User talk:Chris Day/Archive 6

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——————————————— Chris' Talk Page —————————————

I am an editor in the biology workgroup | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Current talk page (94,080)

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.


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Useful links on Citizendium

Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers
Z field experiment to define layers

.jpg thanks

Hey, thanks - my brain was in space (name-space space :-).

PS: You really need to archive some off the top of your talk page! J. Noel Chiappa 17:13, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

Images version

I think the table version eliminates a lot of needless work compared to an image-based solution. --Robert W King 14:21, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

What worries me is the complexity as browsers upgrade etc. The work is trivial as the number of elements is limited. i wonder whether the aesthetics are improved too as the coded table is much harder to manipulate. I'm very aware of all the coding that has occurred but is it really necessary? Certianly it makes it more versatile to change colours in the future or the elements in each class. I wonder, however, will there be a need to change this in the future? Chris Day 14:27, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
Since we're operating at the mediawiki level I suspect nothing will change much. --Robert W King 14:41, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
Well, if we don't use the thing, at least it was a learning experience. Lets face it, the jpgs look alot better.--David Yamakuchi 14:52, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
Right now :-)--David Yamakuchi 14:53, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
This isn't a fair comparison. We can always add the class of element to the table, and the colors can always be adjusted. The code version is dyanmic and superior, in my professional opinion. Not to mention it's less work, and takes up less space. Plus with style sheets we can make it look any way it has to. This is very web 1.0 vs web 2.0 thinking. --Robert W King 14:54, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
I do like the fact it is dynamic, big advantage, i just question if in this case we need it to be dynamic. If the style sheets can improve the aesthetics then great that will be one of my worries gone right there. If you consider all the images stored it might take up less space but if you consider what is seen on a single page it does not take up less space. See pre expand numbers below. Chris Day 15:02, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

Have you considered the size of the code? Using only mediawiki the this version of {{Elem_Infobox}} has a pre-expand size of 1,900 kilobytes compared to using an image, as in this version that has a pre-expand size of 10 kilobytes. I'm not sure if this will be really detrimental to performance or not but wikipedia has its max set at 2,000 kilobytes for a single page. Chris Day 14:58, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

But that doesn't take into account the subpages system either. WP doesn't use clusters. I'm suggesting that we are extremely limiting our capability if we choose to go with static representations. --Robert W King 15:01, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
I know, we are set up at 4,000 kilobytes. As soon as the limit is hit then citation templates stop working, for one. The subpages template is much smaller than it used to be and one goal was to bring the pre-expand limit back down. I don't remember the exact size of the subpages temlate, I'll check. Chris Day 15:05, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
Well also take into account that this is for roughly 100 articles, and the "extreme version" of the data is on a subpage anyway. Do you really want to take the time to change the color on 100 little colored boxes and upload all of the files? It's a question of time and effort. --Robert W King 15:06, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
I don't change any colours, i just move the black box to a new location. Everything else is in layers. Upload is the time consuming part, but that could be staggered, we don't have this template on many pages yet. Chris Day 15:11, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
Comparison of media wiki code vs jpg version.

From an aesthetic perspective here is the comparison from the two examples on the {{Elem_Infobox}} main page. I'd say it's up to you guys, there are definitely some advantages to having a dynamic version, but to the authors not to the readers. Chris Day 15:13, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

I have a feeling that the concern is just only over "the way it looks"; its a relatively moot point since it can be adjusted at any given time. Is that correct? --Robert W King 15:15, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
It can be adjusted. But obviously not as easily, as the mediawiki code. The real issue is how often do we anticipate adjustments in the future? If alot then I'd go with media wiki. If few I'd go with jpg, especially as it is smaller too. Chris Day 15:18, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
If we're going to overflow somebody's buffers then it's not just a question of asthetics, thats a functional problem. If ele were smaller would it be a more streamlined design pre-expand-wise?--David Yamakuchi 15:24, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
The smaller the better. Chris Day 15:28, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
How's the size now...BTW, how do I find out that number for myself?--David Yamakuchi 15:42, 8 April 2008 (CDT)
I didn't see much change (see table below). By the way these values are more accurate than ones I quoted above since in that example the template was called on twice. The numbers in the diff col. below relate to the template values alone without the subpages template included. In summary the mediawiki version is 42 times larger for pre-expand and 32 times larger for post expand size. Where is all that extra stuff coming from?
Different sizes of Scandium (units are kilobytes)
no template mediawiki version jpg version latest mediawiki version
diff diff
Pre-expand include size: 381 1058 677 397 16 1058
Post-expand include size: 54 382 328 64 10 382
Template argument size: 10 44 34 15 5 43
You can see the numbers yourself by going to any page and using the view source option in the view menu (on safari). in the html code you will find the values, just search for "expand". Chris Day 15:54, 8 April 2008 (CDT)


Catalog for elements

Can we have a seperate subpage for MSDS information, or do you think that should all go in the all-encompassing catalog subpage? --Robert W King 23:04, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

Good question. My sense is that it would be better to have specific subpages. Originally larry was mentioning there might be hundreds of subpages. We have isotopes for example, although experimental, I think MSDS makes perfect sense. The real issues is that for any one topic we want to limit the subpages used, only so many tabs will fit. But if we are below the limit then the more unique the subpage name the better, IMO. Chris Day 23:08, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

Muntzing the design

I have a story you might enjoy...

Back in the days when cars were black and radio still only came in the AM flavor, many people were trying to figure out how to make a television cheap. One early television company was owned by a fellow named Mr. Muntz. Now, word around the engineering campfire was that when one of Mr. Muntz's developers had a design they thought was ready for production, Mr. Muntz wold come to the their bench and take out his side cutters. He would then begin literaly cutting parts out of the TV set while it was running! (I suppose he had insulated pliers...eh). He would stop cutting when the set stopped functioning with the instructions..."you can put that one back in". That was how a design was approved for manufacture.

