User talk:Madness Divine

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-- New user message (talk) 22:03, 23 November 2021 (EST)

A/An Grammar Edits

Hello. I have a question regarding your grammar edits to some articles. In the Narukami and Commando articles, for instance, you replace "a" with "an" where the displayed text it precedes would normally require an "a". I'm curious if I am mistaken or you did mass edits searching for "a XL" and it caught wiki-text (not displayed) by mistake. Those are the only two articles I reviewed, there may be more.--Cache (talk) 13:28, 22 December 2021 (EST)

Sorry for the Blackjack revert

Hiya, just wanted to say sorry for accidentally rolling back your edit on the Blackjack. This keeps happening when I check the Recent Changes on my cellphone, I just hit the "rollback" button while scrolling and half of the time don't even realize I did it. Had nothing to do with your work on the article. I was going to revert it again to your version, but saw you'd already done it. Keep going! :) Frabby (talk) 14:07, 28 December 2021 (EST)

No problem. My clumsy fingers would do the same thing. Madness Divine (talk) 11:46, 29 December 2021 (EST)

Did it again, sorry! You probably saw what was going on. Frabby (talk) 08:38, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

A bit too much back pain to think of it last night. It occurred to me this morning. Sorry if I seemed curt. Madness Divine (talk) 09:59, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Impertinent comentary on an Admins edits

MD, I don't appreciate you reverting my edit on A Place as not an improvement, your comment comes across as Impertinent and borderline disrespectful. You have been doing very good work thus far, don't spoil it by annoying the people in charge.--Dmon (talk) 20:07, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Four minor points

Hiya, I saw a few things in your edits that I wanted to raise with you:

• The preferred spelling for "aerospace fighter", as far as I recall the old BattleCorps style guide, was all lowercase and in any case no CamelCase/capital "S".
• And in the Phoenix (novel) article, the Mad Jumpin Jacks are actually spelled/named thus, without the apostrophe. Seems to be a strange mix of english words with German punctuation, but still. (It's an original, German-only novel.)
• In the same article, you removed the hyphen from co-founder. But according to my admittedly shallow research, co-founder is actually the correct spelling, or at least permissible.
• Finally, I don’t think it is appropriate to correct citations from the back covers of books or other products. They’re citations, after all, and arguably shouldn’t be edited. May just be me though.

:) Frabby (talk) 02:18, 6 February 2022 (EST)

Hey mad one, thanks for your reply. Point of order, post discussion points to the user talk page, not the user page. People get pinged by the system when new their talk pages are edited (like you presumably were for this text), not so for user pages which are used for and by users to write stuff about themselves. Editing another userpage (as opposed to their talk page) is generally considered a no-go on wikis. No harm done though, I've moved your reply to my talk page. Another advice is that most of the time, when a discussion emerges on a given user’s (or article's) talk page even with several participants, the discussion stays where it is so that it remains readable. As such, you could have replied right here on your talk page. I wouldn’t get a ping then, but would have checked your talk page for a reply occasionally. If you add to a talk page discussion, make sure to indent your text one step further than the previous poster, by prefixing one more colon (:).

On the subject matter of how to spell AeroSpace Fighter, I was very surprised to read that on our style guide - we originally decided to follow the BC style guide so I don't know where thst came from. I'll have to look into matters here abd see what the current "correct" firm is supposed to be. Busy right now with rl stuff right now so it will be a day or two. Frabby (talk) 04:49, 6 February 2022 (EST)

Oops. I thought I was writing on your User Talk page. The hazards of several days of insomnia. Madness Divine (talk) 12:52, 6 February 2022 (EST)

Regarding "aerospace fighter": In the latest Total Warfare, it is not capitalized. When capitalized in a title, the "s" is not capitalized.

The urge to make a cynical comment about the odds some other recent products having the old CamelCase form... I've left off trying to make it match the MOS. Madness Divine (talk) 02:52, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Not all hyphens are evil

Hi, just wanted to inform you that I rolled back your edits regarding Bone-Norman. Because, well, that’s the proper name of this system. Not a grammar or style issue. :) Frabby (talk) 00:40, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Its wiki page has a hyphen, recent CGL products have a hyphen, it's 0346 local time and I'm not bothering to go through products and make a case for when it was changed. Thanks for the heads-up, though. Madness Divine (talk) 02:49, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Welcome and Hello

