User talk:Panda Bear/Archive 1

This is an archive of my talk page. For my active talk page, click here.

Hello, Panda Bear, and welcome to the Simple English Wikipedia! I hope you will be happy helping here. You should begin by reading these pages: Wikipedia:Useful, Help:Contents, Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, and how to write Simple English articles. If you want some ideas of which pages to work on, read Wikipedia:Requested articles or the list of wanted pages.

Even though it is a good idea to research an article (like looking at the discussion page) before making large changes, please be bold and try! Any changes you make that are not perfect can be fixed later. We are also working most on core articles and the most common topics until this Wikipedia grows.

If you want to ask a question or talk with other members, you can visit our version of the "village pump" at Wikipedia:Simple talk. Administrators on Wikipedia can also help you with more difficult problems. You can also ask me for help. The best way to do that is to leave a message on my talk page. You should always sign your messages on Talk pages by typing "~~~~" (four tildes) at the end of your words.

Good luck and happy editing! -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  05:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia shifting colors

I noticed the request on your userpage and just thought I would mention that all wikipedia.org projects support user based color schemes. Every wiki page that loads also loads 2 other pages, 3 for registered users. The first is Common.css which includes the base CSS code for each page. They next load the skins page (normally monobook.css) which includes separate coding for how each page should look for that skin. For registered users, that users CSS page based on the skin they are using is loaded as well (for example, in my case User:Creol/monobook.css) which can be changed by the user to pretty much change anything on the page from how tables are displayed to the colors shown. It can even make certain objects not appear at all. It does require a decent knowledge of CSS as well as how pages are displayed normally to make the changes, but the end result would be that the user can totally customize how all pages are shown to their account. -- Creol(talk) 06:45, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

User boxes

The boxes you are referring to are called "user boxes". You will generally not see a lot of these for simple wikipedia user as most of the templates do not exist here. However, like me, you could have an account on English Wikipedia and put up user boxes and other such info. You could then link to that page on your simple page. Check out en:wikipedia:userboxes for more on user boxes, there are links at the bottom of the page that kind of sort them out by category. Hope this helps and if you need more specifics, please do not hesitate to ask. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  16:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Pictures

I think it depends on what type of picture. If it's a picture on Wikipedia Commons, then yes you can. You can also upload pictures to Commons and then use them here. I'm not totally sure how either process works as I've never done either of them. I would try asking a user who has been on longer than I or maybe asking on Wikipedia:Simple talk. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful on this one. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  13:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Articles

I don't know for sure. It's fairly subjective. If an article explains why it is important, it's probably going to be okay, but let's use an example. Say you want a page for a TV show, the first page is probably going to be okay. Then let's say someone starts creating pages for characters on that tv show or pages for individual episodes. Right now that probably isn't going to be allowed, and it probably won't be (I could be wrong) until we've expanded to get the core articles of which the TV show would be one. Hope that helps and isn't too confusing. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  13:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Stubs

It's really a judgment call. Tuna seemed to me to have enough information to take out the stub tag so I removed it. The rule of thumb I use is if there is a lot more that could be added to an article than it should have a stub tag. If a the article has a good start and covers a lot of things it doesn't need the tag. It doesn't mean that the article is done, just that there is a good overview. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  03:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

An example of an article that definitely needs a stub tag is Joe Manchin. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  03:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The Adobe Flash article was shorter than an ant, just like the Joe Manchin article. I knew it needed a stub tag, so I added one. Maybe you or someone else viewing this could expand it. Panda Bear 03:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Minor edit question

I would say that going back and signing a comment would be a minor edit. You didn't add anything new, you just forgot to sign, it's not very important. I would say minor edit. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  01:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Image question

• Hello, Panda Bear. To make an image without borders, just type in the image link. But make sure the image is small, otherwise the page mightget "blown" bigger. Cheers!-- Tdxiang 12:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• Actually, size is not an issue. The px attribute will handle it fine. More below. -- Creol(talk) 12:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

• When using the image tag, there are several attributes you can set to define how it shows up. If you leave it blank ([[Image|Somepic.jpg]]) the full image will show up with no border and at its full size. This is the issue Tdxiang mentioned.

