User talk:Reams

...But only when Deso dies, right? User:Nebagram 30/7/7 9:05pm

Your message

You mentioned x, / and *. Fixing these automatically is a good idea. Don't forget changing - to − as well. It would also be nice to clean up the placement of spaces in the numbers solutions – a space either side of an operator and no space just inside a bracket seems to be the best scheme. And what should we do with nested brackets? (()) or [()]? Obviously we should avoid unnecessary brackets, except possibly where they would benefit people who don't understand operator precedence rules.

IMO we certainly should apply the same notation to conundrums as to other rounds – incorrect solutions lowercased and with the ☓. It puzzled me for a moment to find an eight-letter 'solution' with no notation to indicate that it was wrong. -- Smjg 16:43, 18 September 2007 (BST)

Talk page damage by Dumper

Your bot has been completely replacing the contents of talk pages with its own comments. I've fixed Talk:Episode 4358; I think we need to get working on finding and fixing the others. -- Smjg 13:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Graham Nash

Did I somehow break this page? Mglovesfun 22:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

List of Countdown champions

I didn't know that this page duplicated the Series page, if you'd like to delete it go ahead. Mglovesfun 14:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Before I continue

It would take me weeks to do all the duplicate contestant names, but I will do it if nobody does it before me. However thinking of articles such as John Davies, John Clarke and Clive Freedman, maybe they should keep the same name, and the disambiguation page should be John Clarke (disambiguation) as obviously all the searches looking for John Clarke are going to be the Series champion, not the one who won a couples of games in Series 49. Mglovesfun 16:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

For Clarke and Freedman I just added a second page because it was quicker to change the internal links that way (cf Special:Whatlinkshere/Clive Freedman), that would be a lot of links to change by hand. If you want to modify these things, you're of course free to, it was simply a matter of not changing 60 internal links. Mglovesfun 19:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

WTF?

What is this? Mglovesfun 00:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Ola Odutola

I'll get round to doing this one at some point, seen as there are only two games. My question is this, what are the odds that there really are two Ola Odutolas who've appeared on Countdown separately. I doubt it myself. Mglovesfun 01:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

They're all done, the ones that need to be sorted for links are:

• Andrew Wilson
• Christine Hunt
• Clive Freedman
• David Reid
• John Clarke
• John Hunt

For Freedman, I named the page Clive Freedman (Series 6), noting that only one of his appearances was in Series 6, the rest in Series 7 or later. I'll leave you to make a decision on that one. I could change the links manually but if you can do it quickish, I'd prefer that. Mglovesfun 13:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Scratch that I think I've done them all now, apart from Ola Odutola and James Squires which we think are don't need to be changed anyway. But it's up to you. Mglovesfun 18:32, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Main Page

I was thinking you could put the main page in the Category:Countdown for neatness. Mglovesfun 17:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Richard Brittain

Are these edits genuine or not? Mglovesfun 21:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Guest photos

That's pretty darned good. Meanwhile, I'm afraid I've drawn a blank on William Davies - I can't find anybody of that name who seems a likely guest. Could this perhaps be a misspelling of the journalist William Davis? Jturner 23:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

On a similar theme, I've corrected the spelling of Liz Frazer to Liz Fraser. This means that Category:Episodes with Liz Frazer as a guest is now empty and can be deleted if you like. -Jturner 11:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Updates

The wiki's not been update for a while now, in terms of Dumper uploading individual games and players. Will you have any time over Easter to do it, I know you're quite busy. Mglovesfun 15:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm as you're aware I don't really watch everyday so in that sense I'm not the best person to do it, but anyone can read a recap and I usually watch if I'm in, which is three days a week, so yes I think I'd like to, although you're probably going to need more than one volunteer. Mglovesfun 09:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Episodes presented by Richard Whiteley

Not really important, I'm just wondering this category has shot up the leaderboard so quickly, any ideas? Mglovesfun 16:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Seed table

Thanks for centering it. The "center" control is much easier to use than a random number of spaces.  :) Is there a way of hiding a line? It would be easier to leave the asterisked footnote in, but hidden, when it doesn't apply, rather than retype it on each occasion that it does? Drawoh 11:21, 31 March 2008 (BST)

Main page

It might be more appropriate to link to Series 58, rather than Series 57, from the main page. Drawoh 11:21, 31 March 2008 (BST)

Disambiguation questions

Does moving an existing page, eg "Richard Wilson" to "Richard Wilson (guest)" take all its links with it, or would links have to be individually searched for and adjusted? Does one have to have privileges to do a move? If no, how does one do it? If yes, can you arrange for three moves to cope with recent guests with duplicate names: "Richard Wilson" to "Richard Wilson (guest)" "Ian Scott" to "Ian Scott (Series 41)" "Barry Smith" to "Barry Smith (Series 35)" Drawoh 17:29, 31 March 2008 (BST)

