User talk:Mav

User Talk for maveric149

If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it (score = 82).
Problem now is, sleeping has switched from a full (i.e. normal) to part time occupation.... oh well - you only live once, there's plenty of time to rest later...

Older messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4, talk archive 5, talk archive 6, talk archive 7, talk archive 8, talk archive 9, talk archive 10, talk archive 11, talk archive 12, talk archive 13

Thanks for the kind words, Mav. But I won't be a great admin here other than by complaining. I am already a "great" admin (by complaining as well...) on fr. I only wish to take care of my "own" (sort of...) business here without bothering others all the time :-) User:anthere

Complaining is important too. :-) And when I say "great" I mean "will not abuse Admin powers and is likely to use them for good - if so compelled by the moment."--mav

President of the United States of America has president and first lady capitalised throughout the text. None of these words is a proper noun, none are capitalised in my dictionaries, first lady isn't (as far as I know) even an official position, and in this context they are not even referring to particular individuals.

Since that article has an exclusively American context, nobody is likely to object to changing to American lower case style. I can't see why you don't sort articles like that out before starting (again) on more contentious areas.

"Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises" has sold 5,000,000 plus (including the USA) and is hardly a specialist book. The point of capitals is not to confer spurious official status; it is, outside the USA, a normal convention. WDP capitalises alternative names too. The list in Dolphin is identical to WDP.

I was tempted back to doing something on Dolphins by seeing the new articles, but I obviously made an error doing so. jimfbleak 06:59 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You keep saying that the upstyle of all animal common names is common outside of the states and yet have not compiled a list of citations nearly equivalent to Ec's which indicates this is so. I wish it were possible to use capitals for species names but we cannot so long as that is counter to common English grammar (lacking any standards body saying otherwise as well). And the capitalization used in the above articles is OK for two reasons: "President" in this context refers to an official title the "President of the United States" -- same with the quasi-official First Lady/First Lady of the United States. If the common noun "president" used in a non-specific context then I would expect lowercase. Same for "first lady." --mav

Sorry Mav, I'm with Jim on this one (though I agree with what you say on First Lady/first lady!). I don't think users of American english realise just how much their attitude towards capitalisation infuriates the hell out of non-Americans. I and another European both worked on an article some weeks ago. It was finished only a couple of minutes when a possé of American-english users swarmed in and tore it to shreds, lowercasing things that we had been taught since we were five year olds should be uppercased. By that point both of us were on the brink of screaming fuck wikipedia and quitting completely (as I know some people have done over this very issue. One American in particular has driven people away with his 'everything in lowercase' fucking up of articles. He even suggested Prime minister at one stage somewhere!). If American english-users keep up with their 'we are right. You have to prove up wrong' tone there won't be any non-Americans on wiki. People are annoyed enough at how the big publishing houses are now opting to issue books worldwide in American-english because it is cheaper than doing separate print-runs in AE and BE, without then being told 'oh but look this major book doesn't capitalise'. Of course it doesn't capitalise, the publishers have chosen AE to the fury of native non-AE users. FearÉIREANN 08:25 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As I said I would like to capitalize common names of species but I need to see a fair amount of evidence to support this as a rule of grammar. At this point I am not acting on anything ; I am hoping that the capitalizers will either accept the great deal of evidence put forward by Ec to support downstyle (cites from both sides of the pond) or for the capitalizers to compile a similar amount of evidence to support their claims. They already did this with the birds and I am happy to concede that it is OK to capitalize bird names so long as lowercased redirects are provided (we are only talking about 10,000 or so articles so it is reasonable to assume we can have redirects for every one). And if the general trend is to go toward the down style - even with European publishers then doesn't that just indicate that the language as a whole is evolving? Why should we not also follow this trend? --mav

That is missing the point. Academics, researchers, local publishing houses etc use European standard capitalisation. Some of the biggest publishers (who have in the last decade due to the removal of the legal protections offered to local publishers to stop them being swallowed up by American multinationals, have been taking over native publishing houses) for reasons that have nothing to do with grammar or spelling and everything to do with producing one print run rather than two and so have more money for themselves, have chosen to the fury of academics, researchers, teachers, local publishing houses and the general publishing houses to force American english standards (in some cases even spelling) on the rest of the world. This has led some academics to quit writing for these publishing houses (I know three alone who have walked and a fourth who is threatening to sue a major publisher on this issue). It is openly being described as American linguistic imperialism. For wiki to decide that because multi-national publishers have been trying to force American english on the rest of the world, it should follow their efforts and ignore the rest of the world is perverse. Put bluntly, there efforts are seen as amounting to a statement of "It is cheaper for us to do one print run, and so sell the same book in America and elsewhere, than to have to produce a version in British english for Britain, Ireland, Europe, Austral-asia, and an American english version for America. We are so dominant that we are going to simply use American english, and there is fuck all you can do about it because we are so big we now control the market." Wiki should have nothing to do with such an attitude. FearÉIREANN 21:04 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That still begs the question on whether or not it is in fact correct grammar in any English dialect to capitalize species names. I have yet to see any substantive proof for this assertion (believe me I would welcome such proof so that we could have a consistent naming convention for all species). --mav

