User talk:GyroMagician

The top priority articles have been identified as probably being:

• Worcester • Worcestershire • Bromsgrove • Redditch • Kidderminster • Pershore • Malvern College • Malvern St James • Droitwich • tenbury Wells and the suite of former QinetiQ establlishments: * TRE • RSRE • DERA

The number has been kept deliberately low to give us a fighting chance of improving them to at least GA status, so we can concentrate our efforts on these first. Priorities are not set in stone and if you would like to discuss changes, please join in at [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Worcestershire.

Other priorities:

• The recommended priority by kind is for creation/improvement of complete articles is:

1. Places in the county
2. Schools in the county (Particularly susceptible to vandalism - please keep them on your watch lists if possible).
3. Transport in the county
4. Notable buildings/objects/geo features/AONB/Heritage sites, etc. in the county
5. History in the county
6. Industry & Commerce in the county.
7. People in the county - NOTE: These all need the Worcs project banner adding to their talk pages, and assessing.
8. County related articles about things not actually in the county, and/or other related projects.

These lists will help:

• All Worcs related articles by ABC
• Worcs related articles by type.
• All Worcs related articles about people by ABC
• List of all Schools in Worcestershire
• List by Class & Importance: Page 1 All categories except people (not yet tagged with WP banner)
• List by Class & Importance: Page 2 All categories except people (not yet tagged with WP banner).

Specific aims for the project are:-

• Monitor
  Use the watchlist to keep an eye on changes to the project's articles so that vandalism and spamming can be removed as quickly as possible.

• Infoboxes
  Some of our articles need their infoboxes completing infobox.

• References
  Please remember that the list of stubs needing expansion is always in need of attention. Please take a look and see if you can help. One small edit, such as adding a reference section and reference, to an article each session would make a big difference. If you a re uploadiing an image, be sure it has a correct FUR, and that you have preferably already created a link on the page where you want it to be.

• Moves, merges, and multiple edits
  Please be careful when performing articles moves and check if anyone seems to be in the middle of doing the same thing. If he; she, or they are, stop and have a chat about it. Otherwise you may be unintentionally duplicating or reverting each other's work. This is particularly important if an article is currently under a GA review. image may be deleted as it has an incorrect FUR.

• How to write about settlements
• How to write about counties
• How to write about rivers
• How to write about people

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Whilst we don't of course lay claims to ownership of any articles, we should beware of pettyfogging intimidation by 'recent changes' patrollers, particlulary in the case of articles that have passed an especially arduous GA review. BTW: Some reviews are much less arduous; in fact, some get through because there are reviewers who scour the GA nominations for articles where they have subject knowledge (COI?), and then breeze in, do all or most of the improvements themselves, pass the article, and take all the credit.--Kudpung (talk) 00:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

:Hi, use all you like from my user page - I cribbed the basic layout from someone else anyway. I'm not taking a Wikibreak, but I'm soft pedaling a bit, just checking my watchlist every day. I need to relax away from pettyfogging interference of the kind that gets me riled. The Welsh article turned out to be one of those "don't touch our article even if you're doing a grand job cleaning our mess up for us" jobs, so I turned round and walked out of it. They'll get their GA because the reviewer did most of the work for them. BTW: do you have any idea why Nev1 threw his admin toys out of his pram? Shame really - a model of how admins really should be. I'm planning on being in the UK throughout April to take in my dad's 90th birthday, it would be great if you could get across, peterkingiron and iccaldwell have expressed interest in meeting up. I will have to go France for a meeting with my publisher and see my grandchildren, and I'll probably go down to Avignon and do some research for the Wiki wine articles.--Kudpung (talk) 16:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

::Hi Kudpung, I wondered if you might be taking a break. Pettyfogging is a good word for it (and a good word in it's own right). It's funny how those battles seem important here, when they're really not. MH looked like an argument (discussion, I mean) that I wanted to stay out of. They were lucky to find a reviewer prepared to do so much work. I've been doing a bit of tweaking here and there, general tidying up without doing anything too big. I've just made the Ambridge merger you suggested - it feels a little like enjoying a cigarette in a fireworks factory - but I'm not really an Archers fan, so I can step aside if it get a little warm ;-) I'll try and tidy up the WP:Worcs home page next - I think it needs a bit more structure, but I'm not sure what structure yet. We should try to work out a (very) shortlist of priority articles needing work, to try and keep folks focussed. Anyway, let's save that for a bit. Enjoy your break, remember that none of this is really important, and let me know when you're back.

Oh yes, I forgot - I've no idea what happened with Nev1, I didn't realise there was a problem. What happened? I've not interacted with him too much, but he's always been an excellent editor when I have. GyroMagician (talk) 16:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Look what I made in school:

{{Wikiproject Worcestershire invite}}

Hopefully followed by

{{ombox

| type = notice

| image = 100px

| textstyle = color: black; background: #faecc8; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;

| text =

Hello, {{PAGENAME}}, and welcome to WikiProject Worcestershire! Thank you for your generous offer to help contribute. We're sure your input will be much appreciated and hope you enjoy contributing here and being a Worcestershire Wikipedian. If you have any questions, feel free to discuss anything on the project talk page. Finally, remember, be bold with your ideas!

}}

Nice :) --Kudpung (talk) 22:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro, remember this? Evesham Technology. Several of us had a good go at rescuing it and turning it into quite a reasonable article. It was another example of how our teamwork works, and I'm half inclined to suggest that it might pass a GA review. Thoughts? --Kudpung (talk) 22:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

:Hi Kudpung, sorry, I completely forgot to reply to this. Yes, I remember it, I think we made quite a nice job of polishing it up. I don't think it's worth putting it to GA though - we have far more interesting articles we could concentrate on. Malvern Water would be an obvious choice, if you're looking to get another GA for Worcs, as it's almost there already (and I see you've been adding to it today). GyroMagician (talk) 18:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro, I know you are as keen as I am to improve all the articles concerning our native Malvern, and as serious Wikipedians, it is our duty to encourage and maintain good standards of additions by casual authors. However, please see my message on the article talk page. Then feel free to disagree :) --Kudpung (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

:Hi Kudpung, as you guessed, I've disagreed. It's not because I think it is vital to mention FMSW in the article, but because I think this editor has attempted to engage, and then been labelled vandal. It's faster to tag vandal and rollback, but also a fast way to turn away potential new contributors. Anyway, I haven't heard back from Malvernspa, so we'll see. GyroMagician (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

== Non Free Images in your User Space ==

25px Hey there GyroMagician, thank you for your contributions! I am a bot alerting you that Non-free files are not allowed in the user or talk-space. I [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=next&oldid=340117694 removed] some images that I found on User:GyroMagician. In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use images to your user-space drafts or your talk page. See a log of images removed today here, shutoff the bot here and report errors here. Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 05:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit worried that the templates on Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/templates all seem to place a default assessment of C class and I don't know how to override or simplify this. Either that, or they need a long list of crtiteria adding. I dn't seem top remember having to do this in the past. Can you put me wise on this?--Kudpung (talk) 07:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

:They shouldn't. The first example on the Worcs page shows ??? for both importance and classs (as it should). I did notice yesterday when I re-rated Malvern Water from C to B that I could only do that by including all the B-class checks - if I removed them, it dropped back to C. I'm fairly sure it's not related to my recent changes, but I've never rated a Worcs article as B before, so I don't know if this is a new 'feature'. I'll look into it GyroMagician (talk) 08:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

::After a bit of digging I found It is only possible to assess an article as B-Class when all six criteria are met; otherwise, it will be assessed as C-Class. here (see the Assessment section). After playing with the template, and having a look at the Sussex version, it appears that removing

::from the template will make this requirement go away. What do you prefer? I don't find the various B-subcats very helpful, but maybe you/others do? Either way, there is no default to C-class as far as I can see, just an extra check for B-class. GyroMagician (talk) 10:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