I dunno why I just remembered that story, but I thought I'd share. :-)--David Yamakuchi 23:49, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

The difference being i keep getting electric shocks. I hope it does not collapse. :) Chris Day 23:51, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

cellpadding for Periodic

If we leave the cellpadding=0 in Periodic that gets rid of the "white borders" and I like that. What do you think?--David Yamakuchi 00:43, 9 April 2008 (CDT)

That's what i was thinking. I'd say just keep experimenting until we get the right look. Chris Day 01:11, 9 April 2008 (CDT)
I think we're getting close. I can still tweak some kB out of Periodic, and it looks like you had the right idea with the xxxxx on and xxxxx off templates...But I'm done here for tonite....zzzzzzzzzzz--David Yamakuchi 01:23, 9 April 2008 (CDT)

Groundwork

Nice polio there, right on your talk page. Do you ever get the feeling that we're laying an awful amount of groundwork that probably won't be fully appreciated whatsoever until we're both long gone and/or dead? I'm starting to feel that way. --Robert W King 13:04, 11 April 2008 (CDT)

I figured that I need to get to grips with the z field. That was one of my experiments. I don't feel it will go unappreciated. In fact, I think it is essential if there is any hope in attracting good wikipedians here. In addition it is in these early days that massive style and usability changes can be made with absolutely no protest. Enjoy it while it lasts. :) Chris Day 13:14, 11 April 2008 (CDT)

Template Recursion

Chris, I have a programming approach that can work well for programming simplicity in C, but I'm uncertain as to the possibility of using in wiki-markup with templates.

I would like to call a template, pass it a arbitrary number of strings, (names of links, which I think will then show up in the template as:{{{1|}}}, {{{2|}}}, ..., {{{n|}}} ), and then have the template do something to the first data, but then call itself, passing "in" the remaining data, n times until the data is done...Is there any way to do that? I was thinking something like this: 

Consider a template named Template:Myself

{{ #if: {{{2|}}} 
      |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}{{ {{Myself|{{{2|}}} }} }}
      |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}
}}

Basically, #if there is additional data, then do something with the first data, and call youself again, passing in the rest of the data.

The problem with the above example is that it does not pass in {{{3|}}}, {{{4|}}}, ... ,{{{n|}}}. Any ideas on how this might be done? Is what I'm looking for even doable? Is there a way to refer to 2,3,4,etc collectively maybe? Is there another approach that does the same thing? --David Yamakuchi 18:25, 13 April 2008 (CDT)

There's some stuff at Help:Advanced_templates which might be useful (it talks about composing argument names, etc...). I'm not sure if there's a builtin which tells you how many arguments have been passed to a template. J. Noel Chiappa 01:39, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm not sure i'm the best one to help here, I normally just muddle through. I'm not sure of the exact context for what you are doing but the way I would do what i think you are trying to do is the following: 

{{ #if: {{{2|}}} 
      |{{ #if: {{{3|}}} 
            |{{ #if: {{{4|}}} 
                  |{{ #if: {{{5|}}} 
                        |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{2|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}
                         {{DoSomething|{{{3|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{4|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{5|}}} }}
                        |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{2|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{3|}}} }}
                         {{DoSomething|{{{4|}}} }} }}
                  |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{2|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{3|}}} }} }}
            |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }}{{DoSomething|{{{2|}}} }} }}
      |{{DoSomething|{{{1|}}} }} }}

So you're fine if you have a small number of variables but if n is large you're in trouble. BUT, i only about things i have used and that probably represents about 1% of the options out there. Chris Day 09:53, 14 April 2008 (CDT)


I had first posted this to Noel's Talk, but since you and Robert were in on the initial discussion, I thought you might perhas have some insight also...

Well, I saw that where you linked me to the MediaWiki docs it says we can't do this, but this[1] is basically what I was talking about _trying_ to do. So,...how dey do dat? (Category:Editorial_Council)

Now, the template that is "called" to produce this, {{Editorial Council}} "calls" another one named {{Community}}, and that one kinda hurts my brain...or at least I'm having trouble seeing how we end up with what we do. Thing is, it's not really what we want for this template, I don't think...it really does look to me as if the author of {{Editorial Council}} didn't intend this to be the result. So now it's maybe really two things I'm asking...

  1. how dey do dat?
  2. how do we not do the recursion here, and so get the intended results?

Ain't computers fun!? :^) --David Yamakuchi 22:35, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

20/20 scientific hindsight

Anytime I hear something of the form "oh, that was actually easy", my response is always "if it was so easy, how come nobody else did it before X". The Web seems so obvious in retrospect - but a lot of really smart people were working in this area and didn't work it out. J. Noel Chiappa 01:35, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Good point! Although there are those who claim that if he'd had access to Rosalind's data, he'd have worked it out too. Still, he's not exactly anyone - he did win a Nobel (I don't count the Peace one as a real one :-). J. Noel Chiappa 14:40, 14 April 2008 (CDT)
Good point about her input. It's too bad she died when she did; my understanding is that had she lived, she'd almost certainly have been given a share (Wilkins was I gather included somewhat in her place, although of course he'd done a lot of work in the area too) - which would of course have gone a long way to disposing of the inevitable complaints that she'd been robbed. Ironically, while everyone seems to complain about "Double Helix", it contains a lot of evidence (as best I recall its contents, without going to check) of how much she helped. J. Noel Chiappa 16:07, 14 April 2008 (CDT)
The double helix was just classic Watson (honest Jim was its original title, I think), even Crick complained about it. He was a showman and that rubs many scientists the wrong way. As we now know, an ignoramus too, with respect to race and sex. He did many good things but destroyed much of his legacy with poorly thought out comments throughout his career. The book of his life should be titled "The double foot in mouth". Chris Day 16:14, 14 April 2008 (CDT)
I didn't say the complaints weren't warranted! :-) Oh, and that rubs many scientists the wrong way - not just scientists! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 16:31, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

