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Maveric149 Talk Archive 12 (May 2003)

Do you think after the elemnts prject is done you might do the antielements? eg antihydrogen, antilithium, antisulfur, antialuminium?

I don't think the project will ever be "done" since I plan on constantly improving the articles. But there will be a point after all the articles are "mostly done." When that happens we could concentrate our efforts on creating articles for the anti-elements but I don't think there really is much to say nor very good sources of info we all would have access to on them. But I would find it interesting to incorporate at least introductory material on the anti-elements in their corresponding element articles. I've already planned that for the major compounds of every element. --mav

Please take a look at: User:Fonzy/sandbox -fonzy, not much change as you can see.

Do you think i shuld implement it into the already existing antihydrogen article? -fonzy

? But those are the properties of hydrogen NOT antihydrogen, no? --mav

Just an apology for not being able to act: earlier today I happened to notice 142.177.12.18 making edits with derogatory comments about you. (I'm not sure what set that troll off.) I would have reverted these edits -- or at least sent you & Jimbo a note alerting you to what was happening . . . but I was at work & my boss appeared for the first time in over a week with a project that needed immediate attention. Sigh. The one time I can redeem myself & life interferes. -- llywrch 01:00 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

Hey - that's cool. BTW why do you feel it necessary to redeem yourself with me? I don't recall any bad blood between us... --mav

Primarily I felt a need for an apology because I had the chance to take action about something wrong, but unfortunately it proved out of my control.

As for ``redeem myself" -- well, AFAIK there is no trouble between us, but over the last few weeks I seem to have gotten onto the wrong side of a few regulars. The handicap of the Internet is because you lack the immediate feedback, you can never be sure if everyone else thinks you are a dog. (To allude to the famous New Yorker cartoon -- & if you haven't seen that cartoon then, substitute troll for dog. :) -- llywrch 01:43 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

Basicly all the propeties of elements are the same as anti-elements, except antielements have positrons instead of electrons and the Valance Number is negative, however the genral information like when/if it has been formed etc will be different and any other info specifficly about it. -fonzy

Huh? I wasn't aware there was enough antihydrogen around to do tests on. We therefore can't know much about the properties of the anti-elements and therefore shouldn't guess at them (even if in theory they should be the same - we can simply state that "in theory the properties should be the same"). The tables are mainly for empirical data - guesswork should be left to a bare minimum. --mav

well information baout antimatter to be foudn here: http://www.matter-antimatter.com (tough how accurate it is, i dont know) - fonzy

Hey Mav, wanna laugh? Look at the joke on the talk page of Saddam Hussein. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam but it worth leaving just to cheer people up after all the heavy facts about Saddam and the war. (BTW I don't know what is the american equivalent of Essex girls but I'm sure there is one. We have our own in Ireland, Dublin northside women. An Irish equivalent of the joke is how do you know an Northside woman has has an orgasm? She drops her chips (or as you yanks call them, french/freedom fries!) Dreadfully sexist I know, but then most people I know but most of the people I know who tell those jokes as women!) wikilove and all that. ÉÍREman 17:34 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

LOL. Bad, bad JT! -- mav


Hey Mav, I seem to have forgotten the shortcuts for the signoff with the time/date stamp. Clue me in?

---Dante Alighieri <--- had to do that manually. :(

Three ~ in a row = mav, four in a row = mav 20:03 May 1, 2003 (UTC). --mav

This is a rather scary and depressing thing to read: http://www.matter-antimatter.com/armageddon.htm -fonzy

Nothing the worry about - those people are crackpots (they speak of Atlantis as if it were a historical fact - we simply don't know). --mav

well your better at science that i am, so i go by your word, any "quack" could word things in scientific way to frighten ppl.(The same is true about statistics you can twist them in anyway you want to support your ideas). IMO Atlantis was some kind of plae that existed, but the "great flood" in the bible and othe texts destroyed. Thats my theory. - fonzy. BTW how do you like my Eurovision Pages For example:Eurovision Song Contest 1957. O also i dont think Antlantis was soem high-tech society thast just silly, also it obvioulsy wasn;t called atlantis.

That page looks good - very nice. --mav

Not that Michael! :) Tannin

I just came on to say that too. Not that Michael. Though my Adam I am sure he is probably here too under another identity. BTW, is wiki under siege these days from trolls? We've got the many personalities of DW, Adam's troll-central stormtroopers, Michael and his Minions, etc. I have expect some day Saddam Hussein will appear and start vandalising articles about Iraq. Or moustaches. LOL. ÉÍREman 00:59 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

Of course, then we'll be stuck wondering whether the alternate personalities are actually body doubles or just the usual personality switching we seem to attract. -- John Owens

---

Hi Mav, could you put Wim van Est on the recent deaths at the main page? Thx, Jeronimo

Done. Nice to see you are still around. :) --mav

Wow, that's fast. Yeah, Wikipedia still great, it's just I got fed up with some of the Wikipedians. Jeronimo

Hello, Mr. Maveric. Sorry for putting a "k" on the end of your name earlier. Terribly illiterate of me, I know. ;) By the way, it's telling me that this page is 38 kilobytes long. Scary... -- Oliver P. 02:14 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

No biggie - you just spelt it right! --mav

Thanks Mav, I have removed the jay image for now and put the earlier one back. I may ask if I can use it some time as it is far better than the one there now. It shows the whole bird for one thing. Cheers. Steve nova 21:41 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Cool. It is always better to ask (most of the time people say "yes"). --mav

It is difficult to tell if 217.235.14.62 is a bot or just someone in a focused moment. 217.235.14.62 has been posting ISO codes for geographical locations, which is great for articles that exist, but not so helpful with articles that didn't yet exist (See 217.235.14.62 contributions under New pages). I tried to tell the user not to create new articles like that, but the user continues. What is to be done? Kingturtle 03:57 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

Ignoring talk is bad. I'll block the IP for a few minutes to get their attention. --mav

Fine, thanks. I finished my film!  :-D The pressure is off now. Just hanging out watching movies and Simpsons episodes for a stretch. ... I tried to install Mandrake 7.0 (from an old disk) but it wouldn't respect the partition--saw the entire physical drive as one. Hence my experimentation with Linux is at a standstill where I stopped it 3 years ago. How are you? Koyaanis Qatsi

I'm fine. Just got my Internet connection back up. But in the process of trying to figure out what was preventing me from accessing the 'net I disabled just about everything on my computer and am running on a bare bones install. I'm also sick of TV once again! I'm glad to hear that your film is done - I hope it went well. Wow - Mandrake 7 (the memories). You should try LM 9.1 - it rocks! late. --mav
The film went fine. It's gotten unprovoked praise, the best kind. I'll look into Mandrake 9.1, maybe it will know what to do with a partition. I would like to learn it, if only because I think Microsoft is a 600-lb. gorilla.  :-) Yeah, and TV's bland right now. Koyaanis Qatsi

Mav, I thought plants were in green taxoboxes and animals, insects etc. were in pink? Koyaanis Qatsi

That's not a taxobox. It is a dog breed box (an early one). I'm pretty sure they are using pink as their standard color (at least until they think of a good color scheme for the major breed branches). Dog is the species page and thus the only one that should have a taxobox. Hm, I wonder if plant varieties should be treated the same... (headache) --mav
Oh wow. That's going to cause some confusion. And no, I don't have an easy solution. Koyaanis Qatsi

