User talk:Jdowland

Please don’t redirect from the article on you and your own user page. The first one can be edited by anyone and must be factual, the second one is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. Have fun! Ducon 11:03, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * Ok agreed - fixed. Jdowland 11:29, 25 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * and you can do whatever you want with it.  Actually, that doesn't seem to be true.    Ryan W 00:18, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

10 sectors megawad
As you might have seen, I’m flooding the wiki with screenshots of Plutonia. I tried a little to play 10 sectors at HTNR and it might be doable for me. Can you prepare the 32 articles about it like the others megawad ones? Thanks. There’s no hurry, I didn’t even begin to play 10 sectors seriously. Ducon 18:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I’m at map18 in 10sectors, I take photographs like a slacky tourist. Ducon 19:03, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not getting back in touch with you yet. -- Jdowland 13:53, 14 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Sysop
Per your request, you now have sysop rights. You're not expected to perform any particular duties, just not to go nuts ;-) - Fredrik 17:57, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re-organising deep water and invisible floor trick pages.
Done. I think we should list these methods on the trick list below their type. Should we include a section about compatibility on the layout of the tricks? It would be a good idea to include a screenshot with remarks of the editor view, too. CarlosHoyos 21:23, 2 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Anon talk page footer
Excellent! I don't know why that was suddenly bothering me, but thank you. Ryan W 20:29, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Reformatted footnotes in speedrun style pages
Hm, that's a good idea! Do you think the corresponding tables in individual map/episode articles (which are outdated anyway, but I'll get to that) should link to these pages, or have their own lists? The second way requires us to maintain multiple sets of footnotes in parallel, but the first way would result in some mighty awkward numbering (unless there's a way around that in the template). Ryan W 00:26, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it might be good to create some similar Ref/Note templates, with some different properties. E.g. for that page, if we know that all the notes are going to be in sequential order, we could make the template use hash-list markup. Also, in the case where there are multiple references to one note (e.g. '1' on that page) the '^' link goes only to the first one, so, there's room for improvement :)


 * I've seen people post baccalaureate theses to the web, e.g., in which one chapter appears on each page, and footnotes are given in the form "^ Bridgeman 225-228", where the "^" links to a common bibliography on its own page. (To return to the text, the reader just hits their "back" button, which I imagine a good 98 percent of them do reflexively on these pages already.)  How would that suit us, do you think?    Ryan W 05:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

As for linking the map/episode articles in, I'm not sure what the best approach would be here, but I'm in favour of a solution which has the data only defined in one place, if such a solution exists. -- 82.39.115.248 12:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I think I know one way. We create a template that takes four variables as input: an IWAD, level number, style, and field.  The code in the template then acts as a (rather long) "case" statement would in C, and returns one variable.  E.g. it says to itself, if IWAD=doom, LEVEL=11, STYLE=tyson, field=DATE then the text returned is "2003-01-02".  When Adam Hegyi makes an update, we change the raw data once in the template, and the tables in the map and style articles (and wherever else) update themselves automatically.


 * I'm not saying I know exactly how to do this right now &mdash; I'll have to let the MediaWiki help pages incubate. ;>     Also, it wouldn't auto-update the total number of records a person holds (if we ever actually write articles about those people) without an even more clever search template to "call" it, and it doesn't apply to new demos of previously unrecorded maps or to the non-categorized demos in articles like E1M1: Hangar.  But it's an idea.


 * Heck, with generous use of carriage returns, this might even make updates slightly easier. Fewer | pipes | to | count.     Ryan W 03:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: I tried to set this up, but apparently failed because a number of help files at MediaWiki are almost entirely about unimplemented features. (????!!?) So, if you don't mind, could you delete the five new templates I just made? :Z :Z      Ryan W 05:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Sorry I haven't been around a great deal in the last few weeks. -- Jdowland 15:07, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Wouldn't want to inflate that counter on Entryway!  :>


 * In my defense, I will say that despite the warning label at the top of the MediaWiki help pages, that should have worked. The help pages themselves are only on MediaWiki 1.5.6.  For some reason, the same code was being interpreted differently here than it was there (viewing one of their templates directly usually gave a blank page, for example), and I still don't understand why.    Ryan W 03:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Further addendum: I got it working! :D   Believe it or not, the information about the UV speed record in E1M1 is actually pulled from a table automatically.