:::To be quite honest, I'm not an expert with Wiki templates, or any other of the tools really, (I prefer writing and improving articles and doing the occasional Afd rescue). I personally don't find this B-class check list system very helpful, especially when adding the Worcs banner to a page that has already been been tagged and assessed by one or more other projects that it comes under. It's just too time consuming. This came to light today when I tried to edit Edward Elgar page and its talk page.--Kudpung (talk) 11:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

::::I tend to think of templates as fluff to distract us from actually contributing to articles ;-) Shall we agree to remove the B-class checklist then? GyroMagician (talk) 13:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

:::::I agree with you there too :) Can you go ahead and do it? With the exception of the category people associated with malvern, practically all the articles re now project tagged, and if we want to assess them, we can do this on the fly without the check list - after all, a 'B' is not a GA ;) - and we are aware of the criteria. Kudpung (talk)

::::::Done. I checked Malvern, Worcestershire and Malvern Water - both of which look okay, so I think it's fine. GyroMagician (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I need your urgent help. I've added some references to a new Governance section on Barnards Green by copying them and pasting them from the Malvern article, but something has gone horribly wrong and left red stains on the page. Can you do a quick fix?--Kudpung (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

:Done. You were missing a }} at the end of the reference list. I added Penley Radar from Malvern while I was there. GyroMagician (talk) 17:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit conflict - I've had to revert your edits by repasting the entire article, because it wasn't clear from the version comparison what you had actually done. if you can remember what your edits were, gimme an hour or so to finish what I was doing, then make them again. Sorry about this ;)

:I'll let you figure it out - I've spent over an hour trying to untangle your/my edits. I've already lost some in the edit conflict. I think partly we've changed the same things. I made so format and typo corrections, added some co-ords, a few details to the infobox, and formatted the refs. GyroMagician (talk) 00:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

::Golly - you're working late, must be past midnight in Switzerland! I think I've restored most of what got lost. i'll give it another proof read later because I'm still doing some more research for the article. There is in fact a banner somewhere to put on an article when you're working on it, but I can't remember where to find it. Probably quite useful while we are both often working on the same stuff at the same time.--Kudpung (talk) 00:22, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi GyroMagician. Well, I certainly didn't anticiapte the issues that have arisen regarding the use of the ((r)) template. And I daresay nor did you. When we became aware of what we now know are called 'list-defined references', the manner in which we became aware of it, was via the use of ((r)) templates. But we now know that templates can do the job just as well, and without posing difficulties for bots or scripts.

When we worked throgh the issues, our purpose in implementing list-defined references was to ascertain the benefits of that method, not promote a specific template or get drawn into an argument about technical issues pertaining to that template. Not only is it no fun, it can derail us from our original purpose, which was just to make editing easier by whatever method seemed optimal in a given circumstance.

Given that, and given that my own goal was the use of Wikitext to facilitate list-defined references where useful and agreed as useful, I have no difficulty acknowledging the error of my ways, replacing the ((r)) templates with templates, and moving on. I've now done that in a number of articles. Indeed, I think it prudent to simply make the changes and retain the intended benefits, rather than get drawn into certain types of arguments. May I suggest you consider the same for Malvern Water, Malvern, Worcestershire, and Barnards Green. I am more than happy to assist in the change-over.

The easiest way I found to make the change was this:

1. Copy and past into the Edit summary window, so it's available even when I do previews, and doesn't require me to change between windows.
2. Paste the in front of each occurrance of ((r|)).
3. Work through the article, cutting and pasting the reference name from ((r|)) into the template.
4. Do a preview. Any templates that I've overlooked will show up in red, telling me there's a ref without a reference. There's usually only a handful if that.
5. Work through the overlooked templates, copying and pasting as above. Repeat preview.
6. If nothing else overlooked, copy and past whole Wikitext from edit window onto a blank Word document. Use 'find' function (Ctrl+F) to find {{r| - That portion is common to all ((r|)) refs, and gets found if present.
7. If any are found, amend them as above, do final check, and save.
8. Do final check using [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&limit=250&target=Template%3AR&namespace= pages that link function]. If there are no more ((r)) templates, it will not show up. If there are any overlooked, just copy and paste to a Word document to find any stragglers.

Again, I am more than happy to do my bit to help put things rignt and move on. Regards Wotnow (talk) 01:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

An even easier method than above (I can be slow to realise some things), is to use the Ctrl+F function to bring up the little find window atop the article. Copy-and-paste the ((r| portion of the ((r|)) template into that window, and click the "Next" button. It will highlight ((r| throughout the text. Then proceed with the copying and pasting of the template in front of each occurance. My preference is to do that for only as much as shows up in the edit window. So I copy the template in front of everything visible in the window, then work through each occurrance, copying-and-pasting the name into the template, then deleting the ((r|)) template. That way, I keep track of where I am, and minimise errors. It's still reasonably quick. In fact having realised this easier method, the last article I updated, I didn't do the copy-and-paste to a Word document at all. I worked through it per this paragraph, did a preview of course, with no red-ink error messages, saved the article, then did a check of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&limit=250&target=Template%3AR&namespace= pages that link function]. Worked a treat. But that's just my approach to date. Regards Wotnow (talk) 02:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

:When I'm working on a big article that could attract other editors at the same time, I usually copy and paste the whole thing (or the section) into a powerful text editor such as BBedit that can use grep (regular expressions) for searching and making multiple changes. With S. Worcs Coll. I didn't think anyone would be very interested in even looking at it, so I was working online with it. Such is the power of the Worcs project teamwork ;) --Kudpung (talk) 00:20, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

::Cheers Kudpung. Sorry about delay responding. I'm getting more efficient with my use of Wikipedia, but I've yet to try any of those tools. I've been trying to take some of the fuel out of the fire that's erupted around the "r" template. Bit of a catch-22 though. Leave the fuel there, and some point to it as the reason for the fire. Remove it, and some say "hey, you can't do that". But I can pull back now with a clear conscience, having done what I could to show compromise and restore some of Chienlit's integrity, as well as keep Maedin from getting drawn into things. So I can live with myself on that count. Thanks too Gyro for your sane comments in the discussions. Meantime, keep up the good work on the Worcestershire stuff folks. If I stay around for any length of time, I'll chip in where I can. Regards Wotnow (talk) 06:39, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

And if you ever stumble across anything helpful (and of course verifiable) about Richard Tappin Claridge, please feel free to add it to the article. After 1854, both I and an academic who I emailed, have nothing on the fellow. Here we have someone whose name is well known, who suddenly disappears of the radar screen. A bit odd I would have thought. Must be something documented somewhere. The academic I emailed speculated Claridge may have gone abroad, citing a second marriage possibly in Nice, in 1854 (Eliza Ann Morgan?) ["the Times, 7 January 1854: a marriage notice For Captain Claridge of Nice married at Marleybone to Eliza.."] [But nothing substantial enough for me to capitalise on. I couldn't track down anything informative much less citable. Dunno what happened to his first wife, although I suspect she died, or the name of his daughter (Emma?). Dunno when Claridge died. Dunno nothin'.

Here was a poem I sent to that academic:

:Ode to Claridge:

:Oh, R.T. Claridge

:However can it be

:That you evoke such mystery

:Oh, R.T. Claridge

:Since alighting from your carriage

:At Freiwaldau

:(You say that how?)

:To seek out Vincent Priessnitz

:An Austrian, and so a Fritz,

:Whose water-cure,

:You promoted so sure

:That your own name,

:Shares near equal fame.

:Yet a paradox you have sown,

:If paradox it is,

:That one can be of fame and yet unknown.

