User:SPIKE/Forum-09

This file describes Forum threads I created in 2009 and 2010.

Forum: Climate-change articles

All the discussion about this is in the Forum. Opening the thread induced Pwnerator to take over one of the articles, but also taught me that no one believes it is a problem to have multiple or incompatible articles on the same topic.

Forum: Encyclopedia cliches

[Inadvisability of crossing Mordillo]

But fr srs, Mordillo is not to be trifled with. He's like the President of Uncyclopedia. If we were democratic. Which we aren't... Where the Wild Colins Are - LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! 20:13, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

I'd say more like the Darth Vader of Uncyclopedia. Of the Famine of the X generation :) ~ 20:15, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

Ooh, we have generations now? Where the Wild Colins Are - LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! 20:17, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

Mordillo like Famine? I hope not. MrN 20:21, Oct 16

He's just like Famine, except even more cuddly! -OptyC Sucks! CUN20:23, 16 Oct

Of course he's just like Famine. Otherwise we'd be telling him off about his mistake with the user templa - Ohshitohshitohshit... Where the Wild Colins Are - LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! 20:28, October 16, 2009 (UTC)

No mistake. Get in with the latest fashion, man. PuppyOnTheRadio

If this continues, I will have to Unwatch myself in order to get anything done. Spıke ¬  03:22 18-Oct-09

Spikebrennan (no relation) replies regarding my second revert on UN:HTBFANJS

Nice handle. Regarding your revert of my edit to UN:HTBFANJS, I'd point out that the Scat article has nothing to do about scatology; on the contrary, it's safe for work and you could read it to a four-year-old. While on the one hand I'd argue that Scat is a funny, well-researched and well-written nonsense article, I take your point about linking to nonsense articles in the beginner's guide as a general principle. Spikebrennan 00:23, October 20, 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Sir. Sometimes when nonsense is added to articles under my protection, I feel responsible to determine if they contain a nub of non-nonsense and, if so, weave them into the story. Dare I point you to Pikachu? A handle "Spike" was created in 2006 and never used, and recently I unsuccessfully tried to acquire it. Spıke ¬  00:31 20-Oct-09

Pikachu kind of seems like a mere retread of AAAAAAAAA. Scat, on the other hand, I'm proud of (and I got it VFHed). Spikebrennan 21:13, October 20, 2009 (UTC)

You are right to be proud of Scat. It's nonsense--but hardly random. Spıke ¬  01:34 21-Oct-09

In contrast, I don't like AAAAAAAAA! (nor the text of Pikachu)--it's explicitly unthoughtful. But my revert of your edit to UN:HTBFANJS was based on insufficient knowledge and I was wrong to do so. What you wrote was not dangerous even for a n00b. (Perhaps accompany by a recommendation, though, not to put their chimpanzee at the keyboard.) Spıke ¬  01:50 21-Oct-09

Reverting Admin edits on a policy page...

...seems to be one of the best ways to get yourself blocked. It must be some sort of tribute to the patience of admins that you haven't been blocked for a day or two already for HTBFANJS. I know I'm newer here than you are, but I'd still advise caution in the future. King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  01:04, October 20, 2009 (UTC)

Seniority doesn't mean you can't correct me when I am mistaken, nor especially give me a helpful warning, which I appreciate. However, on the specifics:

1. The author of today's change has accepted my revert. Are you saying he is an admin?

2. I am only watching HTBFANJS because Mordillo has taken my Forum under advisement and someone might ask me something. The Forum is still attracting a trickle of comments. Otherwise, I minimize watches.

3. I view a first revert as meaning, Slow down, let's talk about it; and in both cases on HTBFANJS, we have. Mordillo rolled back a change of mine which had gone through the Forum that he didn't seem to have read, and my revert carried a note to advise him that there was more context to read. My reverts are documented, I took the one of Mordillo to his talk page, and I have not reverted to thwart admins. Tell me more if I am mistaken. Spıke ¬  01:51 20-Oct-09

Forum:Articles written from a controversial voice

All the discussion about this is in the forum. It's a good discussion about alternatives to the authoritative (though demented) voice of the encyclopedia narrator.

Forum:CSS background-image

All the discussion about my attempt to use style="background-image: url(...)" is now in the forum. The bottom line: Wikia intercepts any use of the url(...) syntax and conceptually deletes the entire style rule, and there is no graceful work-around, though PuppyOnTheRadio came up with several graceless ones.

Follow-up from PuppyOnTheRadio

I suggested that I would be doing something with UN:HAX a little while ago and I've finally started. My WIP is here. I know you were happy with the idea of this getting somewhat of a make-over. What, if anything, do you think should be added to this listing that isn't already there? (I'm also going to be breaking it down a little and creating a few more sub pages to deal with things like using images and what can be done with animations and transparent images.)

Also had an idea relating back to your repeated background image query from a while ago, but it's not quite what you were after.

Something like this

If you can work out a better way to do that then please let me know, because as you are aware I do tend to be a little brute force with my coding at times. This is partially how I have done the coding on Chatroulette for the menu bar, although I've actually just used a really wide image rather than lots of repeats. Puppy Saturday, 03:12, Mar 27 2010 UTC

This continues a discussion on this page (now archived at User:SPIKE/Forum-09. I did achieve a test box by repeating the star GIF just as you did, but abandoned the idea, as it wasn't dynamically sizeable. Now I just use my local style sheet to specify this GIF as the background for Uncyclopedia and Wikipedia article headers.

