User talk:Eloquence

I will respond to messages on this page. Please check your contributions list ("My contributions") for responses. If there is a response, your edit is no longer the "top" edit in the list.

Unlike other Wikipedians I don't archive Talk pages since old revisions are automatically archived anyway - if you want to access previous comments use the "Page history" function. But I keep a log of the removals:

Removed all comments prior to Jan 2003. --Eloquence 04:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to Feb 2003. --Eloquence 10:19 Feb 3, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to March 2003. --Eloquence 21:19 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments prior to April 2003. --Eloquence 08:14 25 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to May 31 2003. -Eloquence 19:14 31 May 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to June 21, 2003. --Eloquence 18:58 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 3, 2003. --Eloquence 21:51 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to July 22, 2003. --Eloquence 09:07 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to August 28, 2003.—Eloquence 02:11, Aug 28, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to October 15, 2003.—Eloquence 22:39, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 5, 2003.—Eloquence 15:17, Dec 5, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to December 20, 2003.—Eloquence 12:42, Dec 20, 2003 (UTC)
Removed all comments up to February 23, 2004.—Eloquence 23:57, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

re: Wikipedia:Deletion requests page - When I first found this page, I was skeptical. After sleeping on the suggestion for a night, I am much more intrigued by it. I'd really like to see a sample, though. I attempted to take a couple of the recent VfD threads and mock up them up using this structure so the rest of us could see how it would work. Would you please correct my mock-up? Thanks. Rossami 13:52, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your corrections. I'm finding the indents hard to follow. I'm going to make a second mock-up later today that uses bullets rather than nested indents just to see if it's easier to read. Thanks again. I'm looking forward to the new format. Rossami 13:23, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

You are showing a definite anti-surrealist POV with your votes for deletion and comments on said page. I would really question the appropriateness of this. --Daniel C. Boyer 20:56, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Indeed.—Eloquence

REason for unprotecting?

Is there a reason for unprotecting the messages in the main page? --Hemanshu 22:36, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

To allow general editing -- the MediaWiki namespace is at reduced risk of vandalism, so this seems like a good way to make key parts of the Main Page as open as the rest of Wikipedia.—Eloquence 22:38, Feb 23, 2004 (UTC)

Cache test

I tried the same cache test at MediaWiki:Dih and it did not work for me (Main Page was not updated until I forced a reload). Do you have 'Disable page caching' checked in your preferences? I just tried the test with 'Disable page caching' checked and it worked as expected (no reload needed). But when I unselect 'Disable page caching' I still have the same cache issue. Konqueror 3.1.3 on Linux Mandrake 9.2. --mav 04:20, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I tried it as an anonymous user.—Eloquence

I deselected "Use cache" in Konqueror and that seemed to do it. Looks like my install isn't keeping things in sync. I'll test IE on XP at work tomorrow to see if I have cache issues there as well. --mav

Well, any issues there are appear to be client-side -- what should absolutely not happen is that someone gets an old version of the page during first time viewing.—Eloquence

Sandbox

Interwiki at the bottom is not a good idea on the sandbox because now there are two regions that newbies will need to leave intact. We also need two MediaWiki messages now (that's how the header at the top is included, through {{subst:sandbox}}). Dori | Talk 05:40, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Having the interlanguage links at the top is unacceptable. This is etremely confusing to newbies, with lots of special characters. They should either be at the bottom or removed entirely.—Eloquence 05:41, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it is. They get to learn about interwiki links. I think having two regions is even more confusing. Especially when there is little content besides the standard headers. Someone else also suggested removing the interwiki links entirely, which would also mean that we wouldn't need to use subst, but just msg. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps this discussion should be continued on the sandbox's talk page, and maybe even set up a straw poll, but I don't feel that strongly about it. Dori | Talk 05:48, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I could agree with the learning argument if there were 2 or 3 of them. Not with this huge bunch of links, many of them including special chars. If this is the first thing we show people who click on the "experiment" link on the Main Page, that is one excellent way to permanently scare away potential editors.—Eloquence

