User talk:Beetstra

Welcome to my talk page. Please leave me a note by starting a new subject here and please don't forget to sign your post You may want to have a look at the subjects in the header of this talkpage before starting a new subject. The question you may have may already have been answered there Dirk Beetstra

Wikipedia ads file info – show another – #256

I am the main operator of User:COIBot. If you feel that your name is wrongly on the COI reports list because of an unfortunate overlap between your username and a certain link or text, please ask for whitelisting by starting a new subject on my talkpage. For a better answer please include some specific 'diffs' of your edits (you can copy the link from the report page). If you want a quicker response, make your case at WT:WPSPAM or WP:COIN. COIBot - Talk to COIBot - listings - Link reports - User reports - Page reports

Responding I will respond to talk messages where they started, trying to keep discussions in one place (you may want to watch this page for some time after adding a question). Otherwise I will clearly state where the discussion will be moved/copied to. Though, with the large number of pages I am watching, it may be wise to contact me here as well if you need a swift response. If I forget to answer, poke me. I preserve the right not to answer to non-civil remarks, or subjects which are covered in this talk-header. ON EXTERNAL LINK REMOVAL There are several discussions about my link removal here, and in my archives. If you want to contact me about my view of this policy, please read and understand WP:NOT, WP:EL, WP:SPAM and WP:A, and read the discussions on my talkpage or in my archives first. My view in a nutshell: External links are not meant to tunnel people away from the wikipedia. Hence, I will remove external links on pages where I think they do not add to the page (per WP:NOT#REPOSITORY and WP:EL), or when they are added in a way that wikipedia defines as spam (understand that wikipedia defines spam as: '... wide-scale external link spamming ...', even if the link is appropriate; also read this). This may mean that I remove links, while similar links are already there or which are there already for a long time. Still, the question is not whether your link should be there, the question may be whether those other links should be there (again, see the wording of the policies and guidelines). Please consider the alternatives before re-adding the link: If the link contains information, use the information to add content to the article, and use the link as a reference (content is not 'see here for more information'). Add an appropriate linkfarm (you can consider to remove other links covered there). Incorporate the information into one of the sister projects. Add the link to other mediawiki projects aimed at advertiseing (see e.g. this) If the linkspam of a certain link perseveres, I will not hesitate to report it to the wikiproject spam for blacklisting (even if the link would be appropriate for wikipedia). It may be wise to consider the alternatives before things get to that point. The answer in a nutshell Please consider if the link you want to add complies with the policies and guidelines. If you have other questions, or still have questions on my view of the external link policy, disagree with me, or think I made a mistake in removing a link you added, please poke me by starting a new subject on my talk-page. If you absolutely want an answer, you can try to poke the people at WT:EL or WT:WPSPAM on your specific case. Also, regarding link, I can be contacted on IRC, channel [1]. Reliable sources I convert inline URL's into references and convert referencing styles to a consistent format. My preferred style is the style provided by cite.php (<ref> and <references/>). When other mechanisms are mainly (but not consistently) used (e.g. {{ref}}/{{note}}/{{cite}}-templates) I will assess whether referencing would benefit from the cite.php-style. Feel free to revert these edits when I am wrong. Converting inline URLs in references may result in data being retrieved from unreliable sources. In these cases, the link may have been removed, and replaced by a {{cn}}. If you feel that the page should be used as a reference (complying with wp:rs!!), please discuss that on the talkpage of the page, or poke me by starting a new subject on my talk-page Note: I am working with some other developers on mediawiki to expand the possibilities of cite.php, our attempts can be followed here and here. If you like these features and want them enabled, please vote for these bugs. Stub/Importance/Notability/Expand/Expert I am in general against deletion, except when the page really gives misinformation, is clear spam or copyvio. Otherwise, these pages may need to be expanded or rewritten. For very short articles there are the different {{stub}} marks, which clearly state that the article is to be expanded. For articles that do not state why they are notable, I will add either {{importance}} or {{notability}}. In my view there is a distinct difference between these two templates, while articles carrying one of these templates may not be notable, the first template does say the article is probably notable enough, but the contents does not state that (yet). The latter provides a clear concern that the article is not notable, and should probably be {{prod}}ed or {{AfD}}ed. Removing importance-tags does not take away the backlog, it only hides from attention, deleting pages does not make the database smaller. If you contest the notability/importance of an article, please consider adding an {{expert-subject}} tag, or raise the subject on an appropriate wikiproject. Remember, there are many, many pages on the wikipedia, many need attention, so maybe we have to live with a backlog. Having said this, I generally delete the {{expand}}-template on sight. The template is in most cases superfluous, expansion is intrinsic to the wikipedia (for stubs, expansion is already mentioned in that template).

