User talk:Mav

User Talk for maveric149

Current wikipedia STATUS (as of July 27, 2002):
In the full swing of things. Still have a huge back-log of digital photos and field notes to contribute, but I can't get away from the blasted RecentChanges page.

If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it.
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...

I generally respond to inquiries placed on this page by placing my comments on the talk page of the submitter. Therefore many of the comments that follow appear to have gone unanswered - this is not the case.
(Well, at least this is not necessarily the case.)

Older messages are in talk archive 1 and talk archive 2

Mav, somebody has removed all the one-line comments from the List of novelists without any comment or discussion whatsoever and moved it to Authors. I don't mind the latter, but to me it is barbaric vandalism to remove valuable interesting information from the wikipedia. He isn't logged in but he shows up as 209.105.200.36. I am royally ripped. I'll put it all back by hand if I have to, but I'm sure there is a way to revert.Ortolan88 19:44 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Yes -- any attempt to make lists less useful than they already are is a sin in my book. I think I fixed everything for you but this was made difficult due to a weird bug in the wikiware that amended my revert of List of novelists to authors. Please check to make sure I didn't miss anything or reverted the wrong version. --mav

I'm glad you agree, but the version control work doesn't seem to have brought them back. Here is where the crime occurred

Revision as of 01:59 Jul 23, 2002

The versions in the history used to have numbers to make it easier to refrerence them, but I assume you can find this.

I didn't complain about the redirect because I knew that some of the people on the novelist list weren't novelists, but on reflection list of authors is way worse than list of novelist, so I now complain about that too.

This is a very unpleasant experience. Not everyone digs the list-annotation, some of the opera lovers, for instance, but they discussed it civilly. I never expected this. Ortolan88 21:13 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

From this morning's edit of my talk page: "I am coming to the conclusion that it is the lists themselves that are at fault and that no list that stretches on past three screensful is worth the effort to maintain it. Someday the software can make lists if we need them, but it seems the impulse to make long lists is genetic and cannot be ameliorated by annotation, re-organization, or any other tool of information science." Ortolan88 09:37 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)

Latest 209 vicious actions on List of novelists fixed. See Revision as of 17:14 Jul 27, 2002

Ortolan88 20:29 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)

Maveric149, Thank you for your words of welcome on my 'home page'.

You say, "thanks for moving the Australian city articles to the standard format for Australia". Actually, I tried not to touch anything on that node (page? wiki?) other than adding my question.

I hope you don't mind some more questions. I would like to post (wiki?) these to everyone, but yours is the only page I could find that seems to be for questions.

How is it that this massive site is free of pornography and foul language? This seems very odd for a site that can be edited by anyone. I happen to think it is wonderful, better than everything2 (a very tiny and not very easy to edit encyclopedia of sorts), which has lots of foul language.

I've read a number of articles and I wonder why they are so professionally written. I think it is amazing and wonderful (brilliant, if you're British).

I'm curious about the fact that anyone can edit almost any page. Suppose I work for hours creating a good article about an interesting or important topic, then someone deletes it or highly modifies it and no one else restores it? Does this mean that my work might go to waste? I would like to contribute, but I want my contribution to stick around :o) .

David 7/25/02

Not to worry, there's a History link on every page. You can retrieve a previous version, in case of vandalism. Also, constructive wikipedians outnumber vandals by at least 10 to 1 at all times; and that's usually 50 to 1. Ed Poor

Lots of us are professional writers and lots more write well. It may be that no one would pay us to write about some of the things we want to write about. Ortolan88 12:51 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Also, if you've invested a lot in an article and wish to watch it, you can simply click "Watch this page" once you're logged in; the article is added to your watchlist, which you can access in the sidebar. That list will keep track of the most recent changes to the pages you are watching, and you can drop in and see if they are to your liking or not. Cheers, and welcome. :-) --KQ

And, of course, if you don't like the changes, you can change them back, start a discussion on the Talk page that is associated with every article (like this one), or come back here and inform the sometimes brusque, but devoted and energetic Mr. Maveric and the others who watch this page (which once was his and is now the village pump) of what is going on. Ortolan88 13:03 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)

Wow! My talk page is being put to great use while I'm at work! I think you guys answered David's questions very well. Thanx! --mav

Maveric, is it true that there's an easy tool for moving pages available to administrators? If so, I'll probably apply for "admin-ship" - fear of me abusing the power to delete pages has kept me from it, but this would change my opinion. Regards, Jeronimo