Hey Madness, I'm BobTheZombie, and I noticed you just passed me in edits after only a few months, which is pretty awesome (and I'm kinda jealous lol). I've been out of the game for a bit, but lemme know if you wanna team up on any proofreading projects, I'm always hankering for some editing ;) -BobTheZombie (talk) 10:36, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Hi Bob. I'm mostly focussing on misspellings and similar things that catch my eye because they don't take a lot of attention. Some of the stuff I've slapped a cleanup template are wince inducing because it looks like they've been run through Google Translate before posting; I would appreciate it if you'd have a go at some of those. I'm stealing some moments between bridge hands right now. Madness Divine (talk) 13:48, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Darn, I'm also trying to squeeze out small edits here at work... I'll have to save the longer edits for home, and I'll have varying free time for that. I'll try to work more on that stuff tho. Do you have any pages or lists in particular, or just the ole { { cleanup } } tag? -BobTheZombie (talk) 17:25, 15 February 2022 (EST)

I've been through so many I can't think of a single one. I had to go about half a dozen pages of my contributions (@500 per) to find the last one I did, on 1 February. You check out Pserratv's work; I'm pretty sure English isn't their first language but they're incredibly productive. Madness Divine (talk) 17:41, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Yeah Pserratv is not a native speaker of English, he is spanish. But he knows his english is not always top notch and takes corrections with good grace. He is another one of our powerhouse editors.--Dmon (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Casual Edit Award

I can't believe I am the first to hand you one of these. I know we haven't spoken before, but I see you at it every day, and I just wanted you to know your efforts at "cleanup" are noted and appreciated!
Talvin (talk) 14:15, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Thank you. Madness Divine (talk) 14:48, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade

Hello again! You added the cleanup tag to Technical Readout: 3050 Upgrade with "needs quote from back cover rewritten". We discussed this over in the Discord server, and Revanche has clarified that we do not change those: they are direct quotes. Is there some reason that one in particular needs attention? Unless it deviates from the actual text, it should be left alone. Talvin (talk) 20:34, 1 March 2022 (EST)

It differs markedly from the actual text. The 2007 and 2009 editions of Upgrade both begin with "Over two hundred and fifty years ago", just like the original and Revised; the CGL store blurb matches the print editions. I was in a hurry so I slapped on the cleanup tag and moved on.

This isn't the first "direct quote" I've run across that was inaccurate but they're usually reasonably close. I'll paste in the CGL store text and check it. Guess I should have checked the store first. Madness Divine (talk) 21:09, 1 March 2022 (EST)

Ah! I see. I am passing this on to others in the Discord so they can keep an eye out for any where the text does not match. Though, I must raise the question of "Different printing?" I know that different editions and printings of books sometimes have different cover texts. Talvin (talk) 21:18, 1 March 2022 (EST)

In this case, 2007 and 2009 (2nd Printing) are PDF editions but lack the Upgrades rather than Upgrade in the quoted text. The 2007 doesn't have the usual Version x.x or back cover appearing immediately after the front that seem to be the usual signs of PDF releases rather than scans.

I have noticed that some of the CCG cards' pages use different titles than what appears on the card in the image on the page. I expect if I looked closely I'd run across more minor inaccuracies; I only noticed the TRO because I'm trying to check actual quotes before correcting misspellings/less common spellings. Madness Divine (talk) 21:29, 1 March 2022 (EST)

Award

I am granting you a for the quite frankly insane amount of work you have been doing on the wiki recently. I have also taken the liberty of installing an awards board on your user page that includes your other awards (Ok you have not quite hit 25k but you are so close that you will do so within the week I reckon). --Dmon (talk) 05:02, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Thank you. Madness Divine (talk) 05:03, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Citation Abbreviations

Just to be consistent with your work when I create new stuff, the standard for these will be p. / pp. for pages, and ch. for chapters? Thanks in advance.HF22 (talk) 22:25, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for asking. Standard is p. for single page, pp. for multiple pages (even when there's a comma); with the ch. for chapter I'm following another editor's example. I try to use endashes for sequential pages but no problem if you find it's not worth the extra keystrokes; it's one of formatting things maybe one person in thousands even knows about. Madness Divine (talk) 22:32, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks - I'll proceed on that basis. HF22 (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

To follow up about the ch. thing, I can confirm ch. is the current standard. It is a fairly new thing due to ebooks becoming more and more common. The page numbers in ebooks are often variable so we have had to make a shift to chapters. Still LOTS of older fiction references using p. though.--Dmon (talk) 07:37, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

-

OK, you keep replacing one dash with another dash. My keyboard has one dash between the 0 and =: - , and this one — if I double it in the RTF text editor, but if I do it here I get --. You have put forth, it seems to me, a lot of effort into replacing one kind with another--and I will confess I am a bit concerned that you replaced ref name=HOKp63-64 with HOKp63p64 because if I have to go back and work with those pages I am going to do what I always do and find that my references are broken. So, may I ask why this is so important, and can we reach some understanding about leaving certain ones alone? Reference names are not even very visible to the reader, they exist for us as editors to work with. --Talvin (talk) 20:36, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Sorry. My bad - the mental equivalent of feature creep.