Warning to Vandals: This user is armed with VandalProof. Warning to Spammers: This user is armed with Spamda This user knows where IRC hides the cookies, and knows how to feed them to AntiSpamBot. Archives This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot III. Timestamped threads older than 7 days are automatically archived to the current archive Talk started 20/3/2006 1 - 7/9/2006 2 - 29/11/2006 3 - 05/02/2007 4 - 05/03/2007 5 - 15/03/2007 6 - 29/07/2007 7 - 06/11/2007 8 - 31/03/2008 9 - 22/09/2008 10 - 03/02/2009 11 - 17/05/2009 12 - 13/11/2009 13 - 27/5/2010 14 - 13/12/2010 15 - 5/7/2011 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - current 23 - 24 - 25 -

Moiramoira's intimidation, censorship , and the abuse your name

Dear Dirk, Recently Moiramoira started a campaign to delete the pages of this female artist [2] [3], [4], [5] and many more from various wikis. As you may want to check he was unsuccessful in German, Latin, Swedish, English and few more but has succeeded in his attempts in the Netherlands, Italian, and Spanish wikis. The artist, of course, has studied in Netherlands, and since she is painting nude women with horses or flying over a city had provoked the wrath of some fanatics. Moiramoira has written about you banning him here [6], which I quote:"in the past doing another cross wiki vandalism case also on wiki-en and got an official "warning" here <sigh> from a guy called Dirk Beetstra (ano was blocked indef in the end by another admin on wiki-en happily)". I am writing yo see if you can stop this man and his friends from their innuendos, intimidation, and censorship. Please note that if you go to the discussion pages of the above artist in Latin, English and other languages you will see how persistent his attacks are. Sincerely yours --Artaxerex (talk) 03:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place to promote artists etc. Notability is not something that you just gain because you paint or whatever. MoiraMoira is an admin on nl, so she (IIRC) should know the rules there, and if the article does not follow those local rules... Here other admins have reviewed the discussion about the deletion apparently, and the article was not deleted. I presume (knowing Moiramoira's great cross-wiki work!) that the artist has written the article herself on many wikis (or was at least significantly involved in that), which would be strongly discouraged everywhere, and if the article is promotional in nature, it is better to delete it cross-wiki and let it be rewritten in a neutral way (I often delete self-promotion articles without question, even if the person/company/organisation behind it is notable enough for an article). Self promotion should be stopped, that has nothing to do with intimidation, censorship. Otherwise the article can be salvaged by a thorough rewrite. If I see the intro of the English article it still feels a bit promotional, though.

Thank you very much for your reply. I totally agree with you. I am not arguing about the notability of the artist. Even if we abstract from the fact that the artist's work has been published in a number of books in North America, I hope you agree with the admin from Cymerag wiki that "there are not very many muslim women artist from Iran". But, this is not my main problem. If you follow other controversies that caused my bamishment, you will find out that I have been trying to fight the extremist from both religious fanatics, and the raceist monarchists. Unfortunately, I have not a lot of allies. I have given up to introduce an NPOV tone to Reza shah, and Mohammad Reza Shah articles. I provided many referenced books from Western sources to no availe. The structure of power here is that references do not matter. You have to have agood connection with other admins. But I do not want to rant. If wiki wants to be a promotional material for a collpsed and corrupt regime that caused the establishment of the new regime and the regression of the country to the middle ages, who am I to fight? My meat puppets, are just that, but people who fought and banished us are indepenant thinkers!. If we have tried to advocate a womman artist who for fourty years have courageously fought with her paintings, we are trying to promote her for commercial reasons!

I see that Moiramoira still feels bitten about the warning, but I stand with my decision there (and the nature of the thread I started about that warning on our administrators noticeboard showed that that was not the way forward). The two edits that she got the warning for were not what she said she did, and in my opinion the edits did not help to solve the situation (and the editor was repeatedly blocked, several times by me, all the time for the same reason; also note that Fram unblocked the user like me, and reblocked). That does still not mean that I don't think positive of her cross-wiki contributions, and her fight in reverting and removing cross-wiki spam/self-promotion and other vandalism. I am sorry she feels this way, that she felt the need to bring that discussion back and that she still feels shy here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:28, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately Moiramoira and many other admins like her do not understand what does it mean to struggle against undemocratic regimes, whose agents are very active in this forum as well (just read the discussion pages of those controversial articles

Hmm, I see you have a dislike of Moiramoira, though the article on the Dutch wikipedia was not nominated by Moiramoira, and other users from other wikis have been cleaning up behind you as well, and was deleted after discussion, and that you are using sockpuppets. If I look into the records, I am afraid there are even more accounts which feel like having the same activity. I suggest strongly that you stick to one account, otherwise a re-ban might happen quite quick. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

