User talk:Viator/archive1703

Highway Authorities

Hi Kevin, I'm trying to get all the Highway Authority pages to be consistent with one another with a number of sections - introduction, Primary Destinations, Trunk Roads, Principal and Classified Roads, and Class III Roads if I can find any information about how that authority classifies them (as well as maybe Unclassified Roads if they're numbered). Map and council logo in the infobox. Would you mind not taking away that consistency, or if you can think of a better way, let me know - I've already grabbed some of your wording as it's better than mine! It's quite important to get them looking consistently decent at the moment... Steven (talk) 19:18, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Steven.

No real problems about this at my end. I was sort of expecting you to get in touch soon. As you said yourself in an earlier post: I was kinda fishing for thoughts on it when I did it. You may have noticed over time that that's very much my way of working too; plus, I believe in taking perhaps half-a-dozen to a dozen "test cases" and working on ways of building upon and hopefully improving what we already have. Trying to boilerplate too soon, without taking into account case-by-case particularities is a mistake we should always try to avoid, in my view.

But, as you know, no lasting damage is done, in any case, should another contributor take violent exception to what they might qualify as my meddling: a click or two and the whole shebang can be reverted. I'm not myself (unless by oversight) an "edit warrior" -- there's too much to be done in the SABRE Wiki to spend time on that kind of thing: I prefer to move on.

I know that it could be said I ought to run my tests "offline" -- but, then, no-one would ever "bite", would they? I think it's far better to test the waters with a limited amount of what I hope are ameliorations (and extend their number later if no-one howls) rather than attempt to release a myriad of would-be wonder-changes to the gaze of an astonished (SABRE-Wiki-reading) world. (As I'm sure you also know, I'm already of the opinion that there's far too little participative criticism of the Wiki's contents in the Wiki itself: by which I mean in Talk pages.)

This leads me on to want to make a general observation about building the Wiki:

It seems to me that there are, broadly two kinds of contributors (though not everyone, of course fits neatly into one category of the other all of the time)

1. There are the (woolly?) "essayists" (I class myself as being closest to this end of the spectrum): we like discursive content which ideally adds a modicum of distinctive character to each article (even if this amounts to little more than a smidgeon when what there is to say about a topic is, in any case, far from extensive; the automated input of content tends not to be our strong point)
2. And then there are what I call the "Fordist maximizers" (no doubt they would describe themselves in cuddlier terms -- except that I think a good number of them might be averse to the very idea of cuddliness!). Some of these have written and implemented algorithms which have served to generate a very great deal of "cross-fertilized" SABRE Wiki content whilst at the same time being very largely reluctant, it would seem, to contribute much in the way of personally originated sentences and paragraphs.

It takes all kinds, of course, to make a Wiki world, and those in the second category contributed massively to getting the SABRE Wiki off the ground, but we are -- in my opinion -- a bit overskewed in that direction, especially when compared to other Wikis (not least the -- often routinely, it would seem, abused in SABRE circles -- grand-daddy of them all: Wikipedia itself). We are certainly far, far less hidebound than Wikipedia; yet I still feel that the SABRE too often gives the impression that if you're not professionally involved in programming then this is probably not the place for you.

My fear is that the priority you give to "looking decent" could straitjacket articles and make them appear so sterile as to be not worth reading. I sometimes wonder if there aren't some who would perhaps prefer it if the SABRE Wiki were really just one giant interlocking database (with all "articles" -- if such things had to be retained -- being generated automatically from external data inputs) rather than a living Wiki created by collaborative human writers. Who would really want to sit down and read for pleasure (let alone write for) such a construct?

I do value consistency (indeed, one of the "edit summaries" I use -- especially in the Wikipedia -- is "consistency edit") but even in areas where I've tried to establish a broadly standard template for articles (as, for example, in my work on Irish Local Road Authorities) I feel that I haven't really succeeded in writing anything of genuine interest before I've "tampered" a little with the template / varied the layout in some small degree to match local details. Where I haven't yet done that it's because I still lack the necessary detailed local information.