Good point on the reference names. I ran into a problem in the past with some showing up in text searches for words but I haven't seen it in a while; mainly I was trying to bring some consistency in naming because Aspergers. I'll leave them alone in future; I'll go back through my recent contributions and see what I need to repair. Is it okay to combine identical references if two copies of one are in the same article or could that cause problems? And is it okay to continue converting strings like <ref name=TEST></ref> into <ref name=TEST />?

The dashes. I'm replacing hyphens with endashes (ALT-0150) or emdashes (ALT-0151) where appropriate but I confess I only work with Firefox and Word. I can easily replace them with &#ndash; and &#mdash; if that will work better for others. Madness Divine (talk) 21:10, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

I honestly was just puzzled by the dash replacements, not bothered. It looks no different to me unless I peer closely at it, but you seemed very intent on it, so I assumed there was some reason you found important. However, in ref names, I am the only person actively working to update from Historical: Operation Klondike at the moment, and redesigning my ref names in the middle of that could be a real problem. If you feel like you need to change <ref name=HOKp20-21>''Historical: Operation Klondike'', pp. 20-21</ref> to have a different dash in the actual citation, I am just going to shrug. If you change the ref name to HOKp20p21 I am going to find an obstacle in my path, and as you are one of the very few people around here with a faster output than mine when on a roll, that's a significant issue. :D So far you only did it in the Sea Fox page that I know of.

As for <ref name=TEST></ref> into <ref name=TEST />? To my understanding, that is already accepted best practice. I try to do that in my work as I go, but if I miss one, please feel free to correct it. The only difference I see being that I don't put a space after the TEST, but I guess that is a matter of personal style.

--Talvin (talk) 21:19, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the laid-back reaction. I'm going back through today's contributions and fixing the ref names where I changed hyphens or colons. I don't think I did any before today.

The space before a slash closing a shared citation is just more visible to me; I know it makes no difference to the wiki code. Madness Divine (talk) 21:28, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

All good. I am a different flavor of neurodivergent (arguably more than one) myself, with ADHD at a minimum, so I get it. I am also still new enough to this (and with enough of the ADHD anxiety) to go, "Oh crap, is there some great significance to which dash I use and nobody told me?" Glad that's not the case. I went ahead and fixed the reference names in History of Clan Sea Fox to my original format. As for Book Publishers? That, do note, I was just grabbing the references from other articles. There is no standard in there, and it probably does need one.

I am almost done with Eden, and then on to Dagda, and then a few odds and sods and I can hopefully close out Update Needed for Historical: Operation Klondike. At least, until somebody finds another article that should have that added. It's a slog, but nowhere as messy as the Steiner books.--Talvin (talk) 21:35, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Related note: I have been updating from some of the novels as well as H:OK. I fear I have been spelling out "Chapter" rather than putting "ch." I will change that going forward and try to catch any that I already did as well. If you see any, fire at will, no complaints.--Talvin (talk) 16:54, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

Done with Operation KLONDIKE

Hey! Just wanted to let you know that I am done with Operation KLONDIKE. If you are willing, feel free to tweak stuff, it won't interfere with anything I am doing. Not sure what I will turn to next. Thanks for all you do!--Talvin (talk) 12:16, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the heads-up and the acknowledgement. Right back at you on the thanks. Madness Divine (talk) 12:47, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Assistance with empty notes sections

Hey Madness Divine, I would like to enlist your assistance in cleaning up something. Going back a few years it was common to copy/paste an entire "help template" to start an article. This means that a lot of older articles have empty sections, specifically notes sections being the worst culprit (see Amaris Regulars for an example). I feel that an article only needs a notes section if there is relevant "out of universe" information like errors or retcons and the like. You hit a lot more articles than I do so would you please help me start removing these empty notes section?--Dmon (talk) 22:43, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

I'll keep an eye out. I do a lot of item-specific searches, which is why I go through so many. Madness Divine (talk) 22:46, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

I imagine there are far too many instances of the word notes a searchable thing anyway. But if you can keep an eye out I would like to think that between us we can at least reduce the number of empty ones! --Dmon (talk) 22:53, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