! Anyhow thank you very much again for your reply, and I hope you ponder couple of minutes, and do realize that intimidation and other concerns for many of us is very real! . --Artaxerex (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you would not have gone into using several accounts, but would have discussed first (as is at least on en.wikipedia widely suggested in most policies and guidelines), then this might not have escalated this way. As I said, sometimes a document is started in a way which is too promotional in tone, and it would need a huge rewrite before it became reasonably neutral and encyclopedic (and that process takes time and people who actually do it), that deletion is often a better option (starting from scratch when suitable editors have time). I suggest you start on your computer with a beginning, and when you have a neutral and proper version, that you e.g. email it to a wikiproject, or even to Moiramoira and try to discuss with her. I am sure she will be willing. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much Dirk. Unfortunately, there are not very many people like you in the world. And this is perhaps why we are seeing such a mess. I went through that controversy and I realized that perhaps Moiramoira, as you suggest, had some points in trying to stop that editor, but I am not sure of the appropriateness of her style. It appeal to me that perhaps you also did not approve of that editor's contribution, but you disliked more the 4-5 editors who were chasing that poor soul everywhere and deleting his contributions. This is really the crux of the issue, and as you put it, it was not solving the problem, "it was like purring oil on the fire". Any how with your calm and measured response you helped me to overcome my anger. I would say farewell to you with joyful heart, and wish you the best. --Artaxerex (talk) 08:03, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

Please stop deleting my links to YouTube. I own the copyrights on these videos, and they are relevant and pertain to the content. They do not violate wiki guidelines. Tomklem (talk) 06:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Youtube links are strongly discouraged, as people with slow bandwidths can't see them. And we are NOT a linkfarm, but an encyclopedia. Please stop and discuss. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I had a second look. You are showing a video of a Christmas. Although the video shows the subject, it does not tell more about the subject, it does not expand the knowledge conveyed in the article, and as such, it is not suitable as an external link as well. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

It shows moving pictures of everyone on the wikipage. Don't you think people would want to see what these people looked like, and acted like? I read the rules. Put it back.Tomklem (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism?

Will you stop calling my constructive edits to improve display and readability of the chembox entry on all browsers a vandalism? Please take a look at the responses of user FVasconcellos, Edgar181, Carl on the chem talk page before calling me a vandal. My constructive edits have been reverted, but they just reflect the practice which has been applied all the time, because otherwise the box displays as crap on e.g. Firefox 2.x and Unix browsers. But we have to produce portable text with the least common denominator of clients (also non-PC) in mind. The word vandal is a little too quick over your fingers, convince yourself of the facts. Don't allow yourself to block me. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 15:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, how many editors have been reverting you. This is not the way forward. Stop, discuss, and get to a solution. Don't push your solution. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and for your information, I have been looking around a bit through your talkpage contributions .. please remain civil or also there you would be only one remark short of a block. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

In fact two editors have been reverting me, and now you. look all over the place, the editing style with blanks, breaks, zero width blanks etc. is common and traditional. It is now just a new idea that for searchability no blanks etc may be inserted. A new fad. See the comments on the chem discussion page. And I got reverted w.o. discussion. I find this vandal yelling also not overly civil. It are good faith best efforts, and I just followed common practice. Sounds like excited discussions in the public service domain, maybe postal. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 15:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see, vult de doeskoepe meck nit en vandaal heissen, suns krecht se glijks eren kop anners ruemdreit. Greetings. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 15:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You have indeed been reverted by 2 editors (now 3, I reverted all the line wrap things), as the style changes you imply were also without discussion (you started with those edits on the 21st of Jan, and carried on after being reverted or after editors contacted you .. without consensus). As I said, we are on a drive to get the names correct, and if then editor a adds spaces in place a, and editor b in place b, we do get into trouble in the end ("a bc" != "ab c"). This problem has to be solved in a different way, and methods for solving this are FAR from exhausted.

