User talk:Bluegoblin7/Archive 1

From TrainSpottingWorld, for Rail fans everywhere

Threads on my talk page between August and November in 2007.

Bluegoblin7, welcome to Train Spotting World

If this is the first time you've used a wiki you may have a few questions. Most of the answers are obvious. To learn to edit, why not just dive in? At the foot of the editing window there is a help link. This opens in a new window and gives you a good overview of wiki syntax and stuff.

There are very few rules here. The best summary is:

  • Respect other people's Copyright
  • Behave to others as you would like them to behave to you
  • Do no harm

This is not an encyclopaedia. Pages here do not need to comply with encyclopaedic notions or citations or neutrality. Just dive in and start.

It's always worth having a look at Station announcements every so often, too.

One of the first things you might want to do is to place {{talktome}} at the top of your talk page (this page) above this welcome message. Taking heed of what it says will make it much easier for you to follow discussions on talk pages.

And while you browse the site, and especially when you've created something truly worthwhile, why not Digg and also tag on del.icio.us – the tools are in the left hand menu. The more Diggs (etc) we have the better, because Diggs and del.icio.us links add to our findability. The best way to find out about them is to click on the tool. Each is different and each gives you the chance to "rate" any article here. Or anywhere else come to that!

"Snap", the little link preview window, has options in it that you can tailor to meet your needs. If you like it, stay with the defaults. If not then you can turn it off easily

Best yet you have a Spotting World Blog if you want it. Have a look at your User page. There is a link to let you create your blog. This is part of what Spotting World does for you. Or just go to blogs.spottingworld.com. You can use your blog for any lawful purpose. It's yours to do with as you like. Anyone can read your blog once you create it, but only you can write to it.

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Any questions, please ask any user on their talk page.

And please tell all your friends about us

Hello!

...haven't we met somewhere before? :o)

EdJogg 11:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Why, I believe we have! I have turned over... To The Dark Side... LOL! Bluegoblin7 17:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Good to have you aboard

We're having a few server problems at the moment, but we're working on them. So please dive in and have fun here. Tim Trent 14:34, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok will do - and don't worry about server problems. Transport centre keeps going down, meaning we keep having to restart from scratch!
Bluegoblin7 17:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
One thing I hope we will not get here is politics. It is a community, but a different community from WP. The community will undoubtedly create some bureaucracy, but we don't have it at present, and I hope we'll discourage it form being foolish, or quasi-lawyer like. We simply care about decent online behaviour. Tim Trent

Server issues

We have a couple of server issues right now. Aggravating as hell. Mediawiki software is a resource hog, too. Tim Trent 12:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Templates, Categories and Redlinks

A large proportion of the initial content at Train Spotting World was copied from Wikipedia, and this was boosted in June with a copy of the WP 'Thomas the Tank Engine' content.

That's the background...

The reason for mentioning this is that the copy process gathered a number of useful templates but failed to create any categories. So, as you wander around TSW, could you please look out for red-linked or orphan categories and missing templates?

Orphan/missing categories need to be linked-in to the hierarchy here. For simplicity we are just copying the relevant structure at WP, since (a) many of the pages at TSW already include these category designations and (b) there's no point re-inventing the wheel. Where a 'Wikipedia' category is specified, it is usual to replace this with a 'TrainspottingWorld' equivalent (although certain 'SpottingWorld' categories have been created by Tim!). If you look at Category:Categories, and especially Category:TrainspottingWorld categories you should be able to spot whether a cat exists yet or not.

Quite often I find that a whole branch of categories is missing, so I usually reckon to keep working up the tree creating them until they are properly linked in at the top. (If you watch 'Recent changes' you'll see that these edits tend to come in bursts!)

As for templates, these also suffer from missing cats, but also from missing sub-templates. You have to exercise a bit of judgement here to determine how useful they might be at TSW (same with the cats). But then the procedure is just the same -- open the equivalent WP page for editing and copy the content. You will probably find you need to create more cats, sub-templates and doc pages, but all this is allowing TSW to become a more useful place.

In terms of redlinks and red-linked cats, the 'policy' here is to unlink terms that will never have their own pages or categories, but retain any railway-related links. The copy from WP was (to my eyes) rather random, so there are many pages that could easily be added here in the future, so their redlinks should be retained.

What I've told you should probably go on some general 'help' or 'policy' page some time (feel free to create such!), but for now it's up to us 'pioneers' to shape TSW into what it could potentially become...

EdJogg 10:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

That has my total endorsement. The data take-on phase had a few technical limitations, but those also mean our members can shape the place to be what tehy all want and need. Tim Trent 10:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

A lot of hard work

And it paid off

Congratulations. You "own" a part of Train Spotting World.

Tim Trent 22:44, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Image deletion

You are quite right to delete 'elizabeth' for not having a suitable FUR. I suspect you will find that none of the Thomas screenshots, nor any of the other Thomas images, have FUR's either. They were all 'rescued' here when WP got all shirty about FURs, and Tim has been generous in not keeping on at me to apply FURs to these images since then.

However, there are standards here, and new images must abide by them, so the grace period cannot last forever. To save me some work, please don't delete any more, and I'll try to get on and FUR them up in the near future. (It's just it's soooooo booooring even thinking about editing 150+ images!) Please jog my memory if December gets here and I have continued to defer the FURs.