Regards Wotnow (talk) 06:39, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

{{talkback|Kudpung|Worchester University|ts=00:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)}}

Kudpung (talk) 00:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

BTW: we need to tread carefully on tis one - an involved contributor appears to get involved in rather awkwards discussions.--Kudpung (talk) 00:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

If you're done with User:GyroMagician/Gumstix you can request its deletion by placing {{tl|db-user}} at the top of the page. --Stepheng3 (talk) 06:04, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

:You can also use the CSDF tab at the very top of tis page and check 'U1'. Unwanted user pages then get deleted usually within a few minutes.--Kudpung (talk) 23:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi GyroMagician. I have amended my user page to take into account some new learning about these list-defined reference bizzos. The whole page has been amended to take into account, and move away from, the template {{tl|r}} controversy. But more importantly, I have created a new section where I try to explain how I actually implement list-defined references. That itself arose from a revelation as I worked through some articles and added the templates. First, I realised that when I do implement list-defined references, I do it in a slightly different order to how I previously described. I don't do the inline reference first. Having created or amended the reference section to allow list-defined references to work, I first create the full reference that I want to show up, just as I would if I was embedding it in the article text. Only then do I place the inline bit into the article text.

Now, as a result of the recent exercises I've been doing, I realise how easy it is to generate the inline bit if using the template. To me, it's actually simpler than the {{tl|r}} template, because you create the reference first, just as you would anyway, no matter what style you use. Then you give it a refname and then just copy and paste the into the article, add a forward slash (/) thus , and presto, it works. The great irony is that this 'revelation' only came to me after all the recent developments. And it only came to me of course because I went through the exercise of replacing a number of {{tl|r}} templates with templates, and reflecting on what I'd learned from the whole exercise.

Anyway, I'd appreciate if you have a look at the How I do list-defined referencing section and comment on whether it makes sense to you. Regards Wotnow (talk) 07:06, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I've spent today doing a lot on the WP:WORCS page. i've basically created a whole new system for ToDos and article follow up. If you have a moment, please check it out and see that I haven't made too much of mess of the whole thing (and your super side-bar). Thanks. --Kudpung (talk) 11:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

:Hi Kudpung - real life took over for a while, but I have some time for Wikipedia again now. I have a lot of catching up to do!

:Work on the Worcs project page - excellent, it needed a bit of tidying. I would still like to reduce the amount of conent on the main page - I'll see what i can do. It occurs to me that we generally discuss what we're doing on individual talk pages (mainly yours, mine and Wotnows). We should try to redirect more of this discussion to the Worcs talk page, to keep the discussion open and easy to find for not-yet-regular editors. I'm glad to see you've tamed the sidebar template - it's not the prettiest piece of code, but I guess we won't have to edit it so often. Your changes all look fine. When you create new pages within WP:WORCS, if you add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/sidebar}} at the very top of the page (above the shortcut template), you'll get a sidebar. I started a page about Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/Referencing, that I intend to include details of both wikipedia technicalities and how to find source material. I'm sure you can add some useful tips there. I reduced the list of other county projects to a few very active projects. You've since re-added a complete list of county projects, some of which are inactive, or close to it. I think a small set, that we can use to guide our own project, is more useful, but I'll leave it to your judgement. Oh yes, one more project point - have a look at the templates subpage - I noticed the welcome template you put on Wotnows talk page. Do you add them manually, or have you set up some wikimagic to do that automatically?

:Malvern Water - thanks for the note. I suspected who the author in question may have been - and yes, I'd be interested to see the email exchange. I hope I was right about those being good faith edits, although a little misguided.

:Worchester University - I think your fix was quick and ideal. Nicely diffused, and helps highlight a dubious institute.

:Now, I have a monster watchlist to sort through... GyroMagician (talk) 08:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

::Hi Gyro. After checking that my own save below was successful, I noticed a couple of red link here, so I took the liberty of fixing the link to the referencing and templates pages. Regards. Wotnow (talk) 23:42, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi GyroMagician. I see the citation controversy has been escalated. This was always likely.

It won't end anytime soon, if at all, and it will probably do a lot of harm along the way. I saw the writing on the wall early on. And that is exactly why I took the stance that I did, which was consistent with my original stance anyway. That is, the only gold standard is the reference information, whether or not a template of any sort is used. And if a template is used in any fashion for any reason, it must serve our purposes, not the other way around. So once I saw the writing on the wall, I replaced the ((r)) template in articles where I'd originally placed them, alerted Maedin (about the identified technical difficulties, not the looming storm), and did what I could to help Chienlit regain some integrity as a good faith editor.

In other words, once I could see there was controversy, packaged along with several agendas (themselves primarily good faith, but confounding solution and fuelling debate nonetheless), my opinion was, and remains, that the best thing to do is replace the contentious template and side-step the cesspool. Let it play out as it will. Let others who wish to be vehicles for that debate, or even drivers of it, do so. That is their choice.

I see that the ((r) template has been proposed for deletion, and some (I guess automated mechanism) now leaves a message at every use of the ((r)) template. This interferes with the readability of the Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern Water, and Barnards Green articles - especially the first two. The mere act of leaving the ((r)) templates in place is causing problems not originally forseen or intended. Never mind if the tactic of making articles using the ((r)) templates unreadable smacks of the sort of underhandedness one sees in vicious political campaigns. Some will spot that and complain. I say so what?

My advice regarding these articles is that we replace the ((r)) templates with templates. This will bring back the readability of the articles, and avoid being caught up other people's campaigns. They aren't worth getting caught up in. It's not as if they save children's lives or anything really useful in life. I will assist replacing the templates if this if desired. I would estimate the overall time for the three articles at about an hours work. Regards Wotnow (talk) 01:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

:Hi Wotnow, and sorry for not replying to your messages sooner. I think you're probably smarter than I am. Staying right out of the {{tl|r}} discussion is clearly the right thing to do for ones sanity, but I still feel the need to comment. I think we feel the same about the issue, but your restraint appears to be better than mine! If you want to replace {{tl|r}} with in Worcs articles I will not object, but I won't help in doing it because I think the 'discussion' has been very underhanded, and I don't want to make it easier for that particular editor. What can I say, I feel an empathy with mules. I was under the same misunderstanding as you - that {{tl|r}} was somehow related to LDR - so at least I've learned something from the discussion.

:Claridge sounds like an entertaining mystery. I would love to disappear like that - to leave a puzzle for any historian trying to chase me. But of course I'm not famous, so it would have little effect!

:Thanks for your suggestions for the Worcs Referencing Howto. They look like good suggestions - I'll try to include them soon - but if you get some time before me, please go ahead and move your ideas from Talk to the main page. After all, you are a member of project Worcs now (having been our longest serving non-member)! GyroMagician (talk) 08:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

::Cheers Gyro. Dunno about smarter. Primarily pragmatic. I can't claim not to be a proselytiser and at the same time have behaviours that are inconsistent with that stance. I claim only to have been interested in ((r)) templates insofar as they made LDR possible. To be consistent, I can't make that claim, and refuse to acknowledge new knowledge that LDRs don't rely on ((r)). So I can't reasonably 'vote for' ((r)) templates. At the same time, to do justice to those who used ((r)) in good faith, joining any majority movement against ((r)) is not an option I even consider. This is especially after seeing Chienlit's situation. True I picked it up from Chienlit. But Chienlit was inspired by my own efforts to bring relevant information together in one spot, and it would unconscionable for me betray that. So my only consistent stance is one of neutrality, especially regarding the ((r)) template.

::If I get a chance, I'll replace them in the Malvern, Worcestershire article, to lessen any perceived impact on its GA status. There is more to our achievement in that article than meets the eye, both for us as a group of editors, and for Dana Boomer as a reviewer.

::Regarding LDR, I am in favour of its use where a gain is agreed to be had, but not of having editors feel they must use it, even within an article where it is used. I have tried to reflect all this on my user page, and have probably largely achieved that, with the caveat that it could be better laid out. Whether I get to achieve that remains to be seen - I find it easier said than done when I am trying to contain my Wikitime. As for the Worcestershire articles, I would rather give way on the ((r)) template than risk losing sight of what we were originally striving for. Such a risk exists as long as the templates are in the articles. And it doesn't even require us to lose sight. That can occur simply as a by-product of the momentum of other events.