I am sorry that you are offended by the term vandal, but continuing your edits while you have been reverted, and there is ongoing discussion if your edits are appropriate does get close to vandalism. Stop and let the discussion get to a conclusion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Here seems to be the right place to apply my full repertory of low-german and saxonian comments I have all learned under strange circumstances and in strange places. The solution to such text matching problems is to transform the search term to a canonical form by parsing before searching. iupac is not without ambiguities, and you will see that the "iupac" in the boxes is mostly pidgin-iupac or pharmacists-iupac. A transform on the level of separators, i.e. on a pure lexical level, is easy to revert while transforming to a canonical form. The problems are somewhere else, as summarized above, namely lack of unique representation on a semantic level, in particular counting the pharmacist and pidgin names and resulting hybridizations. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC) 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that is a solution, but that is not supported by wikipedia etc. We run into several problems with that if this is not first properly discussed before it is implemented. One thing is that it looks ugly when the spaces are not in the right place, secondly, it breaks the current search facilities. I am currently looking for documentation about 'strange browsers' and how we are supposed to work with that (but we can't supply solutions which break things for the majority, but solve it for 'a handful' of individuals). The best solution is, make the software render the page correctly (which may be possible using wikipedia features!).

We are working together with several official, commercial and non-commercial, organisations to get our data 'official' and conform guidelines and to 'protect' that data. Whatever on-wiki solution is implemented, we should put these into one line before implementing that. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:27, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Pooh, you should be working for Gloeifips-Research. They also search for a decade for the grand unified field theory of e.g. the hair dryer or gloeibirne, together with commitees , commercial and non-commercial organizations and standardization bodies, and meanwhile the competition has sold them out of their contracts at the customer with a perfect but non-standardized solution, and then they come out of their consensus finding phase half finished, agreed except by the sectarians and the puritan renewers (thats you in this case, with the new rule that it has been standardized w.o. spaces). And then the whole witch-sabbath starts anew, and meanwhile the milk went sour and the cow miscarried and my mother-in-law cashed in some money from the farmer for not bewitching the cattle any more. This is the dutch way since 100s of years. Trust me. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I am sorry, but a) I don't think I am alone in this (in fact, two other editors were reverting your edits), and b) things are accomplished here by consensus. You might indeed almost think Wikipedia is Dutch.

Some points:

• You seem to be in quite a unique position, but I still believe that you can read the information
• The multiple line problem in the boxes is a bigger problem for people who use a screen-reader (blind people, see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Usability/Infobox_accessibility).
• Good thing is, most of the editors here don't make money from editing wikipedia.

If you create an account you/we might be able to tweak specific settings. You can also try to change the skin on wikipedia and see if that helps solve the problem (e.g. the Simple skin might be better than the Monobook skin). I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Until of course Kuypers comes in and takes with him a few trusted types and starts a counter movement with an own university, but unfortunately, as soon as this spawned off institution has reached sufficient size, the bickering goes on in the subset etc. and everything repeats itself in a self-congruent manner over and over, as if constructing fractals. The browser I use is firefox 2.x, all firefox 2.x have that. Also browsers on unix-machines. see discussion above,on the chem page, I think you missed it. (Fvasconcellos, Edgar181, Carl) they know that for a long time. It is not exotic at all. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 17:06, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

And I wish the Dutch would find a different method, which makes money, as I am holding Gloeifips stock and lost 50% of my savings on them. Or I propose to buy me out and merge Gloeifips with Wiki as a non-profit, tax exempt and state subsidized. Cheers. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 17:10, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Question

Dirk, do you really think this was necessary? You know as well as I do that vandalism has a very specific meaning here, and stubbornness doesn't count. I agree that 70. should have stopped the first time and waited for an actual outcome to the discussion, but a) he's a regular user (and a productive one too, as strange as some of his Talk page behavior may seem) and b) this is a real problem. I myself used to break IUPAC names with <br> tags—in fact, many minor edits of mine were done solely for that purpose—and I never received a single complaint. Can we implement something directly in the template codes that would bypass this problem? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:29, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm with Dirk here. It's not as though he weren't asked, on numerous occasions, nicely!, to slow down, and discuss. If it were a bot going around doing such edits, it'd have been blocked in a heartbeat. The fact is that his comments on various talkpages are rants, not discussion. I'll need to dig for diffs, but I recall editors who simply ignored all such appeals to slow down; they were eventually blocked. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm .. he does break things, and does continue (though while 'discussing'). And I have not seen many productive edits. Moreover, he repeats in undo-ing edits of regulars (today he again reverted an edit from Wim). I am sorry, this had to stop (and he was asked a couple of times to stop), and then we have to find a proper solution. Also, some of the talkpage message border on incivility ..

There is something implemented in the chembox, and I have also given him other options. We unfortunately can't solve all problems on all browsers. And by implementing one solution (this one), another one may develop (screen readers sometimes get into trouble if you break things the wrong way). And as I explained to him above "ab c" is not the same as "a bc" and as such gives problems. I am very willing to try and implement other solutions, this was not one. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

He's been editing for a long, long time now, on several IPs, and has indeed made many productive edits in the past; he helped uncover some very complex misrepresentation of sources in several benzodiazepine articles and has recently been helping resolve a dispute on Paroxetine. I agree it had to stop; you'll have to excuse me for insisting, but I still think the warning was excessive.

