Revision as of 21:27, 17 May 2009

To speak to another with consideration, to appear before him with decency and humility, is to honour him; as signs of fear to offend. To speak to him rashly, to do anything before him obscenely, slovenly, impudently is to dishonour. Leviathan, X. This is a Happy Talk Page. No bickering. Proverb for the year: if you have nothing new to say, don't say it. If you're here to talk about conflicts of interest, please read (all of!) this. You are welcome to leave messages here. I will reply here (rather than on, say, your user page). Conversely, if I've left a message on your talk page, I'm watching it, so please reply there. In general, I prefer to conduct my discussions in public. If you have a question for me, put it here (or on the article talk, or...) rather than via email. I "archive" (i.e. delete old stuff) quite aggressively (it makes up for my untidiness in real life). If you need to pull something back from the history, please do. Once. Please leave messages about issues I'm already involved in on the talk page of the article or project page in question. My actions: Contribs • Blocks • Protects • Deletions

The Holding Pen

The <div> tag and Cascading Style Sheets_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets-The_Holding_Pen-2009-02-03T06:39:00.000Z">

The <div> tag is part of the HTML standard, and in essence lets you group things logically in a HTML page. Since different user agents have different needs and treat the data differently (e.g. a screen reader for the visually impaired, a bot or a normal browser like Firefox) the rendering of elements and the logical structure has been separated into two different languages: HTML and CSS.

HTML is supposed to structure the document logically while CSS is used to change the visual appearance of a page. A website usually only has one or a few CSS documents (style sheets). Many HTML documents can then share the same style sheet, providing consistent formatting across the site.

The div element has two attributes, class and style, that are linked to the style sheet. The class attribute determines what "class" the element belong to. It is then possible to define a default style for elements of this class in the style sheet .

The style element is what's most interesting here though, it lets you override the default style of an element. So the part within the style="" is actually CSS.

W3C (website) is in charge of the CSS standard and it can be found on their website. Unfortunately, the dominating browser sets the de facto standard so things might not work as expected or even be implemented yet.

The W3C specifications aren't particularly good for learning but they are good as a reference. What you are looking for is probably: .

If you search the webb for CSS you will find countless examples and tutorials. Quick Googling turned up this for example: .

I took the liberty to modify your div tags on this page as an example, feel free to modify and revert as you like. I hope this is somewhat helpful at least. :)
—Apis (talk) 06:39, 3 February 2009 (UTC)_tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets"> _tag_and_Cascading_Style_Sheets">

Thanks! William M. Connolley (talk) 20:18, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Reviving Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/Fluid dynamics

Crownest has expressed interest in reviving this. Since you were a member of the FD project (now converted into a taskforce), I'm wondering if you'd be a part of the Taskforce. The taskforce is undergoing a significant overhaul at the moment, and by the end of it, it should be fairly easy to get around and there should be a nifty compendium of useful tools for people interested in FD. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

In principle, I can help in small ways, though no longer being professionally involved. I wonder if there is an embedded prog taskforce? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:10, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Prog taskforced?Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Current

Ocean acidification

A reader writes:

"Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments. This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean."

I'm not sure, but it sounds odd. You can beat me to it if you like William M. Connolley (talk) 18:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, looks like it was User:Plumbago William M. Connolley (talk) 18:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Correctly deduced. It was me. It may not be worded well, but I think that it's factually correct. Basically, as well as its other effects on living organisms in the ocean, acidification is also expected (see the references) to dissolve existing carbonate sediments in the oceans. This will increase the ocean's alkalinity inventory, which in turn increases its buffering capacity for CO2 - that is, the ocean can then store more CO2 at equilibrium than before (i.e. the "implications for climate change" alluded to). As a sidenote, it also means that palaeo scientists interested in inferring the past from carbonate sediment records will have to work fast (well, centuries) before their subject matter dissolves away! Hope this helps. --PLUMBAGO 06:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Happy William M. Connolley's Day!

User:William M. Connolley has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as William M. Connolley's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear William M. Connolley! Peace, Rlevse ~ A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Good grief! Well thank you William M. Connolley (talk) 07:10, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Double diffusive convection

Bit surprised there is no article on DDC? Has the term gone out of fashion? It was half the course in "Buoyancy in Fluid Dynamics" when I did Part III 23 years ago. --BozMo talk 13:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I remember is was a nice demo on the fluid dynamics summer school DAMPT ran. Not sure I would still be confident of writing it up 10:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I might have to suggest it to Huppert or someone. --BozMo talk 10:23, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

If one of you two makes a stub, I'd be willing to read up on it and make it a longer stub. Awickert (talk) 10:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

What a kind offer. I have started here: Double diffusive convection--BozMo talk 10:55, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

All right - I'll get to it (eventually). It's on my to-do list. Awickert (talk) 16:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

The Red Peacock

I filed an edit warring report on The Red Peacock (talk · contribs) a few days ago in response to his 4RR and refusal to use the talk page on Nancy Pelosi. At the time, you declined a block and warned him to begin using the talk pages and stop edit warring. He seems to have returned to his wholesale POV edits without using the talk page, including the blanking of properly sourced negative materials . In only one case of these edits did he use the talk page, and that occurred at the same time he blanked a sourced part of the Joe Barton page.