 * Transferring *all* the data is a BFJ, where the J stands for "job", and I will get to it as soon as I have more time.   Ryan W 15:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Status bar face hysteresis
Um... wait a minute. The whole point of my revision was that the phenomenon is *not* confined to grinning, but can happen almost anywhere (it was prompted by something I saw in a COMPET-N demo this morning; I really should have written down which one). If you're at 79% health, get hit from the left by a bullet which brings you down to 73% health, then immediately grab a medikit so you're at 98% health, the "looking left" face still has a bloody nose until he's done looking left, at which point he catches up and reverts to the healthy face. Does that make sense? Ryan W 10:58, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah ok I get it. I wasn't sure that grinning was the only animation which was relevant: however I thought the more generic phrasing was misleaidng (which sprite? the status bar faces are graphics lumps rather than sprite lumps for example). But I hit enter before explaining myself in the edit summary properly. -- Jdowland 14:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * the status bar faces are graphics lumps rather than sprite lumps for example   <--- whoops!  I know better than that.


 * Anyway, if you haven't changed it again by the time I decide whether or not to move those STF* tables from Status bar to Status bar face, I'll have a go at it myself.    Ryan W 16:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Template:Todo
On Wikipedia, there are somewhat restrictive guidelines for the usage of these lists. Do you intend these guidelines to apply here also?

The small population of this wiki makes lively back-and-forth discussion difficult even in the absence of such "content filtering". Without the guidelines, however, these lists will just be someone's opinion in bulleted form. I know I could add such a list to 50% of our technical articles. Ryan W 18:42, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I haven't thought of any guidelines at all. I just saw it in one place on WP, thought it looked good, so added it here to play with. I had in mind trying to construct a TODO for articles I, so as to give a list of things to cover before de-stubbing, but it still needs fiddling with to be usable, so I'm a long way from thinking of policy. -- Jdowland 18:49, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Gibs

 * Sorry, that was an accident. I don't know how that happened:( Danny Lilithborne 23:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)


 * don't worry about it - Thanks for your work on the wiki :) -- Jdowland 11:33, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Doom RPG cheat codes
The objection, I imagine, was that it's not a cheat code, any more than -devparm is a cheat code.

Admittedly, there doesn't seem to be a better place for it yet. Ryan W 13:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome
Hi, just wanting to say thanks for welcoming me to the wiki. I'm glad you're interested in my DK conversion, that spurs me on to release it! I made a couple of maps for DK too once (I'm an editor through and through), but barely any of them would be worth installing the game for.

I'll drop you a note here when I get around to releasing it. (Stubbsy 22:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC))

MAP02: The Terraformer
Believe me, if I had an infinite amount of free time, that article would have been written already, since it's a commercial release. (Wouldn't even have to post or watch any LMPs, since they can't be made. ;>

Incidentally, I'm not sure that talk pages should be deleted just because they're orphaned. Sometimes it's useful to have a record of what was discussed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Ryan W 17:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, if they're useful, I'll not delete them -- but it would be useful to keep tabs on them somehow. I'm going to stick those ones in a common category. -- Jdowland 17:16, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

an IP you banned a while ago
hi, I havn't been here in a while. but when I was last here I found vandal using IP 67.34.103.184 to spam the wiki with crap. I've noticed that this IP is one that I use, and it looks like it's been used by multiple people, some of whom, made good contributions. so I was wondering if you could unblock the IP or at least make it a "soft Block" (I think that's what it is) so that people who get accounts can use it (I don't worry though, vandals usually don't come back after the first block, and this looked like someone was just bored...). anyways, thanks. cchristian


 * I've just done an experiment with blocking my own IP. It prevented me from making anon edits but I could log in and post this message fine. So I think this is already a soft-block. -- Jdowland 11:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

categorization of editors
I guess I was anxious over nothing, as usual. :>  I'll reorganize those categories when I have time, unless someone else does it first. Ryan W 00:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the following categories are analogous to the one you just deleted, so they should also be deleted:

