User talk:RexxS/Archive 16

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Developer access

Hello. I saw you discussing some coding related to Wikipedia and thought you might want to get developer access if you don't already have it. You can find out more and request it on that page. Best wishes! Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager 02:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, RexxS. You have new messages at Template talk:Episode list.
Message added 00:04, 19 May 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hi RexxS, I've just written a few paragraphs in reply to queries about the forced shading of row headers. If you have anything further to add or other ideas, I think we'd all appreciate them. Thanks, Matthewedwards (talk · contribs)

I have Template talk:Episode list on my watchlist, so I'll keep an eye on how things are going. Coincidentally, I just posted a response to the "TopColor broken" without seeing your message here, but I'm looking at your comments now. It's late here, so if you're not in a hurry, I'll give them the time they properly deserve tomorrow. Regards, --RexxS (talk) 00:25, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Definition/reference for msw and fsw

Hi RexxS, do you know of a good reference for definition of metres sea water and feet sea water? I want to write an article on them, and all I have is USN Diving Manual R6 Table 2.10. Google doesn't seem to help. Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:12, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's the reference I used originally - it's quoted in Pressure#Units and you can tell it's me because it's defined in the References section! As you know, the USN Diving manual says:
  • "In the metric system, 10 MSW is defined as 1 BAR. Note that pressure conversion from MSW to FSW is different than length conversion; i.e., 10 MSW = 32.6336 FSW and 10 M = 32.8083 feet."
  • US Navy (2006). US Navy Diving Manual, 6th revision. United States: US Naval Sea Systems Command. p. 2-32. Retrieved 2008-06-15.
I'm certain that that is good enough for any article because fsw can be computed directly from msw by simple multiplication, which is allowed under WP:CALC. If there are very few sources, it's often an indication that an article doesn't belong in Wikipedia, so have a think about WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and check whether Wiktionary might be a better place to define "metres sea water" and "feet sea water". If you've never made a Wiktionary definition, it's interesting to have a go. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 11:03, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
I was hoping there would be more information in another source. Possibly sufficient bacground and information to justify an article, as there are several articles on other specific units of pressure. Peter (Southwood) (talk): 15:50, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your courteous comments. I was going through a bad time and said some things I regret, but it was you and your allies that stopped me from editing; it wasn't worth fighting an improbable battle. I think that wikipedia is flawed, in that people have key interests, yours being medicine, and you will die to defend it. I believe in medicine, I study it, I just also believe in having an open mind and a balanced argument. Sometimes one editor can completely prevent a page from being unbiased (the LBGT parenting page springs to mind - a couple of years ago one editor commandeered the page for a very long time and it was extremely biased for a long period of time).

Javsav (talk) 22:51, 22 May 2012 (UTC)javsav

Welcome back Javsav. I wish you well. --RexxS (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for !voting

at my successful RFA
Thank you, RexxS, for !voting at my successful RFA; I am humbled that you put your trust in me. I grant you this flower, which, if tended to properly, will grow to be the fruit of Wikipedia's labours. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Congratulations! --RexxS (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Your note

RexxS, first off, let me say that I appreciate the spirit of what you said, and am certain that your intentions were good. However, I do feel that your response on my page was too strong, especially given the chain of events. "Edit war" - hardly. Experienced or not, the other party did cross a line in suggesting vandalism; note that I did post on their page and I also attempted to make their material conform to standard encyclopedic practice. I feel that it is important to note that I have no particular interest in the content at all, and was merely dealing with overly promotional-sounding material that was repeatedly inserted. Again, I don't fault you for your intentions but do feel that in future a slightly different approach might be more appropriate. Cheers. --Ckatzchatspy 19:09, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you don't feel able to respond to my sincere concerns other than to deny them, and I'm disappointed that you still have not posted on the Talk:Divemaster page explaining your concerns. Unfortunately the other editor is inexperienced and it behoves us to explain why their accusations of 'vandalism' are inappropriate – although at first glance your removal of well-sourced content may seem to fit the bill. I feel very strongly that the moment anyone repeats the same edit they are engaging in an edit war, whether it be "hardly an edit war" or not. You surely know that forcing your version – right or wrong – into the article through repeated edits against another editor is a lousy example to set for a newcomer. Wiki4Thal does not see the text as overly promotional, and your saying that is doesn't make it so in his eyes. That makes it a classic case for immediately going to discussion on the talk page page and helping him to understand. Your reply on his page, User talk:Wiki4Thal#June 2012, was an unhelpful templated warning concerning AGF - when the actual concern is a content issue. Have you read his response there yet? I'd really like to start helping you find an accommodation with Wiki4Thal, but you're not making it easy for me. --RexxS (talk) 19:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I had already replied on the article talk page. --Ckatzchatspy 20:06, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah yes, you edit conflicted me here and I hadn't seen it when I posted. Thank you for that, could you just indicate why you thought it was appropriate for NAUI, but not for Divemaster and I'd be happy to take it from there (if you don't wish to). Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Table accessibility