Metadata hack

You know how you have it so the metadata page, when displayed directly, says "this is the page for the foo cluster - how about adding a link to the main page of the cluster, as in Foo cluster? I'd do it, but I wanted to check with you first to make sure you're OK with it. J. Noel Chiappa 12:24, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Wow, that took me a lot less time to find than I thought it would! :-) Thanks for adding all that doc on the {{Subpages}} page. (Speaking of which, I notice it's all still on {{Subpages}}, not {{Subpages/Doc}}?)
BTW, would it make {{Subpages}} any less complicated if the template called at the end of the /Metadata page was some other template? (I.e. {{Subpages}} wouldn't have to have code to deal with being transcluded from a /Metadata page.) I mean, I understand for the article page(s) you want them all to have the same name, to make the whole thing easier for users, but on a generated page like the template, it could be different, right? (And yes, I know it would take a bot to change them all now! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 12:38, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

abc's

Yeah, they're gonna be a pain to find; we don't have a category that includes all the bios, right? I saw someone catching a lot of them - if it was a bot that did them, I'll keep an eye out for them too.

BTW, how come you changed "status = 4" to "status =4" - does it not work with the space? That's going to be something else that's a pain to change, if it doesn't work with spaces there. J. Noel Chiappa 13:42, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

ToApprove cat

Hi Chris, I'm not sure if there was something that changed, but after approving Rottweiler this evening, the draft page ended up in the ToApprove Category. Hopefully it's just an easy fix! --D. Matt Innis 19:24, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Might have been database lag - it seems to be gone now? J. Noel Chiappa 19:52, 15 April 2008 (CDT)
Dang, that was easy! :-D. Matt Innis 19:58, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

I do miss those nice orange dividers you made :( --D. Matt Innis 19:30, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Checklist_ templates

You probably don't care one way or the other about this, but I'll ask anyway... :-) I've been updating {{checklist_blank}}, which is used on a number of CZ: pages to document the metadata, and created {{checklist_doc}} and {{checklist_basic}} to allow dropping various parts of the text around it. It strikes me that it would have been better to (re-)name them all metadata_<foo>, as what's being documented here is the metadata, now. Is it OK with you if I rename them all? (I'll leave Template:Checklist_blank as a redirect, so I don't have to edit all the obsolescent pages that refer to it.)

PS: Take your time with the obsolete templates; they aren't hurting anything, and I have the ones I've run across all corralled up for now (i.e. they're not wandering around totally lost). J. Noel Chiappa 17:01, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

The names have historical significance rather than functional significance. I agree we should change them all to something more logical. Chris Day 17:20, 17 April 2008 (CDT)
OK, done, thanks. J. Noel Chiappa 17:25, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

OK, what do we want to do with CZ:The Article Checklist? I have gone through it and fixed up all the obsolete stuff (e.g. references to the now-obsolete Category:Checklisted Articles). However, the (historical) name now seems a long way from accurate, since its content is now most about the metadata. Do we want to basically completely kill the term "Checklist"? Maybe this should be renamed CZ:Metadata contents or something like that? J. Noel Chiappa 18:41, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

PS: Is Template:Subpages3 in actual use, or is that just your test article? If it's used, you might want to rename it to something a little more descriptive... J. Noel Chiappa 18:57, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

I can't take credit for "automagically" (creating it, not using it). It's an old hacker (the originals, not the teenage vandals who misappropriated the title) word from MIT; it's in the Jargon file. (For the true defintion of "hacker", look in there.) J. Noel Chiappa 21:35, 17 April 2008 (CDT)
Hmmm. I see what you're getting at. There are definitely subsets of the metadata, of which the "approval metadata" is clearly one. I'm just wondering about the "checklist" part... Let me ponder that one overnight.
PS: Did you see that thread I started on the forums about ditching the "By" field, and using the Metadata history instead? J. Noel Chiappa 21:55, 17 April 2008 (CDT)
Nothing off the top of my head, but I'm pretty tired. Let me give it a think tomorrow when I'm fresh... (I see Aleta wants to get rid of "cleanup" :-). J. Noel Chiappa 22:38, 17 April 2008 (CDT)

wow, this is awesome Chris

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Chris_day/sandbox2.

Amazing work! Tom Kelly 11:46, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

Chris

Can you tell me if the tlsubevent section Template:Timeline/Sample looks all screwed up? Also, can you check in CZ:Howto if the {{tlsubevent}} section also looks screwed up? --Robert W King 15:52, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

Dead templates

Do we want to move User:J. Noel Chiappa/DeadTemplates‎ to, like, CZ:Obsolete Templates, and throw a little text into it? (PS: Still thinking about the metadata division.) J. Noel Chiappa 10:23, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

Oh, another one: It seems like we aren't using Template:ToApprove any more (although Template:Blank metadata still links to it linked to it at one point? I haven't poked around to figure out what template is producing the notice, but it seems from a wording difference that's not it. Of course, since the blank metadata links used to link to it, every metadata page in the world now links to it, so we can't delete it. J. Noel Chiappa 12:12, 19 April 2008 (CDT)

