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User talk:Patrick/January - October 2005

Template:Province South Holland
Dear Patrick, I noticed you are the main contributor to the Template:Province South Holland. Personally I find the present template a little ugly. Moreover it takes a lot of screen-space, and isn't in line with the templates for the other Dutch provinces. Therefore I am planning to change it to look something like this: Template:Province North Holland p (did you make that one as well?). That way it will be more in line with the layout of the other Dutch province-templates, while retaining both the usefull map of the province (although someone might want to replace it with a less-pixeled one at some point) and the links. What do you think of my plan? If you agree, I will make this change and then put this template on all South Holland municipality pages. By the way, do you know why Template:Province South Holland p exist and what the p stands for? I don't see the difference between this template and Template:Province South Holland. Am I missing something? --Hippalus 00:02, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * The current versions are Template:Province South Holland 2p with two parameters and Template:Province South Holland 3p with three: the latter is only used for municipality names with spaces; the third parameter is the name of the municipality with + for every space, which is needed for the MapQuest link. The other two templates are old versions, with instructions for the user to easily edit the page to include the new one. If you create a new version, you could either have again two versions, or use always three parameters.

 * On my screen Template:Province North Holland p wastes space on the right; in a large font this makes the text unnecessarily high, so please try to avoid that. Also, please do not make the map too small.--Patrick 00:27, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * See also Template talk:Province South Holland 3p.--Patrick 09:41, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

UN database...
Hi Patrick, I just noticed that the UN has inserted one article that was written partly by you into their database: for further information

Actions: Content ID : 	UNPAN019581 Revision: 	1 Type: 	APCITY - Asia and Pacific Title: 	Focus on Disaster Reduction: Tsunami Warning Systems Author: 	APCITY *Content Type: 	Case Studies Area of Focus: 	Disaster Management Full Title/ Monographic Title (Max 255 Characters): 	Focus on Disaster Reduction: Tsunami Warning Systems Document Author(s): 	Wikipedia ISBN(020): *Language(041): 	English Call Number(080): Place of Publication(260a): 	United States Publisher Name(260b): 	http://en.wikipedia.org/ *Date of Publication(260c): 	01/08/2005 *Number of Pages/ Size of File(300): 	3 Physical Medium(340): 	Computer file Notes(500): Abstract(520): 	This paper brief introduces the regional and the international tsunami warning systems, as well as tsunami detection, warming conveying, and the shortcoming of the systems. Geographic keywords(650): 	Asia/Pacific Thematic keywords(651): 	Tsunami, Disaster reduction Date of Meeting/Mission(811): Place of Meeting/Mission(811$c): Conference_Short_Title: Security Group: 	Public Checked Out By: Status: 	Released Formats: 	application/msword

Yours, Mathias

Gangleri, back again

 * Halló Patrick! I was long time away from bugzilla. During last weeks I was mainly at ro: where I am an administrator now, at eo: where I applied for adminship and travelling at all the other places.
 * Welcome back!--Patrick 00:31, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

question about localurl, PAGENAME, PAGENAMEE

 * At ro:Discuţie Format:TOCcat I describe a problem using "localurl" together with UNICODE characters. Is this a known problem? Do you have a bugzilla number for it?
 * Use PAGENAME with single E within localurl, I think that works.--Patrick 00:31, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Where are the subcategories

 * Another "strange" behaviour I experienced with subcategories, when more then 200 objects are in the category. To my understanding all of the subcategories should be displayed whatever value is set for the "from=" parameter.
 * A page with e.g. the articles in the name range Leiden-Rotterdam also shows the subcategories in that range. A message like "There is 1 subcategory to this category." refers to that name range. Rather confusing, I think.--Patrick 00:45, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * It is realy confusing. It is the nature of bug fixing, changes, improuvements etc. to provide somthing new. Nevertheless changes to the "look and feel" should be done carefully. As it is now subcategories are hidden regardless if "from=" is used or not. Because I get involved more and more to link objects / pages from other namespaces then articles (i.e. categories, projects, help, ect.) I have difficulkties to "find" / "identify" the subcategories. Regardless of how the technical solution would be (showing subcategories at all pages, showing them when no parameter is used, having an additional parameter "subcategories") something should be done here. I have not followed discussions at bugzilla long time. If nothing is there on this subject a feature request should be issued. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 10:23, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
 * See also 1211

other questions

 * At ro: we plan to use geografical datas about 13.800 places in Romania. Best would be to have a database somewhere at a WikiMedia server. How can we achieve this? What access can we have? What tools should we use?
 * What tools are available to use the MediaWiki software as a front end to a database?
 * I need 4-5 very simple extensions. Who could write them? Should I ask at wikitech-l ?
 * I made the category Categorie:Greşeli cunoscute în Wikipedia and eo:Kategorio:Konataj eraroj en Vikipedio where I link to reference pages.
 * Thanks for all you efforts in advance. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 22:34, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)

answer regarding localurl, PAGENAME, PAGENAMEE

 * Thanks for the hint to use PAGENAME and not PAGENAMEE at the mentioned template. I added comments at ro:Discuţie Format:TOCcat too.
 * What is happening now is that PAGENAMEE is context depended: It has a different behaviour if it used inside "localurl" or not. That is confusing, another "just have to know". Please do not understand me wrong: I am happy to have a working solution but it would be more helpfull, if all other users experimenting with this would save time because the behaviour would be straight forward. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 10:23, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)
 * PAGENAMEE is not context-dependent, but localurl cannot handle the coded form, with %-signs, etc., that PAGENAMEE produces.--Patrick 21:15, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

 * Please see 1649. Thanks! Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:30, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

How to find the subcategory

 * Dear Patrick, please see sr:Википедија:Tests for Корисник:Bonzo. If you think it's worth to make a help page at and / or at en: out of these informations feel free and let me know. Maybe there are issues you would add. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 22:59, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

 * Thanks. Most was already more or less in m:Help:Category. One idea I just added, and I also linked to your page.--Patrick 23:27, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

 * See also 1211 and 1212

wikitravel:

 * Thanks Patrick for the answers so far. I forgot to ask about InterWiki links to the language versions for wikitravel::
 * de: http://wikitravel.org/de/artikel/
 * fr: http://wikitravel.org/fr/article/
 * ro: http://wikitravel.org/ro/articol/
 * sv: http://wikitravel.org/sv/artikel/
 * On the community wiki I made (with version 1.37) I inserted InterWiki lines in the database. In order to avoid there the translation of pagenames using unicode trough en: I added entries as  wikipedia_ro:  etc. Doing this I could write directly.
 * About the InterWiki table I have the following questions:
 * Are all Wikimedia projects using the same InterWiki table?
 * Who maintains them / it?
 * wikitravel:de, wikitravel:fr:, wikitravel:ro, wikitravel:sv fails. Is it a bug of how InterWikis work, is it a wrong configuration, is it easy to fix?
 * I made a redirect from wikitravel:ro to http://wikitravel.org/ro/articol/Portal . This will not solve the problem but I think it will not harm. ... I could see, that this redirect is only the half solution because it does not make the redirect. At least it shows where to continue.
 * If you do not have a better solution until now. You may make the similar redirects also as following:
 * wikitravel:de: to http://wikitravel.org/de/artikel/Hauptseite
 * wikitravel:fr: to http://wikitravel.org/fr/article/Accueil
 * wikitravel:sv: to http://wikitravel.org/sv/artikel/Huvudsida
 * Note: Normally for all projects there are redirects from "Main Page" with capital "P" to the main page. This is not the case for http://wikitravel.org/fr/article/Main_Page etc.
 * Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:49, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)

 * I found, but it does not contain wikitravel, so there must be a newer version.

 * I do not think I can answer your remaining questions, sorry.--Patrick 10:15, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I think the most helpful person on this is likely to be brion. He took care of all international issues for a long time. SweetLittleFluffyThing

 * The (off-project) interwiki prefixes for our wikis are updated from the list maintained here: Interwiki map.

 * It would be convenient if there's a single point on WikiTravel which can be used as a redirector for each language on WikiTravel in the wikitravel: : style; you might check there and ask Evan if they have such or want to set one up. --Brion 22:39, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

 * Now it is up to Evan. See User talk:EvanProdromou. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 23:11, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)

 * It'll take me some time to get to it, but I would actually prefer to have our articles at http://wikitravel.org/ / rather than http://wikitravel.org/ / / . I actually have some scheduled downtime to make this change tomorrow, so that's a possibility. I'll update here on Thu EST with more info. --ESP 00:50, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Done. All our articles are now at  http://wikitravel.org/{language code}/{title} . Feel free to use that form for the redirector. --ESP 03:28, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I'm confused how wikitravel: : is going to become http://wikitravel.org/ / . I don't get how to set that up on the Interwiki map. --ESP 04:42, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Evan! I put a note also at Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 09:35, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)
 * Links wikitravel:de:, wikitravel:fr:, wikitravel:ro:, wikitravel:sv: corrected above. Gangleri | [ Th] | T 18:06, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

So, what changed here? I don't see any actual movement on this. Considering that I was getting emails and user talk page messages several times a day when this first came up, I'm disappointed to see the lack of action. --ESP 18:30, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some Esperanto specialities

 * Halló Patrick, I was surprised about some special interlanguage links. Please take a look at the abstract at eo:Vikipedio:Sciindaĵoj. You probably know the best if this documented already or where to document it if is not the case.
 * There are lots of people "making" (adding, fixing etc.) interlanguage (and InterWiki) links, some manualy other using a bot. Probably there are some channels to inform them (or to mention it in a further release of the bot tools). Thanks and regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 01:09, 2005 Feb 8 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I added this to a few pages on Meta, including Interwiki bot.--Patrick 22:53, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

 * Halló Patrick, I continued to work at the doublex issues at eo: and made important additions to eo:Vikipedio:Sciindaĵoj. The page contains more then 3 error reports with comments in English and Esperanto. Some of the errors might be subsequent as those mentioned together with the "watchlist".