One of the arguments for lower case was that dictionaries and encyclopedias always use lower case. The point I was making with the President example is that real life usage, even in the Wikipedia, does not conform to dictionary rules, which only capitalise genuine proper nouns.

I would accept that lower case is not restricted to the US, but it is certainly more common. I searched Google for {gray whale org.uk} (American species, American spelling, with the org.uk to weed out many US-based sites), and the majority of the responses capitalised as Gray Whale. This cannot be decribed as a specialist source.

I really can't understand why you, Fred and Ec are prepared to cause so much grief over this issue in an area in which you otherwise appear to have little interest. jimfbleak 08:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Little interest? I am very interested in making sure Wikipedia follows correct rules of grammar. The whole point of our naming conventions is to make sure we encourage page titles that would be grammatically correct in a sentence - as is. That way all somebody has to do to make a link is tack on a couple brackets on both sides of a term. Clean and natural. I am also very interested in the subject of biology - so much so I got a degree in it. --mav

Argh, I started this new bout with my dolphin query, didn't I? I think I stated my opinion on the mailing list that I think that for common nouns we should call things whatever the largest number of people expect them to be called. Or something like that. Well, that's what I'm saying now, anyway... I capitalised the dolphin names only because I looked up information on them with Google, and the pages I found capitalised the names. I didn't do a full statistical analysis, though, so I still don't know what the most common usage is for those particular animals. But aardvark is still spelt with a lower-case "a" in most pages, so I still think we should talk about "the aardvark", rather than "the Aardvark"... -- Oliver P. 09:31 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wow, Mav. Great pixs! FearÉIREANN 03:43 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! :) --mav

Mav. I found following message on my talk page (why me?). As a Brit I don't know is it makes any sense, so I'll leave it to you. jimfbleak 07:47 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sir, can you please move Washington, DC into the District of Columbia, the name Washington, DC is not the legal name of this federal district, The City of Washington in technicially located in the District of Columbia. The way it is set up right now District of Columbia goes to Washington, DC it should be the reverse. Thank you kindly for your attention.

Done. --mav

But the shawm was a Renaissance oboe! -- Oliver P. 07:50 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Anytime a stub is so small that the only info in it can be obtained from an article linking to it then it is of no practical use. Simply saying that a shawm is an oboe is like only saying iron is an element or almost as bad as only saying Dallas, Texas is a city in Texas. If you would like to write a stub using complete sentences and give at least a little bit more info then please do so. --mav

Sorry... I'm in my paranoid all-the-sysops-are-abusing-their-powers mood today. I think I'd best be off now, before I fall out with everyone. Nice pictures, by the way. :) -- Oliver P. 08:21 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No apology needed. People like you need to be a bit paranoid to keep real abuses from happening in the first place. Thanks for the photo compliment. :) --mav

Hypenated words are lower case if they describe the bird, eg Red-necked Phalarope, Red-backed Shrike. Increasingly hyphens are being used (where they would not have been in the past) to clarify taxonomic groups; these are always capitalised in species, eg Wilson's Storm-Petrel.

I hadn't finished the palm thrushes, a friend arrived unexpectedly, so we had a coffee in the sun in the garden (I've obviously failed to completely destroy my social life!), I'll have a look now. jimfbleak 09:08 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Mea culpa; when I created these articles, I formed the group names as I normally do, by copying from the species list, but this time forgot to lowercase. I've moved the pages, so the Saxicolini should be correct now. I've be trying to sort the Corvidae and Turdidae into some sort of logical arrangement. I'm not totally happy with Turdidae still, but at least it's comprehensive, and can wait until another day for more tinkering. jimfbleak

You are the expert on when and when not to capitalize bird names so I leave that into your most capable hands (just make redirects where appropriate :) --mav

How do you find the new users? Ilyanep

There is a query that Admins can do but what I do is open up new users' user pages one by one as I see them in RC. Then when I have so many user pages open (usually about 50) that my computer starts to slow down I go ahead and greet each of those users and close the corresponding windows. --mav

So it's almost impossible to find many new users unless you're a sysop. --Ilyanep