Thanks for the response. These three shouldn't prove too difficult as there are unlikely to be too many references. Heaven forbid we get a contestant called Richard Whitely or Susie Dent. Regarding admin - I won't abuse it. Drawoh 20:02, 31 March 2008 (BST)

Rounds to check

Thanks for the info. I'd found the format, but not the value of the parameter. Obvious really once you'd told me.  :) Drawoh 18:47, 12 April 2008 (BST)

Hols

Since I only work part-time :) I'm taking three trips to France before the end of next month, so won't be around 17-21 April, 29 April - 10 May and 24-27 May. Any bits of updates here that I usually do, and don't get done while I'm away, I'll pick up when I get back each time. Drawoh 19:43, 12 April 2008 (BST)

TTT clues

I take your point about these clues being the least interesting part of a recap, so I'll not mark any more if that's all that's missing. I'll simply add the clues if I've got access to them. Of those I marked yesterday, however, I've gone through about half so far, and each recap had a lot more things to correct. Drawoh 19:18, 13 April 2008 (BST)

I've now cleared every recap that I'd marked, and as a result the percentage meter is now showing a higher value than it was before I'd marked them - gradually approaching the magic 50% figure. Incidentally, every one of the recaps needed something other than trivial changes, even yours, amazingly; you had an error in the final numbers round. Your recap is also wrong at the forum, but now we're a forum rather than a group, you can correct it without anyone knowing. :) Drawoh 20:53, 14 April 2008 (BST)

News/FAs

I've done as you suggested and reversed the order of the news. As for FA's, I've recently added a photo to the Chris Wills page, as well as some info the Julian Fell and Chris Cummins pages. Mglovesfun 19:28, 14 April 2008 (BST)

Oh by the way I've found it. Mglovesfun 19:28, 14 April 2008 (BST)

Nine letter word

With your permission I'd like all the niner / nine letter word links to redirect towards letters game, as I don't really see any point in that article. In fact I'm going to do it now, and we can always change it back if you disagree. Mglovesfun 10:57, 18 April 2008 (BST)

Championship of Champions XI

All episodes have now been added and checked, my next project is to check the recaps from Series 50 although that's going to be a pretty huge project. Mglovesfun 12:44, 23 April 2008 (BST)

Oh and I promoted it to a FA now we have all the round details. Maybe the first of May would be a convient date to change the article on the Main Page, if so, what do you prefer? Mglovesfun 13:15, 23 April 2008 (BST)

Re: Next FA

Yep suits me I'll start writing the article this week. Mglovesfun 15:29, 23 April 2008 (BST)

Episode category keys

While looking at the Draws category earlier today, I noticed that a lot of the earlier episodes have category keys which are simply their 1, or 2, or 3-digit episode numbers, rather then being given leading zeros to pad them to four digits. This means that in the Category:Episodes with Gyles Brandreth as a guest, to take just one example of many, episode 151 is listed under heading 0, whereas episode 102 is listed under heading 1. Many other listings of episodes which includes ones prior to episode 1000 also have this anomaly. What is needed is for all episodes up to 999 to be checked and their category keys changed to four digits. This sounds a bit like a job for a programme. If that's not possible, I'm happy to trawl through the episodes, and change them as necessary, but don't want to waste my time if it's easy to produce such a programme to do it automatically. Drawoh 23:35, 25 April 2008 (BST)

Another example, but very slightly different, is in "Category:14-round scores over 100". Here, one episode is listed under heading 1, and the other six under heading E. A trawl would resolve this inconsistency too. Drawoh 23:46, 25 April 2008 (BST)

I've noticed how you've edited three of the episodes, and all seems very sensible. If an automated routine is not possible, and they have to be done manually, I'm happy to help out with a batch. Seems very straightforward. Just let me know. Drawoh 09:19, 27 April 2008 (BST)

Image:GOTD mark nyman.jpg

I tried to delete this image to upload a better one in its place, but it just restored the same image which is odd. The current image is of low quality and there's a much nicer one on U.K. Gameshows. So don't be alarmed when I try and delete the image again, it if doesn't work I'll contact you again. Mglovesfun 10:31, 26 April 2008 (BST)

Seed table

Glad to see you'd updated the seed table. I didn't get my usual 10min break at around 4:30 to do it today. Can't do any more for two weeks as I'm in France from tomorrow. Drawoh 17:59, 28 April 2008 (BST)

Countdownwiki

I was just thinking about a Wikipedia style self-referencing article about the Countdownwiki. Is it worth it or not? I dunno. Mglovesfun 20:18, 7 May 2008 (BST)

Du or du

Anton is known as du on the main Wiki, so he's du on this one too. Most links show du, though a few, including his own personal website show Du. Probably best have a redirect from Du. drawoh 16:27, 8 September 2008 (BST)

