Talk: Dr ishmael/Archive 8

I am no longer active on GuildWiki. If you need to contact me, you can email me or post on my talk page.

Archive Much?

Been a while since I've posted around here lol. Just glanced at RC and seen this, just wondering if it's an attempt to prevent people from uploading generic name images. Other than that, how have things been around here? -- Isk8 (T/C) 20:39, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that is indeed the motivation there. RT actually did the first one, for Gw012.jpg. I considered writing a bot script that would pre-prot all Gw###.jpg filenames, but decided that would be too much work (it's not a bad idea, I just don't feel like doing it right now). I will continue protting them whenever they get uploaded, though, so the user doesn't try re-uploading after it gets deleted. —Dr Ishmael

20:47, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently on gw856.jpg. You have some work ahead. :] RoseOfKali

23:04, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Widgets

Do you, or do you know anyone who uses the "Wiki page in a widget" widget? Mostly, because I'd like to play around with MediaWiki:Widgetwikipage to add some things like purge and difflast. --JonTheMon 17:50, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Nope, sorry. I haven't done anything at all with the wiki widgets. —Dr Ishmael

17:59, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Well, then I'll probably go ahead and tweak that. What kind of power functions would you want besides Purge and DiffLast? --JonTheMon 18:03, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

I don't use Monaco, so what I want would be irrelevant (unless support for widgets was added to Monobook while I wasn't looking?) —Dr Ishmael

19:04, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, i didn't mean you specifically, but like what sort of power functions would a user like you want (like, what extra tabs have you added to your interface)? -JonTheMon

All I've got is purge and GWW-switch. —Dr Ishmael

20:17, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't purge standard for Sysops?

I've a box with Del/Ban cats, prefixindex and some other less clicked stuff. ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 20:23, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm dis-inclined to add in del/ban b/c I want it to be usable by most members of the community. And I'm not sure about PrefixIndex, but it might be a good idea. --JonTheMon 20:49, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

Hm, so it is. And apparently it happened over a year ago. —Dr Ishmael

21:13, March 11, 2010 (UTC)

I'm planning on leaving for good soon.

There's a lot I could say here but it'd make my comment degenerate into off-topic waffle.

All I'll say is that I for one will honestly be sorry to see you go, and thank you for all the thankless work you've put into GuildWiki.

Strange that the most necessary work (e.g., coding - stuff not just anyone can do) is the work that's appreciated the least. A F K When Needed 20:51, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

I've always considered you to be one of the backbones of Gwiki. It'll be strange to see you go. :/ --

El_Nazgir 21:24, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

I was, admittedly, a bit concise there, but it seemed like going into detail on that point would take away from the rest of the comment. What I mean is that I'm going to step back from RC patrol, admin duties, and big projects - other people can take care of those, and I need to stop wasting time that I should be spending doing my job or being with my family (or playing Rock Band, my new gaming drug :D (yes, I know I'm a couple years late :P)).

On the other hand, I am going to continue documenting Nick's visits, as well as parsing Gw.dat after updates to make sure our skill descriptions remain accurate. And of course I'll respond to any comments on my talk page. —Dr Ishmael

21:55, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

Ah goodie.

tbh... the day you and Felix are gone is the day I finally accept GuildWiki has died :(

A F K When Needed 22:08, March 19, 2010 (UTC)

Shame to see you go, and I hope you will be back soon. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 12:30, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

*sigh of relief* Okay, so you're still going to update skill descriptions. Doing that is such a tedious job without the gw.dat --Gimmethegepgun 14:58, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

hey, Doc

Even though you're not leaving for permanently, I feel like this is as good an occasion as any to say this.

I know that we've fought a lot over the history of the wiki (especially when it comes to certain temperamental mutual acquaintances); especially ever since I forced your RfA through way back when, I always had this feeling, "Dear God, what have I unleashed?" While I didn't exactly expect you to be "my personal wiki janitor" of sorts, I never anticipated you blossoming into the headman and, in many ways, community leader that you are today. Always, you have given things 110% of your best effort, going way above and beyond the call of duty as "just an admin" to bring us all sorts of wonderful things...javascript, anti-Wikia fixes, Zaishen and Nicholas data, .dat combings, and on and on. Like Rose of Kali has been to the images/armor sections of the wiki, you have been to ... most everything else, almost.

And you know what? I never got a real chance to honestly thank you for all of your hard work and effort.

I greatly value and appreciate everything you've done for the wiki. Please don't ever forget that. Not checking back here frequently, I can't speak to any undercurrent factions of "Mendel vs. Ishmael". Still, no matter what perceptions it may cause, I want to reassure you that your work is not thankless... there are many of us who appreciate you. I do every time I view the recent changes. I do not mean to make it an excuse, but I have always been somewhat reluctant to approach you with such words since you have self-confessed on more than one occasion that eloquent words are not your forte. I did not want to embarrass you unduly. :)

So, once again, thank you for your service. You are definitely one of the cornerstones of GuildWiki as I see it today. No matter how small we may be compared to GWW, I still believe that is something to be proud of. (It worked on my college applications, at any rate. Extracurricular leadership activities ftw.)

