User talk:Niceguy169
Welcome to Wikipedia!
[edit]
Welcome Niceguy169!Hello Niceguy169. Welcome to Wikipedia and thank you for your contributions!
I'm Paine Ellsworth, one of the other editors here, and I hope you decide to stay and help contribute to this amazing repository of knowledge.
| Some pages of helpful information to get you started: | Some common sense Dos and Don'ts:
|
| If you need further help, you can: | or you can: | or even: |
Alternatively, leave me a message at my talk page or type {{Help me}} here on your talk page and someone will try to help.
There are many ways you can contribute to Wikipedia. Here are a few ideas:
|
|
To get some practice editing you can use a sandbox. You can create your own personal sandbox for use any time. It's perfect for working on bigger projects. Then for easy access in the future, you can put {{My sandbox}} on your user page. By the way, seeing as you haven't created a user page yet, simply click here to start it.
Please remember to:
- Always sign your posts on talk pages. You can do this either by clicking on the
button on the edit toolbar or by typing four tildes ~~~~at the end of your post. This will automatically insert your signature, a link to your talk page, and a timestamp. - Leave descriptive edit summaries for your edits. Doing so helps other editors understand what changes you have made and why you made them.
xkcd move discussion
[edit]You replied to a closed discussion on Talk:Xkcd. Please see the closure notice at the top of the discussion, i.e. at the top of the green section. I'm not enough of a regular on Wikipedia to be 100% sure, but I think it would be best for you to undo those edits.
Besides that, you're also a bit uninformed yourself: "nothing but instances of "Xkcd" would change"
- this isn't true, see the table with green/yellow/red cells somewhere in the middle of the talk page (Ctrl+F "CURRENT: Xkcd"). NeatNit (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I noticed that this was closed after the fact that it was closed, but I wanted to reply to the comments made WITHIN context, next to the comments I was replying to, so I left them in. Comments made some mistakes I wanted to clear up. I don't feel like this mistake is egregious enough to remove my words, but I won't add to it again. The discussion is so long the warnings at the top and bottom are far away from the subject at hand. (I also find closing a discussion to be rather wrong, it should never be forbidden to speak, but I won't fight this one since this discussion had a built-in deadline, some time a decision must be made, after which any further discussion is moot).
- I also feel sure that I wasn't wrong, that indeed only places where it currently says "Xkcd" will change to "XKCD", any place that is currently manually corrected to "xkcd" can continue to be corrected unless someone removes the correcting code, and that seems wrong to do. It's obvious that if it can be corrected, it will continue to be corrected. I'm not going to look at the table, firstly because my understanding of coding says I'm right unless someone messes it up on purpose, and secondly to avoid the temptation to write anything more in the Closed discussion. Niceguy169 (talk) 02:38, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Xkcd#c-NeatNit-20250329171700-Discussion NeatNit (talk) 12:46, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- What you said there seems clearly untrue. It would make no sense that DISPLAYNAME only exists to lowercase the first letter. There must be names which are the reverse, which should be all caps or more-than-just-the-first-letter capital, which need letters corrected outside of the first... And if that's true anyway, then "Xkcd" feels less wrong than "XKCD" (25% wrong vs. 100% wrong-but-next-best-thing), and I'd be inclined to Oppose then. Niceguy169 (talk) 21:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- I don't understand how you can say it's "clearly untrue" when it's clearly documented in the page I linked, WP:DISPLAYTITLE. It's intended for making very small and specific kinds of tweaks to titles, not to completely change the title to something completely different from the URL. The effect is made clear in the article.
- Basically, you can make the first letter lowercase, you can change spaces to underscores (_), and you can add formatting like italics. That's pretty much it. If you don't believe me, you can read the link and you can experiment e.g. in WP:SANDBOX. Saying it's untrue is just refusing to accept reality.
- I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you said it's "clearly untrue" as a kind of joke or in disbelief as your first reaction to learning about it... But if that's the case, maybe try choosing your words better, because that's not how it reads to me.
- But to end on a more positive/constructive note: I mostly agree with you that the second discussion should not have been closed before you had an opportunity to respond to it. Even though I don't think you had anything constructive to say, it's not cool to just slam the door shut like that. NeatNit (talk) 00:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- No joke, I meant I felt it was untrue, can't be true, because it makes no sense. As a programmer by nature, it's illogical to arbitrarily limit it like that. What's more, the part that seems to apply here, "the displayed title must still resolve to the true name of the page; i.e. if the displayed title is copied and pasted into a wikilink, the link should point to the original page", is valid here. URLs don't care about case, so "...com/XKCD" goes to the same place as "...com/xkcd", logically so should wikilinks (I've too rarely used wikilinks to be sure). It also follows "DISPLAYTITLE allows changing the initial letter to lower case; changing the case of any letter in the namespace", which would suggest I'm correct: If any, why not all? I see mention of a [lowercase] (I think curly brackets won't show unless I escape them, and I don't want to look up how) function which very explicitly only lowers the first (i.e. the one that Wikipedia won't allow in the real name), despite the function sounding like it would mean the whole thing - so, "xKCD" - so we can't use THAT, or not only, anyway.
- Now that I've read the whole section, I DO NOT see your point of view confirmed, rather it seems like I was correct. I'm not seeing anything that confirms what you've said, with the exception being that the "lowercase" function works as you said, but nothing to say we can't do it at all. Worst case, DISPLAYTITLE=[lowercase]"Xkcd" (however that would be coded): applying a partial substitution then use the lowercase function on the X, if it refuses to replace the entire title in one step. I will endeavour to look into that sandbox mode to experiment further (though I have to wonder if I can experiment on a page name that doesn't even exist, I get the feeling the vote to move failed?), if I can figure out Wikipedia coding more advanced than the things I've done (mostly commenting like this on ExplainXKCD, LOL!), with the amount of time and effort I'm willing to put into this.