Category:Macintosh exe editors Category:DOS WAD convertors Category:Macintosh WAD convertors Category:DOS WAD editors Category:Macintosh WAD editors Category:Unix WAD editors Category:Windows WAD editors Category:DOS scripting utilities Category:DOS reject map builders Category:DOS node builders Category:Macintosh node builders Category:Unix node builders Category:Windows node builders Category:DOS miscellaneous Editors Category:Unix miscellaneous editors Category:Windows miscellaneous editors Category:Windows lmp editors Category:DOS level editors Category:Java level editors Category:Macintosh level editors Category:OS/2 level editors Category:Unix level editors Category:Windows level editors Ryan W 05:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Template:Cn
Uh... how is this different from Template:Fact? Ryan W 11:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It isn't. -- Jdowland 20:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Sooo, I've redirected it. I'd also like to say that I REALLY HATE THIS TEMPLATE, and I ABHOR SEEING IT IN ANY ARTICLE as it is EXTREMELY UGLY and REALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. ahem. Bloodshedder 22:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The first three characteristics make it a useful template, at least on wikipedia, because they encourage people to get rid of it by fixing the omission. If it is "counterproductive" here, I think it is only so because this wiki is so new: most of our major contributors have been involved in the Doom community for a long time and carry bibliographies around in their heads, and established sites like doom2.net and classicdoom.com are still available in case a newbie reader wants a "real source".  Eventually, most of those contributors and sites will disappear due to general internet entropy, and our articles will have to stand on their own.    Ryan W 23:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it makes errors in an article glaringly evident, which can make the article look worse than it did without it. But on WP at least, I think it's better to sprinkle or  around a bad article than to just delete big chunks of it. I should add that I think there are very, very few circumstances on this wiki where they are appropriate. -- Jdowland 09:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * All right, my anger has subsided, so I can speak a little more freely now. It bugs me a lot how this template is thrown around in Wikipedia, when in the time it takes to add it to an article, the person could have done a simple Google search and verified the statement as true or not and added a citation; at least, these are the cases of its use that tick me off the most. It also seems to me that people often add it after statements they simply disagree with, but have a high likelihood of being true anyway.


 * Since other situations that may not be so clear-cut, I can understand why it is added once or twice in an article or section. However, I really hate seeing it placed after every other sentence in three consecutive paragraphs: it's a lot nicer if people just use the tag that adds the blue box that says that the article or section doesn't cite sources. The tag itself is also quite ugly because it eats up a lot of space; if there was a way to make it look like [?] and a click makes it say [citation needed], or a tooltip, or something, it wouldn't look quite so ugly.


 * Regardless, I understand both of your lines of reasoning, but would like to say that with sites like Archive.org, nothing on the Internet really has to disappear. But if all those sites like doom2.net do disappear, who's to say the Doom Wiki won't? Bloodshedder 11:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with both of you that there are not a lot of places here where is really necessary.  I try to use it only when we are describing events that occurred far away from any public forum (so Google has limited effect), and I think it should also be used for NPOV reasons in unusually controversial situations.  If I, or someone else, uses it carelessly or argumentatively as you describe, well, that's why all the other editors are here.  :>   The "blue box" templates, IMHO, are not as meaningful here as they are on wikipedia, because in many cases 80-99 percent of the article can be verified by anyone with a copy of Doom and a good editor; it is better to point out the specific sentence/paragraph at issue.


 * if there was a way to make it look like . . .  I'm pretty sure you can do that.  See, for instance, the expanding/collapsing templates here.  Tool tips might have to be implemented in the MediaWiki: space, which is harder, but presumably possible (you'd have to figure out how to prevent them from being wiped out in the next upgrade).


 * Archive.org seems to be mentioned often in these discussions (on wikipedia at least), but I must point out that it is only a single site, not yet widely imitated. If there were only one large library in my entire country, which had obtained all of its holdings without permission, I would try not to assume that it would stay open forever.  Although archive.org seems to have been around a while, I am old enough to remember what happened to www.lyrics.ch and Patrick G. Kenny.  In the meantime, it might become subscription-based when its government funding dries up.


 * But if all those sites like doom2.net do disappear, who's to say the Doom Wiki won't?  Well, sure, there's no way to know that.  I just think that Wikia's sheer size, and steady increase in paid staff, speak well for its life expectancy in a way that may not be true for any of these other sites' hosts (maybe even Doomworld, although that one at least has multiple maintainers).  More importantly, I suppose, history shows us that there can be trouble when one designs something and doesn't make contingency plans for its becoming very successful.


 * Ryan W 22:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)