Hey Mav, just curious, what digital camera do you have, and what do you think of it? I'm thinking about getting one for this summer. Sorry if you've already answered this somewhere. Also, were you going to merge/redirect Border collie? Thanks -- Minesweeper 06:18 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

I have a Sony Cybershot DSC-P71 which has 3x optical zoom, 2x digital and takes AA batteries and Sony Digital Disks. The camera itself cost $US 320. It takes really good photos (not the best I've seen from a digital camera but the best I've seen at the relatively cheap price I paid). A example couple examples are at Sacramento, California. It also takes good close-up shots. See media:thumb-Unknown yellow flower at the mouth of Titus Canyon.JPG. But you really should do a bit of research and try to imagine what you want to be able to do with your camera. Check out ZDnet's 3-4 megapixel reviews for other good cameras. In fact the camera I really wanted was the Canon PowerShot G3 which is a semi-pro camera that can take Canon lenses and IBM Microdrives (up to 1 GB). But that camera is way too expensive for me (it is also a bit on the large size). Do stay away from Kodak cameras - they suck. --mav
Thanks for your reply... I guess I have some homework to do. One more question though: Do you have to carry extra Memory Sticks with you while traveling, or were you just picky with what images you held on to? -- Minesweeper 09:37 May 6, 2003 (UTC)
I bought a 128 MB disk because the included 16 MB disk is just about useless. Since I usually take photos at 1280x960 at standard compression I get about 350 images. 640x480 gets about 800 images, 1600x1200 gets me 220 or so images, 140 at 2048x1536. There is also a "fine" mode which attempts to get the largest amount of image data for each photograph. When that mode is active each image is about twice as large. --mav

Mav, I have added your pupfish image to Cyprinodontiformes. -- Josh

Cool. Thanks for finding a home for it. :) --mav

So the Mav-man is back to work on wiki. Cool! You were missed. :-) I've been having fun with my digital camera too and been busily plonking images on Irish pages. (You can tell I am a wikiholic when I went out specially to take pictures of famous buildings and landmarks for wiki pages, thinking - 'ok. I want something to illustrate the Irish Houses of Parliament page'. 'I mentioned Marian altars in the Blessed Virgin Mary page. I'll try and find one to photograph', etc etc. I turned against conventional cameras after a very embarrassing moment once. I was one of the guests at the formal resignation of Mary Robinson as President of Ireland in September 1997. Unfortunately my camera picked the wrong moment (as Mary signed the resignation Instrument) to rewind, very very noisely. So you had the world's TV filming the moment, Mary all dignified, a dignified silence everywhere, two former prime ministers looking at their most intense, and a strange noisy whirring sound in the background going on and on and on. . . and one very mortified person trying desparately to shut the thing up!!! (At least I got a couple of good shots on the day, one of which - surprise, surprise - I put on wiki on the Mary Robinson page.) It did the same thing at a function Bill Clinton was at as president here some years ago (he found it very funny!). So I have confined that awful whirring camera to the nearest bin and now with my new camera I have . . . the sound of silence!

PS: I have just taken a picture of this computer screen for my user page. Not a face shot, mind. That might involve revealing an identity. ÉÍREman 23:06 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Yes - digital cameras are very convenient. Your story about using a regular camera made me laugh. :) Thanks for the kind words too. --mav

I've checked Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), Orders of magnitude, Talk:Orders of magnitude (not its archives, but none of them look relevant by name), and I haven't seen a conclusion that it ought to be either "17 inches" or "17 inches". Have I missed something somewhere? If there was a consensus, I'd love to know it (and add links to it at the aforementioned pages). I slightly prefer the latter myself, because that allows the unit to be linked seperately, but I don't feel strongly about it at all. -- John Owens 07:18 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

I also had a preference for that - at first. But after a while I got complaints from people who have their user prefs set to display the ugly line under links that having the two links side-by-side was ugly and confusing. We also have a convention that the only numbers that are linked are years - yet 112 pm has a number linked that looks like a link to the year 112. This is a blind link and is therefore Evil TM. I can't remember where this discussion took place - probably on my talk page. --mav
Excuse me, but I believe you're infringing on my trademark. -- Evil ®
ROTFL - that's "DR EVIL to you!". :-) --mav

About that clitoris image, mav, how about applying a line drawing filter to the current image? Cgs.

Hm. That may work. I'll try it in the GIMP (assuming the image still exists). --mav

Hi Mav, could you please look at the Irish Houses of Parliament. I put images to accompany my text on there. I know they are probably too big (I don't yet have the ability to shrink images yet :-( ) but cropping them would cut off important bits of the image. Everyone seems very happy with the contents and images, but some browsers and screens may have problems due to their size. I trust you completely, having seen the standard of your work and would welcome any help you could give to make the images more screen-friendly. PS I hope no damage was done with that electrical storm. lol ÉÍREman 22:59 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'll take a look. All is well (I had everything unpluged in time - but that did make me a day behind in my day page updates). --mav

Thanks Mav. I'm actually happy with the location of the images and their relation to the text (all the comments I have received have liked the physical layout and location of the images. I also see that someone has put the page on the Brilliant prose page, which I was very happy about). My only worry is their size, not the location. I am having some computer problems of late so getting the technology to shrink images has been put on hold while I get other problems with my computer fixed. If you could do some shrinking I would be mightly pleased. lol ÉÍREman 23:33 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. --mav

Well, my dear boy, it looks like I won't have to give any more requests for you to shrink images. It turns out my computer could do them all the time. (*blush*) But then I am a technophobe, with the ability when changing a lightbulb to black out half of North Dublin. However Stan told me how to do it and I have just shrunk Mary Robinson (boy there are a lot of people would have liked to do that in real life!) and plonked a resized image of the picture I took at her resignation (the one after which my camera as mentioned started to rewind, meaning that for all of history, TV images of Mary's signing of the resignation Instrument are now forever accompanied by a strange whirring sound!) and plonked it onto the page. I don't know whether it is the couple of pints I had earlier (at this stage 5 hours ago!!!) or relief after a frustrating night when my iTunes on the eMac refused to play CDs of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan but having finally mastered the ability to shrink things I feel positively elated. If only I could shrink things in real life (like the size of my phone bill!). Lol. ÉÍREman 06:42 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I hate to say I told you so, but.... :-) Now you can take pictures at better resolutions (1024px +) and then downsize copies of those images as needed. For example I usually take photos at either 1280 or 1600 pixels wide. I don't edit or resave these images (in order to preserve their maximum quality and the date they were taken). But I do make downsized copies. --mav

Good riddance to 172. I wrote what I hope will be the epitaph of my user name on JTD's talk page. It's responding heavily to you last comments on the mailing list, which so thoroughly disgusted me that I can stand no more, so you might be interested. 172

I'm generally for markets economies too, but seize the second largest oil reserves in the world, use brutal tactics to keep order, and set up a strong welfare state and it's hard not to see a little growth and improving living standards. I was just wondering why you found that all the things that I was focusing on constituted the "good things". Many would say that those actions were brutal and imprudent, and forced him to brutally suppress more groups in Iraq opposing his socialist policies. Good or bad, it doesn't matter; it happened and it's history. Nothing about those edits to the Iraq page were part of a pro-Saddam agenda. I don't think that you have a socialist agenda either because you suspected that I was just including Saddam's great immortal exploits; I just thought that you had come to a misunderstanding that I should've dissuaded long ago.

