User talk:Colonies Chris

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This user is one of the 400 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

Unlinking dates in portals

Plerase stop doing this. In portals, the dates are linked exactly once per page. This allows people to find outher things which happened on that date. WP:UNLINKDATES. They are "germane to the subject" in this case because the dates are linked in a calendar section (usually an "On this day..." area). Also, please do not swap day and month when you're doing this per WP:ENGVAR. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 15:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Where the links may be germane to the subject I have left them linked. For example in Portal:Australia/Anniversaries/October/October 3, the year links are actually "year in Australia" links, so they possibly have some relevance. In other cases they are not germane and so I've unlinked them. For example, Portal:Criminal justice/Selected article/29 had several year links with no more relevance than they would in an article, where they would not be allowed. Another example is Portal:Malta/Selected picture/15, where the year link is not only not germane, it's just plain stupid, as the article is referring to the "early 1950s", but the link is "[[1950]]s". Another example is Portal:China/Anniversaries/January/January 6, where the year links led to articles which have no connection with China, nor with January 6. What use would it be to a reader to click on one of those links. Thety're looking at at a China portal, and those links would take them away from that subject. They are not germane, so I've unlinked them. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:33, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Nihonjoe, Chris is simply reminding us of a long-established protocol for deciding whether chronological items should be linked. The only exception—by agreement wrought through a massive RFC in 2009—is intrinsically chronological articles, like 1969 or 20th century. Tony (talk) 13:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tony1: Date pages in portals are intrinsically chronological articles (or pages). They are specifically and only about things that happened on that date. I don't know how you could be more chronological than that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:10, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

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Adding breaks to the active roster

What was the purpose of doing this? I had to mass revert all of the edits, as none of them needed it. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 06:04, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

You didn't 'have to' revert anything. My changes didn't introduce any errors that needed urgent fixing. Why not just ask me for my reasons before reverting? Since you now ask for my reasons, I'll tell you - simply because it makes better use of the limited space available in a navbox. Unless you come back with a very clear reason for objecting, I will reinstate those edits. Colonies Chris (talk) 08:08, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

I fail to see how it makes "better use" of the template, when the entire thing can fit on one line. There is a reason why this hasn't been done before, and if it has, been reverted for the same reasons. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 16:34, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

It makes better use of the horizontal width. By folding the text onto two lines, the available horizontal width is increased, so more of the many items can fit into the space. You seem to be sure there's a reason it hasn't been done before. Perhaps you'd like to share that reason with me? Colonies Chris (talk) 17:06, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Edits like this have been reverted in the past, simply for being unnecessary. "Makes better use of horizontal width" is just your personal preference, as the whole thing fits on one line for me. And this has never been an issue before, as I've maintained these navboxes for over 4 years now without any sort of edit like this. Make your case to WP:NFL and gather consensus for these first before changing again. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 15:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding me. I'll try again to explain. Of course the whole phrase 'Active roster' can fit on one line. That's not the point. The point is that if it's split over two lines, the leftmost column requires less width. This allows the rightmost column, which contains a large number of links, to be wider, and thus to occupy fewer horizontal lines. This is standard practice in many many templates where the number of links on the right far exceeds a single line, and the leftmost heading can naturally be split. For example, see {{NFL seasons}} or {{Defunct NFL stadiums}} or {{MLB All-Time rosters}} or {{Epic}}. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:19, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Editor of the Week

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your corrective editing. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Buster7 submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

Colonies Chris's positive contributions are numerous. So numerous, in fact, that acknowledgement of them is long overdue. As one example of Chris's repair work, he fixed the spelling of Shields–Watkins Field so that the piping would send the reader to a more specific article. Changing the piping at Fleming Field, which is an article specifically about that field, is another example of correcting linkage. This is what he does! His corrective editing helps readers that are searching for older stadium names by creating a redirect from older venue names to newer ones. Correcting spelling within links, fixing incorrect city links and fixing uses of the template that redirected readers to less useful destinations are all those little under-appreciated tasks that improve the readers use of the encyclopedia. Without the tireless efforts of editors like Colonies Chris the encyclopedia would be littered with dead links.

You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:

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Thanks again for your efforts! Lepricavark (talk) 21:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)