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Washington Metro

I wasn't gonna. But if you wanna, go for it.  ;) Just wasn't sure if there was a proper way. Figured the list was sufficient, but I suppose the ideal solution is that every single article on Wiki is categorized. :) --Golbez 05:34, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Hit one Washington Metro article while random-paging, and had a few spare minutes so I dove in. There doesn't seem to be much of a standard right now, so I figure one will develop out of the chaos of editing if enough people categorize stuff. :) If nothing else, putting all those articles in a category gives a convenient "handle" for recategorizing them later. Bryan 06:50, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Right now the overwhelming listing of Metro stop articles hides the more important Metro line articles. I think all the stop articles should be put in Category:Washington Metro stops, leaving the line articles in the base Washington Metro category—that's how I've handled it with Category:New York City Subway and intended to do it with this too. I don't know if this is a particular interest of yours, but another project that needs to be undertaken is renaming many of those stops with "(Washington Metro)" at the end that have the same names as independent DC places (i.e., Judiciary Square, King Street). Even if King Street, for example, doesn't rate its own article (I'm thinking about it), it should at least be made clear that "King Street" isn't simply a Metro stop and has no independent meaning. I was planning to eventually get around to that myself. Postdlf 07:48, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. This isn't really an area of interest of mine, though, so I'll just do the recategorization and leave it to those who know more about Washington geography to do the moving and renaming stuff. Bryan 07:53, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
How on earth do you do that so quickly? ;) --Golbez 08:08, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Mozilla's tabbed browsing function. I start by middle-clicking my way down the list of stations, opening each one in a new tab. Then I cycle through the tabs, clicking "edit this page" on each one. Then I go back to the first tab again, by which time all the articles are now open in editing windows. Highlight the old category, paste, click save (actually ctrl-v, tab, ctrl-v, tab, space, enter - pastes the new category into the article and edit summary, marks the edit as "minor", then triggers the save button. This set of keypresses has become so habitual it takes maybe a second or so :), and then move on to the next tab while the edit uploads. When Wikipedia's slow there can be dozens of articles in the process of saving in the background at once. :) Bryan 08:13, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
That's just sick. ;) --Golbez 08:24, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I choose to take that as a compliment. :) Bryan 08:37, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks so much for taking care of that so quickly! Postdlf 12:09, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

renaming List of Lunar mountains -> List of mountains on the Moon

Hi,

Can you use your sysop powers to do this rename?

It's needed for consistency with all the other "List of FEATURE-TYPEs on PLANET/SATELLITE/ASTEROID" pages that I'm classifying in Category:Surface feature nomenclature of solar system bodies, and it's needed to make the category alphabetical sorting come out right under "M".

-- Curps 20:36, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Done. Would you like me to nominate you for adminship, BTW? I've seen quite a number of your edits since I hang out at a lot of astronomy-related articles, and I don't think I'd be risking my reputation by doing so. :) Bryan 00:34, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, but perhaps not yet. At some point I might go for adminship. -- Curps 02:32, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I have another category task for you now too, based on this—Category:Mountains on the Moon! Postdlf 20:51, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hi Postdlf. What's your task? You didn't make it clear. It is something that requires an admin to do?
I think he's referring to my near-bot-like ability to categorize vast numbers of articles rapidly. :) Bryan 00:34, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
One thing that would need to be done is split off all the articles like Carpathian mountains and so forth which also exist on Earth into their own Carpathian mountains (Moon) article and then classify them under Category:Mountains on the Moon. -- Curps 21:46, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I'll get on that a bit later this evening, and categorize everything as I go. Bryan 00:34, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Renaming by admin

One more rename needing admin intervention: Aristarchus (crater) -> Aristarchus crater, for consistency

Bulk categorization

I undid much of your categorization spree from a few days back, sorry. I note that some of it has been discussed on talk:Australia. Wikipedia:Categorization is another good page for finding general consensus on how article categorization is done on Wikipedia.

