User talk:Graham87

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Greetings from Germany

Hello Graham87,

I saw your name on wiki commons and there at the same time my postludium on the organ of Feuchtwangen. I am a musician and my favorite instrument is the organ. Perhaps I can give you some more audio files if you want. I like to do audio recording with my brandnew zoom H 2. Quite a lot of audio files are on my "Spielwiese" ( is it playground in english ? )No, I see: it is the sandbox !

Best greetings from Germany

--Metzner 21:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Von „http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Graham87“

Replied at User talk:Metzner on the Commons. Graham87 09:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Requesting a copy of a deleted article.

Hello, I was told to contact you. Could you please send me a copy of an article that was deleted? The article was on "410bc". 410bc is a clothing company. The article I wrote was deleted because I did not provide enough information about notability. I would like to edit it and re-submit it because I do not think it should have been deleted.

Thanks so much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teenten88 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

JAWS

Hi. Thanks for the response. The point I was making was that on the page Help:Contents/Editing Wikipedia, the first link goes to a page that doesn't give much info about how to actually use the program, which I thought might be confusing for people like me who had just stumbled across it and who do not have a reasonable understanding of how JAWS works, or perhaps who had never heard of it. It's a great idea, and I am all for expanding access to Wikipedia for all, so hats off to everybody involved. Davidelit (talk) 07:18, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Good call. Thanks Davidelit (talk) 08:20, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips

Hi Graham,

On an importance scale of 1 to 10, this is a -3. But Dorftrottel would like to delete Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips,as the redirect is not needed, I declined the speedy because you had previously restored it, and he still would like to, I assume to keep the subspace organized. I can see both your points; nonvital, but useful, subspace organization, vs. technically incorrect, but ultimately somewhat harmless, loss of history. I already deleted Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Noticeboard, as the usefulness of the history was negligible IMHO. Do you still feel strongyly about keeping the redirect? You and Dorf probably know more about the history of these pages than I do (I just ran across it at CAT:CSD), so I'll defer to your judgement. --barneca (talk) 17:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I just found it in my deleted contributions and was a bit shocked ... I believe all history should be kept where possible as can be seen from my deletion log. Redirects are cheap and IMO should be used in situations like this, mostly because the text of Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips was merged into Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Helpful Hints. I was the only contributor to Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly/Security Tips besides User:Filll, and I would prefer that to be recorded in the page history. However on an importance scale from 1 to 10 for Wikipedia, I'd rate it somewhere below 0. I can slightly understand the need for organisation of the Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly subpages to make it easier to use Special:Prefixindex on them, but I think keeping the page history is more important. I certainly wouldn't reverse any future undeletion of the page because that would quallify as a very very lame wheel war. Graham87 00:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't dream of wheel warring about something lame; I plan to save up my chits, and someday wheel war on something really big! I have no horse in this race; since you disagree, an uncontested housekeeping speedy isn't appropriate, and Dorf can MfD it if he wants to. --barneca (talk) 04:01, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

• I think only lame things should be wheel-warred about. That being said, I'm not hell-bent on having the page deleted, as you both correctly assessed, it's just my desire to keep the NTWW space as clean and manageable as possible, but I acknowledge the point about the page history, so nevermind. Dorftrottel (complain) 04:18, May 7, 2008

Question for you

Hi - I've been working on the Monty Hall problem mostly in response to issues raised at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Monty Hall problem. I don't know if you know this problem or not, but there's a large graphic that was created by user:Father Goose that he is quite attached to (in the "Solution" section of the article). I'm curious whether there's any difference at all for you between the solution section in the current article (including his graphic) and the one at User:Rick Block/MH solution. If you could check these two versions out and let me know what you think I'd appreciate it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:57, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know this problem - I first encountered it through reading the Marilyn vos Savant article and, once I understood it, having a good chuckle at the controversy. Anyway, regarding the article's accessibility, the table in your version reads much better ... I can follow the problem like a probability tree. The table in the actual article has seemingly empty columns which just make following the problem harder. There is a problem with the images though: all versions of JAWS released after 2004 and at least the latest version of Window-Eyes read all graphical links by default, using the file name. All graphics are linked in Wikipedia, so any graphic without a caption will be read by these screen readers as the file name and other extraneous text. So the first graphic in the solution section of Monty Hall problem is read by JAWS as "Monty-CurlyPicksCar.svg/163px-Monty-CurlyPicksCar.svg" while the first graphic in User:Rick Block/MH solution reads as "Monty-LeftCar.svg/150px-Monty-LeftCar.svg". Either the graphics should have a proper caption, or a non-breaking can be used as I said at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1 #Image alt text in templates. Graham87 04:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I've added alternative text to the images at User:Rick Block/MH solution. This should really be a featured article criteria - I'll bring this up at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria (if you are so inclined, please join this discussion). There is already a criteria that mentions captions, but it doesn't say anything about images for which captions are not appropriate (like these). Although the criteria about following the manual of style implicitly includes Wikipedia:Accessibility, I think it might be more appropriate for accessibility to be specifically mentioned as an explicit criteria at the same level as references. Thanks very much for feedback. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a big improvement. I agree with you that accessibility should be part of the featured article criteria ... most of the guidelines there increase usability anyway. One more improvement could be made, but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. When moving by row, screen readers will read the left-most column as the header. For example, when navigating by row along the right-hand side to the bottom row of the table, it thinks the header is "Switching loses with probability 1/6" and reads that before the actual information of "Switching loses with probability 1/3". There's more information about how JAWS reads tables at "Tables with JAWS" on the Freedom Scientific website. Graham87 14:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Rtrievable page