Hey mav, there's discussion on Talk:Countries of the world/Status of the porting of Dept of State info about how to desubpage the country entries, or whether to do so; if you're still interested in getting WikiProject Countries off the ground you should go vote about what to do. :-) --KQ

Hmm, well I don't know why you're being blocked, but that's definitely an error due to a typo in the function that spurts out a message warning you that your IP is blocked. I've submitted a fix for that part; send in a bug report about the rest... --Brion VIBBER

Whipping you with a wet noodle for moving Institutional Mode of Representation without first checking to see if it's not always capitalized (1 entry out of 3 pages of google results has it without caps) and for then also not changing the links. But you make it easy enough to move it back without breaking anything. ;-) --KQ

Re the IMR: No, not lowercased 1/3 of the time; it's lowercased 1/40 the time, according to the Google results. And since Burch seems to have coined the phrase, I suppose he determines whether it's capitalized or not. Anyway.... What are you doing on wikipedia at this hour on a weekend? --KQ

OK -- I admit I made a mistake (when was the last time you heard that from me?). Since the term is a very minor one, used in a narrow context, I guess capitalization is fine and probably superior to the uncapitalized version (This is same reason I did not change Reciprocal System of Theory). BTW, I'm doing the same thing you are doing -- feeding my wiki internet addiction. ;) --mav

I prefer it lowercased, actually, not that it matters. :-) And yes, I've got an addiction. I took some more pictures today; one of them for an article that could use it, another for one that couldn't (illustrated already), and a third for an article I guess I'll have to write. Odd the little gaps in the 'pedia you stumble on periodically. Amazing growth, though--and we're quite far along for only a year or so of volunteer work. --KQ

Re the deletion queue - I wasn't disagreeing with you this time - I deleted the pages you suggested! :) Re the country pages, I saw the debate - I thought it was ancient news though. There isn't really any way to tell! Demographics of sounds like such a dishwater-dry title... 'people of' is much more intuitive, but hey, whatever people have decided. I spend enough time disagreeing with you :P. BTW, perhaps you can answer another question for me mav? What is the 'signature' option in the user preferences for and how do I use it? Is it a way to avoid writing user: etc every time I leave a comment? I've been wondering whether to make a user page for KJ and redirect it to mine because I'm so damned sick of the extra typing ~ KJ

Re the name of the deletion log; presumably LDC is the one who changed it to "Article deletion log", though I could be wrong. So, what is the difference between a wikipedia page and an article? As far as the software is concerned, "page" and "article" are synonymous. It's not smart enough to tell what's an "article" and what's just a "page full of text". Note also that we have a "Save article" button rather than "Save page", and the search results show "Article title matches" and "Article text matches". Internally, the class that implements various page functions is called "Article" rather than "Page". Maybe that's the wrong terminology, I dunno... it can't be much worse than calling ogg vorbis files "image"s. (cough cough) --Brion VIBBER

I agree on the weirdness of the image:namespace terminology and also really think most uses of the word "article" be replaced by "page". As Larry often said, every page in wikipedia is a page but not every page is an article. We needn't add un-needed confusion by loosely using the word "article" for evey page. This also effects the proposed new wording of the front page which will read "anyone can edit any article" -- which is a completely true statement if we stick with Larry's definition (anything in the wikipedia:namespace would also not be considered articles -- this is how the statistics work, no? --mav

Sounds good to me; put in a feature request and mention it on wikipedia-l. --Brion VIBBER

In this software, I've generally used "article" to refer to the collection of data (title, text, history, etc.) that represents an entry in our encyclopedia. In one case I narrowed that even further: on the special pages dropdown I use "article" to refer to those only in the primary namespace. That was just a matter of convenience--I wanted to know which of those special pages restricted their results that way (as many do). In general, though, I don't use the term "page" for anything except the entities served by the web server. What the "delete" function deletes are articles--it deletes all of the title, text, and history a particular encyclopedia entry, which might also be an image and its associated text. I suppose I could have a separate log for images if that would be useful.