(T/C) 04:26, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

P.S. And lest I forget, I also have to thank you for introducing me to m.o.v.e. I still listen to them every day. ;)

I really didn't mean to leave you unanswered for so long, but at first I wanted to take the time to come up with a proper response, and after a time I did just forget. But like you said, I'm not much for eloquent words, so I should've just said something. I'll say it now.

Thank you for believing in me. pop culture may have blessed that phrase with a tinge of corn, but I use it sincerely

More than likely, I would've continued being a strong contributor, but without the sysop status, my sense of commitment would've been nowhere near the level I've given, that has earned me the respect of enough people to be called a "cornerstone" or "backbone" of the wiki. In my RfA acceptance, I said, "if I am given admin status, it would give me a very strong incentive to devote more time to this community, which I would gladly do." I think I've more than lived up to that. The lack of immediate thanks or appreciation never really bothered me, simply knowing that I was improving the wiki was enough.

Overall, I have truly enjoyed all the time that I've put in here, and being part of this community. —Dr Ishmael

03:45, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Awesome. ^_^d In the final tally, I'd say that is worth more than the sum of everything else I've done on this wiki.

P.P.S How typical. When I'm trying to not be eloquent, I turn out a masterpiece. XD

materials

Hey, you've been updating material pages, so I figured I'd ask you here. In the example of the Glass Vial, it's also used to make Vials of Ink. So would it be worthwhile to include the craftable rare materials along with armor and other items in the "requires xxx" section? Like Leather requires Hide, Steel requires Iron, etc. What do you think? It's just the matter of adding the appropriate categories to those pages, right? RoseOfKali 17:59, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'd intended to do that originally, but I forgot to account for it in my bot procedure - instead, because all materials link to each other through the navbox, I did a blanket removal of all materials from the article list. And yep, just add the categories. You can do it if you want, or I'll do it tonight.

We might still want to make a special note for that, though, since the rare materials don't really stand out from the Requires list otherwise. Heck, all of the drops, salvage, and requires notes should really be fine-tuned for each material, I just didn't feel like modifying the generic phrasing during my copy/paste spree last night. Like for wood, you could have, "Drops primarily from plant creatures; a complete list is given below." or something like that. —Dr Ishmael

18:15, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Cool. I won't get around to it tonight, planning to play some D2 after the last patch. :P But you've done a lot of work on this already, so if you just don't feel like it, that's fine, I'll get around to it soon.

As far as the phrasing, I dunno if all mats can be generalized into what drops them most (though I did get plenty of the "fancy" wood from the plants in Pongmei, never ever seen anything else drop it so much :P). You could make a sandbox of those for each mat, and we can all discuss it and see what fits best. RoseOfKali

18:34, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

It's not necessary or, as you point out, feasible to customize each note for every material like that. If there's nothing notable about items that salvage into linen, for example, then just leave the generic salvage note there. I simply wanted to make it clear that the generic notes aren't untouchable. —Dr Ishmael

18:58, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, doc. I have a few concerns. One, it seems kind of ridiculous that anyone can go in and edit your page... For two, I'm assuming that you were the one who made the changes to the Guild Wars items lists?

(((Plant Fiber-Plant Fibers are a common crafting material.-Acquisition...)))

Can't the creatures also be categorized by location? Just a straight list isn't exactly the most convenient thing, even if you can find their individual locations by going to their links. You don't want to go to every creatures page just to compile a list of creatures in an area that you can get to. This would help a bunch! Thank you!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.6.41.181 (contribs) .

Firstly - it's a wiki, the whole "editing the page" is kinda the point.

Secondly, that'd probably take some doing (it means someone has go go in manually and find out who goes where, I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying there's no easy way for it to happen, it just is a lot of work to update every page. Random Time 00:04, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I rather realize that. But people's own pages really shouldn't be. Second off, yes, I realize this. If it were not for that fact and the fact that I do not know how to work the drop down, I would edit it myself. I'd be happy to help do that, though, if I knew how to work editing things in the drop downs. Help, though. I really couldn't do it all. lol. not enough time. so if you could perhaps contact me on my wiki and tell me how to do that, I'd be glad to help, though you would have to tell me exactly how you wanted it formatted and presented. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CrucialRaven (contribs) .

Vandalism is easily reversible, and a lot of editors can put in constructive edits to userspace pages, if it's a serious problem, a page can be protected. I'm not sure what your third sentence is saying, but that's probably because it's 3AM here. The way "drops by the following creatures" works is that there's a category tree, so anything that drops plant fibers must be in Category:Drops fiber. To have it sorted by location would mean that someone would have to edit every monster page, and put in new categories which contain the location, monsters are in lots of locations, which means this would be an overcategoried mess, and not really help. You can tell with most of the monsters where they'll be anyway (charr in post-searing, stone summit in the shiverpeaks, etc), so the extra work and mess wouldn't be very helpful anyway. Random Time 02:38, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

Huh? How many wikis have you edited on? Every page on a wiki is editable by everyone, unless it's been protected. And a page usually have to be the subject of some very serious and recurrent vandalism for protection to be invoked. Out of over 18,000 mainspace articles on this wiki, only 15 pages are protected. User pages normally never get protected.

