User talk:Dschwen/Archive4

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Neue Wache

An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, Image:B_Neue_Wache_interior_1b.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 09:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:B Neue Wache interior 1b.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on December 24, 2007. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2007-12-24. howcheng {chat} 18:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

POTD

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:USA Lassen NP Kings Creek CA edit3.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on September 29, 2007. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2007-09-29. howcheng {chat} 00:04, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas HTML

Your WikiMiniAtlas is wonderful. Whilst taking a look at its internal workings, I noticed a typo in the HTML produced by the iframe.html script: the <head> tag is missing its closing bracket. -- The Anome 08:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll fix it asap (which will be tomorrow when I have full internet access from a pc with my toolserevr key on it). --Dschwen 13:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tibetan places on the wiki map

Hi I've recently been adding the Tibetan towns and villages to wikipedia complete with coordinates. However the titles of the new villages I have been adding aren't showing on the wiki mini atlas in the globe. If you look at Tibet on the map only the larger places like Lhasa, Dhingri, Shigatse, Golmud etc are showing when it ought to show the titles of smaller places like Alamdo, Azog, Baicang etc and tens of others i have been adding when you zoom in. PLease can you help me because I am trying to draw up a detailed map of Tibet as I add these articles but they are just not registering as places on the map ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 09:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, you'll have to have some patience. The labels get updated when a new dump is generated. --Dschwen 21:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas in Div

How to insert WMA into a div to replace maps to Infobox?--Pako-wiki 15:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is currently not yet possible. I am working on a new redesigned version which has this feature. But please have some patientence with me, as I just moved to a new county and have to settle in first. --Dschwen 18:10, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:Amsel Weibchen aufgeplustert edit2 clone.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on October 23, 2007. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2007-10-23. howcheng {chat} 17:01, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WMA meta loading

Our practice of loading WMA from meta is resulting in a small but measurable decrease in browser load speed for cold-cache users. The reason for this is that when the script is not cached by the client the request to meta requires a brand new TCP connection to meta and page rendering blocks while the script is fetched. There is no particular reason that we need this fetch to be blocking. I'd suggest we wrap the document.write in an anonymous function that gets attached as an onload hook, though with this change the master WMA script will likely need to be changed to execute right away. I know you have been busy lately, so if you don't get a chance to look into this first, I'll go ahead and test a solution, but it might be a few days before I can look into it. --Gmaxwell 05:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The onload hook mechanism was used by another wikipedia before and didn't work. I cannot remember which one. Anyhow, let me try it. What do you mean by master WMA script will likely need to be changed to execute right away? Ahh, I see, so that it is guaranteed to be loaded when it is scheduled for execution. Hmmm. You may be right, and that is probably why it didn't work. --Dschwen 15:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nodal Ninja panoramic head

Just wondering what you think of the pano head. Considering how many panoramic images I take, I suppose its surprising I haven't as yet invested in one. To be honest, most of the shots I take either have low parallax error or are hand-held. Ptgui/smartblend does a good job of masking errors, but it would still be a helpful thing to have in the arsenal. The NN is pretty expensive for something that may not be used very often (and is a bit bulky by the looks of things), and the Panosaurus is significantly cheaper (the NN seems about £150 and the Panosaurus is USD$78 shipping of about $20... bargain!). Did you do much research and why did you choose the NN over other rivals? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 14:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like the build quality of the NN. And if I recall correctly it was just about $100 (I bought it last year when i was in the states). I used it with my powershot G3 and I am extremely happy with it (used it for almost all my in- and outdoor panoramics). However I haven't used it with my 5D yet, but I brought it with me and I'm planning to set it up for my next big pano. Your pics are great, and there is no doubt that with the advanced blending software and some handheld-shooting experience you can get good results. But in the cases where you are using a tripod anyways (and for me that was more the case with the G3 than now with the 5D) it makes you life easier and gives you more reliable results in terms consistent overlap and noticably easier stitching. And I prefer that to the clever automatic seam-faking. Hmm... ..while I'm writing this I just visited the panosaurus website and it looks like a new revision with aluminium enforced arms came out Nov'06 (after I bought my NN). In that case I'd definitely go for the cheaper PS! Uh and while I'm thinking about it a bit more, I think the Panosaurus was out of stock when I wanted to order (in June'06), probably because they were already planning to release the new version. So yeah, go with the PS. It might not necessarily increase the quality of you panos - at least for the ones you upload here there usually is no room for improvement anyways, but then again I have no idea how many pano-attempts end up unstitchable on your harddisk (I know its quite some in my case when i shoot handheld) - but it will make life easier. --Dschwen 15:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Caterpillar of the Spurge Hawk-moth

An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, Image:CH Caterpillar.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 04:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:CH Caterpillar.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on May 3, 2008. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2008-05-03. howcheng {chat} 05:15, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

crepuscular rays

Hi, Dschwen,
May I please ask you to take a look here:
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=08&month=12&year=2007
Please take a look at 3D SUNBEAMS and please see how they call them. Thank you for your time and no response is needed. Regards--Mbz1 (talk) 15:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, a really solid reference! --Dschwen 16:27, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see he got you too. Sad. See here for my reply. Matt Deres (talk) 02:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GeoHack/WikiAtlas hybrid

Here's an idea as I dislike huge size of the GeoTemplate, is when the link is clicked to popup an iframe loading GeoHack mini with 5-10 links to the most popular mapping sites, a more link which direct to the full GeoHack page, and an link to load the WikiMiniAtlas inside. This has the advantage of shorter loading times, makes our mapping service more obvious, and faster for the user. —Dispenser (talk) 06:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image

Thanks for your vote on Clay Anderson's spacewalk, for FP. Please take a look at edit 1, and if possible, reconsider? - Ohmpandya ^{We need to talk... ♦ contribs} 01:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Travels

Hey deBivort! I just went to yor userpage for the first time and noticed the cool Image:User_debivort_travels.png. Did you manually draw that? Or did you use GPS traces? --Dschwen 13:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dschwen - Unfortunately, it's just done by hand. An automated generator would be very cool. I don't suppose any of your wiki apps could do that? Thanks for reminding me of it - it's a bit out of date and I should address that. de Bivort 13:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Guild

Yeah it hasn't gone done terrible well with a few people which is a shame as I'd hoped it would be a positive thing for the photographic community. As I mentioned on the FPC talkpage I used my own profile as a template for other users to follow - I mean I could have made a profile of someone else or xxxxx'd it but I thought it would look like a hollow show of modesty and pretension if I didn't include my profile there. Oh well life is not fair I guess! :-) --Fir0002 22:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Photographic Master Award

Congratulations! You have been selected as one of Wikipedia's Masters of Photography for your outstanding contributions to the project. Please place this award somewhere on your userpage! Also be sure to visit the Photographic Masters' Guild Homepage. There you can find out more about project and utilize the forums etc. As a recipient I would request that you create yourself a profile and add five of your very best images (not necessarily 5 FP's - just five photos you think are your best) to the Guild Gallery. If you don't do this within 14 days of recieving this award I'll assume you'd rather I do it on your behalf.