On another note, perhaps Category:Cratons would be useful to create as a subcategory of continents if you plan to add articles on those as well? Bryan 15:32, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I suppose that my love for palæocontinents blinded me to the concerns of others. The Australians seem to think about their land more as a country than a continent. I shall only categorize when I add new continents such as I did yesterday, when I added Laurentia. I shall lurk in Wikipedia:Categorization and maybe contribute a bit there after a while. I had no idea that some people find categorization such a sensitive subject.
¡Thanks!
Ŭalabio 00:38, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)
No problem. It's not so much a question of "sensitivity" in my case, as it was that most of the categorizations you added didn't really seem to apply; you'd categorized North America under "Geological timescale", for example, and I can't see any way in which North America is a geological time period. It was also put in Category:Earthquakes, and North America definitely isn't an earthquake. :) Bryan 00:44, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"It's not so much a question of "sensitivity" in my case, as it was that most of the categorizations you added didn't really seem to apply; you'd categorized North America under "Geological timescale", for example"
¡Oh! ¡I misunderstood!:
I noticed that "Geological Timescale" links to all of the geological timeunits. I figured that this would be a useful resource. So categories are of the subject -- not for the subject.
¡Thanks!
Ŭalabio 01:15, 2004 Jul 21 (UTC)

Celestial body atmospheres

I've slightly altered your article on Celestial body atmospheres and added a section "Theoretical ideas on the atmospheres of interstellar exoplanets"though I'm not quite sure it belongs with the article it's attached to or should be moved to a new one.... (I'm also 128.151.43.132). --Deglr6328 01:38, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Looks like a neat addition! You're right, though, I'm not sure that it fits so well in this particular article. It might fit on extrasolar planet, but the definition currently over there would exclude them because interstellar exoplanets don't orbit stars. Hm... perhaps you could move this to its own article, interstellar planet? It seems like a sufficiently distinct class of object to warrant it, IMO. Bryan 03:11, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Neat, the "interstellar planet" article already exists but is less detailed than the stuff you wrote. I'd forgotten and didn't check before saving my comment above. :) Bryan 03:15, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fictional deities

Hello Bryan Derksen,

You recently removed categories of some D&D deities to Category:Fictional deities, when they had other Categories in either Gods or Goddesses.

This is fair enough, but at the same time some deities with specific genders remain in the main Deities page. Should I deal with the obvious ones? Or... It is my opinion, that despite deities often being termed as he or she, these aren't actually accurate - deities are deities, and can masquerade as either sex. So should there even BE subcategories for gods and goddesses?

Thanks for your time. Erolos 17:02, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't have created those subcategories myself given the choice; that's why I didn't do any work to sort the other dieties, I just did the ones I'd come across while reading through all the Forgotten Realms-related articles. But I also don't strongly oppose the subcategories, so I don't plan to campaign for their destruction. :) Anyway, IMO for some gods and goddesses the gender is a pretty well defined part of their description, much like their portfolios and other such details, and those are probably okay to move into the gendered subcategories. Others don't have gender so strongly defined (often the "monsterous" deities like Cthulhu, for example) or are otherwise ambiguous, and those should stay in the root fictional deities category. Ideally, IMO each deity will only be in one of the three categories. The guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization seem to support this, suggesting that redundancy and over-generalization leads to needless clutter.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. I was just cruising through those articles on one of my random walks through Wikipedia, so if you find some edit of mine that you really want to revert I probably won't even notice let alone object. :) Bryan 05:56, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I see your a Fictional deity now Bryan? Moving up in the world... ;) Sam [Spade] 06:07, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Whoops, fixing Erolos' link. Not that I don't mind the promotion. :) Bryan 06:17, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughts. I'll leave it as is then, as the FR deities DO tend to have specific genders, apart from the specifically androgynous Corellon. But I'm still of the opinion that deities shouldn't be classed by sex at all. -Erolos 22:05, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

S/2000 J 11

A few idiots used this page as a chatroom. Looks like it's back to normal, but maybe the history should be cleared of everything since my own last edit. Are admins empowered to do that? -- Curps 00:48, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid not, I can only delete the article entirely (and its edit history could still be restored in that case, too). It looks like pretty ordinary vandalism, the same sort of thing that's sprinkled harmlessly throughout the edit histories of many other Wikipedia articles, so it probably won't hurt to just leave it in there for future historians to write papers about. :) I'll watchlist the article to make sure it doesn't get vandalized again without being noticed. Bryan 01:32, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, I overreacted a bit. It's already on my watchlist, which is how I noticed it, a few hours after the fact. -- Curps 02:15, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If the vandalism is still going on tomorrow, I'll try protecting it for a few days; these anonymous users seem to be fixated on that particular article for some strange reason, perhaps they'll just go away if they can't play. Bryan 05:05, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Monopoly (game)