And no, that's a stupid idea. Categorizing creatures by location is a good idea. Categorizing creatures by the materials they drop is a good idea. Categorizing creatures by location and by the materials they drop, not so much. That's getting to the point where the cost/benefit ratio of the idea is way too low to be worthwhile. It's an overuse of the categorization function to the point that the results are meaningless except in extremely specific situations.

If you really have to have lists of creatures that drop a material sorted by the area they appear in, go learn how to do category intersections with DPL or SMW and make your own lists. Here's an example to get you started:

<dpl>
  category = Drops bone
  cateogry = North Kryta Province
</dpl>

There's probably a way to make DPL generate a full list of everything that drops bone and sort it by area, but I don't know enough DPL to do that. —Dr Ishmael

03:26, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

So I herd

You're one cool dude. Talk to your good old friend Rasky every now and again QQ Docta Jenkins 06:37, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

If you stopped acting like a moron around the wiki, I might. —Dr Ishmael

14:36, April 11, 2010 (UTC)

So cold QQ. I thought our game and wiki relationships were exclusive of one another. Docta Jenkins 00:02, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

"Wiki is not IRC is not in-game is not etc..." only applies to administrators taking action against users on the wiki - i.e. I can't, for example, ban Felix from the wiki for calling me names in-game. It does not have to apply to anyone's personal relationships with anyone else. So yes, if you do nothing but troll around on the wiki, I'll simply ignore you everywhere. —Dr Ishmael

01:12, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

-edit- I've thought over how this went down over and over again throughout the weeks that followed, here is my conclusion: I made one single troll edit(Lich king iirc) which I was banned for. Couple weeks go by, I go to pm my good friend ish(whom I have had a few decent conversations with), only to find that there is no reply. I try again several times over a few days. Still no reply. I jump on gwiki figuring you're just busy with stuff and decide to leave you a friendly message, and I get this shit. I can honestly say out of all the times you've been a major faggot, this is pretty high on the list. Fuck you and your shitty logic. 75.142.10.108 04:41, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Re White Mantle Disguise vs Robes

→ Moved to Talk:Costume#Re White Mantle Disguise vs Robes

Costume Makers

→ Moved to Talk:Costume Maker#Consolidation

Help with drop-rate Summary lines?

So first thanks for help with formatting on my new page!!! Second, so that it can be maintained easier/better, who would be the best person for me to speak with about auto-total & percent options? Also is the feature of "lines" (see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gift_of_the_Traveler/Drop_rate/line") available on this Wiki? Appreciate your assistance in order that I may better support the unofficial effort!!!
--

AFAIK, there's no way to do auto-tallies here, Wikia just doesn't have the required MediaWiki extensions installed.

You can do the /line thing, sure. We've just never bothered with it before. —Dr Ishmael

18:12, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

What about the code in Drop rate/To Dye For? It does some kind of auto-tallying, albeit it's a custom written template, but maybe it can be changed to accommodate the needs here? RoseOfKali

18:37, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

That's a bit of a kludge, and all it does is calculate the percentages using the totals as input. It could be adapted for use on the Parcel table, but it would be messy to expand it from 10 to 21 items. —Dr Ishmael

18:48, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've made a table that utilizes a /line template and auto-sums. Haven't gotten around to making it do fancy stuff like percentages, but that'd just be the next step. Be forewarned, the template isn't that pretty right now. --JonTheMon 20:31, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Well I appreciate everyone's time on this subject and do see the example on Jon's page. So have a few questions and will follow-up with him directly at his talk page. Thanks for let me have a space to ask and getting started! --

After looking at it, and thinking about the code, i'm just not comfortable automating that without the proper tools (wiki extensions). --JonTheMon 20:26, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Well, it does work (assuming the /line template was always used correctly), and it's certainly a novel use for DPL, although I'd still have to call it a kludge. The biggest problem would be the percentages - you can't calculate percentages until you know the total, and since you're calculating the total on-the-fly... I don't think it would be possible. So you could do either totals or percentages for drop rate tables, but either way it would be kludgy. —Dr Ishmael

20:33, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, it'd be kludgy as hell. And the only way to get it to work would be to have the base data on a different page than the totals. And the percentages could be done, but it'd require a manual adding of each category, and using those values divide by a manual adding of all values. Not very pretty. --JonTheMon 20:42, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

my purge button

I miss it ever since I switched to monaco (and we don't have one of those fancy running clocks like GWW). And apparently it doesn't work the same, so copying my User:RoseOfKali/monobook.js to my User:RoseOfKali/monaco.js didn't just somehow magically work. Is it possible to add that button to monaco, can you help me please? Thanks! RoseOfKali 11:14, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Um, isn't there a monaco button to the far right of the tabs that says "refresh"? That should be your new purge button. --JonTheMon 13:02, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Only admins get that tab by default, everyone else has to add it with JS. —Dr Ishmael

13:57, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, righto. --JonTheMon 14:00, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Try this: in your monaco.js, where it says 'p-cactions', replace that with 'page_bar'. The addPortletLink function takes that as the id of the <div> in which to create the tab, and Monaco has different ids for everything. —Dr Ishmael

14:11, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, you have to do that AND replace a couple of the 'if' lines as I have noted here. —Dr Ishmael

15:13, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! :D RoseOfKali

18:31, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

The reason we don't have the cool clock thing here is because it doesn't work anymore... I used to put the code in my own .js so it would show up for me. I'm not really sure why it stopped working. It must be because of differences between the two sites.