• The main things to know with images:

  1. thumb: ([[Image:Somepic.jpg | thumb]]) This is the image tag most commonly used. It frames the picture, resizes it to 200px, and puts it on the right side of the screen.
  2. frame: ([[Image:Somepic.jpg | frame]]) This will frame the picture at its full size. The size can not be changed.
  3. px: ([[Image:Somepic.jpg | 250px]]) This defines how big the picture should be in pixels. 200 is the standard size for thumbnail pictures commonly used here.
  4. right/left: ([[Image:Somepic.jpg | right]]) This says whether to put the picture to the right of left. If nothing is there, it will automatically go to the left side of the screen. (unless thumb is used)
  5. Pretty much anything else put in there ([[Image:Somepic.jpg|some other words]]) is treated as the caption of the image. Captions only show for framed or thumb nailed images.

Images can (and usually do use several of these at the same time

[[ Image:Somepic.jpg | thumb | 250px | left | some other text ]] would create a framed image, 250px wide/high on the left of the screen with the caption "some other text". If two attributes are trying to do the same things (a left and a right or two separate captions) then the last one used will work and remember not to capitalize - Left is not the same as left ([[Image:Somepic.jpg|left|Right|some text]]) would be placed on the left with the caption "some text" - the word "Right" isn't the same as "right", it thinks "Right" is a caption which is overruled by the caption "some text"

Hope this helps. -- Creol(talk) 12:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Categories

Cateogries are added to an article by doing the following: 1. Below the text of an article use this format: [[Category:"Category name"]]. 2. You put in the best general term you can think of for "Category name". 3. This can be very hard to determine sometimes. You can look to see what other similar things have for categories, look on English wikipedia to see what categories the article has there, or try to do some educated guessing. 4. It is very important to have an article in the right category, so if you don't know for sure ask myself, Tygartl1, or another administrator for help.

Also, I believe an article on Engrish would be okay here. Thanks, -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  03:48, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Deleting articles

Yes, only administrators can delete articles. However, you can nominate pages for deletion, either for quick delete or through a request and discussion. See Wikipedia:Requests for deletion for rules for both types of deletion. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  02:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Redirects

See the linked page for information on Redirects. Alors, j'ai bien, et toi? In response to your suggestion, I don't think I would make a good teacher. I can speak a little and understand, but I would make enough mistakes that would cause others to come in and correct me a lot. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  20:45, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

It means "I am well, and you?" -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  20:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I used the wrong phrase to begin with. I should have said "Je vais bien" not "j'ai bien". It's been too long since French class. You could say the same thing. "Je vais bien, aussi, merci", which means "I am fine as well, thank you" -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  21:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Hiding text

Say you want to leave a note for other editors on a page, but don't want it seen. The format is this : <!-- What you want to say --> . Words in the middle are hidden but do appear when someone goes to edit the page. Hope that helps and is what you meant. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  16:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I think you're talking about table of contents. Wikipedia does this automatically when there are multiple headings on a page. You then can click 'hide' or 'show' to expand them or make them go away. You can also change the settings for this on your personal settings. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  19:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Snakes on a Plane redirect

Hey there! One question, is this redirect really necessary? Do people actually refer to the movie under that name a lot? Would people actually type it in while looking for this movie? It just sounds like a little pointless to me... Thanks, Archer7 - talk 18:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure people would use it, but I don't see any problem with it staying if EN have decided to keep it. Maybe it's more popular than I thought to call it that. Thanks, Archer7 - talk 18:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Sidebars

I don't think I quite know what you mean. Could you give me an example? -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  02:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Your idea on Babel

Your opinion of creating a new template in Babel is actually a great idea! But currently this wiki is just in its beginning stages and has a long way to go before it becomes as good as the english wiki. For babel templates, we decided to hold on to the idea later. But for example; if a user wants to know Farsi but dosen't understand it, the best choice (as of now) would simply put in the template; {{User fa-1}}. Sorry for the temperoray inconvience. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 07:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

fa-1دانش فارسی این کاربر در سطح مبتدی است.

