User talk:Sparkit/Archive 06
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(Wave} Hey Sparky,.. I ain't around a lot but I have a job where I can listen again.
Just stopped in to say H1!!!
DD
Howdy Mountain Girl!
Happy 2008! Hope all is well with your alpine life! I have a question to rankle your memory bone...it seems to me I recall at one time we had templates for WWR business cards available - you know, cards to hand out to people who are interested in WWR for sending their music in or just listening.. something like that. I suspect I can design one myself but I thought we had a template somewhere already.... do you recall anything like that? Hugs & Blessings! Fine-line 10:25, January 1, 2008 (AKST)
- Uh, I'm starting to wonder if my whole life is at least two weeks off kilter. I think Sol made some biz cards a long while back. Have you queried him? Let me know what you find out. I'd like some to pack around when the topic comes up and I turn into a WWR zealot. :)
- There are some flyers... Lemme see where they are... At the bottom of the Information for artists page.
- sparx 10:42, January 12, 2008 (AKST)
Thanks, Sparks! I think you are right about it being Sol. I DID find, with Jac's help the logos Sol made and I'm thinking I will just design my own cards at this point. The question is WHEN? lol Your place looks divine! I hope you are warm and snuggly! Fine-line 12:45, January 12, 2008 (AKST)
Howdy from Toad
Sparx, haven't seen you around much lately, so I just wanted to say 'hi'. Hope all's going well for you in prison. Take care, and if you need me to bake a cake with a file in it, well, just let me know. --Toad 10:30, January 9, 2008 (AKST)
- Hiya, Toad! I've not seen you in the chat(s) when I drift by lately either. How's things in the big city on the east coast?
- I think you still have your Leavenworth's mixed up. This one's in the mountains of Washington state and I doubt there's even a jail cell in town. I think they haul arrestees off to Wenatchee.
- I could, however, use an atomic snow shovel or several strong-backed young men with snow shovels. Could you do a cake like that?
temp02 sparx 11:16, January 12, 2008 (AKST)
How tos
Hi Jim,
I see on your todo list a tutorials item. I'd like to help, but might not be available to do much until mid-March. (I've gone and booked most of my waking hours until then. The coffee stand people love me.)
sparx 18:41, January 29, 2008 (AKST)
Oh yeah, right. Give me the kissy face thing. You go girl (whatever that means).
Cuz I realized today, this is all your fault! You did such a great job with helpfiles, documentation, categories, how-tos, etc. that your shoes are mighty big ones to fill. I get the whole wiki geist (and how things unfold in a chaotic way as you said in the past) and of course we'll come up with a new way / volunteer set to do "educational materials" but ... still ... like real-world groups, when a strong and competent person comes in and does something well, they will naturally be missed when they're no longer available.
Please note: That was one big long sentence. Poorly constructed. Muddy and confusing. Proof positive that it won't be me writing the helpful stuff.
Enjoy your coffee - and learn how to make it real goodly. Cuz when you finally move up here to Talkeetna, you're first job at WWR will be coffee barista ....
Your best friend ever,
Jimbob 19:17, January 29, 2008 (AKST)
blush Thanks, Jim!
- I may be able to squeeze in some copyediting time on the Genius' Guide to WWR Wiki. ;)
- Wouldn't it be fun to do some little quicktime movie tutorials?
- I'm not doing the barista thing. As I often do, I made an obscure reference to the fact that I often buy a couple triples a day. What I am doing is full time at the newspaper, plus a big freelance project (those emergency plan drawings I did about a year ago).
- In any case, go ahead and order that espresso machine. I may finally make the move this Spring, and between the two of us I'm sure we can figure out how to run it.
