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

TraxPlayer Thanks for the nice welcome.

Thankyou for supporting me, by the way. Funny how my application got a font size bigger somehow... كسيپ Cyp 08:23 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome! I changed the font size because I could barely read the text before. :) --mav

Mav, has there been any decision on the Crown Copyright waiver issue, and whether text that has been released under the waiver can legally be used in the Wikipedia? David Newton 16:17 BST 21 Jun 2003

It cannot be used in Wikipedia but a user is going to write and ask permission for us to use Crown Copyright text under terms of the GNU FDL. --mav

Not a big issue, but is there actually a preferred style for the English/scientific name combination? (I saw your minor edit to Green-winged Teal. Most of my books don't punctuate, and just put eg European Starling Sturnus vulgaris. I've tended to put in a comma recently especially in long species list, because it is more readable, eg European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, but I notice, especially outside the bird articles, that some people use parentheses, as you did, eg European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). jimfbleak 16:31 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Answer is on your talk page. --mav

Mav, I am sympathetic to the changes in Race, although I have no objection to your (or 168's) reverts. I made another revert and a long comment on the talk page for the new contributor. I focussed on process rather than content and hope it is a constructive intervention. Please tell me if I am missing or misunderstanding your concerns, or not getting what has been going on there, Slrubenstein

I was mostly concerned with process too. The new user was erasing neutrally-presented POV with his own different POV. Both should be in the article and both should be presented in a neutral mannor. --mav

talk moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

Mav, there is an ongoing problem with Eamon de Valera. A new user who does not use a usernic just number, has been adding in highly POV additions. I have spent ages lately (as has Mintguy and Jim Regan) removing and reverting these additions and telling the user over and over and over again to stop POVing the article and to read the naming conventions before changing things and breaking links all over the place. The same user has also POVed other articles on Ireland, their contributions in every case being deeply anti-Irish nationalist. Yet other contributions by them elsewhere have been superb. A second IP was also being used to add in POV additions, as was one name to which no personal details were ever added. Now another IP has been used to add in yet more POV stuff. I don't know if it is all the same person. If their contributions were consistently POV then a case could be made that they are simply vandalising Irish-related sites on wiki. But because to paraphrase a nursery rhyme when describing the contributions, "when they are good they are very very good, when they are bad they are horrid, banning would be unfair, but short of banning, what else can one do to stop this person or persons from constantly doctoring information on these sites, adding in text with some words IN CAPITALS? The irony they clearly do know a lot about Irish history. All too often they just seem incapable of expressing it in an NPOV manner, and while just occasionally they listen to advice and stop doing one thing, they then turn up doing another, equally POV thing, some of which has been outrageously over the top. This has gone on since the 4th of June. -- JT

I'll keep an eye on the situation. --mav

Hey Mav, a quick question: is there a compelling reason to keep Wikipedia and Wiktionary and the wiki textbook site and any other sites in separate domains, as opposed to grouping them all as subdomains within one larger site, such as Wikimedia ? User:Karlwick

So that each project can have its own unique name with an easy to remember URL. That helps a lot for recruitment and with making it easy for people to find the place. --mav

Hi! Thanks for your endorsement! I really appreciate it! Poor Yorick 22:53 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Not a problem. ;) --mav

Hi Mav, you are very Wikipediaexperienced, so I would be really happy to get your opinion on a point disussed in the Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style. Do you think we really need five '''''title''''' (bold AND italic) for Article introductions of films? Thanks for your help, Fantasy 06:57 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --mav

As I expected, you solved the problem with one sentence ;-) Thanks a lot for your help, Fantasy

PS: I changed a little bit the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style to prevent problems like this in the future.