• As I stated above this wiki ain't ready to deal with those type of issues. But you could talk this over to an admin since they might have an answer for you then. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 01:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

"Japanophile"

Japanophile isn't a word. "A person who loves Japanese culture" or "A Japanized person" sounds much better. You may request translations at the Wikipedia reference desk if translating English to Simple English is too hard or tedious for you. :D Coffsneeze 15:40, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

You can internally link to English articles like this: [[:en:Japanophile|Japanophile]]. It will show it like this: Japanophile (without the arrow). This can be done for any link to a page on any of the Wikipedias in another language. I thought you'd like to know for your userbox. :-) · Tygartl1^·talk· 22:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Destory all "Yous"

I'm just wondering, but what do you have against the word "you" in an encyclopedia? Cause I think using the word "you" dosen't do much harm in wikipedia. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 22:29, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Alex the parrot

An article would probably be okay. Just keep it simple and explain why it is notable and it should be fine. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  20:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for telling me it was your userbox, I didn't remember where I got it. I also thank you for the Japanese learning advice. Nancysing 10:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello in Latin

I am replying to your question on my user talk- In Latin, “Hello” is “Salve” and “Goodbye” is “Vale”. When talking to more than one person, they are “Salvete” and “Valete.” Nancysing 02:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Reply:Help with images...

Although I tried several different ways, as you said, I put the images "side-by-side" but they were put in the left margin which I had trouble with. But putting the images without the <gallery> stuff seemed to be impossible since my computer wouldn't let me, sorry.

PS. Also I don't know really now to speak Farsi, since I want to learn Farsi, but don't understand it yet. As I've stated before, since I don't know Farsi and the simplewiki dosen't have any other Babel templates than the basic {{User fa}}, {{User fa-4}}, {{User fa-3}}, {{user fa-2}}, and {{User fa-1}}, I just posted up the {{User fa-1}} template since the bottom words on my Babel template got on my nerves. Sorry to disappoint you though. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 05:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Another PS. If you know basic Japanese words, you should post this up on your userpage. catchya man:) --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 05:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

ja-1この利用者は初級の日本語ができます。

.

Greetings

"Hola" or "Buenos dias" for hello in Spanish. "Adios" is goodbye. "Au revoir" is goodbye in French. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  18:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Korean & Spanish

I hardly know any Korean words, but to be honest, now I've lost interest in knowing Korean. But I know just two Spanish words, hola (hello) and gracias (thank you). --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 23:41, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Kindly Tell the world that simple english has a name Sindhish sir. Help ..

Kindly Tell the world that simple english has a name Sindhish sir. Help .. If you can provide information about the advantages of Sindhish, you need to provide them in the correct place (like Simple English) and by giving appropriate sources for your sentences. --Basant5 15:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: help with the images

Done. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 02:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

On what section should I put that gunk (ewww...) image at? Also I don't think I'll be able to make or create any raster images at Commons, sorry. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 05:49, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Here you go:) --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 01:34, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Simple English requires a name ,like you have a name . To spread in schools as a subject .Try to understand

Sindhish is a synonym for simple English .

Simple English is the language which we Indians speak . Using about 100,000 words we speak . Then why Teach and Learn Ten lakh words and idioms of English language ........IN SCHOOLS

because english is an extremely complicated language with numerous confusing rules. I caught onto Hindi faster than I did to english & I've known & spoke english since birth!

Teaching English in the US is quite a task because it is such a comprehensive job in comparison to some other curricular areas. English teachers are expected to cover reading to include comprehension, vocabulary, Greek and Latin roots, fact vs. opinion, main idea, details, etc.

Literature ties right in with reading. We cover many genre including various types of poetry, short stories, novels, plays, essays, and each of these forms includes literary terms students must learn and recognize. Of course, comprehension ties in here, and students must learn to recognize characterization, dialogue, descriptive, narrative techniques as well as passages that set tone, mood, add foreshadowing, etc.