- Keep smilin'
i_kiss_you - sparx 06:23, January 30, 2008 (AKST)
User box formatting
Heya! I'll ask globally but putting it here in case you get here first. The templates Template:Played WWR and Template:Seen live do something I can't stand. Each takes a full "line" of output ... you can put 2, 3, 4, etc. "in a row" on the same line. Was probably done for a formatting reason I don't know about. But they're an example of the kind of thing I want to encourage more of ... and I think the design choice in this case should be "if we want them on individual lines, we will put in br ... otherwise, the default is next to each other." I took a quick glance but was too busy/lazy/self-consumed to dink with it ... I hope it's not that a div requires it's own "line" ... if so, can we get it out of the realm of the div? Thanks for taking a look if you have a chance. Jimbob 12:38, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
- Take the "clear: left; " out of the first line if you want them to display side by side. I kinda like them stacked. Sorry you can't stand it. If indeed that's what you can't stand. The basic code for these I lifted from wikipedia where they're a bit goofy for div tags. sparx 13:29, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
- Thanks for the fast reply. Maybe pass a parm to unstack. They're getting unwieldy on popular artist pages Artists:Radoslav_Lorkovic isn't a great example but gives the idea...on 1 or 2 I edited earlier today, it took a full screen to scroll past all the people who'd seen the performer. Thanks! I'll remove the clear:left; for now Jimbob 13:41, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
- That did it. Thanks. Matter of taste - I like 'em better side-by-side especially when I consider that there may be 20-30 of 'em on an active artist page. Jimbob 13:43, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
Thanks
Thanks for "Music Templates" ... you'll see I've gone crazy "wiki-izing" a bunch of stuff. And thanks for tweaks I think I see you making. Sorry if it's all a mess ... the point is to see what life is like where we finally go "almost all wiki" for editing artists / albums / songs. Although the WWR code was robust (and parts of it will have to remain) anything I can do so people only have to learn one system (i.e. wiki) is good. Plus, by putting "stickers" all over the place, if people are tempted to create their own (regular users have done that) then we're getting more people editing pages. Sorry for running on ... in programmer head... Jimbob 16:21, February 19, 2008 (AKST)
- I'm with ya about folks just learning one system, and even more with ya about getting it more of the load off your back. We'll make it look pretty in time. Once in awhile I kinda like looking at that first chat interface just to see how things have evolved. I'll get caught up in about a month... or not. (sparx 19:39, February 19, 2008 (AKST))
(converted to HTML rather than wiki markup - more people know HTML)
Wow - yeah. Wiki markup for tables always confused me - it's more difficult than HTML. Thanks. Jimbob (talk) 07:07, March 1, 2008 (AKST)
- It took me awhile to figure them out and mostly I did it to learn how to do them so I could use them on wikipedia without the rule harpies coming down on me, but I've not used them much there. I don't know if Mr. Monkey's bots could help us much with converting those. I'll look at that. In the meantime I started a wish list of work for Mr. Monkey's bots (User:Sparkit/Bot wish list). It's a personal wish list. If you'd like one in the main namespace we could do that, too. I really should be working on something else today, but I'm burnt out on both projects, and WWR is lots more fun! sparx (talk) 09:23, March 1, 2008 (AKST)
Request Output
I removed Category:Shows from the Request Output template. There are some shows I've created for my personal use that no one else would care about and I don't want them cluttering the Show page. Hope that's okay. Thanks. Kelli (talk) 09:40, March 2, 2008 (AKST)
- Hi Kelli! I think I'd like to keep the category in the main Request Output template. I'd be more than glad to make you a separate one for personal shows though. Let me know. Thanks. (sparx (talk) 15:59, March 2, 2008 (AKST))
Deleted pages and wandering thoughts
Hey Sparx ... I wondered if I should communicate with you before deleting but then was pretty sure it was the right track overall. Here's what I'm thinking in a wandering form - please excuse the repeats etc. but not going to spend an hour refining and don't want to miss anything:
- Every page is a "stub" in concept. Otherwise there's no need for a history page. Creating a bunch of pages with no content hoping that people will fill them out hasn't worked. It's doesn't seem to work as a "bookmark of stuff to be done" either because there's alot of higher priority stuff that's needed. So I don't want to "stub" anything like "what the History tab does".
- I would like the "Requested pages" report in special pages to be a usable list of pages people could contribute. No one uses it now because it's out of control in number of items requested and whether those items are really useful or not. I remember putting so much stuff in brackets to make a red link when we first started that are never going to be filled in and aren't that important anyway.