If you think a different set of terminology would be better for presenting to users, I'm open to suggestions. --LDC

Hum -- I see now why "article" was used internally. Since there is already a long history of the use the word "article" to mean "encyclopedia article" I think we should stick to that for general discussion. As for what is presented to users I would suggest we replace "article" with "page" for the deletion log, the save button and in most other cases (What was wrong with simply "save" and "preview" anyway?). I know this causes a conflict with the internal names used by developers but the developers of all people won't be nearly as confused as non-developers (perhaps the developers can think of different terminology for their own use). --mav

We've already got "Edit this page", "Main Page", "Random page", "Watch page" (actually changed *from* the "Watch this article" of phase II), "List recently updated pages", "Talk page", "Subject page"... --Brion VIBBER

Yeah, I was pretty sloppy about such things. Every piece of text that actually gets shown to users, though, should be isolated in Language.php, so it should be an easy matter to make these consistent. --LDC

Thanks for the greetings, I've a couple of questions you or one of the other keepers of the wikifaith might be able to help me with. First, what constitutes a "minor edit" and does anybody really care? Second, is there a standard way of transliterating names, places etc from Cyrillic or other alphabets? There's been a discussionette about this over at Talk:Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - I can't decide myself if it's best to use the most common English language spelling (which is this case would turn Pyotr into Peter), or the spelling most often used by scholars and other reference works (which I suspect would keep things as they are). Thanks -- Camembert

Minor edits are sort of unadvertised changes. They don't show up on the list of articles you've contributed to, and people have the option of turning off display of minor edits in the Recent Changes page. Ortolan88

Actually, they do now show up on the contributions list. I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intended change on someone's part. --Brion VIBBER

Yes, that's the intent; a "minor change" is one that you are certifying doesn't deserve greater attention. If you never mark the box, nothing will really be affected; you might consider marking it a courtesy for those who follow recent changes looking for content changes and don't want to be bothered with things like spelling, grammar, and punctuation fixes. It is conversely matter of personal integrity not to check the box if you made a real substantive change to the article's content: if you make a significant change to the content of an article, especially a controversial one, and "hide" your change by marking it as minor, that is an overt act of deception meriting an IP block.

As for the contributions list, I agree that excludiing minor changes by default is probably a good idea--it was simply an oversight on my part not to do that, and it's an easy fix. --LDC

Is there a way for the software to automatically check to make sure if minor edits are in fact minor? Then if somebody tried to hide a non-minor edit they would be greeted with an error message or something. --mav

It could internally run a diff and count the number of different bytes or something, I suppose. How would you decide a cut-off point? I'd prefer to just silently drop the minor mark or include a tiny note after 'page successfully saved' rather than an error message; I tend to mark my edits minor by default except on talk pages, and sometimes I forget to uncheck it when I get into a larger typing frenzy than I intended. --Brion VIBBER

Lee says:

if you make a significant change to the content of an article, especially a controversial one, and "hide" your change by marking it as minor, that is an overt act of deception meriting an IP block.

KQ says: no, usually it's a matter of deception, but I'd lay money that all of us have at one time or another checked it intending to change punctuation or spelling etc. and then shuffled sentences; and some of us in a copyediting phase check things by habit and then decide to add to articles and forget to uncheck it. But no, I'll agree that it's not honest to try to 'hide' edits that way. --KQ

Not the I mind the attention, but since my talk page is becoming a kind of wikipedia chat forum for newbie questions and answers I think I will change my standard newbie greeting to say "If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or post a message on Wikipedia:Help desk". Does this sound like a good idea to everybody? Of course then we would all have to watch that page for questions. --mav

They should be pointed to the mailing list. It's probably OK for them to know about "Help" and such as well, but a Wiki really isn't the right technology for interactive Q & A. -- LDC

Hmm... That would require the newbie to expose their email address to a bunch of people they don't know just to ask a question. I personally would be terrified to ask what might be seen as a stupid question to a group of people -- but then posting a message on a wiki help desk is technically the same... I will think about this some more. Anyway, thanks for making the article -> page switch so soon. I apologize in advance for sending a post to the mailing list on this. --mav

You mean you don't WANT your talk page to be the Complete Newbie Guide to the Wikipedia? We could always start a new page "Ask Mav" and you could answer their questions there :) (resists the temptation to link it)
Re the minor/major edit thing a few stops above this, I always forget to mark my changes as 'minor'. I usually only remember when I save an article and then see that I made one or more mistakes in it - oops! My second and/or third passes in succession get marked minor. I think that an automatic byte counter would be a good thing - it could see if you've changed more than say 40 or 50 characters (or however many characters are in your typical sentence) and automatically mark it accordingly KJ

LOL -- Anyway... I submitted a feature request for the software to automatically determine the "minornise" of edits. You can see it here --mav

I think it would be good to have a Wikipedia:Village pump (quote Ortolan88) page, where (new) users can just write down their questions. I would separate the more "sophisticated" issues from beginners' questions on your page. And more people may be tempted to go and help these people. Jeronimo

Mav,

I don't have permission to use the text from the British Dragonfly Society. I will rewrite in my own words. I am still getting the hang of what qualifies as an acceptable size fragment under copyright fair use rules.