As you may have noticed, the Monopoly (game) article is currently up for featured article status. Currently the only objection remaining is that the boards are too big for small screens. Personally I don't see this as much of a problem and it may not be a valid objection. However, since you appear to have generated the original board tables, do you have a problem if they are replaced with the equivalent tables polluted with <small> tags as shown here. Of course this doesn't actually reduce the size of the boards all that much, but can get the total page width down to ~820px. -- Solipsist 15:19, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've edited the first table in your sandbox version to use CSS styling instead of "small" tags, what do you think? I generally prefer CSS where possible, and in this case it allows the font size for the entire board to be modified again in the future quickly and easily. BTW, thanks for the tweak to the image on my main page - thumnailing used to work nicely for an older version of that picture, and since I rarely visit my own home article I never got around to fixing the code for the new version. :) Bryan 16:39, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Even better. In fact with the CSS approach I don't even mind that the boards are smaller since it doesn't impeed future editing. The only problem now, is that I might have to conceed that user mav was right to insist on reducing the board size ;-) -- Solipsist 17:33, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sysop Accountability Policy

Thanks for the CowboyNeal explanation. It appeared to be random vandalism/someone having fun on a policy page. I'm still not sure why something like that would be on the policy page and not on the talk page. An attempt to further the VfD vote? - Tεxτurε 18:13, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Or just a general response to the atmosphere of "this is a wacky/dumb poll". I must admit to contributing to that myself somewhat, since it is a wacky/dumb poll IMO. :) Bryan 18:46, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
True - Tεxτurε 20:09, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hawstom

Thank you for reverting the unexplained blanking that was done on my account. Tom 18:52, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No problem. Bryan 18:55, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Education in Hawaii

Woohoo!! Someone actually found time to remove all those redundant categorizations of Hawaii educational institutions!! I've been meaning to do it for a long time but got a little too lazy. Repetitive deletions make me dizzy. Hehe. Great job!! --Gerald Farinas 15:08, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Heh, thanks. I've developed a system for repetative operations like this using Mozilla's tabbed browser window interface, once I'm in the groove it goes quite quickly. :) Bryan 15:11, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Arts categories

Hi,

I noticed that you have recently been active in categorising in the visual arts. Can I also encourage you to join the categorisation discussion at Category talk:Art -- Solipsist 21:08, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't really being "active in the arts." What I do on some days when I'm bored is click "random page" until I hit an article that needs some easy-to-do work - in this case, presumably one that lacked a category. If I did a whole lot of categorization in one particular field, that probably means I hit a jackpot - a juicy "list of" article that hadn't been made into an analogous category yet. I don't remember offhand which one that might have been, though. What did I do? Bryan 23:29, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Ahh, I though I had spotted someone with a penchant for adding Canadian painters, so it would have been good to get a Canadian/US perspective. But if it was just random (useful) editing, don't worry if you don't feel you can contribute. -- Solipsist 23:38, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I can contribute. Just point me at a large mass of articles in need of having category tags added to them and I'll churn through them with bot-like monomania. However, I don't really know much about art itself, so I don't think I'll be able to contribute much to conversations about the subject. :) Bryan 23:44, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Linking Syntax

I am the fool who thought placing a category in a page only provided a link to the page of the category. I thought that Category:Geological Time Scale would be useful for Pangæa and ended up listing Pangæa in Geological Time Scale. I found out how categories truly worked the hard way.

Well now, the way categories work now is cool; the category-pages just write themselves. Still it would be nice to link to a related category without being listed in it. Maybe, the next version of the software could recognize two linking syntaxes for categories such as:

  • [ [ Category:X ] ]
  • { { Category:X } }

One would generate a simple link like between Pangæa and Category:Geological Time Scale; while, the other would categorize Pangæa into Category:Continent.

  • ¿Would this be a good idea?
  • ¿Would this be possible?

¡Thanks!

Ŭalabio 23:54, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

Actually, there's already a syntax for it. Put a colon at the front of the link, like so: [[:Category:Geology]] becomes Category:Geology. You can also do this with images (eg, Image:Smiley.png) and templates (eg, Template:disambig), and possibly other things that I can't think of offhand. Category links like this would probably be best suited for the "see also" section, but I'm not sure whether there are any standard practices being developed about linking category pages in this way. I guess you could try doing a couple and see if anyone comments on it. :) Bryan 01:20, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Oh, BTW, sorry I didn't mention this earlier; I didn't realize at the time that this is what you were trying to do. I would have said if I'd thought of it. Bryan 01:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Now that I know this, I shall use it sparingly and cautiously. I am certain that neither of us want a repeat of what happened last time I rushed in where angels fear to tread.
Ŭalabio 02:07, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)
Be bold. It wasn't all that big a cleanup, in the grand scheme of things. :) Bryan 04:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I shall be bold, in a cautious sort of way.  ;-)
Ŭalabio 05:07, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Malicious Deletion Attempt

