User talk:Olivier

I've taken out the table on Napoleonic Era and put in this opening: The Napoleonic Era is an period in the History of France. -- it provides a link "up" to the higher topic. I think the drawbacks of the table (ugly markup) outweigh the convenience. But see what you think -- feel free to disagree & restore it :) -- Tarquin 13:20, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think that such historical tables are great, since they really clarify the stages of the history of countries. They have been added to quite a few countries already, like History of Germany, History of Algeria, History of Romania, History of Russia. I am not sure to understand what you mean with "ugly makup". Anyway, I am quite struggling with the periodization of the French History, and have added the table to the First French Empire article, instead of Napoleonic Era, which covers more than France. Any comment welcome! olivier 10:14, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Olivier This User talk:Yanyang1985. I have seen your message about

The reason I add every city with its province is that I am afraid there are two/more than two same named cities in China(I am sure there are.) So I thought maybe I could do some thing to avoid future duplication( I believe wikipedia WILL have entry for everything in this world, someday!). So that is why. What do you think after I have explained, Olivier? Should I add the provinces or should I just leave it what it is? 2:22pm, 26 Aug 2003(GMT)

Your concern is justified, and there has been quite a lot of discussions in Wikipedia around this topic. The concensus today is as follows: we try to keep titles as simple as possible, and their purpose is not to carry information. Now, about the titles for cities:

the format is (city name), (state) for cities in the USA and Canada, for disambiguation reasons AND because it is a common way of referring to cities in these countries
for other countries, it is a case by case situation. Typically, we do not disambiguate upfront, but rather when a naming conflict actually occurs. In addition, when a city is much more famous than other ones of the same name, we use a disambiguation block, and keep the "main" city with the shortest possible title (see examples in Venice and Paris).

I believe that the Chinese cities we are talking about are the famous ones carrying these names. Thus, they probably should have the short title (name only). If other cities with the same name appear, than disambiguation blocks will probably be appropriate. Please feel free to comment and let me know if I can answer other questions. In any case, thanks for your contributions and welcome to Wikipedia! olivier 06:45, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks,Olivier. That answered my question. I also want to ask you about quotes. I just saw you have moved my quotes in Suzhou and Guilin toward the end of the articles. I was thinking the quotes in the beginning of an article could attract people to read more, but I could be wrong. Please tell me more about use of quotes in wikipedia. I appreciate your help. Tim 14:59, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

About Humboldt Universität zu Berlin: for future reference, articles on Wikipedia are supposed to be named in English. The individual who originally moved it to the German name (contributions) is apparently the vandal User:Heine. Cheers, Cyan 20:40, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I had moved the page myself to "Humboldt Universität zu Berlin". For one of the most famous universities in Germany, I have no problem using its German name. Tons of articles in Wikipedia are named in the local language - for your future reference. olivier 04:06, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

For clarity (and for other readers), the chronology of the page's location is:

Heine moves to the German name, 10:18, 30 Aug 2003
Cyan moves it back, 21:11, 30 Aug 2003
Olivier moves to the German name, 10:27, 31 Aug 2003
Cyan moves it back, 16:40, 1 Sep 2003

The references I had in mind are Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) (from User talk:Heine). The phrase "for future reference" wasn't intended in a snide way, and I apologize for its use. Cheers, Cyan 00:18, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I allowed myself link this user page of a born in France user to his french user page for the wikipedians which also can french (ça existe peut-être :-). -- ArnoLagrange 08:10, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

Hi Olivier. I just tried to send you an email to your hotmail account, but it bounced, saying "mailbox unavailable". Do you have another email address? In case you're wondering, I'm sending out developer contact details to a few active Wikipedians, so that you can contact someone when the server goes down. -- Tim Starling 12:33, Sep 13, 2003 (UTC)

lol. try writing some math articles. not easy... LirQ

(For reference, my initial posting on User talk:Jiang): That's very unusual, but this time I disagree a bit with you. I believe that the president of the PRC should be in the Macau and HK tables. British colonies have the Queen listed in their tables, so why not include the top-level politician in charge of the "mother"-country. olivier 01:02, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Which dependency articles are you talking about? I can't find any. A better question: which dependency articles have country templates applied to them?

