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...

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, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4

I oftentimes give quick, seemingly unkind and terse comments on talk pages and especially in edit summaries. However meanness is not at all the intent, just efficiency. This is a quirk of my rare personality type: INTJ. I do try to moderate what I say and how I say it -- mainly because my terseness sometimes leads to inefficient chit chat to resolve misunderstandings on talk pages.

Hi Maveric, I've just seen your comment on your talk page, and you're rightalot of the 1911 articles haven't been so good. I'll try to wikify them more, copyedit and attempt to remove bias. Minus the biased views there's alot of great biographical information in the EB, on people we probably wouldn't get biographies written about for a long time (maybe never). Smelialichu

Hi Maveric. It's me again, Gonis. Please feel free to answer me in english on my EL page. I can understand it pretty well and your spanish... well... sorry, but sometimes it is a bit confusing :(. I have not been able to answer before because of very busy weeks. First of all, let me say that nothing has been decided (at least forever)... but there was a votation where most of the people decided to stay in the current server (see Retorno a Wikipedia in EL in spanish), and leaving the door open to reunification. Some movement from the wikipedia side is expected. After reading the links that you pointed me I have seen no technical reason that forbids having the spanish version of wikipedia outside. It is my personal opinion that, though it requires a bit more of coding work, it might even be better for the whole project:

It will guarantee that if for some reason the central wikipedia server crashes, the rest of the versions will still work
Wikipedia will not need to store all the encyclopedias saving space (cost) in the central server
The same applies to network costs
The fact that the server is not physically in USA, but in some other country makes reaching it faster for the nationals of that country. It is true that there are spaniards in more countries than in Spain, but certainly none of our collaborators (except you ;-) and probably one more) works from USA. Most of the people come from Spain (though I would like to have people from every spanish speaking country).

A decision from the central wikipedia management to consider EL as the spanish version (I am pretty sure that almost everything meaningfull in the es.wikipedia is in EL) and linking it (appart from the mailing lists, does EL appear somewhere in wikipedia?) would be very well seen in EL and will make the people reconsider their positions. Of course, there is still the question of the non-profit organisation... but that will come after ;-) Cheers. Gonis

Hi Maveric. I am Gonis from the spanish EL. I have seen your comments there and read the pages you mention. Could you please make undertand why is it so important for the interlanguage links (and other features that may come) that all the other "wikipedias" reside on the same server. Different servers will low server bandwith and distribute costs probably. I understand it will make the life of developers a bit more difficult, but not so difficult that it cannot be handled. Internet is about distribution, not centralisation... At least for me. Sorry if my comments sound a bit rude, (this is not my intention), but my mother tongue is spanish and I have difficulties in finding the polite, nice, way of say my ideas in english. Cheers. Gonis

Thank you for the welcome and the suggestions. I had visited a lot of the protocols before attempting to post and discovered that I need more sleep, some scotch, or a translator. Maybe some combination of the three. Being a humanities type, it was a little difficult to follow and internalize, so I tried to follow the style example of the person whose post I modified for content. Learning by doing, and all that.

Your suggestion about the sandbox (on this page, below) was a good one and I intend to take it. In the meantime, please be patient with my formatting errors, which will doubtless be legion. Once I learn it it will be learned.

Is there a convention for book titles similar to the one for movies? As there is no copyright on a book title, duplication occurs. (e.g., America (Warhol) v. America (Cheney) ) If there is no established convention, I suggest including the author's last name to preclude ambiguity, except in cases where the authorship is clear.

Mary Anne

Don't worry about formatting errors; just have fun and everything else will come in time. No there isn't an explicit convention for book titles but for movies it is Crossfire (movie) when a movie and something else share the same name and Titanic (1997 movie) when there is more than one movie by the same name. An unwritten convention is to have 1984 (novel) for novels (and if there is more than one novel by the same name then add the year). --mav

I personally would prefer the convention as Mary Anne proposes - the author as the identifying mark when two novels have the same name. I did this for example with Nemesis, specifying Nemesis (Asimov) and Nemesis (Christie). However, there is no official policy, and I don't think there have been enough examples to specify either your or my method as unofficial policy. At least I have had to do it only once or twice, and being busy on the disambiguation front, I would probably have met them if they occurred often. Andre Engels