Then we must also cover writing. This begins at the basic level of why one group of words is a sentence and another is not. It continues through types of phrases, clauses and sentences. Once we have covered basic structure of a paragraph, we embark upon the essay, being sure to cover informative, descriptive and persuasive. But writing does not end there. In English class we also teach students to write creatively so we need to find time to write poetry and short stories. Learning to do research also usually falls into the English curriculum as does learning how to do a research paper. Oral reports and group projects must be fit in as well.

Are we done? No! In order for students to understand how to improve their grammar and syntax, they must have a good grasp of those areas, so despite how many times they may have been exposed in the past, most students need a review of parts of speech, sentence structure, punctuation, the most common types of grammatical errors, and so forth.

Now in most American classroom, and I believe in most English ones as well, a number of students will speak English as a second language. Some will be functioning significantly below grade level even if English is their first language. Consider the vast amount of curriculum to cover and the varied needs of learners, and it is no wonder that the English teacher feels time pressure to fit it all in.

I feel that I must add one more sad lament. I have retired after teaching high school for more than 30 years. During that time, Americans in general (not just teens!) have read less and less. A great number of our students come to us with lower skills, but policy makers have higher and higher expectations of what they should be able to accomplish within four years of high school. What is the answer? I believe we have to stop social promotion in the elementary schools if students have not mastered specific tasks/material. Then and only then can we have higher expectations of content area teachers in high schools.

The first English grammar book had several silly rules, based on Latin; for example, since the infinitive in Latin is a single word, it's impossible to split it. No reason not to do so in English. It's often awkward to keep that rule. I like Winston Churchill's thinking on the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition: That's the sort of mindless pedantry up with which I will not put.

--Basant5 09:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Image

Arg! Sorry, I never got round to sorting that image, I completely forgot. Sorry about that, Archer7 - talk 19:19, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Image upload policy

Because of the limited number of editors here at Simple and the abundance of editors at Commons with both the desire and capability to deal with copyright matters on all images added, Commons is the better place for images to be placed. Commons also supplies images to all wiki-projects so any image uploaded there can be used in any language wiki. This replaces the need of having a separate copy of each image uploaded to each wiki that needs to use it. Using Commons as our image host saves both time (editors) and space (web servers). -- Creol(talk) 03:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Multiple user accounts

There are two ways to look at the message about logging in as another user. One would be multiple accounts for a single user. The main reason this one would be used is for users with Bot accounts to access that account. The other reason to log in as another user would be multiple people on one computer. Wether it be different members of a family using the home computer or a school or library computer which could have many different people using accounts from it, the feature would be used to log out the last person using the site so the next person has access to their account. -- Creol(talk) 03:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Reply:Jimbo Wales

Haha, that was a nice one, cause you sort-of got me:) heh, heh, still cracking up about it. lol.

Whatever. Now getting back on topic, I think that you should go to the en wiki and create your own user account there. Its simple,

1) go to the en wiki mainpage
2) go click on the log in/create user account button on the upper-right hand corner and click it.
3) Click the link to create a new account and...
4) create your username "Panda Bear" and add in a password (email address is optional).

Also I would actually freak out writing a message to Jimmy Wales and he already knows about the simplewiki since he's the owner. Sorry for being unable to help you on this but I'm kind-a busy in real life right now. well gotta go;) --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 08:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Deletion requests

Hello, Panda Bear. Can you fix the deletion request to Dodoria, Zarbon and Frieza? On the requests for deletion page, it has steps to follow to nominate articles. Thanks, Isis§^{(talk )} 14:03, 17 June 2007

Never mind, Nishkid64 fixed the formatting. I would have done it, but I don't have your signature :) --Isis§^(talk) 14:47, 17 June 2007

Multiple accounts and uploading

See Sock Puppets for information for uses of multiple accounts. There are reasons for and against the use of multiple accounts there. For the ideas behind images see Images and Uploading images. Hope those help! Sorry for the delay in responding to you. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  00:52, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Sun in Spanish

Hi, Panda Bear! I noticed the message you left on Browne's userpage. Sun in Spanish is "Sol". Hope this helps :) --'Choos'nink ^TALK 01:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

"Sun" in Chinese?