Introducing an unique escape character / meta character

 * It is always the same story when the special character is included in the set of allowed characters and no meta character is available. Coding "CXX" etc. is tricky because what looks as "CX" at eo: is already coded there as "CXx". Having more then two "x"-es will confuse the parser / the preview / whatever because if it would understand / could differentiate "CxXx" from "CXxX" it would not know what to do with "Cxxx".
 * I think there should be a "escape" character " " which should be used "before" the "real" "X" / "x". So Aldous HU XLEY ,  eo:Aldous HU XLEY  and  xx:Aldous Hu xley  should be used at database level and at all functions involved. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:21, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)
 * I made some tools and used them at eo:Vikipediisto:Gangleri/tests/projektoj/duobla x-o in order to save some time fixing the interlanguage links, verifying if all required redirects are there, have some useful links to google etc. 08:27, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)

1512

 * Halló Patrick, I reported some of these problems at 1512 referencing to eo:Vikipedio:Bugzilla 1512 (which includes a ...#Newly discovered bugs section) and here.
 * As soon as I read (and understand) some of the http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=pywikipediabot-users messages I will post a message for projects/pywikipediabot. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:35, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC

Missing interlanguage links

 * Halló Patrick, google &q=+site:.wikipedia.org+"warnings"+"does+not+link+to" lists a lot of interesting pages. It seems they have been moved / deleted. Do you know anything about this? Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 09:49, 2005 Feb 9 (UTC)

 * No, I don't know about this. It seems the missing interlanguage links have been added, I checked 1930.--Patrick 22:35, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

 * There are some "warnfiles" at meta:Image:Warnfiles-de-2005-02-17.zip.ogg. Gangleri | [ Th] | T 18:06, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)

Reuse of template name
Since it wasn't linked from anywhere, I guessed you weren't using it any more and stole Template:An for my own experiments on footnotes. If you still want it, feel free to steal it back. Mozzerati 20:49, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

 * That's OK, when I need a template like that again, I choose another name.--Patrick 22:20, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

The Netherlands
I had tried to move it before, but the Wiki would not let me. That's why I listed it at WP:RM. Thanks for moving it. Jordi·✆ 12:59, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Michael Jackson
Hello, would you tell me why you reverted my edits to Michael Jackson? The way it was organised previously is ugly, off place, and there is information all over the place. Your revert helped nothing. Páll 01:48, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I am not saying that the whole edit is wrong, but, as I referred to in the edit summary, the section One More Chance was a strange mix of two former sections, apparently an error. Please fix that, then I look at your edit again.--Patrick 02:18, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

65

 * Halló Patrick! I just want to let you know about 1591 a duplicate of 65. See also User:Gangleri/tests/bugzilla:1691. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 15:09, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)
 * Both bug#65 and bug#563 are fixed now. See 65 and 563. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:11, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

The Multimap scale bug
Is not as simple as you'd think. Multimap only supports a specific range of scales, so you cant use. So there needs to be a. -- Egil 11:59, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * That would be better, but at least it works now for the allowed scales, and for other scales you get the Multimap page for the given location anyway, and you just have to specify a scale then.--Patrick 12:21, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Fixed it now. -- Egil 16:34, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--Patrick 08:41, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Arm image
Thanks for high-resolution photo of ... arm. I hope it stays up for a few days. Sfahey 18:58, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I removed the photograph Image:Demi2.JPG from this article, mainly because an encyclopedia should have a more relevant picture to describe an arm but also because it is has no license attached. Regards, Thuresson 02:31, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * The first argument should imply that you replace it by a picture that you think is better.--Patrick 08:45, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

en:Wikipedia:Template:Interwikiconflict

 * Helló Patrick! Please take a look at en:Wikipedia:Template:Interwikiconflict. Would be happy to know your opinion and possible support about this. Thanks in advance! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 14:26, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
 * Interesting. You can ask operators of these bots.--Patrick 20:35, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

en:Wikipedia:Template:Invalidtitle

 * Helló Patrick! I wait for Brions comment regarding en:Wikipedia:Template:Invalidtitle. It seams that the actual version does not prevent creating these titles (containing %9A etc.) at Latin-1 wikis, see User:Gangleri/tests/Aš. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:35, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

WikiProject Geographical coordinates
I have had some time to think, and see we may have different opinions on how maps should be treated. I really think the type of map pointers used for the Geography of the Pitcairn Islands is bad for a good number of reasons. I have no intention of contesting what you are doing there directly. But I will just say that it is in direct opposition to my visions and goals about the treatment of maps on Wikipedia. I will thus oppose such templates being supported by the Geo coor project proper. They really distract me, and I also think they distract the vision, and the path to get there. (Don't misunderstand: It is very cool that people use the coor template in templates, and if they do, the articles will behave properly in terms of the concept of linking geograpical coordinates.) -- Egil 09:32, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The above came out more like from a judge of World Idol -- give me some time, and I'll come up with something more constructive. -- Egil 10:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay.--Patrick 10:26, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here goes: -- Egil 08:39, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Avoiding having direct links to external map sources, like Mapquest, was exactly one of the visions of the WikiProject Geographical coordinates.
 * 2) I have thus moved your discussion about such mechanisms to the project talk page.
 * 3) I am pretty convinced that direct links in articles to Mapquest et al needs to be placed under the "External links" heading

Character encoding

 * Halló Patrick! Please see User talk:R. fiend. What character encoding is required? What do you recommend? Thanks in advance! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 01:55, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
 * Thanks Patrick for Egill! I planed to work on "stealth links" ( (space) ' edit here   / edit  here), their usage at de: and possible other "applications" but I was puzzeled with a lot of other issues / "just to knows''", most of them new to me see User:Gangleri/tests/unknown. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 09:00, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)

Did you know that ...

 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Image talk:Al-Idrisi's world map.JPG works fine and
 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Image:Al-Idrisi's world map.JPG not?
 * Special:Recentchangeslinked/Image talk:Al-Idrisi's world map.JPG works fine and
 * Special:Recentchangeslinked/Image:Al-Idrisi's world map.JPG not?
 * See User talk:SimonP. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 15:33, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
 * nl:Overleg gebruiker:Andre Engels#no:, nb: and skanwiki (maybe interesting for en:Wikipedia:Interlanguage links etc.) 08:52, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)
 * See feedback at nn:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Interwikilenkjer. Thanks 11:10, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Redirects and inclusions - minor differences

 * Halló Patrick, I have seen some strange coding and want to write about it. Please add the relevant information to the documentation and recommendations wherever applicable.
 * There are four (disambiguation) templates:
 * nn:Mal:Peikar includes nn:Mal:Fleirtyding
 * no:Mal:Peker is included in no:Mal:Disambig
 * What side effects are caused when you use an inclusion and not a redirect?
 * 1) a redirect is identified as such without editing, an inclusion not
 * 2) an inclusion will probably generate at least one additional line in the current (08:01, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)) MediaWiki software
 * 3) anchors would work with inclusions but not with redirects
 * 4) if the included title contains interlanguage links, this will cause conflicts and confuse bots
 * 5) there is a significat difference ragarding inclusion in categories; redirects are not automaticaly included unless this is specified in the first line; this feature does not work at the moment (11:09, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC))  see bugzilla:nnnn
 * Personaly I prefer redirects. Please comment. Thanks in advance. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:01, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)
 * Personaly I prefer redirects. Please comment. Thanks in advance. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:01, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

 * Yes, redirects seem better, see also m:Help:Template.--Patrick 10:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Changes to geographical coordinates
Due to further requirements and enhancements in the concept of coordinates, it seems changes will be necessary. Obsolete templates are being phased out, and in the long run, there may be a new mechanism. It should not be extra work, because as long as the existing templates are used, changes will happen automatically. -- Egil 18:11, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

inline links at commons: to nonexisting images

 * Halló Patrick, I am surprised that inline links at commons: to nonexisting images does not show "red". Is this a bug? Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 21:06, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)
 * They are as usual for me.--Patrick 21:23, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * It maight be that this is usual for you but links to most of the other namespaces behave differently.

 * Halló Patrick, Please take a look at Inline Linking. I was searching some documentation for a friend regarding inline linking (using a start colon) for interlanguage links, categories, images etc.
 * 1) Where can I find that information? I searched meta:Special:Allpages/Inl, the Help and Meta namespaces.
 * 2) Inline Linking (corectly Inline linking) refers more to inline inclusion of images. This page is misleading.
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 22:24, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)
 * I made a brief overview m:Help:Link.--Patrick 23:34, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks Patrick! Gangleri | [ Th] | T 00:00, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

"Sex in Advertising" rename
Hello Patrick, I am sorry but the impromptu change in name for this article seems to me uncalled for and harmful. First of all, the old title is a _technical term_ in the advertising business, describing precisely the argument of the article. Your new title takes the topical title and adds a subset to it, since nudity is certainly NOT mandatory in sex in advertising - it is simply one of the tools of the trade. Thus it confuses and reduces the reach of the old title. If you want an analogy, it is like taking an article titled "British Navy" and renaming it "Battleships and the British Navy." Furthermore, Yahoo returned 15600 hits for the old title and three hits for the new one. The net effect of this change is to make the article less accessible to users. Please undo it, because I do not know how. (PS I am posting this in the article discussion page as well.) Haiduc 12:08, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Since somebody argued about a nude picture that it was not sexual, I thought I make the title more general, and add a more objective criterion. But if others agree with you I will change it back.--Patrick 12:24, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Patrick, quite aside from the fact that Beland and I had only begun to discuss the various aspects of that picture - making any changes by anyone untimely - you seem to be under the impression that the picture is in the article. It is not. It is on another website. So since there really is no imaginable justification for your otherwise well-intentioned action, and since there are a number of very valid arguments for its inappropriateness, please undo your name change, and then if there is a consensus for change I am sure it will be implemented. But please do not arbitrarily create a fait accompli and then set preconditions for restoring the status quo. It is still not clear to me how you can come into an article and arbitrarily change the title without according the other editors the elementary consideration of previous discussion and debate. I look forward to a long and interesting collaboration here with you, but I hope that it will be based on some sense of collegial give-and-take. Haiduc 18:40, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC) (copied from article discussion page)

 * Thank you, Patrick. Please feel free to comment on anything. Haiduc 02:27, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tables

 * Halló Patrick! Please take a look at Dobermann/Temp (moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/TemplateTesting). The surrounding text is to closed to the seccond and third tables. Is there a way to change this. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 05:41, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether there is an easier way, but for one way see m:Help:Table#Space around a table, image, or text.--Patrick 21:31, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Patrick for the hint! I spend more then two hours without success. "align=left" is used at Dobermann/Temp. The page has many errors depending of the window size and your bowser — I use Mozilla Firefox.
 * I did not manage to bring the surrownding text more away from the table:
 * 1) [ no border] around the original table
 * 2) [ border surrounding dummy column] — I have no idea how to suppress the border
 * Another problem is that the first table at Dobermann/Temp will interfear regarding "align=left" with the next following table. Just resize the window to see this.
 * Do you have any clue what could be done here? Thanks for your efforts. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 18:41, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

