Misplaced Pages

I’m sorry if I offend you. But I don’t swear just for the hell of it. You see, I figure that language is a poor enough means of communication as it is. So we ought to use all the words we’ve got. Besides, there are damned few words that everybody understands.

— From Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.

1. Stamps, lots of stamps

Recommended reading;

Papillon,

by Henri Charrière

Paradise Lost: Smyrna, 1922:
The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance

by Giles Milton

• amazon.com

reviews;

• nysun.com
• timesonline.co.uk
• brisbanetimes.com.au
• economist.com

Indonesian killings of 1965–66

Catherine Bonkbuster

On Slim virgins and arbcom dragons

Martyred Armenia

by Fâ’iz El-Ghusein

A course in troll sockpuppets

by Durova

Johnny Got His Gun

by Dalton Trumbo

• Archive 1, 2, 3

Blood and Roses was a trading game, along the lines of Monopoly. The Blood side played with human atrocities for the counters, atrocities on a large scale: individual rapes and murders didn't count, there had to have been a large number of people wiped out. Massacres, genocides, that sort of thing. The Roses side played with human achievements. Artworks, scientific breakthroughs, stellar works of architecture, helpful inventions. Monuments to the soul's magnificence, they were called in the game. There were sidebar buttons, so that if you didn't know what Crime and Punishment was, or the Theory of Relativity, or the Trail of Tears, or Madame Bovary, or the Hundred Years' War, or The Flight into Egypt, you could double-click and get an illustrated rundown, in two choices: R for children, PON for Profanity, Obscenity, and Nudity. That was the thing about history, said Crake: it had lots of all three.

The exchange rates — one Mona Lisa equalled Bergen-Belsen, one Armenian genocide equalled the Ninth Symphony plus three Great Pyramids — were suggested, but there was room for haggling. To do this you needed to know the numbers — the total number of corpses for the atrocities, the latest open-market price for the artworks; or, if the artworks had been stolen, the amount paid out by the insurance policy. It was a wicked game.

The sack of Troy, says a voice in his ear. The destruction of Carthage. The Vikings. The Crusades. Ghenghis Kahn. Attila the Hun. The massacre of the Cathars. The witch burnings. The destruction of the Aztec. Ditto the Maya. Ditto the Inca. The Inquisition. Vlad the Impaler. The massacre of the Huguenots. Cromwell in Ireland. The French Revolution. The Napoleonic Wars. The Irish Famine. Slavery in the American South. King Léopold in the Congo. The Russian Revolution. Stalin. Hitler. Hiroshima. Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Sri Lanka. East Timor. Saddam Hussein.

"Stop it," says Snowman.

Sorry, honey. Only trying to help.

That was the trouble with Blood and Roses: it was easier to remember the Blood stuff. The other trouble was that the Blood player usually won, but winning meant you inherited a wasteland. This was the point of the game, said Crake, when Jimmy complained. Jimmy said that if that was the point, it was pretty pointless. He didn't want to tell Crake that he was having some severe nightmares: the one where the Parthenon was decorated with cut-off heads was, for some reason, the worst.

— From Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

Template-y thing

I was going to do this myself but got intimidated by lots of scarey words on editing templates — I would so much like this:

If you look at this template:

{{BirdTalk}}

it lacks a direct link to the discussion page of the birds wikiproject:

like this one:

{{WikiProject Fungi}}

does for wikiproject fungi. Only a minor thing but can be an arse when I have a slow connection. I'd be grateful verily. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

You just need to edit the "MAIN_TEXT" of {{BirdTalk}}; it's protected, so you have some choices; you do it, comment on the exact text you want and unprotect it for an hour... Why is it protected, anyway? The vandals hit more birds than fungi?

fyi; best comment I've seen today.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:18, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

OK - have unprotected for six hours. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:35, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

 Done — You were gonna be up for six more hours? Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

great, thx - doubleplusgood. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:48, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome, Jack Merridew 12:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

                                       

User:Daedalus969

Jack... Just some advice. While you may well be within policy to remove things from your talk page, it's not really a very friendly way to handle messages... you may find it better to neutrally say "thanks for the input, I will consider it carefully" and leave the message, instead of sparring with others with snarky removal summaries as you've been doing with Dae. Try not to let people get your goat. In some cases that is exactly what they want. Don't give them the satisfaction (or the ammo to use later). I've suggested to Dae that their approach isn't likely to be effective. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 16:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, digging around to try to find the backstory, I got a chance to read some of the posts to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/DougsTech around (before and after) this one. You both leave the impression that you need to grow up. "Sneers", "Jeers", "What the hell is your problem" ???? Completely inappropriate. You both know better. Knock it off. ++Lar: t/c 16:45, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure. I'd disinter those posts except that it would likely only serve to reignite that tiff. Ryulong already issued trouts all round so we all get a nice healthy meal. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

p.s. +An Enemy of the People

• http://durova.blogspot.com/2009/05/maturity-test.html
  I passed ;)
  (although 7b might be correct in the case of some Pokemon articles; not watching those, so my opinion is OR)
  Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:Namibia-geo-stub