If I may chip in, I'd just like to say that I prefer author disambiguation also, especially for fiction, but it presents problems with compilations and works with several authors, such as the occasional reference book. I'm coming increasingly to think that unique identifiers for a work are the way to go, although (unlike IMDb) I'd want significantly different versions (e.g. Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux, for films) to have different entries. In books, I'd lump all versions of a textbook in the same entry, though maybe The Stand and The Stand: complete and uncut could have different ones. Anyway. But that's well down the road before we need a system like that. --KQ

Mav, isn't it easier to just remove the old talk? It will be in your history anyway for those interested. Jeronimo

I don't like archiving stuff in history since it is not at all easy to navigate, is not at all obvious that old talk is archived and most importantly, the archived stuff would be quickly lost in a buzz of many other revisions that represent single edits. Oh I also forgot to mention that I'm an egomaniac. :) --mav

Gracias por los buenos deseos!--AN

El placer es mio! :) --mav

Hi Mav,
One of the french contributor Youssefsan is a student in spanish and also contributing from time to time to EL.

I left him links here and there in case he would agree to help (seems to be willing to, but also know he is busy at school now). Please tell me if there is a specific place/link to indicate him user:anthere

Thanks for the info. We are still trying to figure out what the parameters that any talks might have but we should be settled upon something soon. --mav

Hi,

I'm confused! Helpp! Looking at (for example) [[1]], and its history and so on, I can see that it has been done as part of a project of some kind to set up a London framework - correct? So, I don;t want to blunder in an go editing things inappropriately. However, there is a real weirdness here which is that the nearby places listed just aren't - they are way way off on the other side of London. Maybe it's just an artefact of the way it was set up?? In a perfect world (ho ho yeah right) I would like to correct this but I'm just not sure. Suggestions please??

Thanks

Nev

Yes, that entry was created as part of a WikiProject. But no, you don't have to follow the framework established by WikiProject London (or any WikiProject for that matter) if you haven't explicitly joined the project. WikiProjects are useful for a group of Wikipedians to decide how they will create and format a certain themed grouping of articles. If there is incorrect info in any of the entries, then please by all means fix the information -- WikiProject standards be damned (these "standards" are not like our naming conventions, our policy or even our style guide). I'm sure a member of the WikiProject will come by later and make some minor modifications to what you add so that it is closer to what they want. It is their right to edit the article the way they want and it is your right to do the same. --mav

Ah! Thanks v much for the clarification!

Nev

Not a problem. :) --mav

User:RTC

I wish I knew how to change the 1620 I and 1620 II pages and all their references to IBM 1620 Model I and IBM 1620 Model II pages and references. I created these before I learned about the "|" notation that allows you to refer to one page, but display something different in the text. --RTC

There is a 'move this page' function that is available to all logged-in users. I don't know what your prefs are so I don't know where it is on your panel but on my set-up 'move this page' is just above "Recent Changes" at the bottom of my page. Checking out Wikipedia:naming conventions is usually a good idea before making a move but in this case I don't have any issues with your proposed new names. --mav

Thanks. After reading the naming conventions section (after having already created both pages and having already learned about "|") I knew these were much more appropriate names... but had no idea how to fix them. --RTC

An entry which contains a few copied phrases from individual websites or other sources. Quotation, even without attribution, is specifically allowed in international copyright law, and single sentences are generally not protectable. So why are you bitching about the fact that I "stole" the population of a town and mentioned that a guy used to be the governor of said town? -Lir

I see you finaly found my talk page. In the future it would be nice to place comments at the bottom of talk pages. Yes, it is difficult to claim copyright on individual sentences but you copied more than one sentence. Here at Wikipedia we are extra sensitive about this very issue so we try to make extra certain that our text is above par. Please rewrite them. --mav

Sorry about changing the test. And no, it doesn't add up to 100, and hasn't for quite awhile. --KQ

There shoud be some type of announcement each time the Wikipediholic test gets changed

Maveric darling, if you were a true Wikipediholic you wouldn't let it slip past you in Recentchanges. ;) --Brion, score 86

It looks like there is some hope for me yet. 8-) --mav

Huh. I'd say there's a problem with the test, since I scored an 81 but mav has made at least twice as many edits. :-) --KQ

Well I didn't select the perfect mate option (19 points). I also haven't edited more than 5 Wikipedias yet (10 points; I am up to 4 Wikipedias though). Maybe that is it? Oh I did just edit the test to improve my score (now at 82). --mav

Yeh, I didn't select the mate option either. And I've only added a few en: links to the German and Dutch wikipedia, though I'll probably add some when the next one gets changed over too. Ah well.... There should be one on there about if you're inclined to work on wikipedia when suffering insomnia, or if you've ever suffered insomnia from working on wikipedia. ;-) --KQ

That would make me a shoe-in for sure. ;) --mav

---

Hi Mav. I'm going to bed. You might want to keep an eye on the vandalism, looks like we're getting a few tonght. Have a good one.