::Yes, Claridge turned out to be more intriguing than I ever imagined when I tracked down his book in pre-internet days some 24 years ago. The information is out there somewhere. It could be emigration-related. He could have somehow fallen out of favour. Perhaps fallen afoul of the law. Committed suicide. Or just died in a fashion that would be embarrassing to the promoters of hydropathy etc. Any number of things that might not be seen as the sort of thing one talks about, especially if the person in question was previously of fame and good standing. But somewhere out there, is a document, or documents, that give the clues. I probably won't find them. My circumstances will preclude that. But a good historian and researcher can solve the mystery. Some academics may be put off by the mere fact that so much info is now in the public domain of Wikipedia. But an astute, entrepreneurial researcher would know that there is so much more to say, and better than I've said it, that they could still write a fascinating thesis, book or article.

::If I get a chance to transfer the Worcs referencing stuff to the main page, I will. I thought I'd start out with my ideas on the talk page, where we can feel more free to put them through the wringer, and perhaps pare them down in a fashion that is readily accessible, which you seem quite good at. I think also, by the way, that it would be useful to create some deliberate examples of those red messages that appear when there is a ref error, or a ref missing. Over time, I have found them less daunting, and actually quite helpful. If for example the red message says that the reference has a name that isn't used in the text beforehand, I've found all I have to do is copy the name from the red message, paste it into the inline citation, and presto. So a couple of examples of how to capitalise on that would be handy. Regards Wotnow (talk) 23:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I changed it from the standard template to the inline one. Change it back if you like. Of course, if your objection is that now every reference using it is tagged, then you're out of luck. It's at TfD, it needs to be tagged, and the tag needs to be visible where it's used. It works that way deliberately, it's not a side-effect. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 16:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

:That is exactly my complaint. Have you looked at the affected pages? There is a difference between tagging an article, and making it unreadable - I think you have achieved the latter. Surely the ideas is to warn editors on affected pages, while allowing readers to carry on as normal? GyroMagician (talk) 16:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

::Learn to read? "I changed it from the standard template to the inline one." Take it up with whoever tagged it in the first place - or generally anyone that cares. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 16:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

:::That's the mature, helpful attitude I come here for, thanks. I've no idea what the standard template looks like, but the current inline one is a mess. GyroMagician (talk) 17:48, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

::::See The Wave 96.4 FM for the normal non-inline style in action. If you'd prefer it like that, I can change it back for you. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 18:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

:::::For what it's worth, I saw the articles before 81's change to inline, and it is an improvement on the original situation. When I made my comments above, the articles were peppered with non-inline tags per the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Wave_96.4_FM&oldid=344226596 Wave 96.4 FM] article, with the centralised tag at every occurance of the ((r)) template. The articles looked ghastly. It was in that context I made my original comments, at 1:05, because the articles were truly unreadable. Meantime, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:R&action=history at 1:27], 81' made the TFD amendment to make it inline. I was at that exact time amending my user page to remove all ((r)) templates, saving the changes at [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Wotnow&action=history 1:28]. Only after that did I revisit the Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern Water, and Barnards Green articles, and notice the templates were now inline. I have since perused the discussions from one of the tag links, and I can see that the tags are a by-product of the need to notify editors. While I agree with Gyro that a banner template would be better, I think that 81's amendment to the existing template was a pragmatic improvement on the situation. The articles are peppered with inline tags, which impedes the readability flow. But the articles are now at least readable, whereas they weren't when I made my original comment above and on Kudpung's talkpage. Regards Wotnow (talk) 23:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

::::::Well, there's now a bonus - I've since discovered that {{tl|tfd-inline}} has a "tiny" parameter which makes it even less intrusive. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 03:16, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

{{outdent|::::::} Cheers '81. I see that, after checking the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:R&action=history template R history] again. Although I see the notice has been removed altogether now. That provides an immediate 'solution' to the readability problem. But the catch-22 from that 'solution' is that things look okay at the article interface, whereas in fact the controversy continues, with the ongoing danger of collateral damage to articles from further developments. Gyro (& Kudpung if you're reading), when I next devote a block of time to Wikipedia, I'll change the ((r)) template in the Malvern article to get that out of harm's way. Following that, I'll tackle the Malvern Water article, then Barnards Green. Regards Wotnow (talk) 07:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

:Hi 81.111.114.131 & Wotnow, thanks both for trying to fix this. I agree that the current situation (where users of the template are not notified of the TfD) is less than ideal. I think some work needs to be done on tagging templates, but I have no idea where in W to bring this up. I missed the various iterations, so I haven't seen the tiny version, but it sounds like a step in the right direction. GyroMagician (talk) 11:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

::Apart from the fact that the Wave article is not tagged at all, but every one of its 50-odd refrences needs refactoring to MOS, my 2 cents on tagging is this: I have come across articles that have remained tagged for years. Inline tags point directly to where attention is used, and as such are good for POV, COI and blatant nonsense, for things urgently requiring attention, even if their profusion makes an article look unsightly. Top and Section Banners are more general. They draw more immediate attention to the fact that an article needs some attention, but are more susceptible of being ignored for years. Using common sense, a combination of both is, IMHO, the best solution.
When I get time I will visit the discussion you have all been referring to and if I am able to understand what it's all about I will add my comments.--Kudpung (talk) 06:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

:::Wikipedia has more readers than writers. It will always be that way. I read far more articles than I write for. So, our primary concern should be to keep those articles readable. The flagging of the {{tl|r}} template is to alert editors to a discussion about deletion of the template. It is information only - no immediate action is required. If the affected articles become unreadable (as I think they did in this case), Wikipedia is serving editors above readers, which I think is a priority inversion. I think this is a separate discussion from whether {{tl|r}} is deleted or not - Wikipedia needs a better way of communicating template changes to editors - but I don't know where to raise the point. More generally, I think Wikipedia suffers from a bit too much flagging and tagging these days - it's far easier to tag an article as needing work than actually doing the work - but that's a whole different discussion again ;-) GyroMagician (talk) 08:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, the image was changed because of a request at WP:Graphic Lab, a project to improve the graphical content of the Wikimedia projects.

The original PNG image was converted to a JPG format as it compresses photos more effectively, where as PNG is best suited for logos and diagrams. Using JPEG will decrease the size of the image, reducing download time. I hope that answered your enquiry! :) Fallschirmjäger 18:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

:Doh, I should have checked the filesizes before asking! I have heard/seen PNGs coming out smaller than or a similar size to JPGs, which I guess is why I asked. Here you've clearly halved the filesize, which makes sense. Thanks for the explanation, GyroMagician (talk) 18:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

::No problem. Fallschirmjäger 19:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Golly - you're working fast - I can hardly keep up with you. I'm hard on your heels adding {{todo}} list templates for the articles that need some work f`doing. If you see anything needs doing, add one too.--Kudpung (talk) 11:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

:Blimey, this is tedious work! How long did you spend adding banners to places? I've decided to stop even trying to assess the pages - I just scan over them to make sure there really is a Worcs link, and then add the banner. There are lots of very short pages here - we really have our work cut out. I'll try and go back over pages a bit more slowly once they're tagged though. GyroMagician (talk) 12:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

{{:WP:WikiProject Worcestershire/Newsletter/2010-03}}

{{talkback|Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Worcestershire|Biographies|ts=04:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)}}

Kudpung (talk) 04:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I get your point about the headers messing up peoples' contents lists. Admittedly something I never thought about although I tested the newsletter on my own talk page first. The advantage is that it's a template this time, so one fix does all. The irony is, that I never wanted to do a newsletter in the first place. It was a weak attempt in trying to enlist some more support for the project. Some of those who joined have not made another edit since they put their name down.