I only venture into hacks in one area that might be added to your guide. You document the ways in which you can achieve an effect by declaring an object to be of a certain HTML class. But you should also document the cases where objects are already declared to be of a certain class, enabling the user to specify a custom style. This includes, at my instigation, {{Q}}, {{H3}}, and {{H4}}. Spıke ¬ 12:10 27-Mar-10

I always meant to get back to {{H3}} and {{H4}} to specify class - thanks for fixing that up. I personally avoid too much with custom CSS because when I write I try and arrange it so that what I see is what the majority of users see, so I have very little CSS customisation, with the exception of a few tricks for watchlists and the like. I'll add in a little relating to that though, however if you want to add anything extra then please, be my guest. Puppy Saturday, 23:46, Mar 27 2010 UTC

Actually, yes; it was more than "instigation"; I jumped in and edited the templates myself.

Indeed it's wise to minimize CSS customization. Recently I got chided by Mordillo to that effect. The left-hand box on the UnNews Front Page did not use "width: 100%" to ask for its entire column; when I edited it, it was still fat for me (because I use "12pt Spik2009") but the rest of the world (using 10pt) saw an ugly gap. Spıke ¬ 23:57 27-Mar-10

Just on the back of that I've done some minor editing to the header templates, so {{H1}} also has a class of "Head1", {{H2}} has "Head2" and so on. This may help your customised CSS. I've also just created {{H5}} and {{H6}} in as well. The reality is this just fixes the numbering issue that you originally pointed out relating to the UnNews Main page, as the editing option on section headers can be removed with the magic word __NOEDITSECTION__. I'd be looking at using these on main pages such as main page, portals, etc as well, but what do I know - I'm not an admin. Puppy Sunday, 00:13, Mar 28 2010 UTC

I am glad you coded __NOEDITSECTION__ so it didn't apply to my talk page! Though it inhibits editing by section, it doesn't turn off numbering, does it? Zim has recently done a beta test of a Second Front Page for UnNews and it had a lot of unwanted numbering. If you used "Head1", "Head2", etc., that's a different naming style from the one I used on 3 and 4. Please be consistent; I'll go in and edit my CSS to match.

I also mucked with {{Main Lead}} and {{Lead}} to get control of the font of headlines on the UnNews Front Page. (Normally, these templates explicitly call for Georgia font.) Spıke ¬ 00:25 28-Mar-10

Actually, the only one of the faux headline templates that had a class embedded was {{H3}} which had "mw-headline" as a class, which I've moved across to all of them so by editing that one class in the CSS it affects them all, but editing the individual ones effects just that particular header size. I was trying to be consistent with what you had, so hopefully this should still work effectively - if not feel free to change the class details as, as I said, I don't really use a custom CSS.

And this is the only way that I know of to remove the numbering from a page regardless of user preferences (excluding in-line CSS, of course), and that particular user preference I actually switched back to the default as, again, I try and envision things from the majority perspective. Puppy Sunday, 00:41, Mar 28 2010 UTC

Forum:The Q (Quotation) template

Hya, just wanted to emphasis again that I'm not against your initiatives or you in general and I hope that the reasons I stated in the forums are clear. I think you're doing a great job, just sometimes the "Alles in Ordnung" approach is not fit for Uncyclopedia. No hard feelings I hope. ~ 18:11, January 24, 2010 (UTC)

Certainly not! You decided so as to advance Uncyclopedia as you see it, and I don't claim you see it wrong. "Alles in Ordnung" is a low blow; I do think all quotations should look the same, and that doesn't mean I think everyone should have Travel Papers. If I really believe this, I suppose I should abandon using {{Q1}} now that it's installed. Again, I do have a workaround to make quotes look good, but it makes other code on Uncyclopedia look bad. Your decision is especially justified by the disappointing apathy in this Forum (even Zana ultimately told me on her talk page she had had enough of the topic). This isn't a corporate tech-writing department--where there would be a top-down style decision--and that is often a very good thing. Spıke ¬  01:03 25-Jan-10

Just to clarify that I don't "decide", it's because of that apathy, and because it seemed to disturb only two users, I didn't think it was worth progressing. Sorry about the German thing, it's just an expression ya know? :) ~ 09:01, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

You do "decide"; what you mean to say is that you don't "rule." But look back at the Forum, where Spang has arrived and started a new round. Very like the results changed on Forum:Encyclopedia cliches when you finally arrived. This ponytailed writer never thought he'd long to be back in the Corporate world--where things are at least clear. Spıke ¬  11:34 25-Jan-10

PS--Upon further review, Mordillo, what you mean to say is not that Uncyclopedia thrives on diversity, but that some people do indeed go off and decide for everyone, but newbies like me don't. However, a candid statement of the issues will out, and what I sought to achieve is achieved. Spıke ¬  21:56 25-Jan-10

I have no idea where you got that idea. I didn't think my English is that unclear. I do think that Uncyclopedia thrives on diversity but even with our madhouse approach, an admin needs to step in every now and then and limit certain initiatives that might complicate without a need, were tried in the past and caused damage or don't represent the spirit of Uncyclopedia. ~ 21:50, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. "What you mean to say" in my PS above was just for clever parallelism. You didn't mean to say anything like that--but that is what happened. That is, Spang's work, though not binding anyone either to use {{Q}} or to view quotes his way, is exactly the Uncyclopedia-wide change I sought. In fact it is not true that we all just go off and do it our own way, which is good. Spıke ¬  01:31 28-Jan-10