Interestingly enough, unless you're in a very strong democracy under special circumstances, when you generally have a state-led redistribution of wealth, there is often some sort of autocratic suppression of opposition or violence. This is quite ancient and goes back long before Karl Marx, quite often involving competing dynastic claims, conflict between political elites, conflict between classes, and so on. That's why I drew a link between Saddam's socialist policies and the brutal suppression of those at the losing end of his policies, along with the link between the secular modernizing nature of his regime and the persecution of those who wanted a fundamentalist regime like Iran's. I thought that would be more illuminating than going into lurid detail about how all the methods he used to kill all his victims. Sorry if I didn't explain my changes well enough at the time.

If I come back, it's only going to be to work on very interesting but obscure subjects of history, economics, sociology, and political science that would attract zero controversy, but that would depend on a rehabilitation of my reputation, which depends on you retracting the charges of me being an uncooperative dictator-lover on the mailing list.

172

See my most recent email. I'm trying to be more clear with each one. I do find you and your contributions to be interesting (even when they need a lot of work) and hope to see more. --mav

Mav, please look at Technical terminology. It is the latest Fred-ism. First he tried to remove definitions from relevant pages. Then he tried to screw up a definition he didn't like. Now he is POVing an article he specially created to piss all over the definition page, by putting it in as a first link to the definition page, he equating technical technology with jargon with is defined in a dictionary as balderdish or colloquially as bullshit. Would you accept someone describing the terminology you use in biology as bullshit? Between POV links hidden in sentences, twisting articles to suit his agenda and rewriting pages to be linked to pages he disagrees with to enable him to say in effect 'this is all bullshit', how much more shit like this is going to be tolerated before someone does this? I'm sorry for the language but people have been banned for less and no-one seems to want to tell him to stop. This sort of behaviour, and in particular wiki's 100% refusal to do anything about it, is destroying wiki's reputation and will drive good contributors away if it isn't stopped. Please Mav, DO SOMETHING! lol (please don't be offended by the language but am so utterly fed up with what has been allowed to happen. ÉÍREman 21:29 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

Well I edited the article for NPOV. The text was obviously biased against jargon before but now, I think, the article has more balance. Please add more to the article to make it even better (it really wasn't that bad before and was easily fixed). --mav

Thanks Mav. To be honest I don't want to have anything to do with FB's pages. Sorry about being a bit stressed above. Apart from anything else, it took me 17 minutes to get into to this page because of the slow server. One of the downsides of Safari (the only one actually) is that it times out after 60 seconds) which means on wiki endless attempts to get access to pages when the server is slow. I gave up trying to get onto my watchlist. It has made it difficult to get into my own page to see 172's message. Is there any way we can solve this dispute between you two? I think your comments re his request to be a sysop were harsh. He does have strong opinions and also expects high standards from those he is dealing with (a typical academic trait which I 'suffer' from too sometimes) and finds it frustrating if people try to undermine something he has done with superficial arguments, which does happen a bit in clashes sometimes. But I think your implication (that was how I read it, though maybe you didn't mean it that way) was that he wanted to enter admin to get his own way and would abuse the position was deeply insulting. There are plenty of strongly opinionated admins but I have not seen one abuse that facility. 172 is a professional historian and I cannot possibly imagine him doing anything to abuse the position. Any suggestion that he might, or that he could not be trusted in the role, would be deeply hurtful, particularly coming from someone like you.

I often do not agree with 172 on issues (we clashed on Robert Mugabe, for example) but I do find his left wing analysis invaluable on wiki particularly because a large body of wiki comes from the US where a left wing analysis all too often does not seem to feature prominently (leftish maintstream politicians in the US hold views that Europe would be seen as centre if not right of centre. Seeing the different worldview in the US to Europe is one of the most fascinating aspects of wiki). One of 172's strengths is that he can express views or perspectives that many of us would not hear. It is easy to write about the many many many downsides of Saddam, for example, but there were upsides (being a barrier to religious fundamentalism was a major one, as we can see from the comments of some religious leaders since he fell, which give me the creeps!) Similarly for millions, the fall of communism has been a negative, with they being reduced to below poverty level. A friend of mine in Russia recently saw a 94 year old out begging. For her, for all communist's hideous negatives (and I am unambiguously anti-communism) the new 'democracy' has robbed her of her savings, her subsiding housing, her social protections and left her begging on the streets. 172 could throw a different light on many issues, and remind us that our western perspectives are often black and white and don't understand the full complexities. (If 172 sometimes underestimates the negatives, we often underestimate the positives, and his contributions offer 'the other side of the story'. Losing him would be a big loss to wikipedia.

Yes things got out of hand on Communist state but it is frustrating to try to apply strict academic standards when a handful of people don't. I got an email from a new user - from London, a member of the British Conservative Party, no less. Does it have members? - who didn't want to leave a message on my talk page in case The Cunctator had a go at her. She asked what the problem was with the Cs page. She said that she had read about communism and the various pages on countries with communities governments but never fully grasped how things were that way. Like most westerners, she presumed there was in effect one standard system of government that the USSR had somehow "screwed up". According to her, the Cs page helped bring home a basic fact westerners miss, that the concept of government and party in communism is different. Not by definition right or wrong (though in my view wrong), just different. Grasp that and understanding communism becomes 10 times clearer. Amso80 said the same thing. The article brought home to him a fundamental difference that he had never fully dawned on him before. If you know that, you can start to make head or tail of communism, the USSR, China, etc. If you miss that (and so many do) it can seem like gobbledigook. And you don't put in a detailed discussion because (a) that discussion is complicated and lined with issues of POV, (b) because it distracts from the simple question of what is the system. Like many definitions, it is necessary to think about it, grasp it and then explore its implications. Hence in Cs like elsewhere, you define simply without reaching conclusions. Then, you allow the person to go to a range of options; read about what happened in practice by state or by a general (and by definition long, complex and potentially POV-laiden analysis of how this all worked. Anyone who teaches political science knows that in these areas the definition is central. If students don't not have that, the majority will end up confused, in this case by still thinking in a liberal democractic multi-party mode and so constantly asking 'why' (meaning 'but this wouldn't happen in the US/britain/france etc').

The problem 172 faced was that first Fred kept changing text to change meanings in China, the erasing the Communist state definition. When he failed, he went into the definition to change its meaning and bury it in a detailed highly POV analysis. When that failed, he started adding in links, like the one mentioned earlier which basically implied 'this is some bullshitty bit of political science jargon', while planting in words like authoritarian which in the right context could be NPOV but in the way he used them and location he put them were blatently editorialising the text. And when finally Fred agreed to work on his 'analysis' section in a linked page, The Cunctator came along and screwed up both texts by trying to merge them while adding in more editorialising context. For a professional historian like 172, that sort of behaviour is way beyond the bounds of acceptability. It is the equivalent in academic circles of someone talking the batteries out of a lecturer's mike before a lecture, putting up notices everywhere to mislead people where the lecture was talking place, and then trying to shout down the lecturer to give a different lecture. One battle on one page was enough, but to find Fred jumping from page to page, link to link to put in something to change the meaning, while marking his major, indeed fundamental, changes as minor in the hope no-one would notice his link changes, his editorialising words, his changing of context, infuriated me, as it did 172, Tannin and others who just gave up in disgust. That is why 172 reacted the way he did. Your comments in the circumstances inflamed a situation where his academic professionalism had been screwed around with (by Fred, who admitted the reason for some of his behaviour was that he was "bored", and by The Cunctator, who admitted he was taking a pop at political science standards which he disagrees with. And made pretty clear the concept with which he views people who practice them), and then you come along and say that he cannot be trusted to be an admin because he would abuse his position. The whole experience left him feeling that wiki views the academic standards he and I (and others) try to practice as being worthless and him as a joke who defends dictators. Please Mav, make peace with him. As someone who has contributed a hell of an academic contribution, he does not deserve his treatment and your comments deeply and understandably wounded him. ÉÍREman 23:54 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not going to lie and say that I think 172 would make a good Admin. --mav
I wasn't asking you to, Mav, just to understand what you said and how you said it caused such offence. You could have quietly asked 172 to withdraw his admin request at this time, that with the rows that had happened it might make sense to make a tactical withdrawal. You could have explained privately to him your doubts about his tempermental suitability for the admin role. But it was humiliating and hurtful to put it on the w-list like that. But no matter. What is done is done. The key thing to find a solution that doesn't lose one of wiki's best intellects. ÉÍREman 02:40 May 12, 2003 (UTC)
In the future I will use private email more. I've simply not realized that my opinion carried so much weight. --mav