Hello. Sorry for the imposition, but I thought you might be interested to note that an article you supported in the past on vfd has been listed again under malicious circumstances - the 3rd such attempt in 7 months. Please feel free to review the discussion and cast your vote as you feel appropriate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Atlantium --Gene_poole 10:36, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)


"Ban em as I see em"

[1] 

# (cur) (last)  17:36, Aug 23, 2004 Grunt m (rv vandalism)
# (cur) (last) 17:33, Aug 23, 2004 209.173.230.77 (added drama)

I see em. --TIB (talk) 00:16, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

Special:Ipblocklist: 10:57, 23 Aug 2004, Guanaco blocked 209.173.230.77 (expires 10:57, 30 Aug 2004) (contribs) (unblock) (returning There vandal)

Guanaco stomped him the moment he popped his head up. He's been making fewer and fewer attempts at vandalism lately, I suspect the futility of his activity is starting to dawn on him. :) Bryan 00:21, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Picking up. --TIB (talk) 20:20, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Dubious tag on Senate_Internal_Security_Subcommittee

You've placed a tag on the page, but didn't really discuss it with the parties involved in that Talk page. Maybe you should check the accuracy of the statement involved yourself. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 01:14, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

There is only one comment on the talk: page, and it would seem to be in fundamental agreement with my dubiousness. Here's one of the best links I found on the first page of Google results: [2]. It indicates that the SISS was involved in investigations, and that one of the more bucolic provisions of the McCarran Act was to authorize the establishment of concentration camps. That's hardly comparable to being able to "kill anyone they wanted from a safe distance with complete freedom." I didn't see anything at all about assassin commandos, which I would expect to be fairly prominently mentioned under the circumstances. Bryan 06:15, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Capitalization of God

Thanks for the note. I know that at one point you all had come to a silly consensus, where "deity" was used instead of the word "god"/"God" (a consensus I was happy with). But from what I could tell in the history, this consensus was overturned by Sam Spade acting on his own. Sam Spade frequently does this sort of thing on pages that bare a philosophy he doesn't like. He even started a VfD for the libertarian socialism page with the excuse that he didn't understand it, and, that, he thought we were playing an elaborate trick on him. The only reason I ever registered a user name was so that I could vote keep on that VfD. On the death metal page he wrote an absurd statement that I think most DM fans would find offensive, but I let it stand because I'm tired of dealing with him. There just comes a point when I feel like people need to stand up to him. If I'm wrong on this, feel free to change the capitalization back to avoid conflict; I won't get into a battle over this if you do so, but if Sam Spade does so, I think I probably will. millerc 03:06, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Yeah, I've had a bit of a history with Sam too; he's the only user I've ever got into a long-running fight with. Hopefully it won't start all over again, it's been six whole months since the issue was "settled" and I'd feel somewhat frustrated to be back at square one again. But I also am hopeful that at this point we're just jiggling around a bit near a relatively well-accepted compromise position and it won't blow up like it did before. Bryan 03:19, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Finding the content of some long-deleted pages

I was looking through my watchlist and discovered a couple of pages that had been deleted, and that furthermore were so deleted that I didn't even get a "view or restore deleted edits" link. They're administrative pages and probably don't need to be restored, but I would like to get ahold of the text that was in some of them since it may be relevant at some point in the future. Does anyone have suggestions on how I might go about finding this? Bryan 19:45, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Talk to one of the programmers, they have access to the logs. RickK 23:19, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)
Hi Bryan. I've moved your question here since it was time to clean the Village pump. Brion Vibber might be the best person to ask for this since he has backups of the now deleted archive tables. Angela. 14:49, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. It's not terifficially important, so I'll get to asking him about it "eventually". :) Bryan 15:39, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

American nuclear tests?