It has been suggested by User:The Rambling Man that your opinion is sought on the accessibility of tables in List of chronometers on HMS Beagle. Would creating an untitled zero-width column which can be col-spanned when additional material is to be inserted solve the problem. Demonstration in my sandbox. Thanks for your help. SpinningSpark 10:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi Spark! I don't think the zero-width column solves anything, and the table in your sandbox looks all wrong to me - does it for you as well? I've made some rather general comments in the FLC that you might want to chew over. None of what I say is prescriptive; I'm just trying to get you to examine what you are trading off against possible improvements in accessibility. I hope you find that helpful, but please let me know if you want to discuss in greater detail. Your FLC is on my watchlist now, so I'll keep an eye on it with interest, and perhaps pop back for a few more comments if time permits me. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 15:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Why do you say the sandbox example doesn't solve anything? The material in the spanned columns is no longer under an incorrect heading which I thought was the screenreaders problem. The (almost) hidden column was unnamed, but I have now given it a name so I am really not understanding why the there is still a difficulty. I particularly don't understand why you think the sandbox table "looks wrong". It pretty much looks to me the same as the tables in the live article. The references aren't working of course, and the data is meaningless - it was only meant to demonstrate the display format. SpinningSpark 15:54, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
The version I looked at showed up in my browser like this:
Now do you see what I mean by "looks wrong to me"? Doesn't it look like that in your browser? The latest version looks much better.
I think that latest sandbox version is an improvement but still isn't a full solution for a screen reader because each row (bar one) now contains an empty cell with the header "Extended comments" which would be announced if the user were navigating around the table. I agree it would not be noticeable if the screen reader were reading the table left-to-right, row-by-row. I still think it's sub-optimal to include a column in a table where the data only exists for one entry, particularly when the information in that cell is much larger than the data in any other cell. --RexxS (talk) 16:18, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Wow, what browser are you using? That archive page looks right to me in both Firefox and IE8. The change in the current version is to add a heading for that column which I would expect to make the column even wider if anything. But the problem was probably caused by my failure to put a closing quote on the css statement which is now fixed.
I'm really out of ideas at this point how we can stick with a table format and get the screenreader to read it nicely. Rearranging the order of material in the article to suite screenreaders is just not acceptable to me. Personally, I would go with putting up with the screenreader reading the "wrong" heading as it is now, but if that is not acceptable to screenreader users then it is probably going to have to be changed - at least if I want Featured status for the page. SpinningSpark 16:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
That's FF12, but IE9, Opera 11.64, and Chrome 19 all look pretty much the same. At 1024px the column disappears, so perhaps that's the difference. Now you point to it, I can see that style="width:0px will fail because of the missing ", so naturally the column doesn't get set to zero width!
Look, what you have now is better than it was, and many screen readers will cope with it. It's really not that bad, so I don't expect that it will fail FLC as a result, and I'm just trying to get you to "put the icing on the cake" in accessibility terms. The only change that really, really has to be made is to give those two 'Chronometers on first voyage (Adventure)' tables unique table captions. (Prefix with 'French' and 'Other' perhaps?). I'll keep watching. --RexxS (talk) 17:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Your last comment has already been dealt with, I picked it up as soon as I saw your comment at FLC. If you think the sandbox is now in an acceptable state, would you mind making that comment on the review page and I will implement it as soon as TRM agrees to it as well. SpinningSpark 17:31, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Family trees

Hi RexxS, hope you're well.