You're still charging me with unbalancing articles by adding in huge chunks of text? Although I opposed the war, how many times do I have to make it clear that I don't sympathize with this repugnant murderer one bit? I just wanted to lay the groundwork for someone to chronicle his murderous deeds in the context of Saddam staying in power in a very unstable and fragmented society despite the fact that his core support base accounts for less than one fifth of the population. A different leader could have been less monstrous, after all, had he represented a larger segment of the population. I figured that anyone could chronicle the lurid detail of his many atrocities (I alluded to it, failing to chronicle it with unpleasant, disgusting detail), but few would be prepared to discuss his ideology or political and economic policies or present him a secular modernizer. I'm almost wishing that I never touched it, because if someone as intelligent and well-versed in so many subjects (despite being half the age of many around here) as you are could fall under this impression, then anyone could. 172

You still don't get it so I won't bother restating what I've stated many times before in regards to POVing articles by selectively stating some things while not stating others. I've already apologized on the list for expressing my conclusionary opinion and also stated that you are a good contributor. But I am not going to retract what I said (nor could I in reality) because that was and still is my interpretation of things. Your refusal to even admit you have done anything wrong is also telling; what you've said to various users (calling them trools, vandals and saying that they will be banned etc) is not at all something we want to encourage around here. Allowing you to be an Admin would be a clear sign that that is acceptable behavior (I'm also a bit disappointed in Fred - he is an Admin and he could have handled this whole thing a lot better). Take a break for a few days and then come back. --mav


I've admitted that I've overreacted many times. Don't encourage me to go through all my contributions and come up with a 172 chronicle of shame!

And what I was precisely doing was explaining why I'm not guilty of selective contributions. I'm guilty of terribly dense prose at times, an emotive word here or there that's neutral in an academic setting but alarming to many intelligent lay readers, even errors, and even failing to complete articles at times and leaving them unfinished for months (my worst shortcoming and the only one that has gone unnoticed). But I don't sit around and figure out ways to manipulate facts by selectively presenting them so that readers will fundamentally reassess something and come along to my historical interpretation. You think that I'm a lot more clever than I really am. I only persent one perspective when I'm forced to add a perspective that is overlooked, which was the case regarding Mugabe. If I do come back and if I do become a sysop (a status I wanted just to be helpful to the sysops who've helped me a lot), I'm personally promising you that I'd never abuse the position and I promise to give up the powers right away whenever you feel that I'm failing in my duties. 172

I'm actually fairly sure that you do not intend to POV articles; what I've been saying all along is that you seem to not realize that what you sometimes write has a slant to it (esp. by inundating the reader with facts that are favorable to one side of an issue and fail to mention major contradictory viewpoints - often directly related to the facts you present). You simply don't think there is anything wrong with that - I think that there is a great deal wrong with that. The result is that somebody else has to come in and add facts that are favorable to other viewpoints so that the article is no longer one-sided. And in my opinion any time one user creates a great deal of work for others, then they are doing something wrong. Again, you fail to even realize this is a bad thing and continue to do the same thing. This seeming lack of an ability to realize you are wrong is, IMO, preventing you from growing into an even better contributer. --mav

Would a name make you feel better? Sokolov 172

Looks like a cool nick to me. --mav

Sokolov 172 said: I'm guilty of ... (list of crimes) ... and even failing to complete articles at times and leaving them unfinished for months (my worst shortcoming and the only one that has gone unnoticed). Nope. It hsn't gone unnoticed. I noticed it long ago, but I didn't say anything. I'm not much of one for biblical quotes, but "let he that is without sin cast the first stone" would fit here, as would the one about seeing the speck of dust in another person's eye, and yet not noticing the plank in one's own. I'll complain about you not finising things you start, Abe, the very minute I finish off ... er ... about 342 things that I started. :)

PS: you could be "Uncle Abe". That has a nice, homespun, patriotic feel to it. But you might have to buy the copyright to "uncle" from Ed. (Sorry Mav, I'll get out of your talk page now.) Tannin

mav, could you despam wikipedia:designated agent, subbing

jwales@bomis.com


for Jimmy's email? thx. Koyaanis Qatsi

I de-linked it. Is that enough? --mav
probably not. I think the bots go through and harvest anything@anything.anything. But oh well, he's probably got the address up in public elsewhere. Koyaanis Qatsi

Mav, could you check if the "Download Wikipedia" on Main Page looks OK in IE/800x600? That is, if the table has become too large because of it? --Eloquence

"Sister Projects" now hangs at a level below where the category listing ends. I'll see if I can tweak the table a bit to fix this. --mav
Hm. Perhaps we just need more categories listed - that would balance things visually. --mav

What's your image page do for you, mav? Just curious. Koyaanis Qatsi

It's mainly a queue for images that need to categorized, formatted, and described. But secondarily it serves the same purpose as the list of articles I've created. --mav

Oh oh! 37K again. Who's a popular boy then? :-) Mav, if you get a chance, please look at Dublin. I haven't done anything with the text (well, the odd tweak!) but I have put on rather a lot of images. None is larger than 300 in width. I've put two blocks on (ie, in one case two, in another case three images inside a <div></div> unit, rather than separately) because that way they will stay together and won't move, depending on the browser and how it reads captions, so removing the danger that they 'collide' and one pushes the other into the text. As far as the commands are concerned, the block is just one image so it should avoid the netscape/IE problem of crashing images. I put a set of six smaller images at the bottom of the page. It sounds a lot I know but as it is a page on a city and I had a lot of images of the city and its most famous images, I thought it made sense to use them, and hopefully using the 'blocks' should make them netscape-safe (is anything netscape-proof?) Let me know what you think. I may be departing wiki for a while, due to technical problems. My computer's CD-ROM drive is doing very odd things and as it is still under warrantee I am going to send it for a check-up, which means no internet for up to five working days (seven when you take into account the weekend. AAAAAGH!) lol. ÉÍREman 06:33 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

That page is badly broken at high resolution with the first set of photos pushing the second set to the left (I would show you but for some odd reason my Linux screen capture software did not get installed when I upgraded my system). The only way to fix it is to reduce the number of images. Again, there is nothing wrong with having an image gallery for these types of things (people on dial-up modems will also thank you since it takes nearly 30 seconds to download even a 50 KB image file). There is such a thing as over design in the art of design. ;) --mav