:I had a feeling it went something like that. I'm not sure a newsletter does much to gain support, but it was worth a try. It's an odd place here - I can never predict what will pass without comment and what will annoy people. The whole discussion about the {{tl|r}} template has been...odd. It shows the worst parts of politics - editors trying to stamp out one thing because they don't like another. I think I'll try to stick to editing content for a while. GyroMagician (talk) 16:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I see that the American campaign against the British pronunciation of British place names, by British Wikipedeia authors and British citizens has been relaunched. I think this campaign is deceitful and goes against an admin's remit. I might not be so prepared to let things rest this time round, especially as the editors concerned are oblivious of the sensitivities they may be affronting, and even though I am one editor who abhors opening cans of worms. I may call an RfC and will look forward to your support.--Kudpung (talk) 12:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

:I think it deserves an RfC, if you're prepared to fight it. I am somewhat out-of-my depth, but that's never stopped me offering an opinion before ;-) It would be good to get a wider audience to comment - maybe it's worth bringing this up on WikiProject England first? GyroMagician (talk) 16:11, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

::good idea - I'll test the waters.--Kudpung (talk) 17:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

{{The Teamwork Barnstar|For all your work on the Worcestershire project and the Malvern articles. Kudpung (talk) 19:50, 8 March 2010 (UTC)}}

You're probably like me: not bothering much whether we get barnstars or not. As content writers, we'll never aspire to the great heights of the tens of thousands of edits that most people seem to think is the most important aspect of working here. Well, you and I and a discrete number of others know that quality comes before quantity ;)

I've got heavily engaged in some politics about the implementation of a new system to control the huge number of silly biographies that are created at a rate of some 500 per day, and how to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I'm mainly interested because it concerns us at the WP:WORCS, because being about places, there are a lot of people attached to them, which means a lot of BLPs that have to be resolved one way or another.--Kudpung (talk) 07:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

:I thought I wasn't much bothered by collecting barnstars, and while it isn't my main motivation for contributing, it certainly feels good to be given one by somebody who's opinion I value. I've kept a distant eye on your venture into peacekeeping in the BLP project - it's something I really don't have patience for, but I'm happy that you and others find the energy to do it! I'm happy if I can improve a few articles, and enjoy the process. A good collaboration certainly makes that easier. As I said, let me know when you're ready for the next WP:WORCS project and I'll do my best to help. GyroMagician (talk) 15:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I like your style - you're getting almost as cynical as I do about silly edits :) I'm flying to Europe on Wednesday - are you planning on being in Barnards Green anytime between 31 March and 1 May?--Kudpung (talk) 11:28, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm here. Any chance of you coming over?--Kudpung (talk) 18:42, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I see you've go involved and this saga has escalated to the Worcester page. I feel sure that there is more to this issue than meets the eye, and has little in reality to do with the actual pronunciation of Worcester. --Kudpung (talk) 03:38, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

{{talkback|Kwamikagami|ts=01:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)}}

Kudpung (talk) 01:56, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

If you're finished working with this page, you can request that it be deleted by tagging it with {{tl|Db-u1}}. --Stepheng3 (talk) 05:23, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

:This is thoroughly out-of-date, but I've finally remembered to do this - thanks for the pointer. GyroMagician (talk) 15:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

{{talkback|Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Worcestershire |Good Article nominations|ts=11:48, 23 June 2010 (UTC)}}

Its seems that User:Luke108460 has made no edit, which was not reverted - see his user talk. As I am not familiar with the procedures regarding blocking a user, please have a look into this matter. --Eingangskontrolle (talk) 08:55, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

:I'm not particularly familiar myself, but I think the page you want is Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. A user has to be given several warnings before they can be blocked, so I'd suggest leaving a message on User:Luke108460's talk page (the page you reach by clicking the link) as a start. Keep it simple and civil, and if he persists, report him to the admins. Good luck. GyroMagician (talk) 09:04, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. There's a lot more to that story than you probably realise. I did indeed remove the posting to my talk page because it was about me and contains incorrect information about my action, and there's a guideline to cover that removal. Point is that Diti would not have complained about anything , and wasn't going to until a certain editor who has been stalking me put him up to it. That certain editor was grossly, very grossly, and very personally insulting to me because I Twinkled a routine tag on one of 'his' articles months ago, and he has now been hounding me ever since by taking my comments out of context and plastering them all over the Wiki. I rarely react, but an inexperienced voluntary arbitrator (8 months on the Wiki) has inadvertently given him free licence to continue his insults, placing of silly Barnstars, and trying to bait a whole bunch of serious and mature contributors, one of whom has suggested (not quite so politely) that it might be the work of a minor. Diti unfortunately got involved when he very unnecessarily (my opinion) changed - in good faith - a photo that was perfectly alright, and I everted it. I believe in 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', thus, making edits for the sake of making edits doesn't gel. It is sometimes difficult just to back out when you get attacked for doing something right. It give the offender a sense of victory, and certainly does in this case.
BTW, we've got stuck on getting Malvern Water passed as GA. It was very close to GA before it was nominated but it is now hanging on a minor technicality. Wotnow has done what he can, but it looks now as if it's doomed to run out of time and fail. Any chance you could contribute an idea or two? However, I don't really mind if it fails - I'd just wait a while, move on to something else, and get a new review started later.--Kudpung (talk) 07:38, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. Firstly, welcome back to the Malvern water article. Good to see your input in the work-up to a GA. Something odd has happened to some of the citations, with bare urls showing instead of the citation. After a couple of simple experiments and checking the previews, I have not worked out the solution. I do note that the version as at your edit of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malvern_water&diff=372871323&oldid=372870195 08:50 11 July 2010] is okay. Given that, I copied-and-pasted from that version back into the article content. After saving this message, I'll try to reinstate your efforts from there. I'm expecting it to be easier to do that than to work out what went wrong, although perhaps the answer will jump out as I go. Regardless, it's great to be working with you again. Regards Wotnow (talk) 04:21, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

:{{done}}. See what you think. You'll see by the way my latest method of template usage is to simply use "citation" regardless of the type of thing I'm citing. That's because by and large I now type out the templates as I go, and go for the simplest version that does the job (always my goal previously, just that I was on the steep part of the learning curve for citations) I find it mostly makes no difference to the way the citation displays. I did find one thing that seemed to work better when formatted as "cite x". But I can't recall what it was. I know that (a) if I carry on with my current strategy I'll stumble onto it sooner or later, and (b) if it really bugged me, I could work it out by experiment. However (b) is more time consuming, so I prefer the pragmatic (a). Regards Wotnow (talk) 07:24, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi GyroMagician. I took a bold step with Malvern water, with the hope of improving overall readability. In doing so, I capitalised on the existing material, and tried to do some justice to the effort of Kudpung, yourself, and others. I think I succeeded, but see what you think. I elaborated a bit more on the talk page. Regards Wotnow (talk) 01:49, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. You might notice a change in your userboxes. Thanks for al your help.--Kudpung (talk) 13:07, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

:Thanks KP! A pleasure to help, as always. I thought you were on holiday? GyroMagician (talk) 15:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

::I put the holiday banner there in the hope it would keep the traffic down - I've been participating a lot lately on some policy issues. --Kudpung (talk) 14:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. this might interest you.--Kudpung (talk) 21:40, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

:Thanks for the heads-up - I've added my support. It's nice to read an RfA and think, for a change, yes, this is an absolutely solid candidate. GyroMagician (talk) 09:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I've nominated Malvern College today for GA review. Abacchus has been working very hard on it, and Wotnow has finished checking the refs. There's quite a backlog over there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that reviewers take things in order. The low hanging fruit seems to go first. It would be great if you could chip in if/when the going gets tough. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 14:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

{{talkback|Talk:List of Old Malvernians|Trying for Featured List|ts=03:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)}}