Will do. Thanks for the heads-up. --mav

What's the story with Phpnuke? It's contents were erased, but it doesn't seem to have been pointed elsewhere, and there's no talk about it. --LDC

I must have hit F5 or something while still in edit mode. Doing that in Konqueror sometimes saves a blank page. I also had trouble saving that page - the first time I tried it timed-out so I clicked on the URL and hit enter. I quess that has the same effect as reloading the page in edit mode. --mav

Mav,

I have realised that the article on Sydney lacks any mention of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which I shall attempt to remedy in the near future. It's certainly Australia's most famous street parade, but it is also often claimed that it's one of the world's biggest gay events. Using you as a completely statistically reliable sample of one <grin>, could you comment on this claim? --Robert Merkel 00:53 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)

Yep - It is at least one of the largest if not the largest as far as I know (at least for English speaking countries). --mav

Mav, about the dutch day links: I think instead of changin the links in the articles we should just redirect the capitalized version to the lower case... someone else is bound to make this mistake in the future again anyways... plus chaning links is tedious, and only works for the english wikipedia... the others still need to be fixed.. i think its just easier this way... Lightning 03:20 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)

OK I can make redirects too if needed but I still will fix the links. --mav

Thanks, Mav. I'm back. 200.165.239.234

No problemo, I'm glad I could be of assistance. :) --mav

Sorry, 200. I will be more careful in the future. Slow and steady wins the race, and all that :-( --Ed Poor

Hi Mav

Not sure about this: Croydon Airport

vs this:

Croydon Airport

I mean, cleary they are related, but I don't know how close is allowable, plus maybe the user had permission?? I don't know, please advise. I just wanted to find the history page to add as an external link and was a bit disappointed to see how close it was.

thanks Nev

I just ran it through a brutal Google test and it passed. That's all I ever expect. True, it does look like it was rewritten from the above link and the fact that that wasn't mentioned in the edit summary could be classified as academic dishonesty but I wouldn't call it a violation of copyright. Thanks for keeping an eye out on these matters - it is very important that our database isn't filled with copyright violations. Power to the Wiki! --mav

OK and fine, thanks very much, I'll stop worrying! Nev

To be bold, or not to be bold, that is the question... Thanks, again, Mav!! --Ed Poor

You are welcome - although I often am too bold and come across as being rude. I'm sorry for that part. :) --mav

I'm going to make interlanguage links work as inline links instead of magic top-of-the-page-links on the meta. But I ain't done yet. ;) Once done, en: and w: should be equivalent. --Brion VIBBER 01:04 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

Excellent! Although after the English Wikipedia is moved to en.wikipedia.org then w: links will still go to www.wikipedia.org, no? This is probably an important behavior to have, although that would break a lot of current w: links if some type of conversion script isn't done. --mav

Well, last I checked the consensus was for wiki-links to www.wikipedia.* to continue to redirect to the English wiki for backwards compatibility with old links. Likewise, "w:" is just backwards compatibility, and are just an alias for the English wiki. No? --Brion VIBBER 01:12 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

Hm. But when we do have the non-profit set-up it will be at www.wikipedia.org and probably have its own wiki (maybe with an uber Recent Changes showing every edit made in each Wikipedia encyclopedia). Therefore it makes perfect sense to have w: links go there. If needed I can convert the w: links to en: links -- there couldn't be more than a few scores of pages with them and find and replace will be easy on each one of them. --mav

I would have thought that stuff would go here on the meta wiki? --Brion VIBBER 01:19 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