Just embarking on a brief peer review of Agatha, wife of Edward the Exile and saw a family tree, and it got me wondering how accessible it was. Does it read out nicely or is it a pig? No great rush, just a thought... (and thanks again for your input at FLC, particularly with the chronometers most recently...) The Rambling Man (talk) 07:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi TRM, I've found time to have a look now. The family trees are constructed as tables, so a screen reader will be able to read the names in them without problem. However, the precise relationships that the solid or dotted lines delineate would not be available because they are purely a visual device (they are made from the borders of table cells).
If you take the first tree (Edward the Exile -- Agatha), then there is sufficient information in the adjacent text to know that they were married. You can tell the names of their children on the next row (but cannot distinguish Malcolm III as a son-in-law from their biological children). Similarly, from the textual context, it is clear that the third row contains grandchildren's names, but a screen reader could not ascertain that those named grandchildren were all the children of Margaret and Malcolm III.
The same sort of analysis applies to all of the family trees: the names and generations are clear enough, but the actual relationships are not available to a screen reader. I can see no easy way of improving on that. I suggest that when reviewing these sort of articles, you treat family trees as if they were images - that is, something that enhances the associated text, but is not essential to an understanding of the issue being discussed. If you can still understand what the article is saying without the family trees, then they are sufficiently accessible; if not, then the surrounding text needs to be expanded to clarify the relationships - so that it could stand alone as a description of the point being made.
Sorry if that's rather messy advice - and I wish I could do better for you - but it's not as clear-cut an issue as many of the others we've looked at. Thanks again for all the great work you do! --RexxS (talk) 14:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
No, that's good advice, thanks. My ACCESS-eagle-eyes are somewhat more honed than they used to be...! The Rambling Man (talk) 15:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

MonmouthpediA Barnstar

Monmouthpedia Barnstar
This is a barnstar to say thanks for your work on MonmouthpediA both online and off, really appreciate all your help. Mrjohncummings (talk) 15:49, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Ice Hockey Template Accessibility

FYI: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Archive52#Accessibility, Round 2. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

They need to see those examples at width: 20em;  Br'erRabbit  18:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Teamwork Barnstar
For your outstanding support and dedication in getting Yogo sapphire from a new article to DYK to GA to FA and FOUR. The team effort of the uncountable people involved in getting this unique article to FA is a textbook case of teamwork in article improvement, ie, what Wikipedia should be, not what it all too often is. I can never thank everyone enough. PumpkinSky talk 23:19, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Various stuff

Following up here on some things, partly to do with the WT:AC thread and partly on other matters.

  • (1) The arbitration case you referred to, was that the Moby Dick one that MONGO referred to? That was in June 2006. I started editing Wikipedia in around December 2004, creating my account in January 2005, but only really starting to edit fully the following year. The first point I think I really became aware of Jack was in this motion in December 2008, which I think I followed at the time (it was during the ArbCom elections). That was followed by one motion that I voted on and one that took place after my two years were up (in January 2011). Much of that history is at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Jack Merridew ban review motion, with you having commented on several of the motions at the time. I dislike people referring to years-old stuff as much as anyone, but the trouble with Wikipedia is that the history is preserved there, often in disjointed and sometimes misleading fashion, but enough to make it difficult to leave the history behind. And the longer this goes on, the more confusing it gets (I actually posted to BR's talk page before realising he was Jack, as I don't tend to check user pages and see if they are someone I already know). One of the reasons I'm trying to get all this straight in my mind is trying to work out when various people first encountered Jack, and how many people know the full history going back to the original case.
  • (2) We were both at that workshop in London, weren't we? I'm asking because I noticed you post somewhere about a possible meet-up in Manchester, a place I've never actually been to. I'm half-thinking of going to that, providing it doesn't clash with other things. Have you been to Manchester and do you know if the meet-up venue there is easy to get to?

Oh, and article improving, I sometimes make notes at work when I notice articles that have mistakes, and fix them when I get home, but sometimes I don't have the time or inclination even then, or it needs a bit of research. One example is Georg Andreas Böckler, which has different birth and death years (the en-wiki ones are more the years he was active) than in the German article, see de:Georg Andreas Böckler. I could leave a note on the talk page, but thought I might as well just mention it here and see what happens. I also thought the notability tags at Robert Wright (surgeon) were overdone. And there are huge numbers of biography pages out there (like that one) that have no talk page and no {{WikiProject Biography}} on the talk pages, though that might in some ways be a good thing. There used to be people and bots around that made sure biographies had WikiProject Biography tags on the talk pages, but that seems to have stopped a long time ago. I would make a bot request about that, but last time I made a bot request it got archived with nothing done.