I know adding spaces solves one problem and creates another (potentially worse); what about using break tags as I used to, then? I realize this only affects a minority of users, but it is still a significant problem. Imagine if a Featured article displayed like one of the screenshots posted by Carl over at WT:CHEM; to me, at least, leaving that alone would be unthinkable. One of my "pet" articles, Clindamycin, has a long IUPAC name in the Drugbox, and I've only just realized that readers using a legacy browser may see the Drugbox completely obscuring the article lead! Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:07, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem in insisting, but I was afraid that a softer warning would not help (he was asked a couple of times), and it had to stop.

The problem is there in any form, those names are long, and however we break it, we break it (sorry for the pun). But if we add tags, it can't be found using a search engine (and I find that a big problem; and that may also happen with spaces already), and however it is pushed into more lines, a screen-reader will have problems with it.

IMHO, we should consider to treat the problem as we have done with the InChI's and the SMILES (in the {tl|chembox}}): we could hide it behind a 'show' button (I wonder if it we can code it as 'if length IUPACNAME > 25 then use show button'. After all, the IUPAC name does not add much to the content (it is often an unreadable name, especially for non-chemists), but we can't omit it, and it is just functional to have it unbroken in both the source of the page, and in the generated html (which gets indexed by google). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

About the warning—again, I agree it had to stop; I'd just hate to see a good contributor gone because of such a WP:LAME point of contention.

I guess hiding IUPAC names if they exceed a certain number of characters would be acceptable. Carl suggested using "overflow: auto" in the templates, but I think that would generate a scrollbar? If so, it wouldn't be a good idea at all. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I will have a look at implementing a show button for it in the chemboxes one of these days. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

A few remarks and thoughts:

1. Spaces adjacent to separators don't harm search/indexing and don't change semantics and can be removed on a lexical level. Can you confirm that?

2. Spaces separating identifiers are essential, like in xxxacid ethyl ester.

3. Will think of a simple parser for chemical names that solves the problem.

4. Special break constructs or html meta language is any way filtered out during indexing of html. I think they treat such chars as ignore.

5. Ordinary search engines by no means use a 150 character search string for indexing but break it down into component identifiers and try them in combination, the result has every amount of false drops.

6. Chemical search engines I guess will preprocess the query into some canonical form anyway, or if not possible to find a canonical form then at least into some purified form, where print layout doesn't play a role.

7. I will think of a short algorithm that squeezes print layout out.

8. Anybody there who has a bnf desription covering iupac and all kind of pidgin iupac and pharmacist iupac?

9. Make sure with some chem search engine people that this is not a wild goose chase. With the chemical names I have seen I am rather sure it is.

10. We could use a purified duplicate of the name for search purposes, and one for display purposes. The problem of breaks is inevitable, as some iupac names exceed screen width in any case.

11. Even if ab c != a bc: a-b-c is a- b-c is a-b- c is a- b- c right? Counterexample? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.137.173.82 (talk) 02:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Personal remark for beetstra: Your resume: wow! But I got my Ing years before you were born, which gives me a huge senility factor. Cheers. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 01:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes, but are they?

2. Oh yes, but then, which spaces to remove and which to keep.

3. ?

4. That problem, yes.

5. Again, it solves that problem in a way .. and it would only go for the spaces.

6. 'I guess' ..

7. ?

8. Err .. IUPAC itself ?? As I said, we are working together with large organisations like the CAS, ChemSpider, etc. on this subject.

9. Will do. Until then, don't change them please, just leave them as is until we have discussed, and come to a consensus. As I have suggested earlier, that may still be in your favour.

10. Duplication is a solution that we discussed for InChI and SMILES. As for those, we will run into problems with that, and again, searching this string is NOT the only problem.

11. Right, but we are not talking mathematics here, we are talking string comparison.

I know you were making these edits in good faith, and it is not like you were not discussing with others while doing them. But when you were asked to slow down, and when you were asked to stop, you ignored those questions with an air of 'My solution is THE solution, stop complaining and reverting me' (and you kept on reverting others peoples reverts). Per WP:VANDALISM: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism. Even harmful edits that are not explicitly made in bad faith are not considered vandalism. For example, adding a controversial personal opinion to an article once is not vandalism; reinserting it despite multiple warnings is." ..

