User talk:Johnathan404

This talk page is now 10 years old. I don't think it will be of great interest to historians. But if you do need to leave me a message, please do so.

M5

Thanks for the change on the M5 page. :) Couldn't find the correct syntax. M5lenzar 20:30, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

My message on Littlewood's page

I was just trying to be polite and assume good faith. I just said assume good faith... I've been spending too much time on Wikipedia! The outcome was inevitable really. Jeni 22:19, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Just don't let the 'keep it active members only' crew find out about this. ;-) Johnny 22:21, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

It isn't a problem, its not like things can't be undone, and generally there is always someone around "with the power", even if its not in their remit to use it in that way. I'd say 1 troll in just under a year is pretty good going! Jeni 22:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Chichester, Hampshire?

I noticed on Fishbourne Roundabout that you mention its location as Chichester, Hampshire. According to abcounties.co.uk Chichester is in Sussex. Is the roundabout west of the Hants/Sussex border? M5lenzar 23:28, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it's in Sussex all the way. The border with Hampshire is a couple of miles to the west. Steven 10:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, it's definitely in Sussex. I copied the template from another junction which was in Hampshire. In fact I noticed my mistake and could have sworn I corrected it! Johnny 14:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Junction bug

Any ideas why when I created Walford Cross it bugged and posted the category at the top of the page? I copied the information from another page which works fine, so I'm not sure where I've gone wrong. M5lenzar 19:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It's because the 'name' parameter was blank. It looks like it categorises it as [[Category:Junctions in South West England|{{{name}}}]], so because you didn't have one it failed. Might be worthy speaking to Jeni about that one as I can't see any reason why it can't be made to function without it. Johnny 20:07, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe the reason it works like that is because of the bug in categories which caused a lot of junctions to be wrongly filed under M. So I suspect we are stuck with having to put the name in. M5lenzar 21:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

User gallery

A simple way to do what you just did is {{Picture gallery|page=Images by Johnny}} :) Jeni ^(talk) 18:43, 3 September 2010 (BST)

Is that a new feature, or have I been doing it the long way for ages? Johnny 18:51, 3 September 2010 (BST)

I always code in a way to override the existing page name in most templates :) It's been there since day one!

As an example, {{Get Pictures|Images by Johnny}} produces View gallery (267) Jeni ^(talk) 18:55, 3 September 2010 (BST)

Or there is always {{Gallery|Images by Johnny}} which produces the box on the right! Jeni ^(talk) 18:59, 3 September 2010 (BST)

Very well, I guess it serves me right for trying to do things on my own! Johnny 19:03, 3 September 2010 (BST)

It doesn't end there... there is this too! (Remove the text parameter to show the default "View Gallery (x)" text) Jeni ^(talk) 19:10, 3 September 2010 (BST)

{{Gallery
 |name    = Images by Johnny
 |image   = A27_Brighton_Bypass_3.jpg
 |caption = A27 Brighton Bypass
 |text    = Woah, let me see! Take me there!
}}

Stop with the choice! I can't take it. Johnny 19:31, 3 September 2010 (BST)

A3(M)

Any good?

C2r (talk) 09:48, 9 May 2016 (BST)

Perfect Johnathan404 (talk) 17:18, 9 May 2016 (BST)

Crossings, Junctions, etc.

Thanks for all the content you're adding while I've been tinkering around the edges! To answer some of the questions that I've seen in the changelist:

• I think we do want any minor road bridge included in the navbox list, even if it's unlinked as there's nothing particularly to say about the bridge at this point in time.
• Pages should definitely be created where there is something interesting to say
• We're looking to move to a system of being able to add multiple crossings to a single page - at the moment the infobox can only display details for one crossing, though - it's a lot of work to be able to add multiple, and I'm just about finishing up with last year's re-write of the infobox code!
• Similarly for junctions; I don't know if it will be possible, though, to end up with a crossing and a junction on a single page because of the way that we generate lists of things using dpl.
• I agree that if a bridge or junction has a name, then we should document that, and how the name came about, if we know.

I've reveiewed a lot of your suggestions and done a lot of page moves (thanks!) Hope all this makes sense C2r (talk) 07:53, 27 September 2019 (BST)

Thanks for your diligence! I have a habit of using the changelist for thinking aloud.

In an ideal world I'd love to go through all the empty junctions and add what I can find, but I think this is probably all the spare time I'll have for now. Johnathan404 (talk) 15:22, 27 September 2019 (BST)

Page Moves

Hello, Thanks for moving those pages and updating them with the correct information. I've made a couple of extra changes following the page moves. Essentially, we group several pages in a cluster, and they should be moved together.