What "main Wiki"? -- Smjg 01:37, 17 September 2008 (BST)

This one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_du_Beke drawoh 01:49, 17 September 2008 (BST)

COC13 contestants' recaps

Well done Charlie. Having done all of Doddy's and the first of Richard Priest's I was taking a few days' break before resuming after Christmas. Won't be so many to do now.  :) drawoh 11:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

RR to be added to R-Numbers template

We need to have the ability to add RR solutions to recaps from the start of COC13. So rr= and rrsol= lines need to be added to the template. I've had a look around, but couldn't easily find where they should go. drawoh 11:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I've done it. -- Smjg 20:46, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Stuart. Works brilliantly! I'd found the page to edit, but the content didn't seem relevant. Never thought to press edit and see that a whole lot more is displayed. Thanks again. drawoh 21:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Fusing pages histories

Sorry for cluttering up the recent chnages with crap, but I'm pretty much a dead cert to pass as an administrator on the French Wiktionary, so I'm getting a bit of practice in. I'm trying to work out how to fuse the histories of User:Mglovesfun/Test1 and User:Mglovesfun/Test2 and then I can pretty much do everything I need to. I could do with learning IPA, that's all! Mglovesfun 09:34, 3 April 2009 (BST)

Recent data additions

Hi, it would be nice if, when putting round details in, you could remember to add pages to Category:Recaps with missing or incomplete Teatime Teasers as appropriate. And try not to confuse Carol with Rachel.... -- Smjg 21:18, 1 May 2009 (BST)

Front page image aspect ratios

Hi Charlie, I've uploaded new 16:9 versions of the images on the front page as they are protected for obvious reasons. They're available at Image:GANDISEEG.png (sorry for my capitalisation cock up) and Image:GANDISEEG Reams.jpg (downsampled to improve image quality). You may wish to swap them with their doubles. -- Crispy 14:52, 27 June 2009 (BST)

Recap tidier

Hi, if you haven't noticed already, I've written a little tool that applies some tweaks to recap pages (see some of my latest contribs for examples). It's a command line tool written in D, and at the moment it doesn't communicate with the wiki (only with stdin/stdout), but maybe it could be adapted to improve the output from Dumper or run as an automated task in itself. I'd be happy to share the code with you if you're interested. -- Smjg 19:20, 14 July 2009 (BST)

Re your comment: My general pattern has been to convert entity references and the x template to directly entered characters. Do you think that using the x template is better for this case? If so, I could change my tool to do this. -- Smjg 00:07, 15 July 2009 (BST)

Yeah, I think the template is best. That way when they final add a proper Cross character to Unicode we can fix the whole site at once, and also people don't have to remember some stupid character code or work out how to type it. Charlie 02:33, 15 July 2009 (BST)

Recap writer

You mean this one? I hadn't really checked out the current one before, but I'll consider it. One thing I can't seem to find there is how to enter misdeclarations. -- Smjg 13:07, 15 July 2009 (BST)

Becoming an admin

Hi Charlie,

I've been doing quite a lot of tidying up on the wiki, on and off as time allows, and wonder how I would go about making a "request for adminship" as they say on Wikipedia. In particular, I'd like to be able to help out more with the front page featured article of the month (or year) as Howard is understandably very busy and also away quite frequently at the moment.

It would also be nice just to be able to upload new versions of protected images (e.g., changing the squished screengrabs on the front page to true 16:9) and to be able to help out in other ways above and beyond my current recap checking.

Perhaps you could let me know how the process works?

Many thanks, Chris 'Crispy' Philpot 10:41, 24 September 2009 (BST)

Thanks, Charlie! I promise only to use my powers for good. ;-) -- Chris 'Crispy' Philpot 22:22, 2 October 2009 (BST)

Today in Countdown History

You mentioned that it was a hassle to update the section on the Main Page. I wouldn't mind going through and doing it sometime (if I could). Kai Laddiman 10:08, 3 October 2009 (BST)

80.2.140.146

I'm not sure how best to deal with this user (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS). On one hand, he/she/it seems to be contributing valuable data to the wiki, assuming that it's on the whole correct. On the other hand, he/she/it is regularly getting things wrong. First it seemed to be just failing to add the appropriate categories and writing numbers solutions with an excessive number of brackets. But now we're getting out of this user numbers solutions that are invalidated by missing or misplaced brackets. There's no sign that my messages on his/her/its talk page are being taken notice of at all.... -- smjg 23:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

"dash fix"