I just think it's redundant to list the PRC president in the articles. The PRC president is given no special role or status in the SAR government. Hu is head of state in HK in his role as state president of the PRC, not in right in HK or Macau. We already know that HK is part of the PRC and that the PRC has a president. Who this individual is should be left to the PRC article. I dont see the need to list it in separate places. --Jiang 01:20, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

American Samoa, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands/Temp, Tuvalu, Wales. olivier 01:40, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

American Samoa - badly done; Bush is not "Chief of State". I would drop his name and add in the governor
Andorra - not a dependency; Chirac and Spanish guy are listed because their power as heads of state is granted by the andorran const., not becayse andorra is a dependency of France
Antigua and Barbuda- not a dependency; in each Commonwealth Realm, Queen Elizabeth is queen individually of that realm (i.e., Queen of Canada, etc), not because she is queen of the UK. IF the UK were the abolish its monarchy, she would still be queen of Canada.
Aruba- netherlands and aruba considered separate countries, " The monarch heads the executive branch (regering) of the kingdom and each country individually. "
Australia-same as above; not a dependency, a commonwealth realm
Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands/Temp, Tuvalu - same; not dependencies, "In these states she is officially known as the Monarch of that state, not as the monarch of Great Britain. "
Wales- what's with this one?

Note that Bush is not listed at Puerto Rico.

--Jiang 01:51, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Why are you fighting over the "dependency" denomination, which, by the way, I did not use? My initial comment was about the appropriateness of having the head of state of the PRC in the HK and Macau tables.

Article 12 of the HK Basic Law states: "The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a local administrative region of the People's Republic of China, which shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy and come directly under the Central People's Government."

Therefore, by constitution, whoever is at the head of the "Central People's Government" is ultimately head of HK. Interestingly, that's the same situation as with Andorra, dependency consideration aside. Thus, the core of the question seems to be the redundancy thing for a territory that is a dependency of another one, but enjoys a high degree of autonomy.

I admit that the British colonies I was referring to in my initial posting are former ones - so, these examples were not relevant. The only current British colony which has a template applied is Pitcairn Islands, where only the governor is listed - note that this leaves some room for interpretation for all the other colonies' tables, which are yet to be completed. American Samoa would be a couter-example, but you do not like it on grounds that the description of the role of Bush there is incorrect. That does not mean that he should not be listed in the table under his appropriate relationship to the place. In the case of Puerto Rico, as you certainly know, the table has seen substantial remodelling very recently. Therefore, that has not left enough time for the Wikipedia community to reach a stable agreement on the contents of its table. The other US dependencies do not have a table yet. On the other hand, we did not include the Head of the PRC in the tables of the other first-level PRC's political divisions. Same applies for US states, French departements... but these territories do not enjoy "a high degree of autonomy" as HK and Macau do.

Unless we have further evidence that I missed, my conclusion is that the jury is still out for answering the question: "should we include the Head of State of the "mother"-country in the table of territories enjoying a large degree of autonomy?". This being said, if you feel strongly that Hu should leave the table, than feel free to remove him. My opinion at this point is quite neutral, slightly skewed toward the "he should be in the table" side. olivier 03:05, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Note that a broader discussion about this topic might be of interest to the participants of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. olivier 03:12, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I moved it to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries for further discussion. --Jiang

Du Mu as a Chinese word (loan word), shouldn't be written in italic in English? I am not sure, I think every loan word from other language should be written in italic in English, which means all the Chinese in thoes Chinese-related pages should be in italic. Am I right? --Gboy 03:10, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Cambodia

Hi Olivier, I hope you don't mind but I moved Cambodia/Temp to Talk:Cambodia/Temp because there aren't supposed to be any subpages in the article namespace. Hopefully I fixed all the links to it as well. Angela 22:57, Oct 4, 2003 (UTC)

