User talk:Altairisfar/Archive 3

Geocode sourcing

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sitush/Sandbox3 - Which lists some coordinates sourced to Wikimapia which was

the subject of a WP:RS/N thread. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:02, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_with_unsourced_geodata - These articles HAVE coordinates, but

a concern has been raised that they don't appear to be sourced.

As you seem to know of 'reliable' sources, your efforts in making them sourced 'reliabily' are much appreciated. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:02, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi Altairisfar, thanks for the Barnstar. It is much appreciated. Woodlot (talk) 19:59, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome, thanks for all of your great work! Altairisfar (talk) 20:12, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Wood shingle merge

Hi, you closed the Wood shingle/Shake (shingle) merger proposal with the comment "no consensus". I see quite the opposite on the Talk page. Three editors support the merger; one editor says it "may be useful to merge them" but is not sure; no one is frankly opposed. Sounds like a consensus to me. These are closely related things, and much of the article content is the same. --Macrakis (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I totally missed that one. There wasn't any discussion at the other page. But, since the merge tags were over a year old, why hasn't someone merged them? Altairisfar (talk) 22:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Hickory Ground

Thanks for starting this article. I was actually working on writing it at exactly the same time, so my attempt to save was met with an edit conflict :) I've tried to merge my text into the article you wrote; please check that I've not got anything wrong, and please feel free to copyedit etc. Fences&Windows 17:08, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

The last two paragraphs — "Building on the site..." and "Formerly owned by..." — could do with merging I think. Fences&Windows 17:19, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey, yeah I'm trying to do it now and consolidate the two. Altairisfar (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Nice work, you really dug into the sources. Thanks so much. Fences&Windows 22:01, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

No, thank you! :) Altairisfar (talk) 23:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Otciapofa

An article that you have been involved in editing, Otciapofa , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Uyvsdi (talk) 02:28, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Huh ?

What userpage did I disrupt? --CalmHighball (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

These Altairisfar (talk) 00:34, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Altairisfar. You have new messages at Spyder Monkey's talk page.
Message added 03:05, 14 September 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 03:05, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

How US county subdivisions are placed

You did two reverts that didn't make sense for Pima and Carroll county pages. Most of the 3100+ county pages have cities, towns, CDP and unincorporated communities in separate headings on the same heading levels. These two are not conforming to the norm and the edits you reverted had made them more closely agree with the large majority of the rest of them. Please don't get into an edit war over my reverting your reversions. TMLutas (talk) 21:48, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you're confused, since your changes to Carroll County, Arkansas have placed the communities and townships under the Demographics header. That's not standard. My only change to that page was a revert of what appeared to be simple vandalism by an anonymous IP, evidently that was you. Since that was my only contribution there, I find your edit war warning to be premature at best. On, Pima County, Arizona, I should paid closer attention and should not have reverted. Altairisfar (talk) 03:22, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

You're right on carroll county and I should go back and edit it better. Too many things to do at once. Thanks for the catch. I'm doing edits via filemaker and it's a limited browser at best. TMLutas (talk) 19:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Third Saturday in October‎

Thanks for straightening out that mess! Looking into the issue a little further, I've come to the conclusion that Nuggets56 (talk · contribs) is a clear sockpuppet of Bt8257 (talk · contribs) and I have blocked both accounts indefinitely. Hopefully the discussion can now move forward without interference. --auburnpilot talk 18:42, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for figuring that out. I suspected as much from Nuggets56, but the other party shouldn't have closed down the discussion on what seems to be a legitimate issue. I'm actually leaning toward leaving the title where it is myself, but wanted to see what others thought so this can be put to bed for good. Altairisfar (talk) 18:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Reference syntax out of article text