• {{Namibia-geo-stub}}

Hi,

Actually, it wasn't a good edit. You took the template and incorrectly changed the category from a more precise one (Category:Namibia geography stubs to a less precise one (Category:Namibia stubs). If you disagree, feel free to discuss it at wp:WSS/P. As for other edits, I will go back through your contributions now and look for similar edits to correct. Thanks for the heads up.--TM 15:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh. That part was inadvertent; a copypasta goof from one of the others. Please fix that part and keep the rest of the changes on those templates. I'll check stuff tomorrow. Off, it's late here. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed it and four other where I made the same mistake. Thanks for catching this and bringing it to my attention. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:41, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of Bacon, Egg and Cheese sandwich

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. ~fl 10:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:BRC

Thanks for cleaning it up! لennavecia 14:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Still has icky font-elements in there. And your sig needs single quotes on the multi-word font-name (fixing above, see this edit).

Proximate issue with your page was that the sub-tables did not necessarily fill the parent table resulting in a ragged-right look — which wasn't pretty.

Anysways, there are too many tables in there; divs are good.

I aw you comment that you had no arbs in BRC; no soks either, I expect.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

thanks for fixing my userpage!

Thanks, I didn't notice that. I thought it was free, but I won't again. ⊕Assasin Joe 18:03, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

sigh

Could you knock that off, please? It's really not helping. I know I'm hardly one to criticize being snarky, but it's well past time to de-escalate. Give me a cuff upside the head if I'm being a hypocrite, but do save the snark for the appreciative and not the hostile. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 09:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh, welcome back ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

See also

tag and wag. You can't make this stuff up.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Jack - that AfD page seems not to be displaying correctly, can't see why. The last few posts from Colonel W onward I can see in edit view but not on the page proper. Any ideas?  pablo_hablo. 12:10, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I works for me; the bottom posts at the moment are the two delsort lines. I just did a purge; try again. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:15, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Notability (fiction) flowchart

Do you have the means at your disposal to convert File:090427 Fiction Flowchart.jpg into a linked flow chart based on Wiki markup along the lines of Template:Pantheon of Dragonlance? I might be able to manage it myself, but I suspect it would take me a long time. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:23, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Yikes! There's a reason that's in Category:Intricate templates. I'd go with the image and a more readable typeface. I don't think you'll get good results using a tool designed for family trees to produce a flowchart; it would seem that there's just not enough need for flowcharting on-wiki for a suite of templates to have been developed. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Telepathy and war edits

Hi, thanks for showing interest in the article. I've left a note on the article discussion page re the "prune" banner. The article has already been severely pruned and at this stage is in a state of rebuild with more citation and referencing preferred. More input is great but I would rather discourage pruning right now. Frei Hans (talk) 11:38, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

You have your point of view there; that’s obvious. I've already opined that the article should be pruned right down the memory hole. Thanks for providing the impetus for {{prune}} — an overdue concept. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

{{prune}}'s a fine idea. Which reminds me - is there a WP equivalent of this template?  pablo_hablo. 12:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought so; needs to be put into use more. (There can’t be only “Teh One.”) Other one would make sense, too, but would needs a few tweaks. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Viz Pablomismo message - Clearly Unencylopedia people dont ever watch wikipedia afds enough :( viz the box For those without comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Misplaced Pages have an article about Bullshit.SatuSuro 12:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

{{bullshit}}, anyone? Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:31, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Heheh I was sure I have seen 'BS' at an Afd somewhere once - but I might be remembering wrong SatuSuro 12:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Prime candidates for prune would the greatest hist list at http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:LongPages SatuSuro 12:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

Before you do too many more of these: The correct disambiguator would be (novel). The clarifier (book) is usually used for nonfiction books. Cheers --ShelfSkewed Talk 13:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll revisit them; (book) will end up as a redirect. I see you got a lot; got this one? I've few with me (Bali). It was quite some time ago that I read this. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I read Far Tortuga a long time ago and enjoyed it, but not enough to become a big fan. I think I've got a copy of At Play around here somewhere, but I haven't read it. Cheers, --ShelfSkewed Talk 14:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I've just tweaked the redlinks. I don't think I read any of his others; it was one of my mom's books, I think. Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

webkit finangling

Ta (once again) for tweakage - I tend to use Firefox all the time nowadays, hadn't noticed that the rounded rects didn't work in Safari.  pablo_hablo. 22:38, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

no prob; just know that the radius doesn't work correctly in webkit when the borders of different sides are different widths. also, webkit underlays Chrome, too. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:51, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:Cquote

Hi, thank you for your message. Unfortunately I don't have much time to dedicate to resolving this issue, I hope it will be repaired soon. :)

Regards, Delhovlyn (talk) 20:06, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I've looked a bit but am not sure where this went; Thanks for the reminder. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:04, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

You have been nominated for membership of the Established Editors Association

The Established editors association will be a kind of union of who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the encyclopedia for a period of time (say, two years or more). The proposed articles of association are here

• User:Peter Damian/Established Editors - suggestions welcome.