- The push to get meaningful content added to artist, album and song pages by people other than myself has been going very well. As I've learned what it takes to get people to take the plunge and start editing pages, I've learned that the spaghetti of technical stuff holds little or no interest to most people. If I can further focus on the stuff we really need then I feel like there's a good chance to keep this level of content contribution going.
- I opted for "How to" instead of "Help". Those pages are frequently referred to looking at the access hits. The help pages (except for those that were How tos) were not being used and just cluttered/confused. I certainly am never going to fill out a "watch" help page but maybe I (or someone else) would actually contribute or link to a page that explains something like "Tools you can use to keep an eye on the wiki" (watch, RSS, recent changes, etc. in a full description).
- I'm trying to simplify categories or at least have fewer broad categories that are well maintained vs. a lot of narrow categories that are incomplete, unused and not maintained. The category system that links on itself and back to this and over to that subcategory which links back to the main category seems unnecessarily complex and unusable when, for example, all the user wants is a page where "Fun stuff" or "How to" or "Wheathead interests" articles are listed.
- There are only
21 people on this site who regularly maintained categories. You ... and me occasionally. I don't mean to gut your work as a design insult because if you were still in a situation where you could devote the time to maintaining them or that time returns, it'd be just fine. But the reality of the current situation is that I want to be able to give people simple directives both to find and categorize pages ... like "if it produces a report then put category:report on it". If it's a help page, put it in "How to". I'd rather have too many pages in a related category and then break it into sub-categories than have a bunch of pages that are actually related in small categories hanging out there unknown and unused.
- I plan to do the same with the music. The number of overlapping tags is ridiculous and confusing to people. And unused. Better to have a usable category of "depressing music" than 12 half-filled mis-categorized "sad" "depressing" "heartbroken" "downer" "suicidal" etc. music.
- The search box, bad as it is in finding things, is still a better way to find articles dealing with a particular subject when compared to small, incomplete, unmaintained categories / stub pages. It can be enhanced to improve searching (the google search seems to do a better job generally) and I want to continue telling people "use the search box" as it's the only way to find stuff on a site with 65,000+ pages on it.
- Some of the pages I deleted (Dada, Surrealism) I hope you weren't offended but they were early forays and didn't belong. I only saw them because they were in categories. I'd delete the same of my own stuff. I'm putting stuff in Category:History as a jumping off place before probably archiving/deleting all except the most sentimental. I deleted the entire Blog/Audio Magazine/Archives namespaces and stuff that had been left there.
- Speaking of cleaning, a lot of the pages I put in dealing with tech stuff (mySQL, Apache, Winamp, etc.) are really just a way to avoid 2-3 great articles about how stuff really works. WWR is not a technical, gardening, aviation, arts, jokes, recipies, etc. resource. It's ludicrous to create pages like that when a google search turns up 500 more relevant pages. It's fine to have those pages as long as they reflect an interest of people who are using WWR and they will maintain them. Which is why I won't delete concert announcements etc. even though there are better sources for such information on the web. But I'm never going to maintain the tech stuff nor is this a good place to "define what mySQL is". I will likely use EXTERNAL LINKS in the future to link terms, concepts, etc. that are better explained on other sites.
- I am going to write a maint program to delete all the photos that are not being used/linked to on a page. There are thousands of them, mostly used for ephemeral chat posts. I wish it were that easy with pages. Wiki is great but maintenance is difficult.
- As always, some folks will probably gossip and be ready to provide answers without asking any questions. One of the things I've watched over the years is the ebb and flow of "groups of people". I was looking through a pile of memorabilia the other day and almost none of the people still come around - not because of me, or the site etc. as much as it's the nature of the web/life to find new interests and move on. I've always tried to make room for the new people just discovering WWR while at the same time respectfully keeping the memory of those who have passed on alive for awhile and then quietly removing the stubble so the new crop would have room to grow. I imagine there's nothing more disheartening for a newbie than to feel like they can never compare to the "great people from the good 'ol days" even though those people haven't been seen in 4-6-12-24 months. So, yes, I will be doing some removal/deleting that some will misinterpret in some personal way. There's little I can do to avoid it unless I just walk away and let the site finally explode into irrelevance and myspaceyness.