How did you get that idea? The way I do it does not require Admin abilities. Just a lot of ram and an OS that can handle having scores of webpages open at once (Linux). --mav

YEah, but an admin can do query while a use has to go through the recent changes, in which half of the pages have been added. BTW, you should use a tabbed browser if you do that, try Mozilla (I'm not sure if it works on linux though). --- Ilyanep (never mind what I said...I meant it's harder that way)

I try to stay away from the queries becasue they slow down the server and give way too many results that then have to be pre-processed before they are used (the queries give plain text results - no links). That is far more work than just clicking the mouse wheel down to open a user page into a new window. Konqueror is a tabbed browser. I just have a certain work-flow that doesn't use tabs yet. It might save some RAM so I'll see if it works but many of the things I do do really need separate windows. --mav

Thanx. BTW, I advise archiving now... --Ilyanep

Argh! I just did a day or two ago. --mav

Hi Mav, I just had a look at you great pictures of the anti-living valley. I wish, I could be there one day to see this, the images are just unbeleavable! I was just wondering, why they are in no order, one over the other, some here, some there, or is it just my MS Internetexplorer mixing it all up? Fantasy 21:05 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't know what you mean by "anti-living valley" though.... They are in alphabetical order in the wiki text but they will look different in different browsers and different screen sizes. --mav

Sorry, I like to use different words for the same thing (Death Valley = anti-living valley... ;-) Regarding the fotos: on Mozilla it seems to work, but on the Internetexplorer i have to scroll 5 times to the left to see some of the images and some are even one hiding part of the other image. It was just to let you know, but it's not so important. Have fun, Fantasy 06:36 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, Mav, for being a little late in the lower-case discussion of species names, hope you haven't closed it yet. I am looking at Trees of Britain and Europe and just looking at two species Heldreich's Maple Acer heldreichii and (no common name) A. trautvetteri are mentioned on one page, exactly as shown. Collins Pocket Guide, Trees of Britain & Northern Europe does exactly the same. Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners too spells specific names in lower case. It certainly bears out your case. Dieter Simon 23:36 16 Jun 2003 (UTC) Perhaps I should say the common name of the species does appear in capital letters but the scientific name appears in lower case Dieter Simon

Actually that argues the case for the capitalizers sicne we use the common names whenever they are available. Thanks for the cite - at least several more will be needed to demonstrate that the up-style is OK for us to use. --mav

This is the last time I will come back, I promise :-). Flora Britannica on p223 has Broad-leaved everlasting-pea, L(athyrus) latifolius; Two-flowered everlasting-pea or Tangier pea, L. grandiflora; Norfolk everlasting-pea, L. heterophyllus; Sweet pea, L. odoratus and garden pea, Pisum sativum, all in one para, exactly as shown. A rather quirky compilation, but there it is. Trouble is as most of them appear at the beginning of sentences the generic names all appear in capitals. Hope it helps Dieter Simon

Hi Mav, I don't know how much you know about copyright law but I've been looking at some of the images Joe Canuck has downloaded and I think we may have a problem. The ones I looked at are of sports stars. In some cases he claims fair use but without indicating where they came from (so no credit can be given). In most cases he gives no clue as to where they came from at all. A lot of them are shots of, say Steffi Graf during a tennis match. From what I know, all such shots would be the copyright property of a news agency, but most of his images have no info whatsoever, a small number have fair use - no idea of who took the shot, where they took the shot, whether copyright had been waved, etc.

I have left two messages on his page. The first one politely explained the reason why we needed to know the origins of photos. He didn't reply, just deleted it, the way he had deleted other people's requests. (Classic DW stuff!) I left a stronger second one, stating that unless he can supply some information about the photos they will have to be removed from articles and listed for deletion. Maybe that might make him take some notice though I severely doubt it. Any observations? FearÉIREANN 03:45 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You did what I was going to do anyway. JC needs to understand that he cannot claim fair use without at least stating where he got the image. --mav

Mav, I left you a comment at Zoe. I was not talking about you. But I think I messed the bottom of the page :-((( User:anthere

note that you will only find it in the history. When user talk pages get too long, my comments are usually censored (reverted). I think that is poor practice because I justified my yesterday comment there, and now all what is left in that discussion is you mentionning I am dishonnest when I was NOT dishonnest. Would you be ever so kind to fix my comments please ? I personally think it is dishonest to remove someone explaination when they are said to perhaps be dishonnest. I don't want it to stay that way. User:anthere

I didn't remove anything. I reverted a version of my Talk page which didn't have the bottom of it deleted by your lossy editor. -- Zoe

and while reverting, you removed my comments... yes. ant

So what? It's my Talk page, I can do what I damn well please with it. -- Zoe

Ok. Mav, you will find my comment in the Zoe talk history.