Hi mav, I need some advice on the tables in Australian dingo. It's recognised by three of the kennel clubs, but as it's really a wild animal I think it should have one of the usual taxoboxes as well. I've tried to play around in my sandbox but ended up with an over wide page and couldn't see why. Any ideas on how to lay the page out? Or would it be easier to have a page for Australian dingo (pet dog)? Thanks for any thoughts -- sannse 22:06 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

As far as I know the dingo is just a wild breed of Canis familiaris (aka dog). So any article about the dingo be about the breed, not the species. Therefore no taxobox is warrented. --mav
It is certainly a recognised subspecies, Canis lupes dingo. Some authorities classify it as a full species, Canis dingo (which I think is wrong, but there you go). Tannin
Hm - subspecies give me a headache. The distinction between a subspecies and a reproductively isolated population is often a very fuzzy one indeed (esp. since reproductive isolation is exactly the method by which sub-species are created). The real test is whether or not a domestic dog and a dingo can produce viable offspring who in turn can produce viable offspring with either domestic dogs or dingos. But then there is the argument about behavior isolation (meaning that in a natural setting dingos and domestic dogs simply have very little desire to mate with each other - again this is a gray area). Ditto for wolves. --mav
I think subspecies give everyone a headache! Our current entry, subspecies needs a major expansion. I've more-or-less done with species for the time being (it has quite a way to go yet, particularly with respect to species in organisms than don't reproduce sexually - an area I'm very weak on) and I plan to turn to subspecies next. In fact, my work on species over the last couple of nights was by way of getting sidetracked from my original plan, which was to revamp subspecies. (You know me, I forget what I am doing every time I see something shiny.) That "real test" you mention above (viable interbreeding in the wild) is, as I understand it, applicable to species level distinctions, and (to my mind) the ready and successful hybridisation between Dingos and feral dogs is conclusive evidence that they are not a true species. I'm going to do some more reading before I commit myself in print on this, but I see it this way: a species (a) has noticably different characteristics, and (b) is reproductively isolated. A subspecies is (a) but not (b), and anything that is (b) without being (a) isn't anything in particular at all. Tannin
I've just added to the taxo box, we could change it to two separate tables if and when it seems necessary. Thanks both -- sannse 07:05 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

In re Pearson's chi-square test: You've got to be kidding!!! There are zillions of different chi-square tests (zillions = at least a dozen or so) that are so different from each other except in sharing a common null distribution that <POV> it is astonishing that anyone could wonder about this </POV>. Well, maybe not astonishing to the layman, but still.... Michael Hardy 00:45 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

That's funny, I've only used one and it was invented by Pearson. Stats never was a subject that I much cared for. --mav

Hey mav, could you explain about the legal worries on wikipedia:designated agent? I don't understand what that part's referring to. Koyaanis Qatsi

Me neither - I'm sure Jimbo would have a much better idea. In the meantime I just moved the page because it was out of place and protected it on the suggestion of the user. --mav

Hey, mav, I'm noticing irregularities with both the edit page process and the recent changes page. Please keep an eye out and see if I'm crazy or noticing something real... I swear that I'll edit and save a page and then it will appear on the recent changes page... then later it WON'T be on the page... and it won't appear to have been edited... but it's in my user contribution page... very confusing.

--Dante Alighieri 09:32 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

That sounds odd indeed. --mav


Check out Infinite (Eminem album). It is not properly linking to it's own talk page... --Dante Alighieri 09:36 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
The page seems to work for me. --mav
If you access the talk page from my user contributions page however, it DOES exist, see? --Dante Alighieri 09:38 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
Same story... --mav
Just a thought... have you cleared your cache? Or done a Shift+Reload? -- Minesweeper 09:48 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

ctrl-f5 might be the solution Pizza Puzzle

Yeah, it works for me now, I must be tired... I'm going to bed. On a related note, does anyone think that the Eminem page is garbage or what? --Dante Alighieri 10:03 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
Yes Eminem is garbage (double meaning). --mav

Any chance that this has to do with the server move? I was doing all the above on the old server, not the new server... --Dante Alighieri 10:15 14 May 2003 (UTC)

Could very well be. The changes in DNS may be causing weirdness to occur with caching. --mav
The caching problem is seperate: Brion has talked about it on the mailing list. If in doubt, hit reload. Tannin
It's not just caching, believe me, I hit the heck out of the reload button during the whole above process. Also, mav, want to move this whole thread to the article on new server weirdness to clean out your talk page? --Dante Alighieri 10:26 14 May 2003 (UTC)
It's OK here. --mav

you beat me to greating GCarty darn :) MB 15:35 14 May 2003 (UTC)

We have an interesting phenomenon on the Main Page. Due to differences in font types, at 800x600 resolution, sometimes the Selected Articles listing doesn't break to the next line under the Standard theme, while it does on the Blue Cologne theme. (See screenshots: Standard | Cologne) A solution that would keep those of us at higher resolution from guessing about whether it fits or not would be to set that table to 611 pixels wide. That's the maximum width (through experimentation) that the Selected Articles table can be set to without widening the page for 800x600 users. It would have the added benefit of letting anyone who makes additions know if their formatting is too wide and should be corrected at any resolution. Thoughts? -- Minesweeper 20:15 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

I've been thinking the same thing for some time now but have been too lazy to figure out how to get it to work in HTML (width="" seems to set minimum table width and not max width). --mav
Take a look at Main Page/Temp. Does it show up at the proper (with lines breaking) width? -- Minesweeper
By golly it works now! I tried that ages ago and it didn't work - the developers must have fixed something. --mav

Mav:

I'd appreciate it if you did me a big favor. For some reason, I can't seem to send e-mails from my computer. I'm computer illiterate so I'm not going to be able to solve this problem anytime soon. It would be great if you could e-mail my endorsement of James Duffy's nomination to be an administrator to the mailing list for me.

If the request if too much, I'd thank you for even responding to decline. If you're willing, it's on the bottom of my talk page.

172

Done. --mav

THANK YOU! But if you come back to the mailing list to address the same subject, could you add that I have an explanation on my talk page? 172

If it comes up, yes. Sorry I missed that part. --mav

Thank you Mav for your endorsement. I never sought the sysop position and am honoured to have been nominated. I am also a bit emotional, having seen what 172 wrote on his talk page about me. I was deeply touched. So much so that I am speechless! (so this could be the shortest message you've ever received from me on your talk page.) lol ÉÍREman 00:47 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

mav -- I've taken your comment regarding the Wikipedia:general disclaimer and posted it on the talk page there. I'm going to try and add your concern to the disclaimer. It is just a draft disclaimer, but perhaps it can be useful. Alex756 12:30 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

My resolution is 1152x864. This is how the Main Page looks in that res. with your fixed pixel width -- the resolution doesn't really affect the rendering of the table, you just waste lots of space in high resolutions, whereas with no fixed with, everything except H.A. fits into a single line. --Eloquence 14:09 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

Fair enough but please consider how ugly the page looks when the individual lines overflow for users with screen res at 800 x 600. Your last update to the new articles line caused such a line break. What I do is squeeze the width of my browser until the text of the Main Page's intro is on three lines (exactly one sentence per line). This is, in fact, slightly smaller than what is needed so there is a slight margin of error. --mav

Dear Mav: Thanks for answering on the main page talk and placing George Francis on main page-recent deaths :)

God bless you!