I am not disputing your knowledge, seniority, etc. And the critisism that you have displayed was and is certainly welcomed. This needs to be solved. But as I also said earlier, methods of solving this have not been exhausted yet, and the different solutions must be analysed. The current solution breaks (quite some) pages, your solution solves that problem, but likely/surely results in other problems. My suggestion is, hide the name behind a 'show' button, in that way it does not widen the template to unreadability (like was done with InChI and SMILES in the {{chembox}}), but can still be seen in an un-broken (but ugly displaying way) when needed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

re 11. We are talking string search, not mathematics. Yess! I am not talking about algebraic subtraction, but about the grammar of Iupac/pidgin/pharmacists iupac and the associated semantics. So I meant, for the semantics 3,7-dihydro-5,8-dimethyl-blah-blah is the same as 3,7- dihydro- 5,8-dimethyl-blah- blah, and so forth. String comparison and string transform is also mathematics. The striking point is that you can safely insert a blank after the dash and the semantic stays the same. You can also safely remove a blank after the dash, without changing semantics. Thats what I mean with AB C != A BC, but A-B- C == A- B-C == A- B- C. Where A, B, C are your choice of digitlist, methyl, hydroxy, deca, blah and blah. And where == indicates equivalence in the sense of equal semantics. A very simple lexical analyzer will be able to remove blanks from such points safely and know where to do that. So we may make up rules for safe insertion points of blanks, which don't change semantics and can be automatically removed. Your opinion? (I guess you got me wrong , I am not talking algebra and minus signs here, but know quite a bit about the mathematical attack of string comparison and string semantics from compiler construction) 70.137.173.82 (talk) 08:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The fun is:

• this

is not the same as

• this

In other words, in wikipedia, adding spaces may solve one problem (how it is displayed), it breaks immediately another thing (searchability). That maybe should not happen .. but it does. Until such time, adding spaces manually should not be done, as:

• It breaks searchability (so it solves the problem for people with old computers and other browsers, but you can't find it anymore)
• It probably breaks screen readers (so it solves the problem for people with old computers or other browsers, but now blind people will have problems 'reading' the page)

and there may be more. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:32, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I did solve it now in the {{chembox}} (waiting for the database to replicate, may take some time, until then it is not visible). I'll see how this goes, and if it does not break things, after that I probably will implement it in the drugboxes as well. I now should not break the normal visibility of a page, except when you click the show button to see the IUPAC name (but then you want to see the IUPAC name, and should care less about the rest of the display at that moment. If you click 'hide' it will revert to a properly displayed name. Hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:37, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes that aceticacid was clear to me but what if the search string contains embedded dashes, like in my example? Search for 3,5-dimethyl-blah with blanks inserted after the dash and without. Thats what I meant by safe insertion points after separator characters. The acetic acid misses the point because there the blank is a separator, but before and after other separators it is ignore. Otherwise you have a problem with your search engine. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 08:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

And I was not talking about seniority here, thats your invention. I was talking "senility factor". Cheers. Will now have a Gin on you and soon go to bed. It is 1 am here. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 09:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Searching for 'acetic-acid' or 'acetic acid' does in both cases give as a first result Acetic acid, but second and following results are different. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thats not the question. The question is if acetic-(blank)acid gives the same result as acetic-acid. (because the dash is already a separator) Please re-read what I wrote SLOWLY, and think about it I will tomorrow, my time, give you a short introduction of lexical analysis and parsing in this matter. The point is also that you may have a search preprocessing yourself in wiki, which knows where to remove blanks (namely if they are ignore), and where not (namely when they are the separator character themselves) 70.137.173.82 (talk) 11:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I thought of that while I was demonstrating. No need to lecture about parsing text, Regular expressions are far from strange for me. See User:XLinkBot, User:COIBot and [User:CheMoBot]], the first using regex, the second performing a lexical analysis/parsing text in order to compare usernames with 'what they edit', the third slowly developing into a bot designed to actually see if the data one puts in a {{chembox}} or {{drugbox}} is the same as the value, verified by members of the Chemicals and/or Pharmacology WikiProjects (and possibly later other infoboxes as well). I do now see that for the latter bot I might have to be more careful with a 'verified IUPACName' .. also that should be part of a discussion before we proceed changing them in the boxes.

Again, I put it through the test, 'acetic- acid' vs. 'acetic-acid'. Those results are almost the same, the differences start further down the list (around number 13). But we are focussing on searching (as that was the first problem I anticipated, and what does show to be a problem in the built-in wiki search engine, and it may also give strange results in User:CheMoBot), we also have to consider other problems which may occur (one of them named above). As many people have now said, adding those spaces is not the way forward, even if searching indeed is not going to be a problem. A third 'problem' that I anticipate is that having those spaces there, may induce new/unexperienced editors coming in (using Windows XP and Firefox), seeing the spaces (which, if I may, sometimes look ugly in the boxes), trying to edit out all those spaces, and seeing that their browser does not have a problem with it, pressing save, and, thinking that they do us a favour in removing them all (like you were adding them to quite some pages).