That was my original thought too but it doesn't make much sense to have the Foundation's constitution, bylaws and such right next to random POV crap that was ported over from one of the encyclopedia's. Another interesting thing we could do with Metapedia is to somehow integrate the mailing lists so that each time a post is made to the list it shows up in Meta's Recent Changes. Another cool thing about having the Foundation having its own Wiki is that www.wikipedia.org would both be a portal to the various languages and home of the Foundation which makes logical sense. Another neat thing about that set-up is that when a person lands at www.wikipedia.org and hits Recent Changes they could see the Recent Changes for the whole dang project (display all Recent Changes for each encyclopedia would be the default there -- this would exclude Recent Changes from Meta by extention posts to the mailing lists). Cool eh? Of course this functionality hasn't been written yet -- but would be cool. --mav

Okay, make up your mind -- is meta supposed to be a useful place for information and discussion about the project, or a dumping ground for non-NPOV material that we don't want to have to look at? --Brion 02:02 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

It should be both. The wiki at www.wikipedia.org would be just to maintain Foundation-specific pages. --mav

That sounds mighty specific; so specific, in fact, that I'd be very leery of putting it at such a general URL as www.wikipedia.org. I'd make it foundation.wikipedia.org, and it would be a very small, boring place, since all actual discussion and business would be at meta.wikipedia.org. --Brion 02:10 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)

That could work too - I was just kicking around ideas on what to do with www.wikipedia.org beyond simply having a portal there. It still would be nice to have an uber Recent Changes directly accessible from that portal. --mav

Is there a compelling reason not to have spaces between the interlanguage links? I just ask because sometimes it forces the edit box to have a scroll bar at the bottom, and I wanted to pick up your torch on the interlanguage links on the year articles (in my mostly nonexistent spare time). Does that cause any text boxes to wrap wider, or do the browsers all interpret it ok? --KQ 02:06 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

They still work with spaces. I hadn't noticed there was a scrolling problem because my screen is 1400 pixels wide now. I will add spaces in the future. --mav

Maybe it doesn't affect any of the rest of it--your talk page even has a scroll bar on it, but scrolls only for the link http://www.croydon.gov.uk/ledept/localstudies/cr-pastairport.htm above. So this might be a non-issue unless some browser chokes on it. Mozilla for winMe handles it fine. What do you think we should do? --KQ

I'm not sure if I follow you but long URL links will tend to cause horizontal scrolling - browsers don't wrap them. The only thing that can be done is to use brakets to display something else. --mav

I wonder if you have been keeping an eye on the Aria Giovanni talk webpage. The situation there is out of control.

Matters have deteriorated to a highly abusive level over a website link. Of special concern is the general conduct and attitude of someone called NetEsq, who claims in his details to be a lawyer.

He has repeatedly abused anyone who opposed the idea of the website link with such tactics as net misettiquete ( eg the use of the word 'you' in capitals and bold to emphasise shouting), a poor grasp of history, the unrepentant use of such termsas Nazi, out of context quotes and attempted alienation ("only YOU opppose it").

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of his beliefs, it is very advisable to bring this most unruly and arrogant person into line.

Given that your name is on the list of persons who can ban users, I thought it advisable to bring this to your attention, before it leads to persons leaving the wikipedia - something likely to stroke Netesq's already aggressive ego.

I will look into it but I do happen to agree that at least the url should be in the article and the constant deletion of that info isn't cool either. But being a bully is bad too. --mav

Dear mav,
(1) I know how to block an IP, but I've heard a rumor that I can block registered Wikipedia users, not just anonymous IP addresses. Is that true, please?
(2) Speaking purely hypothetically, if that's true, how would I go about it, please? (If I have to trace the username to the IP address to do it, how do I do that?)
Thanks,
isis 06:51 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

Nope. There is not an interface for this yet (Brion is working on one) and I'm not sure what the interface will be. --mav

Then IP 203.185.240.37 was wrong about that -- whether that was ignorance or a deliberate lie, it certainly makes everything else that pusillanimous would-be provocateur said incredible, doesn't it? Thanks much. -- isis 07:17 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

Concerning cysteine/cystine - uhh, nope. The picture (the monomer) is cysteine, two cysteines joined by a disulfide bond is cystine. Hmm, since I'm not looking at that page right now, I forget exactly what's wrong, but I thought it was something I shouldn't just barge in and change (esp. since it's getting late). -- Marj 05:27 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)

? Sorry I don't follow. Yes two cysteines = 1 cystine via a disulfide bond with water as a byproduct. I will make that more clear. --mav

