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The Kindness Campaign

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This user is a member of the Kindness Campaign

Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better the quality of life at the Wikipedia through Kindness and Recognition of Users. It is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. All too often we get too wrapped up in our own tasks to recognize the hard work and determination of others. This WikiProject aims to correct that injustice, even if only a little bit, by making a conscious effort to acknowledge exceptional effort, skill, and commitment. It is motivated by the belief that a little kindness goes a long way, and in the end results in a better Wikipedia experience for everybody.

Remembering Brian Boulton

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[Message text copied here from User talk:Brianboulton#Remembering Brian:]
Dear colleagues,
I wanted to create something by which those of us who have had the pleasure of working with him could commemorate our friend Brian Boulton, who died peacefully on 9 December 2019. Although userboxes are often used for frivolous purposes, it occurred to me that it would be meaningful simply to display the following userbox on our user pages:

This Wikipedian remembers
Brian Boulton.

To add this userbox to your page, just apply: {{User:Pdebee/UBX/Remembers}}
With kind regards;
Patrick. Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!)

Remembering Sarah (SlimVirgin)

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[Message text copied here from User talk:SlimVirgin#Remembering Sarah:]
Dear colleagues,
I created a generic userbox to commemorate our absent Wikifriends, and I keep a copy for Sarah at my user page:

This Wikipedian remembers
SlimVirgin.

To add this userbox to your user page, just copy/paste:
{{User:Pdebee/UBX/RemembersAbsentFriend|SlimVirgin}}
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!)

AI improving images

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Hey Patrick, we now have a very useful tool to improve old images that we want to use on Wikipedia: AI. To give you an example, I just used AI to improve the image on this page: File:James_and_Bernie_Loster.jpg. I seem to recall that I have helped you with some images where the original image wasn't very good and I could only improve it so much, well now we can improve them much more. Robman94 (talk) 19:23, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rob,
Wow! That looks very effective! When you have the time, please kindly send me a quick cheat-sheet on how you do it, and I will experiment. I don't have any pix to process at the moment, but it will prove useful when I do. Thank you so much for thinking of letting me know! Hope you are keeping well? All is well here.
With kind regards for now;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 09:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a professional version of Copilot at work, so I used that. I tried the public version at https://www.copilot.com but the faces got blurred out when I uploaded it. The trick with AI is to talk to it just like you would another person, so all I did was something like "can you enhance the attached photo please?" and then attach the pic. Robman94 (talk) 00:53, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again Rob,
That's amazing; like something out of science-fiction! Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction, and for your time and always helpful assistance. I will experiment with my next photo and let you know. Until then, please keep well and many thanks once again.
With kind regards for now;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 13:56, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox

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Help Desk
There is one Wikipedian looking for help. (refresh)

Great idea making a userbox out of {{Wikipedians looking for help}}. I noticed it doesn't have a border around it, perhaps you weren't sure how to avoid having another border on the inside, around the text? If you want an outside border, like most userboxes have, so it goes around the whole thing including the image, You can transfer the inner border to the outer |border-c = #a2a9b1 and |border-s = 1px to the userbox, and then adding border:none to the |style= param in the inner template call. You might have to play with other CSS box model properties in the style param, like margin, padding, or font-size to get it looking just right; lmk if you need help with any of that.

Note one more thing: see how the box jams up against the nearby text? That's because of a lack of CSS margin, and currently, there is no way to adjust that using a {{userbox}} param (although you could enclose the whole thing in a <div> and do it that way, kind of an inelegant solution, though.) I just made a proposal at Template talk:Userbox#Edit request: new arg 'bodymargin' to change Module:Userbox which builds userboxes, to fix that in the Module code, and you are welcome to follow that discussion or chime in. If that proposal is accepted, then you could adjust the userbox above by adding |bodymargin=0 8px 0 0 to add some separation between the box and the text wrapped around it, but that won't do anything now until it is. Mathglot (talk) 06:20, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again, Mathglot ;
Thank you so much for making these improvements! You were right: I didn't know how to remove the inner border, and am most grateful to you for applying your technical know-how to re-design the userbox to its now classic appearance. I have now updated the userbox at the gallery, to incorporate your code changes; thank you!
Thank you also for taking the initiative of requesting the new 'bodymargin' argument be considered as an enhancement to the userbox module. I shall follow that discussion with interest.
Very many thanks once again for all your helpful contributions!
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 09:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again, Mathglot ;
Please may I take you up on your earlier offer above ("lmk if you need help with any of that."), hoping I would not be imposing on your time and kindness?
Now that I have added our new userbox to the Userbox gallery, one can see that ours is slightly bigger than the one above it (also shown here, on the right). Is there any way ours could be made the same size, please? If/when you have the time, feel free to update the main version, directly at User:Pdebee/UBX/WLFH. Very many thanks!
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 02:55, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I have now also added your original template, centered at the very top of my user page, where it looks very nice too!

Hi, Pdebee. I played around a little, creating User:Pdebee/UBX/WLFH/sandbox and adjusting it a little, but it didn't work. The problem lies somewhere in the fact that your box is constructed differently, being a box within a box with the inner border stripped, I think, resulting in slightly different Table Html. Here's what the Html looks like for {{User help desk}}}} and the new sandbox one right under it, as two Html tables:
I thought it might have been the padding in the sandboxed one, so I tried setting that to 0, but it didn't o it. Another approach should be taken, which might involve adding different (new) styles to Template:Wikipedians looking for help/styles.css, then passing a class into {{Wikipedians looking for help}} via a new |class= param that picks up those styles, to match those used by {{User help desk}}, but I don't have the time to investigate that right now. But you should feel free to play around in User:Pdebee/UBX/WLFH/sandbox, and/or Template:Wikipedians looking for help/sandbox to see if you can get them to match up. (Don't worry, as long as you are in sandboxes, you can't break anything.) Test cases are in Template:Wikipedians looking for help/testcases, and you might have to create a new test case, to test whatever changes you make to the sandbox. If you think you found a solution in the template sandbox, lmk and I can move it to live. Mathglot (talk) 04:06, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fix ping. Mathglot (talk) 04:08, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Mathglot,
Thank you very much for your prompt actions above, and for taking a closer look at this. I apologise for causing you to be distracted by this seemingly cosmetic glitch, but the underlying cause seems to be so complex that I am sure we can live with a slightly bigger userbox for now; after all, it does serve its purpose. As an editor, I am very comfortable with Wikitext and with using Wikipedia templates but, unlike you, I am not familiar with—let alone an expert in—HTML/CSS programming. When I have the time, in the near future, I will follow you advice and try to match up the two lumps of code that you so thoughtfully prepared for me, and I will contact you again with the outcome of that effort. Until then, please keep well and many thanks once again for all your great help during the last few days; it has been a very fruitful series of exchanges for me, and I certainly enjoyed communicating with you. More later, then.
With kind regards for now;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 20:50, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

November music

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story · music · places

Today I have three biographies on the main page, in memory, miss a fourth one, nominated a fifth, that means little time for other matters. My places now include La Scala, - see music, Verdi three times, and twice in my story! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Look, today's image, - she "portrayed" herself with her husband at the end of the table, - would have been good for Thanksgiving ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:22, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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