Hi. I'm curious why you felt the need to move reference syntax out of the References section and back into the article text? It's extremely rare that I find any editor wanting to do that, so I'd like to know more about your objections. One rationale for my edits is that simplifying article text by excluding reference minutiae makes it easier for the casual editor to make edits. GFHandel ♬  20:03, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Rather than your assertion that it is easier to use, it seems to me that it adds complexity to editing. I do not find it advocated in the manual of style or help pages. Can you point out where it is demonstrated to be preferred over standard formatting? Altairisfar (talk) 21:24, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I guess that I (and many other editors now) are at the cutting edge of a movement to standardise references, with the aim to make article text less disruptive due to Wiki-syntax—hence making it less daunting for the casual editors that we are trying hard to encourage. Those casual editors don't have to know how to add reference syntax, however they have a much easier time skipping over the short references left in the article text. Have a study of articles such as Sean Combs and Bob Hope and try to envisage just how disruptive to the text it would be if the reference syntax was in there as well. In articles where references are reused, you get a similar split of reference syntax, so it does very little harm to go the whole way and remove the single expanded ref component from the article text. BTW, I believe that you do need to consider your strategy regarding reference formatting, since (by undoing my edits) you have reintroduced disparate date formats in the rendered references (something that is against policy). Anyhow, I hope this is some food for thought, and since you seem to think that it adds complexity (which I assure you is not an issue), please don't hesitate to contact me if you have more questions. GFHandel ♬  21:52, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Point taken on the disparate date in that citation, it is now corrected. "Cutting edge" or not, I'd like to see examples of where consensus has been reached that this is the better method of formatting, since it is not at all common. Altairisfar (talk) 22:01, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I do this a lot and find it very helpful. I've been thanked many times for re-organising references this way, too. The core issue is that full citation details inline turn into half the wikitext, making the prose fragmented and essentially unreadable in the editbox. It drives n00bz away quite regularly as they can't read it. Wikitext with a high proportion of plaintext in it is much more approachable.

There's not a consensus that this is preferred; no accounting for disparate opinions. But it is popular and being used more and more, everyday. You know the history of this? When ref tags with names were first introduced, the ref definition /had/ to be at the first usage and the other invocations had to follow. This often put them in things like infoboxes. Later, the parser was made two-pass, which allowed them to be invoked above the definition, and later-yet (2009) things were changed again to allow references to actually be defined /in/ the reference section. That there are many articles written with them defined high up is simply due the fact that at the time the articles were written, the refs /had/ to be done that way. And people learned that approach and then closed their minds to further learning.

This isn't even cutting edge; see articles like Franz Kafka, Lynching of Jesse Washington, Pedro II of Brazil, or Avery Brundage; they don't have a single ref tag in them; they're using even better referencing mechanisms. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 23:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the info. I'll have to give it some thought. Altairisfar (talk) 23:16, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Ellicott's Stone

Re a link to an NRHP site: Isn't there any way to link directly a particular historical site on the NRHP website? A user following the link at Ellicott's Stone will find no information about it using the given link, as I did. •••Life of Riley (T–C) 00:14, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a long-standing and well-known problem, but no. You have to do a search each time to get to the information. There is no way to form a permanent link to it. That NRIS link is in all of the many thousands of National Register of Historic Places articles on Wikipedia. So far no one at WikiProject NRHP has figured out an alternative, so it comes up again and again. Altairisfar (talk) 00:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Typical of a government website: abysmally slow and difficult to use. When I tried the search you suggested, it took at least two minutes for the results to appear. After a second search, I got tired of waiting and gave up. •••Life of Riley (T–C) 01:01, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I know. Something does need to be changed, if nothing more than adding use directions to the {{NRISref}} reference template, which was created by the project a few years ago. You're not alone in your concerns. Altairisfar (talk) 01:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Editor Help

Hello Altaitisfar,

My name is Shannon Fischer, and I am revising a wikipedia article for an English project. I have been working on some research for the Cahaba River page. I noticed that you have made some edits on this page, and I was hoping you could help advise me through this process. I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,

Stfisch (talk) 14:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I would be happy to help in any way that I can! Just let me know. Altairisfar (talk) 14:29, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/WLM-US 2013 discussion

Would definitely be appreciated. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

thanks for nice Presbyterian church pic

Adams Grove Presbyterian Church pic by Altairisfar

It's always a pleasure to browse in the Alabama historic site listings and find your beautiful pics. Is the light so great, or is it your camera, or what? Anyhow, thanks for helping kick off new List of Presbyterian churches. Any interest by you in helping there or at List of Methodist churches would be very much welcomed. Cheers, --doncram 23:40, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it was the light, most of mine don't turn out like that. I'll see if I can find a few to add. Altairisfar (talk) 15:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work in List of Presbyterian churches. Could you possibly please comment at Talk:List of Presbyterian churches#development, split? I think it is time to split out a U.S. list and would like your opinion on some options. And I'd defer to you starting the split article if you like those honors, or I could start the split. There's another discussion item there too. Thanks, --doncram 04:25, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Hand-coding

Hey all :).

