User talk:Davide

I appreciate all of the time and effort
David:

I appreciate all of the time and effort you are making on the Wiki. Since your email is not accessible I am approaching you through this media. I have heard form some of the coummunity and they feel the colors you have chosen for the Italy portal are a bit too loud and they have asked us to revert them back. I would prefer to do that with your knowledge and approval. Could you please contact me at [mailto:greenejr@familysearch.org greenejr@familysearch.org]?

Thanks

Jim Greene


 * Ok, back to the original colors I was trying to get Italian flag colors but failed, Jim. I prefer to be contacted thru my user discussion page (which is why I have selected the Preferences&gt;E-mail&gt;E-mail me when my user talk page is changed) to enable any communication, I have with this project. I am watching a fair number of pages and do not want to receive emails otherwise. But if you want to talk thru skype that can be arranged. davide 22:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks David, I will let everyone know that this is your preferred method of communication. Thanks for changing the colors back. There is nothing like a change in color on a web page to make people feel uncomfortbale:)

Jimgreene 14:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Jim, I appreciate that. But shock was not the intent!, Thank you davide 23:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Please do not
Dear Davide:

Thank you for all you contributions to the Wiki. I am a Slavic Consultant at the Family History Library and also Wiki moderator. I will appreciate your future genealogical contributions to the Slavic Wiki pages however, would you please refrain from changing the format of the Slavic pages, such as moving the columns and moving the bullets. Also, please do not categorize letter-writing guides under word lists, to name just a few.

Thank you.

Sylvie Pysnak pysnaks@familysearch.org


 * Sylvie, Ok I will not touch the slavic pages, (can you please tell me which ones they are ? ) As for categorization, I am afraid I can not ignore those pages in slavic as it is categorization! Which is part of the wiki concept. davide 23:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

very pleased
Davide:

I was very pleased when you added the category (Word Lists) to the Wales Language and Languages page. You can change anything and everything for any of the British Isles, Pacific Island or Asian pages. I welcome your ideas and efforts. That is the core concept of a wiki and the whole Web 2.0 revolution. You are making contributions that I either don't have the time or know how for and with more people like you this will be the greatest genealogy site on the web. I would especially appreciate some help improving the Wales Beginners Corner.

Darris 18:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Darris, I appreciate the words and as it is on wikipedia expect everything to be edited merciless :) ,Thank you davide 23:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Also very pleased
Thanks David for all of the work you are doing and for seeing holes that need to be plugged and plugging them. A speciall thanks for creating my user page, I can't believe that I didn't have it there already with my email address. Jimgreene 16:45, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you davide 22:07, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for puuting the icon on my page, you are awesome! I had it on my to do list for the week, and now it is done!!! Thanks Jimgreene 16:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Deleted Pages
David, care to explain why you are resurrecting the DELETED pages? Every one of them were deleted and NOT wanted.

PS, don't try to edit my user page, either.

dsammy 20:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have not resurrected any deleted pages? The only thing I did recently was I visited the Special:DoubleRedirects page and corrected the double redirects? No pages were created eg: no create or this page does not exist page dialog came up. Is this what you mean? For your userpage I only added that you were a Moderator for this wiki (which you removed and then replaced yourself) and linked to the Worldgenweb - Advisory Board Members page(which you removed but mentioned on Talk:USGenWeb page that you were), I apolgise for editing your user page, I only wanted to improve the wiki, so please do not make it sound like I did something wrong. I would appreciate it if you please do not comunicate with me anymore, I will try not to cross your path, as you come across as very angry and territorial (which I don't believe you are) I believe that both of us just want to improve this wiki. davide 00:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Format of tables
I notice you have removed the format details of several tables.

The cellspacing="0" is necessary to avoid the hideous-looking "thick" grid lines which are no longer acceptable by most people as "good style".

The style="margin: 1em auto;" is needed to centre the table (this particular style seems to work with all browsers).

The style=width="xx%" is necessary to allow table to have a sensible width but not spread too far across large size wide-screens.

I belive that presentation style is just as important as content. bromaelor 09:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Hold Off editing until further notice - read why
David,

You need to stop editing for a while. The servers hosting the Wiki is undergoing repairs, including program repairs right now. You need to start reading the User Group discussion and minutes to keep yourself up to date. The NewFamilySearch is on same server and has program problems while moving to new servers and more new servers are causing problems that have not been resolved yet. The message came down from the Operations yesterday afternoon. You are not the only one, so are many others who have been told to hold off until all clear. Even I have to hit "Save Page" button twice to save any changes and this apply to this your discussion page. dsammy 08:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Editing
No problems! I think the updates to the system are now over so keep on editing!

A couple of points:

The texts such as   appear to have been generated by some internal bug in the wiki in the past. Even if they were deleted they reappeared on the next Save!!!. As they are no longer appearing, I assume the techies at LDS have sorted this one out and it's now safe to delete any legacies.

Similary those strange  . I've no idea what they were for and they no longer appear so I assume these have been sorted out as well and can be deleted?

You've also correctly deleted loads of useless mark-ups like  ...   which keep popping up on various pages. These appear to have come from the 'auto import' process and serve no purpose!

Some knowledge of XHTML is an advantage when creating or editing pages. I say that as an IT teacher of (too) many years!!! It is possible to edit on fswiki using their graphic editor but it does allow lots of bad coding to appear! Most peaople don't realise that when they press the Enter key this can lead to a    mark-up being inserted or when the press the space-bar twice a &amp;nbsp; is inserted! But in graphics mode the editor cannot always see this!!! Switching to Wikitext mode will show up errors like:

 == Follow these steps to & nbsp; edit an article == 

(and that example is taken from a help page!!!!).

If you want to read up on advanced editing you need to look at Wikipedia's help pages, such as:


 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Advanced_editing
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table

but be aware that fswiki and wikipedia are not 100% compatible and have a few subtle differences!

In general, if you can avoid using XHTML on wiki pages then try to do so. Only use it when absolutely necessary.

Uploading images is a bit of a sore point at the moment! It used to be easy, but a few weeks ago they changes the rules and made it hard work! Now all image uploads have to be sent for "checking" before they appear (I assume this is to avoid copyright infringements?). So I've given up on adding images to pages :-(

A good way of formatting a table would be something of the form:

 {| width="x%" border="1" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em auto;" 

but you could also add:

 cellpadding="4" 

if you wanted more white space around the text within each cell.

Remember that you don't always have to set the width to 100%. This can be an irritation when the table just contains small amounts of data but is forced to stretch to fit the full screen:

but

You can of course leave the width out and let the system decide, but this can result in tables being too narrow!

The best solution is 'trial-and-error'. Keep using the Show preview button and see what it looks like?

Let me know if you need any help! I tend to edit only the Wales sections of the fswiki!


 * Thanks for great advice and reading list!...davide 15:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)