Fine. I have noticed before that there seem to be such a rule for work-in-progress. Seems a bit akward to me to have such pages in a Talk.../temp, but I don't really mind. olivier 01:21, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Olivier, any chance you can start clicking on "This is a minor edit" for all those years pages? You're filling up the Recent Changes page. RickK 05:40, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Oooops, OK. I did not realize this. Thanks for letting me know! olivier 05:42, 5 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hua to Huaguo
Hi Oliver, the info which was taken out has been merged with the Hephthalite entry both originally started by me when I knew very little about editing :-P I did this because though Hua are Hephthalites, it is fair to make a distinction between these and the Huaguo which the Chinese sources believe to have been their origin. The Hua info better belongs on the Hephthalite page where reference is made to the Chinese belief that they originated from Huaguo. I also mention on the Huaguo page that it is thought by the Chinese to be the origin of the Hephthalite Hua (Hwer). I hope to find info about the establishment of Huaguo and more info about their period in China thus justifying further the distinction. User:Zestauferov

Thanks for the clarification! olivier 02:55, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Please remove insulting comment from User:Cyan Heine 02:55, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

??Which one? Where?? olivier 03:54, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This personal attack is insulting and the purest nonsense: "The individual who originally moved it to the German name (contributions) is apparently the vandal User:Heine. Cheers, Cyan 20:40, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC) "

I cannot add my comment after his, because the page is longer than 32 kb, and the first section is too long. Maybe you should move a part of it to an archive page? -- Heine 05:13, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have moved some of the discussion to archive. The page should be more workable now. olivier 09:01, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I am so sorry. What I wrote in Talk: Sha Tin is not against you. I think you did good work on wiki. You made great contribution on lots of articles. I sincerely apologise for my poor english which makes you feel that I have offended you. Maggiemei.

Mo mantai la! And I apologize for overreacting! olivier 15:01, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I really feel sorry. I am a Wiki newbie. My comment was not against you. I knew that you did a good work on wiki and that's why I wanna share my feelings from what I experienced. I made the previous comment just because I want to know whether you have the same feelings or not. I am always willing to tell you. You may send me email and we can talk about it. Really sorry. Maggiemei

It's OK. I understand now. I normally do not communicate with other Wikipedians by email, but if you feel that you want to share things that you do not feel confortable writing on this page, let me know and I will send you an email. In fact, I am a bit surprised by your feeling that some people may be doing a lot of minor contributions in order to increase the perceived amount of work they do.

As far as I know, no one gets any reward for this. That's also the reason of my comment to Fuzheado, because I am not sure that rewarding people on quantity would be beneficial, and I am interested in his opinion for guiding people who want to do university projects like he does, in the future. Don't get me wrong: I really appreciate what he does, and I think that his students have done very valuable contributions to Wikipedia.

The only reason that I can imagine, why people would want to give the impression of doing a lot of work is in order to get the "administrator" status. But, in order to obtain this status, a contributor needs to receive the positive backing of several existing administrators, who will be reviewing the details of his/her contributions before giving their opinions. Administrators are normally heavy contributors themselves and would probably identify such an attitude in the contribution history of a candidate for the "administrator" status.

If you could give me more details about your negative feeling, that would be helpful, and could maybe help me understand what is happening. Anyway, thanks for your great contributions, and seriously, that would be great to have articles about HK's walled villages and the clans :-) olivier 15:39, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

田汉

Talk:Tian Han -戴&#30505sv 21:20, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK. olivier 20:30, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It's truly amazing how Pierre Berthier helped the English sneek into Les Baux de Provence and steal all their bauxite for 26 years without the French ever knowing it! NightCrawler 20:25, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Uh? sounds kind of interesting. Anything to add about it into either article? olivier 20:30, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. I've not ignored your question, and in fact it is something we're experimenting with right now -- grade by individual, by group, by number of edits, quality of edits, etc? I'll hopefully post some more well-thought-out answers soon, as we're trying different methods with different classes. Fuzheado 05:54, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Monarchs/Presidents?