Frank Warmerdam

What is 64.126.80.159 doing? Check out his edits at Talk:Characters (The Simpsons):

software => "chicken" (the meaning is a bit abstruse...) --Ed

Looks like a drive-by vandal. Those were the only two edits that were made by that IP. --mav

Hi Maveric,

I tried updating the Erysimum 'Chelsea Jacket' page to incorporate the standard format for the tree of life, and found that renamed links like [[image...|image:...] don't work. Any idea how we could include a link to a full-size image? image:ErysimumChelseaJacket.jpg|

The easiest way is just to include the full-size image in the description page for the small image. (Which I've just done for this one.) Thus, you click the small image and are presented with the large image. --Brion VIBBER

Hi again, I've started adding credits for the photos, which are taken by my wife and I. I'm fully versed in GPL and GFDL, so I know what these mean and love them dearly. But what's the point of having a check box for uploads when there's no sign of whether the image was submitted under GFDL?

Mav--I see you're working on the Wikiproject Tree of Life. What kind of advice would you give someone who's not knowledgeable about biology? I'm taking pictures of flowers, veggies, and fruit periodically, and wanted to contribute them, but I don't want to make things more difficult for others. For instance, I just wrote a brief article on canna lily so the picture had a home, but it's an orphan and I'd love it not to be. --KQ

Ok, well nevermind the bits above, answer me this: are the tables always green? If not, why not, and when? (I see to remember one that had cells filled in pink.) Also, is it the intention to put the taxoboxes in all plant articles, including edibles? I notice many fruits and veggies don't have it, though many inedible plants do. --KQ

Thanks for the answers. We should put the info on colors in the tables on the wikiproject page; in fact, I think I'll paste your explanation in now. I'd like to help when I can, but I am not a biologist; however I can google search for the info and plod along methodically much the way I did with the countries awhile back.... Oh yeh, and there's that other wikiproject, too. So much work, so little pay. ;-) --KQ

No problem. --mav

When you upload a picture there's a checkbox in the HTML form that says "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." By ticking this I assumed that it would be recorded that the images I upload are under GFDL. So it seems a bit redundant saying in the image details that the file is released under GFDL. The image pages already list who uploaded the picture and when it was uploaded. Would it be possible to also display whether the license box was ticked when the upload occurred? --Ramin

If you don't tick the box, your upload is denied. Therefore every uploaded file is assumed to be under GFDL (as it must be to be included in this work, which is under GFDL as a whole), because the person who uploaded it necessesarily explicitly checked a box to that effect. (This is more than we do for article edits, where there's a little note but you don't have to acknowledge it...) --Brion VIBBER

Darn, you beat me to it. I was just about to change it back. Danny

LOL. She really is bugging me. --mav

Mav, do you have a URL for that Washington portrait from the LBJ library? I can't find it there, and I'd like to make a better quality reduction of it from as high-quality source as they have--and from the looks of that site they probably do have a high quality source. --LDC

Sorry, I wasn't the one who uploaded it -- all I did was put the thumb in the table and the larger version in the thumb's image page. Is there a copy of the old upload log around? --mav

Hey, Mav. Please take a look at the Marina Tsetaeva delete that I did. Although there were some cosmetic changes, I found that for the most part the text was a straight copy of the source I gave in Talk. I can restore it if you or anyone else thinks it is okay, but I think there may be serious copyright issues there. Danny

Mav, I recovered Taliban article from vandalism as requested.
The talk page for Palestine is too long for my browser to handle. Can we refactor or archive some old talk? --Ed Poor

Hey, thanks for the welcome words! I definitely like this place, though I can already envision it eating all my time :( Anyway, see you around. Ppetru

Mav, I see you changed the non-wiki headings in the element articles. You think that should be done elsewhere as well - e.g. the formatted country article? Jeronimo

I'm not trying to change the color, mav, I got the wrong code from a website and you changed it back before I could find the correct one. Is there a reason to use words rather than the codes? And if so, why do some of the pages list the codes instead? Aren't the words more ambiguous? --KQ

Er? If any of the taxo tables have codes then yes that is wrong if the resulting color is different. I don't see how words would be more ambiguous than codes but that is a moot point since the particular word codes were chosen as the standard (our original goal was to make a nice yet simple table and using word codes was part of that). --mav

Of course it's wrong if the color is different, as I said above. I understand that the particular word pages were chosen as standard, and again, as I said above, it was not my intention to change them. What I was asking you was whether words themselves were chosen over codes, and that is what you have answered after misinterpreting my motives three times. I don't understand why you think I would try to change something like that without discussion. I do understand if you think people might not want to talk to you.