All in all, we have to agree on a solution to solve the problem for everybody, not be pushing a solution for one (group of) editor(s), and inducing problems for others, or inducing problems further down the line. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. The wiki search engine is anyway close to unusable, and needs work. I propose a chem search button, with parsing into some lexically purified form. It will not solve the problems with pidgin/pharmacist iupac, e.g. dihydro- N- phenethyl- normorphine or 3,4-methylenedioxy-aniline "or any variants or hybridizations thereof with true IUPAC notation", if you see what I mean. Ok. if you are so familiar with lexical analysis and parsing, then you were playing dumb, asking how we would find out which blanks to delete and which not. (besides I wrote the parser and code generator for the Philips synchronous simulator, translating a mixture of synchronous gate level descriptions and RTL expressions into pseudocode, also the compiler writing language and stub used in the local developments for HLL compilers, and many more. This were not mere lexers, but full compilers for high level languages, able to translate e.g. digital filters into machine code, real register transfer languages) So you need no further explanations? Thank you for the conversation, and move it ahead, the current situation even if not completely cleanly, would have been remedied by my edits, and looks totally like shite. But we are at least on the same page now. Had a monster elephant size Gin on you. More tomorrow. Then lets discuss what to do to your shit search engine and its preprocessing, and what you think about a chem search preprocessor/button. Finally I have to report that the there present dutchmen in charge during my professional life were always holding up the whole business with their consensus politics, their standardization frenzy and their regulation mania as well as their sectarianism in technical matters. Meanwhile the competition was running circles around us, and we got virtually no applause except from academia and public service and state subsidized agencies, who were used to that work style and found it normal (eg. PTT, railroad etc. Same in the foreign subsidiaries). But I tell you they were all bad cases of anal retentive bean counters. And the flowering landscapes were always just behind the next corner, as promised, namely for 30+ years. Think of it. And reconsider if we want functionality now, or the pure teachings of the std committee, with exceedingly well thought out world class functionality projected for the year 2050. Cheerio. The lexers may klei me aan moors for tonight. Committee: animal with 30 pairs of legs and no brain. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 13:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Still, the wiki engine is the one we have here. We could try the same analysis using the google engine (which is probably better developed). And still, we are only discussing the problems with the search engine. There are other problems to come over, and there may also be other solutions with the same effect ..

Building specific chemistry search buttons is a difficult one, that would require them to implement that type of things in the sourcecode of the wiki, and they are reluctant to these things. I think it is more productive to come to other solutions. Have a nice day! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

How do you like my exposure to fine north german dialects? Is that intelligible? You speak frisian and groonigsch? Thats a bit apart from low german for the most of the dialects, except as spoken in the Sylt/Husum/Buesum area maybe for the frisian and the northwest corner for the grooningsch. But not as far apart as the high languages, because its older and has not diverged so much with the latin influence. Source code: Yes, that needs work, and it is not much, namely preprocessor plug ins, which can be developed for the topic at hand, essentially as problem oriented language parsers and the like. Want to discuss that with me tomorrow? 70.137.173.82 (talk) 14:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou

Thanks for your recent reversion of the linkspam on nursing articles. Caught it way quicker than I did! Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I know where the cookies are (and he passed a threshold on one of the statistics ...). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:03, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Oops!

Thanks for this!

What a muppet.

Ben (talk) 15:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Scrollbar IUPAC

search Hyodeoxycholic acid, click IUPAC "show" and you have a horizontal scrollbar. Firefox 2.x 70.137.173.82 (talk) 14:57, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I already uttered a 'bad word' about that .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Unblocking

Thanks for helping me getting unblocked! It seems like I was really lucky, since Chris G didn't quite believe me, but Slackr unblocked me first. Anyways, thanks a lot. It feels awesome to be back in the community :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xkoalax (talk • contribs) 17:23, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Oops, forgot to sign it. --Koala (talk) 17:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It looked really strange that you were Grawp, seen older contributions, but I wanted a second opinion. Take care not to follow links from outside that encourage you to edit something in a certain way. Preview first at least. Take care, happy editing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

chem search

I believe you missed something in your search results for indole-3-acetic acid. Namely: the first 6 hits, regardless of replacement or not of dash with dash space, all lead to hits which contain indole-3-acetic acid. See highlighted result of your search. It found those in the body of the article. So it delivered these sometimes in different ranking order. But they are the same results! So I think you missed something. The wp search is pretty stable against these blanks, EXCEPT of course, if removing the blank removed a separator (like indole-3-aceticacid) Look a second time yourself. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 23:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC) 70.137.173.82 (talk) 23:55, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense, did not think about that. But now we should try it on a search where the IUPACName is very dissimilar from the common name, and where the only mention of the IUPACName is in the drugbox/chembox (and for best results, we should use the same search term, but change the IUPACName in the box; taking care of the replication lag that templates have). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Result search experiments

try

Ethyl-8-azido-5,6-dihydro-5-methyl-6-oxo-4H-imidazo-1,4-benzodiazepine-3-carboxylate

which is Ro15-4513.