Weekends like this, I think I'll have time to catch up on stuff like that, but it never quite seems to work out that way. Endless amounts of fairly easy to moderate stuff to be done, but difficult to get into that mindset when you want to settle down and do something more substantial, or are putting off doing other things. Though thinking on that a bit more, I think the thing that annoys me most about some of the recent stuff is that with a whole encyclopedia out there to work on, why do some people get so caught up in the interpersonal stuff around here, or walk around with huge chips on their shoulders or points to prove about how unfair the system is (I'm talking in general about several editors here, not any single editor specifically, both currently at arbitration and outside that). Anyway, if you are serious about taking up that challenge, could it work as a system? WP:Collaboration Challenge? Hmm, maybe a better name is needed. I do have a long list of potential articles that I would happily suggest for article collaborations. I made a note in July 2011 that we didn't have an article on Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder, but that was created in January 2012. Maybe Gunnarea capensis? Carcharoth (talk) 02:13, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Carch. Ralph knows the history, and I'm sure he'd fill you in over a few beers. I'd encourage you two to have the meet-up (and I'm wanting that page undeleted, amongst many others; /hint/. Moby was about the fourth case). The notion of tying two disputants together could work in some cases. Both parties would have to actually be able to bring something to the collaboration, of course. FWIW, when I first encountered Wehwalt, we had a minor spat; I'd tagged Nikita Khrushchev as missing a source (or something like that), and we had it out on his talk (January, sometime). It all worked out fine; I've since worked on most of the FAs he's written. nb: User talk:Parsecboy#About Arkansas..., today's convert; User talk:DrKiernan#Shark's teeth, last week's (objections assuaged). DK was the editor who spotted Alarbus and TMA-1 as both being mine. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 02:40, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Sure, but working with people doesn't require creating converts. Just learning how to tone things down when things get messy, and finding a better way to handle things when something happens like with Raul and others (usually, that involves being able to handle such things without converts and supporters speaking up for you, the more others get dragged into something, the more it can escalate). As far as all the referencing stuff goes, I'd personally much prefer to learn how to do such stuff myself, rather than rely on others to do it for me. Improving the documentation that explains such things ensures both that others can learn about it and that it carries on for a fair amount of time even when people go inactive or are no longer around. I have a similar attitude to copyediting. Asking people to copyedit for you is OK to a certain extent, but becoming reliant on 'super-copyeditors' is not good. People should, gradually, pick up a smattering of all these skills themselves (including being able to do at least once a manual conversion of some of the reference changes you make). The general principle I'm wary of here is where various individuals become the 'go to' person for various issues. I've seen that in copyright areas, in image areas, in arbitration, in SPI and checkuser, in templates, in copyediting, in certain narrow topic areas, and so on. To some extent that is well and good, some specialisation is needed and always will be needed (especially in complex technical areas), but like anything, that can go too far. And the sort of edit I really hate most are fiercely complex, script-generated ones, that are probably 100% fine, but which pack about 40-50 changes into one edit, and if they pop up on your watchlist you have to either go "eh, that's probably OK", or spend hours trying to figure out what exactly was changed and how and why. Even more annoying is when you spend the time to unpack the changes and find that a tiny little mistake was made, and you wonder how many times that mistake was made before someone noticed. Anyway, today I was meant to be doing other stuff, so I'll put up that wikibreak notice come back to this on Wednesday (or maybe later). Carcharoth (talk) 12:24, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Hi Carcharoth, I wasn't intending you to have to look up the grim details of a six-year old Arbcom case: I just wanted you to be aware that Raul and Jack have had previous interactions going back at least that long, and that the problem is deep-seated. I endorse your view of the "all-round editor" and have always sought that as my own personal goal, but would remark that the job of content editing enjoys far more status on Wikipedia than the equally necessary task of technical editing. If you work for some time in the area of accessibility, you soon see the parochialism, and can appreciate how badly folks like Jack can be treated by some who are unable to see beyond their own small area of expertise. That is a problem which will take a paradigm shift to resolve.
Turning to more pleasant matters, yes, we met at the London workshop. I was the one frequently arguing with Charles, but it's ok, we don't fall out over it - it's just my application of dialogue as a didactic device :) I regularly drive to the Manchester meetups and give lifts from the Midlands to reprobates like Harry Mitchell, and you'd be most welcome to join us if that were on your route. I'd encourage you to come along even if you wouldn't need a lift: the meetups are very casual - and always enjoyable - and we've had some very interesting chats with all sorts of Wikipedians. Attempting to build links to as many parts of the country as possible is my small contribution to strengthening the editor base, and everyone who joins in is most welcome.
I've joined in with Wikipedia:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team in the past, but they tend to wax and wane as the prime movers get caught up in other things. I have always found that working in a small group to improve articles is the most enjoyable activity on-wiki, so I'll take a good look at the ones you've suggested later today. No doubt Br'er will want to re-write all the references (and quite right too!). Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 12:59, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Belated follow-up here to thank you for the kind offer of a lift for this Saturday. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to make it to this meet-up after all. Hope it goes well, and maybe I'll make another one later in the year. Carcharoth (talk) 08:12, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Working with people does require that all actually bring something to the table. That needed saying. The other, too. I've a huge theatre background. Drama is a tool. It shapes how people look at things. I think I'm pretty good at finding the right balance. Wiki won't get fixed if everyone is meek about things. That's a pretty old trap, really.
I teach this stuff all the time. See the contribs of User:Sitti Noerbaja; all 48 of them. I'd noticed Crisco editing Indonesian topics, so I chipped-in. Many of those pages were new, still in his userspace. What's he done since? Used the techniques demonstrated in about 200 new articles. Wehwalt has learned the mechanisms I've shown him, as have a lot of others. Diannaa does whole conversions, herself. User:Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 did some really good work in the outer solar system; Ruslik0 and Kheider are good at this stuff, but they learned, more. I'm also a software guy, and we hate writing documentation; technical writing is a different skill set.
See edits such as this one. Notice how I'm working on every other cite in the references section. That's so the diff is clean. I do the others in a different edit. Parsecboy is watching this, so I make it easy to follow. Sure, sometimes I'll make omnibus edits that result in a diff that's all a jumble, but I'm quite careful about it. I use external tools to verify that a refactor isn't actually damaging anything.
Br'er Rabbit (talk) 13:16, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Part of what happens when we set up a civilised society is it allows people to become specialists. I don't need to know how to kill a chicken or raise crops or build a television set or drive a garbage truck. There's all kinds of people with all kinds of niches in a civilisation, particularly in an urban setting, that do those jobs on my behalf. We shouldn't all have to be generalists, because that precludes the depth of knowledge required to do the more subtle or technical or wildly creative things such as sequencing DNA or building bridges or making great art. And that's what Wikipedia could be like, too. Some people could be specialising in writing articles, and others in formatting the citations or developing the underlying mark-up or building and maintaining navboxes. It would be true collaborative editing, with various editors bringing different skills to the table.