Hi, you deleted Khalid Kelly here: http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Khalid_Kelly on August 16, 2007. I would like to read whatthiws said. Can you send me a copy? Robert C Prenic (talk) 11:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Melbourne

Okay. Thanks for the note. Much appreciated. Having just encountered a bizarre page move at Estevan, I was clearly too quick on the gun at Melbourne. Skeezix1000 (talk) 12:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

ozone depletion

the tone may be inappropriate for wikipedia but the content is far from inaccurate. please edit it to show the proper tone if you are embarrassed by it.

as far as inaccurate, let's check some things out.
1) hot air rises. ever since humans discovered fire they found out that hot air rises. modern times call the action convection. true or false? (true)

2) electric sparks cause ozone. this has been proven true by scientists. the "fresh" smell from just after a thunderstorm is from the ozone created by the lightning. maybe there are different physical laws in germany than in the states... scientists create ozone in labs by using spark gaps within a normal atmosphere.

3) from the scientists i've heard, most of the pollution in the atmosphere gets into the upper atmosphere in australia's hot desert via convection (see point 1).

so, what's wrong with using all 3 tidbits of information we all know and creating a system to replenish the ozone layer or even creating a new one that all the CFCs can destroy?

71.66.102.41 (talk) 04:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Rugrats vandal

Hi again Graham, 72.148.144.40 is back and has vandalised alot of articles related to the Rugrats again. Can you please revert them and issue a further block. Thanks from your old friend TheProf07 90.209.255.78 (talk) 17:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Just so you know, I've reverted his edits to the Rugrats related articles. However, he may do more between me going offline and you reading this message. Again, thats for your help on this matter 90.209.255.78 (talk) 17:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC) (TheProf07)

Update and more accessibility questions

Hi - It appears the accessibility guidelines won't be explicitly added to the featured article criteria, see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Accessibility. The general argument against is that the criteria already includes WP:MOS so the accessibility guidelines are already included, albeit implicitly. user:SandyGeorgia has added adherence to the guidelines to a checklist she maintains for featured articles, which will hopefully be sufficient.

The questions are about template:TOCright, template:TOCleft, and template:TOClimit.

1. Is TOClimit an issue at all?
2. The guidelines basically say to not use TOCright or TOCleft. Are these actually significant issues? For example, is this version of the article on Georg Forster or this version of the article on Tolkien difficult to read? One of the editors of the Tolkien page apparently stomped off in a huff over the TOC placement (without using TOCleft the TOC appears by itself between the lead and the first section creating a large area of blank space to its right). If TOCright and TOCleft do create significant issues should we take them to WP:TFD?

I'd very much appreciate your opinions about this. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm glad the accessibility issues are being considered in FAC.

I have no problem with Template:TOClimit - if CSS is disabled, it won't do anything and won't generate actual junk like Wikipedia:HiddenStructure does.

I don't object to the use of TOCleft and TOCright templates on their own. However, I strongly object to changing the position of the TOC. When I read through an article, I expect no text after the table of contents, so I skip to the first heading after I've finished with the TOC. In general, screen reader users expect things to be on a consistent position on a page - it makes life a lot easier. As I said at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1 #articles with a floating TOC, the first time I encountered the TOC position being changed at isotope, I thought the article was vandalised because it seemed to have no lead section.