You do have a point. Sometimes I think the sandbox should be entirely empty (or rather up to the whim of the newbies). That's why I proposed doing something similar to Wikipedia:Recentchanges and Special:Recentchanges. I think Tim filed a bug on SF about something similar to that. That would be the best way IMO. Dori | Talk 06:02, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

It has been suggested that meta information should be in a separate edit window, which would be optional and off for anons. So you wouldn't see interlang links if you don't want to. I've also thought about having a <meta> tag for information that is shown not on the rendered page, but only on the editing page, which would be useful for editing guidelines.—Eloquence 06:04, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Editing obituaries

If we are going to keep the MediaWiki links so that non-sysops can edit the Main Page, we need a link to be able to edit the Obituaries section. Can you take care of this? --Michael Snow 16:26, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

General objection to new main page, etc

E,

I have added a comment to the main page discussion page (qv), but the disorganized nature of that page leads me to believe it will be essentially a way to blow off steam and not substantitve discussion. Accordingly, as you seem to be the chief of those whose comments indicate an interest in substantive discussion, I invite a response from you directly.

In addition, having gone over your WP page, there are some bullying issues that you might find of some use.

If a dialogue develops here, we might wish to take some or all of it to email. I would be willing to do so.

ww 17:19, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I understand that you feel the new look is too "corporate". Would you care to elaborate on that? I think looking professional and interesting is important, not harmful to the project.—Eloquence 22:47, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

There are two points that I can see. Neither is 'technical'. First, the page is now vertically long because of the inclusion of 'nice' white space and images. This makes getting to the page's content less straightforward than it was. Since that content is an introduction to something much larger (ie, the WP), it should be as straightforward as possible to get to, and through. I (the generic viewer) did not come to this page to admire WP, to be indoctrinated with WP virtues, to hear about WP press releases, or to be dazzled by WP's good taste in Web page design. I have come here as a porthole, and non-straightforwardness of layout interferes with that. Perhaps thinking in terms of figure and ground might be hepful. The prior version was better in this respect.

As for 'corporate', that is more a matter of, in my view, fad. You may have noticed in recent years that all magazines (except possibly scholarly journals) have adopted a kind of wild typography (font choice, font color, text background, ...) in the first page of an article. I personally find it annoying and in some cases next to unreadable. This was a consequence of fad/style amongst the designer folks, possibly as a result of some study of the impact of extreme typographic effects, and almost certainly not the result of some centrally controlled design ukase from the article design tsar. Is there such a design tsar? I'm beyond my knowledge of the world of graphic arts here. Something similar occurs in sneaker design, but on a more rapid cycle.

In a similar manner, Web designers in the recent past have converged their work on a relatively narrow range of choices and effects, with the result that there has been a uniformitization of apparance among actively designed (eg, corporate) sites. In the future, it will be something else. The new home page has moved in that design direction and so has acquired a 'corporate look'. Since the WP is, in a real sense, non-corporate (ie, it's at least tangent to the business world of marketing and PR) it is ill done for its home page to appear more like the usual corporate thing than otherwise. In this sense, anything not in the current main stream of 'good / competent / progressive <there are numerous words used in the context, all it seems attempting to say something more important than au courant -- pick your own term here>' for the design of a home page would provide some distinction from the common corporate herd. A distinction that is, in my view, worth making.

More than I would have liked to say, but I find my reaction more intense than I would have expected. Hope this makes my position(s) clear.

ww

user Plautus_satire

You may wish to take note of Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Plautus_satire. - Curps

Sandbox

They should be at the bottom, with a "do not edit" notice. A huge chunk of interlanguage links at the top, made of unrecognizable cryptic characters, is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really wrong in terms of usability. Did I mention it is wrong?—Eloquence

I replied in the sandbox, but as that isn't likely to stay there long, I thought I'd better reply here as well. Mediawiki:Sandbox was created for this so that all that would appear is {{msg:sandbox}} rather than the links themselves, but apparently interlanguage links only work with subst, not msg. Angela . 08:07, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

How do the {{msg:xxx}} comments work? Where can I find a reference or page to learn more about them? Rossami

The best list I've found is at Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages - Texture 22:56, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)