Antonio Thankfully yours Martin

(ps: hope this new service they are talking about brings back the markers!! :) )

Got em from http://nationalatlas.gov/electionsprint.html I'll go back and fill in when they're done - Hephaestos 08:30 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Coolness. --mav

Thanks Mav. I'm amazed I could remember all of that in the article. I did a course that featured that stuff in one lecture circa 1986. I know the topic interests me and I have written on it in the Irish Independent before. I did consult one or two references bit most was just from memory. BTW I am revisiting old articles to recheck images to make sure they work OK. I having great fun using the combination of iPhoto and the digital camera. Too bad my bloody computer has begun to malfunction. (I was supposed to leave it in for repairs on Wednesday but the thought of 5 days computerless (sorry, 7 when you take the weekend in) did my head in. So I'm keeping it til Monday. As I am away most of next week at my sister's wedding, the pain of withdrawal will be much less. :-) Now, gotta go to bed. I am supposed to be picking out my morning suit later today so I guess some sleep would help! lol FearÉÍREANN 06:57 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi, Mav.

Just out of curiosity - when does the most active wikpedians list get updated? I'm curious...

Also, my e-mail account is out of commission for the moment. So anything that was sent there over the past 24 hours has not been read - and is likely to stay that way for the next day or two. Arno 08:26 17 May 2003 (UTC)

It's only updated when a developer or Admin who knows a lot about SQL gets around to it. I'm not such a person. --mav

Thanks for your greeting!
Although I have noticed your habit to friendly greet new-commers, I can't help asking if you have any particular advices for me? :-) -- Johan Magnus 02:23 18 May 2003 (UTC)

you are correct, Mav and I was wrong to use that term. But please understand, I have put a lot of work into wiki, and it is frustrating when someone comes to a page and not understanding why I have put something in in some way, promptly changes it, in a number of cases to a form that would make wiki a laughing stock among serious academics. I have asked that person simply to check with me first if they have a query as to why I have put in an entry the way I have, but instead the person in question left a snide attack on me on the Communist state talk page. Having endured constant mispresentation of my motives on that page, having been called a "communist" (which anyone who knows me and my politics would find as ludicrous as calling Pat Robertson a catholic!), a holocaust denier, a censor, a bigot, etc., having had things quoted out of context, and having spent hours and hours explaining" things only to find one or two individuals not even answer the points made but just bulldoze their way through to do what they want even when everyone else's advice (those working on the page) is that they are wrong, I am a little frustrated, to put it mildly. All I want is for wiki to be a credible sourcebook, not an amateurish one, as I have shown in my work on royal titles, on correcting and writing Irish history entries, on editing numerous articles so that terms are used correctly, NPOV standards are followed, etc. I have not changed meanings in articles even when I believe it is wrong, merely tried to add counter-weight and apply proper academic standards. For that I have had abuse, snide remarks, blatent lies told about me on the wiki-list, unambiguous mis-representations posted, etc. It is frustrating trying to be professional in what I do here when some people insist on turning carefully worded, top standard academic work into poor high school essays time and again, or when some people do to my work what was done to Tannin et al's work by adding in sweeping generalisations, by screwing up carefully used and previously checked out capitalisation, and don't even have the courtesy of checking with me as to why something is written the way it is written when I ask them to do so, not by claiming 'ownership' of the article but simply to help them understand the reasoning and so avoid making mistakes in editing something on a topic that they don't know much about. I make a point of not editing text I don't know much about, and if something strikes me as seriously wrong, putting a note asking 'why is this this way? Please explain'. I do not simply bulldoze everything I don't like, change its meaning, its context, etc. But a lot of people do.

I know I can be sharp and if people are offended I apologise. But there are plenty of people I have criticised with whom I have gone on to work closely with on something else. Stevertigo and 172 are classic examples. It is simply my style but is tame by the standards of what is said by most academics criticising other work. And is inoffensive compared to what has been said to me by academics who have looked at articles I have asked them to review. (I could not quote what four academics said about Fred's additions to Communist state for fear that children might read this. And one particular user's editing of political science work was described in the sort of language George W. Bush probably says privately about Saddam Hussein and Osama. Suffice to say that that user, if he did a political science exam, would be hardpushed to get as high as an F grade. But he still sweeps into articles he knows nothing about, screws them about, and then wonders why a host of people hits the roof, accusing people who have done careful research or have studied for years of bias.

BTW, I don't know what happened to your original message on my hotmail account. For some reason one porn site I have nothing to do with (and emailed twice telling them to stop sending me things) keeps sending me 300k and 400k files - of naked women, which as you know it utterly pointless in my case :-). It may be that your messages arrived at some point when the account was over the limit with this trash and so wasn't accepted.

In any case, thanks for your message. I take whatever you say very seriously, given how much respect I have for you. I will try to restain in both my bad temper (which I normally don't lose that often off wiki!) and my frustration. All I want is for wiki to be a credible sourcebook, not an amateurish one. All I have ever done has been with that goal in mind. lol, take care FearÉÍREANN 03:14 18 May 2003 (UTC) PS: as the original message was intended by you to be private, I am going to remove it, having read it, from my talk page.

I know things can get a bit rough in the "trenches" so to speak, but I've learned through time that not speaking ill of other people or their work helps things immensely. Sometimes the best thing to do is just walk away as our NPOV policy states. In fact I do this often after I get the feeling that me and a person I'm arguing with on a talk page are talking in circles. Later, maybe even months later, I come back to the article and edit it the way I wanted and the great majority of times the same person who I was arguing with didn't say a word. It is just that when we are in the heat of an argument edits to the article are viewed far more critically than they otherwise would be. Wikipedia is going to be around for a very, very long time, so it is OK if an article is sub-par for a while so that people arguing over it have time to cool off. Think of all the extra time you would have to work on other articles if you weren't writting posts to talk pages so much. Yours in the wiki, -- mav

Fair point, Mav. Anyway I am too much of a perfectionist. I am currently driving my agent mad because I am not happy with a scene in a novel I am writing. And she is already pissed off at me because one chapter in a political science textbook I am also writing is overdue. I'll blame wiki for distracting me!!! lol. FearÉÍREANN 04:44 18 May 2003 (UTC)

A lot of those countries had citations in them, and most of the ones that did were removed when whoever switched them to the new format switched them to the new format. Koyaanis Qatsi

The citations really should only be on the pages where the public domain text resides. In the case of the country articles, the text in them has been largely rewritten. But the daughter articles still are very much derived from the public domain sources. --mav
I don't think you did anything wrong. But to be more right the references should have been placed on the subpages to begin with. However, I think it is better to just work toward better citation practices in the future instead of worrying too much about the way things were done before. --mav
I'm not working on it any more. Koyaanis Qatsi

I am not sure what I did wrong in regards to the main page. I was very careful about my selections. Can you please fill me in on what I might have done wrong and how I might improve? :) Kingturtle 21:49 18 May 2003 (UTC)

Sure - but in a bit. --mav

ah yes, Pierce Brosnan. Nice to see a mention of someone from my own local town. :-) FearÉÍREANN 23:46 18 May 2003 (UTC)

You here, mav? Zoe and I have a question for you. Koyaanis Qatsi


I am gald you agree with me about the caption for last image on the London Congestion Charge, there has been a silly debate wether it should say you are leaving the London COngestion charge article or to make it more serious like i kept chainging it too. -fonzy

Mav, when you have a chance can you look at the genetic drift article? I made a major revision at 18:43 (May 19), could you compare it to the previous version? If I am way off, feel free to revert; if my version needs some clarification or correction please help out, Slrubenstein

Mav, would you please delete all versions of my User page (except the latest, of course!) at User:Arpingstone. The list of old versions has got ridiculously long. Thanks. Adrian Pingstone 19:36 19 May 2003 (UTC)


Mav, I see you've moved all the links for WikiProjects into the talk page. I assume this is the correct form. But is there some way an article can be marked to belong to a wikiproject, in a way that can be seen in the article? Otherwise the project is likely to be hard to find.