In summary, TOClimit is alright, and so are TOCleft and TOCright, but the placement of the table of contents in an article should never be changed - it should always be, in terms of the wiki text, below the lead section and directly above the first heading. Graham87 15:37, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The bottom line is where the TOC is in the HTML (right?), and it just turns out that putting TOCright or TOCleft immediately before the first heading keeps the TOC in a consistent spot in the generated HTML. This concern would say __TOC__ should in general not be used as using this forces the TOC to be generated wherever it appears (this is used by both TOCright and TOCleft). Perhaps this should be raised as a MediaWiki issue. I'll talk to Sandy about this so she understands the issue. By the way - scanning your contribs it doesn't look like you frequent WP:FAC. I don't know if you're interested, but I'm sure accessibility comments would be appreciated at FAC reviews. Most of us have no idea what articles look like through your eyes. Thanks again. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, where the TOC is in the HTML is the important thing. In general, __TOC__ shouldn't be used, but I don't mind the situations where it's placed at the end of the page ... I can't remember where I found that now. The TOC shouldn't obscure any text for people navigating by headings, so there is almost nowhere sensible to place it besides in its default position. I used to frequent FAC ... in fact, my first contribution there is the reason that I created my userpage to tell people I use a screen reader in case I make strange edits. I usually just copyedited the entries - I couldn't think of much constructive feedback to give. I hadn't thought about commenting on the accessibility issues ... I'll check out the FAC page every now and then and speak up if I find anything unusual. Most good pages are accessible, unless unusual layouts are used. Graham87 00:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: your message on User talk:SandyGeorgia about the timeline at John Vanbrugh: If you mean the one in "List of architectural works", that's fine as it's just plain text. Graphical timelines like those generated by EasyTimeline aren't accessible at all. Graham87 10:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It's an EasyTimeline in the HTML between the lead and the first section header transcluded through Template:John Vanbrugh timeline. The accessibility guidelines don't say anything about timelines. Should they? -- Rick Block (talk) 13:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well ... if it wasn't for the links to view, discuss and edit the template, I wouldn't have even known the timeline was there. The last time I checked out timelines (my musings are at Wikipedia talk:Accessibility/Archive 1#Timelines?), I used to be able to at least read the text of the timeline, without being able to read the years. Now timelines seem to be just one big graphic with no caption and all modern screen readers will just completely ignore them. It would be best if the output of the timeline extension was accessible, so sighted and blind users could get the same information, and I don't see why it can't be. User:Mzajac and I had a brief discussion about this in May 2006 in the link above. Where would be the best place to hammer out an accessible timeline system? Graham87 13:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

And to answer the original question, yes ... the guidelines should be modified to say that they don't read at all with screen readers. However I would prefer it if the EasyTimelines were fully accessible. Graham87 14:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

for the copy-edit. I had no idea about irregardless; I thought it was one of those flammable/inflammable things.--ragesoss (talk) 02:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Freo Doctor

Of all the arts to attract things - it seems funny - the other month it was the deserts - and ned kelly had to get protected - oh well anybodys guess who is next - cheers SatuSuro 00:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the mixup with the email dont knpw what happened - and btw the whole south west tas issue is a nightmare - a very under covered area (at least 30 mountains and rivers should be in but are not) and a confused south tas wilderness an south west world heritage area and the national parks that make it up - hope over time to clean it up but its a mess! sorry i also misunderstood your email first time - will get back - cheers SatuSuro 02:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The dark hole of calcutta the tasmanian project - i once waited 6 months for a repsonse on one of the articles - sigh SatuSuro 02:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be great to have that art copyedited - and remove my npov tag - as it read like either a copyvio or a tourist thingo - hey i gotta get off have a good day - cheers SatuSuro 02:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that - cheers SatuSuro 03:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Wowo - you have been through the rigors of american centric supposedly universal encyclopedia articles - I think I would have tagged half of them us centric! - cheers SatuSuro 08:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Cherry Creek (California)

Do you have any idea why the article is saying though these areas are accessible only to backpackers? I am not familiar with the area. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 13:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Thread at WT:WPM

Hi - Might you be able to comment on the thread at WT:WPM#Pascal's triangle? Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 11:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! -- Rick Block (talk) 04:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome - I usually prefer simple layouts to more complex ones as they work with more software and hardware, hence the preference for ASCII over tables where it makes sense. Graham87 04:17, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

RfA thanks!

		RfA: Many thanks
		Many thanks for your participation in my recent request for adminship. I am impressed by the amount of thought that goes into people's contribution to the RfA process, and humbled that so many have chosen to trust me with this new responsibility. I step into this new role cautiously, but will do my very best to live up to your kind words and expectations, and to further the project of the encyclopedia. Again, thank you. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

recovery of deleted artical for verification and correction

If you need access to a Wikipedia article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel, or personal information, and has not been deleted as a suspected biographies of living persons violation, I will userfy the article for you.

Note that using the text to recreate any deleted article may automatically qualify them for speedy deletion, and copies of previously deleted content that are being used solely for long-term archival purposes may be subject to deletion because Wikipedia is not a free web host. We have a list of alternative sites which may be used to host your content.