User talk:Anoted

see also and other questions
diff of post on CzechOut's talk page

I thought that see also was a good way of letting the reader know that there were other articles on a similar topic that might contain additional information that isn't in the article. A good way to link to things that we might not be able to link to in the text of the article. At the mo' we only have one entry in the cupcake article. It's something that was entirely visual, we don't have the choice of words that who used, because who didn't use words. In the beginning of the episode the Doctor is reminiscing about cakes with edible ball bearings and in the end Rose brings him that. The only text that we have to apply is "cake" and "edible ball bearing". Everything else is visual (well, there are yummy sounds). That's what my reasoning was. I was also taking note from some of the alcohol related pages I'd been recently working on.

So what is the appropriate way to use see also? Is there ever a reason to use it for in-universe articles or should those lists be stripped from the other pages?

The capitalisation and category--I wasn't confused, just moving super fast. Too fast apparently. I try to watch for that, but it sometimes happens.

Also, what's the precise difference between and ? Is demonym new? Do we have other versions of this for other article types? For something like Tiaanamat?

Also, I was thinking about doing some work on real-world animals? Can I create a real-world animal category as long as I don't take animals from mammals per GOR? Thanks. Anoted ☎  02:53, May 3, 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there any way I can get you not to quote the entirety of your posts on my page back here? This practice is just creating a massively long page. From my perspective, I've just read your message on my talk page; I don't need to read it again on yours.  I think pretty much all admin are in the habit of having multiple windows open while talking to users — one to their own talk page and one to their correspondent's page.  Your odd and utterly unique habit of making both windows look the same is thus confusing in that circumstance.  It's easier if you let your correspondents choose what section titles they want to use.  Remember, your talk page is actually there to be edited by other people, not you.  But on to your questions:


 * isn't that new; I just got around to illustrating the template today. It's a specialised form of, necessary because there's nothing really wrong with a demonym.  We are Earthlings, even if Earthling is not as precise as it could be.  Ice Warriors are Martians, even if other things are, too.   is for wen you're making up the name outta whole cloth.  No part of the PAGENAME is actually within a narrative at all, or it's very clear that the name isn't the name of the species.  Stingray is the classic example of a fully conjectural title.  That name is based wholly on what they look like, and doesn't at all come from the story.  Also, there's a difference between an article that would take  and one that would take category:demonyms.  The former is usually a species; the latter is usually more than one species.  Another way of looking at it is that category:demonyms os under category:linguistics, and thus pages there are talking about a term more than a species.


 * Nah, "see also" is pretty much always a bad idea in the main namespace. There are one or two exceptions, as there are to any rule, but you should just immediately wean yourself of them. (I kinda thought all my edit summaries were pretty clear on this point.)  Linking must always be meaningfully contextual.  A simple list of "see also" links has no context whatsoever.  Why should people "also see" these links?  We don't know, so don't do it.  Either find a way to include the links in text, create some kind of navigation template (like, or don't include the links at all.   Looking at cupcake you had cake as a see also, which was redundant, since cake was in the lead.  You also had chocolate cake, but it's not at all clear why that's relevant to cupcake.  And obviously you didn't know because you couldn't integrate it into the text.  So if you can't figure out how to put it into the body of the article, maybe the truth is that it's not a truly meaningful link.  I mean, why chocolate cake and not fruitcake or wedding cake?  It's just an arbitrary link at the end of the day.


 * Instead of creating new categories in another branch of the category tree, shouldn't you maybe stick with foods for a while? And anyway, I'm not going to give you blanket permission to do "some work" on real world animals.  Specifics, please.  03:33: Fri 03 May 2013