I'm dropping you a note because you've been involved in dealing with feedback from the Article Feedback Tool. To get a better handle on the overall quality of comments now that the tool has become a more established part of the reader experience, we're undertaking a round of hand coding - basically, taking a sample of feedback and marking each piece as inappropriate, helpful, so on - and would like anyone interested in improving the tool to participate :).

You can code as many or as few pieces of feedback as you want: this page should explain how to use the system, and there is a demo here. Once you're comfortable with the task, just drop me an email at okeyeswikimedia.org and I'll set you up with an account :).

If you'd like to chat with us about the research, or want live tutoring on the software, there will be an office hours session on Monday 17 December at 23:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office ^connect. Hope to see some of you there! Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

ip editor adding metro areas

I see you have started reverting edits that were made by that IP already. I was waiting for AIV to block him, but I am glad you got started. I will help. I'll start at the bottom of his contributions, if that is ok with you. Gtwfan52 (talk) 23:58, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, what a mess they made. Happy to have some help, thank you! Altairisfar (talk) 00:00, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Valhermoso Springs, Alabama map picture

I know that you didn't make the article for Valermoso Springs, but I figured you would know how or know someone who could fix the location on the map that is given in it. This has just bugged me, since Morgan County is not that far south. If I need to inform someone else, just let me know. Also, sorry about the header capitalizations. Thanks! Dofftoubab (talk) 06:29, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Roll Tide

Hey, how's it going? I noticed that List of University of Alabama people is a mess, and that lots of people who have articles aren't represented one way or another. I suppose we need separate articles lists) on the ADs, coaches, etc. I started by creating Presidents of the University of Alabama and can use your help in expanding and cleaning up (President of Harvard University was kind of my model--perhaps the title should be singular, or it should be "List of"). Anyway, your help here and in general is appreciated: the various articles need cleaning and synchronizing, and maybe the categories as well. And of course I need to be added to one of these, haha. President, preferably! Drmies (talk) 19:53, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

• And check this out. Drmies (talk) 20:31, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Roll Tide back at cha! I'll add both to my to do list. I think the title of the new one is fine. I'll try to find some sources for it too. It may take me a while to get to them though, real life has been consuming a great deal of my time as of late. Altairisfar (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Good for you, I suppose! ;) Did you see this article? That makes supporting a winning program a lot less cheerful... Drmies (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

No, I had not. But it isn't anything we didn't already know. There is at least a grain of truth to the disparaging adage that many SEC universities are "a few classrooms attached to a football stadium." Altairisfar (talk) 14:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Timeline

If I'm not mistaken, this edit and this edit were before I had any contact with Doncram. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

One two sentence article. Okay. Altairisfar (talk) 05:44, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Sigh.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 06:23, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

All that shows me is that your work was shittier than any of the Doncram articles that you've moved to back to his userspace. Altairisfar (talk) 06:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

FYI on duplicate diff

The last diff in the list you posted on the Doncram Evidence page is a duplicate of one you listed earlier in that same list. Thought you would want to know... --Orlady (talk) 14:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Altairisfar (talk) 17:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

AFT5 newsletter

Hey all; another newsletter.

• If you're not already aware, a Request for Comment on the future of the Article Feedback Tool on the English-language Wikipedia is open; any and all comments, regardless of opinion and perspective, are welcome.
• Our final round of hand-coding is complete, and the results can be found here; thanks to everyone who took part!
• We've made test deployments to the German and French-language projects; if you are aware of any other projects that might like to test out or use the tool, please let me know :).
• Developers continue to work on the upgraded version of the feedback page that was discussed during our last office hours session, with a prototype ready for you to play around with in a few weeks.

That's all for now! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)