User talk:Droll/Archive 1

Sign of the Four

Thanks for your work on that. Don't worry about fixing the images. I've got them on my computer. The reason they're broken is because we couldn't have the images transfered over to the English wiki with the rest of the pages. Hence, anything requiring an image either has to reupload it here or over at Commons.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Formatting

I see what you're talking about now. I'm not sure what causes it, but I would guess that it's a WikiMedia thing. A bug report would probably be the best course of action.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 08:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Formatting Problem

→ bugzilla:03959 – "formatting problem with — and –"

If you examine the following phrase:

"jealous of the praise which had been—perhaps undeservedly— bestowed on his (Mr. Pickwick’s) researches"

You can notice a space before the word 'bestowed' but not before the word 'perhaps'. Then, if you examine the article (or this message) in an edit window you will notice that there is no space before the word 'bestowed'. There is, however, a single line break. The phrase is from The Pickwick Papers: Chapter 1 on Wikisource. My background is in Computer Science and it is my opinion that the unintended space is an artifact of the software that creates the HTML page. If I am correct then this problem will exist everywhere on Wikisource and not just in this one article.

I notice that when the software which creates HTML code parses text it stripes single line breaks and parses two or more line breaks as a paragraph break. Some articles I have examined on Wikisource do not have single line breaks but do contain pairs of line breaks. This is an artifact of the source (provenance) of the article and the way the source has been formatted. In the case of the articles sourced from Project Gutenberg (witch is a public domain source) the text is formatted with single breaks (line breaks) as well as pairs of breaks (paragraph breaks). This is the kind of text that the software does not parse correctly.

I know this might seem to be nit picking but it's my nature. I doubt this is a problem within the scope of the Wikisource community. I'm note sure this is correct form. Please advise me

Hallo Droll! I made lots of tests until now but did never experiment with "Use external editor by default" from special:Preferences | "Editing". Maybe you know an editor which is using a syntax you are more familiar with. Best regards en:User:Gangleri | T 16:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

meta:FCKeditor

• Halló Droll! I used TextPad in the past (but my laptops crashed because of the hard disks). As far as I know TextPad does not support UTF-8.
• Here some links. I never tested it:

1. bugzilla:01125 – "WYSIWYG (FCKeditor) integration"
2. meta:FCKeditor → meta:Email notification (documentation) → Enotif helpdesk hotpage == [1]

• Best regards Gangleri | w: Th | T 21:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The Pickwick Papers

Nah, go ahead and remove those links. With the title box up top and chapter box on the bottom, it is redundant. Those were put up there to make the backlinks very explicit, but I'm sure if a person actually inspected the page, the would manage to find a link the took them back to the Pickwick Papers title page.

I'm not sure if other Dickens works are like that, either. Since you're going through his works to edit them, you would know better than I would, but if those links "<WHATEVER TITLE HERE" are there, we might as well remove them.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Rudyard Kipling: Kim

Hi Droll, I've noticed that you've moved Kim to Rudyard Kipling: Kim. This, though, is not needed, since there is currently no other work on WS that goes by the title Kim and so does not need to be disambiguated. It is current Wikisource policy not to use the author in the name of the title (i.e., going with plain "Kim" for the title page as opposed to "Rudyard Kipling: Kim") unless it is needed. Thanks.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

What you did with Dicken's works is fine. Since they are chapters of a larger work, that's the best way to go about doing those works. But go ahead and give me a list of the works you've corrected (or I can correct them if you want) and I'll delete the redirect. Thanks!—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 22:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Chapter templates

I can't see the symbol that Wolfman recommends. It just shows up as a square box on my screen. I guess I need to find a font to install in order to see it? But I'm wonder that if I can't see it how many more people can't see it as well. It might just be more beneficial to go to using arrows (like a left-pointing one) in a colorful box (like the one's Mike) has done to indicate the backlinks.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 01:32, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Illustrations for A Christmas Carol

Yeah, I don't see why we couldn't use them here. The art work is clearly in the public domain, and simply scanning images into a computer doesn't constitute any kind of copyright status. Go ahead and use them here. It'll be a great edition.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 01:36, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful! Thanks for finding these pictures!—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Adminship?

