User talk:Fabartus

HI and welcome --Me! If you need a wiki question answered... post it here! // FrankB 21:04, 3 July 2013 (EST)

Significant numbers

Hi mate. Unfortunately I'm having to remove significant numbers of your edits due to them being factually incorrect. While I appreciate that you're doing this work with a good intention, it's creating a lot of "policing" work for us that we don't really have time for. I will have to ask that you keep your edits to new pages or minor corrections to existing pages, rather than actively reworking pages which are already established and checked. Windwalkr (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2013 (EST)

Hmmmm my watchlist says WTF RU talking about?

August 2013 20 
    (diff | hist) . . "Username" tag‎; 02:36 . . (-167)‎ . . ‎Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs)‎ (Rollback - The most important page content was moved across to the right hand edge, which is undesirable.)
    (diff | hist) . . "Trainz-build" tag‎; 01:59 . . (-5,562)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎ (Roll back to an older version; too many of the recent changes are factually incorrect and introduce new/confusing jargon.)
    (Deletion log); 00:13 . . Windwalkr (Talk | contribs) deleted page Category:Category:TrainzOnline editing-help pages ‎(content was: "{{Speedy-delete|Inadvertant double cat}}" (and the only contributor was "Fabartus"))
    (Deletion log); 00:12 . . Windwalkr (Talk | contribs) deleted page Template:Fund-bot ‎(content was: "{{Speedy-delete|Page created by haste, mispelled, replaced by template:FUN-bot |<b>Fra</b><font color="green">nkB</fon..." (and the only contributor was "Fabartus"))
2013 August 19
    (diff | hist) . . Template:Stub‎; 23:35 . . (+7)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎
    (diff | hist) . . Template:FUN-beg‎; 23:31 . . (-457)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎
    (diff | hist) . . Talk:TADDaemon‎; 22:51 . . (+2,540)‎ . . ‎Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs)‎
    (Protection log); 22:23 . . Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs) protected "User:Jamesmoody"‎ ‎[create=sysop] (indefinite) ‎
    (diff | hist) . . Talk:TADDaemon‎; 21:47 . . (-1,476)‎ . . ‎Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs)‎ (Blanked the page)
    (diff | hist) . . TADDaemon‎; 21:47 . . (+97)‎ . . ‎Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs)‎
    (diff | hist) . . Template:UserTip‎; 21:04 . . (+5)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎
    (diff | hist) . . Template:UserTip‎; 21:04 . . (-507)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎
    (diff | hist) . . Template:ORP-top‎; 21:02 . . (-128)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎ (get rid of the garish colours)
    (diff | hist) . . Template:ORP-beg‎; 20:59 . . (-572)‎ . . ‎Windwalkr (Talk | contribs)‎ (Get rid of the garish colours)
2013 July 30
    (diff | hist) . . [http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php?title=Trainz_build_versions&curid=638&diff=5379&oldid=5194 Trainz build versions‎]; 00:18 . . (+1,287)‎ . . ‎Jamesmoody (Talk | contribs)‎

1. I count one change to content text, the only real one I made, btw. I'm glad you spotted the Speedy-delete facility and acted appropriately. But there are a couple of others in the category. Oh, and apologies for this one, you are mostly right, it wasn't what I'd call trolling, but was poking a stick at the bear I was unhappy with that day.

That's trolling. Don't do it. Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

I think it a very short sited policy... Another philosophical difference we have, claiming copyrights privileges then cutting off customer support inside the copyright period. I still support systems I coded for as a consultant in the '80s, and the one I don't (The owner, an MIT educated native took his company and moved back to Russia), well, they were given the source code.
 • It's an ethics thing with me.

So is Forbidding people to upgrade an asset to say TRS2006 when bringing it's tech forward is alien to me, particularly when it's an asset downloaded over a million times... How does letting a old version stay on the DLS without an update help clean up DLS content?

I have no idea what you are referring to? Could you give specifics? Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

 • What motivation do you give people to upload things they've fixed for themselves—when you set up this time-expensive process full of irritations... and then want voluntary compliance when the whole just demotivates people to donate their time? Really!? How's that working out for you this past four years? I think I counted over 870 Pages of 25 items each on the DLS cleanup last month... I've seen at least thirty or forty others that are errors to CM, not listed there. Not exactly stellar progress, imho.

1. Jamesmoody appears to not realize a long table in the margin next to the text wrapping around it is nicer, but he isn't supportive of your broad brush. Formatting, piffle.

I'm sorry, but having an opinion does not make you right. Especially when the person you are arguing against is a sysop, that's pretty much a losing battle. Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

1. He appropriately fixed up legacy version stuff which he had better information about. Most of that legacy stuff, unknown parties put on the Wikibooks, in another exercise in inconsistent treatments. Had I not been sick this past month, I would have finished that reconciliation. Some of it still generates questions. Historically, you don't care. (Got that part down.)
2. In the immortal words of a presidential campaign on this side of the pond: Where's your beef? This is not the forum, you can't misrepresent, use hyperbole, gloss over, nor cover up in a Wiki.