I know that some (who can) like to unleash a thousand changes in one go. My own method is much more plodding -- and, as I've said -- I won't go to war over any of my generally slow-but-steady alterations and experiments. I'm often the first to say (after mulling over amendments I've tried out in various different circumstances / parts of the country and letting them stand for a while): "No, that doesn't work" and to change them back. But I hope I've done a little, at least, to convince you that there is some method in what sometimes may appear to be my madness. --Viator (talk) 23:15, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Disruptive editing?

Why have you chosen to enter into an edit war over a topic that has already been discussed? I trust you'll self revert your disruptive county edits. Jeni ^(talk) 23:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Dear Jeni,

I think you are confusing "discussion" with "decision".

If you remember, you took the decision some time before Christmas to alter the templates which generate the route infoboxes. A discussion then ensued, in the course of which I expressed no objection to the new improved internally linking architecture in itself; I did, however, express my disappointment that one knock-on effect of the new dispensation was that (as far as Ireland was concerned) Ockham's razor was being blunted in the matter of the display of the infobox links to the names of counties and roads authorities.

I was told (in effect) not to worry my silly little head: my concerns would be proved groundless once certain teething bugs had been overcome. I waited a while, but then committed the cardinal error of asking (prematurely and very inadvisably, it would seem) "anything happening yet on this front?" This time I was sent away with a flea in my ear and the basic message: some of us do have lives to lead, you know.

And so I decided to go cold turkey and take a whole month off from SABRE (even deleting it from my favourites, to make the temptation to "just have a little peek" that tiny bit more resistable). This was no easy step, I can assure you, for someone whom you have yourself implicitly adjudged to be a SABRE-nerd.

Well, I did manage to go Sabristically teetotal some four weeks or so ago. I logged on again at the beginning of this week, hoping against hope (< what an odd expression, but you know what I mean) that I might just possibly witness the dawning of that brave new world in which "all should be well" (i.e. clunkiness defeated by concision).

I started by looking at some random regional roads (the vast majority of the Irish roads covered by the SABRE Wiki fall into this category). Hooray: alles in Ordnung -- my worst fears had not been realized. However... checking the "Meets" links from some of these regional roads to national roads, I soon saw that in the case of the nationals the promised rendering of (for example) "County Offaly" as "Offaly" in the County field of the infoboxes had not in fact been realized.

Thinking (naively, as it turns out!) that this was the result of some oversight (after all, the infoboxes relating to most Irish roads still displayed the county names in compact form) I amended the infoboxes attached to a number of N road descriptions to match the structure of those linked to R roads.

Big mistake! You clearly took my amendments, Jeni, to be the parting shots in an edit-war of attrition. To be quite honest, until I had cause to look for a second time at one or two national road articles I had no idea that any such war was in progress. I'm not too sure (from my Wikipedia days) how many tit-for-tats it takes for it to be established that an "edit war" has begun -- but in any case, as I believe I've said a number of times in SABRE Wiki discussions, no way am I any kind of reversion warrior!

Yes, I plough my furrow (perhaps far too doggedly for some), but once the big guns come out and say "this is MY field: clear orff, you peasant" I almost invariably exercise the (withdraw-and-)live-to-fight-another-day option. Life's too short (as they say) and, besides, I'm up to my oxters in so many other internet/nerdy endeavours...

So it comes down to this: now that you have drawn my attention to the fact that, in your view, a war of reversion exists between us (please, sir, I didn't start it -- or, if I did, I didn't mean to) I won't make any further edits to the counties fields of the National roads infoboxes. As I said earlier, that kind of warfare (as opposed to Dobbin-like ploughing) is just "not my bag": I do what I do until someone goes ballistic in opposition -- after that, it's just too draining on psychic resources to fight pitched battles on what, after all is "just this internet site, you know" -- much as I love it.

I do still hope, though, that I won't have to leave SABRE over this. I'd submit that my "demands" -- basically that those who can, once they have some spare time, make the essentially cosmetic (but important to me!) changes that would leave me happy -- are not that excessive.