Your input would be most welcome :) Kudpung (talk) 03:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi {{PAGENAME}}! an article you have contributed to, has been selected for the Wikipedia Version 0.8. offline release on DVD and iPhone. If you would like to make any last minutes changes or improvements, you are most welcome to do so. Deadline is midnight UTC on Monday, 11 October. See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Worcestershire/Archive 1#Worcestershire articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release for other selected articles you may wish to update.--Kudpung (talk) 04:52, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi {{PAGENAME}}! an article you have contributed to has been selected for the Wikipedia Version 0.8. offline release on DVD and iPhone. If you would like to make any last minute changes or improvements, you are most welcome to do so. Deadline is midnight UTC on Monday, 11 October. See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Worcestershire/Archive 1#Worcestershire articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release for other articles you may wish to update.--Kudpung (talk) 05:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

:This page still needs a bit of shaking out, but I'll not have a chance to do anything with it anytime soon. It's not in bad shape though. GyroMagician (talk) 15:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro, you may like to chime in here. To be honest , I haven't made my mind up yet.--Kudpung (talk) 04:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

:I can see why - it's tricky. The Midlands page, as it stands, is pretty low value. But having no 'Midlands' page would also seem wrong. I'll keep an eye on it and see how the discussion develops. GyroMagician (talk) 15:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello, as far as I can see I followed the rule at Wikipedia:Disambiguation dos and don'ts for redlinks on dab pages; they are meant to be navigation pages for existing articles not lists of putative articles which will probably never be, and probably should not be, written. Regards (Crusoe8181 (talk) 11:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)).

:Those are pretty clear instructions - you are indeed correct. My apologies - sorry about that! I'll revert my revert. GyroMagician (talk) 19:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Their article is totally unreferenced and full of peacock terms and speculation about their future. My main areas as you know, are wine, geography and biographies, but not so much women and song ;) If you want to WP:PROD those band articles, be my guest. Try PRODing them first, where there is a chance the PRODs will go unnoticed and the articles will get automatically deleted after 7 days. Failing that, an WP:AfD is the answer, but the danger there is that if there are no, or too few voters to reach a consensus, and after another 7 day extension, articles will default to 'keep' . Whatever you do, I'll support your decisions, but I won't be bothering to try and rescue the articles.--Kudpung (talk) 05:00, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I've accumulated a huge amount of experience round here since we did the Malvern GA. What we probably didn't realise at the time is that as Wiki settlements articles go, it was quite a monster undertaking. That means (you guessed!) that I reckon it's not short of FA. How do feel we give it a go? There can't be much more to do except check out the image captions, and a few minor tweaks.--Kudpung (talk) 10:03, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

:Hi KP. I did wonder that at the time (I think someone - maybe you - mentioned it). I think it's a pretty good article. Shall we have a look at it and see what it needs. If it's not too much, then yes, I'm game. GyroMagician (talk) 11:29, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

::OK. How do you feel like checking this over: WP:WIAFA, and letting me kow where you feel we might be short of the mark. The only things I can think of are some new refs that might need putting in the same format as all the others, and some image captions that need to comply with a special rule that I don't quite understand. I do not agree with theWikipedia policy that many editors insist that according to MOS all bulleted lists should be rewritten as prose. IMHO, insisting on it for Notable people sections is a stubborn interpretation of the rule, and such sections look ridiculous and are very hard to scan alphabetically for particular names. We got round this in Malvern College by already splitting the alumni of into a separate list page.--Kudpung (talk) 12:43, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

:::I've been over the refs and given them a quick clean - I think I've found all that need reformatting, but let me know if you see any I've missed. I also renamed a couple of sections, before someone points out that the page name shouldn't appear in section titles. I think Malvern Water is a special case here, but we'll probably have to argue that. Using anything other than a list for notable people seems silly, but this is Wikipedia, so we'll have to see... What's the question/rule about captions that's troubling? I'll read over the page again in more detail in the next couple of days and make more comments. GyroMagician (talk) 14:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

::::I think it's something about alternative extended captions for people who cant' see the image and may be listening to a spoken version. I can't remember where I read about it.--Kudpung (talk) 16:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

- actually the 'in use' tag wasn't stray - i was working on on the page and the edit conflict it was supposed to preven just happened ;) --Kudpung (talk) 12:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

:Oops - I noticed you'd not made any changes for a several hours, so I thought you'd forgotten it. Sorry about that. GyroMagician (talk) 13:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

::No worries, I was scouring the web for more info for it - and yes, before I realised it, two hours had passed before I found what I wanted.--Kudpung (talk) 16:44, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. Keep an eye on this page if you can please. I've just reverted an unsourced claim that CocaCola is going to close down the Colwall plant next month. I find this is very hard to believe and I've read nothing about in the newS. --Kudpung (talk) 08:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

OK it's official - it will be in tomorrow's Gazette. --Kudpung (talk) 11:00, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

:That was unexpected. How odd - I assumed the brand was doing quite well, as it seemed to be appearing in vending machines more and more often. I can't say I'm too upset to see it close down. I'm very sorry for the people who will lose their jobs, especially in the current job market. But Malvern is not such a large water source, on an industrial scale, and I've never been all that convinced that selling bottled MW alongside Coke and Sprite is such a great use of the stuff. Extracting too much water is not good for the source - if the Hills dry out too much, the filtration doesn't work so well. I'd far rather see the springs on the hillside flowing clean and pure. I think an operation on the scale of Holywell is far more appropriate to Malvern - and I wish Rhys Humm luck in his bid to become supplier to the Queen! (funny to think they both sell the same water to such different markets). GyroMagician (talk) 10:33, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

HI Gyro. Are you aware of the full extent of this campaign against British place names? I know you have commented on one of them: talk:Peterborough, Talk:Dover, Talk:Plymouth, Talk:Sydenham, Talk:Cornwall, Talk:Cambridge, and talk:York.--Kudpung (talk) 02:27, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

:I'm watching it unfold. I haven't decided yet if this is a serious proposition, or the Wikipedia equivalent of poking a wasps nest to see what happens. I find the argument - that too many British place have the prime spot so we should make Ontario first instead - a little too hard to take seriously. GyroMagician (talk) 06:08, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. In order to more accurately interpret Wikipedia policy, it has been suggested that we rename the Malvern, Worcestershir page. Please see the proposal at Talk:Malvern, Worcestershire#Suggested page move where you are welcome to voice your opinion. --Kudpung (talk) 13:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello Gyromagician. I notice you are actively involved in a discussion to move Stroud, Glos. to Stroud and have produced a wealth of figures to support your argument. I am not terribly good at figures (or computers for that matter) so I was hoping you might be able to help me understand why Austin (Texas) appears to be the primary austin when Austin (the UK car company) seems to get many more hits. I am not suggesting that Austin (car) should be the primary topic, I am merely trying to understand why Austin (Texas) is! (Or are my figures wrong?).--Ykraps (talk) 18:26, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. We have a new editor who is keen to do more research for Malvern. Do check out his suggestions if you have time, and chime in with your thoughts. There may be some issues with footnotes. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 05:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Is now nominated as a WP:GAC. Get ready for battle :) --Kudpung (talk) 05:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

{{talkback|Ykraps|wiki/User_talk:Ykraps#talkback_coding.|ts=--Ykraps (talk) 21:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC) }}

I think our friend from the 'synonym' pages issue has been wasting a lot of people's time. I have been doing some more research based on your excellent observation. We'll see how far his barnstar for integrity gets him when ARBCOM have finish with him. I may need you as a witness for the WP:SPI. It will take me an hour or so to prepare the charge sheet. --Kudpung (talk) 01:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

:It was a pretty pathetic attempt. It just sounded a little too perfect. Most of us forget to login at some point, so we end up recording our IP's next to our usernames - so I searched on the username and IP, and there he was. If ARBCOM want anything from me, I'm happy to comply. Let's hope this doesn't reopen the Grand Disambiguation of English Placenames (that also happen to be the name of something else) discussion! GyroMagician (talk) 11:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