What the heck is the "Monarchs/Presidents" section supposed to be for in the year articles? Did they die in that year, were born, became rulers, what? See 1783 --A very confused mav

See the discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Years. Your comments are very welcome! olivier 14:16, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Olivier, you've made redirects for national flower, national tree, etc. So you can answer the first question at Talk:National emblem. Jay 12:27, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I am afraid that I cannot help you much in this quite technical question. I made the redirect because I thought that "national flower" was close enough to "national emblem" to justify the redirect, rather than having no link at all. Also the "national emblem" article already had a list of plants, animals..., not started by myself, when I made the redirect. Bottom line, I did it because I thought it was helpful. If I was wrong, please feel free to modify it. olivier 14:30, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Why move articles out of their /Temp pages when they are far from complete? --Jiang

I think the Nepal article looked good enough to be on its own page, even if it needed more work. I also think that having the article on its article page will attract more attention and edits/improvements. I think that the /temp thing looks really messy and discourages potential contributors. olivier 06:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your opinion is needed at Talk:Chongqing#Move. --Menchi 08:16, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK, I have added my 2 cents. olivier 08:40, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Date format

Hi Olivier. I see you made some changes to Ikazuchi. Please don't change date formats from British to American or vice versa when they are consistent within an article -- this caused a big argument on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) about six months ago, and resulted in the creation of the "dynamic dates" preferences option, so each user can decide for themselves how they want to see dates presented. -- Arwel 14:45, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

We have the "Date format" setting in Preferences. --Menchi 00:08, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for the feedback. olivier 03:37, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the Ezra Pound link: too much rush. Bmills 09:06, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome! olivier 10:51, Nov 26, 2003 (UTC)

Hello Olivier. Thanks for fixing some of my bold contributions. A question : Are you sure that ( and ) are necessary around chinese chars ? a+ gbog 18:17, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Welcome. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). You might also be interested in List of China-related topics. olivier 18:21, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

OK, but what happens if i don't really agree :) (I feel that the real name of Chinese authors is the characters and therefore should be first, and without ( ), but anyway, I'll do as others do...) gbog

If you feel so, you can discuss your opinion in the talk pages of the above mentioned pages. Thanks for the work! olivier 18:38, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Hi, just curious, what is the point of linking to Victoria Park in London, Ontario? That's just a disambiguation page for various cities named Victoria Park; the one in London is actually just a park. Adam Bishop 07:14, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I was actually in the process of building the Victoria Park disambiguation page, and I looked for as many such parks as I could in Wikipedia. In the process, I linked all those that I found. In fact, most of the parks listed on the disambiguation page are actually parks, like the one in Hong Kong, which has its own article. As far as I know, the only city in the list is Victoria Park, Western Australia. I was maybe over-enthusiastic in linking those parks. You can delink if you think it is appropriate. olivier 07:20, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I was too hasty...I suppose an article could be made about the park in London, it has some interesting history now that I think about it. Sorry :) Adam Bishop 07:24, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

No problem! Apparently, creating this disambiguation page was somewhat useful... olivier 07:26, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Olivier, the helipad at Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal is also on a rooftop of the terminal (although only a few floors above sea level). See [1]. So strictly speaking the rooftop helipad on the Peninsula may not be the only one. Hlaw 12:01, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hong Kong Macau Ferry Terminal has an heliport and not an helipad. Anyway, you are right, a small change would be beneficial in the text at Transportation of Hong Kong to explain this. olivier 12:05, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

fixed. olivier 12:34, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Duplicate pics

The Guangxu and Tongzhi Emperor articles have the same picture (uploaded under different names). Do you know which is which? --Jia ng 12:47, 19 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My Google Image search indicates that it would be Guangxu. olivier 12:52, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

List of Cambodia-related topics

FYI, I just created List of Cambodia-related topics, please feel free to add/delete. Thanks. Fuzheado 04:40, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

wow, cool! olivier 09:28, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

D

WikiProject French départements

Hi Olivier. Thanks for the feedback on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French départements. I've inserted a table for Ain on Wikipedia:WikiProject French départements and would like your feedback. Thanks, snoyes 14:32, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please help with Chinese mandatory military service information verification

Hi! If you have time please check Conscription and help me to verify this information: China (People's Republic of China, PRC) has mandatory military service both for men and women. Women go to the army for 2 months and learn to fire guns. Information updated: as of 2003 with some information not updated since 1990s, unofficial source. Thank you with best wishes for PEACE PROFOUND, .^.. Optim 22:40, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC) .^..

Translation check

'salut Olivier. You don't by any chance know whether "professeus" is an old-french form of "professeur". (I was translating the title of a book by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin on that page). --snoyes 07:19, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It really looks like a typo to me, especially since (1) the French language used at the time of Brillat-Savarin was very modernized already and almost identical to today's (2) the rest of the title is not in old-french (3) I've never heard of "professeus". olivier 07:29, Jan 25, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll have a closer look at the title. --snoyes 07:30, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yikes!