 * Please note the updated link above, did you try that?--Patrick 01:37, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Patrick! I changed Dobermann/Temp succesfuly regarding "Space around a table, image, or text".
 * Regarding "Another problem is that the first table at Dobermann/Temp will interfear regarding "align=left" with the next following table. Just resize the window to see this." You can see this only if you have a very large monitor or you edit the section "Appearance" and make a preview in a large window. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 04:24, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)
 * Use  before the second table. On en: we also have Template:-, so you can use .--Patrick 08:30, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

unknown behaviour of templates

 * Halló Patrick! I am involved in the translation of Wikimania texts into Esperanto, see meta:Special:Allpages/Translation requests/Wikimania.
 * Please take a look at meta:User:Gangleri/tests/Wikimania 01. I would like to know if this is a bug or not, if it is specific to or not, maybe it is new since version 1.4.0. Thanks in advance for your efforts. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 21:32, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

 * This looks normal, m:Translation requests/Wikimania/Template:Browse/Eo: is not in the template namespace but in the main namespace.--Patrick 01:36, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks Patrick! I never tried an inclusion of objects from the article namespace (only from project or user namespaces).
 * Hound exists; generates  . I learned somthing new. Thanks Gangleri | [ Th] | T 04:28, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

Bad titles

 * Halló Patrick! What is your opinion about User:Gangleri/tests/sister projects? Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 02:22, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)
 * The logic is not always clear.--Patrick 08:56, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks Patrick! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 11:11, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

Watchlist requests
hey, try to be patient with watchlists ;-) when you load 10 or 20 queries onto database, it is not going to work any faster, thanks! Domas Mituzas 12:01, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

 * I rarely do more than one watchlist request and one or two other requests at the same time.--Patrick 08:57, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Map
Have you looked at the enlarged versions of those maps? Jooler

 * Yes, my comments refer to the full versions.--Patrick 11:16, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wabi-sabi (source of text?)
Please see Talk:Wabi-sabi, but the gist of it is... I have (hopefully temporarily) removed a bunch of text from the Wabi-sabi article you created because it appears the text was copied verbatim from http://www.art.unt.edu/ntieva/artcurr/asian/wabisabi.html. It was good text, and maybe I'm mistaken, so if you can give some feedback, that would be great... --Ds13 06:14, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

 * At the time I copied it from http://www.capitancook.com/articles/index.php?WabiSabi (which does not have that content anymore) assuming that it was under GFDL. I don't know more about its copyright status.--Patrick 09:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the response. I noticed you did include the unt.edu link when you created the article, and that's where the text appeared to come from when I (only recently) looked at the article.  The old chicken and egg question...!  Anyways, I guess better safe than sorry when it comes to GFDL...  Cheers. --Ds13 18:04, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

some questions
we discussed this already at
 * Halló Patrick!
 * 1) I was surprised about commons:User:Gangleri/tests. It seems that the image namespace behaves quite different, remember
 * 1) I am puzzeled about voting policy. Some Wikipedias require between others n edits (in the article namespace). I see no way to count the number of edits if a user worked some weeks on an article which is deleted later. Do you know better?
 * Yes, that is a problem. These edits can only be seen by a sysop in the "deleted" page history.--Patrick 13:43, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * 1) It seems that there has been a change regarding the "watchlist" functionality. If I watch "foo" which is moved to "bar" the last is no longer in my "watchlist". It seems to me that this is a change since the last version(s). Is this true or just a wrong "feeling"?
 * I just tried it out, I moved a page I watch while logged in as another user: both the old and new name are on the watchlist of my normal username.--Patrick 14:13, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks in advance for all your efforts. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 13:31, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

 * Thank you very much!

 * I learned somthing new about duplicates and 1202: See
 * nl:Overleg gebruiker:Andre Engels
 * ro:Discuţie Utilizator:Gangleri
 * 1) Deletion log at nl:
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 14:55, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

Template:Link
Why does Template:Link use external link style instead of internal link style? I think the template should contain: | and thus produce a link in internal link style. The current form seems misleading to me as I would expect an external link to lead to an external site. However, I am reluctant to change it in case it is used somewhere which depends on or prefers it in its current form. (And there seems to be no way to tell where a template is used.)

If the template needs to stay as it is then I will simply use Template:ilink for internal links in the internal link style. I do think the current form of Template:Link is interesting. Perhaps it could be moved to wlinkx ("a wiki internal piped link in external link style")?

- Pioneer-12 22:24, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * It is no longer needed due to a software update, earlier internal link style for a link depending on a parameter always led to the edit page.--Patrick 22:59, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Ah, that explains things. And aha, "what links here" DOES show where a template is used (I could swear it didn't do that before.... but that was months ago.) I wonder if the link template is TOTALLY unnecessary. It seems like it might be useful for utility purposes. - Pioneer-12 23:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I blanked it for now, but you are welcome to restore and use it, of course.--Patrick 23:35, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some notes about redirects

 * at the end of uk:Обговорення користувача:Gutsul
 * redirects to the special namespace do not work automaticaly
 * redirects using "standard" names for namespaces as "project" behave "displays" differently in "&action=edit" and in "&redirect=no"
 * #REDIRECT [[foo] with one ending bracket workd
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:48, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:48, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

Some notes about interwiki / interlanguage links

 * multiple prefixes ru:en:User:Patrick will not fail
 * ru:Google:Patrick generates a bad title
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:45, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:45, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

Some special templates

 * it:Discussioni template:Vuoto
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 19:32, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 19:32, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

 * I do not understand your point. Perhaps you are confused by an existing page containing the message about the non-existence of a page?--Patrick 00:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's the point. People can insert the template at an arbitrary title and "at the first view" you can not see the difference. I tried to make such a "empty" page at de: but de:MediaWiki:Noarticletext is using many different templates. Finaly I continued to work on other items. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:35, 2005 Apr 26 (UTC)

Some notes about MediaWiki

 * namespaces: strange behaviour at oc:Utilisator:Gangleri/tests
 * Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:58, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

 * So "wikipedia:" works the same as "project;" I tried it on fr:, there it also works like that, but on Meta it goes to w:en.--Patrick 21:23, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the help Patrick! I was asked about the difference between und  . I found some links with google but you know that the informations maight not be up to date. I asked "Wegge" at irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki but the answer was more "It maight be that ...". If he read this and verfies the code Wegge should answer here.
 * The only difference between localurl: and localurle: is that the latter calls the PHP function htmlspecialchars on the output of the former. By experimenting with various combinations of localurl(e) and PAGENAME(E), I have been unable to spot the difference. I think the origin of localurle is buried somewhere in the more sinister past of the Parser. -- Wegge 09:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Reminder: There are severel bugs known with localurl:
 * will generate broken links for pages containing space(s); see 1649 and use
 * will generate broken links, ; see 1649 (I used [ Th] == [ Th] earlier in my signature) and use
 * Suggestion: as long as the "behaviour" of localurl e : is not "known" I suggest to use localurl : and see what happens &ndash Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:23, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

 * Hopefully 2 -3 actual examples can be provided
 * en:MediaWiki:Mailnologintext &ndash zh-min-nan:MediaWiki:Mailnologintext (history)
 * Notes:
 * en:MediaWiki:Mailnologintext shows an example generating "broken HTML links"
 * oldid=11211 seems to be the example
 * It seams that the settings of the current WikiMedia foundation projects are configurated that way that MediaWiki:Mailnologintext would never be displayed. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:40, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)
 * ... (here) ...
 * See
 * meta.wikimedia.org and localurle – mainly pages as LanguageFoo.php
 * zh-min-nan:User:Gangleri/tests
 * Please include some notes at Variable
 * Thanks to all for the help and support! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 08:55, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

 * I've cited an actual example and put it above. I see no principled reason why one instance of Special: would use one while another would use the other.  A-giau 10:38, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some notes about documentation

 * Halló Patrick! Please follow unknown documentation. I would be happy if you log in to Nuka-Wiki (verion 1.5). Just use the English user interface. Thanks in advance! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 20:29, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

 * Please see Category:PAGENAMEE. PAGENAMEE is not equivalent to <underscore>PAGENAME</underscore>. I never made such tests before but you can see now that all (?) characters which are not 7bit ASCII are "converted" to UNICODE (?). Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 21:52, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

More questions

 * Halló Patrick! This night I used <pre> – </pre> the first time. But at commons:User:Gangleri/sandbox/Common errors I have a problem with the "layout". Could you please give me a hand. The OK shuld have the same orientation as not OK. Thanks in advance! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:30, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

 * Halló Patrick! I have a problem wich "anchors" which I experienced for quite a long time. Please do the following:
 * 1) go at eo:Vikipedio:Trukoj/Plurnivela uzado de ŝablonoj
 * 2) remember the text: "Eble Brion povas plifaciligi la aferon jene:"
 * 3) edit the section "plibonigoj"
 * 4) you will see "Redaktante Vikipedio:Trukoj/Plurnivela uzado de ŝablonoj (sekcion)" – this is the "next" section
 * The page is quite huge. The problem may relate to "additional anchors" defined similar to <font id="foo">. I searched " id" in the browser but could not find it. Please let a note here if you can identify the "problem". Thank you in advance for all your efforts. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 23:20, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)

 * FYI: About es:Usuario Discusión:Pilaf
 * Please note that "<font id="Live Preview again" />" does not give the same result / the same anchor as "<font id="Live _ Preview _ again" />". Gangleri | [ Th] | T 10:52, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)
 * FYI: rendering (?) problem at su:User:Gangleri/tests == 2029 Gangleri | [ Th] | T 03:18, 2005 May 1 (UTC)

 * Halló Patrick! I worked on 531 but I need to leave for some days. Could you please create some simple test examples regarding the usage of non 7bit characters in parameters in "localurl"? "Örlög" etc. fails as parameter in localurl:foo:.

 * Seems to work fine, just do not use PAGENAMEE in localurl.--Patrick 08:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Template:Task failed / fails for titles like "foo:Örlög", "Image:Þórsmörk Júli 1996.jpg", "User:הגולם", "User:נעבעך גוט משוגע", "User:Горан Анђелковић".
 * I replaced PAGENAMEE with PAGENAME in Template:Linkset here and Template:Task here. "Linkset here" now works properly but "Task here" does not. WHY? Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:02, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your help and sorry for the delay. I made yesterday about 800 edits "to feel familiar again" [[Image:Smiley.png|16px|;-)]] I still have no general solution for Template:Linkset here (calling Template:Linkset). An extension "underscore" would help to fix the problem and simplify everything.