I went through the list at CZ:Templates, and using what-links-here, corralled a bunch of other test/obsolete ones. I notice that in a lot of cases <foo> is obsolete, and we're using <foo>2, or <foo>22, or something. It would be nice to put the templates we're actually using at plain old <foo>. Of course, if <foo> contains history it would be good/useful/interesting to save, we can merge the histories; it's not too hard (once you get the hang of it - of course, I was the main history-merge expert on Wikipedia for a while, so maybe it just seems easy to me now :-). J. Noel Chiappa 19:25, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

Minor subpage bug

See Talk:Church of Scientology/Archive 1; it seems to think it's the talk page for the subpage Church of Scientology/Archive 1. The code probably doesn't grok Talk: archives. This may not be easily fixable until we get the Strings: package; no big deal, it's pretty obscure, no need to fix it anytime soon. J. Noel Chiappa 21:04, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

New Periodic Table...table

Hi Chris,

I noticed a thing you were noodling around with and thought I might just go ahead and tweak some things. Check it out...
User:David_Yamakuchi/Sandbox2 (<--"top level")
{{Resizable Periodic Table of Elements}}
{{Resizable periodic cell}}
{{Lead/Physical_Properties}}
Lead/Catalogs#Properties
and, last but not least
{{Physical properties}}
Whew! I guess it got a little involved. :-)

Now, what I did was to take the Lead physical properties data and stick it in a template similar to the metadata one. This way we can call up the data onto other pages (like the periodic table for instance) thru the template..."#if" it exists...and when the data is eventually improved (like with better precision / more accurate measurements or whatever), the numbers get automatically updated thru the wiki. Please let me know what you think. I'm interested in your opinion on the direction I went with your table, but I'm particularly interested your opinion of the scheme with the physical properties and the templates. Thanks for taking a look when you get a chance...--David Yamakuchi 22:28, 20 April 2008 (CDT)

{{Resizable periodic cell color}}--David Yamakuchi 23:53, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Jump in if you like :-)--David Yamakuchi 19:50, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

User plan mess up

Chris, I completely messed up my User Plan and rollup to work-group. Will you help me get on track. You could delete everything needing deletion, and I'll try again. Would appreciate your help. Thanks. --Anthony.Sebastian 16:45, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Chris, thanks. Will try deleting and starting over. --Anthony.Sebastian 19:40, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

header footer

You mean, as in, 'there's a default header and footer they all use', or 'there's a default header and footer that get used if there isn't one defined for this subpage type'? I think it might be nice to allow customer headers and footers - but I agree that might be a little overkill.

Also, the documentation is a 'work in progress'; I fully expect it to get changed as we tweak things. Still, I wanted to get a start on it, so we're not facing a huge backlog of untackled documentation at any point. (It seems easy to tweak existing documentation, but hard to do new stuff from scratch.) J. Noel Chiappa 17:22, 22 April 2008 (CDT)

Font style

What font style settings are you using for the [?] I want to add this to a section of the periodic infobox to the upper left, and add a bit of hover code that tells people they can navigate it. I'm not sure that right away it is instantly recognizable that you can click on the periodic table within the infobox. --Robert W King 10:36, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

In {{periodic}}, where in the code does it display the text that displays the label of what group is currently navigated? On that cell, I want to insert <font size=1 style="align:left;">{{H:title|This is a navigatable Periodic Table of the Elements. You can hover over each unit and click on it to see its current article!|[?]}}</font> --Robert W King 11:11, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
When you say "group" do you mean element? If so, it is just the elements article name that is used for the wikilink. Chris Day 11:14, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
|[[Helium |{{ {{#ifeq:{{{elSym}}}|He
     |element on
     |{{#ifeq:{{{elClass}}}|Noble Gas
          |Noble on
          |{{#ifeq:{{{elClass}}}|Non-Metal
               |Nonmetal on
               |Noble off}} }} }} |ele color={{{ele color}}} |noble color={{{noble color}}} |nonmetal color={{{nonmetal color}}} }} ]]

Above is the code for one cell. The part that give you the link is bolded here: "|[[Helium | style code ]]" I'm a little confused by your question so this answer may not make any sense. Chris Day 11:18, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm looking for the part where the elClass is; I want to insert the hover on the upper left corner (it should be the left hand of that table cell). --Robert W King 11:21, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

Got you, you're looking at the wrong template. It's in {{Elem Infobox}}. See the code below: 

{{#if:{{{elClass|}}}|
{{!}}style="border-top:2px solid #bbb" width="100%"  align="right" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" bgcolor=#f2f2f2 
{{!}}<font size=1>''' [[{{{elClass|}}}]]:'''</font>
{{!}}-}}

Chris Day 11:27, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

That doesn't seem like a great place for it; I'd rather it went in the very upper-left hand corner of the interface (across from the group name), but I don't have the motivation to fix it properly. I'm going to put it back next to the group name until I get around to putting it where it probably should be. --Robert W King 12:06, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
It looks right now, except it made the whole thing wider. --Robert W King 12:36, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
We can restrict the width to the correct dimensions by figuring out the minimum size of the question mark and fixing the cells (? and group) in pixels. Currently i just left the group one at 100%. Not good. Chris Day 12:39, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
I just fixed it. I removed the 100% width. --Robert W King 12:40, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
Does that fix it? If so, that is easier than figuring out the minimum size. Chris Day 12:41, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
Yeah, check it out. I think it's a little more intuitive now. I wish the WP folks were jealous of this widget we (You, Myself, and David) put together. I really am proud of it works and looks. We did a great job. It really makes WP's chem box look amateurish. --Robert W King 12:44, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

For the record, I think it looks great, but my only gripe is that the MSDS/catalog subpage is horribly organized and needs to be arranged in some kind of logical way. Right now it's just a hodgepodge of unformatted data. --Robert W King 15:52, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm just worried about the concept now, not the format. Tell me if you see any problems I have missed. Chris Day 15:54, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

Per-article subpages

I saw the header/footer templates; at first I was confused, because I thought they were to be added to the subpage manually, but I looked at that /Isotope subpage and worked out that you must be calling them from {{subpages}}. I think that's a very good way to go.