(T/C) 16:45, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

It works for me on Monobook. The line "var timerParent = " would probably only need one minor change to work for Monaco. —Dr Ishmael

19:26, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

And what kind of change would that be? RoseOfKali

02:52, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Very similar to what I had to do for your purge button. Check out User:Bot_ishmael/monaco.js. You'll probably want to play around with the "timerObj.style..." lines, it looks somewhat huge with the current settings. —Dr Ishmael

03:10, April 22, 2010 (UTC)

Costume template

You need to disable the [edit] links like was done in other templates, currently they take you to edit the template itself. Thanks. RoseOfKali 14:48, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

Oops. Fixed. —Dr Ishmael

15:33, April 21, 2010 (UTC)

Characters

How did you setup your character panel on your profile?

Dragon Cupcakes

The Cupcakes were handed out in the 2009 Dragon Festival (coding error; see Dragon Festival 2009#Notes). Wet Wet Wetter added the cat "Dragon Festival 2009 items" back then. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 15:58, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I'd forgotten about that. Anyway, my policy has always been that if it's a bug, it doesn't count. —Dr Ishmael

19:11, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be completely reasonable to remove them from the category, since they're not intended to be Dragon Festival items. On the other hand, Dragoncakes sound epic and delicious.

20:37, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

O.O Oh my God :P

Thank you!

I was going to revert my edit since consensus went against me, but after all that work you did... as Viper said, it's a cool pic. A F K When Needed 11:37, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

"...all the work you did..." o.O ~~Turn on WikiEd -> find/replace all "Guild Wars 2 Assassin.jpg"/"Guild Wars 2 Assassin?.jpg" -> save.~~ I mean, yeah, I spent 2 hours doing that, man does my right pinky hurt from hitting the '?' key so many times. I may have to sue you for the cost of my carpal tunnel treatments. —Dr Ishmael

15:23, May 3, 2010 (UTC)

Course Correction

I'm sorry it's taken me 5 days to at least formally accept the apology you posted on my talkpage, but there's been so much more in your post that I didn't yet have an answer to (I do now). Late as it may be, I thank you.

You wrote, "you need to take responsibility for gaining full (or at least better) understanding of a situation before you directly overrule any administrative action", and I agree; I would ask you that if I do fail at this, please shout at me on my talkpage instead of duking it out in mainspace or project space, it'd be much appreciated. (Not that directly overruling you will be possible in the near future, what with me not having sysop, but things may change yet again - hopefully, of course, I'll not need to. ;)

Since y'all convinced me to keep having a go at being a bureaucrat, if I wanted to have a quiet word with you about that May 3rd block, preferably without re-raising the spectre of me having an issue with you personally, how would you suggest I best go about it? Talkpage, email, IM/chat, phone call, not at all? I'm still going to want to address the wiki at large, but I'd rather avoid you getting the impression I'm putting you up on the pillory or some such. --◄mendel► 08:46, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

Talk page is fine. I don't mind having someone bring up an issue for discussion, it just seems like it would be more productive to hold said discussion before anyone takes any further action on the issue. [Action - discussion - final action] seems more efficient than [action - reaction - (possible re-reactions) - discussion - final action].

Since I'm already typing, I'll go ahead and try to explain that block. The user had made a very crude vandalism edit. In my experience, users like that A) have a tendency to vandalize again, including re-vandalizing after they get reverted, and B) have a 99% chance of never making a constructive contribution to the wiki. Thus, blocking a vandal like that has no negative consequences, but has a good chance of preventing further disruption from the same vandal. What's wrong with that? —Dr Ishmael

14:25, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

And if you want to discuss the block I made just now... I did not block for the first vandalism, since it was minor and of a style that I don't usually see lead to additional vandalism. I only blocked after they vandalized a second time. —Dr Ishmael

15:14, May 11, 2010 (UTC)

I do look at the vandals' contribs, so if I had examined that block before you mentioned it, I'd have noticed that. I agree that the 4th edit by itself would have been minor, but the first edit today was "obvious vandalism", and the two edits of the day before qualify this IP as a repeat offender.

I have thought much about my next step in our discussion, but I don't feel collected enough now to put it to ~~paper~~ bits (1 a.m.), so I beg your leave to hand it to you tomorrow. --◄mendel► 23:02, May 11, 2010 (UTC)

Amalek

i uploaded a map to Amalek and made the article, since you're the big wiki pro i was hoping you would edit the page a bit better since im just a wiki noob Pryon 17:07, May 22, 2010 (UTC)

Krytan Brandy

same story Pryon 17:07, May 22, 2010 (UTC)

Goth --> gift of the traveler

Surely it should be Gift of the Huntsman? Random Time 22:31, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I blame it on the very cute and very distracting baby behind me. —Dr Ishmael

22:35, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Math templates - Zaishen Forecasts broken ?