Steverapaport 23:04 19 May 2003 (UTC)

Anybody interested enough in the subject will find the message on the talk page. Everybody else will simply edit the article without thinking that they need to follow a WikiProject in order to edit the article. --mav

The information appeared on the May 22 article, but not the Aaron Burr article. But I've fixed it, and made it more accurate. thanks for catching it. Kingturtle 05:48 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks. :) --mav


Hi, I am new to this site and made my first contribution last night.

I added to the page about the film "2001: A Space Odyssey," with my theory that the number 666 is encoded into the film's running time.

I was surprised that my contribution was edited (redirected) within about 5 minutes of me posting it. I always take this kind of speed--especially in the middle of the night--to be a sign that the website is "of the Order"--the U.S. gov, the CIA, the freemasons, the world communists, what have you--who can afford to employ hundreds and thousands of people to monitor websites in the middle of the night, I suspect. I have to say that "Wiki" does sound rather witchy.

On the off chance that I am talking to real people, I will continue. I am interested in Maverick's biography here, especially his personality type. I, too once tested, out of a book, as INTJ, which the book said was very rare. But I was borderline on the J, being almost equally P. (I am absolutely not a scheduler, though, so I can't be that kind of J. I am, however, strongly judgemental in some ways, so I could be that kind of J. There is inconsistency in how J and P are defined.)

Anyway, I am pleased to have my article linked on this site. I wrote it quickly, it is a first draft, but I have written on the matter so much that it has become second nature.

Feedback is appreciated. Don't worry, I'm used to people saying they think my theory is full of crap. But I usually ignore those opinions. Generally the opinionater gives no support for it.

-Mark Seely (markseely)

I've left a response for you at your talk page here: User talk:Markseely. -- Evercat 21:35 31 May 2003 (UTC)

mav, i will not be touching may 22. :) Kingturtle 06:26 22 May 2003 (UTC)

What about May 21? --mav
Oops. i meant, May 21. I might have a go at May 22 tomorrow. Kingturtle 06:29 22 May 2003 (UTC)
Cool beans - Thanks! --mav

It seems that we were both online at the same time which caused some cnfusion %( You can delete Radagast Slavic, Radagast slavic, Radagast Tolkiens and any other versions that possibly exist except yours Nikola 07:23 22 May 2003 (UTC)

They are harmless as redirects. --mav
Harmless, but needless as well. As you wish. Nikola 20:05 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Mav, I am getting really pissed off and I am writing to you because aside from me and 168, you made the last -- fair and constructive, I thought -- contribution to the talk page for genetic drift. I take your comment seriously, and although I still believe that my verison is better-written and more accurate than 168, I ceased from what you rightly consider a silly revert war. Nevertheless, I have continued to work on the article -- using 168s version as a base, I have made a few changes today. 168 has reverted all of them. Can you blame me for believing that he simply cannot accept me contributing to this article? I made two basic changes: I stated that drift acts on alleles, not individuals, because that is how population geneticists see it. I realize this may seem semantic -- in many cases it is (in clonal organisms it amounts to the same thing, and when it comes to drift caused by accidental death it amounts to the same thing. But when it comes to deviations from the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium it is just wrong; also, to understand the hitchhiking phenomena (in which the natural selection of one allele leads to changes in frequencies of other alleles) one has to see the distinction between allelel and individual. I also added a bit to explain the difference between fixation and extinction (what happens when one allele drifts to 100%, which means another allele has drifted to 0%). I admit that what I wrote could have been rewritten or fleshed out to make it clearer to a lay audience, but 168 just reverted it.

Look Mav, from my point of view I see only one of two possibilities: either I continue to work on the article and keep getting into stupid, pointless, tedious, edit wars with 168, or I stop contributing altogether -- in which case 168 has effectively banned me. I believe this is unfair (although if you really believe I my changes have been wrong or poorly written, or that you believe I have been acting in bad faith and perhaps deserve to be banned, I wish you would tell me). (I would have no objection to blocking both me and 168 from the article for a week, to give time to others to work on it -- although I'd appreciate it if they would at least look at my last version: http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Genetic_drift&oldid=947916 which 168 kept reverting)Slrubenstein 21:11 22 May 2003 (UTC)

The last thing I want is for you to stop contributing - the project would be much harmed by your absense. Also from what you have told me and from what I have seen I'm begining to get the feeling that 168 feels that he "owns" the article. If true, this is not acceptable. I'm sorry that I have allowed things to get as bad as they have but personal issues in my life at the moment have limited my time and emotional wherewithal to deal with this situation. But the weekend is approaching so I'll have more time and energy soon. --mav
I really appreciate your comment. I am certainly not going to leave the project -- but I the whole thing really has made me feel hurt and angry. It is my belief that in addition to NPOV, wikipeida will only work if people are willing to make some compromises, to distinguish between what one doesn't like versus what is unacceptable, and it seems that almost any change I make, even the most minor, is now unacceptable to 168. But my personal feelings aside, it is 168's apparent notion of ownership that does concern me the most. I created a stub for Founder's effect and 168 made some changes, and then reverted, with this comment: "oh go ahead and have your inaccurate article to yourself." Now, you know me well enough to understand that I do not consider any article "mine." But I think the implication of 168's gensture is, "founder's effect" will be my article, and "genetic drift" will be his.
For my own sake, as well as the sake of people whom I respect, like you and Lexor, I will stay away from the Genetic drift article for a week. I do want others to work on it. But that will not resolve the underlying issue in this conflict between myself and 168.
Mav, I turn to you in part because you are very knowledgable about biology, but also because you have been around a long time and I trust you. But I certainly don't feel you have any obligation to act as peacemaker, especially when there are other things going on in your life -- you certainly shouldn't apologize for anything that has happened at that article. I just hope you don't mind my turning to you in this instance. In any event, I hope that whatever has been going on in your life is resolving itself in a good way. Peace, Slrubenstein
Thanks - everything should work itself out. :) I'll take a look at the genetic drift article this weekend and begin to merge in parts of your version along with adding some clarifications of 168's points. --mav

Anything of interest happen lately since January that should concern me, particularly in the area of bots or geographic related articles (city/state/county)? I decided to start back up with some of the work I left off of doing. -- Ram-Man

Welcome back! Answer is on your talk page. --mav

.... what are you doing, mav? should I just stop with the citations? (re: Politics of Bermuda diff). wearily, Koyaanis Qatsi

Just a tweak so as not to give the impression that all the text comes from the CIA or DoS. This is really something better suited to a bot.... --mav
Fine, whatever, let rambot do it then. Koyaanis Qatsi. I'm just sick of working on it. first, importing them onto a subpage before we knew subpages were to be avoided, then adding Dept of State info to some of them but getting bored with it and quitting, then moving them off the subpages, then adding the citation but a poorly worded one--it's like pushing a rock up a hill.
No because then you wouldn't have made any net improvements to that set of article. Just like with anything else around here the older versions are improved upon as time goes by ; each of your actions on these articles has improved them. --mav

Mav: I need some advice. The machine learning page is mostly about a sub-type of machine learning, called supervised learning. Is it considered polite to move 90% of the material from an existing page into a new one? If so, would it work to do a "move page" to supervised learning, then go back and replace the re-direct with a more general page with links to the supervised learning page? Let me know.. Thanks -- hike395.