 * diff of the following reply on CzechOut's talk page
 * Thanks for that clarification, it was very helpful. The reason I copy-paste to my talk page is because I like to be able to look back at old conversations. That's really hard when they span multiple places. The problem isn't so much during a conversation--I can have two talk pages open at once and generally do. But if a conversation goes on for a while, or if I'm looking back at an old conversation, then it's just sooo easy to get lost. Would it help if I only copy my half after you've posted? Thread my comments inbetween yours? Because I don't want to compromise the ability of others to use my talk page.
 * What I was trying to ask about animals was about the exact way that game of rassilon categories works. All years are in the top cat years for GOR even though they wouldn't normally be, right? So if a category for real world mammals was added (a subcat of earth mammals) then Guinea pig would be in both Category:Real world mammals and Category:Earth mammals for the duration of Earth mammals involvement in GOR. The same way that bear is in Category:Bears and Category:Earth mammals, right? Bear is only in the earth mammal category because of GOR, right?
 * And yeah, I'm planning on maintaining my focus on foods, but I like being able to do grunt work that can't be assigned to a bot when my brain needs a break. Un-orphaning pages, copy-editing, wikilinking, putting things in categories all take varying amounts of brain power and it's nice to be able to switch things around and do other types of editing. I made some edits in the past week that I had to undo to maintain the GOR and I just wanted to be super clear about how GOR worked. If there's still something I don't understand about it I'd like to know now, not after an edit of mine screws things up. I like to think that I pick up pretty quickly on most guidelines and rules simply from watching my edits and reading edit summaries when they are reverted but not everything is obvious and things that I thought were obvious sometimes end up being a little more complicated. So I figured that it didn't hurt to touch base. Anoted ☎  04:50, May 3, 2013 (UTC)

Categories
diff of the following post on CzecOut's talk page

species v. creatures v. animals
Category:Species, per our current definition is supposed to be used for intelligent lifeforms.

Category:Creatures, per our current definition is supposed to be used for non-intelligent lifeforms--animals that do not exist in the real world (RW).

But that's not how things are working right now. While most of the articles under Category:Creatures are not intelligent, they are also often categorised as species. And there are lots of non-intelligent lifeforms currently only categorised as species.

I'm guessing that a large part of this is because Category:Creatures has no subcategories. So if you want to categorise something as a mutant, or silicon-based, you put them in the species category tree.

This is also highly complicated by the way we treat the animal categories, primarily Category:Animals by zoologic class. The animal categories seem to be set up with the intention of handling only real world, non-intelligent lifeforms. But we have intelligent lifeforms being categorised as both species and animal (see Cei) and unintelligent lifeforms being categorised as creature and animal (see Stingray). Intelligent or not, none of these are real world lifeforms, so I'm not sure why they are considered animals. But this is a widespread practice, and leads to articles like Giant Clam being categorised as creature (Category:Skaro creatures), animal (Category:Molluscs) and species (Category:Mutants), which is confusing as hell and makes zero sense.

It seems like this system was set-up with a couple clear divisions in mind. Intelligent and not intelligent. And then each of those was supposed to be divided into RW and non-RW.

Or is the actual intent of the current system to have a set-up that has intelligent, un-intelligent, RW and non-RW lifeforms all co-existing in same categories? Are we supposed to have category called "aquatic species" where we can find every water based lifeform whether or not they are intelligent and whether or not they really exist?

The way the categories currently function I don't know what the intent is--there's just too much contradiction.

If RW lifeforms are not supposed to overlap with non-RW lifeforms, and intelligent lifeforms are not supposed to overlap with non-intelligent lifeforms, then I think it should be fairly easy to set-up subcategories for Category:Creatures and go through the articles in Category:Species and Category:Creatures and put them in the proper category trees. And then go through the animal categories and strip away the non-RW articles and categories.

If these are supposed to overlap then there's quite a bit more work to be done creating an category system for all lifeforms that includes divisions by real world existence and intelligence, but also includes subcategories for appearance and function that contain all types of lifeforms.

I don't want to touch anything until I know which way these categories are really supposed to work, so I'm coming to you hoping that you can clear this up for me. Anoted ☎  12:05, May 3, 2013 (UTC)


 * I will of course be interested in hearing your continued opinions abut the animal categories. Your suggestions will be deeply considered.  But for the moment, I just need you to continue to opine about them on my talk page. Please take no action with respect to them.


 * You know, there is a difference, if only a marginal one, between "Earth " and " from the real world", since there are things which are from Earth but not from the real world. So it's not like once the GOR is over, I'm just going to move "Earth mammals" to "Mammals from the real world".  It will be taken off of individual pages, as the note atop category:Earth mammals makes clear.  So, yes, you are right to say that bear is in "Earth mammals" only because of GOR, but I can't really support your proposed structure of creating a real world variant of "Earth mammals".