 * Would be happy to know if there are ways to simplify Template:Task. See also and . Thanks in advance! Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 03:11, 2005 May 19 (UTC)
 * I added some comments to the template talk pages, it seems some templates and parameters are superfluous.--Patrick 22:00, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks again! I answered at and . Yesterday I modified Template:Task mainly for the namespace "special" and because you may "call" / "place" the template whereever you like. I also changed priotity "test" to priotity "sandbox". Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 21:43, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

 * I am aware that "Template:Task" is complex because of what I called "portability" which contradicts "localisation". It is based on "generic namespace names" used also at "Template:Sort order" and derived variants. Probably it makes no sense to "force" the usage of "generic namespace names" for users others then developers. It makes neither sense in Italian, Spanish etc. nor in Russian, Hindi etc. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 22:18, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

 * Halló Patrick! I have written some notes about handling at Template:Task and will include bugzilla references later. Would be happy if you take a look at it. it: wants to have the template transfered. I am especially interested about the idea having the "todo pages" and "todo/priority pages" in the template namespace. Thanks in advance and best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 12:33, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
 * Halló Patrick! I worked all night at a RTL test wiki. I will look at your work tonight. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 11:19, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)
 * Both wiki's will be offline until this weekend. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 18:37, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

Template:Forced new line

 * Halló Patrick! At "Nukawiki" I use
 * &nbsp;

generating:

when used three times generating:

 * to generate forced new lines mainly after templates. Before I experimented with "<br clear="all" />" and a number of empty lines or "<br />". I do not like it (press CTRL-A in the browser) but is / can be very efficient. Do you know another method / other methods?
 * I can see that this does not work here (User talk:Patrick). Please compare with nukawiki:#Template:Forced new line. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:33, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

 * I do not know, I never need more than just a new paragraph.--Patrick 22:49, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks anyway! fi:User:Nikerabbit assumed: "i suspect tidy is removing them" – "what is tidy?" – "cleans the xhtml output". Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 23:04, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

using div
generating:

when used three times generating:

I hope(d) this works here. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 01:58, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

FiverAlpha
compare with leuksman:User:Gangleri/tests/sandbox#Template:Forced new line

Template:Forced new line substitute
content is:

test with Template:Forced new line substitute

 * 2390 – request for a defined "new line" after rendering

Would be happy if this is a valid substitute. 1 Have to test it at en:. 100 Compare with new line substitute nukawiki:User:Gangleri/tests/sandbox. 150 Best regards ~ generating:

Would be happy if this is a valid substitute. 1 Have to test it at en:. 100 Compare with new line substitute nukawiki:User:Gangleri/tests/sandbox. 150 Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 09:37, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC) 1 Thanks Patrick! Now we have something that works at en: but *not* at Nuka-Wiki. Regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 17:34, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

list of items

 * Halló Patrick! I will insert here some links. Best regards Gangleri | [ Th] | T 01:49, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)
 * restrictions restrictions related to "history" and variable REVISIONID

Wageningen
you have added to the Wageningen page text about a penis-shaped memorial. so far as I can tell this is an urban myth. There is nothing on the official Wageningen sites: http://www.4en5meiwageningen.nl & http://www.wageningen.nl/internet/index.jsp. Do you have a source for this? - Plastic rat

 * ,, .--Patrick 21:25, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thankyou Plastic rat

Conversion from a parameter expression to a rendered parameter or conversely
Hi! How can I "quote" the value of a parameter used in a template without generating wikicode? See and ? Gangleri.

 * I do not think conversion from a parameter expression to a rendered parameter or conversely is possible. It seems that, unfortunately, for a demo you have to use two parameters, one with and one without nowiki tags, like m:Template:T demo. Regards, Patrick 09:05, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Image source
Thank you for uploading Image:Map North Holland with numbered municipalities.png. Its copyright status is unclear, so it may have to be deleted. Please leave a note on the image page about the source of the image. Thank you. --Alan Au 05:55, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Nu
Template:Nu has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Templates for deletion. Thank you. — Xiong 熊 talk * 23:43, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

(Contained : " Category:Images containing nudity".)

Trinity anniversary
July 16, 2005 —two months from now—will be the 60th anniversary of the "Trinity" test. I'm trying to organize a few people into getting that article to featured quality before then, anticipating a lot of general news coverage and curious minds. I've noticed you doing good work on Manhattan Project-related articles in the past, so I thought I would see if you were interested in helping out. Please see the discussion at Talk:Trinity site for some of my further thoughts on what should be present in the article, and please feel free to share you own. Thanks! --Fastfission 19:04, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Benelux (composite)
I put it on vfd see: Votes_for_deletion/Benelux_%28composite_page%29 Waerth 12:36, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Contained:

=Belgium=

=Luxembourg=

=Netherlands=

Template:call
The meta:Template:call incantation is a tad hard to figure out. It also is referenced without explanation in, where its intent is apparent. Perhaps you can add Usage to the Talk page, as suggested in Template_namespace. (SEWilco 04:51, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC))

 * Done.--Patrick 21:09, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Recursive if equal g
I was trying to make a recursive template, for multiple optional parameters, but can't get m:Template:if equal g to behave as expected. My Template sandbox test  *  was supposed to emit all three parameters but only emits the first followed by  . I also asked Babel whether template recursion is disabled in Meta. (SEWilco 03:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))

 * See m:Meta:Babel.--Patrick 09:27, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * OK. Yet Another Template, then. (SEWilco 15:14, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))
 * More usage of if equal g: Template:seemain2, Template:seemain3, Template:seesubarticle2, Template:seesubarticle3. I created Template:Show0, Template:Show1, Template:Show2, Template:Show3 to avoid the X1-X3 name conflicts. (SEWilco 17:09, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))

Seemain
I understand your interest in Template:seemain3. I realized it could be somewhat simplified. After my latest changes, I think "What links here" of Template:seemain10 and Template:seemain20 will be informative in different ways. And for 11-19 I'll just make people count. (SEWilco 08:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC))

 * Why do you make so many templates? For 1,2,3, separate templates make sense, but why 6,7,8,9? The ifs allow one to use always the same.--Patrick 08:16, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Another thing: the naming is confusing, seemain20 works for a maximum of 20, seemain3 works only for exactly 3.--Patrick 08:28, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * All the templates require a certain number of parameters. Seemain20 requires 20 parameters, even if some are empty.  We're both aware of the inabilities to detect parameter existence, and if that changes the few seemain20 uses are likely to be altered.  The templates for 1-10 are for convenience of use, with simple coding in smaller numbers for speed.  (SEWilco 16:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC))

WP:TFD

 * 1) Template:Itp, which you created, has been listed for deletion at WP:TFD. Blank Verse   ∅  13:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) Template:Msh, which you created, has been listed for deletion at WP:TFD. Blank Verse   ∅  05:44, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * 1) At Template talk:Ilf, you say that Template:Ilf does not work. Do you want it deleted? Blank Verse   ∅  10:53, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Done.--Patrick 12:38, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Meta-template "scripting"
Patrick,

After I posted something to Wikipedia talk:Avoid using meta-templates, I found your page. it seems that you have introduced many "scripting" meta-templates, like Template:ine or Template:P1 (which I was trying to find under X1). Just wondering, have you considered anything that I mention in my comment in the Meta-templates page? Right now, there isn't a lot of use of most of these (zero links for some) on Wikipedia.

Also, just a usage question, can you link to Wikimedia to get templates, instead of duplicating them on Wikipedia?

Mrendo 17:31, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I learned the technique from Template:If defined call1, etc., which are used in some infoboxes, which are in rather many articles (more than 500, so the backlinks do not show all). I have expanded on the idea. Where other methods can be used, efficiency with regard to the server load (especially in the case of widespread use) should be taken into account in the comparison, and also simplicity.

 * No, templates on Meta can not be used directly on Wikipedia, they have to be copied. With MediaWiki version 1.5 they can also be imported, which may be more convenient in the case of many (small) auxiliary templates.

 * Patrick 22:33, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * See m:Template talk:If equal for templates that I am aware of that use the technique.--Patrick 23:00, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Have you considered asking an administrator to protect these meta-templates? Most people don't know about them, but since they are implicitly included in many, many other templates, the consequences of a change to the template are far-reaching, not only in page appearance, but also in server load when one of the basic ones is changed. The ones that exist in Wikipedia now shouldn't need to ever be changed if they work correctly. --Mrendo 14:31, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Good idea, I have protected the three templates implicitly included in more than 500 pages each.--Patrick 21:13, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Organization of info on Dutch municipalities and villages
Why did you make all Dutch villages redirects to their municipalities and moved info to the municipality pages. This is wrong. I just made Benthuizen and noticed their were no links to it! Can you please stop unlinking these? By unlinking these you are not inviting people to be bold and edit things!!! Also most municipalities are recent creations while the towns and villages in it have a long history! Waerth 15:35, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with this. Why do you think Dutch villages has not any right to have an own article? Is it not important enough? Jeroenvrp 15:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * When there was no separate info about Benthuizen, the redirect from Benthuizen to Rijnwoude was very useful: it led to a location map, a link to a detailed map, etc. This cannot be combined with a link from Rijnwoude to Benthuizen, that would be an indirect self-link.