Nah. I don't think that would be considered rude. A move will in fact improve both articles. --mav
Thanks! --hike395

Oooops! Just for fun, I started a little US 395 page off of the link that you added from my Talk page. Unfortunately, you had called it California State Route 395, and I didn't catch the error and just made the page. I've moved the page to US 395, but in the process made two mistaken pages California State Route 395 and USHighway 395. Could you possibly delete them? Thanks! --hike395

Suggest you examine facts before you say a word to me. This Hemp person I see, has Administrative powers so just reverses other peoples work. Last week she drove away 2 other people and before that if you read, others too. Do something about her or do you tolerate articles that are opinions, and approve of Hemp deleting facts etc? THAT Sir, is a violation of Wikipedia Policy, not my words in any manner whatsoever. Have you read the crap she put in? Take a look at my contributiuons. If you want me to leave, Mr. Maverick, please say so and I will stop contributing immediately. If not, do something about user Hemp instead of veiled threats to me. Jacques Delson 23:01 25 May 2003 (UTC)

That is what happens when you sully yourself by slinging insults ; even if you are right you look wrong. If your aim is to make her look bad then do so by being real nice and cooperative, not by being ultra rude. --mav
I didn't know I'd driven anyone away. Interesting. JHK
I must have missed that part as well. Glad to see you around again JHK. :) --mav

Do you have a problem with me? I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to intrude in my affairs? Perhaps you will explain because I sincerely doubt you want me moving what you write all over the place or messing around with your pages, do you? Jacques Delson 03:41 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I think Martin is preparing the framework to SoftBan you for the obvious violations of Wikipedia:Wikiquette you have committed. See "Troll talk" under m:Bans for more info. --mav
So what about the perpetrator of the ethnic abuse on Jacques' page? Wikiquette shmikiquette.

Ha! I saw those H1 headings on my user talk page and immediately thought that it was some disconted vandal defacing it in revenge for me reverting Julie p8i6%#^$#@ is a slut, or the like. Then I read the sig. :)

I'm not convinced that your scheme (as just suggested) would be an improvement, Mav (there is a right way and a wrong way, and we might as well do it the right way) (peace! just my opinion!) - but I can't see any great problems with it either. If you can beg, bribe, threaten, or otherwise persuade the developers to make that change, then go right ahead - I am agnostic on that matter and won't argue.

One day a few years ago, I was driving rather aimlessly through some of the countryside a few tens of kilometres from home. It has rained a week or three previously, the grass was fresh and green, and after a while we passed a paddock with a flock of sheep and new-born lambs. They were all standing along the fenceline on the short grass, leaning through the fence to eat the long grass on the roadside. All except for one. This little fellow, being all of 10 or 12 inches high, had squeezed through the fence and he was standing in the long grass leaning through the fence eating the short grass. Life is like that. :)

(And I wish I'd had a camera!)

(PS: one of these days, someone is going to die and leave me some money. I'll sell the business and take a few years off to do a degree in Biological Resource Management. Got any moderately weathy relatives going spare?) Tannin

LOL Alas, no. :) --mav



Hello, Mr. Maveric. I was wondering if you could remind me of the current policy on pre-emptive disambiguation. I thought we only added disambiguation text to titles - "Old Street (London)" and so on - when there was more than one article competing for the simpler name... -- Oliver P. 11:04 26 May 2003 (UTC)

"Old Street" is a very generic name for a street and likely to be shared by many other streets around the world. Therefore a more precise name is warrented. --mav
But if there are no other Old Streets that actually have articles, then a more precise name isn't needed. I thought I remembered this being your argument! Maybe I've remembered wrongly... -- Oliver P. 18:53 26 May 2003 (UTC)
It really depends on if there are other "Old Streets" we might one day want an article on (I'm fairly certain that we will). You also have to remember that each article we have serves as an example of how we title things; if people don't see any attempt to disambiguate a street name then we are going to have a big problem with disambiguation for common street names. This is about creating a more precise article name not really about preemptive disambiguation (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision)). That is why our article on Einstein is at Albert Einstein. If you can think of a better naming scheme that doesn't look like standard disambiguation then please implement it. In short; please respect the fact that other people in other cities with other streets called "Old Street" may also want to have an article on their "Old Street." "Old Street", by itself, is just not precise enough to be a title that can stand on its own. --mav
Ah, thanks for that link. I hadn't read that page before. I see your point that Old Street isn't a precise title. I meant no disrespect to people with other Old Streets, but of course they could change things when they decided to add their own street - either by adding their own Old Street to the same page (cf. bridge, a word with very many meanings, although admittedly that page is a complete mess...), or by moving the page and creating a new disambiguation page at that time. But never mind, it makes little difference one way or the other... -- Oliver P. 19:16 26 May 2003 (UTC)


Go ahead and work on the date pages, mav, I don't have time to do any of it tonight. -- Zoe

Will do. :) --mav

Hey, where were you a couple days ago! ;-) Like I said, not feeding anymore! JHK

You took the words right out of my mouth. :) --mav
Damnation! Fed him again -- but I really wish he'd stop polluting the site with nasty comments about me -- I'd say 90% of his talk comments, even to other people, refer to me in a distinctly negative manner. I feel like HJ -- do I want possible colleagues or students to see this? Still trying not to feed -- but sometimes they seem to be starving!JHK

Bad boy! You've allowed your page grow to 38K again. :-) Anyway, dear boy (Jeez. That's what comes from listening to a Noel Coward song while drinking Earl Grey tea from a china cup. I start saying 'dear boy'! How gay is all that! Though Coward might not have approved of me sipping earl grey tea from china cups while dressed in biker's leathers right now!) . . . anyway . . . I've noticed a problem that is arising over the opening paragraphs of many royal and papal pages. We use numerous styles, many of them illogical and a throwback to when wiki named royal pages by personal name not royal nomenclature. Some pages put personal name at the start of the opening sentence and bury the actual royal title that is the name of the article somewhere later. I've found some where people have removed royal titles altogether, or throw a tantrum if you suggest the royal name should come first!

I've proposed a solution on the Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) page. Take a look and let me know what you think, dear boy! :-) PS: I've pushed your page up to 39K hee hee! lol FearÉIREANN 01:10 29 May 2003 (UTC)


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Kylie Minogue, just added to the 1968 page and presumably has been or will soon be added to May 28, better known for being a singer than an actress? I know that's how it is here in the States, at least, not so sure if that's the case elsewhere. But it certainly ought to say singer in there. -- John Owens 08:05 29 May 2003 (UTC)

I'm just copying entries from May 28. The only section I confirm on the day pages is the events section. Please edit the year page the best way you think is fit and I'll edit the day page to match. --mav

Would like your expert opinion on large scale revert done silently @ History of China (see gripe @ talkpage) -- prat

done. --mav
Mosstoh is continuously putting his/her wholesale editions on History of China in ill-managed interpretations. I have post sveral times on the talk page and his talk page but s/he never seems to pay attention. User:kt2

I missed the response because I was expecting it to come from Ram-Man. Anyway, your wiretap is in place.  :-P Koyaanis Qatsi

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