User talk:Chris j wood/2013

Nomination of List of bus types used in London for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of bus types used in London is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bus types used in London until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. JetBlast (talk) 21:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

File:Logo of the Zentralbahn.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Logo of the Zentralbahn.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 14:12, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Infobox Switzerland station and services= parameter

Hi Chris. Thanks for your message. I've been cut off from the internet since Friday afternoon and therefore have only just received it. I added the new parameter to the infobox template only a few minutes before I modified the Zürich Hauptbahnhof article. In hindsight I should have put a message on this page about the modifications, and should also have updated the document page for the infobox. I will do the latter tonight. In the meantime, my apologies. Bahnfrend (talk) 01:13, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry

My revert of your edit was accidental. Feel free to restore your edit.--MONGO 13:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Another sorry

I used the word "vandalism" in reverting your change to the page Jordan (disambiguation); on further investigation, I realized that it was more of an error, or perhaps a difference of opinion. I decided to leave the Albanian martyr on the list (who you had removed - did you intend to?) and I re-added Thomas Jordan the banker. I'm sorry I used the "v" word - I had looked up the Thomas Jordan article very quickly and didn't find it, so it looked like straight-forward vandalism. Brianyoumans (talk) 13:09, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

No problem. I certainly didn't intend to remove the Albanian martyr, but merely to move him (to put the list in alpha order). Also, I think you meant Jordan (name) rather than Jordan (disambiguation) (which I havn't edited). -- chris_j_wood (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Your recent article title changes, ex Hofen, Switzerland

Hello, I've reverted your changes to the article title of Hofen, Switzerland. The reason for this is that the WikiProject Switzerland title conventions says "If there is another article at (1) or (2), e.g. about a place in other country, ", Switzerland" is added to the name". Cantons are used as disambiguation only if "If there are several municipalities with the same name, the name of the canton is added to each, unless one is more common". Adding the canton's name to the only municipality with that name in the country makes it less clear, harder to find, goes against the WP convention and implies that there is another municipality with the same name somewhere else in the country.Tobyc75 (talk) 12:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that special case. Not quite sure why we need so many conflicting special cases in our dab rules (for example, the rules say you must never disambiguate a place in England with either ", United Kingdom" or ", England", but must always use the county name). I must confess I don't think the Swiss special case is a particularly good idea, because if it does transpire that there are multiple places with the same name in Switzerland (and I've already found several cases of that) then a link to "xyz, Switzerland" is likely to end up tagged as "disambiguation required" for the rest of eternity. But he ho, conventions are conventions. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 12:50, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately there are so many style guides and rules that it's hard to know which one applies. In any case where "xyz, Switzerland" needs to be disambiguated, then of course use the Canton or even the District to distinguish them as the WikiProject conventions state. If there are any cases that you know of, where you're unsure, I'd be glad to take a look and give you my two cents worth.Tobyc75 (talk) 13:16, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I think the current conventions have their advantage. For instance "Switzerland" is a much more stable and recognizable term than "Uri" or "Graubünden" (San Vittore, Switzerland sounds better than San Vittore, Graubünden and won't have to follow any move regarding the canton). The "xyz, Canton" format is also potentially misleading when the canton is named after a city as it looks more like a quarter in it than an independant municipality. Having said that, conventions are not carved in the marble and anybody is warmly welcome to suggest a change. mgeo talk 20:21, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd rather got the impression that Swiss cantons were pretty stable political entities; I know Napoleon had a go at reforming them, and Jura is a fairly late invention, but most of them have been around with their current boundaries for centuries. Are they really less stable or less recognisable than US states or English counties, both of which are routinely used in this way?. You do have a point with regard to confusion between canton and city though. More worrying to me is that [[San Vittore, Graubünden]] was a red-link; whatever we call the articles we should certainly have redirs for things like that (San Vittore now has). -- chris_j_wood (talk) 08:11, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. When I said stable I didn't mean the cantons proper but their names. I know a few cases like Bern/Berne, Graubünden/Grisons where a move could be always possible, hence my opinion that their choice as disambiguators is disputable. To be honest, I don't really care about the other countries as their situations are quite different in terms of population and languages. Naturally there should always be a redirect from the "xyz, Canton" format otherwise we'll likely end up with two articles for the same subject (which is always very annoying..). mgeo talk 10:34, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

TemplateData is here

Hey Chris j wood

I'm sending you this because you've made quite a few edits to the template namespace in the past couple of months. If I've got this wrong, or if I haven't but you're not interested in my request, don't worry; this is the only notice I'm sending out on the subject :).