 * Rijnwoude has a very small article, so you could easily add the text about Benthuizen as a section. When the article about a municipality gets very large, it is time to split off villages to their own articles. It is not a matter of not being important enough.--Patrick 00:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * By deleting the links and making the pages redirects you are telling people it is not done. 99% of the visitors doesn't know how to edit a redirect so they leave. Waerth 10:02, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * They can add text to the municipality article.--Patrick 10:12, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * See also m:Help:Redirect.--Patrick 10:16, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I still disagree with this. A village is not a subsection of the municipality, it is part of the municipality, but needs an own article by itselve and there will never come one if there are no red links. Following your arguments you can also redirect provinces of countries to that country. We call this uneven redirects, in other words 'redirects to an article with a different subject'. It is also not pro-GFDL to encourage people to first write on another article and than move the text. It should be written under the good articlename from the beginning, only than the right history will be available. Jeroenvrp 13:31, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * It surprises me that you dispute that a village is a subtopic of the municipality. Even for matters not related to local government the municipality is the standard grouping of villages, see e.g. the map linked from Rijnwoude. And keeping subtopics in one article until that gets too large is standard practice on Wikipedia (also for provinces) and elsewhere. A move should be indicated in the edit summaries of both the source and target article, so the edit history is still easy to find.--Patrick 15:07, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

 * Because most municipalities in the Netherlands are recent creations with a short history as opposed to most villages which were seperate municipalities just 30 years ago. Waerth 23:24, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * A municipality article may well cover the history of its villages, also before the existence of the municipality. With regard to that history and some other topics, the municipality just provides a convenient grouping of villages. Always when there are lots of little pieces of information one tries to group them, in this case little pieces of text which are rather small for an article. Also, municipality info is relevant for the village, and therefore convenient to have in the same article as the specific village info.--Patrick 02:46, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Waerth and Jeroenvrp here, and hope that you will restore the villages. Just because an article doesn't have enough content yet, doesn't mean it is not worthy of existing on its own right. If you want to try experminenting with these kinds of redirects, try it on nl: and see how they respond first. Danny 15:03, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Article size recommends combining very small articles.--Patrick 15:41, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * It also recommends fixing a short article by adding information - Galwaygirl 18:07, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * It is saying "consider combining it with a related page" under "<1K". So you can consider it, in my mine an others opinion a very bad considaration. Also a lot of pages that were moved and made a redirect where more than that. Also a lot of pages where made a redirect, without ever been an article. There was even an article about a former island moved to another page. It had 2 or 3 alineas. Jeroenvrp 18:08, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like you've been making massive amounts of work for people by mixing up political subdivisions with physical geographical locations. IIRC it was consensus that actual geographic locations are notable in any case, while there's no particular rule for political subdivisions. If you're unsure as to political or geographic representation of an area, you should be especially careful, and perhaps ask one or two people who know the area for advice. Kim Bruning 21:12, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Probably that was about deleting content, not about moving it. Can you give a link to that discussion?--Patrick 23:30, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

 * It was in accordance with the WikiProject Dutch municipalities, so it is ridiculous to say that I or we have caused you work. Also, it was done gradually, not only by me, but also by Eugene van der Pijll and Pethan, so if you had any interest in the matter at the time, you could have joined the discussion. By making massive changes before a consensus is reached within the project, you may be causing work if things have to be reverted again.--Patrick 23:15, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Danny,

If you think a redirect qualifies for deletion, the proper procedure is to list it on Redirects for deletion. Please restore the redirects for now, and wait until the discussion there is finished.

Patrick 22:48, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC) (also posted at User talk:Danny, currently User talk:Danny Archive 6)

 * Actually, when you made those redirects, you deleted considerable amounts of material. Our job is to help Wikipedia grow, not stunt its growth, which you have been doing. Danny 22:53, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * I have only deleted links to redirects and some red links which did not seem useful, not any content. I have not seen before that a redirect was deleted for the benefit of a red link. It is not even mentioned in Redirects for deletion as a valid reason.--Patrick 23:23, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

 * See also above: it was in accordance with the WikiProject Dutch municipalities, so it is ridiculous to say that I or we have caused people work.--Patrick 23:15, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

I just saw your comment on dannys userpage. Do you know how many redirects you made? I'm sure you acted in good faith, but let's not cause even more work for the good people than has already been done. Perhaps you could help with the cleanup instead? Kim Bruning 22:59, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Eugene van der Pijll has also made redirects. See also WikiProject Dutch municipalities.--Patrick 01:05, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Roger that. The wikiproject might be seriously broken then, making it extremely difficult to do interwikis, or even maybe having broken them. Ouw ouw ouw. :-/ Kim Bruning 01:48, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:Erasmus Line
I would like to know what is the purpose of Template:Erasmus Line, and why did you create three articles (Hoogvliet, Poortugaal, and Rhoon) which contained nothing but the template. Thank you. (Perhaps you intend to expand these articles. In that case, let me apologize for failure to understand that.) - Mike Rosoft 21:12, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Some people are against redirecting a village to a municipality, they prefer a red link from the municipality to the village. However, in that case it is difficult to find info about the village. The metro info is an attempt to cope with this problem, it is useful info regarding the village, and also providing links to the municipality, etc.--Patrick 21:26, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Dutch province templates
Patrick,

I guess if you want to include the various links in your templates that's ok but your list of all the municipalities in the various provinces take up half of the article. You can make them a lot smaller you know. You don't need the huge map. You can just have a map at the top like the one in Hilversum. ---Hottentot

 * That does not show the names of neighboring municipalities.--Patrick 00:32, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes but you could make the map smaller ..... so people could click to enlarge it is hige now and in every mun. article. Waerth 01:19, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Patrick, don't you see that your templates take up too much space? You don't need all that stuff. All you need is a version where it just lists the municipalities in South Holland. --Hottentot

 * That compromise seems okay, except that the numbers in the list corresponded with the numbers on the map.--Patrick 22:39, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

 * Hmmmm...why do we need the map again? --Hottentot

 * For example to see the name of an adjacent municipality, so that you can then follow the link for that.--Patrick 22:57, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thank you very much for helping me out with info that ! means bold. I'm still learning to use tables.

Cheers Ianblair23 22:27, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * You are welcome.--Patrick 22:30, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

Template protection request
I'd like to request protection of main and seemain. See Template_talk:Main and preceding discussion. User:MarSch is impatient and ignorant of all the options. I can easily write a bot to change "misuse" Main usage which are not at the top of an article (the specified usage), but am waiting for things to settle down or getting approval from someone. I mentioned a bot in previous discussions, but MarSch ignored that and took what action could be easily done. Incidentally, there were versions of those templates which use  but were removed by someone who did not like HTML, and I do not know which is preferred. (SEWilco 4 July 2005 00:00 (UTC))

 * Currently there are no frequent reversions, and the matter is being discussed, so protection does not seem needed.--Patrick 4 July 2005 10:12 (UTC)

Google maps
Please use the correct coordinates.--Patrick 4 July 2005 16:34 (UTC)

 * Correct coordinates? Please define. Kim Bruning 4 July 2005 17:55 (UTC)

 * Oh, *&*@&#*@!&#!!!! I see. I forgot to use the "link to this page" on google maps. Lemme fix. Kim Bruning 4 July 2005 18:03 (UTC)

Clothing article
Patrick, I haven't meddled with YOUR sociology of clothing article, or the link to it from one part of the clothing page, because you're so protective of it and I'm just not up for another fight. You know that I don't regard your article as a good treatment of the sociology of clothing, since it doesn't seem to relate to the discipline of sociology in any way -- there are no references -- and it is severely ethnocentric, being based solely on your personal experience of a certain segment of contemporary Western culture. But I do object strongly to your adding another link to your article in the regular clothing article, trying to connect clothing taboos and clothing maintenance. That list of "clothing taboos" is squicky and bears no real relationship to the actual business of clothing maintenance, cleaning and mending. I don't get off on stains, I try to get rid of them. For aesthetic reasons. Please, just accept our stand-off and don't try to push. Zora 06:53, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * It is standard practice to link related content.
 * There is no such thing as my or your article.
 * "I don't get off on stains, I try to get rid of them." is a silly and irrelevant remark.
 * Patrick 07:14, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * If you know more about ethnic variations regarding a topic, you can always add that.--Patrick 07:25, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I can't just ADD stuff, because the categories you have set up are unworkable for any cross-cultural comparison. Clothing taboos -- taboo implies either something forbidden but naughty and enticing, OR something tribal. It's a bad word to use. I think you mean "any element or condition of clothing that implies low social rank or disregard of social mores". Well, there have been thousands of human cultures, and they all have different ways of judging what's upper and lower class, or what counts as gross disregard of convention.

 * Cleanliness as we understand just doesn't WORK in a lot of cultures. If all you wear is paint and a penis sheath, then cleanliness is washing your body (though how often constitutes cleanliness I don't know) and changing your penis sheath when necessary. If you're a Tibetan nomad, you don't wash your clothes OR yourself -- a good coat of grease is protection against the weather. If you're an ancient Tongan wearing barkcloth, you just wear the barkcloth until it falls to pieces. There's no way to wash it. However, you may want to bathe several times a day, and consider visiting European seamen to be utterly gross. It is impossible to generalize!

 * As for the real sociology of clothing, here's a place to start: . The guy seems just too too postmodern to me, from a brief glance at his resume, but his work would have references, and that would start you on a voyage of discovery in sociology. Anthropology would be relevant also -- as far as I'm concerned, the distinction between anthropology and sociology is mere academic turf war. See material for this course . There's more to it than just classifying the stuff you see every day in your male urban Western environment.

 * If you happen to be a gay male, then you probably know enough to make a specialized article right there. Tell us about the signals clothing gives off among gays. Handkerchief code? True or urban legend? Is the Tom of Finland look still hot? What about bears? I haven't looked, but I suspect that this stuff isn't in Wikipedia. Just putting it out there would help break down prejudices, I think.

 * Or if you're a jock, an article about the etiquette of wearing sports or sport-styled clothing. Something about which I'm completely ignorant. I can tell you about Balenciaga, but not sports jerseys. If you're going to write about your environment, zero in on it.

 * That's all. I'm sorry if I've been snippy, I'm TIRED. I should probably take a wiki-vacation for a while. But really, your taboo list has only a tangential relation to clothing maintenance. Zora 09:11, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, there was a section "Imperfections of clothing" dealing with practical imperfections as well as social ones (these often go together). Maintenance deals with prevention and correction of part of  these imperfections.--Patrick 09:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * That section ASSUMES modern Western-style clothing. It's completely inapplicable to 99% of clothing history. It's ethnocentric. US-centric. Furthermore, it jumbles together all sorts of different issues. Zora 10:21, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * Usually, unless stated otherwise, text is about the present. Discussing history (and remote tribes) is interesting, but it is odd to complain that e.g. a zipper is not very relevant, just because in ancient times (which could easily be 99% of clothing history, measured in time) it was not invented yet.--Patrick 10:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

History and remote tribes are just as important as NOW and HERE. There are some topics, like architecture or painting, or clothing, in which an acquaintance with history, sociology, and anthropology are crucial. You can't just dismiss everyone different as "remote tribes".

Look, if you want to write about clothing in YOUR specific environment, which you must define carefully, then you can. Without looking anything up, BECAUSE you are what an anthropologist would call a native informant. It's not written down, but you know it because you live it. But your knowledge is good only as far as the boundaries of your world. The minute you start generalizing outside the world you know, you can be very wrong.

