Verbarson

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This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Verbarson.

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About me

✝

This user is a Christian.

Therefore, I do believe that God loves those who disagree with me. Or him. And so should I.

en

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

Because that is what I grew up with.

UK

This user uses British English.

But I will use the spelling and grammar appropriate to the article (as far as I understand them).

This user lives in
England.

We invented the steam engine and the NHS. I'll stay for now.

This user is a member of the
Church of England

It's not perfect, but as they say: If you find the perfect church, don't join it (because then it won't be perfect any more).

This user is a member of WikiProject UK Railways.

That is the area I am doing most editing in.

This user is a participant of WikiProject London Transport.

The reason the city I was born and raised in actually works.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Middle-earth.

A topic I enjoy reading about

This user pledges to return to
Old-fashioned Wikipedian values.

I have benefitted from other editors acting on these values; this is the Wikipedia I wish to pass on.

And some more whimsical opinions

1+?=

There are two types of people:
those who can
make sense of incomplete data

This user does not
read books in the bedroom.
This user sleeps in the library.

^S^S

This user is a paranoid programming professional who publishes^S little^S and^S often.^S

who?

This user is entirely non-notable (verify)

2

This user thinks
Thunderbird 2
is still the coolest.

My signature

Here is my signature: -- Verbarson ^talk_edits

It includes links to relevant pages. The -- Verbarson part links to here, my User page; the ^talk links to my User talk page; and the _edits links to my Contributions page. The whole is wrapped in a template that keeps it from being split over two lines.

Here is the code that creates it (as entered on my Preferences page under the User profile tab):

{{SUBST:nowrap|[[User:Verbarson|--&nbsp;Verbarson&nbsp;]]&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Verbarson|talk]]</sup><sub>[[Special:Contributions/Verbarson|edits]]</sub>}}

For this to work, I must also tick Treat the above as wiki markup

Breakdown of the code

Here is a explanation of each part of the signature code.

 {{                                      start template
  SUBST:                                 'magic word' SUBST before template name^[a]
  nowrap                                 the actual template name^[b]
 |                                       start template parameter (everything else) 
  [[                                     start wikilink
   User:Verbarson                        link target: my user page
   |--&nbsp;Verbarson&nbsp;              text to display for user page link
  ]]                                     end wikilink
  &nbsp;                                 extra space for readability
  <sup>                                  start superscript
   [[                                    start wikilink
    User talk:Verbarson                  link target: my user talk page
    |talk                                text to display for talk page link
   ]]                                    end wikilink
  </sup>                                 end superscript
  <sub>                                  start subscript
   [[                                    start wikilink
    Special:Contributions/Verbarson      link target: my contributions
    |edits                               text to display for my contributions link
   ]]                                    end wikilink
  </sub>                                 end subscript
 }}                                      end template

Notes

^ SUBST causes the template to be evaluated once, and the result to be inserted in the text. This means that if I change my signature in the future, the existing copies will not change. It also makes the page load slightly faster (a benefit on history pages, which may have hundreds of signatures).
^ {{nowrap}} ensures the signature will not be split over two lines

But there is another aspect to my signature that is invisible to everyone except me.

In my common.css page is the code

/* Highlight sig for my use only - bold black text on green */
#bodyContent a[title="User:Verbarson"] { background-color: #00ff00; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; }

The effect of this is that when I am signed in (which causes my common.css to be active on every wiki page) and the browser finds an anchor titled "User:Verbarson" (which includes my signature, and a few other items), it will display it in bold black text on a green background, like this: -- Verbarson ^talk_edits. This makes occurrences of my signature stand out to me, which is useful on Talk and History pages, without it being unduly distracting for any other reader.

Pages I have created, and why

NOTE: although I created these pages, and am chuffed to have done so, they are in no sense "my" pages, and many other editors have enlarged and improved them.