Seeing all that I've written I hope you'll understand that if I had 2-4 hours of time to refine, delete, par down and proofread, I may been able to boil it all down to "because I'm trying to get some focus on the site and make it more useable to the general public and less "Wikipedia like" in the useless details and inability to find what you really want to find". I also hope you'll understand that I'm writing to you like I'd write to a fellow project developer - because that's what you are. I hope some of what I've written rings true and I certainly hope you won't take personal offense at my attempts to focus/clean up the site. I will probably make some mistakes, wish later that I hadn't done so-and-so ... but overall, I hope to make things easier/better. As an example ... I had no idea song tags would turn out the way they have ... but apparently it's "better" than the easier-to-use (in my opinion) pulldowns because people are doing more tagging now than in the past and I've gotten 3 emails from artists saying they really liked the "new way their artist and songs pages look". Go figure.......
Jimbob (talk) 10:10, March 3, 2008 (AKST)
- Thanks Jim for all the info. No personal offense taken. Really. I had about five minutes to dash of the question this morning and I suppose it came off blunt. I do understand and support the direction you are pointing WWR. I've been rethinking the Help stuff since this morning. I know it was irrelevant to 99.9% of listeners, but I've long hoped folks would learn from it. (Damn, I wish were sitting in a coffee shop talking.) The unrelated to music stuff, (Dada, etc.) I don't care about. Long day... More later...
temp02 sparx (talk) 21:26, March 3, 2008 (AKST)
Whew!
Oh goodie. I was hoping you were in a rush and just needed to fire off a quick "What's going on?" ... glad it wasn't a problem. Really really really glad!
I've been meaning to append to my comments all day "Um, yeah, and I see where I screwed up too cuz I'm getting red links in various Mediawiki namespace system messages about "...as indicated in this help file...." sort of things. But I think I'll REDIRECT those pages to something in the "How to" section as I see them. But I took the Be Bold directive to heart and got the courage to start ripping the old wiring out in hopes of cleaning up the bird's nest. Bound to be a few strands of old wire I shoulda left alone.
I do hope your long days and projects contain some level of personal satisfaction. I know a bunch of the wiki stuff is fun, addicting even, and that you miss hanging around here. But as I watch my money fly out the door here and see my personal expenses increase, I sometimes lay in bed at night wondering if I'll have to go back to work. The prospect of having to even find a job are daunting, let alone having to actually show up and take direction from someone else. Don't know if it makes you feel any better but you've already done all that difficult stuff ... and moved to boot ... and you're getting an actual income. You've already overcome my nightmare. All the hours/days of fun tinkering around here without pay pales compared to the real steps you've taken out there in the real world.
'Course once we win a huge harassment settlement against the RIAA, you're first on my hiring list.
Jimbob (talk) 22:49, March 3, 2008 (AKST)
- Here's an idea for those red Help links. Link them to a page, maybe just call it "Help" and explain on that page that MediaWiki is the place to go for extended help, and direct them to the howto category for WWR specific tasks. MediaWiki because the wikipedia stuff if customized for wikipedia policies which could confuse Wheaters. All the links would look something liks [[Help|whatever the link says now]]. Maybe... Still thinking...
- I do love the work I'm doing. Having some problems with the atmosphere. No surprise, I guess. ;)
- Yeah yeah yeah! A single page (or a few well written ones anyway) even if the help goes to a "bookmark" / header within the page. Yeah - I think that's a better solution than 50 little "stubby" pages that no one is going to update. I've noticed that even I will make minor changes/update to a big page I'm already on for other reasons and then see "Oh, that's not right....lemme fix it." Jimbob (talk) 10:49, March 4, 2008 (AKST)
Washington trip
Sparx, this probably doesn't belong on a talk page but I know you will see it when you have time... I am heading to Mereer Island in July. I don't know for sure how long I will be in the area but I am hoping for at least one free day and a WA Wheathead get together. Are you interested? LuAnna (talk) 11:23, March 29, 2008 (AKDT)
- Neat LuAnna! Keep me posted. I am more than interested. :) I'm excited! sparx (talk) 17:11, March 29, 2008 (AKDT)
Monitor calibration
You mentioned that I should calibrate my monitor before throwing out terms like "puke green".