So, taking Mudda Murphy's Bridge, the following pages potentially exist:

• Talk:Mudda Murphy's Bridge - the move screen will ask if you want to move this at the same time
• Category:Mudda Murphy's Bridge - this will list other pages in the same category - these are generally dynamically generated and populated,but if this contains entries other than the main page, these should be investigated as part of the move.
  • Your new page that you move the main page to will have a redlink to create a new category automatically - you should create this and give it the magic word HIDDENCAT (surrounded by two underscores on each side).
• Gallery:Mudda Murphy's Bridge - this will have a parent gallery and could be full of images
  • The old Gallery should be deleted and a new one created for the new page, with the same parent gallery being specified during the creation
  • Any images should be moved by editing them and updating the gallery. If there's loads, we can do this with AutoWikiBrowser - just let me know.

I try and keep an eye on the move log and fix anything thta gets forgotten, so don't worry if you miss something!

Cheers C2r (talk) 19:59, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Useful information, thank you. It would be good if this was documented somewhere. I didn't know moving pages was an option. (It may well already by documented, right now I am guilty of that fine internet tradition of saying things without checking first.)

- Johnathan404 (talk) 20:41, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

We have the fine internet tradition of not documenting anything very well - something Steven and I are slowly trying to improve - I've just written a comprehensive How-to article on this Help:Moving Pages as it really should be documented somewhere! C2r (talk) 22:30, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Photo-required image

> IMO "photo required" shouldn't link to a bigger version of the placeholder... it should link to the upload page, or nothing at all

Hello, Thanks for the suggestion regarding the Photo-required not linking to anything and change to the sandbox template to demonstrate this. I've implemented this change across a number of "list" templates that we use.

Obviously, when the wiki was originally set up, this functionality wasn't available - I've been adding it to other places, but hadn't got around to the Photo-required image yet.

If you do have suggestions regarding wiki functionality/structure, or see how something could work better, please feel free to discuss in https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=5 as if anyone's working on bulk updating pages comments against sandbox templates could easily get lost.

Thanks again for picking this one up, C2r (talk) 07:35, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't realise the main Template:JL image was still linking to the image page rather than the junction page, too. I have made this change to the sandbox. As it's supposed to be a list of junctions, I would suggest the image links to the junction. Johnathan404 (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2020 (BST)

That's a bigger change, as nowhere else in the wiki is designed like that - essentially, anywhere you can see an photo, clicking on it takes you to the image and the metadata of the image (e.g. date, galleries, location) - to link it instead to the junction name here (and to the page in similar list templates) would deny the user an easy way to ge there, while at the same time duplicating the link itself (the user can click on the name to the right to end up in the page itself). Therefore, this one I'm not convinced of the merits of changing. C2r (talk) 08:33, 8 April 2020 (BST)

I think what does need to be considered (and admittedly this talk page isn't the right place to consider it), is exactly what the purpose of that template is.

If the intention is to direct people who want more information to the individual junction pages, then that should be what the template is all about. If you're looking at an Index page, it's not unusual to find that tapping anywhere on it will take you to the main item. The SABRE 'view all topics' list has 4 ways to open each topic, for example.

If the intention is that most people will be able to get all the information they need from the Junction List page without tapping on any additional links, then most of the individual junction pages ought to be removed. Speaking as a reader, I find that SABRE's junction information is sometimes in one place, sometimes it's in another place, often it's in both places and often the two pages disagree... that's not good.

That's just my thought process. I don't expect it to be a high priority, but it's something to consider as the SABRE Wiki improves its presentation standards. Johnathan404 (talk) 09:28, 8 April 2020 (BST)

I entirely agree about the purpose of the junction page (and lack thereof of such a purpose on today's wiki). The principle idea behind it was twofold: Firstly, to list the junctions for a major road in some sort of logical order (while when you're in a junction page, the navbox does this but there is nothing on the road page itself to do this), and secondly, before every junction had a page, the list provided detail on the junctions themselves that weren't at the time considered noteworthy. This is how they've ended up somewhat neglected. Ideally, I'd like to do away with them, and have a CBRD/tube map style linear diagram of the road which would include junctions and links to the junction pages, as well as other features such as rivers that are crossed - something a bit like the Junction list we've got in the infobox, but more dynamic.

However, it's not been a priority for me up to now, as I've been re-working core templates and categorisation over the last few years in order that we can make better use of the data, as well as separating out the international data from the core data better - there's still work I need to do there - my next key tasks are:

1. to better support crown dependencies as these at the moment sort of fall between core UKIE and International

2. allow multiple crossings per crossing page, and junctions per junction page

3. move remaining old style infoboxes into the new world

4. Fix presentational issues with the infobox (borders etc.) on chrome/IE

If you've got time on your hands and want to look at such a dynamic replacement using new templates, feel free. That said, you're also adding a lot of great and much needed content (thank you so much for this), so I wouldn't want to distract you from that either! I've also been doing a lot in the background of the maps, as well as trying to add content myself (as you'll have seen from the number of pages about Irish bridges that have been appearing). If you've got better photographs of any of them, feel free to replace those I'm just getting from Geograph, or add them to the page itself... C2r (talk) 10:23, 8 April 2020 (BST)