While reviewing the Mission schedule page for this week, I noticed all the entries in "Date" Column where displaying an error. So then checked out the underlying Templates and all (Bounty, Mission, and Combat) seem to be producing the same error message:

   * Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "]" 
   * Expression error: Unexpected < operator
   * Error: invalid time

Since you appear to be the author and I was unaware how to fix myself, just wanted to bring to your attention. Thanks! -- 6:24, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you didn't manage to merge the /data template into all the needed templates. --JonTheMon 13:14, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

I've updated the /next templates, checked that nothing links/includes the /data templates anymore, and re-deleted them. —Dr Ishmael

14:47, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

According to your user page, you can now walk on water.

Hai Jeebus! A F K When Needed 09:18, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

o_O Do we need to get you a padded room? ...or do I need to get a clue? Cuz I don't get it. —Dr Ishmael

12:50, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

The photo of the ship from the first Nightfall mission.

A F K When Needed 13:24, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

....... /facepalm I think I'll take the padded room then, thank you very much. —Dr Ishmael

16:43, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Eep.

But we needz you...

A F K When Needed 17:23, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Dude, thats my line! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 15:05, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Dude that's not how you make use of the past tense.

A F K When Needed 15:14, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Greetings

Also salutations. Guess I missed out on all the fun? —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 07:51, June 13, 2010 (UTC)

I completely forgot...

But since your spawn is still too young to say it, happy mildly belated Father's Day. 23:49, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hey! Happy (late) Poppa's day and gz on the spawning! (much more belatedly) —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:18, June 23, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Dr Ishmael

14:57, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Bot Offer

Does it still stand concerning this? bottle might have to walk away from this 1. Sorry for the trouble and thanks in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bottle130 (contribs) .

Sure. It'll probably be a couple days before I can get to it, but I'll do it. —Dr Ishmael

12:33, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

I'm free - and it looks like a task that I can do using AWB. Should I run the task? Random Time 13:36, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead. —Dr Ishmael

14:56, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the bot should remove

from all the templates Random Time 15:16, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Complete Random Time 15:35, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Oh... uh, yeah, that needed to be done, but what Bottle was doing was moving the gold value out of the article text and into the template in the first place. Example. —Dr Ishmael

16:01, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Darn, I'd try and sort that one out, but I don't have time right now. If I can fiddle with my little knowledge of RegEx and AWB, I'll try and run it tomorrow. Random Time 16:17, June 24, 2010 (UTC)

Found at least one you missed: Enslavement Stone. It has "Gold" capitalized, did you use a case-sensitive find&replace? —Dr Ishmael

21:29, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

SoC revert

On SoC, you reverted a user who had deleted a colon. I'd like to re-revert you, as the colon breaks the enumeration of the two quests grammatically, and the text seems to flow better without it. I wasn't able to figure out why you did that revert. --◄mendel► 05:32, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Considering that it was a rollback, I suspect this was an accidental recentchanges click. The colon definitely doesn't belong.

12:22, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the benefit of the doubt, Felix. Yes, that was a misclick when I was trying to do this. When I looked back through the SoC edit, I couldn't see what had actually been changed (punctuation doesn't stand out very well, so I assumed it had been a simple whitespace edit), thus I didn't see the harm in leaving my revert in place. I've corrected it now. [edit] I swear I did. I went there, clicked "undo", entered "misclick in RC" as my summary, and clicked "Save." Apparently Wikia decided to completely ignore me, since the page history now shows mendel as fixing it almost hour after I thought I had. Bah. —Dr Ishmael

15:23, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

Nick's Template

When you said the "default place holder", I'm a little confused. If I understand it correctly if there is no update to the template then it continues to show the previous weeks location and collectible. While I agree it's not critical to update the page, I've seen it go several hours before the location is found and updated. In the meantime if you are using the template or look at the main page you might be working toward the wrong goal. It's an interesting point though so I'll move this to the discussion page on the Nicholas the Traveler article. -- Glamtre (Contribs) 00:02, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

Since it's basically the same question, I'll just put my response on Nick's talk page. —Dr Ishmael

00:27, June 29, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

I knew I forgot something when I posted. Thanks for adding the link to the minimum client. —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 01:29, July 2, 2010 (UTC)

Just curious

If I were to make a random edit to a random page, would you also edit that page? ;o --- -- (contribs) (talk) 13:58, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

If the page required additional edits, yes. :D —Dr Ishmael

14:09, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Also, got you. ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 15:02, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Is it really a "gotcha" if I was a knowledgeable and willing participant? :P —Dr Ishmael

15:05, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat, I think. You still edited the page I edited, after all :> ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 15:13, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

And now, you've edited the edit of a non-random trolling about editing the edit on a page randomly edited by Viper. :P

—Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 16:09, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Brain hurts (edited the edit wha?) + "July 8, 2010 votes since 16:08". ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 16:16, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

/doubletake Where the bloody H did you get "trolling" from? o__O —Dr Ishmael

16:57, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps, it would have been more technically correct to ask "is this a case of a target so expertly baited that he himself thinks he was a willing participant?" —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:06, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Ah. To me, "trolling" is much more negative and malicious. —Dr Ishmael

17:17, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

My apologies: I absolutely meant to compliment both of you (albeit one very backhandedly); no negative or malicious aspersions were meant to be cast.