I was hoping that a short block for edit warring would lead him to understand the consequences of not honestly trying to discuss his edits. It seems that after staying away from wikipedia for a few days, he's returned to his same behavior, and I wanted to bring that to your attention. I know those articles (and all political articles) get pretty heated, and discussion is an absolute must. Thanks in advance for your help. Take care! Dayewalker (talk) 19:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've had a look, and while I think he would benefit from talking, his current behaviour doesn't look actionnable William M. Connolley (talk) 07:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

RD has blocked TRP for a week, so it looks like I was wrong William M. Connolley (talk) 09:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

File:DSC 1207-lych-gate-and-chapel.JPG

Could you move it to Wikimedia Commons? Thanks, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I certainly could, but why should I? It is far more convenient for me to press "upload" here than go over to commons. en should add some kind of "automatically send this thing to commons" or something William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

It should. Since it doesn't, somebody will have to move it :) Having moved quite a few images myself, I find pestering people to move their images a lesser evil :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Weeeellll... I find the situation with regards to uploads a bit silly - there is a giant banner saying "don't upload it here, do it there" but then it lets you do it anyway. I take that to mean they would rather have stuff uploaded here than not at all, so that is what I do. If someone wants to write a bot to auto-xfer everything across, that would be fine by me. And for those who do the xfer manually in the meantime, I'm grateful. This is crying out for a techno-fix, not for me to change my behaviour William M. Connolley (talk) 07:10, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Civility?

You really want to talk about civility? How about this for civility, written on my talk page by Falastine fee Qalby:

It appears that you are on a POV editing rampage

I don't have the time to follow you around and revert your ass on each edit.

I am not going to be silent about this shit.

Very civil indeed! I wonder why you did not talk to him about civility as well! And what exactly is wrong, here , with saying that removed referenced material is vandalism? Isn't that part of what vandalism is? Here's what Misplaced Pages says about the definition of vandalism:

Sometimes referenced information or important verifiable references are deleted with no valid reason(s) given in the summary.

Oh wait! Even worse! That exact same user you are defending reverted referenced material on that same page and his edit summary said Undo Vandalism, it's vandalism to remove referenced sections and insert nonsense here  !!! Why exactly didn't you warn him about that? And how exactly is that different from what I did?

• I will certainly be waiting for some explanations.

Regards. --Lanternix (talk) 05:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear, ideally it won't require an admin to intervene in every squabble. Yes, I agree, FfQ should not have written that (note, BTW, that when you modify a persons comments as you have done, it is conventional to write "emphasis added" to avoid misleading. Note too that FfQ has at least called your edits shit rather than you, though I doubt you will find this any great consolation).

As to the issue of using vandalism in edit comments: I re-iterate my advice and warning: do not use it for good-faith edits, even if they remove referenced material; save it for people who are attacking wiki William M. Connolley (talk) 07:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Alright I admit that I used incivil language, and I apologize for it and will avoid it in the future, though his edits as I indicated in my post were inflammatory and incitement. Whatever the case is, it doesn't warrant Lanternix to use sockpuppets in order to revert me on other pages. Calling my revert of his copyvio vandalism is laughable. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 07:36, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It takes effort, from both sides, to avoid responding to provocation real or unintended. I'm sure you realise that though his edits as I indicated in my post were inflammatory and incitement doesn't justify incivility on your part; just as you believe that ill on your part doesn't warrant Lanternix to use sockpuppets William M. Connolley (talk) 09:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I acknowledge this. So that I avoid getting into another flame war with Lanternix and since you are aware of what is going on with Lanternix, could you please take a look at this. He is reinstating this irrelevant sentence fragment because according to him "since Caponica was banned because of that game of trying to compile every single user who disagrees with FFQ together as sockpuppets of me, I will be backing him/her up, and I will be restoring his/her edits until he/she comes back, or at least until there is some sort of explanation as to you FFQ is reverting these edits." So basically he is reverting the edit not because he thinks it make sense but because he will continue to revert me since I contributed to the ban of Caponica and he won't stop until Caponica is unblocked. This is POINTy, and if I revert him, he will soon compile a 3rr report again. -Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 04:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for apologizing and for recognizing your mistake. I do apologize in turn if my words upset you. They were certainly not meant to be inflammatory. However, I hereby reiterate that these blocked users have nothing to do with me and their accounts should be restored. And until this happens, I will continue to honor their contributions to Misplaced Pages by restoring their edits. Note also that I am trying to reach a middle ground on articles that do truly matter to me, such as Copts. I hope you can positively contribute to this instead of simply reverting my edits. As for those other people who revert your edits (and sometimes mine as well, as was done on Copts by IP 98.194.124.102), I have nothing to do with them, and I am not responsible for other people's actions. Simply claiming that anybody who disagrees with you is automatically a sockpuppet is laughable. In addition, I do not find it far fetched off that you created some sockpuppets yourself that would seem to revert your edits in order to convince that I am operating sockpuppets! I have been on Wiki for years and years, and I was never accused of doing that. It's certainly not part of my strategy on Misplaced Pages. --Lanternix (talk) 04:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't have "happy outcome" written on it. User:Caponica is blocked as a sock of you . Unless this is rescinded, I (and everyone else) will assume this is true: you can protest if you like but will be ignored. As it happens, this has no impact on your restoring Caponica's edits; we will all assume you are restoring your own edits with a convenient excuse. But that, in turn, means that FfQ's complaint doesn't really make a lot of sense: you are reverting, apparently for POINTy reasons, but we're used to people doing that.