This gives exactly one hit with the original iupac name and exactly the same result if you insert a space after every n,n-blah- or n-blah or blah- . 70.137.173.82 (talk) 11:25, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Besides, Violaxanthin does not find the iupac (which contains an erroneous ampersant and likely has been recently changed) regardless of spaces, probably due to recent change. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 11:32, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Could also be that the search engine does not find hidden items. The Ro15-4513 example uses drugbox and does not hide the iupac name. Ask the wiki programmers, if thats a plausible explanation. Or it could be a coherency problem with the caching or the like, due to recent change. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 14:36, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Nope, that should not be. The search engine either searches the source, which clearly contains it, or the generated html, which also contains it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed spurious ampersant from Violaxanthin. After the edit the previous horizontal scrollbar disappeared, but the iupac name is now so long, that it does not fit on the screen, when I click show. So I copied the iuapac from the source into the search, and the search engine could not find it. Strange. Take a look at Violaxanthin, its too big for the screen even with sidebars switched off. Bummer. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 15:23, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have the problem with the IUPACName, as it gets properly hyphenated, but I see the effect (to a small extend) with the SMILES on that page; I suspect that even new browsers will show the problem with certain SMILES (where there are no proper breakpoints). Bummer, indeed. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:31, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Experiment Scopolamine: Does not find the iupac name. Regardless of blanks or not. Suspect: The name contains meta-characters for print control, like "small", "nowiki" etc. The name has layout with numbers in an exponent position, but copies to something else. Search engine even unable to find scopolamine from a partial string of the iupac name. Probably searchability means that we have at least to have all flat without small, exponents etc etc. just plain ascii string. If it really searches in the wiki source, then we have to be careful that it doesn't take brackets, squarebrackets etc as meta text and skips it in search or doesn't index it or the like. So the searchability has problems. Probably, if possible at all, needs a special format for the search string and for the iupac name itself, which doesn't interfere with meta text etc. In this light neither searching the wiki text, nor searching the generated html makes overly much sense. It is just not for that, it is for text, I guess. Take a look at it. Horror: Look at Clarithromycin. The drugbox is larger than the whole display box! If not larger than the display box packed into a transport cardboard box! 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

In HTML:

<td bgcolor="#EEEEEE" style="text-align: center; vertical-align: top;" colspan="2"><span style="font-size:11px">(-)-(<i>S</i>)-3-hydroxy-2-phenyl-propionic acid (1<i>R</i>,2<i>R</i>,4<i>S</i>,7<i>S</i>,9<i>S</i>)-9-methyl-3-oxa-9-aza-tricyclo[3.3.1.0<sup>2,4</sup>]non-7-yl ester</span></td>

In Source:

(-)-(''S'')-3-hydroxy-2-phenyl-propionic acid (1''R'',2''R'',4''S'',7''S'',9''S'')-9-methyl-3-oxa-9-aza-tricyclo[3.3.1.0<sup>2,4</sup>]non-7-yl ester

• this does not find anything
• this does not find anything
• this finds it as result 3.

This is annoying. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the conjecture of meta character/meta text is correct, if you look at it. That means we have to escape to nowiki outside the iupac name and stick to plain "ascii text" for the name and escape back to wiki after that. Which gives kind of awkward iupac, which is not very well readable. So to say a machine readable and searchable version. (assuming the search engine searches the wiki text. I would guess the indexing algorithm parses the text down to identifiers and number strings. The same for the search string. I would also guess that the search engine is not overly well suited for that. Maybe we can as an experiment convert one drug box to plain ascii string. The previous examples where it worked hat no bells and whistles like that, right? Maybe it does a conversion on the rendered text as diplayed, to text format before searching, and does something unexpected? The whole search seems to be immature. Lets try the nowiki idea, and then without bells and whistles. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC) 70.137.173.82 (talk) 16:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess it works in the simple cases, where the rendered text, converted to text string, is identical with the text string he is using for indexing. If so, worth an experiment with nowiki. 70.137.173.82 (talk) 17:23, 30 January 2009 (UTC)