Me neither! It was late. I always did get cysteine and cystine mixed up, but I did look it up! It seems clearer now. -- Marj 16:34 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)

Oh, that's fine - Lord knows I get easily confused when I'm tired. :-) --mav

Understood, appreciated. -user:stevertigo

I hope I didn't seem too heavy handed... --mav

Go here and create & sign a comment with four tildes, please. --KQ 03:40 Oct 14, 2002 (UTC)

Works for me. --mav

Ok, thanks. That was weird. --KQ

Just want to say thanks for the style manual hint. user:Tillwe

No problemo. --mav

Maveric, please help us stop the non-stop slander and vandalism done by the anonymoys people in the pro-Jehovah's Witnesses camp. Their constant slander of all JW critics is hatespeech. In fact, their constant vandalizim of this encyclopaedia only proves that much of the criticism made against the JW movement is true. The pro-JW group uses unscrupulous tactics to slander others, censor material, write bald-faced lies and literally rewrite history. Every single day they rewrite entries, and they refuse to respect the opinions of anyone at all, but themselves. If they (and we are talking about a few people here) are not banned for at least a month, then we might as well delete every entry on this topic, because their actions have made clear that they have no intention of ever ending their vandalism and censorship. RK

Already trying to work on it. PS - Posts to my talk page get much faster responses (an asterisk appears next to the talk link). --mav

- sugestion why not create teh artcile then make it a protected page if anyone wants to make an edit tehy will have to ask someone who can edit the protected page. - fonzy

That is a possibility, but oddly general policy around here actually favors temporary IP blocks of individuals instead of preventing everybody but sysops from editing a page. --mav

Another user was gracious enough to inform me of a problem with the data I am using to generate articles. All the cities that I added today for Connecticut and Iowa are false. I can try to write a script to correct them, or is it easier for some way to delete them all? Get back to me on my talk page with your response. If you can delete them fine. I didn't modify any existing pages, only created new ones. Otherwise I'll just work on updating the data at some point. Thanks. -- Ram-Man

Yikes! Response on your talk page. --mav

i cant get the characters to work see á á á á á á á á THATS NOT A á --Lir

They all look fine to me on Win2K/IE6. --mav

it looks like that greek alpha fishy symbol? Its a bit strange that I can see it fine under naming conventions but when I try to cut and paste it I get this a'

αα ok i got it

I usually do use the move feature. The few moves that I just made already had redirects there, except for one that I didn't notice until later. Or have I misread your message? Eclecticology 22:55 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

Ah I see - a pre-existing redirect that was the correct title was preventing you from moving the history from the incorrect title. Much apologies for "Duding" you. ;) --mav

sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate

Lir 23:52 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)

About the mistakes in Alabama, I looked at the example you give me and the census bureau calls Madison in both Limestone County and Madison County. I do not live there and there are lots of different ways to define a city. I suppose such examples will have to be "fixed" by the people who live in each place. But maybe I am mistaken. I will check into this as well. Thanks for the update. I was gone for a few days and will manually fix all my mistakes. It shouldn't be so bad, especially since it is my fault. -- Ram-Man

Wow. One city in two different counties? That sounds odd but I guess it is possible that it is in fact correct. --mav

Hi Mav, I see you're moving WikiProject Conservation Worldwide links onto Talk Pages where practically nobody will ever be able to find them. I've already spend several dozens of hours on this project. What is the point of all that work when no-one can find the page? User:Renata

Having WikiProject tags on article pages gives the wrong impression to readers and potential contributors on the WikiProject's importance. I've already had to explain to a newbie that they didn't have to get permission from a the keepers of a WikiProject to make changes to an article that was created as a result of a WikiProject. Your tags aren't as harmful as the ones I moved from the French Department and US State articles and in fact I really don't think you should even call your project a WikiProject (it looks more like a category scheme). But having WikiProject tags in articles, even relatively benign ones like yours, encourages others to place more harmful ones in articles. More reasoning can be found at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French departements. If your project is in fact mostly a category scheme and not a set of WikiProject standards then perhaps a page rename is in order. Then there would be no problem with including a link to your project in see also sections. --mav