Hello Droll,

I was looking at your edit count, and I have seen that you have greatly contributed to Wikisource. Your name was not on the list of administrators,therefore, I was wondering if you would consider being one.

With Regards,

J.Steinbock(Discussion Page)

Revised chapter template

I like the {{chap}} template. It's short, succinct, and nice. However, I think there might be a way to consolidate the templates {{chap}}, {{chap last}}, and {{chap first}} using a method similar to what we did for {{author}}. Have a look at it. What we could do is use this "hideifempty" templates so that if we don't have any input in the "next" or "previous" chapter slots, then they won't show up. That would be even easier than having to remember three different templates to use for one work.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 01:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Droll. Talk a look at what I've done with Template:Chap test and see how I implemented it on User:Zhaladshar/Sandbox. That's what I was talking about. Now we only have to use one template for any page (we don't need to have three different ones). Of course, the colors could always be changed to whatever we want.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Either way's fine with me. It is possible to still just use one template for all works (even multi-book, multi-volume works)--it would take just the addition of one more parameter. But I'm fine with having two different templates. For Template:Chap simple, I think we should add the {{HideIfEmpty}} templates so that for the first chapter and the last chapter, they won't show up (very similar to what we did for Template:Chap).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 00:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Droll. I just looked at the template. I'm not sure how you simplified it, but it still looks good and works just fine, so I assume it's all for the better. Thanks for putting so much work into it. It looks great.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 16:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Collections of works

Hi, Droll. I'm sorry to load this on you. I was browsing some of the contributions that you made, and I've got a comment on your naming conventions. I'm using such things as Ballads of a Cheechako as my examples. For collections of works and short stories, it is best not to put the title of the collection in with the title of the poem, except as disambiguation. For example, the first poem in Ballads of a Cheechako is "To the Man of the North High." The title for that poem should be To the Man of the North High, not Ballads of a Cheechako: To the Man of the High North. Since people might know the name of the poem and not the name of possibly one of the many collections the poem might appear in, the better naming practice would be to have simply the title of the poem itself. I think you've done the same with Rhymes of a Rolling Stone and The Spell of the Yukon. Since this is not much work, I can make all the page moves if you want (that way you can still work on whatever projects you're doing right now). Thanks.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 17:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. You'll have to forgive me, though, for I am not exactly understanding your point. I am not seeing how it relates to having the titles of poems named under only their exact name (and not the name of a collection they were published in plus the title of the poem). I do not think that this is as big of a problem, for I have added probably close to half a thousand poems to Wikisource with suprisingly little overlap in name pages. I think for the most part, having solely the poem name will not be detrimental. Just in the cases like "L'Envoi," "Song," "Ode," etc., it will bring problems. I can only see how using the smallest amount of words in any given title will actually help the project, and expanding on a page title in the case of multiple works having the exact same title (then, obviously, more words are necessary). I can only go by my own experience here, but when I first enter a title of a work, I just hit the "Enter" button which defaults the "Go" feature and not the "Search" feature. So the first thing that comes up is the page with the exact wording I entered.

Also, so many older pieces (especially poetry and short stories, but even numerous novels) were published in magazines and other collections, that going by the naming schemes for the poetry of Robert Service, they must have the collection's title included with the actual name of the work itself. It seems to be much easier just to use the exact title itself and add more when needed.

Please understand that I am not trying to be critical. I, too, am just trying to help WS out as much as I can. (And, yes, I did add the Sketchbook to WS. If not under this user name, then I did it anonymously.)—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 00:37, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I guess for now, redirecting to the pages you created will suffice.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

I have noticed that you have moved a number of pages in the collection Rhymes of a Rolling Stone and have caused problems with many redirects. Zhaladshar and I have discussed the naming of these pages. My opinion is that these poems were published as a book and not as individual poems. I have done some research on this. Be that as it may, I don't see how the page names you created are any better than mine.

As for changing the headers, I don't see the need for that either. Also I spent a great deal of time making sure that these poems are formatted correctly and I don't see the need for reformatting them. I know you have the right to do anything you want but you should consider if your changes are for the better or if they are just change for changes sake. Please respond on my talk page. --Droll 08:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

The only formatting change was to replace hard HTML linebreaks with wikimarkup indentation; the rest of your formatting is preserved. The header and page title format were discussed quite a bit at the WikiProject on infrastructural and guideance development with links from the Wikisource:Scriptorium, notably at "Standardised page infobox" and "Title format standard".