Hi, I'm confused by your edit to Episode 1519, in which all you did was revert an en-dash in the score to a plain hyphen. To me, a dash fix means making it an en-dash. (Even better, using the score template, which does the ndash with nbsp's around it less cumbersomely than typing them manually.) -- smjg 17:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently writing a parser for the wikicaps, and weird characters like en-dashes make life a lot more difficult, so I just wanted a quick fix. If they're hidden away in templates then that's no problem, so in future feel free to use {{score}} or whatever. Charlie 17:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, one of the things my little program does now is to apply the score template here. Out of interest, what is the purpose of the parser you're writing? -- smjg 00:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The parser is for generating the 1000 new classics games I've just added to apterous. It worked quite nicely, there are a lot of weird bits of ad hoc syntax that people have introduced but mostly it's not bad. In future I might consider using it to spit out a nice clean version of every recap, and unify the various different formats for e.g. disallowed words we've got. Charlie 10:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Is spitting out a nice clean version of every recap anything different from what my program does? (Maybe I should get round to sharing it sometime....) -- smjg 19:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

You tell me. Can your program cope with every quirk of recap template syntax and process all the recaps at once? Charlie 21:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I've consolidated the whole conversation here to make it easier to follow - hope you don't mind. I'll keep an eye here for replies. Anyway, as for my program, I generally improve it to cope with new quirks of recap template syntax as I discover them. And it processes only one recap at a time, but could probably be easily hooked up to some wikibot program to process them in batch. -- smjg 01:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I emailed you my program back in February - have you had much time to have a look at it? Anyway, I've just made a few more improvements to it if you're interested.... -- smjg 17:19, 21 August 2010 (BST)

Hi

Hey Charlie. I remember watching the series you were in and let me tell you- you are so cute! I really wanted you to win (not just cos you're hot!) and was gutted when you didn't. Thanks also for creating this wiki! :)

I agree. A very hot guy. But how many cute guys like Charlie can create their own successful wiki? Well done Charlie! 90.196.10.54 23:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Links to CountdownGoofs Youtube Videos

Could you perhaps add some more youtube links to more episodes please, including the 1st episode and the Pilor Episode titled Calendar Countdown. Ant2387 20:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hi, if you get this before the current wave of automated vandalism stops ... how about disabling anonymous edits for the time being? I assume this is possible in the MediaWiki configuration somewhere. -- smjg 23:34, 4 October 2010 (BST)

I've disallowed anonymous edits and restored the CAPTCHA which had broken when I upgraded the wiki. This should solve the problem. Thanks for the heads-up. Charlie 03:04, 8 October 2010 (BST)

When does the captcha appear? It certainly isn't on the create account page as I look at the moment. The spammers have clearly learned how to create an account now.... -- smjg 20:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Error when moving a page

Hi Charlie, I've had a message from a past contestant about changing the name on their page, but we both get an error message. Do you know how to fix this please? Cheers, TobyMcDonald 14:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

You'll need to tell me the page and the error message! But generally users don't have the ability to move pages, so that's probably why. An admin may be able to help you. Charlie (talk) 18:22, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Mickie O'Neill wanted her page moved to Monica "Mickie" O'Neill. When I try to move it I get the following message:

[YbzXwGCTS5j-4WX222M2gAABRiU] 2021-12-17 18:32:32: Fatal exception of type "MediaWiki\Storage\IncompleteRevisionException"

I get it whenever I try to move it to Monica 'Mickie' O'Neill, so it's not an issue with the ".--Launchballer (talk) 18:41, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I have tried moving my page to something with only letters and that doesn't work either. MON (talk) 15:06, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

The page move functionality has now been fixed and I moved the page to Monica "Mickie" O'Neill. Charlie (talk) 16:57, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

"New messages" flag

User:MON asks: Hi Mr Reams, How do i change my password from gobbledygook? I want to edit something but i have to check the message you sent me on c4countdown every time i want to log in.

In replying to that, I've discovered that the "New messages" flag is not resetting, very likely due to it failing to recognise me as that user talk page's 'owner' (after I responded to the new message, it started saying "You have new messages from 2 users", which if anything is even more annoying).--Launchballer (talk) 23:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I will attempt to fix this, it seems like an issue with the database migration. Charlie (talk) 11:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I have the same question, I'd like to please change my password if possible. --Mamoru (talk) 05:12, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Note; this comment was originally put halfway through mine, and I've moved it to the end.--Launchballer (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I have the 'new messages' flag stuck again.--Launchballer (talk) 09:34, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

It's been a while, where are you at now with sorting it out? — Stewart (talk) 13:25, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Series 82

For some reason I can't seem to edit Series 82. It says "This page has been protected to prevent editing or other actions.". Usually whenever I try to move a protected page it asks me if I want to move the protection to the new title, so this is obviously a glitch. I'd like to change 181 episodes to 182 episodes. I'm tempted to just delete the page and recreate it, but then I'm wasting the page history. What's happening?--Launchballer (talk) 01:14, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Ping.--Launchballer (talk) 10:24, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Now happening with Countdown too.--Launchballer (talk) 20:23, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

James Roberts also.--Launchballer (talk) 01:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)