Some of the rules we have on Wikipedia actually get in the way of collaborative editing, though. For example, we have a rule that the first primary contributor to an article gets to choose the citation style. Well, most of our core articles were already written long ago, and if we have a rule that we can't change the citation mark-up without permission of the original primary contributor, we have a problem. (Alternatively consensus can be obtained to change a particular article, by initiating a discussion on the talk page.) Because it means that we can't upgrade the mark-up when new and better ways to do things come along. The ownership of the article by someone without a technical mind-set will preclude introducing better implementation of the citations or other technical aspects of the piece. So that's a mindset that needs some re-thinking. -- Dianna (talk) 20:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but part of the challenge of Renaissance man is to become a specialist in everything - as I can proudly boast that I can kill, pluck and cook a chicken, plant and tend crops, design and build a TV, and drive a truck! Of course, I can't pretend to compete with those who do that as their day job, but having some understanding of what's involved gives me respect for those who make it their life's work. Given long enough, people generally (not always!) interact better with others, and I suspect a broadening of experience helps that. Does Wikipedia play host to too many younger editors who need to soften their approach to others? Quite probably - it might make a good research project.
Of course, you're spot on with your analysis of the problems of WP:CITEVAR which is often used blindly as a means of stifling the possibility that a change of reference mechanism could improve their maintainability and accuracy. The guidance there does nothing to improve an editor's understanding of why parenthetical referencing may be a good choice for the Ormulum, or that citation templates can cause loading problems when editing Israel, but that generally LDRs and SFNs are generally an improvement to the average article. Anything that simply says "Do this" and "Don't do that" is suitable for junior school pupils, but insults the intelligence of any adult who has taken the time to investigate and weigh the pros and cons involved. A guideline is meant to document consensus, but CITEVAR makes a particularly poor job of documenting the consensuses encapsulated in it, and perhaps at some point in the future that will be rectified. Here's hoping. --RexxS (talk) 21:48, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Please don't make me look at retarded articles like Ormulum. I can tell without even opening it for editing that the endnote mechanism is from hell and the ref-downlinks are old-school. CITEVAR is merely a weapon to beat people with, as is all the date format idiocy. Bzzt ;) Br'er Rabbit (talk) 23:53, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Dianna, specialism is good, but spreading skills is even better. It avoids situations like what happened with the guilds. Specialists also tend to work best when they gain their skills after a rounded education learning the nuts and bolts, rather than arriving fully formed. And I don't actually see any thought for the future on Wikipedia, in terms of passing skill-sets on to the next generation of editors. Too often people just develop their own skillsets and then leave after a few years, and each generation of editors has to learn anew, sometimes using the documentation left behind by earlier editors, which varies from rubbish to readable.