Well Done Dschwen, we've had our differences but you've certainly done your bit for the FP collection! :-) --Fir0002 08:19, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Featured sounds

I noticed that you have participated in Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates in the past. There are now two candidates and the project appears to be abandoned. If you could look at the candidates and vote it would be appreciated. Zginder^{(talk) (Contrib)} 18:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

with no subject

Once Fcb981 told you: "Just thought you should know, Dschwen, you lost a lot of respect from me just niow." I believe you should know that you lost the last bit of respect that I still had for you after your latest comment. In a mean time may I please ask you to stop giving me orders? May I please also ask you to spare your time and do not respond this message. Thanks.--Mbz1 (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you even know the meaning of the word respect. EOD. --Dschwen 05:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

Thanks! :-D --Dschwen 19:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sparrenberg Castle

FYI, I recently noticed that your Sparrenburg FP got orphaned, as the article was deleted for being a copyvio. I put in for a translation request and voila, Sparrenberg Castle was created and your photo now has a home. If you have time, you may want to proofread the article (apparently, that step is still outstanding). Regards, howcheng {chat} 07:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/cow

An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, Image:CH cow 2.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 08:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edison, Nebraska

Please stop deleting the Mapit template from Edison, Nebraska. Community articles are required to have the Mapit link in the EL section. Nyttend (talk) 02:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Neither is it a true external link, nor does it add any information that isn't there without it. --Dschwen 03:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Four-spotted Chaser

An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, Image:Dragonfly macro.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 06:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect highlighting script

I've left a note at User talk:Dschwen/highlightredirects.js about possibly simplifying the script, if you so choose. Redirect-highlighting has (finally!) been subsumed by MediaWiki: as of early March 2008, pages now have a CSS class mw-redirect to links that are redirects. This change would speed up the script by reducing extra client-server communication to, well, nothing. Thanks :) Gracenotes^T § 01:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

HighlightRedirects

Hello. I have made several major changes to your script. You may wish to adopt them into the actual script.

My version can be found here.

The changes I made were:

Changing the tab to a MediaWiki tab
Making the script not work on Special and edit pages
Changing the bright blue link colour the normal darker one

Thanks! archanamiya · talk 15:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Although the script should be majorly reworked. A recent MediaWiki revision introduced a css class for redirect links, making the XHRs obsolete. --Dschwen 15:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I threw out all the XHR stuff. You should readopt the new version in order to avoid unnecessary server queries. --Dschwen 16:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Postprocessing

Rather than fill the FP nom with even more conversation, I figured I'd bring the chat here. I recently discovered a neat little tool that works similarly to HDR tone mapping, but less intrusively, and without the additional step of actually creating a 32bit HDR file. Basically, you feed it multiple exposures (either the same frame processed from RAW at various exposures, such as -1.5, 0 and 1.5 stops, or individual frames that are aligned perfectly), and it will analyse them, pick the areas that are exposed in the middle of the exposure curve, and merge them all together to create an 'ideally' exposed image. To be honest, I don't know any more than that about how it does what it does other than what is on the site itself, but it works very well indeed, without any obvious haloes. As you would expect, the resultant image is often low in contrast, having squeezed a lot of dynamic range out of it, but if you feed it 16 bit TIFFs, it will spit out 16 bit TIFFs too, which respond very well to further post processing. Anyway, thats the secret weapon. The rest is just the dart art of photoshop editing. ;-) Oh, and while Tufuse is command line driven, there is a GUI available for it. Its all a bit cutting edge at the moment - both Tufuse and its GUI are very much beta right now, but I haven't found anything else out there that does the job as well as it does. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 01:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delisting nom. of your image of Petrified Wood

Hello Dschwen,

I am sorry to say, but I have nominated one of your most early works that was promoted to FP status for delisting. The discussion for this delisting nomination can be found here.

Kind Regards,

Booksworm ^{Sprechen-sie Koala?} 10:09, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A message in WikiMiniAtlas discussion

Hi Dschwen! I left you a message in meta wikiminiatlas discussion some days ago. Read it when you can! Bye! -User:Theklan.eu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.16.207.133 (talk) 00:06, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm currently on vaccation. Will respond next week. Best Dschwen 03:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By the way... there's a week now that WMA is not properly working on eu:wp. It gives a mysql error message. Do you know why? -Theklan (talk) 10:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. The underlying database was changed slightly (this relates to a server outage a couple of months ago and a workaround which doesn't work anymore). By the way, the WikiMiniAtlas does not appear in Konqueror un eu.wp, it throws a TypeError: Null value (I've seen that before on some other wp). --Dschwen 12:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the common.js script that was very long to a shorter one copied directly from es:wp. It's strange, but I can't do nothing. Have you seen the zoom level idea I gave you in the discussion? -Theklan (talk) 16:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It works now in Konqueror, but check out eu:Helsinki floating in the Atlantic (west of greenwich instead of east). I'll get to the city size zoom level thingie later. --Dschwen 19:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Helsinki problem solved! There're many, also on en:wp with these problem, putting E instead of W or opposite. By the way! Congratulations for the work with Panoramaviewer... I have discovered it now and implemented a link in a template for wide images in eu:wp! -Theklan (talk) 11:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Guild gallery/profile

Hi Dschwen, Just letting you know that I've added your profile details based off the commons MoP info. Hope its to your liking --Fir0002 10:43, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category intersection proof of concept

Not sure if yr script is quite working right: entering 1794 births & English philosophers should yield at least one article (William Whewell) but the results say 0 at the moment. Do you plan to provide as output a list of the (first n) results? I take it you know CatScan. As useful as linkto for some purposes might be linkfrom (e.g. which of the items on this List of Foos are in that category) and the ability to ask which of a group are not in a category. Dsp13 (talk) 15:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uhm, when I try it, I get William Whewell as the one result. The code is still experimental and I do not sanitze extra whitespaces and extra linefeeds from the input (so don't press enter after the last entry). --Dschwen 15:36, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And yes, I know catscan. My tool started as Link intersection. You linkfrom and not suggestions are pretty good though. --Dschwen 15:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, it was the extra linefeed... thanks! Dsp13 (talk) 21:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image wanted

Hi. I noticed you commented on this engine image. You may like to comment on the planned new image here Cuddlyable3 (talk) 12:15, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Staten Island Ferry Terminal

An image uploaded by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, Image:Staten Island Ferry terminal.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! MER-C 07:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mehran and Arad

My name in author place is because usually as you upload the photo, your name is already written in author's place. So I forgot to remove my name (And I did afterward in most cases. however, some works are infact shared contribution. (We created it together). --Arad (talk) 17:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. Just needed the clarification. These matters are usually taken pretty serious on commons. Thanks. --Dschwen 19:07, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