What I meant, again, and read this closely, is "ambiguous in terms of browser interpretation." It's been awhile since I had to look that up for a page, and the situation may have changed, but I'm not sure it has. The hexadecimal approach is less ambiguous because NS may use one word and IE may use another one, and the two may be interpreted differently on "incompatible" browsers. I don't know how common that is any more, but some time back (3 years ago) it was fairly common. At any rate, that was the situation three years ago, and it may not be now (as it shouldn't be). If you care to respond, do me a favor and respond to what I'm talking about, not what I'm not. Thanks, --KQ

I'm sorry KQ. We obviously have misunderstood each other. I was not indicating that I thought you were unilaterally changing colors on articles -- I just changed back what I saw as a mistake (I wasn't thinking ill of anybody when I did). I misread "ambiguous" and translated that into human terms, not in terms of browsers. As a matter of fact the colors have been tested in the latest IE, Navigator, Mozzila and Konqueror and the colors all look pretty much the same with the one word color codes. You do get in trouble with two word color codes though -- IE can't read those (it displays navy blue for "light gray" for example). Your intention in finding the hex code for the exact colors is admirable but really not needed. We can't be expected to provide 100% compatibility to ancient browsers (although if you have access to it, I would be interested if Navigator 4.7x renders the colors right. However, if people don't bother to upgrade to modern browsers we shouldn't let that stop us from doing things in the wiki way -- by keeping things as simple as possible. BTW, am I really that unapproachable? I hardly ever intend to be mean and I can't remember ever wanting to be mean to you. As a matter of fact I wanted to thank you for working on the WikiProject page -- you did a very nice job of organizing things. --mav

I don't usually think you're unapproachable, no; but your comments are often quite brief, and could sometimes be taken for brusque. I know that's probably not what you mean; you're on the 'pedia a lot and busy in several different areas of it, so an economy of 'speech' is understandable.

In this case, the dander went up over "Hum -- changing back to agreed on, human readable and rememberable color". Now I see that you meant that words were to be used in place of codes; at the time I read it as an accusation that I was attempting to pull a fast one by putting the wrong code in. Similarly I misinterpreted "I don't see how words would be more ambiguous than codes but that is a moot point since the particular word codes were chosen as the standard (our original goal was to make a nice yet simple table and using word codes was part of that)" above. I'm at a loss as for another interpretation of the sentence before that, though. At any rate I'll work on being a more generous reader and, uh, try to respond to what you are saying, and not what you're not. :-)

I don't know what to say for others who take offense (and don't ask for examples? I saw some kind of fracas awhile back, didn't pay it much mind, and can't remember the details). Anyway--on with editing, away from drama, --KQ

Mav, a thought, if you like the idea of Village Pump maybe you could mention it in your friendly greetings to new registered users, something like

"questions to Wikipedia:Village pump, serious problems and suggestions to User_talk:Maveric149".

Then, if we all watch the Village Pump, it might build up into something worthwhile. for that vital period between signing up and world-weary wisdom.Ortolan88

I will do that -- It is about time I go through the new user list. Thanx! --mav

You've been wiki-quiet lately; I hope my previous grumpiness didn't run you off. I do very much appreciate your work. I apologize for being rude; I was in the wrong. --KQ

Thanks to you and Heron for setting me straight about the convention on linking dates. I've tried to peruse all the FAQ and help but I've not yet come across anything which enumerates conventions like this...the use of formatting characters, conventions about using italics or quotes for titles, how to handle external links, section headings the like. Are there any pages - or even just examples of good practise - that you can point me at? Apologies for posting here, I'll take myself off the the Village Pump next time... Mazzy

Well, thanks again; you've been quite the gentlemen about it. :-) --KQ

Thanks for pointing out the problem of spellings on historical terms. I've never thought it this way. Ok for Battle of Inchon, if it's like this in History books, then it's probably better to keep it this way. But what about: This battle took place at Inchon, South Korea? I would say, this is wrong, since the city name is definitely Incheon.

More information about the new Korean romanization. They mention that one of the reasons of this revision was the internet, because the new spelling can be written more easily on international keyboards.