It has been revised, but no reference to obit, at least one blind reference, and mention of racing driver with different name. I would like to use this as example of styling of article about someone, putting references to biographies, obituaries and other comprehensive items at end of opening sentence as in User:Michael P. Barnett/style example (I did this for an acquaintance who asked me to put in a reference to biography she had written of subject of the article, then objected strenuously to use of version just linked -- I asked for its removal, and an administrator said it had been done, but it has come back, at top of hits from Google search on me, which is a pain) or William Anderson (artist) (from following up my early experiments on editing, using Leigh-on-Sea where I lived 1937--1940) where someone altered my edit slightly. I don't think it worth separating selected works when article is so thin. Maybe consolidate in single bibliography. If you fix this before I can I won't mind. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 17:02, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

:Hi Michael. Sorry, but I don't quite understand what you're asking. Which page should have been removed but wasn't? We should be able to fix that quickly. I had a look at John Gunn, and extended it a bit - I find these pages usually develop faster if more than one person works on them at a time ;-) Amusingly, it turns out the racing driver and the physicist are the same person! There's clearly lots more to add there. Can you explain again what you'd like me to do? Then I'll see if I can help GyroMagician (talk) 22:42, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

::Sorry about deleting the motor bike reference. I did not know he was a biking enthusiast, and thought the Ian referred to someone else. Only got to the obit his daughter wrote for Physics Today yesterday afternoon. One minute error in it. She wrote that he got his degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. Degrees are awarded by the University not the college. Would be nice to find out if he got B.Sc. or Ph.D. or both at Cambridge, and if Ph.D., the topic and supervisor. I can dig into this if you like. My comment about my user subpage problem is as under control as it is going to be. Styling suggestion relate to ideas in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Some styling questions . Will put suggested revision in my User page tomorrow and augment this response. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

::Just emailed Records Office at Trinity Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

:::J.B. only had a BA, never had a PhD - it's in one of the obituaries out there - his daughter (I think) comments that he is the third Gunn to be mistakenly called Dr. ([http://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedia/halloffame3.cfm here]). Re Cambridge, true, a slight reword will fix. I love the motorcycling story, because it sounds so unlikely somehow. I can understand why you might have thought it was someone else - but it's always worth following a link first, before deleting it, just to make sure.

:::If you're making edits to J.B.s page, make them in main space, unless it's something really drastic. I have been quite active over the past couple of days, and Jpg1954 has added a lot of detail. The page is lookin much better than when we all started.

:::Everybody tends to have a slightly different referencing style on WP, but we follow some broad rules, and as a rule follow the style that already exists on a page, unless there is consensus amongst editors to change it. All facts must be cited, using a reliable source. The citation follows any punctuation (comma or full stop). Over-referencing is usually (always?) unnecessary - one or two references are sufficient. Some people like to cite at the fact statement - I prefer to cite at the end of sentences, but that's only my style. The further reading section is to be kept as short as possible - any material referenced in the body text should not appear also under further reading. Numbering the further reading list is unnecessary (because the list should be short) and generally discouraged (because it encourages a long list, and referring to it). I hope that helps a bit - this is my interpretation of the Manual of Style, which is the definitive reference. For specific questions, ask on Gunn's talk page. HTHs! GyroMagician (talk) 08:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I made a start on expanding the RRE article. For what it is worth, I went on to teach and run large computer lab at MIT, a turbulent 1964-5 back in UK at late but not lamented Institute of Computer Science in U. London, industry, Columbia and CUNY, early work in electronic publishing (MIT Press book) computational chemistry, symbolic calculation -- condensable to 10 words Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:47, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. Take a look at this when you get a moment. I personally feel that if someone is not going to take on a review, they have no business leaving comments like this, and should stay out of it. Nevertheless, I'm personally relieved that I won't have to work with this reviewer on a GA again. --Kudpung (talk) 16:33, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I just posted reply on my user page that may be the end of trying to contribute -- sorry Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:27, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I meant a reply to another editor Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:31, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

{{talkback|Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (embedded lists)|Notable residents|ts=12:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)}}

Hi {{PAGENAME}}. A Worcestershire Project page has now been taken on by a reviewer for Good Article after a very long wait. Several points need addressing, but the page has not been rejected as an immediate fail. If you have time, please see Talk:Evesham, and if you can address any of the points listed, I'm sure that between us we can get it through to GA. Thanks. --Kudpung (talk) 21:10, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I put a comment and a metacomment on the Telecommunications Research Establishment site and brought it to attention of Jpg1954. I should have brought it to you as well. I put the RRE article on hold -- cleaning up articles about Charles Coulson and Rosalind Franklin had higher priority, but the Coulson article went into limbo as result of wiki-legalisms and I am reluctant to try putting any more material directly into articles until I get clearer picture of whether WP is going into self destruct by legalists finding ways to obstruct substantive contributors. Ironically it was trying to help with Evesham article that gave me further insight into propensity of WP to develop epidemic errors. I have been expressing some views on various guideline websites quite politely but a bit critically. 71.224.245.75 (talk) 04:11, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

forgot to sign 71.224.245.75 (talk) 04:13, 28 January 2011 (UTC) Michael P. Barnett (talk) 04:17, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I've suddenly realised that there has been no movement on the Evesham GA for nearly 2 weeks. I thought you were going to have a crack at the history section, but if I misunderstood something, please accept my apologies and let me know. Kind regards, --Kudpung (talk) 06:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

:Hi Kudpung, and sorry for being a bit absent recently. I had intended to work over the history section and other parts of the Evesham page, but work has been a bit 'demanding' recently (hence I'm only just packing up on a Sunday evening!). I probably won't be doing anything substantial for the next few weeks. GyroMagician (talk) 19:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

::Hi Gyro. Well, we lost Evesham. None of us is to blame really. You got busy, I ended up in hospital for a couple of weeks only able to do a few sporadic minor edits around the site and then I got sent off to the jungle for a couple of weeks with a very poor sat connection that was stable for all of 30 seconds each time I could log on. I'm back home near Udon as from late last night and apparently have to face the music this week at RfA, so I'll pick up on Evesham some time in the near future. There's a bit of a barney going on at Talk:Malvern, Worcestershire. It looks as if my appeal to stop people indiscriminately adding stuff has backfired and the whole thing has opened up a can of worms in the Notable Folk section. I'm going to stay out of it now because it's basically become a wrong venue for redesigning notability policies. Kudpung (talk) 11:39, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

:::Hi KP. Yes, shame about Evesham, but it was just the wrong time for all of us. We'll have another shot when we're all better prepared - the article is still a very good base to work from. I hope nothing serious is wrong on your side. I've always found the best part about being in hospital is leaving (and I used to work in one!). I've seen the (slightly bizarre) barney at Malvern, and decided to stay well clear of it. Last time I checked, the gist of the argument seemed to be that we can't be sure reliable sources are not fake, so we'd better not include them. I'm assuming (hoping) the discussion will burn itself out without intervention. GyroMagician (talk) 17:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

::::We'll pick up on Evesham again when things calm down. Michael was doing his best to improve the Malvern article and I admire his tenacity for sources even if the items to be sourced were not always quite the right ones. He certainly seems to have some good print media to refer to. If he was a young man in the 50s when he worked at RRE that would make him almost an octogenarian today and I wonder if he knew my father. There seems to be a lot of polemic about the blue plaque on the Aldwyn Tower. Well, I have to scoot, apparently my RfA is going to be transcluded in a couple of hours, so start praying for my moral soul - the next 7 days is sure to be sheer hell ;) Kudpung (talk) 07:59, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

{{talkback|Talk:Malvern, Worcestershire|An appeal to editors to be careful|ts=15:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)}}