Frex, here in Hawai'i, it is the custom to leave your shoes outside the door, or at the door. You don't wear shoes in the house. It's dirty. Now if I generalized from that to all of the US, or all of North American, I'd be wrong.

If you started reading some of the books and articles in the anthropology of clothing syllabus, I'll bet you'd enjoy them. In fact, I'm wishing I had time to get some of those myself. I've picked up my clothing knowledge hit or miss and never really read anything rigorous. I'll bet my approach could be improved too. Zora 11:09, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

 * You suggest that my text is for 99% wrong, yet your example does not even contradict anything of my text.--Patrick 20:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

User template suggestion
For a sandbox of your own, create a user subpage. — I wonder how many others didn't think of putting that reminder there. Excellent. (SEWilco 05:17, 15 July 2005 (UTC))

 * Thanks. Something along these lines was suggested by (Steve S)Ummit in Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#redirect the sandbox?.--Patrick 06:35, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

wallpaper groups
hi there patrick,

a suggestion: since you seem to applying a lot of energy to the "complete list of wallpaper groups", how about moving the examples out to a separate page. I've been meaning to do that for a while but I don't have time right now. What I mean is: the list on the Wallpaper group page should just be the "diagrammatic" versions, plus orbifold notation etc. Basically to make the list more compact. (Check out the german version to see what I mean.) All the pretty pictures and photographs should be in a separate article, e.g. Wallpaper group (illustrations). Whaddya think? Dmharvey Talk 11:48, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

 * I think it is useful to have the examples for a group together with the description and diagram, but in addition we could have a summary page.--Patrick 12:21, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

 Greetings. I see you've been amplifying the comments on each group. Thanks for playing!

A few questions:
 * 1) Did you notice my comment on the talk page about center versus centre? I don't care which we use, but convention says we stick with what was there before, which is "centre". I find it hard to remember, and I don't know if you're forgetting or didn't notice.
 * I'll try to remember.--Patrick 21:07, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

 * 1) In discussing p4, for example, you say "There are two different rotation centers." However, both the diagram to the right and the orbifold notation 442 indicate two non-isomorphic 4-fold centres and one 2-fold center. That might be a typo, but in p4m, orbifold *442, you again say "There are two different centers of symmetry." These lead me to believe a systematic confusion about the meaning is possible. Can you clarify?
 * I meant 4-fold centres, I have clarified it.--Patrick 00:22, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

 * 1) Dmharvey had been providing a link every time a group was mentioned outside its section, and putting quotation marks around all group names; I changed the quotations to italics or bold. You seem to be using no links and no special distinction for group names. In fact, some existing distinctions have been removed. Is that accidental, or something we ought to discuss?
 * See Talk:Wallpaper_group. Apart from that, things like a link to a section of the same page are a nice extra service that an editor can provide, either the one who wrote the text or someone else. The main rule about these features is that they are not removed without good reason.--Patrick 00:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Also, I'd like to request your eyes for a check of the section I wrote on crystallographic notation. (I put out a general request on the talk page, but I'm guessing you aren't tracking that.)

Incidentally, that's a remarkable user page you've assembled. :-) KSmrq 17:58, 2005 July 28 (UTC)

Frieze groups
Hi Patrick

I noticed that you have contributed a large sequence of edits on Frieze group in the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately your edits have introduced a number of factual errors and problems with the language. I also feel you have introduced too much unnecessary detail, some of which belongs in, or is duplicated in, other articles. Natch. this is all IMHO so take it with 0.0647g of NaCl if you prefer.
 * Below you mention only one factual error, which I corrected.--Patrick 20:16, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I will be brief, and use the 1/4/2005 edit of Linas as my point of reference. The side-by-side comparison is here:. My apologies if not all the edits I refer to are yours.
 * The opening two sentences are far less clear than the original. In the first, you have made an attempt to refer to the equivalence classes of groups, but the strict mathematical "class of groups of transformations of pairs of numbers" is four levels of abstraction deep (well, five if you consider numbers an abstraction of quantity).  Too deep for a general reference work such as WP.  IMO the original captures the essence of the groups, and if it is necessary to add the extra level of abstraction, this can be done via a "strictly speaking" comment after the definition, possibly linked to Isomorphism class or whatever.  The second sentence is currently incorrect - a group is not an isometry.  (Ironically, you have equated an object at one level of the tower of abstraction with one at a different level.)
 * I moved the formal part a little down and corrected the error. The levels of abstraction are inherent in the subject, I found that leaving one level out was confusing, e.g. a symmetry group of type 2 is only a subgroup of one of type 7 if for the latter we take a smaller translation distance; also combining reflection and rotation is different depending on the positions of the centers, so we can not simply take the origin at the symmetry center.--Patrick 13:10, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The introduction of cartesian coordinates is not necessary for the definition of Frieze group, or even the characterisation of the 7 classes. Coords should not be introduced unannounced.  However, they are useful in analysing the groups in later sections.
 * I did not change that.--Patrick 13:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * You have substituted the ° (&deg;) sequence for that symbol in whatever code table your computer and browser likes. It is better to use the character entity.  See
 * It is at the bottom of the edit page, so apparently a Wikimedia standard.--Patrick 13:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The listing of finite symmetries of a strip is unnecessary detail, amplifying an off-hand remark in the original. Maybe trim back and refer to Point group.
 * It could be moved there, but since this is specifically about a strip, it is also very much related to the subject of this article.--Patrick 13:24, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I am not sure of your intent in the "1D" sections and "Mathematics of ..." sections. I am guessing that you are attempting to demonstrate that these are the only groups by first analysing the action of the group on the long axis and then adding "thickness".  However this should be made explicit - the article is not about isometries of R.
 * I moved the 1D section to a separate article.--Patrick 13:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Finally, a request: "Show preview" and "Comment"! Or at least a brief description of what you are doing and what you plan to do in the talk page. The history page for your edits doesn't help me see what you have done. I don't have time to work on the article just now, and it seems that your are still progressing with your edits. I may visit again in a week or two.

All the best, Andrew Kepert 10:12, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Hi, I just want to tentatively add my voice to AndrewKepert's comments. Although I'm not familiar with the history of the Frieze group article, I can see there is currently a problem with target audience. At the very least, the introduction to Frieze group should be something along the lines of the introduction Wallpaper group, aimed at a general audience, with all the mathematical terminology separated off in a "formal development" section or something similar. Dmharvey Talk 11:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Good idea, I changed the intro.--Patrick 13:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

duplicate content within a page
Hi - There was a mediawiki bug that's recently been fixed that caused content of a page to be duplicated when editing a section. It appears User:Patrick/w2 was affected by this bug. Just letting you know so you can fix it if you care to. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:30, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks.--Patrick 08:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Are the two expressions the same?
In answer to your qustion that - It's not evident that this simplification is equivalent.

I suggest that they are.

4\sin 18^\circ = \sqrt{2(3 - \sqrt 5)} = \sqrt 5 - 1 $$ The last two expressions can be shown to be the same. Square the second one, and factor.

And my calculator, evaluates all three to the same value.

 * --MathMan64 02:12, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, I know. It was not a question, I removed "It's not evident". I put "rm" (=remove) in front in the edit summary, but for extra clarity I should have put quotes around "It's not evident". Thanks anyway.--Patrick 06:04, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Fibionacci packing
Patrick,are fibionacci distributed circles the most densely packed? :--User:TransylvanianTwist

 * I do not quite understand the question, but gives packings of circles.--Patrick 08:11, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Cat:Municipalities of the Netherlands
I notice you created this page - is is still in use, or ought it be deleted? Only a couple of things seem to link to it and I'm not sure whether they're pointing to the right thing. Cheers, sjorford →•← 08:20, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

 * This is a demo page, see m:Help:Category.--Patrick 08:45, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Help wanted
Hi Patrick. From your edits I see that you know a lot (among other things) about isometries and symmetries. So I think you would be well qualified to help us at orthogonal matrix. I wonder if you have anything to comment at talk:orthogonal matrix to the discussion going on in there, or if you think the article orthogonal matrix itself needs to be made more clear. Thanks a lot, Oleg Alexandrov 15:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Regular tessellations
A few weeks ago you added to tessellation that "The three regular tilings are p6m and p4m." That reminds me of the joke "There are three kinds of mathematicians, those that can count and those that can't." Could you please add the third regular tiling, p3something? I assume you know right away what the something is, while I would have to read up on notation.

By the way, I'd be interested on your comments on the term neat tiling. Ril wants to have this article deleted (see Votes for deletion/Neat tiling) because it's not the correct term; he claims that it should be called continuous tessellation. Do you know the correct name? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:54, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I clarified: Of the three regular tilings two are in the category p6m and one is in p4m.

 * Sorry, I don't know whether the name is neat tiling or continuous tessellation.--Patrick 17:18, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Apologies for adding the wrong "third one", and thanks for the correction. Hv 00:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Ball (mathematics)
There is new discussion at Talk: Ball (mathematics) in which you may be interested. Just thought I'd let you know.  —msh210 14:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Euclidean plane isometries
Please stop changing the title of section "Isometries as reflections" despite clear disagreement. Your edit comment
 * Wikipedia is not for jokes like using an ambiguous, seemingly nonsense section title, and only later saying how it was meant

seems intended as a deliberate insult, violating Wikiquette. The section title is not a joke, whether you approve of it or not. Instead of engaging in an edit war or pushing for a violation of the revert policy, try something different, like a genuine discussion on the article's talk page. I assume you mean well; so do I. I'm also pretty friendly and reasonable if you'd like to work out a consensus. --KSmrq 04:09, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

 * Actually, I was not sure it was meant as a joke, but that was the best and mildest explanation I could think of for why you like your version so much.--Patrick 08:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * By the way, I reverted after 34 hours, you after 4, you are much worse in that regard.--Patrick 09:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Scale
Thanks for fleshing out Scale. You put in some extra wikilinks, I thought this could be contrary to Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) ("avoiding distracting information, such as extraneous links"), but maybe not? --Commander Keane 12:57, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

 * I renamed Scale (measurement) to Scale (ratio) (a narrower subject) and moved some content, which became off-topic, to Scale. Feel free to further rearrange that content.--Patrick 13:05, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Mainstream
Hi, Patrick. I'm curious about why, in Mainstream, you changed the statement about identifiable genres to its opposite. In science fiction, "mainstream" is often used to mean "mundane" fiction, not sf and often not one of the other named genres either. I've never heard it used to mean science fiction. Have you? —JerryFriedman 23:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * It looked like an error: something very special may not fit in one of the existing genres. It seemed odd that many common genres would be excluded from "mainstream". In fact all fiction is subdivided in genres, so one might conclude that there is no mainstream at all. Do you mean that in the context of sf, just non-sf is mainstraeam, or that even detectives are not mainstream?--Patrick 06:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Quotientgroup talk
Could you contribute to the talk on the quotientgroup []? Thanks.