By user 210.180.96.xx

First of all, I am sorry about going ballistic -- we have had several revisionist historians lurking around lately and your changes looked like a type of revisionism. I don't have any major issues with using the newer Romanizations per se (so long as they are valid and widely used) but when a certain spelling or city name is used for an event for long enough that spelling gets set --- at least in the context of the event. And it would be perfectly OK and in fact desirable to stick to the Romanization that was when the event occurred and maybe mention in parenthesis something like (in modern day Incheon) or (modern spelling Incheon). But the two are so similar that I would simply make Inchon a redirect to Incheon and only have such a note on that page. There are similar issues here with Saigon -- it would be silly to say that the North Vietnamese attacked Ho Chi Minh City during the Tet Offensive. --mav

Ok, agreed. I know on a big project like this, decisions have to be taken and the redirection seems to be a good compromise.

And sorry if I make any glitches, I just discovered wikipedia since the sherlock plugin was created for Mozilla (a few days ago -- was it yesterday?) so I'm still fairly new at it. And thanks for your support, the recent changed pages are really worth reading and it helps me get used to the "what can be done" and the "no-no"s. --Anon

I hope you like it here and decide to stay. :) --mav

Thanks for the greeting, hi to you too :-) I tried to find the page where your comment was but I couldn't find it. --BL

Ah yes, the old Wikipedia:Naming conventions. How could I forget? Jimbo should come ban me for life. ;-) --KQ

Please no! I can't do all these movies by myself. :-) -- Zoe

Oh, that's hilarious. :-D Thanks. --KQ

LOL - I have no idea how that particular convention got in there - may have been before my time since I don't ever remember a discussion on the matter. --mav

I don't remember a discussion on it either. I've been here since about 2 months after it started. --KQ

From your latest description page:

This image was created by me using the GIMP. I release this image into the public domain. Why the hell I have to say this twice is idiotic (already stated on the upload log). --mav

Simple, Mav: because the log is just a log, and old stuff will be rotated out of it. The description page is permanent. If you think there's a way to make the interface easier or more obvious, let me know.

How about this: on a successful upload, if the image description page is empty, but the comment field had something in it, the page is automatically created with the contents of the comment? The comment is meant to be about the act of uploading, not the image, but I imagine that everybody uses it for image description anyway. --LDC

That sounds like a good idea to me. Would the text from the upload summary be next to the first entry in the image's history or simply be text added to the editable image page? I would prefer the former but either would stop me from being cranky. Sorry about that BTW. Of all people I shouldn't be pissing you off. Well, maybe Jimbo is more important not to piss-off. ;) --mav

Oh, I'm never pissed off by complaints from people who work harder than I do. Anyway, I was about to say that the comment field is already displayed in the first entry of the history list...but then I went to check, and it wasn't. That was my intent, and you just uncovered a bug (fixed now). I was thinking that maybe I should start the description text with it as well, but maybe that's not needed if it's there where it should be. On the other hand, the original version might be deleted, and we'd lose that comment, so I'm inclined to take my suggestion anyway. --LDC

Cool thanks. Not that it is too important but will it also be possible/practical to amend all previous uploaded images with this info? Granted there are far more important things to do so this should be a low priority; very low if it would be alot of work.

I have to disagree with you on your "hard-working" comment -- without your efforts to improve performance in the wikiware, Wikipedia would have ceased to be for practical purposes. --mav

The bug was that the comments were recorded in the log but not the database; there might be a way to read the log automatically, but since it's only a month's worth it would probably be easier for me to just do it manually (and it would avaoid complications like deleted images, etc.). That's kind of what I've been doing the last few days anyway--clearing my head of code by editing all the images.

Luckymama58 says: Hey, thanks for the welcome. Currently I am only working on Chico and the Man and Freddie Prinze here but I hope to contribute to other articles as I have time, especially in the areas of astronomy and geology. I have a BA in Secondary Ed in the fields of Math and General Science. Let me know if you need my help on any specific project! --Luckymama58

Mariposa says: Maveric, thanx for welcoming me. This is a wonderful resource and--most importantly to me--another wide open chance to do some writing, particularly about my favorite topic, the late great Freddie Prinze! Just hope I don't get lost in all the technical stuff, being an artist rather than a scientist LOL! BTW--I too have a BS in BS, having gotten my second Bachelor's (after a BA in English) in Education at an institution which was in the process of restructuring its College of Education at the time--leading to my learning nothing but BS on the subject! --Mariposa

mega-LOL :) -mav

2002-08-08: Mav, once again I've responded. Please look and comment, if you get the chance, at User talk:Dwheeler. -- Dwheeler.