So, as you know (or should know - we sent out a centralnotice and several watchlist notices) we're planning to deploy the VisualEditor on Monday, 1 July, as the default editor. For those of us who prefer markup editing, fear not; we'll still be able to use the markup editor, which isn't going anywhere.

What's important here, though, is that the VisualEditor features an interactive template inspector; you click an icon on a template and it shows you the parameters, the contents of those fields, and human-readable parameter names, along with descriptions of what each parameter does. Personally, I find this pretty awesome, and from Monday it's going to be heavily used, since, as said, the VisualEditor will become the default.

The thing that generates the human-readable names and descriptions is a small JSON data structure, loaded through an extension called TemplateData. I'm reaching out to you in the hopes that you'd be willing and able to put some time into adding TemplateData to high-profile templates. It's pretty easy to understand (heck, if I can write it, anyone can) and you can find a guide here, along with a list of prominent templates, although I suspect we can all hazard a guess as to high-profile templates that would benefit from this. Hopefully you're willing to give it a try; the more TemplateData sections get added, the better the interface can be. If you run into any problems, drop a note on the Feedback page.

Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Mendel and Mendola

Hey, I reverted your move from Mendel to Mendola, since "Mendola Pass" seems to be the clearly less common form in English usage. In fact, I wasn't able to find one single English language book using that name... Please have a look at these graphs. I opened a related discussion here. Cheers, --Mai-Sachme (talk) 11:15, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Trams in Zurich

Hi, thanks for the heads up, however, the stacking issue is now massive, MOS:IMAGE says to avoid images facing, not that it can't occur, and the crux of it is that images should be relevant to the text they accompany. With the amount of images included at 1920x1080 (that is not an 'over the top screen resolutions', a concept which doesn't exist, per MOS:IMAGE, a page should render at all resolutions) the image next to:

• 'Underground proposals' is 'The opening of the BD in 1902'
• 'Extensions and a new model' is 'The opening of the UOeB in 1909'
• 'Low floors and more extensions' is 'A Swiss Standard Tram, at the city's tramway museum'

This is against MOS, and simply there are to many images, or not enough text. Please reconsider your readdition of all the images, and instead work with me to make it a holistic page that renders well and flows correctly at all resolutions. Twenty-eight images for ~4000 words is a huge amount of images, maybe the table at the top of the article can have pertinent images be added to it, or be broken apart into sections. Liamdavies (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

RE sandwiching, Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Alternating left and right specifically refers to that as a way of avoiding image stacking, it is perfectly acceptable and the text is generally only sandwiched at high enough resolutions that it doesn't matter. Liamdavies (talk) 14:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Bullet point three, it specifies that the image should be in the section it refers to, with the amount of images you have put in, at 1080 the images start pushing the navboxes down, it's simply to much and means that the images aren't in the section they refer to (refer to image stacking). The changes I made removed enough images to make the page look good, with each image accompanying and complimenting the text that it is pertinent to. Be reverting all my changes (which I must say, I consider quite rude, I spent a lot of time and effort doing that) images now accompany text completely irrelevant to its context. Images should augment, and improve the article, they should support the text and help comprehension and interpretation, not simply be there because we have them and they look good. Regarding MOS:IMAGE and sandwiching, look at the Wikipedia:Picture tutorial and wording, it doesn't say its verboten, it says to avoid, to help the flow of the article and keep as many images as possible while avoiding stacking I strongly feel WP:IAR works. There are additional problems with the huge amount of images following each other down a page, just look at the page from a mobile device to see how user unfriendly it is). To view pages at different resolutions try here (how Trams in Zurich currnetely looks here).