If you wish to be elected, please notify me here

• User talk:Peter Damian/Established Editors#Other nominations

If you know of someone else who may be eligible, please nominate them here

• User talk:Peter Damian/Established Editors#Other nominations

Please put all discussion here

• User talk:Peter Damian/Established Editors#Discussion

Peter Damian (talk) 10:28, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll give it a look and see where it goes. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:02, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - do you accept the nomination or not? To be elected, you have to accept nomination. A note on my talk page will be sufficient.Peter Damian (talk) 14:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I said I’d see where it goes, and it did; fwiw, I’d have opined “keep” if I’d had time to read everything before it closed. I’m at UTC+8 and much shite goes on while I sleep. I think you have some interesting ideas and motives here but possibly not the right solution in-hand. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

You confuse noobs

Your not blocked, but you say you are. Many noobs will not see unblocked indefinitely and will think you are blocked. Just saying, Programmer13_{What I do} 16:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I never said I was blocked, I said I'm a sockpuppet — there's a difference. “Noobs” are inherently confused, so no-worry. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:40, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Revert

Thanks! --EEMIV (talk) 12:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem; looks like he ran amok after that and his head's now in the basket. teh vandals — day're -so- boring. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

A challenge then

Ok, here's a challenge. I have seen userpages with an online/offline variable which editors click when they are (surprise surprise) online or offline. I was musing on a variation of this for the user talk page. An online one where the variable resulted in the page being pale blue, maybe with clouds and a sun, representing 'day' (some form of underlying sky image under writing), and an offline one which had a dark underlying image (night sky) with maybe owls and moons or something, and the script was coded to go white. Something like a prologue subpage but had its parameters over the whole page. Make sense? Speaking of which I am off to sleep (again). Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That would be things like {{statustop}}, which Rlevse uses. It's basically a switch statement and what you're thinking would entail several of them; one for each element you suggest. They would be buried in templates or user subpages. Changing background and border colors would be fairly straightforward — see user:roux and purge it a few times. Smallish images as ornaments would work about the same way. There's an issue with doing a large background image/colours of the “night” variety; we can set the text colour easily enough but the link colour is set by the site css and the only way to change that locally is to wrap the link-text with something that tweaks the color; i.e. every link and sig on the talk page. For this reason the faux background-images and background-colors have to be ones that look reasonable with standard text over them; also, since these are not really background-images, they don't repeat (“tile”) so they won't extend down the page.

My own musing; you're making an offline-at-night assumption; late night, at least. What about users on the benighted side of the planet from our region? You'd be showing them the night and the moon during their full daylight. We have {{CURRENTHOUR}} but not {{CURRENTLATITUDE}} per this (and the math would get messy anyway) — see mw:Help:Magic words. I structure user pages with the layout and technical glue in the page proper and split off the actual content into subpages; User:Jack Merridew/Body text, for example. I still typically have some xhtml in there, but it's minimal and could be lessened. I've not done this on my talk pages, but could; they tend to work a bit differently due their open-ended nature. I probably should be factoring-out things like colours to subpages for maximum flexibility; once there, using a switch is easy. My talk page editnotice uses a switch to offer a different quote each time; there are a dozen in there.

Implementing this sort of thing will not be as simple as adding a bit up top; there will be pieces scattered about; top, site of each image, site of wallpaper. Another route would entail doing this via a script in the Misplaced Pages:MediaWiki namespace, which I'd need to be able to edit ;). In effect this would amount to revisiting the skin options which have been static for a long time. I tend to opt for custom local solutions rather than for building generic tools for the proles to coat tail on.

Thanks for the idea; I'll marinate on practical techniques.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:48, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Emmette Hernandez Coleman

Hi Jack, can you please back off this user for a while? I've noted that of the last 5000 edits to Talk:Main Page, you have precisely two. Combine that with your statement/threat to EHC that they would "go on your watchlist", the fact that your comments appeared in response to a thread EHC started, and the unproductive tenor of your comments - well, I'm sure there's no need for me to start using any alphagettis I can pick out of the soup.

If you have ongoing concerns with the editor, please bring them to me as it seems I may be better at patient and friendly education. At the very least you could try waiting until there is even a hint of evidence of disruption, and even then you could still try the ol' patient-and-friendly. Alternatively, compile an RFC/U or post at a noticeboard asking for sanctions. Please don't continue in a course which appears to be application of "one man justice". Regards! Franamax (talk) 20:22, 21 June 2009 (UTC)