Though it might all be a bit moot, as a TV programme I saw today speculated that civilisation is a bit of an evolutionary dead-end, and Nature was wrong to think that making apes smarter was going to lead anywhere. A bit doom-and-gloom, and a damning indictment of global economics being just a way to strip the planet of its resources and concentrate wealth in the hands of the oligarchs, and that, coupled with overpopulation is bad news unless science and technology can shift the paradigm and overcome all the problems that aren't really going away. The usually cheery stuff you get in such programmes. Carcharoth (talk) 02:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Hehe - passing skill-sets on to the next generation of editors is already well in hand:
is a good example. As for real life, the best we can do is hope to equip our own kids with the skills to deal with the problems we leave them. --RexxS (talk) 10:51, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
All the more reason to get to work. We gotta do the tell. ... -- Dianna (talk) 19:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "X-ray_computed_tomography". Thank you. --Nenpog (talk) 04:14, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Accessibility query (I think)

Hi, Mr. Sheen has been fettling John Horsefield with the finesse that is far too often not appreciated. He's mentioned you in this edit summary. I am assuming that the issue relates to accessibility, since that is one of your spheres of interest. Can you point me in a suitable direction for more information? I am not doubting him or you, merely seeking to further my knowledge. Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 01:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, of course, Si. It's probably easiest if I quote myself from the talk page of Coral island:

Definition lists are not a sensible way of marking up subheadings. The markup ;Notes produces this html: 

<dl>
<dt>Notes</dt>
</dl>

which is a definition list. See http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#h-10.3 . Although it may look like bold markup to a sighted reader, anybody using a non-visual agent will hear the start of a definition list, but no definition. We should not be making our text any more confusing for the visually-impaired than we have to, so I have reverted to using the wikimarkup for bold to delineate the headings. That at least is harmless to most screen readers. Ideally, however, the subheadings should be marked up as third-level headers (using ===) but I understand that some people dislike seeing them in the table table of contents. If there is no objection, I'd like to markup those subheaders as <h3>...</h3>

So basically, although it looks the same to me and thee, anybody using a screen reader is likely to get a very different (and unintended) effect. I'm sure experienced Wikipedians like Graham87 is used to it by now and copes well, but I don't really see why we need to subject them to it when it's easy to use proper markup that does the job for everybody. Hope that helps. Your pal, --RexxS (talk) 02:15, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Great! Your explanation is appreciated. I've just realised something rather bizarre, though. I quite often go hunting in the source of web pages, for all sorts of reasons including finding bugs, filching CSS/scripts etc and generally understanding how the designers did what they did ... but I have never looked at the source for a page on en-WP. Although I long since gave up commercial web design (the old problem: people want to phone me) perhaps now is the time to start really looking into how WP works under the hood.