Good lord Olivier, you are going to pass me up soon! :) [2] --mav 07:54, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully not!!!!! :-) olivier 07:56, Jan 25, 2004 (UTC)

I see you changed municipality to commune in La Baule-Escoublac. Is it really a commune? Do you mean community? A commune would be some sort of social collective like a kibbutz perhaps. Also the last sentence about animations does not make sense, do you know what the author meant? --Bob Palin 15:51, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I looked up commune and now see that it is probably correct but what about the last sentence?

It looks like the author means that some activities/animations, like regional products markets, or fairs, are organized once in a while in the city. olivier 19:34, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

Re: your question about removing the French links on the French communes with Robbot: I checked, and I found that the problem is that those were linked as "fr:Commune De..." while the actual page was at "fr:Commune de...". Because of this, the French page was not found, and therefore subsequently removed. Knowing the problem now, I will go over these and add and correct the links. Thanks for keeping an eye on my bot! Andre Engels 10:31, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Great, thanks! olivier 10:53, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

FISC

Olivier,
Just wanted to let you know that I expanded the article on the American Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to which you contributed a while ago. Thought you might be interested. --Xinoph 04:45, Mar 12, 2004 (UTC)

Opéra National de Lyon

Hi Olivier, I am working on opera houses at the moment. Alas, I have been unable to find any information on the Web in English on Opéra National de Lyon. Can you help out if you have a moment? Even just a few lines on the history of the building would be wonderful. Merci, -- Viajero 10:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Olivier le nettoyeur

Thanks for cleaning up my contributions - good work! ;-) -- ChrisO 17:09, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Haha. In fact, thanks for your great contributions! olivier 17:11, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Oliver,

Greetings. I am a bit new to this wiki thing and I have a question for you regarding your latest changes to the PanGu story.

1) You say more wikification is needed... exactly what do you mean? Is there a recommended format page for Chinese Pinyin? Please send me a link if there is; I have not seen it.

2) The tables I added originally were based on a generic dictionary scheme used on the web for Chinese/Pinyin; i.e. not wiki only. Your particular method of rearranging the data has the following characteristics: a) names that are neither Pinyin or Chinese are now primary links b) an additional delimiter ";" is added to the characters c) the word "pinyin" is duplicated in every single usage d) documentation titles (which vary in English) are used as links

Owing to the spelling challenges in converging ancient data, it seems worth the effort to understand your changes for future use. Again, I am new to this but I have more content and want to understand how others might change it before adding more.

I thank you for you patience in considering my comments.

mamgeorge

Olivier,

I stand corrected. I saw the Chinese format page and have a better understanding of what you were trying to accomplish.

I thank you for the modifications to my contribution.

Please note that in changes such as this: Shu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3) Should probably be: Xu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3, Shu Zheng)

I do not know what romanization Shu Zeng is

Thank You,

--Mamgeorge 16:43, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! First of all, welcome to wikipedia, and thanks for your contributions. Regarding your initial question about the standards for Pinyin and other China-related things, I understand from your second message that you have probably found by now the workpage Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles. The List of China-related topics might give you some links to page of potential interest to you as well. In fact, some of these workpages are the result of considerable debates among Wikipedians. Nevertheless, some of them are still works in progress, and you are welcome to bring your contributions to the discussion pages of these workpages if you are interested.

Regarding the mention "more wikification is needed", I actually meant that I had done some work in the direction of [Wikipedia:Manual of Style for China-related articles], but that I had left before completing the job, and that anyone interested was welcome to do it.

I agree with your way of writing Xu Zheng (徐整; pinyin: xu2 zheng3, Shu Zheng).

