knowledge, which has been under development for about 3 years.

Since last spring, we've been hard at work on the country-related portion of the outline, which consists of topic outlines of countries, but this project continuously exposes us to many country-related content problems that need fixing which we repair along the way. After all, an outline of knowledge that leads to junk pages isn't of much use. We clean things up and standardize sets of pages that are critical to the functioning of the outline (even though they are not part of the outline), which makes it a lot easier for other editors to further develop those pages.

But more importantly, this portion of the outline can be thought of as a conceptual map of the world, helping readers to find their way around the world, topically-speaking. Because of this, they double as site-maps of the encyclopedia's coverage of country-related topics, and this makes them an integral part of Wikipedia's Content System.

We use power tools, a lot. And advanced wiki-methods. You should familiarize yourself with WP:OTS, WP:AWB, Mozilla Firefox, WP:LINKY, WP:WikEd, and WP:TIPS. You should also be able to find your way around Wikipedia like the back of your hand, so you might find these pages useful: Wikipedia:User Page Design Center/Navigation aids, and...

Community portal

And of course, the tutorials. Just knowing how to find them is very useful for when you need them. You should skim through them so you know what each one covers.

Keep in mind that we're always looking for faster and simpler ways of working on Wikipedia's pages. We love new power tools and tricks. I add the most useful ones to WP:OTS as I learn of (and try) them.

Outlines are a form of list. We also use lists extensively as tools. They are useful for many things on Wikipedia. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Remember always that we need more help. If you can attract enthusiastic and energetic editors to this team, please do so. Experience is not required. (They should however be good at spelling and grammar). We can and will provide the necessary instructions and wiki-training. Simply refer them to me, and I'll be happy to get them started, just like I'm doing with you.

By the way, you'll probably run across the other team members on my talk page (they hang out there a lot), and on the edit histories of the country outlines. They also tend to pop up on each others' (and sooner or later your) talk page when their paths (tasks) cross. We operate "behind-the-scenes" (that is, on our talk pages) because of Wikipedia's auto message alert feature for user talk pages. It's part of our addiction to speed (velocity, not the drug(s)).

Back to our current focus: country outlines...

Our current goal is to get these error-free and functional enough to be useful to readers in general. Once this is accomplished, "completed" outlines are moved to article space. So far, we've moved 29 of them to article space even though they aren't finished yet. They can be found at Portal:Contents/Lists of basic topics (the current name of the Outline of knowledge - as you've probably guessed, we're in the middle of a namechange, which will most likely take another month or three).

I've noticed that you are not a registered WP:AWB (AutoWikiBrowser) user yet. AWB is a fantastic tool for editing entire lists of Wikipedia articles. It is a Wikipedia-editor and auto-page-loader, which means that as soon as you save the current page you are working on in it, it saves the page, then clears itself of that page, and then automatically loads the next page on the list! AWB can generate a list of articles for it to work on in many ways, including building its list from the links on any page on Wikipedia - which allows us to make our own custom task lists for it. :) AWB also has powerful search/replace and skip features which enable you to make repetitive changes rapidly and target the pages you want it to work on very specifically. It also supports WP:REGEX (regular expressions) for searching and replacing, which are extremely useful for search/replaces that have more than one line in them (and many other aspects).

Your first assignment is to request approval for using WP:AWB, and then upload and install it on your machine.

I hope you like going fast. :)

And as for speed, this is just the beginning...

The Transhumanist 02:58, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Concerns answered/addressed

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I've answered your questions and addressed your concerns at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of No Country for Old Men awards and nominations as well as some posed by others. Please let me know if there is anything else. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:06, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stop

Please stop removing and invading my talklpage. GIve me some dignity. I'll archive the page in my own time and the way I want to do. LOTRrules _Talk ^Contribs 13:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I had already stopped, but I was within guidelines to do what I did. Talk pages should "keep a clear layout", and since we do not own our talk pages, Gary did not behave poorly by reformatting it. Further, WP:TPG also states it is appropriate to refactor signatures if they violate WP:SIG. Which it does. Because it's soapbox-y, which violates policy. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is highly inappropriate. Although you pointed out OWN, it is still a talk page which I maintain. I do not have a problem with signatures, incivility, personal attacks nor bad grammar. Citing SOAP was clearly out of the realm of editing another user's comment. As policy clearly states Never edit someone's words to change their meaning, even on your own talk page. Please have enough restraint to refrain from refactoring anything on my talk page. As I don't OWN it, it is still a talk page used to communicate freely and although anyone is free to edit any page, I am asking you politely to stop these types of edits. ^Law_shoot! 22:58, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Signing every comment with "STOPKillingMuslims" is highly inappropriate. Even if you don't have a problem with it appearing on your talk page, "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a vehicle for propaganda of any kind, political or otherwise". That is WP:POLICY. WP:TPG is not policy, but a guideline, which, while it does say what you quoted, also says "As a rule, do not edit others' comments, including signatures. Exceptions are ... Removing prohibited material, Deleting material not relevant to improving the article, If a signature violates the guidelines for signatures." Signatures are there to identify a user and attach the comments the user made to that user, not to push their political standpoints which WP does not stand by. I stand by my actions. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You were a little late in asking me to stop, too. I refactored them all over 12 hours ago. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you asserting that because a certain amount of hours passed that my comments are invalid? ^Law_shoot! 23:33, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Just that since I'd already finished, your request for me to stop was a little late. I believe your comments are invalid because I feel you are wrong. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 23:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because we are at a stalemate, I brought the issue to AN/I. It is with no malice that I do so, but since you have deemed my request as 'wrong,' I would appreciate other input. Regards. ^Law_shoot! 23:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