"Sun" is :太阳 My Chinese is rusty, but I hope I haven't got it wrong... :P-- Tdxiang 02:35, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

• Tài yáng is its pinyin. Where are you going to use it? :P Well, even though we learn Chinese in Singapore, we speak English and for me, 3 other dialects most of the time, so Putonghua is a problem for most Singapore students now!-- Tdxiang 03:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Bots

Yeah, I think anyone can have a bot. I don't know a whole lot about them. You could ask someone who has a bot for more information about them. Check out this Bot page for more info. I know Sean William and Vector have bots here. -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  19:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Re:Another image upload request

Done. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} ^Adminship 01:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

reply

here :) --vector ^_^ (talk) 05:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Advertisement

Nice ad you're giving me. :)-- Tdxiang 09:09, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Old messages

Why the old message tag on my user page? -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  03:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hello, Panda Bear. I suggest that you make the userboxes on your page into templates (or a single template) so that it isn't so long. --Isis§^(talk) 02:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, like this. You make a subpage like this:"User:Panda Bear/UserBox/title of userbox", then copy your userbox into the page. Or, you may create a subpage like this:"User:Panda Bear/UserBoxes", and copy all of your userboxes into it. It saves a lot of space in your userpage that way. Hope this helps, --Isis§^(talk) 12:48, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Re:RfA

Ummm... you never voted in my RfA although it was closed earlier than usual at my request, but here. Also my RfA turned out to be unsuccessful with 3 supports/5 opposes/1 neutral. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 07:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Goodbye?

Ummm... what makes you think I'm on a wikibreak? I never said it and I visit this plac almost everyday. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 21:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh that. Well due to past events I decided to leave the en wiki for "I dont know how long" some time and may or may not return to en wiki. But I'll still be avaible here and also at Wiki Commons. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 21:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Danke

Thank you. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 23:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Re:Um... everything

"Auf Wiedersehen" means Goodbye in German. And I only would allow sysops (or certain bots) to edit my userpage cause one problem I am uneasy with, are vandals and that some vandals would create registered user accounts. They could like mess up my userpage which would sometimes get on my nerves if it was a frequent occurance. Sysops on the other hand are trusted by the community so theres no harm with them. --§ Alastor Moody _{(T + C)} 22:27, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Image and Spanish

I thought the dog was MUCH cuter ;) and I'm the only user here with the image of themselves, so it got embarrassing. Also, I can speak some Spanish, I know a lot of Spanish words (And German, as I am from Austria), but I cannot create a proper sentence. That's all. Happy editing! --Choosnink ^TALK 00:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Overflow box

To place it on the right, just add this line to the DIV tag:

 float: right;

-- Creol(talk) 02:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Mother language

Persian, my friend! And if I where in your shoes, I would plan archiving my talk page! :p - Huji ^reply 16:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Answered on my talk page :) and fixed the typo above - Huji ^reply 20:37, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I answered your post on my talk page. BTW, why don't you add a link to your talk page to your signature? - Huji ^reply 18:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to know if you've made any progress with the IRC thing - Huji ^reply 14:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Template messages

Hi. I thought I'd let you know that when you leave messages in talk pages such as {{welcome}} or {{test1}}, please use {{subst:test1}} instead of {{test1}}. It's only a guideline. RaNdOm26 17:42, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Changing usernames

Usernames can't be changed after a certain number of edits purely due to a software problem I think, it just can't cope with it. Archer7 - talk 20:43, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Sean William changed his with a large amount of edits. --Isis§^(talk) 21:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok

Hello, dear Panda Bear. I'm very sorry for not being able to answer your questions due to school commitments. I do not know Japanese, but I know Chinese, together with 3 other dialects. I don't take Japanese as it is only applicable to those in Singapore's Special Stream. I am in the Express stream, which does not entitle me to learning a third language. Cheers!-- Tdxiang 09:31, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

日本語

Hello once again, dear Panda Bear! Okay, I was just kidding when I said my Chinese was rusty. I just don't speak it often, but I have an adequate knowledge of the language. As for Japanese, well, I know a few (very few) characters (by learning from friends who know Japanese), which doesn't qualify me for Japanese literacy.ありがとう!(Thank you!)-- Tdxiang 09:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)