Yeah, it's one of those words still searching for its ultimate connotation and denotation. It's true that friends shouldn't let friends troll strangers; I also find that friends like to bait each other (see: above) and I've seen that referred to as trolling and being trolled, although the perpetrator isn't considered a troll.

Similar to signifying (e.g. Bo Diddley's Say Man), which is PA among strangers but required behavior among friends (in the relevant circles). —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 17:35, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

My brain can't even turn that article into words.

19:18, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how it counts if it's the user's talk page. :P Jink 17:11, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

A random page includes any and all pages that currently exist on the wiki. :> ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 18:31, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

Hurf durf. Like he's not going to respond to something on his talk page. Jink 18:30, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

He doesn't always. ---

-- (contribs) (talk) 21:54, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

Diablo the Chicken

Found him. That's a pretty neat chicken. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 10:08, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. It's been a while since I've read through the archives, but he's been beheaded (and resurrected) at least twice, and experienced all sorts of dismemberings in between, one of which he is currently riding out on the lower body of a robot. In the beginning of the strip, he served as the "evil (pseudo-)villain," but most of his evilness has gradually rubbed off onto other characters, primarily on his genetically-engineered son, Oliver. —Dr Ishmael

13:57, July 10, 2010 (UTC)

The Battle for Lion's Arch info

Ok I re-posted the more detailed info for The Battle for Lion's Arch. There was no need to take it down and just post up the Objectives. That isn't helpful to the players. The Walkthrough part will help them prepare for the mission! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Josh5813 (contribs) 03:20, July 11, 2010.

The problem is that the article is word for word, section for section, the same as what's on the official wiki. My take on the GFDL is that it allows copying, as long as (a) it's acknowledged and the same licensing appears on each doc. Unfortunately, the official wiki and this one use two different copyright protocols, so it's a problem. You are welcome to paraphrase or restate the material in your own words. —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:54, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

Exactly - this wiki and the official one use incompatible licenses, so you can't just copy articles directly. —Dr Ishmael

03:58, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

And copying a template that doesn't work here is bad. Still, couldn't it have been tagged somehow as needing a rewrite? Much of the actual info we can re-use. --◄mendel► 22:25, July 11, 2010 (UTC)

I'm with Ish that the full-on pasta shouldn't remain, even though GWW used to do it from GWiki a bunch. (Of course, I thought commenting the pasta out should have been okay for the 72 hours it would have taken someone to rewrite; would have saved whoever was doing our first draft a lot of time.) —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 00:33, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if all I was trying to do was help people try to beat the mission Battle for Lion's Arch by posting a more detailed walkthrough of it. You said more or less "Don't post stuff from the official wiki if you didn't write it" Um... can I see the proof you have that I didn't write it. Like I said to others "Just because you say it's true doesn't make it so."

No posting up a detail layout of the mission to help people expect whats to come is wrong of me but one user posted something so helpful to aid others in the mission "expect to have 90 drops for your character, merchant summoning stones would come in handy." THANK YOU GOD! I know now what I was doing wrong in the mission, I didn't bring merchant summoning stones and I was thinking about all the fucking drops that would happen for me.

If you don't want people to post truthful answers for a walkthrough post it up at the main screen "Please don't post correct information to this site or you will be kick off and banned. Just post up stupid shit that won't aid other players in any way and you'll be fine." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by John7777 (contribs) 23:54, July 14, 2010.

"can I see the proof" -- don't be silly when you don't have a leg to stand on, look at the history of the page on gww.

We agree with you that a walkthrough would be helpful (and we're getting there), but unfortunately we are bound by law and cannot copy the GWW content over, or our site will be taken down. --◄mendel► 08:12, July 15, 2010 (UTC)

block explanation

Are you going to post one? --◄mendel► 01:46, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it obvious? —Dr Ishmael

01:50, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it was obvious to the IP. --◄mendel► 02:14, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

*sigh* Whatever. You have to remember I'm not a carebear admin like you. —Dr Ishmael

02:56, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Just popping in to say this was a reasonable exchange.

04:51, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

I remember that you're a software developer, and writing stuff like that is like writing documentation, so it's no wonder that you don't like to. ;-P --◄mendel► 08:15, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

If it's hard to write, it should be hard to read!

21:40, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Remember: When writing software documentation, you have to assume that the user has already read and understood the compiled machine language code, and just needs help with the details. -- Random Time 22:14, July 12, 2010 (UTC)

Book

It's just introducing you to the characters as you'd expect. I'll buy it when I can, but being a sucker for lore that's not much of an achievement by the first chapter.