Thanks for correcting the Animal Echolocation (sic) page. However, you forgot to change the pages pointing to the original page. I've done that. David 10:55 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Opps, thanks. --mav

Thanks for your statement at Talk:China! What you said is an exact reflection of my opinion (and summary of my talk above ;-) ) Jeronimo

No problemo -- I call them as I see them. --mav

I moved the page Zaire to Zaïre (and redirected zaire) to that becuase Zaïre has an accent. and you moved it back again. is there a good reason why? (i am quite a pedantic person at times) - fonzy - PS i read taht you moved it because its nto teh english spelling. BUT IT IS! any decent ATLAS will put the accent on the i! You dotn spell Café with out the accent.

Simple. Hardly any English speakers use the Zaïre form. Look at a Google language search for the two terms while only searching in English language websites. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions, esp. common names, and use English term. --

-- but if they searched for it in "the english form" it would redirect tehm to the correct one. I do get quite serious about accents on words.

Then place accents on the words within the text of the article -- page names have to be linkable by people who do not know how to make accents with their keyboards. Also make the accented form redirect to the non-accented form when the non-accented form is the one in dominent use. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (anglicization) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Simple as that. --mav

Mav, what's the point in moving Cape Town to a city, nation format? AFAIK there is only one Cape Town. It really is disambiguation gone mad. -- Tarquin

--consistency. --mav

yes, but a) the rule will break on cases like Madrid, places like St Marie (probably loads in France, need to be seperated by departement), states which aren't quite states (case of Cornwall...). There's just too much variety in the names humans devise for cities and places for such a simple rule to work. Anyway, why not make it "Cape Town" for the good old K.I.S.S rule? -- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KeepItSimple -- Tarq

Where it brakes, additional disambiguation will be there to fix it. There is no need to have articles on each and every city just because they exist. Predictable linking is a good thing (TM). --mav

it's funny that for cities you want consistency & I disagree, whereas for reorganizing policy I want consistency, and you disagree... ;-) -- Tarquin 13:35 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)

Funny indeed. Although other issues are driving our particular views on these separate matters. --mav

Mav and Talk:mav watchers, please take a look at Talk:Britannica Public Domain for two sets of thoughts on the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Ortolan88 09:48 Aug 11, 2002 (PDT)

IIRC, some of the IP addresses used by the vandal of User:Rlee0001, including the one that I blocked but also at least one of those that you blocked, were dynamic. Should we unblock these? As the primary IP blocker, do you have a system for checking and unblocking dynamic IPs? — Toby 19:10 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)

I don't know how to check whether an IP is dynamic - how do you do that? As for the system; Yes I did have a system for this with the Phase II software: After some time had passed I would move the block from the old blocked IP page (which was editable) to a page I titled Wikipedia:IP probation watchlist. But now when you unblock an IP there doesn't appear to be any history of the block and there is no easy way to transfer the needed info and links to a manually edited watchlist. Lee is working on a "watch IP/User" feature so that unblocking an IP/User could automatically put them on a watchlist (if I can convince Lee to do this). Until that feature exists I really don't want to take the chance that the vandal still is using those IPs. --mav

Somebody on the mailing list checked using some network utility. I remember that this person said that some of them were at Road Runner, at that these are generally dynamic. If you use nslookup on the 66.xxx.xxx.xxx ones, then they come out at rr.com, which I guess is Road Runner. (They were using a utility that gave much more information, however.) I plan to unblock mine, moving the information to the probation watchlist with the help of some HTML cutting and pasting. We'll see if they act up, and they'll be on probation anyway. I agree that the ideal solution is your proposal. — Toby 23:31 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)

Re Francis Bacon: I've been slowly ploughing through this lengthy article and revising it. Then some unregistered individual made his many changes throughout, and you moved part of the article to the talk page. I have no problem with the unedited 1911 material out of the main page, but the offect of the combined efforts made everything more difficult to follow than it already was. As things stand I restored the version from the last time that I worked on it, then moved the unedited portion to the talk page replacing the version that you had there.

I can easily agree to dividing this article. A possible division might be Francis Bacon - Biography and Francis Bacon - Works. Is the hyphen the right punctuation for subdivided articles? I'd prefer to avoid the old sub-pages debate if possible.