 * First of all, there would never be a category "Real world mammals", per T:FTRW. It could only be at "Mammals from the real world", but I just don't see the need for it, on reflection.  I mean we don't have "American states from the real world", only Category:American states, which includes wholly fictional states. The difference between the two is so marginal that I"m not sure it's worth making the distinction.


 * We don't have to have a "from the real world" variant of everything. I think it's especially hard to justify when you already have a category that's "Earth ", because some users just won't get the immediate distinction between those two things.  Now, there are of course exceptions.  There's kind of a need for category:earth technology and category:technology from the real world, since the DWU Earth has at least one more sapient species than our Earth.  But most location-based categories don't also need a FTRW cat.


 * Furthermore, Creatures is an awful, lazy category that we've been lumbered with since 2006. It should be destroyed, not expanded, as you seem to want to do.  I'm not at all confident that it even contains what it says it contains.  As the original definition made clear, it was a "subjective" category, and these sort of categories are specifically barred by T:CAT NAMES.  Basically, the category might as well be called "miscellaneous" for as much good as "creatures" does us.


 * As for how to work with categories and the Game of Rassilon, you should find that all categories involved in the game are clearly marked. Basic rule of thumb: stay far away from any category that is currently involved in the game.  You can add the category to any new entries that deserve to be in the cat, but you shouldn't subtract.  If a page seems questionable, flag it with me and I'll investigate.  Don't remove on your own.  Not all categorical patterns are obvious.  15:31: Fri 03 May 2013


 * diff of the following reply at CzechOut's talk page
 * I understand the different between Earth ___ and _____ from the real world, don't worry. And I know that it's "from the real world" and that "real world ____" actually means something here and it's very different, and that's a dangerous place to get informal. I just super hate typing all of those "from the real world"s. So annoying! I wasn't planning on creating a "Mammals from the real world" category--it would have almost 100% overlap with the Earth mammals category so it seems silly. I was just using it as an example per GOR. Creating a "from the real world" category wouldn't screw up GOR as long as I only added pages to it, not moved pages from their current category to a new subcategory. That's all I was trying to clarify.
 * The thing I'm still confused about in terms of the lifeform categories is are they supposed to be divided up be real world/not and intelligent/not or is there supposed to be a tree that encompasses all of those things. Because if it's supposed to encompass everything, that's going to be one hell of tree.
 * In regards to the talk page thing, is your issue with my adding the other half of the conversation in terms of handling ongoing discussions, or...? If I put the other half of the conversations in only right before archiving, would that bother you? If while a conversation was ongoing I put in links to the diffs of what I said, would that be ok? I don't want to negatively affect other people's ability to communicate with me, but being able to easily find other parts of the conversation and archive full conversations is important to me. Also, this is something totally different but are there scripts for auto-archiving? That is archiving things that are x days old? I tried looking, but wasn't sure where to look on wikia and wikipedia takes up the first bajillion google results. Anoted ☎  16:07, May 3, 2013 (UTC)

Your talk page
I would strongly urge you just to learn how to read conversations from two windows. It's a time-honoured practice that people have been doing in MediaWiki installations for over a decade. It's not that hard once you get used to it.

Your suggestion of posting your bits only after I've replied won't help me the next time I visit the page. See, I, as the respondent, also want to be able to see what I've posted. Especially with someone like you who's asking a series of highly complicated and detailed questions, I want to see that I've actually answered everything. If you interject a huge wedge of text between my posts, it makes it harder for me to follow myself. If your stuff is on one page, and my stuff is on another, I know where to look to find particular information, and I don't have to scroll endlessly. Remember that scrolling is a much bigger deal on mobile devices than it is in desktop browsers. Trying to follow my own thoughts on your page while using wikiamobile is a nightmare of scrolling. I have to use my finger so often on this page, it actually burns calories.

Seriously, please just stop doing this. It's counter-productive, and it goes against community intent. If this wiki had wanted to have conversations all in one place, we would have enabled the Message Wall, so that talk pages worked like the forum. I understand the arguments against this kind of discussion, but this community has considered those negatives and nevertheless chosen to go old school. We chose, through forum debate, to stick with this kind of dual-windowed discussion. So please just use this type of discussion area in its traditional manner. 15:31: Fri 03 May 2013

Speedy rename
When using please make sure that you: 15:31: Fri 03 May 2013
 * assign a value to the variable
 * don't apply to categories, as the template applies to every page within the category. Categories aren't speedy renames anyway because the change applies to multiple pages.
 * The two possible values for are yes and no. That's it.  Don't need a song and dance about "they never were" or "the talk page is but the real page isn't".  The question is, "Are the links to this page under consideration moved?"