Thanks for all the info. I looked at Wikipedia Category scheme and it looks very complicated. I only called the whole thing a WikiProject because G from B suggested it. I would much prefer it if it was called Conservation worldwide or something. What would you suggest?? Renata 22:40 Oct 20, 2002 (UTC)

To me it just looks like a list of conservation topics, so why not list of conservation topics (if the self-referential material at the top is taken out). However, if one of the purposes is to list everything related to conservation so that people can tract the recent changes to everything linked on that page by using the neat "watch links" feature, then Wikipedia:list of conservation topics would be best (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia arranged by topic, List of mathematical topics - which should be in the wikipedia namespace - for an example). --mav

--- talk - aim utilitymuffinres

Since you asked, a "publican" is a person who keeps a pub. - Montréalais

Oh. I thought is was some localized contraction meaning a person from the IRA. This should be explained better in the article. Thanks for the info. --mav

I have a long answer to your question on my talk page. -- Ram-Man

Hello again, Mav. This time a question about merging pages. I've found Saint Nicholas and Nicholas of Myra. Should they be merged, and if so, what is the correct procedure, please? Thanks, Renata 06:30 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

No real rules on this, but this is what I think is best: Saint Nicholas needs to be only about the widest English usage. Thus the Saint Nicholas of Myra text should be moved to Saint Nicholas of Myra and merged there (no real procedure, just hard work). Then at the bottom of Saint Nicholas you should have a line break and then a link to Nicholas of Myra. Now the fun part; check the links going to Saint Nicholas and make sure they really intend to go to the article about the childrens festival. --mav

I saw you just moved Munchen (with an Umlaut) to Munich. I disagree with this. Not sure of the "standards" though. The people who live in Munchen should surely be the authority on what the place is called. Everything else is just a localization of that. Here in Malaysia, USA is called 'Amerika Sharikat' (America United) which is a terrible phrase since it doesn't mention 'states' or any concept of North vs South America. If Wikipedia was firstly in Malay language, the residents of USA should still decide what their own country is called. So, shouldn't the local people get to define the official name, and the rest should just be links? WillSmith (Malaysia) 16:33 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)

  --> Syarikat = company, corporation ... America Syarikat ~= Corporate America?

To butt in; you have my permission as an American to call the US by its Malay name in the Malay section of Wikipedia. That's the only sane thing to do! --Brion 12:00 Oct 22, 2002 (UTC)

Read Wikipedia:naming conventions (anglicization) and its talk page. This is the English Wikipedia, therefore we name things in English. --mav

I was looking at the most wanted page and found the entry for Part per million. All nine links to it are from element pages. The term seems self-evident, and I wondered if there was enough to it to warrant an article. However, since the elements project is your "baby", I resisted the temptation to remove all these links. Eclecticology 17:22 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

They are not that important. The main reason I created the links was so I could use the compact ppm via [[part per million|ppm]]. I also had a problem with understanding the "part per x" concept in grade school (It's a complete, "well duh" now though - which makes explaining it correctly more difficult I might add). I guess the only useful thing that could be done with such entries is to have some unitless quantity comparisons as part of the orders of magnitude WikiProject. This would be useful for people since things like "150 parts per billion" or even "56 parts per thousand" are nearly meaningless without some reference or comparison frame. I don't know when I would be able to get around to creating such entries so remove the edit links if you must. --mav

Hey mav, could you take a look at Talk:List of flags regarding your comment to User talk:isis? Thanks. Scipius 20:26 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

Mav: did you manage to determine the copyright status of ? I uploaded that image from the congressional bio site, but deleted it when I read their copyright notice, which doesn't guarantee that the images are in the public domain. --The Cunctator

Actually I think you only deleted the image description page and not the image because when I uploaded the image from his senate website I noticed that you had already uploaded the above, and IMO, much better image. I then tried to revert to your version. So no, I didn't find any info about the public domain status of the image. However, we have a lot of images here that are not in the public domain that are used under the fair use doctrine. I'm pretty sure we are OK in using this image since our use falls under an educational purpose. Revert to the other image if still makes you nervous. --mav

I don't think the GFDL really allows us to add content that restricts downstream use (e.g. someone who wants to use Wikipedia material for a commercial purpose--might even be the Wikipedia Foundation...) --The Cunctator

I have similar misgivings about allowing proprietary images. You will have to talk with Isis and LDC about this -- they are the ones mainly responsible for the change is policy (the written policy is still pretty conservative but the unwritten one is rather permissive). --mav

I guess I deleted the wrong thing. Ack. --The Cunctator

Yeah it does seem odd that deleting the image description page doesn't also delete the image. A couple other people besides myself have already noted this to the developers. --mav

Dear Mav: Hi! I want to thank you for the welcome note, even thru you wrote it about 2 months ago. To tell you the truth, I'd never even noticed anybody writing anything until somebody else put an input recently. My bad.