"Dashes are as bad as slashes." I suggest Francis Bacon (articles on people are generally biographies) and Works of Francis Bacon (linked to prominently on the biography page) — Toby 23:47 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

As I was writing the above I began to think that things like 1911 EB material or the wisdom from the Eusless Bible Dictionary might be in the form Francis Bacon/unedited material. It's not really talk page material, but the argument to keep it off the main page is also strong. The sub page format would present a series of articles that could be easily deleted once the editing is done. People looking for something to do could then find plenty by putting the word "unedited" in the search box. There have been suggestions for separate pages for a lot of downloaded material, but there is some value to having that material maintain affinity with what it purports to encyclop about. (To encyclop - new word = to look at with a single, not very NPOV, eye.)

Now for something completely different. I've noticed your habit of greeting newbies, and I've read some of your comments about old-hands. As an extension of the first perhaps the newcomer could have a fancy-looking certificate e-mailed to him congratulating him for having become a "Level 0 Wikipediac". If he shows that he understands the most basic instructions for writing an article he can receive a whole new "Level 1 Wikipediac" certificate. Further certificates could come with small increments or progress. An "old hand" might then be somebody who has reached level 10. Perhaps going through the different levels could even be automated! Eclecticology 01:10 Aug 13, 2002 (PDT)

"Wikipedia is not a Masonic Lodge." Toby 23:47 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

Hello Mav,

You mentioned in the previous talk archive that you are gay. Would you like to join the Wikipedians/Queer list? - montréalais

I didn't knwo such a list existed. Sure why not -- latter though. --mav

You asked me why I deleted the EBD dictionary entries. My answer is that I do not feel they serve any use. This is not something against the EBD in particular - I have the intention of removing anything that is both orphaned and without actual content. I really don't see what use it has to have the EBD definition of 'adversary' in Wikipedia. Maybe I've been a bit too rash in immediately deleting it, but if you have any argument why these ARE useful, I would like to hear them. It is not specific against the EBD entries, by the way - they just came up first in the alphabet. -- Andre Engels

" I do not feel they serve any use" sounds fairly subjective to me. Therefore it behooves you to list these things in the vote for deletion page first and then wait for a few days. However poor, the EBD entries do (now some did) have content on them. Please also read our policy on this issue at Wikipedia:Wikipedia policy on permanent deletion of pages. It is now not possible to say if the particular entries were at all useful, because they are now deleted. --mav

---

Hi. I've emailed wikipedia-l@nupedia.com about the unblocking of IP 62.64.253.65, but as yet not received any reply. For the record I apologise for the copyright violations, I made those entries in a fit of enthusiasm soon after discovering Wikipedia. I promise not to make such copyright violations in future. If you wish I will rewrite the lightbulb article in my own words. --Anon

No hard feelings and apology accepted -- I haven't seen the email to the list yet but I have already unblocked the other IP. I'm sorry it had to come to that but there really isn't any other way to get the attention of non-logged-in users on serious matters. And yes any help with rewriting/rewording the copied text will be much needed and appreciated (BTW, so long as you mention the source and word everything in your own words/organization there is nothing wrong with using a single source -- All that I ever expect is that new material passes the Google test -- public domain material is, of course, fine to copy and paste).

I think another Admin has deleted the Swan article and maybe another near complete copy and paste job that I placed on the deletion queue -- it was not my intent to have these articles deleted so quickly (the whole reason to have a deletion queue is so that these things can be reviewed over several days to a week at minimum).

BTW, it is not at all required in any sense of the word, but if you plan on contributing a lot it might be a good idea to create and use a user account. Doing so makes it easier for other users to contact you if need be and would also make it easier for you to track your own edits and play with your user settings so that they fit your editing needs. But again, it is your right to be anonymous if you want to. --mav 11:34 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

Hi Mav, what's the point in deleting the headings of several county articles? I think these headings are part of the WikiProject U.S. States. I agree that it looks bad if they're not filled in, but it may give some editing hints to visitors. Jeronimo

Long tradition here on not liking empty and/or spurious headings. That's all. On top of that I also personally hate them -- esp. the oh so informative "Introduction" heading. --mav

Yeah, the "Introduction" heading really stinks, and I don't really care if the empty headings are there. Just thought you could better spent your time on writing new element articles or so :-) Jeronimo

Yeah I would prefer cranking out another element article too but I have missed a couple of days of Recent Changes that I had to go over. I wish there were a way to not display any edits by users and IPs I know and trust -- then it wouldn't take me 3 hours to search for vandalism, copyright violations and to greet new users. I started so late today I am not going to get a chance to do anything other than housecleaning. Such is life. 'nite. --mav