User talk:Andy Dingley/Archive 2011 March

Scanner

I wanted to give you advice on the images in black and white! When scanning images of this type, set the scan to greyscale, because if you put "line art" or "black" makes you all the serrated edges. Or do the scanning technology "line art " or "black and white", but double or quadruple resolution, then use a program images, convert the image to grayscale and resize it.

I have now corrected some images, you can find an example here. --A7N8X (talk) 23:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I always do scan greyscale. Sometimes (and I think that map is one), but not usually, I convert to black & white by post-processing. The problem is that some of these books (and that Autocar Handbook is practically falling apart) are on very darkened paper. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:36, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

are you sure that the settings are all manual, maybe when you go to save automatically moves the color chart on "black and white"?

if you have problems with some books, because they are too dark or dirty, you can easily scan it in color and then I'll try to correct them.--A7N8X (talk) 20:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

date of sketch

Hi Andy Dingley, you've scanned this image and wrote that the sketch was from August 8, 1810. Do you have a chance to look up if that's indeed the date or if that was a typo? The voyage of the Endymion to Rockall was on July 8, 1810. So while the author of the sketch could of course have sat down 1 month later to draw the rock, it's more likely he sketched it on site... and a Wikipedian about 2 centuries later hit the "8" key instead of the "7" key... :o) ... but who knows? Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 00:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Did I have a chance to look it up? No, I just make this crap up because I feel like it. How about believing what's written once in a while, or failing that, checking the references for yourself? How about reading Wikipedia of all things? Oh look, the date of the damned thing, and the two claimed dates for the landing are explained in some detail. Detail which I took the trouble to type in beforehand, to save having to answer accusations of carelessness like this, and people who go and edit careful image descriptions to add incorrect dates to them. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Field Marshalls

Hoi Andy, could you have a second look at this revert please?

• I don't understand why you insist on keeping Category:Diesel tractors. It's only a red link atm, and it's redundant to the already existing Category:Diesel-powered tractors. From my point of view, if such a category, the existing one should be used, even if it seems (regarding tractors) rather odd to me, because (not all, but) nearly all tractors are diesel-powered … perhaps we should also add Category:Wheeled tractors (according to Category:Wheeled vehicles, and in contrast to Category:Tracked tractors) and Category:Four-wheeled tractors (according to Category:Four-wheeled vehicles) to nearly all tractor categories then? ;-)
• Also, Field Marshalls are not necessarily always green – note the images – so keeping Category:Green tractors on this category level appears misleading.
• And, hmm, Category:Tractors in England might be ok atm, because all (currently 17) images were actually taken there afaics, not e.g. in Wales, in the Netherlands or elsewhere. But can you foresee when we will get the first Field Marshall photo not taken in England, so that the category has to be removed (as it would be wrong then)? Why not using Category:Vehicles of the United Kingdom or similar instead? (Category:Marshall, Sons & Co. vehicles is already in that category, btw.) Well, as you already know from that in vs. of discussion, I'm not in favour of such a "vehicle of country" categorisation. I prefer the less confusing and less misleading "vehicle company/manufacturer/brand by country" categorisation on a higher category level, but that is another (and probably will stay an ongoing) discussion.

Greetings --:bdk: 22:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that Diesel-powered tractors existed, and yes, one of these two is redundant. I still don't like the regular Commons practice of creating needlessly convoluted WP:NEOLOGISMs as category names. "Diesel tractors" meets WP:COMMONNAME, but I really don't care one way or the other.

As to "diesel" in the first place, the point is that tractors were petrol-engined, until perhaps the Ferguson TEF. The diesel tractors before this (Field-Marshall, Yeoman of England, Porsche and Lanz/Ursus) were rare exceptions, usually (as here) with large, slow-revving single cylinder Diesels. It's not important to identify modern tractors as diesels, it's just implicit, but for these early models it's significant.

Marshall products are green, this was their standard colour for everything. The orange Marshalls (I admit, I don't know much about these) are very rare today and were only built at the end - I'm not even sure Marshall was the same company at this time.

Category:Tractors in England ought to be Category:Tractors of England, but we don't have that. Category:Vehicles of the United Kingdom is too broad. "of" and "in" aren't the same thing at all. If we shift "vehicles of" to "manufacturer by country" (which hasn't happened) than that would at least have some rationality to it - although the likelihood on Wiki is that it will end up slavishly categorizing British-built vehicles as Fords, then all Fords as American (Wiki never sees reality as a check on anything). Andy Dingley (talk) 00:33, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

double images

You have double images (1 and 2), if you want you can ask an administrator to cancel one of your images, specify that you were wrong to charge them.--A7N8X (talk) 12:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. As you've already cleaned one of them, we should delete File:Firebox stays (Heat Engines, 1913).jpg Andy Dingley (talk) 12:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)