Hello mav, thanks for adding me to the list of participants in WikiProject Elements. ^_^ I didn't do so myself since I haven't contributed much yet, but it was a really nice surprise to see me mentioned on there. ^_^ -- Schnee 14:27 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Mav, thanks for the idea of using a little colour in the Protected Areas tables. Since you have experience in both National Parks and colour in tables I'd like to know your opinion about a little irregularity I've discovered. Thanks! D.D. 21:22 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

NP :) --mav

Hi mav, maybe you could de-spam the email addresses at wikipedia:foldoc license as a courtesy? also, it's apparently time to archive your talk page again. Koyaanis Qatsi 02:07 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --mav

Yeah, you are right, Mav. Unfortunately he has done that to just about every political science page he has touched. On the one in question, he mucked up a mathematical formula, removed a definition and replaced it with a sentence that completely missed the point of the definition, etc etc. I have asked and asked and asked that if he isn't sure about something, leave a question on the talk page - 'why is it like this?' or at least explain his changes on a talk page. But he simply sweeps through pages, usually mucks up things that he obviously doesn't understand. It is bad enough having to spend so much time updoing vandalism without then undoing disastrous 'edits', especially when the article 'edited' was I thought 'screw-up-proof'. I mean, I am careful not to edit a page I don't know about, or to leave a note asking 'are you sure this is right?' Most users I come across do that. But this user doesn't and has irritated me, Tannin and a host of others, who see his editing of the pages they worked on as disastrous. I was absolutely livid over his latest botched edit and expressed it very sharply, perhaps too sharply. but it was a case of "not a-fucking-gain" when I saw yet another carefully written article mangled by an incompetent edit by the same person. (I sometimes wonder does he even read an article before editing it. And it isn't as if he is a newbie. You'd think by now he would know to be careful!)

BTW that person who keeps POVing Eamon de Valera did it again. I was in the middle of doing a rewrite - the page is too big so I was editing it down. I came back to find the edits lost, links yet again broken, dodgy historical claims added in, blatent POV lies (eg, claiming deV's nickname 'the Long Fellow' in the Irish language is Án Amadáin Fada. My Irish may not be great but even I know that actually means the long fool!) That addition pretty much sums up the agenda of the anonymous editor.

While I am on - Joe Canuck is back as User:ChuckM. I did some checking last night. There is little doubt by that JC was DW. And through following certain edit patterns and image downloads you can in effect trace a path of Ron's 'creations', some of which he had overlapping. DW was on from August 02 to January 03. He also used 64.228.30.125 (he signed one comment made by that number as DW) from January to 10th June. Elliot was used in between August and December 02 and was brought back for use on three days in March. From the 7th of February to the 28th of February, wiki was graced with the presence of Ron Davis. Black Widow covered a month between March and April, Olga Bityerkokoff for two days in April while Jacques Delson was on until 26th May when after being challenged by Camembert about being DW he disapeared, with 64.228.30.125 being used until 10th June, along with another an almost identical IP.

On 10th June, ChuckM made an appearance, along with another IP followed on the 11th by Joe Canuck (who picked up and continued editing pages that ChuckM and 64. . . had done work on, as had Jacques Delson, etc). Canuck who was banned on the 20th, allowing ChuckM to return on the 22nd and almost immediately removed the ban notice from Joe Canuck's page, attacked MyRedRice and make accusations against Wapcaplet and me (suggesting that images of Glasnevin Cemetery I had downloaded weren't really taken by me but came from another source on the net. Interestingly one area of shared interests among some of the above 'people' was old cemeteries! Cemeteries was one of Ron Davis's first topics to write about.). ChuckM vigoriously defended Canuck, just as Olga defended Black Widow, Black Widow defended DW, etc) ChuckM also suggested that his absence from 10 June to 22 June was because he was on holidays. He also suggested that when he logged on he went to look at Canuck's pages which he thought were excellent. But if he went on holidays on 10 June, how did he know about Canuck's work, since Canuck only started on the 11th? And if he didn't go straight away on holidays but came back to read wiki, why didn't he log on and contribute something? It all sounds distincty dodgy, particularly when you look at the pages Canuck edited and then look at the previous contributors; many of the pages were contributed by the above, with seemless edits, no disputes, no reverts, no corrections, none of the things you see on most wiki pages that are edited by genuinely different people.

They all

edited the same pages (sports in each year, history lists, Canada, etc), with one often finishing an edit started by a predecessor who had been banned;
used the same editing style;
downloaded the same type of pictures with the same lack of information;
laid out captions on images identically, ie - text of caption - ;
made the same sort of comments when challenged.
came on to defend their banned predecessor.

Indeed, looking at the downloaded pictures, I suspect they are all taken from similar sources. All same size, same shape, same quality and all except a couple in black and white. It was quite bizarre seeing images added months apart from supposedly different people that were almost identical; both the images themselves, the manner of their addition and even their captions which were unlike anyone else's on wiki. Indeed the reliance on lists by all the users named suggests they were using books of lists, from lists of sports to lists of actors, etc. Given the striking similarity in the use of images, they all may have come from those sourcebooks.