My impression is that many users here prefer not to interact with media wiki when possible. That was my rationale but there is a problem that misspelled subpages such as Isotpes will slip through (see below for more on this theme).

Here's an extra tweak for you, if it's not too much extra code: if Template:<tab>_header exists, call it instead of the generic tab_header, and similarly for the footer? Yeah, I know, it's a little silly, and we're threatening to drown in complexity/features... but it might be useful. Whadja think?

I think this is a good idea since it gets around the problem of the generic header being too general to be useful, or grammatically incorrect, in some cases. Being able to write a specific header at a later date is very desiriable. As you point out below, MSDS tab could have Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) in the header.

You have a point with a new header/footer slowing down proliferation of new tabs, but... it's a pretty low speedbump, I think. In terms of checking for proper spelling of the tab name; why don't you, on the talk page, if {tabN} is defined, check for the existence of /{tabN}, and emit an error message if it doesn't? Does that take too much code?

But does this solve the issue? It all depends on how the tab is created and where it is misspelled. If the subpage name is initially incorrect and the tab is correct your suggestion would work (works the other way too). But what if the user starts by adding the tab and then clicks on the red link in the new tab to create the subpage (I suspect that is what happened to give us Isotpes)? Now we have the wrong name in both cases so the error check will not catch it. Likewise, both tab and subpage might be created with a subtle variation so that it is distinct, but acceptable, from other clusters with a similar subpage. For examples, an isotope subpage might be created as opposed to an isotopes subpage. At present the best bet for identifying an error is when the category is seen as a red link at the bottom (assuming all the relevant category pages have been created, which is not the case at present). Even that is not foolproof since what is to stop us having the category pages for isotopes AND isotope, so even a blue link at the bottom might not be a good indication of a mistake? As CZ grows I see this as a major pitfall with regard to having more versatility to create novel subpages names, yet it's probably not enough of a problem to nix the idea. For me the real thrust of this proposal is to increase the transparency (or descriptability?, is that a word?) of the subpage tabs.

I don't have any immediate thoughts about the categories. They should all go in the appropriate workgroups (for the parent article), no? J. Noel Chiappa 20:39, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Probably right here. I will add the workgroups too. I was trying to avoid a situation where we end up having hundreds of different categories with only a few (single?) members. Chris Day 11:17, 28 April 2008 (CDT)
A couple of comments:
  • I take your point about the mis-spellings. Having the list of defined subpages might help with that, though; if people see "Isotopes" listed, they might not create "Isotope".
  • I don't think it's a big problem if we have a category for every subpage type, even if it has a few entries. What's the problem there, anyway?
  • It's too bad there's no way to automatically put all those categories into a super-category automatically, so it would be easy to keep track of them - but to do that, you'd need to edit the category pages. What you could do, to keep track of them, is call then all "Per-article-Subpage-Category-<foo>", where <foo> is the individual subpage name - that way Special:Prefixindex/Category:Per-article-Subpage-Category would find them all easily. That would at least allow you to find the Isotope/Isotopes of the world - and then you could use the category to track down the rogue suppages, and fix them. You'd have to manually peruse the list of subpage types to find the problems - but you'd have to have a human in the loop anyway, for that.
I think this is getting there... J. Noel Chiappa 21:46, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Now that I think about it, the categories should be added in a template which is always included, and does nothing else. That way, if someone screws up Template:<tab>_footer, you at least get the cats right. Would there be any need for a 'default' footer template (if no Template:<tab>_footer is defined), at that point? J. Noel Chiappa 22:41, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

But wouldn't this defeat the whole point of having a generic template, i.e. "many users here prefer not to interact with mediawiki "? If we go this route then I think we should just go with the low speedbump that allows the versatility but gives allows some control of the tab names to reduce potential errors and redundancy (via similar tab names). Chris Day 11:17, 28 April 2008 (CDT)
I didn't follow this. Were your comments in response to "the categories should be added in a template which is always included, and does nothing else", or in response to "Would there be any need for a 'default' footer template"?
Were you saying 'yes, let's put the category-adding in a separate template that is always added, and does nothing else - so the users can't mess it up - and then also require a Template:<tab>_footer to be defined, as a low-speedbump to slow down creation of new types of subpages'? J. Noel Chiappa 21:46, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Noel, sorry if my replies above are a bit rambling. This whole proposal is still tumbling around in my mind. Please keep adding your ideas though, as discussing this helps me cement the idea. I've already thought of things that were not even on my radar screen before answering your points above. Chris Day 11:51, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

No problem - I know how that 'half-formed thoughts' thing goes! J. Noel Chiappa 21:46, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Faraday

OK, I have to finish copyediting Faraday first. Hopefully I'll be done with that tonight - it's starting to feel like a life sentence.. :-( J. Noel Chiappa 16:11, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