To return to the "decision" v. "discussion" distinction I raised at the start of this post: Yes, there was a decision (essentially yours, Jeni). Yes, this was followed by some discussion. But where is the final decision that followed that discusion? (OK. I may have missed it through my self-imposed "exile".)

In conclusion, I feel I ought to mention the tension that I perceive as existing (far, far more than in other wikis I am familiar with -- Wikipedia itself not excluded) between the techies, who can (and occasionally do) effect sudden and far-ranging changes affecting the whole of the wiki, and the sloggers (among whom I count myself) who go on adding their (low-tech) pebbles to the many mountains of SABRE. Isn't there a place for both of us? -- Viator (talk) 01:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd add that Jeni did not make the decision to do this independently - there was discussion beforehand in committee as to the reasons why and the technical changes that were going to be made prior to any editing commencing and the solution has been overwhelmingly agreed by the majority of committee members, including other wiki admin. Yes, I also find the speed of development frustrating at times, but it's not something which I can do anything about. I would like to see a lot more automation, because even in terms of the "sloggers", there aren't that many of us and there is a lot of data to cover. If we add into this reverts and re-reverts of information - it is essentially time consuming and wastes time and resource which frustrates me further when there is so much else that needs to be done. C2r (talk) 07:31, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The "this is MY field: clear orff, you peasant" is exactly what you seemed to be saying with reverting my edits on a couple of National Roads to change them back from the new system and getting into a strong discussion about how dare some "slogger" like me come and touch Ireland. While Jeni's tone here is characteristically antagonistic and unproductive, you started back here where you left off with reverting National Roads (you'll note how no one had actually touched them in the interim) - and far more this time - and then a British A Road(!), so a comment from someone was needed. That said, that you are now agreeing to the 'truce' of leaving things as they are now, it's not a problem. Si404 (talk) 10:18, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

PS: I fixed the A4219 edit you made, it now does what you wanted it to do, but on the new system - if you remove the Council bit it works how you like.

Thank you, Chris, Simon: I appreciate your comments. To be honest, though, unless it's hidden from me in some way, I can't see any evidence of the "discussion beforehand in committee" that you mention, Chris. The structural alterations to the routebox template were first mentioned in the Committee forum on 16 January: long after implementation had begun in the weeks before Christmas!

What there was -- in the SABRE Wiki and Maps forum -- was a thread (entitled Routebox Updates) which Jeni started at 1.59 on 17 November with a description of some alternative templates she had devised and an invitation to test them out, with an announcement made by Steven just over 21 hours later that the new template had "gone live" (i.e. the period of sandbox testing only was over). Although Jeni nowhere used the verbs "propose", "suggest", "recommend", etc., or any related nouns, I did take her phrase "awaiting the all clear before it goes live" to amount to the same thing. I was very surprised, nevertheless, to see how quickly that "all clear" came -- with less than a day to run tests or comment on the results -- and no indication of the process by which it was agreed to. You write that the solution has been overwhelmingly agreed by the majority of committee members -- although, as I say, I can't find any record of the expression of that agreement (the proposal was never put to the Committee AFAIK) -- and, if they did express it, I wonder what figure it is that you take to be overwhelming. (14, a simple majority, would have been enough for me -- had I evidence for it!)

Simon, "slogger" is a term of praise from me, so I'm very sorry if, in taking it that I was applying it to you, you also took it to be a rebuke. The more sloggers the merrier, say I: it's what we're short of in the Wiki. And people can "touch Ireland" as much as they like (except where it's by means of what does get my goat: automated and over-hurriedly implemented one-size-fits-all "master solutions" -- especially ones which carry a whiff of a neo-colonialist attitude in appearing to attempt to force square Irish pegs into British holes). Níl mise Éire (I am not Ireland), to adapt a famous phrase!

The reason I have taken a particular interest in Ireland is simply that, for a very long time, coverage in the Wiki of the country's roads and associated institutions was threadbare, often out-of-date or just wrong (mangled placenames taken by non-Irish-speakers from blurry GSV images, I would guess!). I've simply been trying to add to the Irish articles at least some worked-on and case-by-case written content (beyond auto-generated database returns) which -- it's my fond hope -- will encourage other readers / potential contributors to "come onto my land".