I think discussion such as the one yesterday should not be moved to user talk page, as they can conveniently censor these discussions to suit their own purpose. Ant

You're determined to try to make me look bad and to put the worst face on every g*ddamn thing I do, aren't you? If YOU had not messed up the page, *I* would not have done anything to it. I reverted it because of what YOU did, not because of what you said. I don't believe in modifying Talk pages, though there are many many people who do so. I was only fixing what YOU messed up. Your comments got dropped in the process. But of course, that wouldn't suit your interpretation of me being an evil person, would it? -- Zoe

Oh for crying out loud, would you both STOP IT! Zoe - if you had archived your page that would not have happened. So it is partly your fault. Anth, if you find that your browser is cutting off the end of her page, cancel out of the page, or go into the Page History and revert to the previous version.

But I can't Jt. That is the whole point ! I can't edit a page too long. In this case, it was written 31 ko, so I thought I could add a dozen words (normally, it cuts at 32 ko). But apparently it cut nevertheless :-(( ant

Sounds like a case of Internet Exploreritus, the most damned disease on the net. Dr. JT's remedy - bin explorer. Get Safari. Far far better. IE is pure and total crap. FearÉIREANN 06:46 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Zoe had to do that to get back the end of her page, and that involved reverting to the version before your comments. In cutting her page like that it is partly your fault too. Zoe was not censoring Anthere, Anthere was not trying to screw up Zoe's pages. You both just fucked up at the same time. Now will you both fuck off and stop this clowning around. You are acting like Brittany and Christina at the MTV awards.

Dunno these ones.

There are enough vandals out there to be fought. Will the two of you stop cat-fighting and go out and fight the Michaels and DWs of this world, not each other. OK? These tantrums all this pointscoring is becoming tedious.

Sorry Mav, BTW, for highjacking your page like that. But I have been watching these two fighting for weeks and it like watching slow motion sumo wrestling and its getting on my nerves and everyone else's. I am really fed up with all of this. And now I am going to friggin' bed. Oiche Mháith FearÉIREANN 05:59 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Women fights. The worse. :-) Good night. Ant

I never said anthere did it on purpose. I do not think she did it on purpose. As I said, it was her lossy editor that was the problem. However, from the time I stopped working on Wikipedia last night until the time that I came back this evening, my Talk page more than doubled because of all of the information that was cut and pasted from the Votes for Deletion page. It is NOT my fault that the page got so big, it was the move from VfD. -- Zoe

Fair point, Zoe. I guess we are are a little tense. Anyway, look on the bright side, GrahamN has made a complete ejjit of himself in what he said. And most people understand what you did, why you did it and that even if they disagree don't see you are some sysop vandal. You know, you and Ant should be working together. You both are capable, committed wikipedians. And if you were, you'd terrify the bejaysus out of the DW's of this world. OK. Better stop. We can't have Mav doing two archives in one day. :-) Get some sleep, both of you (Ant and Zoe), heck Mav too. I'm about to. (I only got up 7 hours ago for a few minutes. I currently have the flu - the real flu. I'm so high on drugs I could fly to work, if I was going to work. So as dawn breaks on another sunny day, and I break into a sweat through typing (no joke!) it is time to crawl off to bed and sleep for another 15 hours! Take care and lol to all three of you. FearÉIREANN 06:46 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Calm down you two. Neither of you are "evil" or at all bad people so please stop. :-) --mav

It looks like Zoe archived the page so the issue is moot. I understand though and take back my observation. --mav

If you understand, that is fine. Ant

I'm afraid Joe Canuck is ignoring appeals on the photo issue. (So DWesque!) He deletes anything I say, deleted stuff from Camembert, deleted stuff by Martin but I think Martin put it back again. JC has made it clear he wants no discussion of the issue on his page (and any discussion will be deleted) as he thinks it has nothing to do with him. I have put a note on Jimbo's page but I wouldn't be surprised if that is deleted too when JC sees it. I guess there is no option left but to remove his images from his articles and list them on the VfD page. Re-the growing suspicion that he is DW/Black Widow, how should that be handled and who should make the judgement call? Ths similarities in contribitions, tone, attitude, behaviour re images etc are striking. What are the odds on someone coming to wiki who shared all the characteristics of DW/Black Widow yet who isn't DW/BW. In addition when Cam challenged him as to whether he was DW he immediately went ballistic. The thing is, as a supposed new user, he should not have known who DW was. Yet his response suggested he knew and didn't like the mention, which was damned suspicious. FearÉIREANN 00:26 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yep - it is time for VfD. --mav