EdJogg 02:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

calendar cats

No need to remove cats when the date has passed. It copes manfully :) Tim Trent 23:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

When copying from Wikipedia

Please go the extra mile and use {{From Wikipedia}} on the new article's talk page.

We're allowed to copy from WP but we must cite them as the source, legally. See Wikipedia:Verbatim copying.

Tim Trent 18:10, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok. No probz - I was just working thru the wanted articles list - bits need re-writing anyway!
Shall I add articles about countries, years etc?
Bluegoblin7 18:13, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I think years is good (have a look at some of the existing year articles and see how well Slambo put them together in Cat:Timelines. He did an amazing job with templates for year articles. Countries is questionable unless we have something to say about rail/steam in the country. Tim Trent 18:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
{{From Wikipedia}} needs a parameter - the article name as it appears on WP. Tim Trent 18:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I would urge restraint. When adding missing bits from WP, such as templates and cats, it is very easy to end up creating stuff that may not be strictly needed here. (I'm probably just as guilty as anyone!) And the same will apply to articles.
For years and countries, we're only interested in, for example, 2007 in rail transport and Rail transport in Albania, any other info can be sourced from a suitable online encyclopedia. Similarly, pages about units of measurement could be combined onto a single page with suitable redirects -- readers of TSW are unlikely to expect to find information about the history of the foot (measurement unit)
...but don't let me stop the good work you're doing...
EdJogg 23:39, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thomas userbox

Bluegoblin7, I'd just like to say a Thomas userbox exsists so you can go to the userbox page and get it into your profile. --S.C.Ruffeyfan 19:37, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

HELP!!!

Ive been trying to put some new temps on from WP, but there not working. Please have a look someone!!! Bluegoblin7 23:00, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific, please? EdJogg 00:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh yes, might help!
It's the temps over at Trains:Welcoming committee/Welcome to TSW mainly, but please have a look at my other edits too...
Bluegoblin7 00:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Mainly cats Bluegoblin7 00:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
You are being far too prolific for me to check all your edits! (But don't let that stop you :o) ). As for templates, check extra carefully what you have typed: template names are case-sensitive. Any help? EdJogg 02:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, you're doing grand work at setting up the help pages etc. Can I please ask you to add the appropriate category names (and categories) to pages as you go? That way you'll avoid adding more pages to the 'uncategorised list', AND be able to find them again...

Also note that some of the cats you've listed as 'TSW xxxxxxxx' may already exist. Start from the 'All categories' link on the Main Page. Most of the cats you'll be interested in will be (or should be) under Category:TrainspottingWorld categories (note the unusual capitalisation and spacing...). If you keep close to the Wikipedia cat names and structure, there'll be less work for you to do when you copy-in a new page/template from WP.

EdJogg 01:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, will do! Bluegoblin7 01:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

test

test sig Bluegoblin7 01:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

No idea why I can't recover it

The bit of a mess surrounding the userboxes "User Thomas" and "User STS". We need to take far more care when we create userboxes to get them in the right namespace. I'm not at all keen on the format "User:Thing" because this is easy to confuse with a user's page.

So I went in and moved and deleted and screwed up by totally banjaxing User STS irrecoverably. Must be a software fault. I can;t even see what it was in order to recreate it. Apologies. It needs to go in Template:User STS and I'd put it back if I could. There is the original work there, but it isn't formatted.

Please could you adopt S.C.Ruffeyfan and show him how to make userboxes?

Tim Trent Talk to me 21:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeh no probz Tim.
Will have a look at the Userboxes. Sorry about them going in the wrong place. I just clicked on the link i made and edited... but it didn't work! Shall I have a look at the STS one then?
Bluegoblin7 11:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Would be nice, unless you have already :) Tim Trent Talk to me 22:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeh ive sorted them out now: look on the Userbox page! Bluegoblin7 23:14, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

New Workforce

BG7, I've made a new workforce on Ernest the Engine and Others, can you help me on it????? --S.C.Ruffeyfan 18:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I will happily join up if you tell me a bit more about Ernest the Engine etc. Also, can I request that you start the page here until it is a bit bigger! In the mean time i will have to delete your page, it is uncated and not neeeded atm!
But don't be downhearted! I am VERY happy to help if you make a basic start on it!
Bluegoblin7 21:51, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

My created userboxes

Hey BG7, each time I create a new userbox, can you help me get it into a proper template? Thanks --S.C.Ruffeyfan 17:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeh no probz - in fact, if you copy and paste the code from ANY exisitng userbox (except the workforce ones), and then edit the text to your liking, you'll have a proper one. I will be putting a message on the FAQs about it soon. Will let you know here when it's on!
Bluegoblin7 18:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Removing 'uncat'...

Hi. I had used the {{uncat}} template to identify a number of new pages that have not yet been properly categorised. Even though they have redlinked cats, they are effectively orphaned (and uncategorised) until those cats have been created. Could you find some time to create these new cats as you bring stuff over from WP. It's much safer (and easier) to create them 'as you go', since there is no chance of forgetting them.

EdJogg 00:56, 30 November 2007 (UTC)