Plus (and I know this will sound as if I've got a whole large portion of chips on my shoulder, together with a pickled onion and a small battered sausage too): I've been conscious so very often in the past of the attitude that says: "Oh, is Ireland different? Never mind, we can bend this GB definition/template/etc. and pretend...: that'll do, won't it?" What is it that drives some Sabristi to want to treat Irish arrangements as an anomalous (but not so much that you'd really notice, so long as you keep your Empire blinkers on) distortion of British norms? My first Sabristic "mini-spat", in fact, was a disagreement with Guy Barry about his (I thought) condescending account of the Irish motorway network. (The difference between us was soon resolved.)

I recognize, mea culpa, that my method of making selective (not blanket, auto-generated edits) -- to "see who bites" (in the words of another highly regarded Wiki contributor) -- can look like pig-headed reversion for reversion's sake. I don't, in fact, "double revert" except unconsciously / unintendedly (as has happened here once or twice:my apologies). Retreating to lick my wounds and looking for another field of endeavour is much more my (proud-to-be-a-wimp) style, though, yes, the she-bear-seeing-her-cubs-attacked in me does now and again take over. A warning to Wiki contributors of the possibility of merciless revision is explicitly given in the advice supplied on each Wiki edit page, so I don't think we ought really to complain about such edits (reversible, after all) when they occur. I didn't make blanket edits to the National roads pages: I made test edits of about 1 in 5 of such pages (and took care to note that they made no difference at all to the displayed contents of the "County X"), then awaited bites. (The matter was finally mentioned in the Committee forum, of course, when a very large pike bit...) If I made double-reverts (through test-editing the same road twice), sorry: that was the result of inattention on my part.

Simon: sorry that you took offence at my A4219 edit (a British road -- how very dare I? <- only a joke). This was a test edit to see how the "new" treatment of British and Irish roads compared. You are quite right that simply removing the word "Council" from the infobox entry does the trick. An equivalent solution doesn't (yet) exist for the County field as it applies to Ireland, however :-( As I've implied, no doubt ad nauseam, before: just as it doesn't make a lot of sense to head a menu section "Soups" and then list Chicken SOUP, Leek and potato SOUP, Mushroom SOUP, Tomato SOUP, etc. etc., why keep repeating the word "county"? The official names don't even include the word "county", by the way (they are Cavan, Kerry, Roscommon, etc.: it's just a useful convention in the 'article titles to be able to distinguish, say, County Wexford from Wexford (town).

Chris: I'm sceptical about your wish to see a lot more automation of the SABRE Wiki. I feel that it's over-automated already (even grand-daddy Wikipedia itself allows the common-or-garden contributor to feel much more comfortable about the possibility of being able to add something useful despite lacking a qualification or experience in the field of coding), and it's long been my view that it could well be that "high tech" aspect of the SABRE Wiki that may be deterring more from taking part. I can understand that extensive automation was called for in the early days to enable fast population of the SABRE Wiki pages, but I do feel we ought now to be concentrating more on the flesh than on the bones: this is (or should be) above all an open-access Wiki, not just a database. That we are now seeing "sloggers" such as Owain contributing real textual "meat" to the Wiki is a highly welcome development, and I think that that is the area we should be concentrating on. -- Viator (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Kevin, just a word from someone sitting on the sidelines of this a little: it's certainly something that I try to be aware of that Ireland can require different solutions to NI, and different again from GB - it's why I'm always very careful of the terminology! I can assure you that it was never the intention to treat Ireland as second-class, the changes required to make the county fields work properly for Ireland were always planned as part of Phase II (certainly in my head, anyway!). There were two solutions available: the old way worked fine, but the new way with all its bells, lights and whistles was coming, and the only real issue was the temporary requirement to display the full versions "County" prefix on the names to use the new functionality.