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you think that I can be of help with finding your way within Wikipedia in the future. olivier 22:18, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

Taurus (constellation) move

Hi Olivier. Small notice about how to move a page properly: I noticed a message on the Village pump about a move of the page Taurus to Taurus (constellation). It seems you just cut the content of the Taurus page and pasted it to Taurus (constellation). Unfortunately, this way you loose all the edit history of the page and the talk page with history. If you look at the menue on the left, you will see an option "Move this page". Using this option, you can move a page including all the history and the talk page to a new location, and a redirect from the old location is automatically created. This is the preferred way to move a page. Also, the destination of the move has to be an empty page. If there is already a page at the destination, you cannot move the page, and an administrator has to delete the target page so the source page can be moved. Anyway, I fixed the move, so Taurus (constellation) now has the correct edit history and the talk page. Please don't see this message as a critic, just a hint about a Wikipedia feature. Thanks also for creating the disambiguity page text, nicely done. Happy editing -- Chris 73 | Talk 03:08, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I actually know about the "move page" feature, which I have used on many occasions. In this specific case, I just forgot about the loss of the discussion page and did the cut-and-paste that you are mentioning. Thanks for fixing this. olivier 03:16, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

All right, there was apparently no discussion page, but you are right anyway, the history ended up being misplaced by my move. olivier 03:19, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

No problem. Are you the Olivier with 30728 (!!!) edits and #4 on the english wikipedia? Most impressive! -- Chris 73 | Talk 03:47, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently Wikipedia does not permit several users to have the same user name. So, yes, it's me. Quite hard to imagine that my edits add up to such a figure, though. (By the way, #1 and #2 are bots). olivier 06:33, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Man, do I feel like preaching to the pope now ... just tried to help a novice user with a wiki feature, and then this ... Anyway, no harm done. My respect and best regards, Chris 73 | Talk 07:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

My respects for your patience for explaining things in such details to other users! You were right anyway, I should have followed the procedure you are describing. There is no Papal Infallibility in Wikipedia :-) olivier 07:29, May 11, 2004 (UTC)

Bar

Are you planning to do a duke of Bar or Duchy of Bar article? If so you are saving me some work, and here is a link. If not, well... i'll do it sooner or later. Cheers, MvHG 14:22, 15 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed you did. Any plans for other duchies? MG

What I did is just include some 1911 content into a new article. This article is far from being perfect, so you are more than welcome to improve it. No plans for other duchies at the moment. Cheers! olivier 14:32, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

List of universities in Russia

Hi Oliver,

You created a new entry (List of universities in Russia) and added a few links to it from various places. You need to be aware of the differences in the Russian educational system which may create problems with the term University. The majority of xUSSR educational institutions are not Universities in the US sence. They used to be called Institute of this or that technology. They usually offer M.S. and Ph.D. equivalents in a single field only, usually technology. For example there is Institute of Railroad Transportation, offering M.S. and Ph.D. in Mech. Eng. for Railroads (yes, M.S. is THAT specific). Probably 90% or more of all University-level education is carried out in places like that. The schools were renamed Universities recently, but they still remain Institutes of Technology.

I think a disclaimer like the one above should be placed on the page or an article should be named differently.

Gene s

I just want to correct Gene s's statement. Institutes were not simply renamed. Some of them were actually converted into the Universities (so, if a new name includes University, it is indeed a university. The ones that could not obtain a university status either became academies, or maintained the institute status (some of them may have technical university in the title, but it would not be the same as university).--Ezhiki 16:49, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)

I suggest we move this discussion to Talk:List of universities in Russia Gene s 07:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re John Dos Passos - While properly, in another language outside of English, his name would be spelled with a small "d". However, spelling is how it is on your birth certificate, right or wrong, and John Dos Passos was with a capital D and he signed his letters that way. Thanks. JillandJack 15:00, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC) See : [3]

Whatever you say. Thanks. olivier 15:08, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

- By the way, you might consider doing a clean page move next time, because your cut and paste ends up losing the whole page history. Thanks. olivier 15:10, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Le corbusier

Hi, I saw that you have rollbacked an anonymous contribution to Le Corbusier. In my opinion it is a valid contribution of a list of important buildings by him( one or two I don't know). Could you please cite your reasons for the rolback so that I can act accordingly- either restore or leave it as it is? KRS 07:36, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hello?!?!?!?! I RESTORED the list that the anonymous user had erased, not the opposite. Please re-check the article history. Besides, most of the buildings listed there had been my additions! olivier 07:42, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Terribly sorry! So stupid of me! (I blame the automatic edit summary:-)KRS 07:54, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)