FYI Kudpung (talk) 15:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kudpung —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.206.140 (talk) 00:47, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I just want you to be sure that I know nothing about the above link and who posted it. It geolocates to New Jersey and it may have been sent in good faith as it seems to have been sent to a number of editors who have worked on the same articles asyou and I have. My RfA isn't going as well as expected, but in the light of the unsigned canvassing, it's probably best you stay away from it. Regards, --Kudpung (talk) 08:08, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I originally wrote this Wikipedia:WikiProject Worcestershire/How to write about places in Worcestershire as a sub page to the Worcs project, but I feel it is just slumbering there. I'm considering moving it to a stand-alone Wikipedia essay - after a few small changes - and putting links to it on all the geographical projects where I feel it might get a broader use. Because I wrote it, the move would probably not need a consensus, but as you contributed to it I'm asking you if you see any objections. Regards, --Kudpung (talk) 11:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I have not followed up on Gunn diode -- I just feel increasingly awkward as an intermediary. And WK is a sideline. Have been nibbling at main article on Malvern, with benefit of improved logistics. I see you have made changes very close to one of the places where 1622 is given as critical date for bottling Malvern water. I doubt if water was bottled then. Can believe someone published something, but what where? The reference to the spas book in the main Malvern article does not help. I can take another look at its precursor dealing with spas before 1815 but I did not see it during a quick inspection. Where did you find Elizabethan info you quote? Michael P. Barnett (talk) 02:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed you had asked for a reference for 1622 item, so I think it not inappropriate to have asked you the question last night, and to follow up with what I have found (and not found). The valid reference is in Malvern water, numbered [21] that has a complete reference, an external link to the full text, and another link to just the reference on a pubmed page. I went by other routes to a slightly more convenient full text[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1918458/pdf/procrsmed00423-0039.pdf W.H. McMenemy The water doctors of Malvern, with special reference to the years 1842 to 1872., Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 46 (1) 5-12, 1953.] This includes the quotation from Banister's work and an extensive bibliography. The references in Malvern water, to the article by Poynter{{cite journal

|first=F. N. L.

|last=Poynter

|title=Notes on a late Sixteenth-Century Ophthalmic Work

|journal=Library

|year=1947

|volume=s5-II

|issue=2–3

|pages=173–179

|doi=10.1093/library/s5-II.2-3.173}}

seems to be irrelevant. I have inspected it on the screen -- it is not very long. I will delete the dud reference in Malvern water, and put the good reference into the main Malvern article. But finding all the places where the dud reference is given, and correcting these, is time consuming. Are there resources to streamline this kind of process? Is it worthwhile? I have enough trouble at the moment with sculpted pulses and product operators (Janet identified herself -- I may have met her when in a pram) -- but I'm not digging. {{Reflist}} Michael P. Barnett (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2011 (UTC) Michael P. Barnett (talk) 23:32, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Hudavendigar has made extensive edits to Ridley–Watkins–Hilsum theory. Do you think the changes are sound? Should we ask him/her to take a stab at improving Gunn Effect?

Jpg1954 (talk) 19:24, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

:Hi Jpg1954. I really don't know very much about the subject, but the additions look sound, and read well. Yes, I think it's a good idea to ask him/her to take on the Gunn Effect page - please go ahead and invite. GyroMagician (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. I listed this at peer review because I thought it would lie there for weeks before someone picked it up. However, it was retrieved in seconds by User:Tim riley for whom I did the peer review for his Elgar article some time ago that later passed FA. There is no hurry for this PR and there are no deadlines, but I'm just letting you know in case you would want to help out with some tweaks. I am flying to the UK (Barnards Green) on 19 July and will be staying for 2 months. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:40, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

:Hi KP, I'll have a go as I have time. A useful review, BTW GyroMagician (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

::Thanks for having a go at it. Have you any ideas about what might be the consequences of the referencing system when it(eventually) comes up for FAC? I've let Wotnow know about the PR but he has not been editing for a long while. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:15, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

:I tend to agree with you about the serious potential for harm of this kind of misinformation, and I just wanted to thank you for your diligence. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

::Cool - thanks :-) It amazes me the lengths some people go to, to vandalise WP. But we all keep an eye out for this kind of thing, and mostly it gets caught. GyroMagician (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Companies#No_Lie_MRI

What led you to think that was "a case of self-promotion"? --cc 16:03, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

:It struck me as promotion of a non-notable company. What stood out was the sudden appearance of a lot of links to the page showing up on my watchlist. I also think NLM are pushing an idea as reliable as the polygraph, so I guess that makes me automatically suspicious. But I wasn't certain, and my opinion about what they do shouldn't come into it, so I asked for a second opinion. I should have notified you when I did that though - sorry for not doing so. GyroMagician (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

:Merry Christmas to you to KP! I hope you've had a good one. I can barely move for scoffing too much turkey :-) GyroMagician (talk) 21:22, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

It would appear to be the same fellow, yes. I don't know much about the National Academy, but it seems that US citizenship/residency is not a requirement for membership - there are numerous other British members that I'm aware of, it seems. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:04, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

:Okay, cool, I've learned something ;-) Do you have a ref? I'll try to add a note somewhere in the page - unless you want to do it. GyroMagician (talk) 21:20, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Gyro. Could you please take a look at Malvern and its recent talk page discussions. I still feel that there is still excessive detail in some sections, including the rambling description of quotes of what other people have said about the town, the places of worship, and other diverse sections. I've already cut a lot out. I would like to see us get this to FA this year. Six months ago a peer review was done, but possibly needs to be done again. Cheers. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

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Hi, I'm writing up a motion to the UoN SU Council to promote the use and publication of media under free licences. As a UoN student/alumnus, I was wondering if you'd like to give your input.

Please comment at :commons:Commons:Village pump#Motion to University of Nottingham Students' Union Council.

-mattbuck (Talk) 22:44, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

{| style="background-color: #fdffe7; border: 1px solid #fceb92;"

|rowspan="2" style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 5px;" | 100px

|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 3px 3px 0 3px; height: 1.5em;" | Best wishes

|-

|style="vertical-align: middle; padding: 3px;" | for the holidays and 2013 from a warmer place than where you are ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:23, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

{{talkback|Talk:Evesham|ts=02:58, 24 June 2013 (UTC)}}

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Hi. The Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe/The 10,000 Challenge has recently started, based on the UK/Ireland Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. The idea is not to record every minor edit, but to create a momentum to motivate editors to produce good content improvements and creations and inspire people to work on more countries than they might otherwise work on. There's also the possibility of establishing smaller country or regional challenges for places like Germany, Italy, the Benelux countries, Iberian Peninsula, Romania, Slovenia etc, much like Wikipedia:The 1000 Challenge (Nordic). For this to really work we need diversity and exciting content and editors from a broad range of countries regularly contributing. If you would like to see masses of articles being improved for Europe and your specialist country like Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon, sign up today and once the challenge starts a contest can be organized. This is a way we can target every country of Europe, and steadily vastly improve the encyclopedia. We need numbers to make this work so consider signing up as a participant and also sign under any country sub challenge on the page that you might contribute to! Thank you. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 08:59, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

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I have finally got round to listing it for review as a Featured Article. All help needed! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:45, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The FAC failed as no one was willing to assist. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

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Worcestershire - one of England's oldest and still existing (with some minor boundary changes) ceremonial and political shires, famous for its nearly 1000 year old cathedral, the River Severn, the AONB of the Malvern Hills, some of the oldest schools in the country, England's fastest growing university, apples, pears, cider and cricket, and of course its world famous sauce. The Wikiproject is now in need of some attention. Created 12 years ago, this project amassed a huge resource for editors working on all kinds of articles and categories related in some way or another to the county. Kudpung is more or less retired from Wikipedia getting on for 2 years ago and it would be good if a group of editors could get it up to date and continue to maintain it.
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WikiProject Worcestershire 14:14, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

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