River Teise

Just a not to let you know that I've reverted your deletion of the watermills on the tributaries of the River Teise. This has been discussed on the talk page of the article before. The duplication is not "unnecessary" as the River Teise article is about the river itself, of which the watermills form a part, whilst the Medway watermills articles deal solely with the two hundred plus watermills on the River Medway and its tributaries. The main problem is that the River Teise article needs to be expanded to cover the other aspects of the river, which will then give it more balance. Mjroots (talk) 09:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't kid yourself. It is a duplication. And it is unnecessary. The hidden comments (please copy all changes to..) speak for themselves. Stuff like this makes maintaining the encyclopedia a pain in the butt. But if you think you have to artificially inflate the article, fine, I don't have a strong motivation to fight with you about this crap. --Dschwen 15:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statue of Liberty picture

Sorry if I misattributed the Statue of Liberty picture. Is you picture on Wiki Commons? If not, are you OK with me using it in the montage? I can always replace that frame with one of the others if you wish. --Jleon (talk) 15:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't worry :-). This and this is on commons. Of course you can use it, that's why I released it under a free license in the first place. --Dschwen 15:13, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments

I appreciate your photography, Dschwen. Normally your comments are insightful rather than sarcastic. Why the change? Durova^Charge! 14:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's probably just the frustration of seeing so many people obviuosly disagreeing with my assessment of the encyclopedic value of manipulated historic documents. Don't take it personally please. --Dschwen 14:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas in Hebrew

Hi, I saw the cool WikiMiniAtlas and I want to integrate it into Hebrew Wikipedia. Because Hebrew is written from right to left, I't looks bad sometimes. I think you should move all the styling out of JS into css (better code) and in the JS use only class or id property (almost never use x.style.something - maybe only in the display to show/hide). Then, we can create another css (extra - which not replace the css, but overriddes some properties), RTL.css, for rtl languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Persian etc). I guess it should be the same as the regular css, but everywhere where using right should use left, and left should be right, and margin/padding: 0 5px 0 0 should 0 0 0 5px and vice versa and most important use "direction:rtl".

Another problem, which is general and happens in LTR languages too, is the _ between 2 words. Thanks, ערן (talk) 20:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, most CSS is actually in the iframe.html that gets loaded into the popup. It would be a piece of cake to make an iframe_rtl.html which would be used for rtl languages. --Dschwen 21:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I filtered out the underscore now. Odd, a couple of months ago i had an israeli friend take a look at the hebrew WMA and he didn't complain about RTL issues. What does direction:rtl do? Are all words backwards without it? --Dschwen 21:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Direction:rtl sets the direction of the document (or the element) to be right to left, and it also sets the text-align:right. The words are not backword, but it behaves wrong (text alignment is the most notable problem). It also affects the place of chars, which can be in inproper place. For example when you want to write "Jerusalem (Ohio)" in Hebrew document which its direction is rtl (Just the same happens in the map for Hebrew chars in ltr map):

Bad: Jerusalem (Ohio)

Good: Jerusalem (Ohio)

It because chars like ()., used in any language and the bi-directional algorithem of Unicode deal them as "neutral chars", a-zA-Z are "ltr chars", and Hebrew alphabet is "rtl chars": when neutral char surrounded by ltr/rtl chars it behave as ltr/rtl and its goes to the right place, but when the neutral char is in the end of ltr string in rtl document it is deal as rtl char (and vice versa) and go to inproper place. In general it can be fixed by one of the following:

Adding invisible chars (‏ or rlm) to the end of the string. When this char is in the end of the string the ) is surrounded by ltr chars and behave properly - good solution for text with little bidirectional text
Adding the string to span/div element with "unicode-bidi:embed;" or "unicode-bidi:bidi-override;" - Almost the same as the first solution.
Setting the whole document direction:rtl (the elements inherit the direction from their parents). Good solution for setting the whole document as using rtl chars.

When the map is in Hebrew, setting direction:rtl to parent element is necessary (in Hebrew/Arabic Wikipedia we set the <html dir="rtl"> and we also use special css).

Thanks, ערן (talk) 06:41, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

commons:MediaWiki:DelReqHandler.js

Hello, I mentioned you over at WP:AN, in a comment that perhaps using this script on Wikipedia would be helpful. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#AFD_backlog. Cheers, Cirt (talk) 21:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:CH cow 2.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on October 2, 2008. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2008-10-02. howcheng {chat} 16:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well Done - I have been featuring this picture on my user page for nearly a year now because it has everything a Wiki pic should have as well as being utterly calming. I have not yet come across anything better to replace it!! Regards Motmit (talk) 10:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a bunch! --Dschwen 22:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FPC Nom

Just wanted to drop you a line and let you know I nominated one of your Biden/Obama images on FPC. Seems you've been a bit disillusioned by it all lately though? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know, and thanks for the nomination. Nah, well, I'm not disillusioned by it all, just some FPC projects. I'm pretty active on commons in the geocoding area, and developing tools and bots on the toolserver. I probably just needed a break from certain things. I don't agree with direction FPC took in the last few months, but hey, what can you do, as long as there are plenty of happy contributors. There is so much work on the Wikimedia projects it is pretty easy to find another niche for a while. --Dschwen 16:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What direction do you think it went in? I saw your disapproval of the pixel peeping and downsampling.. I'm not that fussed on the issue. I guess most of my images have a bit more leeway than average as they maintain better than average sharpness as well as poster sized reproducibility. As for geocoding, I'm using your template on my images and that javascript that grabs the coordinates from the Google Maps page is handy, so I guess I've got you to thank for that one. :-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 16:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Too many people with too little clue. Narrowminded fixed schema voting. Insect macros are largely favoured, and these so-called restorations get a big-time historic value bonus (sorry, for me most of them are just boring dust-clone-out jobs, and questionable color balance adjustments). There are exceptions of course, but seeing these photographic pearls side by side to.. ..sorry.. ..junk makes me just more sad. Geez, I'm starting to sound more and more like Carol :-). --Dschwen 21:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You don't sound anything like Carol - you're coherent and she's a mad as a hatter and difficult to follow! ;-) I wouldn't say insect macros are favoured - plenty of them do fail if sharpness or composition isn't great. Admittedly, its the 'wow' factor of seeing something up close that gets people, but shouldn't that be rightly so? Wow factor is a valid component of the criteria (but obviously only one of many), or do you disagree with that one? To an extent I do agree with you, though, about some of the more boring historical images and I generally don't vote on them unless they're particularly well done. Admittedly, theres been a glut of them lately thanks to Durova, but I'm sure they still contribute a pretty small proportion of all FPs. Still, photography is only one of a number of visual styles, and we should try not to be biased. Above all is the goal of the best possible encyclopaedic images of any type, right? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 10:30, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, but if you manage to follow she isn't incoherent at all. And I agree with you last sentence Above all is the goal of the best possible encyclopaedic images of any type, what I'm saying is essentially that some types have it easier than others. And some voters are completely oblivious to this fact and construct weird arguments to rationalize their subconscious bias. --Dschwen 14:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I haven't had much to do with her but on the few occasions when I have tried to follow her discussions, I found them very frustrating and difficult! I'll take your word for it! I'm sorry for dragging you into the myre of a controversial FPC nomination, by the way. :-) I suppose I should assume good faith but with the number of irrational opposes, I suspect political bias may be rearing its ugly head. Composition, well its a subjective thing and I won't argue about that, but some of the reasons are ridiculous. "the supposed main subject is not the actual main focus of the photo"... What?! *sigh* I have to admit, landscape/landmark photography is far easier to pass through FPC. Some people expect a staged studio shot when it comes to events, apparently. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 21:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, don't worry, it really isn't your fault. I had the political bias theory as well. There isn't much you can do about it. If that really is the reason for some of the substance lacking opposes it would be quite sad. Talk about NPOV. Those people should seriously reevaluate their work on Wikipedia. Granted, it is easier to let your bias influence something rather unimportant like an FPC nom, where the concept of POV if much harder to grasp (arguably every photo has some kind of inherent POV), still I find this display rather unmasking (especially in light of a current admin candidacy by one voter). Well, I've pretty much given up on this nom. Unfortunately it looks like most voters are either drive-by voters, who don't bother to follow up on the nomination, or (yep, AGF just went out the window) they just don't have the guts to admit they were plain wrong, and change their vote. Once a discussion heats up like that people tend to get more stubborn anyways. And I think the nom has reached that point (and my angry replies have certainly not helped to avoid getting there). --Dschwen 15:41, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