Page Name	Reason
GWR 3901 Class	Somebody asked on Talk:Locomotives of the Great Western Railway why there was no mention of this class. Since I had some details, I added it.
GWR 4600 Class	Another class not mentioned on Locomotives of the Great Western Railway. Only one was ever built, since it was rather a failure, but it ought to be included.
List of GWR standard classes with two outside cylinders	This is really why I started editing Wikipedia. I wanted to be able to compare the various Churchward standard classes by the standard parts they shared, and I realised that the wikitable sort mechanism made that easy. So I have created this page to do it, and let everyone share.
Skerne Bridge	The oldest railway bridge in continuous use in the world now has its own article
Chippenham viaduct	A redirect page to the viaduct section of Chippenham station, which allows the viaduct to be categorised on its own merits.
GWR petrol-electric railcar	A very early attempt to use internal combustion for local passenger services.
GWR 0-6-4 crane tanks	A redirect page to the crane tanks section of GWR 850 Class, which they were based on.
Queen's Pier, Ramsey	A redirect page to Queen's Pier Tramway. It should be the other way round, with the tramway being a section within the pier's article, but the tramway article existed, and the only "Queen's Pier" article referred to Hong Kong, so I put this in for those who might search for it. This has now been switched round, so that Tramway redirects to a section of the Pier article.
GWR oil burning steam locomotives	The list of renumbered oil-burners was found to be too much for the GWR numbering page, so I've started this page for that list and any other relevant info I can dig up.
List of Isle of Man railway lines and locations	This brings together PoIgb templates for all the passenger-carrying lines on the Isle of Man, and also makes them individually available for transclusion on other pages.
Cliff railways in the Isle of Man	Three of the five cliff railways have no specific article; this will fill that gap. The very limited articles for the other two have been redirected to this one, which has more information, and better citations.
Bassaleg Viaduct	A redirect page, to allow the second-oldest operational railway bridge/viaduct to be categorised independently.
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary	A book that combines two fascinating subjects; an author I love to read, and a work of reference I love to consult.
Grenville steam carriage	The oldest self-powered passenger vehicle still in working order. I discovered its existence by accident while searching Commons for images about Churchward.
{{Tolkien's legendarium}}	A template that adds clickable links to the underlying image. When I first saw this diagram I tried to click on the various parts and was disappointed when it didn't work; now it does.
The Society under the patronage of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Hilda	A redirect from the full name to the not-very-obvious shorter name.
{{Sketch Map of Middle-earth}}	A template that adds clickable links to the underlying image, in this case a map of part of Tolkien's invented countries.
{{Great Western Railway}}	A navbox template that pulls together all the major pages for the Great Western Railway.

Other stuff I have done

Page, Section or Template	Contribution	Reason
GWR 2800 Class	Remove a '/'	My first edit: I removed a stray '/' character that was stopping a URL from working properly. (I forgot to leave an edit summary.)
GWR locomotive numbering and classification	Table GWR class numbers by 1st/2nd digits	I had always felt that the GWR numbering system was best laid out in two dimensions, so I started to build a table to do it. It turned out more complex than I was expecting, but I am fairly satisfied with the outcome. I'm glad the data is static; I wouldn't want to keep a table like this updated if the information changed regularly!
{{Isambard Kingdom Brunel}}	Restructured and added many more entries to this navbox.	The content of this navbox was fairly meagre, entirely unfitting to the manifold output of the great IKB (including, of course, his failures).
GWR 850 Class § Crane tanks	Added section for the crane tanks based on the Class 850	The crane tanks were only mentioned on WP as a red-linked list entry in Locomotives of the Great Western Railway.
GWR 101 Class	Removed the attribution to Holden	Holden was long gone from the GWR when 101 was built. However, it may have used his patent oil-firing mechanism - to be confirmed.
Dorman Long § Bridge building	Added an image for each bridge listed	I think that the variety of Dorman Long's work is better appreciated visually (even if DL's successor company is going into administration).
Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company § Bridge building	Again, added an image for each bridge listed	Sadly, Cleveland Bridge has closed. All I can do is highlight their past achievements.
Charles Collett	Enlarged the article considerably	The article was small and almost entirely unreferenced. Even now, it is almost entirely locomotive oriented. Collett did much other work with coaches and other aspects of railway engineering.
Locomotives of the Great Western Railway § New-build steam	Added this section	GWR locomotives continue to be built, not just restored.

[1] SUBST causes the template to be evaluated once, and the result to be inserted in the text. This means that if I change my signature in the future, the existing copies will not change. It also makes the page load slightly faster (a benefit on history pages, which may have hundreds of signatures).

[2] {{nowrap}} ensures the signature will not be split over two lines

[a]

[b]