However, have you seen that I've created a working prototype of the changes that you would like to see with regard to the new versions of the county fields? I need one of the technical folk to check over the coding, and make sure it's not going to break other things, but the idea is that you can have "county=County Cork; county2=County Kerry", and it will hide the "County" part from display, but will still put everything in the correct categories for the automation to work. Steven (talk)

Diolch yn fawr iawn / Go raibh maith agat, Steven! That will be excellent when it comes about; that's basically all that I'm after in this regard. I do notice, though, that as of this morning we're not there yet. (Please see my remarks in the SABRE Wiki forum.)

There remain one or two other areas in which British usage and terminology are being imposed inappropriately on RoI reality, but I'll leave those for now until the roads authorities and counties problems are resolved. -- Viator (talk) 11:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Irish Counties (again)

As previously discussed, please stop wiki linking and piping the county and authority fields to use the old method on the road pages. I've rolled back the R750 and R999 changes that you've made today to my last edits. C2r (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I hope you won't mind that I've restored my amendments/amplifications to the text of the route descriptions while bowing to your routebox preferences.

Could you have a look, too, at the R999 talk page, when you get a chance. Beir bua! -- Viator (talk) 18:43, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Of course, sorry for not checking more carefully on what I reverted - it's been a long day. The information on the R999 talk page is very interesting actually - I certainly wasn't aware of that but unfortunately don't have any further information. I just drive a lot really :) C2r (talk) 20:33, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

E roads

It is, to me, one of the mysteries of the workings of the SABRE Wiki why some (whom I'd describe as the over-systematizers) appear to want to negate the hard work which other editors have put in willingly in the interests of accuracy.

I proof read your excellent reformat of the E road pages and found some missing countries in the key of the odd routes (page before my edits. I then spent over an hour inserting them into your key and had not realised that each key was bespoke for each page* so put it on all three pages (the Class-B page not yet having it). You then reverted my changes on both the Class-A pages, undoing all that hard work willingly put in, doing so in the name of 'accuracy' - the outdated (and somewhat self-fulfilling) belief that Czechia isn't widely used. You then reverted my revert on the even page for accuracy as Armenia doesn't have an even route - which is fine as that one is indeed accurate now - I overzealously changed it (and overzealously reverted it). But you also were overzealous and reverted my revert on the page for odd routes, thus removing Armenia, Kosovo and Moldova - which have odd routes and aren't listed ([1]after your first revert) - from the key (after your second revert). Can we put my all-country key back in there please? I don't believe any country with E roads is lacking an odd route, so my key is the correct one.

To add insult to injury caused by your utter rejection of my willingly putting in hard work in the interests of accuracy, you've decided to, on your sandbox for Class-B (which surely could have been done as proofreading, rather than implying that not only was my original work in making the page, but also my afternoon spent checking and updating it and making it conform to your formatting system, needs a fundamental overhaul for not being good enough) decided to oversystematise and alter the key from the the one that is on the page itself to your key from the even page (which would have been more work for you to do). FYI: off the top of my head the countries lacking class-B routes are Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the UK.

*just as the key for OS maps of northern Scotland have motorways on them, and OS maps for High Peak have an explaination of the symbols surrounding the High Water Mark, a standardised key is normal. This is one of the reasons why I didn't notice that the keys were different until you pointed it out this evening.

Si404 (talk) 22:56, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

What I do in my own User sandboxes is entirely my own business: that is what User sandboxes are for. I've never looked at anyone else's -- and it would in any case be especially inappropriate when the contents are (as most must inevitably be) "works in progress". That is how things work here, in the Wikipedia, and in every other wiki I contribute to.

It was clearly a mistake on my part to copy the contents of any of my User sandboxes to the public wiki before the whole project (which I estimated might take up to three weeks) was finished. I only did so because you were confusing matters by editing my User pages (not an expressly forbidden action, but one I've never come across before).

Let me finish my work (which I can assure you I have spent far more than an afternoon on -- although this is not an "I work harder than you do" contest), and then you can revert all three pages, wholly or in part, as you wish!

PS -- It's not a good idea for any editors to "make points" in the edit summaries (that's not what they're for, and I'm sorry for having succumbed to temptation on a few occasions myself). Let's keep the discussion on our Talk pages or, even better, let's -- all of us -- make far more use of the currently vastly underexploited article discussion pages!