Do we need a Category:American nuclear explosive tests when we already have a Category:Nuclear tests? I don't think we have enough articles on nuclear test series to warrant breaking it down on a country-by-country basis? --Fastfission 21:33, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I just this very moment noticed that that category already existed. However, Category:American nuclear explosive tests can be further sub-categorized under American history, American military, etc. so I think it isn't such a bad idea. Other countries don't have as many articles for nuclear testing, so breaking them down by country wouldn't be necessary; they can just go right under cat:nuclear tests. Bryan 21:36, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It doesn't matter much to me, I was just wondering if you had seen the other category or not. --Fastfission 04:53, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I hadn't until I ran into an article already categorized in it, about halfway through my run. Bryan 04:57, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wickes class destroyers

Please see my note at Category talk:World War II American destroyers. Jinian 15:22, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Image:Metis2.gif

Image:Metis2.gif

Hi there! Thanks for adding the image Image:Metis2.gif. It currently doesn't have an image copyright tag, and I was hoping that you would add one as untagged images may be deleted eventually. (You can use {{gfdl}} to license it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) Thanks! --Diberri | Talk 22:16, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Neptune

Hi Bryan, sorry about Neptune (planet)! Looks like we had the same idea at the same time, and then tried to fix it at the same time. Hopefully now it is all sorted. -- Chuq 05:13, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Such things happen from time to time. I've VfDed the April 11, 2009 page, though I think I could probably have just deleted it myself without much controversy. Bryan 05:18, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pics ot the Moon

See [3]: "These images can be reproduced if credit is given to the Nordic Optical Telescope and observers listed below." I have uploaded some, but I'm unfamiliar with some of them. Like, is Rima Hyginus = Hyginus? —Joseph | Talk 05:06, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

I suspect so, a rima is a fissure (Planetary_nomenclature#Descriptor_Terms_.28Feature_Types.29) so "cleft" would seem a reasonable synonym. Any others you need to find articles for? Bryan 05:22, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

??

—Joseph | Talk 05:56, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Leotard

I have now replaced the image on Leotard with a picture of M. Leotard wearing his original garment. -- The Anome 08:38, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bot

Bryan, thanks for the janitorial services, keep up the good work! However, could you teach your bot (it is a bot, is it?) to mark its changes as minor? If it's the category it fixes and nothing more actually, then I see no point in overcrowding the watchlists. Also, what is the point in removing the categories from a template into the articles themselves? The effect is the same with the exception that it's easier to add just a template message than template and the same set of categories to all project pages. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 04:17, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Heh. Not a bot, I've been doing categories manually. With Mozilla's tabbed windows it's easy to develop a rapid patter for doing simple cut-and-paste changes like bulk categorizing. I've actually been of two minds on whether categorization is minor or not, but since you ask I'll try to lean more on the side of marking them minor. As for the template category issue, I feel it is inappropriate to put categories in "navbar" templates because the two features serve distinct functions. Many of the articles that wind up with templates do not properly belong to the categories that are included with them. For example, although I didn't take the time to clean it up myself this time around, most of the articles with Template:Polish Secret State probably should not be located directly in Category:World War II; it's excessive and overly redundant clutter. They should be in sub-categories. Bryan 05:58, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick answer. As to the categories - IMO if you find the categories wrong - feel free to correct them. However, I still do not understand the reasons behind removing the categories from a template into the articles themselves. The navboxes are not only a nice and clean way to let the users navigate between sub-pages of the same project, but they also serve as templates that ease the work of a wikipedian who writes the articles. That's why I decided that it would be easier for me to add the categories to the Template - it's much easier to write {{Polish Secret State}} than to write {{Polish Secret State}} [[Category:World War II]] [[Category:Polish history]] [[Category:World War II resistance movements]]. It saves both time and effort. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 06:15, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Larry Niven

Hey, I didn't know about the warlock's disc thing. I guess you're right about it referencing the disc instead of ringworld, I was sort of pulling that out of my ass if you didn't notice ;-). Good catch. --Ignignot 20:51, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

No problem. I hadn't heard of the Magic card before, so this is one of those serendipitous comings-together of facts to form an articular whole that's greater than the sum of individual editors' knowledgeses. Or something. :) Bryan 23:23, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Template:Quebec

Thanks for your help and support. --Valmi 08:59, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Catherine Palace images

Greetings:

I'm still learning about images - I noticed that your positioning in individual thumbnails is now "none", but preceded by **div class="floatright"**