 * Here's an example so you don't even have to go back to the template page:
 * 17:43: Fri 03 May 2013

czechbot requests
diff of the following message left on CzechOut's talk page I have a couple requests for czechbot:
 * Move everything from Category:Fruit from the real world to Category:Fruits from the real world (fruit is grammatically wrong)
 * Move Category:Drink stubs to Category:Beverage stubs so it uses the same name as Category:Beverages, and Category:Beverages from the real world. Anoted ☎  16:16, May 3, 2013 (UTC)

deleted sandbox
permalink of the following conversation on Doug86's talk page

Is there a particular reason that you deleted my Sandbox? Anoted ☎  05:04, May 2, 2013 (UTC)
 * It's been two days since I left this message and I have NOT received a reply (and you have been editing during this time). You deleted a personal userpage of mine and you did not leave me a message on my talk page or even provide an explanatory edit summary. I'm assuming that the page was causing a serious problem of some kind and had to be deleted, because I can't see why my userpage would have been deleted otherwise. I can't figure out why you didn't just blank the page and leave me a message, but that's why I came here. I suspended judgement and asked. Ignoring me is seriously not cool. Anoted ☎  17:31, May 4, 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the lateness of my reply. The reason I deleted your page is because userpages are supposed to have the prefix User: and without it they seem to be regular article pages. I will try to be more careful in the future. Doug86 ☎  20:21, May 4, 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't notice that--somehow it got created without a user prefix...not sure what happened, adding a /Sandbox1 to the url of my userpage should have created it with a user prefix. Fortunately the text of the page was short enough that I was able to rescue it and add it to another sandbox. Anoted ☎  03:11, May 5, 2013 (UTC)

TitleSort, NameSort
I've tried for several days to explain the functionality of these two templates. But if your latest post's first line is, "Now I'm even more confused", I have clearly failed. So at this point I simply must apologise at my inability to communicate the points to you. If a thread at The Time Lord Academy is creating this level of confusion, it's not doing its job and must be deleted. I think future readers of the thread will not benefit from the back and forth in that thread, so I will instead revise the instructions on these two templates to include the points I was trying to make.

The Time Lord Academy is meant to offer a tiny snippet of advice about a specific editing situation, and is not really meant to generate much discussion. Yes, some clarifying questions are allowed in these threads. But, in future, if you find that you're really not understanding the post at a fundamental level, please bring those issues to the talk page of the admin who posted the thread. We have to remember that these threads will be read months and years down the line, that short-lived personal confusion won't benefit future readers too much.

For your own personal understanding, let's just reduce things to this: please just use for all names and  for all titles of stories. They absolutely do different things. will not work at all on pages including an ordinary name (like Harry Sullivan), and will not work properly on pages including an ordinary title (like The Crimson Horror (TV story)).

If your editing runs into one of the very unlikely edge cases with which the thread was concerned, maybe I'll change it, maybe you'll notice it, and maybe you'll then understand. Honestly, the points the thread was trying to make apply to less than 1% of pages, so ordinary cost/benefit analysis dictates that it's best to just delete the thread, clear our minds and walk away.

I again apologise for any hurt feelings or bafflement that I caused. 19:01: Tue 07 May 2013


 * diff of the following reply on CzechOut's talk page
 * I don't do much editing on name pages so it's not a really big deal. My confusion came from the idea that "The John Smith" would, under title sort be rendered as Smith, John The, and not John Smith, The. Did I misunderstand the original example? Anoted ☎  19:20, May 7, 2013 (UTC)

Alien/unnamed individual
Please stop adding to pages that are dabbed in the unnamed alien style. Not only is this title nomenclature in the process of being ripped out of the wiki, it's not at all necessary, since auto-suggest makes it very clear which article one is selecting. is really only for those cases where you'll arrive at a page by virtue of a redirect and need to be alerted to the existence of other such pages. Examples: red, Victoria, Brian Williams.

Unnamed alien is the dab page, so therefore a on the specific pages isn't appropriate. The appropriate template for pointing to a dab page is, unsurprisingly,. But it's not necessary in this case because people wouldn't likely end up at Unnamed alien (The Iron Circle) looking for Unnamed alien (The Night After Hallowe'en). Auto suggestion would have weeded out that kind of error.