- Ummmm. It was a rather flip comment. Monitors are kinda like browsers - things look different on various monitors and platforms. The gazillion Windoze graphics cards add more variety. There are definite differences in how colors look between Mac and Windoze systems - Windows monitors usually show colors darker than Macs. Which could be why that green looks pukey to you.
- Real monitor calibration requires sophisticated and expensive equipment. You can, however, make some changes with the buttons on the front of the monitor. Works good for monitors that are too bright or dark, or if there's a definite color cast. There might be a control panel for monitor calibration, too. I'm starting to forget everything I once knew about Windoze.
- Gotta do this sort of calibration with your personal perception of color, though. If you like really saturated colors, you can amp up the saturation (like a lot of people do with TVs). If you like subtle colors you can do that, too. Load a high quality outdoors photo with colors that you know - like a Talkeetna photo with sky and greenery. Have it on screen whilst you make changes. Make the sky look the color you know the sky actually is and the greenery, too.
(Non-)Success with the SparkitTest template
After days of futzing around with it (possibly as much as several minutes per day!), I think I may have finally obtained the vertical centering you were shooting for on your Template:SparkitTest (documented in comments in the code). Gladdened to hear you liked my "approach" and "look" - I aim to please, but am often a rotten shot. ;-) --12-stringer (talk) 11:54, May 1, 2008 (AKDT)
- Just an FYI - the "centered" template does not look right on IE (I'm using version 6). Kelli (talk) 12:14, May 1, 2008 (AKDT)
- Thanks for the extra eyes, Kelli - no, I didn't test it in IE; back to the drawing board --12-stringer (talk) 15:22, May 1, 2008 (AKDT)
Talk page message
Hey Sparkit - leave me a silly message on my talk page to generate an orange banner for a screen snapshot for your Communicating_on_the_WWR_website article. Thanks. Jimbob (talk) 20:38, May 3, 2008 (AKDT)
Year of Wonders
Hi Sparx. I was just looking at what you had been reading. That always interests me. A book you may want to try some time that I am reading right now is called Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I just started on it last night and have had a hard time putting it down. The protagonist a peasant women living through the time of the plague in her village of Eyam is the story teller.
- Wow, thanks Billy! It does look like a fascinating read. I'm gonna look for it at the local bookstore, or amazon.
- Connie Willis' Doomsday Book is set mostly in a time of plague. I could hardly put it down when reading it. Not so much because it was during the plague, but because it was a fascinating story and well written.
- I've not been reading as much the past few years as I used to. I think I'm going to set the Umberto Eco book aside again. Just doesn't seem to suit my mood of late. Years of Wonder might be just the ticket!
Artist page standard
Sparx (or anyone else if they know) do we have a standard for artist bio sections? I see some with the one -bio image and others with a second image in the bio section that is flushed to the right. My question is do we have or do we want to have a standard or guideline for the artist and other key pages? DogNut (talk) 12:59, May 4, 2008 (AKDT) Sparx, I added this question to the Mr Monkey page...