Now, can we get something sorted so that all the referenced videos are subtitled? <g> - Sitush (talk) 01:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Today

How do you like today's good story (hidden message: "open mind"), you awesome Wikipedian of 12 November 2009 and 9 April 2012 ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:29, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

The music of Dan Leno

Hi Rexxs, Sorry to bother you. You have been recommended to my by GreatOrangePumpkin in relation to a small bit of formatting for an article which is currently in PR prior to an FLC listing. I have recieved a comment from GOP who states this:

  • "The two tables need to have a format to meet the access requirements. I am not fluent in English so it is hard to explain properly, so I just give you this example: List of songs recorded by Chrisye. You should change the row lines to "!scope=row" (note the exclamation mark) and column lines to "!scope=col". To avoid bolding add "plainrowheaders" somewhere inside the class parameter. If you want more information I suggest asking User:RexxS, who is an expert in this field."

I'm a bit confused with "and column lines to "!scope=col". " I have tried to do this but I'm struggling to format it correctly. I think I have managed to do ""!scope=row"" successfully and I have added the "plainrowheaders" successfully. It's just the "!scope=col" which I am having big problems with. Can you help? I would be most greatful. -- CassiantoTalk 21:31, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Cassantio, please feel free to bother me anytime. I'm only too happy to help if I can, so I'm writing a few comments on the PR page for you. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 22:46, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm so greatful. One more thing, we are considering one more name change from "The songs and sketches of Dan Leno" to "Songs and sketches of Dan Leno". Rothorpe suggested "The" was redundant and Ssilvers and I tend to agree. Could we have your thoughts on this here? Thanks again. Feel free to call on me at anytime if I can be of some help. :-) -- CassiantoTalk 18:54, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Semi colon for bold

Hey RexxS, I often see (and have done so myself) people using a semi-colon to produce a "heading" which therefore isn't indexed in the TOC on a page. Reading User:Malleus Fatuorum's talk page, it seems that this is sub-optimal for screen readers. Can you elucidate for me? If it is a problem, then I'll make sure we don't use that approach in future in FLs! Hope you're well. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

(watching) I saw the same, think I got that it is better to just bold the line, is that right? I tried here, please check, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
You're brave boys and girls, reading my talk page. Sometimes even I wince when I read it. Malleus Fatuorum 19:30, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
brave? read it? I shamelessly use it as a forum (thanks for hosting!) - who would look at mine? - call me something, that I can order my t-shirt ;) - in good mood on the day when GA had her first GA (see user), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Surely I've had a go at you in the past haven't I Gerda? If not, then I'm sure your day will come. ;-) Perhaps Wikipedia ought to consider a "Malleus called me a ..." line of leisure wear? Malleus Fatuorum 20:19, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Not a past that I remember ;) - My day was 3 August 2010. - How is your wildflower-wife? - Good leisure idea, have another beer ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
My wildflower-wife is fine, but a little disappointed that the birds seem to have eaten all the expensive seeds she sowed, as all we've got so far is grass and dandelions. Better luck next year maybe. Malleus Fatuorum 21:00, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
That's fine, Gerda; nb: sometimes a few newlines are needed, too. Br'er Rabbit (talk)
Hi. The wiki-text notation ';' is for definition lists and produces that html markup. It simply happens to be the definition terms are currently styled as bold. If you want bold, use the usual notation, as it produces the correct markup. Ralph will say as much and more. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 19:35, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Hi TRM, Jack's exactly right. If you want my 'more' explanation, it's in the section #Accessibility query (I think), where Sitush asked the same question. It's *not a big deal*, but easy to fix: use a === Level 3 heading === if you don't mind it appearing in the TOC; or use {{Toclimit}}; or just '''bold''' it! Tiny things like this add up to make the experience of using our encyclopedia that bit nicer for the visually impaired. Worthwhile, IMHO. Cheers, --Ralph ;) (talk) 20:26, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Bingo. Easy question, easy answer, easy improvement. Thanks to you, and all. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:27, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
(One more people stalking) RexxS has said it all, make a proper heading or use {{Toclimit}}. But don't use bold to simulate headers, as screen readers will have it read aloud like normal text. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Accessibility#Headings. Dodoïste (talk) 21:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
You can't always do that (make "proper headings"), if the article already has headings at a level equal to or greater than the level the ";Notes" section would be, for instance. In other words, you can't skip levels. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with screen readers reading the "simulated headers" aloud; in fact that's exactly what you'd want them to do. Malleus Fatuorum 21:18, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
I don't get your point. Maybe an example would help? Anyway, I only meant to add: "bold is not a solution either". That is all. Cheers, Dodoïste (talk) 22:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Bold is the only robust solution. What I meant was that you can't jump from ==References== to ====Notes====, if that's would be required to keep the subheading out of the TOC if the article already contained level 3 headings (===Heading===). Malleus Fatuorum 22:26, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I get it now. There is this particular case with subheadings of references, where we don't want level 3 headers to show up in the TOC. In the meantime, we want to show level 3 headers in the article. Okay, that's an exception where the best solution we currently have is to use bold. But it should be improved, probably trough MediaWiki Software. Not that I can do it myself, though. It will have to wait until a developer gets interested with this issue. Dodoïste (talk) 22:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