wood duck

hello; thanks for undoing my change of wood duck image; you were right, especially given the monitor brightness requirement laid down in the commons image guidelines (i have just discovered them, and now i see that the guidelines require a minimum of 2 megapixels); that brightness is too bright for me; my image is over-exposed where the bird is white, but at least the colours are vivid; your best criticism was the blurriness; your choice of image is too gloomy, even when my monitor brightness is calibrated; it could stand a little exposure compensation, some gamma correction and a drop of saturation; that might make it more useful when someone arrives on the page (as i did this morning), looking for a good image with which to confirm the identification of the bird in his own photograph; that is the only reason i signed up, uploaded my image and used it to replace the almost colourless existing wood duck; your photographer did take a good, sharp image; just not a helpful one; which leaves the matter of file format; if you were serious, please direct me to the guidance that advises against use of png Mashoo (talk) 21:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uhm, that guidance would be common sense, but it is spelled out at commons:Commons:First_steps/Quality and description. Seriously, PNG will almost always inadvertently result in worse quality. You, for example resized the image to a mere 800px. With JPG you can upload a 2000px wide image at the same filesize. Despite lossy compression you will end up with way more detail. Worrying about lossy compression is like taking the tireiron out of your SUV to improve gasmileage. Nice try, but there are other more effective things you should do first. Make a sharp and well exposed picture, save that as JPG, and its quality will be a zillion times better than a downscaled snapshot in PNG. This discussion is a really old hat. In the end I'd love to just say just do it! ;-), just use JPG like everyone else. So, sorry if I'm coming across a little snappish, I really appreciate having you as a new contributor and I hope you continue uploading lots of high quality JPG files ;-). --Dschwen 22:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

that sense of yours is now more common; thank you for your assistance; but my image was a crop, not a downscale; there was no file size juggling going on; a pretty poor image though, and i would not have substituted it, but for the original incumbent's lack of dynamism; as for exposure, i intend to upload a further version of my duck, without the exposure compensation blowing out the white bits; perhaps it will end up as dull as the one i was trying to replace, but it will be good to have put my lessons learned to some use; and i will put your jpeg advice into practice —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mashoo (talk • contribs) 18:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Optional adminquestion

I just got your question idea, but at this point in the RFA, it's probably not really needed (roughly 4 hours left). Also, I'm going to be busy tonight with offline stuff, and need to go soon, so I probably wouldn't be able to write a thoughtful response in time. Thanks for offering a question, though. Happy editing, Spencer^T♦^C 19:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Its ok. You actually answered it already ;-), and I voted accordingly. --Dschwen 20:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

~~Hm...I was mistaken; I have another day.~~ That's good to know, Spencer^T♦^C 00:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I'd like to thank you for voting in my RFA. Thanks also for expressing your trust in me, and I hope that I live up to your expectations. Don't forget, if you have any questions (or bits of advice), please leave a message on my talk page. Thanks again, Spencer^T♦^C 03:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Macro Images

Hey Daniel, I browsed thru your gallery but couldn't see many macro images apart from the dragonfly and coin. Could you give me a few links? Unfortunately, Fir's pictures are all downsampled. Muhammad(talk) 12:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a couple of random shots (some are cropped, some might be slightly scaled (however not nearly as much as Fir's shots), I don't remember exactly):

cropped

Not really macro, but I like them:

another big pano made with the Sigma lens

It's a fun lens, probably even more so on a 1.6 crop factor camera. --Dschwen 21:56, 22 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I particularly liked the Biden-Obama picture. Muhammad(talk) 17:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Map of Prussia

Something funny happened with your vote...can you clarify it a bit? Something must've got messed up somewhere. Thanks, Spencer^T♦^C 01:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, I guess that one was a bit too subtle, eh? ;-) It was meant as a comment on the... ...lacking caption. --Dschwen 03:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah...I'm really slow today. Very clever. Spencer^T♦^C 01:12, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DSM 360 Pano

Hey Daniel, I stitched the panorama once again, taking into consideration some of your comments and the new version has IMO almost not tilt, and the levels problem that Janke mentioned has been sorted out. About the 360 degrees, due to a slight crop after the stitching, the panorama is a tad short of 360. Under what name should I upload the new pano? What should I do with the current FPC? Muhammad(talk) 07:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What software do you use for stitching? If all images are overlapping no crop should be necessary. It would really be a shame if just due do a few degrees missing this would not be a 360 pano. A 360 degree pano can be viewed in a panorama viewer. I'd just load over the old version. The voters should be able to deal with that. --Dschwen 13:58, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture Image:Dragonfly macro.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on November 1, 2008. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2008-11-01. howcheng {chat} 17:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinates

Thank you for catching and fixing the error in the coordinates for some of the Illinois townships; as I continue to expand the Illinois township articles, I'll be sure to avoid that issue. As for existing articles that may still need this fix, I can do that with AWB if you wish. Omnedon (talk) 15:56, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, that would certainly be a great help. I've just been working on my WikiMiniatlas and noticed the stray Illinois townships off the coast of Portugal :-). It seems to be a consistent error of specifying 9 degrees of longitude instead if 90 degrees. I haven't yet seen any article where it should have been 91 or 92 or anything else. --Dschwen 16:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just extracted a list of still broken articles from the database:

Best, Dschwen 16:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those have all been fixed, and I've made another fix that should prevent this from happening with other articles as they are expanded. Omnedon (talk) 14:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! This is great. What kind of fix did you make? --Dschwen 16:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Geodata extraction

geodbcompiler.py (source, enwiki log)

We should work together? — Dispenser 05:46, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh by! Yes, I guess we should. Here is the same thing in (ugly) Perl. A couple of differences:

mine outputs a textfile as my WikiMiniAtlas server program uses an internal btree db (no big issue I could just extract data from your db).
mine parses the name parameter
mine performs some title shortening (removing state, county, and country names from long place names - english only right now, and this could be moved into a separate postprocessing script)
I need the length of the article (to perform weighting for the display priority)

It might help a bit to make these updates incremental. Have you tried that? (use the modification date of the article). And a real kicker would be a unified international db, where interwikilinks are exploited to generate coordinates in all languages. --Dschwen 13:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...I should really stop procrastinating on writing back

I've refactored so the function givings an object with the parsed link properties. I also extended it to work DE, NL, JA, FR wikis. (Interesting side note, NL uses Z for South) I've also come up with ome ideas for other (hopefully) language independent metrics:

The standard deviation of time between edits of the last 100 or 500 edits. A bit like Wikirage, suppose to bring highly edited articles (current events) to the top of results.
Number of incoming links. Important articles tend to be linked more often.
While high in bandwidth and computing requirements traffic statistics might also be a good source of current event articles.

The incoming link seems to be a very good source; however, it seems to be a very costly query even when optimized (probably a server issue). A sample table is found coord_test in u_dispenser_p (easiest viewed with phpmyadmin.toolserver.org). — Dispenser 09:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Long time since I worked on the database part, still learning. Anyway, tools:~dispenser has all the coordinates in a tab seperated text file. It looks like blacklinks is a good indicator of popularity. Once I get computer with excel 2007 I'll do some analysis, never thought I'd get close to that million row limit ;-). — Dispenser 07:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, holy shit, amazing, unbelievable, perfect, great!

That is the most amazing... I'm at a loss for words. Already enshrined at the top of my user page (although it might be more fitting at the bottom: "leaving Brooklyn..." but nah). And not for nothing but, I write this message from, yep, Brooklyn:)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		The Angry Tarsier of Appreciation!
		For providing me the most ideal image I could ever hope for, I giveth unto you this small furious prosimian as a token of my thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What a fitting image. It's like that critter is screaming you got a problem wid dat?. --Dschwen 18:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas on ca.wiki

It doesn't work any more on cawiki. Has it changed somehow? --Vriullop (talk) 10:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What does it doesn't work anymore mean? No more blue globe? Garbled labels? Empty popup? Nothing has changed . --Dschwen 20:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me. Might have been a short server glitch. These should recover by themselves within about 10min. There will be an extended Server downtime for maintenance inbetween Dec 28th and 31st. --Dschwen 20:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for my short explanation. There is no more blue globe. It has been reported on the local village pump on 18th December and at least since then I can not see the globe. --Vriullop (talk) 11:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It works whith IE and Konqueror, but not with Firefox. --Vriullop (talk) 14:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'll double check. But the most likely scenario is that some other javascript on ca is broken, and that error prevents the execution of the WikiMiniAtlas. Tha has happened on other wikipedias before. --Dschwen 15:01, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, here it is:

if (document.styleSheets[0].cssRules) {

At the bottom of ca:MediaWiki:Common.js. It throws an

uncaught exception: Security error (NS_ERROR_DOM_SECURITY_ERR)

If I manually execute the WikiMiniAtlas initialisation routine, it works. Maybe the error is specific to newer Firefox versions. That code seems to have been adde a long time ago. --Dschwen 15:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a known problem [1] The error is thrown when a script tries to access data which was loaded from a different (sub)domain. This is the case with the CSS Stylesheets (they are loaded from upload.wikimedia.org). Anyhow: this all is not related to WikiMIniAtlas :-), the javascript execution is simply stopped after the first error and never reaches my code. --Dschwen 15:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help. It seems there is a problem with the newer versions of Firefox. --Vriullop (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. You should have an admin remove all bits that access cssRules. This will never work in a standards compliant browser with consistent security model (as our stylesheets are served from a different domain). --Dschwen 18:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

category & link intersection

Happy New Year! DO you have any idea why your wonderful category & link intersection has recently stopped working? Dsp13 (talk) 21:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What? Somebody is using it?! Yay! :-) There is maintenance in progress on the toolserver. The main database server (yarrow), which hosts a copy of the english wikipedia, is not yet back online. Check http://status.toolserver.org/ for updates. --Dschwen 23:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

«Somebody is using it?! Yay!» Sure ! Me too, I wait with impatience to see it working, my feeling is that such a tool should be a major search tool for Wiki[pm]edia, and resolve a lot of problems that concern categorization. I find stupid to have categories like "drawing from Van Gogh", "pen drawing from dutch painter", "drawing in black and white", while you could simply search "Van Gogh drawing b&w". It's should be more a kind of keywords or tagging system; the lack of tags was IMHO an Original sin of Wikipedia. Happy New Year. 4 January 2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.53.48.40 (talk) 11:04, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Workaround for Geobox in Henning, Illinois

I've used a small workaround to achieve a little bit more elegance in the Henning, Illinois article. See Geobox talk.--papageno (talk) 17:08, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Input requested at Sunset

Hi Dschwen,

After a quick browse through the history of Sunset I've noticed you've previously edited the page. Your input is now requested in choosing a new lead picture here. Thanks for your time, --Fir0002 00:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

VPC Help

Hey Daniel, Could you please take a look Wikipedia_talk:Valued_picture_candidates#Bot_Closings.3F? Is it possible and would you be willing to create and/or operate the bot? --Muhammad(talk) 18:16, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if I am disturbing. Could you please reply? Thanks --Muhammad(talk) 17:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry Muhammad. I'm currently quite busy in real life and won't be getting around to write such a bot anytime soon. --Dschwen 17:43, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply. I understand how tiring and time consuming it may be to create one. --Muhammad(talk) 18:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Christmas lights

Removing every photo from a location outside the US, and removing a humble miner's cottage to replace it with you local "high quality" panorama is short-sighted, insular and not in the spirit of Christmas. The decoration of that 4-room miner's cottage tells a story that isn't told by any of your other photos. I'm putting it back. You can choose which one of your American panorams you want, but two is superfluous. Happy New Year! Amandajm (talk) 10:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The image quality is sub-standard to say the least. --Dschwen 15:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

POTD notification

POTD

Hi Daniel,

Just to let you know that the Featured Picture File:Staten Island Ferry terminal.jpg is due to make an appearance as Picture of the Day on January 25, 2009. If you get a chance, you can check and improve the caption at Template:POTD/2009-01-25. howcheng {chat} 17:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas on sv.wp