Essentially images should be added to an article to aid it, to many images detract from the educational value, and there are to many images that are completely irrelevant to the text they accompany, or even the article as a whole (there are pictures of things/concepts not even mentioned), to fix this images alignment has to be staggered (as I did) and images have to be removed (as I did). Liamdavies (talk) 15:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to bother, but by comparision, this is how what I did looks at higher resolution and I hope gives insight as to why I made those changes. Liamdavies (talk) 16:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree that it looks fine/good at 1024, but 90% of users use a screen resolution higher than that, so for 9 out of 10 users it looks as it does for me, not great. I think there are two things at issue, I saw (and fixed) a huge image stacking issue, and you have found a lot of images that you want to highlight. Given that I suggest a compromise, we go back to the version I had, BUT:

• We add an image gallery under the table in the 'Many companies' section (where the first six images I removed can go),
• 'A Swiss Standard Tram, at the city's tramway museum' goes left, and 'Line 31 now uses double-articulated buses to try to emulate tram capacity' gets added to 'Lines closed' (below the black and white picture)
• 'A Forchbahn train on Zurich tram tracks' would be squeezed into 'Route network' (probably by pushing 'Paradeplatz is one of the key nodes of the route network, served by 7 routes' up next to the table)

'Central is another node, with 6 routes' would be left out OR replace 'Paradeplatz is one of the key nodes of the route network, served by 7 routes' - one major junction is enough.

This would stop the stacking issue, while keeping most images, I feel it to be a fair compromise. Thoughts? Liamdavies (talk) 17:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, re mobile, I meant in 'mobile view' see here and here. Liamdavies (talk) 17:08, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I've redone the images, hopefully less controversially this time. I hope I didn't piss you off to much, I don't mean to step on toes, but often some one finds a picture, and adds it to a page. I've spent a fair bit of time trimming and arranging images on tram pages. I think changing the table to sections is the way to go, I'll give you a hand if you'd like. Let me think about how to make 'mini infoboxes' for each. Liamdavies (talk) 17:34, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence! I think it at least flows better (picture text wise) but do agree that the old version looked better at 1024, unfortunately we have to make articles that looks good at many resolutions on many devices (it is a huge problem). I see why you made the upright change, but would just remind you that you shouldn't make something look good just for you, everyone's viewing experience can be different based or operating systems/devices, browsers, resolution, font, font size, and wiki preferences. It should also be noted that people can change their preferences on pictures sizes, which is why it is generally advisable to avoid 'fixing' image sizes. (Please take these comments as things to consider, not attacks or slights, I don't want to offend, just give a little food for thought) I'm still thinking about how to break up the table into text, do you have any thoughts? Or a comprehensive source? Also, it's been nice to constructively talk about and solve an issue in a manner that has been both civil and consensus/cooperative. I also love the English colloquialism! Liamdavies (talk) 09:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Graz Central Station

Hi Chris, I appreciate all your hard effort for Wikipedia and especially on railway articles, but would be grateful if you didn't start renaming "Central Stations" to "main railway stations". As you know, weeks of debate have been expended on the merits of different names for Hauptbahnhof and no consensus reached. We currently have at least some consistency in the use of "Central Station" as well as conformity to major players like Deutsche Bahn and, in this case, ÖBB - see here. Moving individual articles in the light of the controversy already generated is not helpful. May I suggest we leave the issue for now and concentrate on creating and improving articles. Cheers. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:11, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind response. I was new to this issue until it arose on Wikipedia. The trouble is there seems to be no definitive work on central stations or the origin of station naming that we can use as an authoritative source.

My dictionaries - Langenscheidt's massive Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch and Ernst's Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik - translate Hauptbahnhof both as "central station" and "main station", so both concepts are clearly valid. Ernst also adds "chief station". That deals with Hbf as a common noun i.e. "the main station in Foo is Foo West" or "the central station in Cologne is Köln-Mitte".