Don't want to ruin it for you (or anyone else) but... yeah, definitely a Necro in that book. A F K When Needed 18:37, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

I was just trying to be clear that I haven't personally read it yet. Seems like people are taking it to mean that I was being skeptical of the claim, but that wasn't my intent. —Dr Ishmael

18:41, July 16, 2010 (UTC)

The War of 1812?

Wikpedia also confirms the Howitzer as cannon. ^-^ (Alas, no fixes to summary typos.) —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:46, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Dohohoho

06:36, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

FYI: Error added by your bot

Just now, a user switched the tooltips of 2 images around, rank 2 and 3 of the Maxed Titles track were accidentally switched - the tooltips were previously added (in their incorrect form) by your bot. The edit is here. Just thought you should be aware of this issue. -- Random Time 15:44, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

That was me going semi-auto in AWB to update links to Kind Of A Big Deal. When I got to that page, I figured I could make the alt-text better by inserting the actual rank titles, and I just got those two mixed up. —Dr Ishmael

15:48, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

Aah, you're here - you probably saw the edit, then. Just wanted to make sure you knew about it - as if it was automated it could have been a widespread problem -- Random Time 15:49, July 19, 2010 (UTC)

scum

I'm sorry if I wrote something down badly; I had had my head deep into the code, then tried to answer all of the talkpages where the topic had come up — there are 4, and I apologize if the inevitable duplication grated. That done, I checked into an online game for some relaxation before going to RecentChanges later.

I do realize now that my criticism was quite unbalanced; I didn't mention any advantages of the variables approach, nor did I look for them much. I do appreciate the effort you've invested to demonstrate this extension to us; that's been very valuable to me. The idea of using single data points flexibly hadn't occurred to me until I saw it on your demo page.

I don't think myself a wiki-god. I write my thoughts down as clearly as I can so that people can discuss them, and that I might learn by this discussion; I am happy when someone manages to show me something that I failed to see.

I do hope that you'll reconsider your wikibreak; I'm certain we all would miss you if you really left.

Also, thanks for catching my numbering error in Nicholas the Traveler/Past Dialogues/tmp‎‎. --◄mendel► 04:19, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

back... for a little while -- I think everyone is relieved. I sure am! --◄mendel► 13:07, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

Grated? You might say that. Unbalanced criticism? You might say that too. (I like to think that) I can handle constructive criticism well, but your criticism in this case was almost entirely destructive. It's not that you criticized my solution, it's that your arguments were so vehemently against it and seemed to completely obviate the possibility of counter-argument. You hadn't even bothered to look at what I had done (made obvious by your confusion here) or to ask what else I planned to do, yet you still felt wholly qualified to slap a "FAIL" tag on the entire idea simply because you think you know best.

I think my wife summarized the situation pretty well, and I can't think of much to add to that. —Dr Ishmael

18:45, July 20, 2010 (UTC)

Edit Summary of the day!

Doc Ish: +1
TEF: 0
Readers: +0.5
Previous editors: -0.1

—Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 04:02, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

Body blocking is good on melee

→ Moved to Talk:Fenrir

SMW properties

Maybe they only are pulled from mainspace? --JonTheMon 16:30, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that was my next idea. —Dr Ishmael

16:31, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

mendel didn't bother

Mendel would have bothered had he had the time to spend on it. Sorry. --◄mendel► 00:34, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I wish you'd said something, then. When you posted another WoT lambasting the extension but ignored my question there, it felt like you were blowing me off. And that's a big reason I blew up like I did. —Dr Ishmael

00:44, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

You and Jon opened up a lot of different "demo" areas, and I can't work on them all at once. I worked on one (the title bars) for a few hours, gained some understanding of why people wikicode the way they do, and added that to the discussion. Should I feel you were blowing off here because you didn't add the running number to the header, like I had suggested? I can't explain it, but rather than think you intended to offend me, I prefer to believe I don't know. --◄mendel► 08:34, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

I did that because it's a simpler solution that doesn't require a CSS hack, and thus an improvement on your version. —Dr Ishmael

12:52, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

My solution requires a css hack? --◄mendel► 15:45, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Shame on you mendel, cheating at Counterstrike Source.

15:46, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

"For the TOC to be numberless, would some admin please install the .css suggested in Template:TOCright into MediaWiki:common.css?" If you have to modify the ToC's appearance due to a limitation of your solution, I consider that a hack. —Dr Ishmael

16:01, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

That wasn't part of the solution. It'd have been easier to slap NOTOC on it and keep the previous appearance; I opted for a TOCright , and since the actual headers had been nested 3 levels deep, the dialogue entries had triple number numbering, which was detracting from the numbers that mattered. You simply cut those "legacy" headers and didn't care about the long TOC atop the article, that's why you didn't run into this. --◄mendel► 20:58, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Why are you even complaining about this? It was still your idea that got implemented, with only a slight variation (letting the sections be numbered automatically instead of supplying it explicitly). —Dr Ishmael