WikiMiniAtlas was activated today on the Swedish Wikipedia, by modifying sv:Mediawiki:Common.js. However, some Swedish coordinates seem to be missing from the database. Perhaps it hasn't been updated? For example, sv:Kävlinge is not shown on the map. And the Swedish Wikipedia is not in the selection list in the settings. Can this be solved? --LA2 (talk) 20:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it can. I'll add the swedish language to the supported list of languages. --Dschwen 20:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with the swedish language dataset. --Dschwen 21:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, works. Thanks for using the WikiMiniAtlas :-). A coordinate data update will be performed in the next few days (articles with recently added coordinates should then show up on the map too)! --Dschwen 21:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to the old description, database dumps are used. Do you know have a method to include live updates as well? One thing I discovered was a Norwegian city that had been placed at 15°17'E (in Sweden) rather than 9°17'E. After looking around, I found the bad coordinates in nl.wp and corrected them yesterday. I hope the Swedish Wikipedia community can help with this kind of improvements, now that WikiMiniAtlas is activated. But how soon will the changes be visible? --LA2 (talk) 10:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was using semi-live updates for the english wikipedia (once per day), directly extracting the data from the database. However the data needs extensive postprocessing (I'll have to write that up somewhere), which is language dependent. Therefore I cannot do this for languages I don't know myself. The swedish coordinates will be updated coming week (according to the guy who processes the dumps (de:Benutzer:Kolossos)). --Dschwen 13:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting a page at meta:WikiMiniAtlas/CoordinateProcessing. --Dschwen 16:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you have any feedback or recommendations for how "infobox city" and similar templates should be designed, that would be most valuable. --LA2 (talk) 12:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As for "extracting the data directly from the database", you might want to study the incremental update mechanisms used for de:Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia or the "ping" schemes used for some blog aggregators and by GeoURL.org. --LA2 (talk) 12:57, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The extraction is not a problem. I'm harvesting the external links table, as every coordinate template should produce a link to the geohack page. Real time updates are not possible for other reasons (I'm building a quadtree datastructure half in memory half on disk to serve the label data). My suggestion/request for the infobox design would be: please make maximum use of the CoordURL, i.e. put in reasonable type: qualifiers, and use their parameters (i.e. type:city(279237) to indicate the population). --Dschwen 13:31, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For the CoordinateProcessing, isn't it enough to (1) silently drop parts of the article name after comma or in parenthesis, and (2) to automatically blacklist articles that contain more than very few coordinates? If an article name is "Paris in Illinois", then it would perhaps be interesting to know which such prepositions ("in") can function as a comma. --LA2 (talk) 16:05, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dropping parts after parenthesis and commas was my first approach. Unfortunately there are numerous cases where the resulting label is meaningless or confusing (all the cases where the information dropped would not indicate the location). Simply dropping any list article with not specifically named coordinates would remove a couple of more or less useful cases (Mud Lake, Mohammadabad, Iran). I am however penalizing list articles in their display priority on the map (the should appear only at large magnifications, but this is partly still a work in progress). --Dschwen 16:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Penalizing" list articles (articles with many coordinates that don't specify the name parameter) isn't all that bad. If the positions don't appear on the map, users will have a very real incentive to add the name parameter. This borders on another question: If an article is about a town and has sections for each park or suburb, each with a redirect pointing towards the town article, then we can put categories on the redirects. Could we also put coordinates in the redirect pages, or should they be in the large article. I guess they must be in the large town article, each specifying the name parameter. But then, clicking the map will lead to the article, not to the right section of that article. --LA2 (talk) 21:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I remember geocoding redirects being discussed somewhere not long ago. It seems like a sensible thing to do to me. I'm not to keen on putting lots of coordinates into articles, as it increases the chances of data duplication (we have quite a few geocoded lists, where the items each have their own geocoded articles). --Dschwen 22:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fourteen days have gone by, and still no update as far as I can see. Kolossos doesn't answer my questions on his German talk page. What's up? --LA2 (talk) 00:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know. I'm in email-contact with him. However he hasn't replied to my last message yet. --Dschwen 18:04, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Geobox coordinates - defaults for type/region

In answer of your comment at Template_talk:Geobox#type:_parameter_needs_sensible_defaults!, I made a test version with new defaults. -- User:Docu

Geodata datadump

I have been pointed in your direction as someone who works with raw wikidata and also in OSM. I just wonder if you offer some advice on how I might get access to some raw data for UK wiki articles, specifically the data markup contained in {{infobox UK place}}. Do you know if it is possible to do that? Fmph (talk) 20:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I work with raw geodata. However, I'm working with pure low level coordinates without needing to know which templates generate them, and what the parameters of these templates are. The guys you want to talk to are Benutzer:Stefan Kühn and de:benutzer:Kolossos

In particular check out their project Templatetiger! This should be what you want. --Dschwen 21:32, 15 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Panoramaviewer

G'day. By chance I discovered the {{Pano360}} template at commons. I started a bit of discussion about the viewer at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_picture_candidates#360_Panorama_Viewer (primarily to advertise the fact that it exists). It seemed to me that whilst in reduced resolution mode the applet was still downloading the full image prior to display, making things slow for large panoramas. Assuming that this is the case would it be difficult to modify the applet so it loads a thumbnail from commons instead? If you have any other similiarly useful tools please advertise them. Noodle snacks (talk) 09:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It does not load the full image in low res mode, but generating the downsamped version may take some time. --Dschwen 09:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is the down sampling done on the client or the server? Noodle snacks (talk) 10:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just answered that, didn't I? The downsampling is performed on the server. But since the applet requests a 2000px thumbnail, which is not commonly used, the wikimedia servers might take a bit to generate it when you first view the pano. --Dschwen 15:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, I didn't find your answer clear is all. Noodle snacks (talk) 01:25, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another issue is that I haven't managed to get the applet signed. Which means it can only make requests to the domain it as loaded from (in this case the toolserver). Thus I have to proxy the image requests (they get cached locally on the toolserver after the first viewing). I'm also looking into flash alternatives as they might not have the heap memory issues the java version has. --Dschwen 02:22, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Google Maps at sea

Hi. Lately I've been trolling for articles with bad coordinates, by looking for [W]s in the oceans on Google Maps. There are quite a few, but a lot of times — when I check the Wikipedia article — I've found that you already fixed it. ... Months ago. Google isn't exactly snappy about refreshing its database, is it?
—WWoods (talk) 23:17, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe. I know. I'm using the meta:WikiMiniAtlas it is more up-to-date :-) --Dschwen 02:03, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template:GeoTemplate#Wikipedia_articles

For completeness, I like to add WMA to the above, but I couldn't figure out a way to link to it directly. The version used at [2] doesn't seem to do it any more. Can it be done?