For its use as a proper name, there are 4 key factors that, in my view, favour "Foo Hauptbahnhof" being translated as "Foo Central Station".

First, there is evidence that Hauptbahnhof used to be Centralbahnhof (or Zentralbahnhof) in German in many, if not all, cases. Munich, Frankfurt, Magdeburg and Hamburg were certainly referred to in this way and there are other examples at de:Centralbahnhof. So there is an argument from linguistics.

Second, an analysis of the use of "Central Station" in European countries, including UK, shows that such stations are usually the principal station in a town or city, at least when they were originally named. Others have also argued, however, that some of these stations were named after a railway company e.g the Great Central Railway. But this appears to be the minority (I am aware that the US is different, but we are talking about European practice here). So there is an argument from usage.

Third, and rather surprisingly, there is widespread use of the term "Foo Central Station" in English sources when referring to German or Austrian Hbf. In particular, Deutsche Bahn and ÖBB use this in their English publications and on their website. "Foo Main Station" also occurs, but is less common and, of course, it is not a form of proper name we find in Britain or other English-speaking countries. "Hauptbahnhof" also occurs frequently, but one wonders whether that's simply because people don't know how to translate it. It's a contender, certainly, but because it's use is not overwhelming, it falls at the fourth hurdle below. So there's an argument from authoritative sources.

And fourth, there's simply WP:USEENGLISH. If we want to be intelligible to our readers (like DB and ÖBB I suppose), we need to find the nearest English language equivalent. The intelligibility or language argument.

For me the real conundrum is why did we call stations "Foo Central Station" when, often, as you've observed, they aren't central to the city? I think it may be because "Central" referred to the network, not the city i.e. the railwaymen who named them saw them as "central" to the railway network in the area they served. But that's just a theory. Hope that helps. Bermicourt (talk) 16:42, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Winterthur Hauptbahnhof

Hi Chris j, is Winterthur Hauptbahnhof the only Swiss Hauptbahnhof affected by the 121 undiscussed moves? cf. Talk:Central station. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Seetal railway line

Template:Seetal railway line has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. eh bien mon prince (talk) 10:27, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Opting in to VisualEditor

As you may know, VisualEditor ("Edit ^beta") is currently available on the English Wikipedia only for registered editors who choose to enable it. Since you have made 50 or more edits with VisualEditor this year, I want to make sure that you know that you can enable VisualEditor (if you haven't already done so) by going to your preferences and choosing the item, "MediaWiki:Visualeditor-preference-enable". This will give you the option of using VisualEditor on articles and userpages when you want to, and give you the opportunity to spot changes in the interface and suggest improvements. We value your feedback, whether positive or negative, about using VisualEditor, at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for setting up an article on St Mary the Virgin Church, Langley. I was born and raised at Langley and St Mary's has played a significant role in my life. LynwoodF (talk) 17:57, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, although in truth all I really did is pull together information from other WP pages, plus a little bit from the parish's web site, and find some cites to support it. There is quite a lot of architectural detail on the web site, but I'm not too comfortable adding that as ecclesiastical architectural terminology goes straight over my head. If there is anything you can add, please go ahead. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 10:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The important thing is that you set it up properly. I found it because I watch Langley, Berkshire and Kedermister Library. So many of the things that come up on my watchlist are either vandalism or unsourced naïve nonsense that it is refreshing to find something done sensibly. I may have a go at expanding the article, but I am a tired old man these days and find it increasingly difficult to summon up the energy and courage to embark on such tasks. LynwoodF (talk) 17:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

PROD for Cleveland Circle and Reservoir (MBTA stations)

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I proded Cleveland Circle and Reservoir (MBTA stations), which you've previously worked on, for deletion. They're really two separate stations, not a single station complex of the sort seen on the NYC subway. All the content (including a bunch of history which I just added) is now at the separate station articles. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:49, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow, that is a blast from the past. I created that article back in 2006, when WP was a very different place. Looking at it from 7 years more experience of editing, I completely agree with your suggestion of splitting it. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 10:05, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the article has been dePRODed, and is now at AFD. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2013 (UTC)