Could you please inform me more about this technique? How does this differ in effect from positioning each image "right"? I note that those editors with tiny monitors (800 px) object to the larger images - my theory is that a reasonably sized image may obviate the necessity of a click-through to what is in some cases an over-large image (see Three Gorges Dam and click on one of the first few images - I have not yet produced an intermediate as is needed in this case, not my contributed image), so I tend to prefer a 300 pixel minimum. I have also had a carefully constructed gallery destroyed by an editor - it appears that the editor did not like the detachment of image from text, as the gallery followed the text. This destruction resulted in some of the ugliest image layout I have yet seen on WP. I restored it by putting the gallery before the text and then referencing the specific image within the nested sub-article with a postage stamp sized image - see seismic retrofit#Exterior reinforcement of building. At least that has (thankfully) been left undisturbed for a while. Where a large number of images are to be shown I have been putting these in floating galleries (see Shanghai#Architecture as an example) specifically so that they may be of reasonable size, and where the image is central to the theme of the article, to make it large and prevent text wrapping with appropriate coding. See Sundial Bridge for a large article preface picture with a trailing gallery. That article would definitely loose its impact with a smaller image as the image is a representation of the visual impact of the object. I do think that 250 pix is too small for my preferences in the particular case of Catherine Palace, but that a gallery is not yet appropriate for that article, and a large image would be inappropriate as the article is about the palace - not its visual importance as with the bridge article. What we really need is a variable image width by user screen width - at least it would be nice to set this up as a user preference. I think that there methods to get the user's width - at least the window size, but the Wiki engine would have to have some extensions to process this correctly.

By the way, what size monitor do you use and why did you feel that the images were out of control (a bit)?

Please respond here - I will watch your page.

Best wishes, -- Leonard G. 00:47, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Heh, many comments in one. I'll try to answer them all.
Firstly, the div. I use the "classic" skin rather than the "monobook" skin, and although I didn't know it at the time the "monobook" skin apparently automatically stacks floating images in a column down the side of the page. In "classic" it doesn't; try switching your preference over to "classic" skin temporarily and have a look at the version before my edit: [4]. All the images are in a row at the top instead of a column down the side, which squeezes the text into a tiny little column on the left. By turning off the built-in layout code (using the "none" keyword) I forced the images to form a column, and by wrapping the whole group in a div I was able to tell the whole group of images to float to the right. Here's a quick demo, using a div with a visible border (and note that I'm still in "classic" skin):

without div (the "before" version):

In classic skin, this results in a row of images beside each other.

without div and with "none" keyword, putting images in a column in Classic skin:


with div floating the column to the right:


I have since learned that Monobook handles image layout better than Classic does, however, so I've mostly stopped doing that (but I haven't worried about going back and removing it from articles I've done that in, since it looks the same in Monobook either way). At some point I'm going to file a bug report and see if I can get Classic fixed to work like Monobook does.
As for resizing them down from 350 to 250 pixels, that was just due to my own personal preference for what a "good sized" thumbnail was. I agree that it'd be nice to have an adaptive thumbnail setting, once upon a time I used to just use the "thumbnail" keyword without specifying a size in the hopes that that would be implemented soon. Personally, I think Wikipedia articles should be primarily focused on the text and use images only to accentuate the text rather than as the main centerpiece of the article. Generally speaking I would only leave images larger than around 300 pixels if it was a map or diagram that would become illegible at smaller sizes. In my opinion a thumbnail should be large enough to let the reader know what's in the image so that he can decide if he wants to click and see the full-sized version and not much larger than that. However, I don't feel strongly enough about this that I'd argue if you made those images 350 pixels again. :) Bryan 01:20, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your prompt and very informative response. I agree that many find 350 pixels too wide, but I feel that the 250 pixel WP "standard" is too small - I have been recently been setting to 300 pixels in the hope that this will stick, but it still gets downsized in some articles - which I why I have taken to galleries and (only in a few and especially appropriate cases), wide images isolated from the text (not only the Sundial Bridge but also a bridge panorama in the Wuhan#History section of the article. This latter example simply would not work well in a more restricted format. I admit to pushing the envelope further down in the article with the concert group panorama, especially since it is not isolated.
I will follow your model for right hand images in my new work and will try to go through my older articles as time permits. -- Leonard G. 02:34, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I believe the Sundial Bridge article is a perfect illustration of what I said about how images should serve the text of the article rather than the other way around; that first 700 pixel image completely dominates the article, with the descriptive text about the bridge tucked away at the bottom where I have to scroll down to see it. Furthermore, at 700 pixels the image is too wide for people browsing on 640×480 or smaller screens (don't laugh, I bet Wikipedia's going to be a popular item for small handheld computers once a properly downloadable version is available :) and even an 800 pixel wide screen is a bit too small when you allow space for the sidebar, scrollbar, etc. And the image size is 93.5 kilobytes, which is a bit hefty for dialup users especially when combined with the four other thumbnails below. I'm going to shrink it down into a "conventional" right-floating thumbnail, I hope you won't mind too much. Bryan 02:52, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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