The redirects broke because Zhaladshar pointed out the reasoning while I was in the process of moving pages and I halted midway to consider and discuss. I was tagging the redirects for speedy deletion; an admin eventually deleted them after I paused to reconsider. I'm uncertain whether to move the poems to their own pages and link the greater work to them, or move them to subpages and redirect to them. Since there are obviously arguments in favour of both methods, I'm fairly certain I'll go with the same compromise you reached with Zhaladshar.

Do you have any particular reason to prefer hard HTML linebreaks over wikimarkup indentation, or the chapter template over the standardised header? // Pathoschild (_editor / ^talk) 16:38, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

No you did not preserve the rest of my formatting. EG. Rhymes of a Rolling Stone/Prelude Also see below. As for "Standardised page infobox" {sic) and "Title format standard", it seems to me form the discussion that no consensus has been reached on this issue yet. I agree that there should be a common look for all Wikisource pages but I don't think were are there yet. I object to your imposing your rules on me at this point.

Are you going to replace the redirects? Why should your decision about page names be final. If I understand the philosophy of Wikisource, I have the right to change page names as much as you do unless there is a consensus of users. You should also be aware that some of the pages in question are linked to by disambiguation pages because the name of the poem is used for more than one page. Why is a slash superior to a colon. Note that Wiki link syntax treats colons as a special instance making links easier to write and less error prone.

Wiki implements indentation by using lists. Look at the source of any HTML page. Hard line breaks are much less prone to side effects and load faster. You should also examine how other users format poetry. My practice of using line breaks is very common and acceptable practice. Yes I have reasons.

Were you intending to change the page names of and reformatting all the poems in the Robert Service Collection and throughout Wikisource to meet your criteria. Why don't you works on the over one thousand poems Zhaladshar or the other thousands of poems. --Droll 22:19, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I have my reasons as well, and I do know that MediaWiki uses definition lists for it's indentation. This syntax may be ideal for poetry:

• The lines are often indented in relationship to the rhyme scheme or rhythm, which is exactly what definition lists are intended to do. I fail to see where this is 'prone to side effects'.
• Tagging all poetry with this syntax allows simple manipulation of the lines and indentation style using the common stylesheet, a powerful feature that hard HTML linebreaks don't provide.
• Wikitext is easy to understand for new users, HTML less so.
• The definition list syntax is roughly double the size of the linebreak syntax, which comes out to be quite negligible. In the extreme case of a 1500-line poem, the syntax would increase the size by 4 kilobytes over hard line breaks; this is a non-issue, particularly since the vast majority of poems are no-where near 1500 lines.

The page name and header standards were agreed upon by the community. If you have a problem with them, discuss with the community; don't drop snide remarks on a user's page. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk)

I am not trying to be snide. If I sounded that way I apologize. We could discuss poetry formatting for a long time and believe me it has been discussed by others. There is a help page about it (Help:Editing poetry). The way I format poetry has been acceptable to other admin. My real point is that I choose to format the page in a certain way and I was and am free to do that. If you believe there should be a policy then we can all discuss it. What I want is what is best for Wikisouce. I also believe in the Wikipedia philosophy. --Droll 00:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to discuss at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Standardise indentation and linebreaks; a consensus on this would be the ideal solution. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 01:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

New Hampshire by Robert Frost

Hi, Droll. No, this isn't bad. While the collection was published in 1923, the four poems listed as published in New Hampshire were in fact published elsewhere earlier. These poems did not first appear in this collection (hence, they were published at an earlier date sometime before 1923). So, these poems are not violating any copyrights. I'm not sure about the other poems that have appeared in that volume, though, but I can say that the four currently listed are not creating a problem by being here. Thanks for asking.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 05:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Abd'ul-Baha author article.

Thanks. I always forget to file it under A, as english doesn't have the glottal stop of persian/arabic. (sigh) -- ChristianEdwardGruber 20:13, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Adminship

Just nominate yourself at Wikisource:Administrators and we'll take a vote.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 22:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)