Im also coming to you because you seem to be one of the (if not the) most important administrator(s) here. I hwrote an article about Fabio the model about a month and a half ago, only to have someone re edit it saying something like "Im a Hero!" or something like that, and then Anders Engels correctly sent my article to the erase "washer machine" (as I call it). The person who edited the article, erasing my biography about Fabio and putting those 4 hero words, made me work twice as hard by having to find out about Fabio again and then writing, in my own words of course (to prevent Wikipedia.com from having copyright problems) Fabio's biography once again.

I read an interesting comment by someone that said that some of the administrators should monitor new entries and editings, and decide whether that entry or editing is worthy of being allowed before it is. That way, people would be prevented of having their articles messed up by such things like I am a Hero, Hi, Hail to The Kings or whatever might occur to the people who dedicate themselves to mess up articles. Do you think there is a way that we could have wikipedia administrators monitoring new entries and editings??

Other than that, I want to thank you for correcting some of my articles without making me feel bad about the way I wrote them. Some wikipedia administrators and users, whose names are really not worth mentioning, have gone as far as insulting me and my articles, not realizing that I wrote my articles when I was new and thought of this more like a magazine. Ive seen my earlier mistakes, and changed the way I write my articles lately, thanks to people like you and AN, who correct me without making me feel down, making this a worthwhile experience.

Thank you!

Sincerely yours, User:AntonioMartin

Opps! I seemed to have missed your note until now - I've been mostly working on the Spanish Wikipedia lately. I looked into the deletion and can't find anything wrong. Records indicate that Jeronimo (not Andre) deleted Fabio since all the content that was ever on the page was "im the hero". There does not appear to be any record of a previous version by you at that page title. If there was a previous version and somebody vandalized the page, all you have to do is go into the page's history, select the version right before the vandalism, click edit and then save (see: Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version for more detail).

In reference to;

"I read an interesting comment by someone that said that some of the administrators should monitor new entries and editings, and decide whether that entry or editing is worthy of being allowed before it is"

I'm not aware of this. The way things work around here is that all users watch Recent Changes and fix things that they see are wrong. There are only 41 Admins (all part-time volunteers and only half of them are currently active) with over 4000 edits a day now. There is no way for us to review each edit and if we tried it would kill the project. This leaves each one of us, Admin or not, the responsibility to make sure vandals don't win.

No problem on the corrections - I try to do the same thing for each new user just to show them how we do things here. I'm sorry to hear that others were not as gentle as AN and I. Some of us are frustrated by the large number of daily edits and our inability to review everything (this was possible 6 months ago and was relatively easy 10 months ago). So I can see how some people can sometimes be less than kind (including myself).

I'm glad you like it here and I do enjoy reading your articles. --mav

Hi Mav, I spotted the missing element 106 because I am translating all chemistry tables (well lots of them at least) to dutch.

Three questions:

First one I also posted to the Periodic Table page: "What about giving the table a smaller width? It does not fit on my 1280x1024 screen, and I think it might with narrower columns. I know that an absolute table width in stead of width=100% may cause problems when somebody uses a larger font. Still now the cells are very much wider than need be.

Compare version of environmentalchemistry. It fits easily on half my screen. (And is slightly more informative by the way.)

Another question: do you also experience the problem that the table moves underneath the left menu, showing through it, when one scrolls to the right. This happens on some other pages as well. I use Windows XP - Explorer 6. Erik Zachte

Last question: I saw a neat small periodic table for navigation on the Lithium article. I assume it is an experiment. Is this going to be carried through for all elements? If so, is there (well yet another question) a shortcut for copying all images to the Dutch database. It would save me 110 times, 'Save As' , and 'Upload Page' entries, which are quite a hassle with slow respone times. (cross database linking is not a feature, I believe, providing an external link to the English Wp is not favoured by some)

Cheers, Erik Zachte