I would have thought you'd be charged by his magnetic personality to write and write and write? Chris Day 18:13, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
Funny person. NOT! But it was really neat to learn about him (I never knew that much); turns out the dude was a really, really major scientist. I'd now rank him below only Einstein and Newton, and on a par with a handful of others. J. Noel Chiappa 20:39, 26 April 2008 (CDT)
What amazes me about that era is their versatility. For example, Robert Boyle was the first to see biological cells (even if dead and only the cell walls in cork) and coined the term cell. CD
Heck, what about da Vinci - one of the great artists of all time, and also did other stuff! But yeah, it must have been cool to be a scientist back then - so much to be discovered, so much virgin territory! I feel like I missed out twice; back in the late 40s / early 50s in computer science, if you were breathing and had a pulse, you could make a major discovery! Still, we'd have missed out seeing where it all went, and seeing the amazing stuff we've found out by today. J. Noel Chiappa 21:53, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

MSDS

Chris, I like the MSDS tab and an isotopes one might be good too. I do wonder how few people know what the MSDS is, so we might start out the top of the page with "Material Safety Data Sheet" for Cadmium, and inlude a date so we know how old the safety data is, and possibly a source. I note that other sites gives links to MSDS pages so the information is timely. David E. Volk 16:15, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

I agree MSDS is not exactly great either and the whole MSDS subpage needs a lot of work stylistically. MSDS is , however, better than catalogs. Chris Day 18:11, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
If you had per-tab-type headers, you could include Material Safety Data Sheet in the header template for the MSDS subpage. There, I think I've answered my question above; optional subpage header/footers are a good idea! J. Noel Chiappa 20:44, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Also, regarding the question marks showing up on the tabs, I don't like the look of it one bit, but I do realize how useful it is for getting guidelines. They make it look like our software is choking on a missing variable. I wonder if you can use two lines on the tabs, with a very small font (help) or (guide) directly under the text. David E. Volk 16:15, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

I have to say that I'm not keen on the question marks or the hash (#) marks we had prior to that. I feel purple ? at the end should probably be enough, possibly leading to and image map jpg of a typical set of tabs with labelling too. I have experimented with smaller fonts and double height and no combination is satisfactory. Chris Day 18:10, 24 April 2008 (CDT)
I think that the average person, seeing the ?, will not think of it as the outcome of a programming error. Maybe a hover that says "Help" would be useful, though? J. Noel Chiappa 20:44, 26 April 2008 (CDT)
I was not thinking of it from the perspective of a coding error but rather a space issue. In clusters with many tabs they will run off the screen to the right. Less space in the tabs means more tabs can be accommodated at the top. Will people use the CZ:Subpage links that much? One thing is that a red ? link will indicate when an article specific subpages function has not been defined. Chris Day 11:34, 28 April 2008 (CDT)
Good point about the width. Is there any way to force the "?" underneath the tab name? That would save on the width. J. Noel Chiappa 21:55, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Thinking some more. Above I was discussing that the subpage categories could be a minimum requirement for creating an article specific subpage. But actually, the minimum requirement should be to create a "CZ:Article specific subpage" description of the subpages role. In this way we will have a record of ALL the article specific subpage names being used and this should help us catch spelling error at the source and reduce redundancy when creating article specific subpages. This is the low speedbump that needs to be in place to keep things consistent. While the generic footer and header templates are useful our goal should probably be to have specific header and footers as these new subpage types are created. Chris Day 11:40, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Motto bug

Hi Chris, thanks for taking a stab at that motto bug. I think it is caused by too large (with inclusions) of a template. Which means...no quick fix? Of course, I could be wrong. --Larry Sanger 10:39, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

You're exactly right. It also explains why the workgroup todo lists collapse too. The post expand size is huge (about 4.7Mb for one page I checked). There is no easy fix that I can see but I will think this over a bit. It should be possible to only include what is used. Chris Day 12:02, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

Subpage header design

Since now everything on the site has a "flat" appearance, any chance of making it so that the subpage header also appears "2d" as opposed to the beveled table look it has now? --Robert W King 13:53, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

Awesome Template:Codewink. I was going to adjust the colors too but everything I chose was too bright. --Robert W King 14:31, 25 April 2008 (CDT)
What you call dull is actually neutral. You go away from neutral and the colour becomes the centre of attention. Exactly what we need to avoid. Chris Day 14:33, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

SubpagesSub-workgroups proposal or resolution

Chris:

I noted in the Forums that Larry Sanger asked you to submit a proposal or resolution to the Editorial Council regarding the creation of sub-workgroupssubpages. I would be happy to review or critique (or whatever) that proposal or resolution when you have drafted it. Please feel free to call upon me for help. - Milton Beychok 12:16, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Did you mean per-article subpages, or sub-workgroups (or subgroups or sub-groups or whatever their formal name is)? J. Noel Chiappa 20:41, 26 April 2008 (CDT)
I am pretty sure that Milton is talking about the sub-workgroups. I have two irons, three if you count the elemment infobox, in the fire at the moment which makes discussions on this page a little confusing. Chris Day 11:41, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Feature request

Hey Chris, I think we should display at least the metadata (if not the unused subpages) by default. Also, it would be very handy to be able to click on a datum and be taken to the page immediately to edit it--but that's too much to ask for at this point. But more easily accessible "edit" links for the metadata would be useful, anyway. --Larry Sanger 12:23, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

There is a direct link - and a direct edit link - to the Metadata in the header on the article's talk: page. (The "M" button goes there, and there's a text edit link.) My guess at the thinking as to why (since I wasn't there for the discussion, but it's a design call which I agree with) was not to burden our ordinary users with the internal CZ mechanisms. It's only one extra click away - do we need to make it more accessible? J. Noel Chiappa 20:20, 26 April 2008 (CDT)
Noel's interpretation of history is correct. Originally the metadata button was on every page, I reduced that to the minimum number. As Noel points out there is already a link at the top of the talk page to the edit window, is it too subtle? The goals was from the talk page one could either directly edit or just view the raw metadata page. I could make the button go directly to the edit page. Just let me know which is preferable. Chris Day 11:45, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Re: Displaying metadata, yes, I can change that to be show by default. Chris Day 11:49, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Oh, that's what Larry meant by "display at least the metadata ... by default". Blah. Looks ugly, to me - a huge header I usually don't care about. If I want to see something in the metadata, I click on the show button - it operates entirely on the local machine, so it's fast. What the devil is the point of having a show/hide button if it displays by default? What is someone supposed to do, click the hide button every time they go to a talk: page? J. Noel Chiappa 20:52, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Elem Infobox