I don't have any plans to gloss over or cover anything up. However, I also don't want this site to turn into a gossip column. Information here should be factual and relevant to the current version of the product, not emotionally charged, and not of historical value. You are very much wrong that "we can't do X because it's a wiki." You seem to be confusing Mediawiki (the software) with Wikipedia (the organisation.) Let me assure you that we do not share Wikipedia's goals or modus operandi. Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

There aren't any great list of pages where you guys have edited my errors... Could it be... since I've been very careful to make as few changes as possible, save where most needed.
In the meantime, I'll write up an inline editing template to hang for when you guys mangle the language. Speaking geek only works if all the geeks in the shop speak the same dialect of geek, and certainly doesn't translate well to English without due effort.

1. 1. This is a base slander: '(Roll back to an older version; too many of the recent changes are factually incorrect and introduce new/confusing jargon.)' and appears to be painting things with an overly broad brush. (See below, the appropriate edit would be to correct any actual error

I started off correcting errors in the page, but after 10-20 minutes of that it became evident that the whole thing was substantially flawed and would take an hour or more to correct. We don't have that kind of time free, so the only way to get the page back into a useful state was to revert your changes. Basically, you wasted your time and ours by making substantial changes to something that you didn't have a clear understanding of. That's no different from me walking onto a popular wikipedia page, completely rewriting the whole page, in a different style (not matching the existing wikipedia standards), throwing away much of the existing information on the page and replacing it with my own. I'm pretty sure that would get my edit reverted there as well. Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

, unlike your self-rep, I do make the occasional mistake. I'm willing to learn, Mate!)

I understand that, and to be quite honest it's the only reason you haven't been banned from here already because so far you've cost us a lot of time in fixing up things that you've broken. I'm not trying to shut you down, because I'd love to have more people contributing to the wiki- in the long run that will hopefully make the site more useful and lower our own maintenance costs- but what I would appreciate is if you toned down the extent of your efforts until you've got a clear understanding of how things work here. Learn first, THEN make the sweeping edits, rather than doing it the other way around. Windwalkr (talk) 10:17, 21 August 2013 (EST)