Slerp
Patrick, please find something better to do than second-guess me, especially about Slerp. I've been Slerping since 198 4 ; is that a broad enough hint? You inserted a sentence about quaternions into the geometry section, where it does not belong; quaternion Slerp has its own section. --KSmrqT 15:42, 2005 August 26 (UTC)

 * I overlooked that my remark was already covered in the next section. Since it was a duplication, not a claim that your text was wrong, your claim that you know a lot about this is irrelevant in this context.--Patrick 21:24, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Cube
Hi Patrick, thanks for your interesting contributions to cube. Just a small thing to keep in mind: at this moment, the first part is a bit cluttered with pictures. I'm assuming you'll continue to work on it and that this issue will resolve naturally. Cheers, Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I moved one less important picture down, reduced one, and made a small rearrangement. How it looks depends on user settings. Usually I prefer "thumb" without specifying px, then the user setting is respected, but for the net I made an exception, because it is very simple, so can be small anyway. Feel free to rearrange them further.--Patrick 11:45, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

That's fast. Yes, it looks better now, though still a bit too many pictures for my taste. By the way, I really appreciate your work on the symmetries of the cube, but (like most people here) I only say so if I also have some negative comment to make. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:10, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I am glad you like the text. With regard to the images, "a bit too many pictures for my taste" is as vague as "a bit too much text for my taste". I would understand that remark if some images were very similar to each other, or not very relevant. I do not think showing the relationship with other geometric figures is off-topic.--Patrick 06:51, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

With "too many pictures", I mean that the layout is not very pretty; I did not mean that the pictures should be removed. I played around a bit, but it's not easy to get it right with this enormous template at the right side; it's probably better to wait till you feel like you're finished with the article. Usually, we try to have a short lead section, which is why I put the relationship with other solids in a separate section (I agree that this is not off-topic); hope you don't mind. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:53, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

 * Ok, that is fine.--Patrick 14:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Polyhedra without face-, edge-, or vertex-uniformity, but with regular polygons as faces
The title Polyhedron is too long. As you know, the subsection treats the Johnson solids, the deltahedrons and "an infinite number of non-convex forms". Here are a few things I think we might do: Your thoughts? --Perfecto 05:21, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Call this section "Other polyhedra with regular faces" -- the sections above already treat the non-f-u, non-e-u and non-v-u forms extensively.
 * Omit the infinite non-convex forms and call this "Convex polyhedra with regular faces" -- the infinite forms are not notable anyway.
 * Omit the infinite non-convex forms and call this "Johnson solids and convex deltahedra" -- the infinite forms are not notable anyway.
 * Omit the infinite non-convex forms and call this "Johnson solids" -- the infinite forms are not notable anyway, and the convex deltahedra are already either Johnson solids, prisms or antiprisms.
 * Omit deltahedra and the infinite non-convex forms and call this section "Johnson solids" -- the JS article would talk about these creatures anyhow.

 * Ok, I prefer the first. Non-convex forms are mentioned in every section, so there should be something in this section too.

 * Another thing, your overview of 75 shows 9+15+11+53=88; I saw that at least the dodecadodecahedron is mentioned twice.--Patrick 06:49, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, title, changed.

RE: non-convex polyhedra with regular faces... I can paste six cubes to the sides of a cube, and come up with a non-convex polyhedron with squares faces. I can paste two dodecahedrons together, and come up with a non-convex polyhedron with pentagon faces. That paragraph is speculation and untrue.

I'll be bold and rewrite this section after a bit. I can tighten it by defining Johnson solids. Also, indicating that the convex deltahedra are already either Johnson solids, prisms and antiprisms. Perhaps, I'll delegate the non-convex infinite forms as a last line. --Perfecto 20:21, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I meant convex ones. I clarified that and added more, based on the above.--Patrick 21:01, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

You wrote:

 * With regard to polyhedra whose faces are all squares: if coplanar faces are not allowed, even if they are disconnected, there is only the cube. Otherwise there is also the result of pasting six cubes to the sides of one, all seven of the same size; it has 30 square faces (counting disconnected faces in the same plane as separate); this can be extended in one, two, or three directions.

What do you think of this rewrite:

 * There is no special name for polyhedra whose faces are all squares. If coplanar faces are counted as one face, then there is only one such polyhedron, the cube.  If coplanar faces are counted separately, then there are infinitely many of these, built from various combinations of identical cubes.

I favour vigorous writing. Instead of '...includes these three solids," I wrote "there are exactly three solids." --Perfecto 03:25, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

 * At first sight one may think that you can combine identical cubes arbitrarily, but in most cases this give faces of which some or most are rectangles or other shapes. Your formulation strengthens this wrong impression. Another thing is that "If coplanar faces are counted as one face" is ambiguous, do the outside parts count together as one disconnected face, or do we also count the inside part? Even if the sentence is true regardless of which meaning applies, such an ambiguity is ugly. By the way, some remarks about these things may already be needed earlier, where Kepler-Poinsot solids are mentioned, or in the introduction.--Patrick 07:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Substubs

 * De Klomp
 * Lunteren
 * Den Dolder
 * Uithuizen
 * Bilthoven
 * Hollandsche Rading
 * Zevenbergen
 * Lage Zwaluwe
 * Beesd
 * Vleuten
 * Pijnacker

These pages you created have been sitting on Shortpages for some time. Do you have any plans to expand them? They could also be deleted as extremely short articles with little content. - SimonP 17:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I am not happy with them either. First they redirected to the municipality, but a few people had a problem with that for odd sentimental reasons. We can make them redirects again.--Patrick 19:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Gallery articles up for deletion, stop this precident!
I noticed that these articles:
 * Gallery of Nintendo Entertainment System screenshots
 * Gallery of Super Nintendo Entertainment System screenshots
 * Gallery of Sega Mega Drive and Sega Genesis screenshots
 * Gallery of Sega Master System screenshots

are now are up for deletion. Would you vote in favor of keeping these articles since you've worked on other gallery articles like the William-Adolphe Bouguereau gallery? They show the history of the advancement of video game graphics over time and are useful as a source of images for graphics for video game articles. --ShaunMacPherson 20:22, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization of list items
You may be interested in reading the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style in which User:Cacycle brought up your name in relation to the capitalization of list items. —Lowellian (reply) 04:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Lattice
Hello. It appears that you may be the author of most or maybe all of the material in the sections titled 2-dimensional lattices and 3-dimensional lattices and External links in the article lattice. You put that material into the wrong article, and I've moved it. The page titled lattice is a disambiguation page, listing lattices used in baking, steel lattice towers and bridges, lattices made by carpenters, computer hardware and software corporations, etc., none of which are lattices in the sense in which the term is used in mathematics. It is not appropriate to include all of that and your material on the same page. Notice that the third bulleted item listed on the page says:

 * In another mathematical usage, a lattice is a discrete subgroup of Rn that spans Rn as a real vector space, or a translate of a discrete subgroup. The elements of

etc., etc. If you click on lattice in that paragraph, it takes you to lattice (group). That article is the appropriate place for the material that you wrote, and I've moved it there. Michael Hardy 19:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

 * That's fine, I was thinking of moving it myself.--Patrick 20:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

On writing an article
Hi Patrick. We intersected quite often recently, and I would say we did not really agree when we met. The issue is that I am not really pleased with your writing style.

Case in point, the text I removed from inverse. That is a disambiguation page, listing the possible meanings of this word, and if needed, pointers for more information. I know that your strength lies (among other places) in Euclidean geometry, but there was no need to give a complete characterization of all the inversions in the Euclidean space in that page. That page is not about Euclidean geometry, it is not even a math page, and I plan to cut more of the things you inserted in there.

The right thing to do would be writing an inversion (geometry) article where you can treat at length this very particular meaning of the word inverse. And even inversion (mathematics) would not do the trick, because again, your meaning is even more specific than that.

Now, this is part of a larger pattern I noticed in your edits. You tend to focus too much on expanding on a given concept, without thinking too much how that fits in an article. Another case in point, the article involution, which you basically monopolized with a lot of technical information specific to affine and linear involutions in the Eucliean space, while involution is by itself a very general and abstract concept used in many other areas. I would suggest you fork off some text from there in a separate article.

And in general, please do pay attention at the global structure on an article. Don't just work on the leg of an elefant, but also step back and see how it looks on the elefant as a whole. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, when needed I split off material from an article, or rearrange material within an article. I created Inverse (mathematics). It is not very long, so we do not need to split it up more. The mathematical meanings are related.

 * The involution article is not very large, and the geometry section is on-topic, so I do not see a need to split it off. Perhaps it is just a personal aversion against geometry that you might have?

 * --Patrick 23:01, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I don't recall having aversion against geometry, or geometers for that matter, but you never know. :) Anyway, my advice is to never forget the global picture.

 * And by the way, that inverse superarticle you created by merging together a bunch of articles sorely needs some structure. Looks now like some very long unordered list. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:51, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

On pseudoscalars and absolute values
Patrick, could you explain why you think absolute values are not psuedoscalars? For example, speed is the absolute value of velocity. When velocity experiences parity reversal, speed gets an extra sign flip (and retains its original sign). I'm having trouble seeing the difference between this and other psuedoscalars and would greatly appreciate it if you could illuminate this issue. Thanks. RaulMiller 23:00, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Scalars remain the same if we multiply vectors by -1, pseudoscalars are also multiplied by -1.--Patrick 23:06, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Agreed. If y is the absolute value of x, then y is the absolute value of -x.  Alternatively, -y is not the absolute value of x nor of -x.  In other words, as long as the quantity you're working with is an absolute value, I can't see any difference between it and a psuedoscalar.  Can you tell me what the difference is?  Thanks again. RaulMiller 00:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * What do mean by "speed gets an extra sign flip (and retains its original sign)"? A scalar does not get a sign flip, and it also does not get an "extra" one. A triple product gets a sign flip, that is a pseudoscalar.--Patrick 00:31, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Speed is never negative, regardless of any reversals in direction. RaulMiller 01:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I know. So?--Patrick 08:41, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Is that backwards of what is meant by psuedoscalar?  In other words, given a velocity <vx, vy, vz>, vx would be a psuedoscalar, because if the velocity is reversed the sign of vx is reversed, while absolute speed is not a psuedo scalar because its sign is not reversed reversed when the velocity is reversed?  I'm a bit confused by that because vx seems like a true scalar -- I don't see any extra sign flips in the case of vx.