Hi, thanks for your help, the subcategory is perfect!.Regards, ciercita. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ciercita (talk • contribs) 12:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question for FL nomination

Hi there,

My self with a group of other editors have been working hardly in a set of articles that we would like to promote to FL (and potentially the whole thing to a featured topic). We managed to promote one, Euro gold and silver commemorative coins (Belgium); but when we started to work on the nomination of the others (specifically Euro gold and silver commemorative coins (Austria)), somebody claimed that there are too many non-free images on them. We have since then prepared for nomination the countries Austria, Finland, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Monaco; while we continue to work on the other countries.

The question is, what is your opinion, as director of the FL committee, about lists that have different non-free but properly fair-use images intrinsic in the character of the list? The images are not there to make the article look good, they are the core existence of the article and without the images the article itself makes no sense. Can you please take a quick look at Euro gold and silver commemorative coins (Austria) for example and tell me if it is worth to send it for nomination?

If you agree I would love to start nominating the ones that are ready.

Many thanks, Miguel.mateo (talk) 10:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that it's not just my opinion. Even if I said I think its okay, the rest of the community may not. Or vica versa. The article must meet the policy page WP:NFCC and specifically for lists, Wikipedia:FU#Non-free image use in list articles. I saw that User:Alastair Haines went into detail about the use of the images in the Austrian coin FLC. From what I gather, he said it was fine. I think you should ask User:David Fuchs and User:Moni3, who are both well versed in image use policy at the FAC process. Sorry I can't be of more help, regards Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your answer, at least you have given me a lead to follow and I will do that in a second. At least I hope you understand that the articles do not make sense without the images, and I have tried hard to get free images, but it is impossible at least at the current moment where banks are focused in way more serious problems. If the articles can not be promoted because of a technicality it would be a shame, but I am ok if that were the case. Thanks, Miguel.mateo (talk) 01:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PS, I am trying to centralize the conversation in one page so it can be used as reference, can you please express your comments here: User_talk:Miguel.mateo#Re:Question_for_FL_nomination? I do not mind if it is simple copy/paste of this conversation. Many thanks in advance, Miguel.mateo (talk) 03:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Are you going to answer this?

Sorry, I wasn't very active around the time you replied and I guess it got archived before I noticed it. It's strange that I'm not listed at WP:AWB/CP because I do have AWB installed. I think it might be because I'm automatically approved since I'm an admin, cause I was approved to use it before I became an admin. So, what's next? :) Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 02:57, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've forgotten already (the details of) what I wrote to you. For my sake, please disable your talk page archiving service. The Transhumanist 04:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Step two

Load Firefox and Linky.

The Transhumanist 04:14, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Assignment #1 - Error check the "World Heritage Sites in" entries

On each country outline, there should be two "World Heritage Sites in" entries.

I need you to check each outline to make sure these are both included and that they are correct.

This task is accomplished most easily with Firefox and Linky. (But if you know an easier or faster way, please tell me all about it).

Copy User:The Transhumanist/Country outlines and convert the links to section links (you'll need to do this twice: once for each section the WHS entries are in), then in Firefox select (up to) 99 of them and activate Linky (right click to get drop down menu - you'll see Linky on there). Once Linky has loaded the pages in tabs (sub-windows within the Firefox window), use Firefox's tab commands to quickly traverse the tabs to study and compare - you'll get a feel for the standard after looking at 5 or 10 of them.

To error check, bring up the tab, search for "World Heritage Sites" (if needed) and check the link's destination to make sure it goes to the correct page. The links include sections to go right to each country's section in he WHS lists. There's a list of World Heritage Sites for each continent. They're listed on the World Heritage Site article. Countries that don't have any should have the word "none" in their WHS entries.

Thank you.

Good luck.

By the way, some countries have WHSs pending. Do you think we should link to those? If so, feel free to fix the corresponding outlines, placing "pending" . Use anchors ({{anchor}}) at the destination to enable section linking if needed.

I'm very interested in seeing your results.

If there's anything above you need explained, don't hesitate to ask.

The Transhumanist 04:41, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiCup

Delivered by neuro^(talk) for Garden and aye matthew at 20:49, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Matthewedwards. You have new messages at Davemeistermoab's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.