BTW, the updating frequency mentioned at m:WikiMiniAtlas#Data_Sources is it still current? -- User:Docu

Hm, you could use

http://stable.toolserver.org/wma/iframe.html?{latdec}_{londec}_800_600_en_4_en

until I fix up a better solution for fullscreen display. The update frequency is more or less correct, at least for en, de, and sv, which I extract myself. The other ones still depend on dumps and the processing by SKuehn and Kolossos. --Dschwen 19:35, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It works. I added it. It would be helpful if one could open the links in another tab. This way one can check several articles in sequence (or maybe it's just me and my browser). It's a good thing it has so fresh data. I generally use some of dispenser's tools (e.g. log) to fix coordinates, but for navigation I like using the VMAP0 layer in MiniAtlas. In one of the other layers, blue links are hard to read on mostly green background.

BTW is the zoom option in Special:MyPage/monobook.js still working? -- User:Docu

What browser are you using? The link color should change when activating satellite view (it does that by changing the style-sheet in javascript, that might not work with older/non-standards-compliant browsers). I use the middle mouse button to open articles in new tabs. I thought opening new tabs by default would be too annoying. Maybe I should make that configurable. Zoom should work, but only for coordinates which do not supply their own zoom settings. --Dschwen 17:10, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using Firefox. Link color changes from blue to white when hoovering over links, but not in general, when switching maps. Seems to be the same in Internet Explorer.

The tabbed browsing could be useful mainly when in full screen mode.

The zoom, I hopped it would save me right-clicking on the the " ". Maybe it's some other javascript of mine that interferes. -- User:Docu

Oh, you are right, my bad. The color is not switched automatically. I never found this to be a problem, as my browser (Konqueror) correctly displays the text-shadow CSS property and renders a light Halo around the labels making them readable on pretty much any background. Firefox 3.1 will support this as well. --Dschwen 15:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mount Redoubt talk page

I do not disagree with your position, but I have a question. I did not think we were allowed to outright delete material from the talk page. Alyeska (talk) 15:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, why not. It's not like it is a personal talk page. Just think of it as "archiving" it to the revision-history ;-). Seriously, the conversation with that nut-case had no value whatsoever for the improvement of the article. And leaving this sort of stuff sit around on the talkpage reflects badly on Wikipedia IMO. It is not our mission (nor our obligation) to give weirdo-trolls a platform. --Dschwen 15:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In that case I would recommend Fields of science have its talk page cleaned up. It would be better if you cleaned it up than myself since I have a conflict of interest. This guy is very vocal. Alyeska (talk) 15:42, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, slightly different story, since part of the discussion is about the edit warring by the IP (I just skimmed it, so correct me if I'm wrong), and thus is vaguely about improving the article. So I wouldn't be so quick in removing it. IMO that IP should jsut be blocked and the FoS article semi protected. It seems to be a pretty static topic in any case with no necessity for anon edits. In any case I don't want to get into too many disputes with fringe-/pseudo-/non-science loonies, as that sort of confrontation is mostly frustrating and can wear you down quickly (which is what those types are counting on). Failure of rational discourse just makes me mad :-), and I don't want to ruin this nice day. --Dschwen 15:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In that case enjoy the rest of your Friday. Thanks for the input on this. Alyeska (talk) 16:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sears Tower

Hmmm. Until recently the article had a sentence remarking on that very fact... I hadn't noticed, but it has gone away. I'll restore it. And good catch on other articles that cite the 110 figure! Kevin Forsyth (talk) 17:09, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Noabaak (talk) 16:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, my name is Noa, writing on New York Guide for Korean readers(to be published in book within 3 months). I would like to use your photograph from Top of the Rock. Still a beginner communicateur, I did not find your email address. Hopefully you can find mine on my profile and contact me through email. Thanks.

Rehoboth Carpenter family

Regarding Rehoboth Carpenter family - We have surveyed, we have compromised, we have repeatedly asked to user Iwanafish to communicate. He refuses with his snide comments and reversions to non-wiki versions. We have warned him "offically" a lot more than 3 times. Repeatedly, we have asked for mediation, we have asked for help and I do not know who else to ask. Can you pass this up the chain of editors?

User Iwanafish continues to disrupt and vandalize this page and it has spread his behavior to other pages. John Carpenter (bishop) John Carpenter, town clerk of London What else can we do but shut down the articles involved and provide warnings that when they are restored by user Iwanafish that they are garbage? Has wikipedia lost the ability to police itself? I am beginning to think this is a hopeless cause where such bullies can inflict such damage to wikipedia. What else can be done? John R. Carpenter Jrcrin001 (talk) 05:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

HighlightRedirects

Hi Dschwen, I like your javascript extension HighlightRedirects very much. Some time ago I changed my wikipedia skin to vector. Unfortunately the highlighting does not work there. Do you also have a javascript extension for highlighting redirects that one can use in vector.js? --Ephraim33 (talk) 10:31, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This script should work with the vector skin. Have you move the contents from User:Ephraim33/monobook.js to User:Ephraim33/vector.js? --Dschwen 13:38, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but in the German language wikipedia. The very same snippet works in de:User:Ephraim33/monobook.js, but does not work in de:User:Ephraim33/vector.js. (The same is true in the English wikipedia). At least I cannot find the "redirects" button.
With monobook I see the following buttons: article, discussion, edit this page, history, move, watch, redirects.
With vector: Page, Discussion, Read, Edit, View history, Move, Watch.
--Ephraim33 (talk) 15:03, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ohhhhhh! sorry, alles klar. Hatte nur auf den Teil geguckt, der die Redirects markiert, nicht auf den Teil, der die Option instlliert. Ich schau mal, was ich da aendern muss. --Dschwen 15:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you add something like

highlightRedirects.addStylesheetRule('a.mw-redirect:visited', 'color:darkgreen');

right after

highlightRedirects.addStylesheetRule('a.mw-redirect', 'color:green');

This allows visited links to be colored as well. You can choose the color :) Danke! Plastikspork (talk) 00:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Both issues should be resolved now. In vector the tab looks somewhat stupid. But that's more or less a bug in the addPortletLink function. Let's hope it gets fixed (quite a pain in the ass that every skin needs special treatment). --Dschwen 03:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Plastikspork (talk) 03:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Ephraim33 (talk) 13:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

John Quincy Adams

Thank you very much for your comments! :) Durova²⁹⁹ 19:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh.. well.. sure :-). Just telling it how it is. --Dschwen 19:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WMA & copy and paste

Because the alt attribute is missing firefox simply uses the title attribute. Please add mapbutton.alt=""; before mapbutton.style.padding = '0px 3px 0px 0px'; to m:MediaWiki:Wikiminiatlas.js. This would also increase the accessibility of coordinates to screen readers. — Dispenser 20:23, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. I noticed your comment on IRC, but very late, and didn't really know what it was about. Will change that in a second. --Dschwen 21:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note