FYI:I tweaked the text size specifier in the infobox as well. It was ok in IE but firefox didn't like the font size...--David Yamakuchi 16:23, 27 April 2008 (CDT)

{{Physical properties}}

Chris/Richard/Noel, would one of you be able to take a look at Phosphorus/MSDS#Physical__Properties and help me figure out how to get rid of the extra whitespace in the Mass and Electronegativity cells? I'm stumped. It looks like it's coming from the line breaks in between lines in {{Physical properties}}, but when I remove them, the table stops recognizing the new rows for some crazy reason...#^%$!!!. It seems like it's possibly something so simple someone with a fair amount of wikitable knowlege will scoff at it, but sadly, that aint me. So, if you have a couple of minutes to spare, please...scoff away :-) --David Yamakuchi 21:42, 27 April 2008 (CDT)

Never mind. I got it!--David Yamakuchi 23:08, 27 April 2008 (CDT)

Show/hide on Talk: page

Any particular reason you took out the "collapsed" in {{Unused subpage list}} and {{Checklist22}} (not the greatest name, BTW)? I liked them a lot better collapsed out of the way. J. Noel Chiappa 20:41, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Never mind - I just figured out what Larry meant above. J. Noel Chiappa 20:55, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Check out Talk:Yangtze Patrol, With IE, the Wikipedia notice is ovewritten by the subpages header. The Wikipedia notice didn't used to get zapped like that. What happened? J. Noel Chiappa 23:30, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Don't see it on my broswer and not sure what the wikipeia notice is either. But I know why it happens. I had to drop a work in progress but plan to finish off tonight. Chris Day 23:35, 28 April 2008 (CDT)
{{WPauthor}}.
Also, I guess there's some joke with {{Checklist22}} I'm missing - is it a Catch-22 joke? (It's late, I'm tired!) I just thought you'd gone through Checklist1, Checklist2, etc and created one more variant by doubling the number! J. Noel Chiappa 00:28, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Ah. Light dawns over famous Massachusetts fishing port, as they say... J. Noel Chiappa 00:34, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
?? Block Harbor is in Rhode Island, I thought, not Massachusetts? :-) J. Noel Chiappa 00:44, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Yes - I was making a (clearly lame :-) joke back at you, with the 'Block Harbor' thing. Yes, it is Marblehead I was referring to. I completely missed the Charlie Brown reference... sigh, it's late; plus to which I'm not a big CB fan. Definitely a cultural lacunae, or something; Schultz was definitely really good. (Although 'Pogo' might have been a tad better.) Maybe it was too subtle for me - I'm more a 'Calvin and Hobbes' kind of person... J. Noel Chiappa 00:51, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Sarcasm? J. Noel Chiappa 00:56, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Sounds like you need sleep too! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 01:01, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Yes, it works fine now. J. Noel Chiappa 01:47, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Header footer stuff

I did reply to you about the header/footer templates, etc (see section above); not sure if you'd noticed that. J. Noel Chiappa 01:47, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Hi, I finally had a chance to think about your comments, and replied over there, at User talk:J. Noel Chiappa#header footer update (it was easier to answer your questions in situ, rather than back and forth on two pages, in case you're wondering what motivated that :-). J. Noel Chiappa 19:39, 29 April 2008 (CDT)
Excellent point about the [[Category:Experimental subpages]] (about how they'd have to get them both right). Now why didn't I think of that? :-)
I'm still a little confused about how "group-AS-subpagename .. represents a reduced set"... Oh, wait a minute (light bulb finally goes on :-) - you mean "<workgroup>-AS-<newsubpage>"? Ah, now I get it! Hmm, I'm not sure I see much use for that? Why would the <bar> workgroup want to be able to see the <foo>-type subpages in their workgroup? I wouldn't worry about that one - because if we ever discover a need for it, it's trivial to edit the template, and all the group-specific categories will be populated after some database lag. Unless we see a need for it right now, I'd leave it out for the moment.
About the proposal - I don't think the Editorial Council (the formal one) will want too much technical detail. The technical detail would probably be more for a CZ: documentation page. (Actually, it could just get added to CZ:Article-specific subpages, no?) J. Noel Chiappa 21:01, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Is this a permanent change on the article Talk pages?

Hi, Chris: The Talk pages suddenly unhide the MetaData Page and the Checklist page. Is this going to be permanent? The Hide buttons work but only until I have left the Talk page. When I return again, those pages are unhidden again.

For what it is worth, I vote for leaving them hidden all the time. - Milton Beychok 12:01, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

removal of approval

Has removed= always been there? Or did I miss something recently? --D. Matt Innis 12:24, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

news on whether strings will be added?