Note that I'm not saying, "just change your s to s" in this case. I am firmly saying don't even bother with anything on these pages that start with unnamed/unknown (story title). 14:05: Wed 08 May 2013

Dishes from the real world?
Please define the difference between category:dishes from the real world and category:meals from the real world. 01:23: Mon 13 May 2013
 * If I may jump in here, what's the difference between category:condiments from the real world and category:condiments and preserves from the real world? Or category:seasonings from the real world and category:spices from the real world? --SOTO ☎ 01:30, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * A meal is an instance of eating whereas a dish is a specific food preparation. Meals can include multiple dishes and they almost always include a dish and a beverage of some type. This also always for subcats like "meat dishes" and "egg dishes". If you substitute the word meal there it doesn't make a whole ton of sense.
 * There's a lot of overlap in condiments and preserves, but specifically, things like jam and pickled onions which are not really considered condiments.
 * Seasonings includes herbs and spices but not condiments. Mint is an example of an article that would be considered an herb but not a spice. If you think it's not the best name, renaming it to Category:Herbs and spices from the real world would mean the same thing while including more obvious search terms. Anoted ☎  02:11, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't think of a single article that could go within category:meals from the real world, by your definitions. Unless we start making articles like breakfast, lunch and dinner. But, until we have such articles, I think we should delete the category. --SOTO ☎ 02:21, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's why I replaced it with category:Dishes from the real world and added a delete tag to the now empty cat. Even if we wrote all of the meal articles we could, I doubt we could acquire more than a handful. And I'd imagine that we'd want them in the top food category anyway. Anoted ☎  02:26, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * Please remember to add a ':' before 'category' so that the cat doesn't disappear from the text and get added. Anyway, three articles is enough for a category. Anyway, what about spices and seasonings? What do you plan to do with those? --SOTO ☎ 02:32, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * I put a delete tag on the now empty spices. Seasonings is in use, but if someone thinks that herbs and spices would be a better name, I can make the change and put a delete tag on seasonings as well. Though it would be easier for a bot to do. There's a growing number of food categories up for deletion, not to mention a couple requests pending with CzechBot, so I'm trying to be mindful of that. Anoted ☎  02:43, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * No, never mind. I remember why I didn't go with an "herbs and spices" category. Using the name seasonings allows use to include things like honey. Anoted ☎  04:06, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * And now, the seasonings category has a subcat Category:Sugars from the real world Anoted ☎  04:25, May 13, 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do not add any more categories to this wiki at the present time. You adding a  tag to categories necessitates an admin respond in some way, and we've got more important things to do this week.  Between the premature release of the series finale and active vandals, the admin staff is busy right now.  At this juncture, I'm going to have to rule that you seem to be making unhelpfully fine distinctions between virtual synonyms in your category names, and you don't really seem to be working to any sort of well-thought-out plan. I apologise if this message seems terse, but I hope it is not seen as wholly impolite.  Nevertheless, I must insist you put your categorical interests on hold unit further notice.  And that is not a way of stopping you forever.  You will indeed be notified when it's okay to continue.  But for now, please just cool it.   04:49: Mon 13 May 2013
 * Additionally, you may not depopulate a category you don't like or don't understand in order to put a delete tag on it. We talked before about non-alcoholic drinks, for instance, and I told you then that non-alcoholic/alcoholic was a reasonable organising principle for drinks. So now I have to take the time to put it all back together again.  People do not think of beverages as automatically non-alcoholic.  Beverages are both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.  You have to specify which for clarity.  Here is the only definition the OED gives for beverage: "a drink other than water".  That's it.   05:03: Mon 13 May 2013

User talk pages
Hi! This is just a reminder that when you are having a conversation with another user, you reply on their talk page, not your own. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  04:19, May 13, 2013 (UTC)

Using ref tags/Thread:131242
I've rolled back your edits to Tea, Coffee and Wine. It's fine to put examples into the discussion, but major changes like that need to wait until after the discussion. Until then if you want to illustrate how they'll look create a sub-page of your user page and make a copy of the article there. We can't have two different systems of citation operating on the wiki while a discussion is in progress. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:25, May 19, 2013 (UTC)