 * There don't seem to be many options for what happens to the sign of a scalar when the corresponding vector has its parity flipped. Either the sign changes or it doesn't or the sign is not a function of that vector.  Since psuedoscalars are advertised as behaving differently from regular scalars, and since the sign of regular scalars changes when the parity of their vector is reversed, that seems to leave "no change" (absolute value) or "not a function" (irrelevant).  Well... except there is the chance that I'm misunderstanding something of significance (perhaps with some special emphasis on partial functions), and that's what I'm hoping you can explain (or point me at a citation on or give me an example of or something).  Thanks. RaulMiller 13:28, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * From scalar: In physics, a scalar is a physical quantity which assumes a single value which is independent of the coordinate system being used to describe the physical system. A related concept is a pseudoscalar, which is invariant under proper rotations but (like a pseudovector) flips sign under improper rotations.

 * So vx is neither a scalar nor a pseudoscalar, in the terminology that is relevant here.--Patrick 19:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Hmm... that actually makes a certain amount of sense -- at least for the case where x y and z are defined by the frame of reference. However, in contexts where they have physical definitions, vx is just as much a scalar as speed is.  RaulMiller 00:39, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

 * P.S. your recent edit to the psuedo-scalar page completely clears up my question. Thanks! RaulMiller 00:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Point symmetry articles
Hi Patrick,

I just saw you were following my direction to get individual articles for the polyhedral symmetry groups. I'm really glad for your help. I'm stretching to get the basics correct, so I appreciate all corrections/help.

I know my new images could use some work for completeness and consistency.

I am curious how you'll group the "subpolyhedral" symmetries. I'm a bit lost what to call them. Bipyramidal seems good for some. Maybe simply dihedral for 2-noded domains?

I'll keep inching... Feel free to discuss with me what your goals and ideas are - or just do it and I'll watch and be amazed!

On a side topic, I've been making up names for the uniform plane tilings, using extrapolations/parallels from similar polyhedra naming. I've been unable to really find names for them. The most complete attempt I've seen, descriptive at least, is at http://www.hadron.org/~hatch/HyperbolicTesselations/

I'm still in progress adding dual tilings to uniform tilings (only 2 of 6 up now), and don't have formal names for them either!

Tom Ruen 07:57, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I like your work, very good.

 * Are you unsure about the symmetry or just about the name? Crystal_system gives two notations and a name for most. The name may not always be the most suitable for general geometric purposes. For example, we have the simpler names cyclic symmetry and dihedral symmetry for two of the series. Point groups in three dimensions explains all symmetries, but with one notation, with few names. I will look into names for others.--Patrick 09:21, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Conway's orbifold notation
Do you think that this might be better under a heading Conway notation? Or should Conway notation article redirect here?--Gaff talk 22:49, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Conway has introduced more notations, e.g. the unrelated Conway chained arrow notation.--Patrick 22:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Got it. Do you think the John Conway biography article should have a list of his notations or are they all referenced there in some other way? --Gaff talk 23:32, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I added these two links.--Patrick 00:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Adding a page for this topic seems like a fine idea, but your first sentence is either seriously misleading or just wrong:

 * "Conway's orbifold notation, introduced by John Conway, applies to three classes of symmetry types: wallpaper groups, frieze groups and point groups in three dimensions."

The problem is, the notation is not that limited, and applies to more general surfaces. Please do the necessary background research and correct this; the reference I added is a good place to learn more. Thanks. --KSmrqT 11:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I added "among other things".--Patrick 11:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Pentagrammic prism
Pentagrammic prism
 * rephrase: It is a special case of a right prism with a pentagram as base, which in general has rectangular non-base faces. (this is probably what one would expect Pentagrammic prism to mean)

A pentagram is a 5-sided star. Why would anyone associate pentagrammic with anything BUT a 5-sided star base? Tom Ruen 23:22, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, the two base faces are equal pentagrams, but I mean the name does not suggest that the side faces are squares, they could be rectangles.--Patrick 23:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, I misunderstood. There's the uniform pentagrammic prism of one edge length and more general topological Pentagrammic prism which is more general in geometric parameters.
 * This is true for all the uniform polyhedra. It might mean there is value in inserting the word "Uniform" in every article referencing a uniform polyhedron, like Uniform tetrahedron or Regular tetrahedron and niform great stellated dodecahedron, if you want to be specific.
 * I'm not being 100% serious, but maybe 75%. Any "object" that is commonly referenced as possibly nonuniform by the same name ought to have a separate article created. Cube is safely uniform, but hexahedron is not, even though cube is the more public term.
 * Generally, I'd say "regular" or "uniform" is implied. I doubt many people talk of dodecahedra and mean an irregular one.
 * P.S. If you have some time, see discussion at Talk:Uniform_polyhedron on the overachieving polyhedron article and trying to organize the geometry zoo a bit.

 * We don't need separate articles, but within each article we can distinguish between properties valid for any version and those valid just for the uniform version. That has been done in e.g. tetrahedron.--Patrick 00:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Polyhedral/tiling image categories
Hi Patrick,

I thought you might be interested in my new categories, added to images: ALL NEW Image categories:
 * Category:Polyhedral net
 * Category:Polyhedral image
 * Category:periodic tiling image

... Time for bed!

Tom Ruen 07:53, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Very good.--Patrick 11:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Egg (food)
One problem I see with putting the egg shape on Egg (food) is that a search on the word "egg" will not go to this information. A person searching for egg shape may not naturally go to Egg (food) to find this information. IMO, there should be a link on the disambig page to egg-shaped and a page called Egg-shape, because not all edible eggs are egg-shaped. But I'm not going to quibble over it. Snafflekid 17:09, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

uniform polyhedra and stellations
Hi Patrick. I thought you might be interested.

I added all existing images of uniform/stellated polyhedra to this page:
 * List of Wenninger polyhedron models

Since I'm using Wenninger's book as a reference, I thought I'd add pictures there to help catch problems.

Tom Ruen 23:05, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Very good.--Patrick 09:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Axis of rotation
Hi Patrick, you've reverted my redirect of this article to rotational symmetry, with the comment "a movement is not a symmetry". I guess that strictly speaking you are right, in that a body which is not rotationally symmetric may still be rotated. However, that rotation is a symmetry of the underlying space. If there is a rotation there is an axis and it is irrelevant whether there is symmetry, so perhaps my choice was far from perfect. I still feel that Axis of rotation can never become a full article and is better redirected somewhere. I think that rotation is a better target and will redirect there. Let me know if you disagree. --MarSch 09:39, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

 * That's fine.--Patrick 10:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Re: Removing spaces
Hmm, OK, my apologies, I didn't know. Adding non-standard spaces to make text look nice on some particular browser and platform seems like a less-than-ideal solution to me, but I'll defer to you on this matter. Thanks for letting me know. —Caesura(t) 22:19, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Orthogonal matrix
Should you pull this notation stunt again I will treat it as the vandalism it has become. --KSmrqT 00:41, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

 * See Talk:Semidirect product, there is consensus about this symbol.--Patrick 01:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

 * You seem to think we're having a debate. We are not. There is no agreed consensus. Different mathematicians make different choices. Change mine and I will revert you as a vandal. --KSmrqT 03:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * KSmrq, I think you are going overboard with this. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:20, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

 * I value your opinion, Oleg. Nevertheless, discussion has not worked with Patrick. I will revert. --KSmrqT 07:25, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Semi-vandalism at rotation
Hi Patrick. I am writing about this. I would like to say that you are making the same mistake as KSmrq above. Please be careful how use use the word "vandal". Please do.

At rotation we have a really bad article (not only in my opinion, if you see talk:rotation, and talk:axis of rotation), article which is largely your work. That is due to the fact that you don't have a good sence of what belongs in an article and what does not, and what is appropriate level of detail. As such, your articles tend to be a bunch of facts with no structure which are very hard to read. I have been doing clean up after you (not at all intentionally I may say, rather I run into them and they are bad articles) at involution, reflection (mathematics), inversion, inverse (mathematics), isometry, and now I have been trying to bring rotation in some decent shape.

That is to say, if I remove some material which with my best judgement is way too much detail at the current article and in the current context, and if you disagree, please react in a different way than claiming my contribution is "semi-vandalism". Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:00, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

 * A common combination of edits is a "move": it means deleting some content and adding it at some other place. Unlike most edits, which can be done stepwise according to your time and how you feel like it, this is a combination that either is done fully or not at all. Please do not carry out "half moves". I have asked this before.--Patrick 17:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

 * To clarify: you need not understand the moved text, and nobody will blame you for imperfections in moved text, if you mention in the edit summary that it came from another article. You just need to know broadly what it is about. Also you need not merge it in existing text of another article if you do not feel like it, you can just drop it there. The proper merge can be done by someone else. The main thing is that good content is not hidden in a page history.--Patrick 18:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes I try to move things when I have a good idea of where to move and believe it is worth it. Any constructive help with that is of course appreciated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Revert ≠ minor
It is not appropriate to tag a reversion as a minor edit. Note that How to edit a page says
 * Marking a significant change as a minor edit is considered bad behavior, and even more so if it involves the deletion of some text.

I'm hoping this was an accident on your part, so giving you the chance to correct it for yourself. If you do so, it would also be helpful to include some indication of why you chose to revert, as a standard courtesy to other editors. Should the edit summary line be too short, you can use the talk page. --KSmrqT 23:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

 * It is built in in the system that rollback is marked minor. Without explanation you reverted my edit, which I think was useful, and which I explained as "separate theorem from discussion".--Patrick 23:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Good points. However, Patrick, I think you have been an admin long enough to know that the rollback button is to be used only against vandals. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

 * You may disagree with my edit (and it seems you do), but I did give a terse explanation: "rv muddle". I thought that made my reason clear enough, but if you did not you could ask for clarification. You still have not corrected your action; please do so. Thanks. --KSmrqT 05:27, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

 * It looks like a very unreasonable edit, and the edit summary sounds like general angryness, not making any sense.--Patrick 06:48, 7 November 2005 (UTC)