Wow. I really appreciate your honesty here :-). That goes to show how taking a fresh look at things without the prejudice of let's say a username can help ;-). Cheers! --Dschwen 15:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No worries: I thought this was a situation where it seemed to be dishonest not to mention it. (albeit, I hadn't realised it was you who voted that way when I was discussing it over there, but I was partially thinking of this, so...) =) Anyway, I'm sorry if I came off as aggressive in the FPC nom: it's probably not obvious, but half-toning is actually far harder to do restorations on, because - trying to put this simply - In a half-toned restoration, that clone stamp has to be absolutely perfectly positioned on the same bit of the half-toning pattern if you're trying to cover up a bit of dust or damage, on a regular restoration, it's only rarely the same level of precision is needed. So, in any case, I apologise, and wish I had taken a better tone from the start. Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 192 FCs served} 15:51, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't have the most deescalating attitude either. Sorry for that as well. I should be more mellow especially around en.FPC, then it'll probably be more fun anyways. I realize the difficulties involved with the restorations and will try to show more appreciation in the future. Best Dschwen 23:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Arkansas State Capitol

I'd suggest waiting a few weeks, then renominating: You could probably do a better job at managing the nomination, and I think it would pass if so. Shoemaker's Holiday ^{Over 192 FCs served} 10:52, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chichén Itzá

| I can see the value of showing the unrestored side, but |now I'm curious, what do you mean by with more height/visibility?

Your photo is of great technical quality, no doubt, but the proportions are not ideal for an infobox. The aspect ratio means that when you fit it into the width of a standard infobox, the image looks very "flat", so that the image drowns in the text in the box. Most people find that infobox photos should have the aspect ratios of portraits, not of landscapes. There are exceptions, of course.

I felt that it would be better to place your photo where it belongs in the article, where there can also be inserted a comment that indicates the high resolution of the image.

What you really should do, though, is to insert your photo in the article about El Castillo. There's already a photo there that is identical to yours, but in a much lower resolution. Maybe you can also use it in the articla about Itza, although the one used there may be more relevant than yours, since it has lots of people on it, to illustrate that the steps have not always been off-limits to tourists.

Keep up the good shooting! #8D)

uspn (talk) 06:21, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Less decorative icon please

▼

The current icon looks decorative in appearance like the icons we use for external links. This appears to confuse readers into the purpose of the icon. There are some way to fix this: 1) differentiate the icon with some user interface element such as a drop down arrow or lines 2) Make the icon in a 3d button possibly using the <button> tag 3) add a rollover/hover effect separate from the URL underline. — Dispenser 21:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Smart WMA icon

We are use line-height: hack on superscripts, but the WMA icon increases the line height. See Ridge Route for an example. Would it be possible to use .clientHeight to check if there is enough space to load the icon? — Dispenser 21:59, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, good suggestions (this and the one above). I'll experiment a bit and see what I can come up with. --Dschwen 02:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Yeah, nice picture, but we already had a much higer resolution image in the article with a better perspective."

I am not sure if this is sarcasm or a pointed comment but it seems directed at me so you should note that i switched out the previous image for the one you just replaced pretty recently (4th of Feb this year, [3]), there had been a highly perspective distorted image in the article that someone had used to replace yours nearly a full 2 years before that[4]. I have never even seen your image before and I certainly didn't replace it with mine, I actually only originally uploaded it as a demonstration on FP when the perspective distorted image was going through FP and then figured as part of the discussion that it was a better illustrative image for the article than the FP candidate. Mfield (Oi!) 02:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Mfield. I went through the history of the article back then, and already saw that you replced an inferior image. So this was not meant to be sarcasm directed at you. Sorry if it came across that way. It was just a general frustration with people inserting their images for the sake of having their images in the articles. This might be due to a skewed perception of reality.. well, I have no idea. Your image certainly was a step up. My picture is a panoramic taken with my old camera, so at 100% it does not look perfect, but the perspective (taken from near Coit Tower) is IMO the pretty good as it is a way to show the building from top to bottom. --Dschwen 12:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas javascript

Currently the javascript for the WikiMiniAtlas is loaded on every page view, no matter if a page has coordinates or not. I intend to make it so it only loads when needed. (This is for the English Wikipedia, but the fix can probably be reused on other Wikipedias.) See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#WikiMiniAtlas.

--David Göthberg (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WikiMiniAtlas links only for terrestrial coordinates

It used to be that the blue globe linking to WikiMiniAtlas was disabled for off-Earth coordinates. This seems to no longer be the case -- see Template:Coord/testcases, for instance. I suppose this change might be related to the recently-added 5-second timeout (which by the way I greatly appreciate). I'd like to return to the blue globe appearing only for terrestrial coordinates. Would you kindly investigate the regression and, if possible, implement a fix? --Stepheng3 (talk) 05:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops. Ok. It actually is related to the introduction of regular expressions to do the coordinate filtering. I should have tested this more extensively (the Coord/testcases slipped my mind). Thanks for pointing this out. I'll try to get the old functionality back. --Dschwen 15:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, fixed. Clear your browser cache to test. --Dschwen 16:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. Thanks! --Stepheng3 (talk) 17:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WMA and Safari.

There is a problem with WMA using visibility:hidden instead of display:none to hide the iframe in Safari. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Annoying.2C_constantly_present_invisible_div —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notification. I responded there and made a small change to the script to circumvent the bug (hopefully). --Dschwen 15:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Category intersection

Hello Dschwen. Thanks a lot for this tool: http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/intersection/, I find it very useful. Just a little question: Is there any tool intersecting categories and WikiProject banners, placed at talk pages? (e. g. {{Composers}} [[Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs]]). User:WolterBot generates cleanup listings automatically, however, it could be useful to create quick lists manually. Is there any possibility, please? I'm asking here, since I'm absolutely unenlightened in technical matters :) Thanks for your answer. Have a nice day. --Vejvančický (talk) 15:35, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It can be done with tools:~magnus/catscan_rewrite.php. — Dispenser 19:37, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Alamo Mission in San Antonio

An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Alamo pano.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Jujutacular ^T · C 01:12, 2 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks for replying to my question. Much appreciated!
DeltaFalcon ^{talk / contribs} 08:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Review_of_closure_process_2

I refactored part of the poll to hopefully adequately reflect that there is a third option that people wanted under one of the sections. Please review the current state of the section and change your contribution as you see fit.

Adding new options as I have done is the suggested way for the poll to proceed, and I think the degree of differentiation we now have is roughly what we should be aiming for - not too many different options so we can still see some consensus developing, and not too few so that people can find an option that reasonably approximates what they want.

(refactor edit diff: [5]) Thanks, Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 16:57, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Review of closure process 2

I'll just mention that there are some new reply options for this question, which also serves as an example of how the poll should progress when none of the available options suit the contributors. The question on dealing with unclear consensus has apparently been the most controversial so far. I remain hopeful that we will succeed in representing people's opinions by the time the poll ends. Feel free to change your vote or add a new reply option if the three new ones still don't quite work for you. (But obviously, try to create something general enough that it's likely to gather a following.) Thank you. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 09:18, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]