- We need to check with Mr. Monkey and he's not back from his sojourn to the Bulgarian May Day celebrations. I was hoping that his bots would take care of converting existing images to -bio.jpg images. Not sure if that's even possible. I've tried a few by looking at the page's history finding a version previous to the implementation of the artists' bio template, preview, click on the image, download the full resolution image, then uploading it to the -bio.jpg. I'll ask Mr. Monkey to touch base with you when he returns. sparx (talk) 16:03, May 4, 2008 (AKDT)
The Domesday Book
Hi sparks
Thanks for the book reference. I like reading on a specific theme for a while. I will certainly look for that book. Take Care billybones
Thanks for the note
Hi Sparx! Thanks for writing and you're welcome on the interview. I'm glad it helped clarify things and increased the level of acceptance of needed changes and kindness towards Jim - I think sometimes simple misunderstandings can cloud things up with all kinds of emotions and reactions... And when Jim just talks on the air by himself, there is none of the normal conversational clarifications that happen when people are face to face with each other, so those misunderstandings can probably intensify. As for me, I'm doing pretty well. Been practicing and writing with more sense of daily discipline, and doing less of the business-y stuff. I think that's good for me, for the time being. But I do need to step up and work on booking my next tours. I know I'll be more excited about touring, though, if I have new material to sing! :-) Esther (talk) 11:06, May 8, 2008 (AKDT)
Mystified
People mystify me sometimes. I read the piece on the Community News page about the plan for offloading some of the burden of WWR to a council of elders. I listened to Esther interview you. I heard you say you were exhausted and wanted a break from non-constructive comments, email, etc. I look at some of the comments and wonder... Is it that hard to hold one's tongue for a few days, maybe a week?
Please take care of yourself, my friend. Not one bit of this (WWR) is worth compromising your health or sanity.
- Biggest hug ever possible to you right now. Thank you for hearing beyond all the noise. And Mr. Monkey thanks you too because he's having a ball sending Mr. Wikey(?) flying into log walls and hearing him scream... and just for you, the first test of something coming ... and yes, it's still WAY test! Jimbob (talk) 17:53, May 8, 2008 (AKDT) Image:Test Ohyeahkid.gif
- Later addition: Emoticon_gallery - you'll see where it's going. Format is Image:Any wiki image.gif and it makes it 50x50px if bigger. Jimbob (talk) 19:36, May 8, 2008 (AKDT)
Image:Emoticon th cuteee.gif What the f have I've done? Image:Emoticon STFU.gif
Computer language
When you enter your site does your name automatically show up after Howdy? If not, what do I need to do with the code?Billybones (talk) 22:35, May 8, 2008 (AKDT)
- Yes. On my user page that code snippet shows my name. It shows the name of whoever the viewer is logged in as. Jim sees his name when he looks at it. Kelli sees hers and so on. Nifty, eh? sparx (talk) 17:23, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
Questions
Hiya, Bisbo. I'm writing a response. It may take me awhile. Image:Hug.gif sparx (talk) 18:05, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
- Thanks, Sparky, but it's not necessary. In fact, I just took the questions off your page, because it just doesn't matter. I appreciate you working on an answer, though...lotsa good folks here, and you're at the top of the pile.--Bisbonian (talk) 18:09, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
- Well, OK. It just takes me awhile to write some things. It's always worth it to me, though, because it helps clarify my own thoughts. I do feel we need to talk about what's going on with WWR, but I also respect Jim's request for a break. I think I'm up for the challenge of working within those parameters. :) Also, Bakatcha, I thinks you are real fine folk, too! sparx (talk) 18:27, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
Adopt-a-user
Thanks, Kelli, for your interest in Adopt-a-user. I hoped you'd come on board. In these past few months your knowledge of WWR wiki has without a doubt eclipsed mine. I'm very happy about that. Right from the start with WWR wiki my favorite part has been seeing people learn and it still is. 
sparx (talk) 19:54, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
- Thanks for the compliment, but I doubt that my knowledge has surpassed yours. I'm getting bolder though. :-) It is great to watch people learn the WWR wiki! Kelli (talk) 20:00, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
Thanks, Atuu, for your interest in the Adopt-a-user thing. With the support of folks like you it's sure to fly. sparx (talk) 19:49, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
- Aww shucks sparx!
::blush I am just trying to emulate the Wheathead that selflessly led me by the hand when I first showed up here...I believe the name was sparx!::;) Atuuschaaw (talk) 20:04, May 9, 2008 (AKDT)
Glad I could throw some light on the songs for you Sparx. I have the great pleasure of knowing George and being able to hear him play on a regular basis. I am thrilled to be able to give him as much exposure as possible. Pyrite (talk)
Instrumental lyrics search?
I've been removing that, too, when I come across it on instrumental tunes. 
sparx (talk) 14:05, May 11, 2008 (AKDT)