1. 1. This as I wrote it copies terminology you yourself used on the forum, 'Code build version' and has a lead that is comprehensible to the target audience -- nine to twelve year olds. (I trust you'll agree a computer savvy kid is more or less equal with a technophobic retired railway conductor, or truck driver? Both age groups and education levels are trying to fix errors.)
   2. You can't just say "This is advanced material AND put it on the web. You can be dictator to people working for you, but when things get out in public, those things are used to judge you and your staff.
       • Put that terse form in a manual if you must such as TRS2006's .pdf CCG manual, but don't let your wishes blind the reality--these pages are visible to anyone... and need be written to be comprehensible or they give a bad impression of N3V Games and TRAINZ. NOT career protecting actions.
       • Lead material has to be introductory or no one is going to read the page... in which case, why write it?)  • You have a digital page limit... none at all.  • You have a TOC navigation by link... reference materials can be well down in the article and still be easy to find.  • You personally really need to come to grips with the fact the big draw for this software is free content. Not your runtime and GUI software. You know the thing which raised my eyebrows from you Chris--was the forum discussion a month back where you said N3V wasn't currently tracking performance issues, and the TS12 threads complain about little else.
2. Returning on topic to Trainz-build tag and my version...
   1. It links to information related to the topic. Config.txt files are after all at one and the same time, source code, ini files and I trust you'll agree the Tag is assigned a value. (NOT ALLOCATED, the existence of the tag name is the 'allocation') Hence your reversion 'recreates the offending English' that gave impulse enough to overcome my vow to change as little as possible (a momentum!) so impulse and momentum, I fixed one important centerpiece page so it's comprehensible.
      Be advised, that page is also linked repeatedly in citations external to the site, so will likely be the most visited page on the whole wiki. Misusing language isn't recommended.
   2. section Trainz build versions is wholly accurate, and like the TrainzBaseSpec page has redlinks to pages yet to be written. ContentManager.exe for example will be written as a {{FUN-top}} article as I've 'allocated it' in my head--not the odd overly technical way you apparently are happy with here, which has obvious shortcomings to and for a new user. In fact, I doubt 95% of the forum users can relate to all you think you are saying there. If I do anything at all there, in will need balanced with Content Manager, which is ill designed and like many of the pages herein, makes me embarrassed for you all. ... I certainly doubt scattering the treatment to all those redlinked pages is wise, though using them as redirect pages to section headings of the chapter organized help page is likely a way forward.
      IMHO, You guys are too close to the topics, think too many things are obvious, assume the reader knows more than you should. I've seen that syndrome over and over again in 30+ years in engineering--bright people communicating badly--and not realizing it. That's one advantage a big company has over the small, more eyes and minds to proofread and catch issues. I've spent half my career inside big defense contractors, where just the department had 30-40 engineers. A good small group has advantages, but the collective brain and viewpoints of the many in a design or document review is one of the 'True Aces' held by a big department. That's also why Wiki's should work, lot's of contributors, but then you never really encouraged that with all your 'this is not a democracy' arguments.
      Further, I've seen an awful lot of brainy college professors and grad students do exactly that style of writing, make those mistakes on the en.wikipedia... writing for a general audience, even a specialized one (The set of Trainz version owners) with a general education level takes a certain skill of stepping aside and checking what you are assuming, then making sure the audience can follow.
   3. Further: One does not allocate a numbering system, one designs it, perhaps assigns a value to an allocated place. As far as 'new jargon'... writing about the overuse of the word version on the Wikipedia and the wikibook—I must have spent over an hour trying to make that concise and sensible to readers totally unfamiliar with Trainz, and the encyclopedia 'text version', trust me, gets hopped on right away by other editors if there is something unclear. The complaint I got there was for/in being 'too technical' so I beg to differ, for this is a derivative of that wording. I don't doubt the explanation might have needed more polish...
      but unlike a lot of your pages, it at least told the story about a rather important tag.
3. The worst part I see, is a very uneven treatment of how things are referred to:
   1. What does 'top-level' tag or top-level container mean on a page? (such means nothing without a reference. You guys likely talk shop about the data structures, not realizing you are assuming context. It took a while for me to figure out it was code words that meant mandatory in KIND XYZ on one hand, and most times just meant KIND TrainzBaseSpec on the other.)
      In short, it's always ambiguous unless referenced... I think I changed a few to read 'top-level config.txt file entry' which at least anchors the phrase, leaving "level" to be confusing still.
   2. The Parent-Child sections many pages, mainly KIND structures makes some sense only if they connect and tell the tale of overall organization. Tag class, container class articles have NEITHER... yet if you implemented the scheme fully, Child sections would and should have a list of links to dependent tags and containers pages. Container pages would link back under the Parents section to the articles covering the KINDs which need them. The hierarchy and it's linked relationships then tell the story, at least will if each such link has a phrase or three explaining the relevance of the link (see a disabig page on Wikipedia, or one of the YEAR pages like 1492 or 1941. Things brief, to the point, and on topic, giving context+understanding.
       • As implemented currently, most Parent and Child sections are wasted space, and wholly useless.
   3. At that point the only thing needed is ensuring each page has an appropriate introductory explanation and
   4. I'd incorporate sub-page examples (i.e. local templates--any page in the wiki can serve as a template page) with a collapse/expand click box. Link other sub-pages making up a complete example set of various key types.
       • These structures should be a full linked definition page set for an asset, something of each major kind (selected from Trainz 1.0 updated into compliance):
       • Big Boy, F-locos, Log Wagon, B&N freight, PRR boxcars (all interactive from T'04)
       • Another set of scenery examples: a basic building, an industry, tree, ..., etc. and so on through each user class. Examples N3V's debugged, and other people can use to see the interaction of defining elements.
       • Incorporate partial config.txt files like that and support with a screenshot showing other source files in the ..\editing\usernamespec sub-directory to present the whole picture. Nothing like an image to communicate well across all education levels and backgrounds.

In any event, if you want to collaborate, you'll need to actually edit, not revert. If you want to antagonize, I really don't need the time sink. I'm certainly not going to do anything much more without parserfunctions. I've already too many things to back track over and recheck as I wrote to James Moody here // FrankB 09:38, 21 August 2013 (EST)

ProToolz Pages

Please do not reformat them. They are reproductions of the HTML tutorial pages originally made to go with 3dtrains track laying tools, and their UNALTERED redistribution was part of the agreement between ME and 3DTRAINS as a condition of my securing permission to re-release them.

For what it's worth, they aren't meant to be part of the wiki per se, but rather are stand alone pages meant to be viewed within Surveyor to guide a user on how to properly use the tool.

There is a "parent" introduction page at http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/3D_Trains_ProToolz - but the individual pages must remain as they are.Template:Unsigned

That's why I posted you Ted, not my 'patrol' so to speak. I saw your lead page, 3D_Trains_ProToolz, but it is deficient in not explaining what the heck they are. Why one would want to use them, and where you can get them. The company (www.3DTrains.com) comes up as dead links, from google I can infer they were written originally for MSTS and somehow they've been added to the DLS... none of that is explained, nor is your agreement.

If you are referring to resizing the images, I misdoubt that is a violation of any agreement. And verbatim copies would be a copyright violation N3V should and will likely jump on you about.

The pages need links back and forth, and text introducing their purpose. Me I'd increase the PIC size, so people can actually see what is going on. I'd do them full width with caption under or above or both as makes sense to the information flow. You already have them in a table, you're half-the-way there. // FrankB 01:59, 21 August 2013 (EST)