-- Viator (talk) 11:03, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for correcting a couple of your mistakes at the User Sandbox phase - it's easier to proof read little bits phase than the whole lot in one go, and so spotting an error when looking over the changes you had made, when you had made them, seemed a way to stop the very few minor errors (eg Sankt Vith in German-speaking Belgium marked as being in Germany)

It only took me an afternoon because I spent MONTHS researching the route of and mapping out every single E Road, and therefore I can spot the things that are wrong quickly and easily. I hadn't mentioned this, because tooting my own horn is irrelevant here, as you pointed out.

As for the Sandbox page for Class B - I felt it's creation as a ignoring of my work getting the page up-to-date and conforming to your format just hours earlier. And when I looked at it and saw that it had your own, incorrect, key, rather than the one on the page itself, I saw it as an outright rejection of my work out of some petty ownership issue, that you want the pages to be yours. I merely want the pages to be correct and I'm glad you've taken the time to improve both the look and the content of the E Road pages. But I really don't think you're glad that I've taken the time to double check what you've done, in the interests of accuracy, hence why you are moaning about it. Your actions are coming across as someone wanting these pages to conform to your system and will negate anyone else's work put in to make them accurate. Si404 (talk) 14:22, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Simon, no "outright rejection" of your work was intended and I apologize for giving you that impression. It's a question of working method. My original plan had been to complete Sandbox versions of all three pages first, and then invite comments. I jumped the gun because of external edits to my User sandbox entries from 18 February. User sandboxes are not "secret" (as you put it at Talk:E Roads/B-class) but they ought to be free from external editing. Comments can even be made (and are, indeed, welcome) while the sandbox work is still in progress, but they should be placed on the relevant (User or Namespace) Talk pages.

Putting the Belgo-German border on the wrong side of Sankt Vith was indeed a stupid error on my part, but your (undisputed) correction of that mistake at 11.01 on 3 March is not of the same order as the re-ordering of the key (which appeared to have been prompted by my not changing your own use of the name "Czech Republic").

As I say, most of this "conflict" arose out of not using the Talk pages. As you know, I've had serious problems with the large-scale implementation of sweeping changes -- especially those affecting the Irish county and road authority pages -- without the discussions and approval "in committee" so mysteriously claimed by some. (Where? What committee?) I know that the SMT suppressed the Wiki Talk pages a few years ago -- but now that we've got them back, let's use them!

Meanwhile, I'm carrying on with User:Viator/Sandbox/E-roads/B-class. Of course, anyone who wants to can look at (and comment on) it -- but it's not finished until it's finished!

All the best. -- Viator (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Please note that I did not change the key on your sandboxes yesterday, but on the pages that you had put your finished work onto. The three pages should now have the correct key with the correct countries omitted (AM and BH for A-even, none for A-odd and CH, DK, FI, SE and UK for B-class). It wasn't triggered by Czechia, though I noticed that change before the reversion of your new key, but by the key for odd routes, which missed off Armenia (and as the even one did legitimately, I assumed it was the same key, having looked at the first item and saw Austria there as well and changed it too).

I'm adding some more information to the B-class page currently (a meets field - easier to begin with class B for this as the highest number is 8, whereas a route like E40 would have 30 or 40), and will probably add more (distance figures) at a later date. We need to work out a way of getting changes from the parallel pages merged together so that no one's work is omitted, because no one wants that. Si404 (talk) 17:34, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

As an aside, I'd value your input on [2] E751 in Trieste. There are some signs with the number southbound from the E61 to the border (Slovenia fully signs the route to the border as part of E751), but I'm not entirely convinced that it warrants inclusion as an unofficial signed extension (of which there are several, though this the only one in a different country) as this seems to be mostly Italian sign quirks. Si404 (talk) 17:45, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

GAAA I lost my edits, as my PC decided to reset without me having saved them - Chrome's normally good at dealing with, but alas not this time. As such it's only minor ones today.Si404 (talk) 17:58, 4 March 2017 (UTC)