On the basis of all of this, I concluded that ChuckM is Joe Canuck (Wapcaplet too suspects that) and that they were part of a larger group that can be traced back to DW in August 2002. That's my guess anyway. Any opinion? FearÉIREANN 04:28 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I also conclude that User:ChuckM is DW simply because only DW would think his Year in Sports pages are good at all (they are horrid messes that don't follow the conventions set by similar pages!). The best way to deal with the Irish POV guy is probably what you are doing now; reverting the bad and salvaging what is left. If and when that gets too tiring then I suggest you take it to the mailing list to approve at least a SoftBan. Your other description is a bit disturbing - last thing we need is another Micheal. Sigh. I don't have the as much time for Wikipedia user management as I once did (I'm getting spread too thin with Wikimedia, this blasted date nonsense, and now the WikiTextbook project - not to mention my goal of making one major update to at least one article a day). I wish I could do more. --mav

Mav, this is not going to work. If you take the deadline out, the MoS will stay the same (I will revert any change to a solution that has been agreed on neither in consensus nor in a vote). If you put a minimum votes requirement in, I will put in the MoS as a fallback option. The alternative is to accept that the option with the highest number of votes wins.

Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. Tim has proposed a date conversion solution which would allows us to change the representation of the format during display. So eventually both formats will be supported, although one will be the expected default in editing. --Eloquence 06:23 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Then why not use Tim's idea to display the links in whatever format a user has in their prefs but allow editors to use either format? --mav

Unfortunately, Tim's proposal is not very well developed. It's unclear whether he wants to store text internally in a standardized format. If he wants to dynamically convert it on the fly and store it internally in mixed form, it gets complicated: Then you have to convert the text during load and save, and a lot can go wrong in the process. Or you don't convert it at all in edit mode and only do so in display mode, which would mean that editors would come across pages which have both date formats, and the results would not be very intuitive and predictable.

The most reliable auto-conversion approach IMHO is to standardize on one format both for internal representation and display, and to have a user preference to convert the format to another one during display and (possibly) during saving, but not during editing. --Eloquence 07:06 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The way I see the whole situation is that we are pitting two large groups of Wikipedians against each other. Each wants to have an absolute sytle. But no matter which side ends that other side, who also wants an absolute style, not only doesn't get what they wanted but they get exactly what they absolutely didn't want. This has the potential to fracture our community and cannot be allowed to happen. --mav

This is one part of the picture. If you look at the history of the vote you will note that at one point I put my vote on both leading options. I'm a consistency fanatic. I don't care (much) which style is used as long as it is used throughout. Few people feel as strongly as I do about consistency, but then again, few people feel as strongly as James about their date style. So please don't forget that there are not just two groups here. Unfortunately, it is sometimes impossible to avoid changing rules in a way that some people do not like.

I do think that we haven't searched for a real compromise solution long enough. Maybe changing dates only during display would work best -- after all, users could edit an article to use consistent style within the source, and the Wikipedia engine would make sure that articles are displayed consistently everywhere. The same solution could be found with units. With BE/AE spelling it's different, and maybe that's a case where the consistency folks just have to grin and bear it. --Eloquence 07:24 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"Unfortunately, it is sometimes impossible to avoid changing rules in a way that some people do not like." My whole point all along is that "some" is closer to half. That's bad and is IMO the tyranny of the majority at its worst. And I think it wold be neat to have the option (off by default) to set the display of units, dates and even spelling based on user prefs. A "sifter" project could then use that feature to set global defaults on how units, dates and spelling are displayed (since "sifter" pretends to be professional). But Wikipedia, IMO, should be free range by default. --mav

Gee, now there's a discussion to look forward to on the sifter mailing list. ;-) I do think we should also set a default for Wikipedia (voted on), because I don't think such a default would scare away anyone. --Eloquence

On second thought readers can and should be presented a choice when they enter a sifter; American styles or Internatinal styles. No reason we can't do that (if they want to mix and match then they can log in and set their prefs). But this would not be a good thing for Wikipedia since the majority point of entry is through search engines that take the user to a certain article. Just some random thoughts... --mav