If anybody is still confused, have a look at The Coral Island. It contains a Level 2 References section which is subdivided into Notes, Citations and Bibliography. I could mark up those subheadings as level 3 headings like this version in my user space. A lot of folks don't want those showing up in the table of contents, so I could limit the TOC display using {{TOC limit|2}}. You can see how that works in this version. Unfortunately, an editor couldn't then split up any of the existing sections into subsections, and have the subheadings show up in the TOC – as adding subsections to the Plot summary illustrates in this version. So we might use bold for those subheadings as a 'least worst' solution for the visually impaired. As mon cher ami Dodoïste remarked to me once, "We mustn't let the perfect become the enemy of the good." --RexxS (talk) 22:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I see you've learned the lesson very well! Even catching me faulty of not respecting my own guidelines. :D
Thanks for the detailed explanation. And what about the case mentioned by Gerda Arendt, could we use level 3 headers and {{TOC limit|2}} instead of bold? Cheers, Dodoïste (talk) 23:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
We could, of course, as no level 3 headings exist yet. Personally, I wouldn't bother because the article is still evolving and somebody might want to add other level 3 headings before it gets to FA status. On the other hand, Gerda is the principal editor and understands how this works, so perhaps it wouldn't be a problem. It's always going to be a matter of judgement, and our mission has to be to help as many others develop their judgement as we can. À bientôt! --RexxS (talk) 23:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Some coding improvements in MediaWiki

Hi, I hope you're doing well. As for me, starting september 2012 I should study occupational therapy if all goes well. I'm all fired up! :-)

Now to the point. I need as much advice as I can, on a field you're more experienced than me. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Accessibility#Changes_in_thumbnail_alt_text. Thank god some developers are dedicating their time to accessibility. Before writing something at bugzilla, I want to be sure we agree on what should be done. And I want to understand what's being changed, because I currently feel very confused by PHP and MediaWiki coding.

In short: RexxS superhero please rescue me! I'm a young maiden living in a castle nerd boy living in a far far away land. Dodoïste (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Salut, Dodoïste! Good news on your studies, and congratulations! I've been elected as a trustee of the Board of Wikimedia UK, so things are busy as I'm trying to set up an Education Subcommittee while getting ready for Wikimania next week – but being busy is good.
I've commented at WikiProject Accessibility and I hope it makes sense to you, and I've made the same point at Bugzilla. In brief, I'm happy with all of the changes but just as cautious about sticking image filenames into alt text as you are. It won't hurt to have several of us commenting.
J'éspère que tout va bien avec toi, --RexxS (talk) 00:55, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. It sounds exciting to be a trustee of the Board of Wikimedia UK. By the way, have you seen the Wikimania accessibility presentation? I've just learned about it myself. It seems to be made by three accessibility experts from Switzerland. Following an audit requested by Wikimedia Germany. Maybe some things will start to move forward. Dodoïste (talk) 13:28, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for that link - I've just signed up for the presentation, and I'm hoping it will help raise wider awareness of the issues here. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
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