I did a quick check for "notes references" and showed a bit over 1000 hits. It won't show all of them but it's a good place to start. I'll put it on my "brain isn't working well today, so do mindless stuff" list. Madness Divine (talk) 22:57, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

Madness Divine: as you may have noticed, I have started taking a stab at this myself. It's an all-you-can-eat Buffet, plenty for everyone. ;) I am going through the "Stub" category as a lot of those have that section sitting empty. You use a different search method, I believe, so we should complement each other's methods nicely.--Talvin (talk) 09:36, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

And I have a third method, I hit the random page button and look at what turns up!--Dmon (talk) 09:40, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

Once I got through the numbered part of Stub (1st Whatever Fusiliers, etc.), it dried up fast, so I switched over to Category:Mercenary Commands. Going to slowly go through the different subcategories of Category:Military Commands, that's where a lot of them are. Also removing any empty or functionally-empty Rules sections as I go.--Talvin (talk) 11:59, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

Have at it, folks. I'm happy to have one less shiny thing to be distracted by. Madness Divine (talk) 12:27, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

Redundant

Just noticed the "redundant" note on Mitchell Loris. I think Dmon is trying to get rid of all the titles and positions boxes in favor of something else, might want to ask him.--Talvin (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2022 (EDT)

I think he's the one who's been removing all the lede life dates that are already in the infoboxes, which have been left behind. Madness Divine (talk) 20:11, 14 May 2022 (EDT)

Aff to both of those things being redundant, the lede life dates stem from way, way back before we had a character infobox and the Titles and Positions boxes where my first attempt at a standard format for the titles. The code is pretty fragile and breaks easily so I changed over to what would become Category:Titles and Positions.--Dmon (talk) 20:58, 14 May 2022 (EDT)

Empty Sections and Commenting

Hello Madness Divine. I thought I would share the following (hopefully helpful) tip. (If you are already familiar with this, then my advance apologies for the redunancy.) When removing a standard section that is empty, one option is commenting or "remming" it out. One advantage of commenting, in comparison to deleting, is that if new information appears that would inhabit that section, then uncommenting it is easier than re-entering the section header. This is definitely a matter of taste in many cases, though for standard sections that are empty (but which may make a return) this can be a helpful tactic to know. Of course, for things being banished to the ether never to return, deletion, preceded by drawing and quartering, works quite well.

The code for commenting out is as follows

<!--Commented out due to lack of information

==References==

<references/>

-->

Happy Trails --Dude RB (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. There didn't seem to be any point retaining References sections on product articles, considering how rarely they're used. Madness Divine (talk) 21:31, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

It is definitely a matter of taste and personal judgement, and I have no fault to find. It just occurred to me to share as I see that you are a quest to vanquish empty sections (which is a valiant quest). Have a great day. --Dude RB (talk) 21:40, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Help with Google-Fu

Hey MD: you appear to be the Search-Master on this Wiki. I am trying to embark on a project to identify and move all the Files that have & in the name, because that character breaks things: the images won't show up on pages, I think this is an issue from one of the MediaWiki updates. Problem: & is not accepted as a Search term by MediaWiki, and Google is failing me. Do you have any insights into a workaround? I hate to think I will have to go through the File space "by hand" and find these, but it's the only option I am seeing. One example of a broken file: File:SLDFBattleMech DivisionTO&E.jpg The only constant in the broader issue is the &, however. --Talvin (talk) 11:06, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

I wish I could help. I thought search engines like Google strip out punctuation entirely until I was testing things just now. I did a couple of quick searches for "Art & Fiction" and "Art and Fiction" on Sarna and got different results, and I have noticed in the past that searches for numbers work with text but not without it. Same result with Google just now, but Google often omits some Sarna results and doesn't update very often.

I think it might be a broader issue with punctuation in filenames and targets - redirects to target sections with punctuation marks in them only go to the article. Design Quirks is a nightmare for that. One of the old hands like Dmon might know what's going on.

I wish there were magic in my searching abilities. It would be nice not wasting time searching through all results of a string to find just the hyphenated/unhyphenated or the ed/ing/s suffix of similar words. Madness Divine (talk) 12:51, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Classic BattleTech Universe booklet editions

Hiya, I just noted this 6 January addition of yours to the Classic BattleTech Universe article: "At least one edition of the 2005 standalone FanPro product used the same logo as the Classic BattleTech Boxed Set." Can you cite a source? Is it possible that you're mixing this up with another edition of the universe booklet, like this one: Introduction to BattleTech? Frabby (talk) 09:57, 7 June 2022 (EDT)