22:21, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't complaining, I said I didn't know why you implemented your solution while not discussing mine. Could you please explain to me why implicit section numbering is superior to explicit numbering? Did you do that so your "edit this week's dialogue" is easier to use? --◄mendel► 06:21, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Why are you even complaining about this? -- I brought this up because you see something I do as blowing you off which can be explained as "wanted to provide a demo, but didn't get around to it because it takes a while to get back up to speed on SMW and set something up" (which you've no doubt discovered by now); while on the other hand you don't realize that your own actions could be seen the same if somebody wanted to see you the way you see me. tl;dr you get angry at others doing something that's similar to what you do yourself. Be more tolerant! --◄mendel► 06:47, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

I didn't couple that with a gigantic diatribe to plow your idea into the ground. It's not the same situation at all. —Dr Ishmael

12:24, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I didn't, either. --◄mendel► 18:51, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

WUT —Dr Ishmael

18:55, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

dictionary:diatribe --◄mendel► 22:39, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Your link doesn't work. Also, you damn well know what I mean. —Dr Ishmael

22:48, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you mean you#re not taking it seriously. --◄mendel► 00:04, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Howzabout we rejoice in (a) having some new templates that are kinda cool and (b) having a (debatably) cool new extension (that might/not serve some cool wiki purpose)? (I wouldn't be upset either if some peeps could apologize for accidentally stepping on each other's toes in an effort to make the wiki mo' bettah.) —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 21:56, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Hah, fat chance. Mendel will never admit that the variables extension has any purpose at all. —Dr Ishmael

00:00, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

I've described the purpose it has. --◄mendel► 00:04, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that's right: contributing to the delinquency of wiki-coders everywhere.

Where have you done this? Not on my talkpage, and not on the Wikia board. I honestly can't find it. —Dr Ishmael

01:10, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

You've been slighting me 4 out of your past 5 lines. With your leave, I've lost the desire to continue this pastime. --◄mendel► 01:31, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

You know, I realize you guys probably graduated in 1850 or so, but at USF we really emphasize teamwork, communication, and cooperation in programming scenarios, often over the quality of the actual code. Instead of slaying each other over whose approach is superior, I suggest that you work together for a short period of time on one approach, and then the other. That way you'll both objectively see the pros and cons of each method, and then we'll have two robust options to choose from in the end. Plus you'll both be personally invested in either option so it won't lead to any hard feelings. Best case scenario, you'll learn to see past your differences and develop a nice healthy bromance.

If that idea is too carebear for you, then just shut the fuck up before I start vomiting fire.

06:23, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

User:John7777

As per User_talk:Josh5813#Blocked for 1 day, it seems that John7777 is the same person as Josh5813. Since Josh5813 has already been blocked once for vandalizing your userpage, I'd like to increase the block duration to 3 days, or a week at most, and extend it to the other account as well. Would you like to do the honors? 17:00, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Sure. I had wanted to do that myself, but I wasn't sure if other admins would see it the same way, so I took the conservative route. —Dr Ishmael

17:01, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think it's helpful if another admin helps with this to show that (1) it's not personal between Ish & not-quite-anon; (2) there are helpful ways to contribute (and this ain't one of 'em). —Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 18:22, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Fellblade diff

Yes. --Vipermagi 13:05, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Aha, I thought so. It would be useful if we had a central location to list that bug so we don't have to list it on every individual animated item, but I can't think of a suitable location for it. —Dr Ishmael

13:14, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Hey ish

Don't take this personally, I'm sheerly posting on your page because it happens to be the one I'm on currently.

You and mendel need to stop bitchfighting with each other about menial things. You and I have never particularly seen eye to eye on many subjects, but both of you are acting like a bunch of six-year-old highly advanced programmers.

I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is about mendel that so aggravates you, nor what it is about you that so aggravates mendel, but I'm reasonably sure if someone -probably anyone- else had referred to what you said as "I insulted myself, now we're even", you wouldn't have gotten quite as irritated.

As many are aware, perhaps you're not, I don't often agree with mendel, but I think that this situation is ridiculous. You got annoyed because mendel recoded some of your work, stuff ended, you apologised and made a comment, mendel took it the wrong way and you got irritated again.

Now that said I'm not entirely sure whether or not you were joking about the whole matter, which you may well have been, in which case disregard me. Again, I have no real idea precisely what is going on and reading every article is too much effort since they're pretty scattered from what I can see.

Also, to quote Felix, "If that idea is too carebear for you, then just shut the fuck up before I start vomiting fire."

That line amused me a lot more than it should have done.

Oh on a totally different note, how have things been going? I've talked variously to almost everyone I knew before I went on hiatus for about 2 years, apart from you. So yeah, I heard you had a baby and stuff, so how have stuff been? Jink, other stuff like that and common pleasantries blargle blargle blargle.

Anyway, I hope you won't take this as a chastisement, and I hope I'm not posting into an argument that has already been resolved.

I dunno maybe my entire argument is a bunch of irrelevancies, but hey, what you gonna do? :) —

Warw/Wick 22:24, August 8, 2010 (UTC)