I don't even know who to ask or where to push, but it's my hope that we could get it soon. I suspect it will open up a lot of possibilities we never even considered previously.--David Yamakuchi 13:27, 1 May 2008 (CDT)

I'd like to see this too. Any ideas on how we could possibly make this happen? I've tried leaving notes on a couple of dev's talk pages (Zach, I think, and someone else), but nada. Can Stephen Ewing install it? J. Noel Chiappa 17:12, 3 May 2008 (CDT)

Dunno...lets ask...--David Yamakuchi 18:50, 3 May 2008 (CDT)

colors

Hi Chris, thanks for the help on the new Catalog colors. I will try to remember to find this article when I need to see the formatting for doing something similar. Hayford Peirce 12:14, 2 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for help

It's not only that I'm learning the differences from Wikipedia, but learning the differences between the way I think things ought to work. :-)

Perhaps there could be some collaboration between military and biology workgroups on swarming behavior. There are quite a few publications examining the relationships; I have a pleasant mental image of a general pausing to consult with an army ant. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:26, 2 May 2008 (CDT)

Recipe template needs some minor tweaking

Hi, Chris. If you look at the new bearnaise recipe at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Bearnaise_sauce/Recipes you'll see that the template needs some tweaking in the "howmany=" and "what=" areas. The problem is that the way it is now set up is that it is generally for "servings" -- and the numerical number shown is LARGE. But, as I wrote the bearnaise sauce recipe, and looked at the Times and Julia, it became clear that the result I want to give is "cups", not "servings". I tried to do this in various ways, but all of them were either bad or not very good. (If I just substitute "cups" for "servings", then the "3/4 to 1" is ridiculously large.) Deleting "howmany" certainly didn't work.

Ideally, what I'd like to be able to do here is something that ended up looking like:

Yields
3/4 to 1
cup, about 4 to 8 servings

Is there any way to fiddle this? Many thanks! Hayford Peirce 18:36, 2 May 2008 (CDT)

Subpage default contents

I notice that the links to non-existent Related-Articles/Biblography/etc in the subpages navigation bar (and also any non-existent per-article subpages) don't offer the preload of the blank page (with {{subpages}} already there). Would it bloat the code greatly to do an ifexists, and if the target is not there, make the link a preload edit? That would probably help the forgetful / less technically steeped... J. Noel Chiappa 09:25, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

I too was wondering about whther to do this but it slipped my mind. More than once probably. I don't think it would b a problem size wise. Chris Day 09:28, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

MSDS subpage

It would seem to me that unlike Isotopes (which only element pages would have), MSDS pages would potentially be found on all chemical compound pages, which is a vastly greater number. So should MSDS be a 'standard' subpage? (BTW, there are a whole bunch of backlogged suggestions for standard subpages, including Quotations, Glossary, etc... the system for approving them seems to be wedged/non-existent - see CZ:How to add a new subpage type.) J. Noel Chiappa 16:47, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Yes MSDS is probably a more general example since every checmical under the sun would have such a page. It may well be more suitable as a standard page. I was thinking about what types of subpages we will have. I remember Larry early on suggesting we would have hundreds and I think there is no reason why this will not be the case. With so many, however, it might make more sense to have a hierarchy. There will be some used by all pages (we have these as defualt now). There are some that could be used by all pages, like catalogs. There will be others that are more specific to a particular workgroup such as MSDS. And finally ones that will only be used on a small set of articles (this is what we want tabs for). I have been wondering what to do with the workgroup specific ones like MSDS which currently fall between the stool with regard to our current set up. Do we really want MSDS to be seen as an unused subpage option on every talk page? But, I agree we do not want to have to define a MSDS tab in the metadata for every chemical. I don't have an answer, yet, but it would be nice if from the standard set of subpages only appropriate ones show up in the unused subpages list of any given articles talk page. Chris Day 09:40, 5 May 2008 (CDT)
Well, you could always define "workgroup-specific-subpages"! :-) I.e. have templates of the form "Template:subpages-<group>", and the template which displays the unused subpages on the talk page would pull the cat(s) out of the metadata, pull up the appropriate "Template:subpages-<group>" template(s), and go through the list in there and add them to the displayed list. One problem: if two different WG's both have a subpage, it might get displayed twice. I can't think of any easy way to fix that that's not really ugly. (E.g. define "Template:subpages-<group1>-<group2>", for cases where cat1 and cat2 are both specified. With ~30 workgroups, and something 30! combinations [can't be bothered to work out the exact math :-] that's too many to be feasible.)
As for the backlog, I think you have a great point that experience with per-article subpages will give us a lot of info. I have yet to look at the proposal page (been doing catchup), I'll make sure that point is included as a plus for PA subpages. J. Noel Chiappa 10:34, 5 May 2008 (CDT)
What kind of hierarchy could one construct, though, other than 'all/workgroups/specific'? Are you saying construct some new, distinct, hierarchy to organize articles into, and associate sets of subpages with nodes in that new hiearchy? Because I can't see any other existing information we can 'mine', to suggest additional subpages past the 'all' set, other than wgroups. J. Noel Chiappa 17:31, 5 May 2008 (CDT)
I have not thought it through at all. Chris Day 18:01, 5 May 2008 (CDT)
With workgroup specific subpages you could also basically offload some of the administration of the subpages and names and such to the WG Editors, who would presumably have the best insight into the way subpages of their articles should be arranged.--David Yamakuchi 19:39, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

Talk pages

Well, yes and no. As the project gets bigger (as Wikipedia did), it's simply too much to keep track of, particularly when you're leaving messages on lots of personal talk pages, and unlikely to go back to a random person's talk page for a different message. You either have to i) check for a reply manually, or ii) add the page to a (usually bloated) watchlist to watch that way. Of course, i) CZ is still pretty small, and ii) I'll be coming over here all the time anyway, soin your case either page works fine! J. Noel Chiappa 10:21, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

Gonzales

Yep, Mr. G. now shows up in the right place. I'll remember to make a minor change to the article next time I correct an ABC=. Thanks!

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