So how to sort this out? Well, use the talk page. FfQ has given a reason for his revert, L (as I've said above) hasn't given a valid reason. If L persists in failing to explain himself on talk, or only using this non-explanation, I will block him William M. Connolley (talk) 07:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yonteng

Dear William,

I know you have been dealing with User:Yonteng. I have reported him 4 times since last week for multiple 3RRs, attempted outing, and incivility.

This user is currently requesting an unblock, and in the process just attempted a second outing of User:Emptymountains. Please let me know if I should still report this through the admin board. Emptymountains (talk) 19:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Not sure I understand. If there is personal info that Yt has revealed that he shouldn't, please let me know, perhaps by email William M. Connolley (talk) 20:40, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I just posted it here: .

While my first name is listed on my user page, I have never disclosed my physical location (city, state).

Yonteng did this today on his talk page, and also on the NKT talk page. Emptymountains (talk) 20:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

New Kadampa tradition

Hi William, i am Yonteng, you blocked me twice (ouch!) Please, i would ask that if you have the time you take a look at the last bit on the NKT talk page before you do it again????In the interests of neutrality. i think you might understand what has been going on best wishes and no hard feelingsYonteng (talk) 20:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC) Thanks man-I am inexperienced But this really needs looking at. i honestly think these people are using WP to promote themselves and bullying all other editors off the pageYonteng (talk) 20:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to state your case concisely. Do so on your talk page, not here William M. Connolley (talk) 20:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Done!Yonteng (talk) 09:46, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The banners are now being reverted unreasonably by Truthbdy who simply claims they have not been discussed and are invalid-Please help.Yonteng (talk) 07:07, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I will have a look later today. In the meantime, I advise WP:1RR - indeed, I may well decide to enforce it William M. Connolley (talk) 07:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

OK WM thats good. Please, all i want is that admins take a look at this article and stop it being so one sided. people are linking to WP in good faith, This article is highly biased in favour of the NKT and needs balancing. I am tired. If I give in I will be the fifth editor who tried to change things who has resigned in light of this relentless propaganda barrage. Please, all i need is for someone to investigate-people keep giving advice on what to do-It needs doing! and i cant.Yonteng (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

In general, admins will not intervene on content issues. All we do is uphold the Law (ahem). I've just done that. Ideally, you would find other wiki folk who are interested in this subject and prepared to edit the article William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

DonaldDuck

Hi,

who should place the {{banned}} atop User:DonaldDuck's userpage? Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 13:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think he is banned. He is indef'd, which is subtly different William M. Connolley (talk) 16:23, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps {{blocked_user}} then? --Martintg (talk) 21:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

My understanding of the subtle difference is that {{banned}} implies judgment while {{blocked user}} merely implies fact. Correct? Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 21:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that is right. Indef can be lifted without much fuss, if circumstances change William M. Connolley (talk) 16:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Accordingly, I was WP:BOLD and attached the template myself. Since {{blocked user}} is merely a statement of fact -- a fact that can checked by anybody --, attaching this tag does not appear to require an administrator. {{banned}} probably would. Διγουρεν_{Εμπρος!} 16:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed William M. Connolley (talk) 20:35, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

block of User:Meandmylefthand

Hi. The account User:Meandmyrighthand was created one minute later than this one. --Rrburke 16:10, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please block

User:YAGIRLSDNB, vandalism-only account, see diff. Incidentally, he/she fails at swearing in Spanish. Awickert (talk) 18:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Done William M. Connolley (talk) 18:50, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Awickert (talk) 19:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

You may feel free to bother me again William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Skunk

What a nasty pointy little skunk you are ! Giano (talk) 21:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)