- Oh, and the constructive thing I could say is what I did say: To explain my actions, how I didn't KNOWINGLY add to a closed discussion, I didn't knowingly break the rules, and when I saw it was closed I didn't want to revoke what I said because it was already done and I felt they were important clarifications to make. i.e. I meant no harm or disrespect Niceguy169 (talk) 05:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- "
URLs don't care about case
" - this isn't true at all. Domain names are not case sensitive, but everything after the first "/" is case sensitive. Some specific websites might treat it as insensitive but it's sensitive in general. - "
(I think curly brackets won't show unless I escape them, and I don't want to look up how)
" - this brings up an important question: if you're that inexperienced with MediaWiki/Wikipedia's technical aspects that you don't even know basic things like that, what on earth is giving you all of this confidence on topics that you clearly know very little about? This has Dunning Kruger written all over it. - If you care to learn, then read about these things, I've given you some good links to get you started. But if you don't care to learn, don't go accusing people of misinforming others when you're clearly clueless about the topic. NeatNit (talk) 06:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- Please, let's aim for a friendlier tone in conversing, I'd like to steer away from anger and animosity, I find them unproductive. I'm trying to discuss things, civilly. As for why: because I'm a heavily experienced programmer, having programmed in a variety of languages, while this is merely a markup language (and I've written many webpages from scratch manually with HTML, another markup language). Just because I'm new at the specific markup language doesn't negate my decades of experience as a programmer. I think in programming, the specific language doesn't matter, it just comes down to seeing how things work in THIS language. And I DO have years of commenting on ExplainXKCD, a wiki which (seemingly) uses the same language, just that DISPLAYNAME has never come up. Not knowing how to escape special characters is because I haven't had to do so - or haven't had to do so in a while - I learn languages by needing to do something and finding out how, and using special characters doesn't usually come up when commenting on a webcomic.
- True, whether or not the address is case sensitive depends on the what the server is running on, I believe Linux-based ones actually DO care, since so many don't I forgot about that, but you're right, I believe Wikipedia is one that does - which flies in the face of the possibility of lowercasing the first character, because then THAT would NOT resolve to the same name, but it's possible and allowed?
- I looked into that Sandbox, found a page to experiment with, NATO (also 4 letters, also all caps), then I realized: I could wikilink it into the Sandbox, but my understanding is that DISPLAYNAME functions on the name of the current page! I don't see a way to experiment with DISPLAYTITLE there without the name of the current page being one I want to mess with. Then I noted, I opened Help and Preview while there, both of which were still open when I came back here, so maybe I can pretend edit the NATO page just to check the Preview, then Cancel the edit when I'm done.
- I note that while experimenting, I opened Template:DISPLAYTITLE to check its usage, and one example agreed with you, saying that changing the case of a later letter was invalid and didn't match, but then it disagreed with itself and said we CAN change the case of any letter. ???
- EDIT: Oops, NATO is a protected page, I can't enter Edit mode. Niceguy169 (talk) 06:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- Feel free to experiment on this page: User:Paradoctor/XKCD. NeatNit (talk) 08:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- LOL! Seems like I'd need an all-caps article title to see if I can lowercase it, :) That would be what doesn't work about the Sandbox you linked in the first place.
- Found a couple of semi-protected pages (I recall NASA was one) I could at least get into edit mode, then ran into the snag that it seems DISPLAYTITLE only says "From now on...". I then needed to see it display, and I couldn't find any of these pages actually do so. Found three variables that looked right to put displaying the page name as one of my tests, one displayed blank every time, the other two ignored the modifications every time and displayed the original version, even with simpler stuff that should have worked (like the lowercase function). ONLY reaction I got was when I set DISPLAYTITLE to all uppercase then followed it by the lowercase function, I got the "conflicting" warning I was promised in the help files, but only the once, I never could trigger it again, and otherwise those variables wouldn't budge. Finally found a page NOT protected, (I think GIF? I would think that would be protected to prevent edit wars), to see if it would work on an unprotected page, still same thing, so I ran out of time to work on it with the task of finding a way to display the modified name, to see what commands would work. I haven't gotten back to the experimentation. (Seems a largely moot point except for my drive to experiment, so not a lot of motivation and no deadline, LOL!) Niceguy169 (talk) 12:41, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
- Feel free to experiment on this page: User:Paradoctor/XKCD. NeatNit (talk) 08:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- "
- What you said there seems clearly untrue. It would make no sense that DISPLAYNAME only exists to lowercase the first letter. There must be names which are the reverse, which should be all caps or more-than-just-the-first-letter capital, which need letters corrected outside of the first... And if that's true anyway, then "Xkcd" feels less wrong than "XKCD" (25% wrong vs. 100% wrong-but-next-best-thing), and I'd be inclined to Oppose then. Niceguy169 (talk) 21:18, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Xkcd#c-NeatNit-20250329171700-Discussion NeatNit (talk) 12:46, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- When a discussion is closed, it is closed. – The Grid (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- So I would never do this intentionally. But I had already written everything, and closing a discussion is very wrong anyways. What I said I felt needed to be said, and nobody said it in time. What I did ACCIDENTALLY is certainly not bad enough to warrant this kind of reaction. Again, I never would have knowingly added to a closed discussion. Niceguy169 (talk) 21:12, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- FYI, making your name and talk page Navy makes them nearly invisible in Dark Mode. Niceguy169 (talk) 05:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- When a discussion is closed, it is closed. – The Grid (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2025 (UTC)