User talk:Stephen Gilbert

My old messages seem to have disappeared into the void... --Stephen Gilbert

About my page Wikipedians/The Cunctator: I made the necessary redirects.

Hi Stephen! about your evil impulse (mwahahahaha...), Axel mentioned that the other day. i went to look and see if there was anything worth transferring, and found a few things, but since they're all pretty much evidence that I've actually been politer in the past when trying to teach Helga about what history and encyclopedias are about, I don't know if I should lose them and let newbies think I'm an awful crank, or transfer them to my current pages. Or, I could just let them go, because my own contributions should prove that I actually *do* know my stuff... ;-) Feel free to do as you wish, old son -- if there's anything there worthy of posterity, keep it -- if not, "push the button, Max!" J Hofmann Kemp

Hello Stephen. Is there a script or a fast way to make the year pages, or does this have to be done by hand each and every time? If I remember correctly, somebody, (cant' remember who) was just crankin' these things out like they were nothing. --maveric149, Sunday, May 5, 2002

Great work on the moving everything over on the wikipedians pages - I did some of the work two but gave up after about 20 moves. --12.246.119.53

Thanks for helping with the Dutch links. --maveric149

Important note for all sysops: There is a bug in the administrative move feature that truncates the moved history and changes the edit times. Please do not use this feature until this bug is fixed. More information can be found in the talk of Brion VIBBER and maveric149. Thank you. --maveric149

Re adding fountain pen to the Brilliant prose page -- thanks! (in proportion to my less-than-a third-I-guess contribution to that article) -- Marj Tiefert, Thursday, July 4, 2002

The Wikipedia Google search bar is pretty cool -- I'm glad you copied it. --maveric149

Please read Wikipedia talk:Status of the porting of U.S. Dept of State info and make your ideas known. We've been discussing how to organize the country articles, and the input of a leader like you would be invaluable. --Ed Poor

Re the Project Sourceberg/SourceLink whatever stuff--it's pretty cool. But the current state is that such suggestions have to be put into practice by the suggestor. --The Cunctator

How do I get to the page where you moved the copyright discussion from the Village Pump, please? I was participating in the discussion and now don't know how to find it to follow it. -- isis 8 Sep 2002

No problem re; gamecube articles. I've noticed articles in regards to some games, noticably the Zelda series which are poorly written, and need to have a NPOV, as they are obviously written by fans. I'm a bit scared to undertake these though! Greg Godwin

Are you going to move all the slashed poker articles? Do you need my help? (Do we need to talk to LDC, who pretty much wrote them all single-handedly?) --Ed Poor

Hi Stephen - you commented on my pages a few days ago, and pointed out that I should try to link pages in. Now I have a real problem - so perhaps you or some of your readers could tell me how to solve it. Suppose I want to put in an entry for "Rockingham china". There are quite a lot of entries for "Rockingham", almost none of them concerned with the English pottery. There are at least 500 entries for China, and doubtless many more - I think it's incredibly unlikely that any will refer to china - in the sense of pottery. So how do I go about creating such an entry, and how could it ever be found by anyone?

I still have problems with multiple entries for words - I haven't figured out how to do these yet - though I suppose there is a solution.

e.g

induction -> a method of mathematical proof (mathematical induction)
induction -> linking together electrical circuits - (electromagnetic induction)
induction -> a method of inference

I'm sorry - I still don't get this.

User talk:David Martland

Thanks for the detailed responses - noted. Now I'm trying to figure out how to do better maths markup than (e.g (3x+2)^2) - must be a way - without having to use LaTeX, though not sure if HTML based methods are good enough. DM.

2)² Lir 10:57 Nov 18, 2002 (UTC)

Talk:Python and Java typeheckexample response given. + notice the name change.

Next reply made Mon Nov 18 22:42:07 CST 2002

Hi Stephen,

I made unilaterarily and without consult a #80 line of the TourBus, linking several wikipedias in a loop. If you wish you can write about it in MeatBall TourBusHQ. I do not like a place where I can not be me --AN 05:07 Nov 22, 2002 (UTC)

It did not occur to YOU to put up pictures of the letter because you did not go look in the requested images pages. ;p Hehe... --Dante Alighieri

Hi Stephen, this is Richard Drake, host of something called Why Clublet. Who knows, you might have heard of me and/or it. I live in London and I'm at rdrake@clublets.com. I would be interested to exchange email. This is my first edit on wikipedia so sorry that I know not (knot) the ropes. Thanks.

An e-mail is on the way... -- SG

Don't worry, Stephen. I'm not planning on corrupting the neutrality of Wikipedia with absolute values -- at least, not unless a consensus forms that way! ;-) --Uncle Ed

Thanks for trying to help. I did receive an email from Brion, before I read your entry in Pump. As far as my favorite work in progress goes, I'm happy with the article's energy, the cross-reffed footer, and all the work everyone put into it. I noticed you worked on it about a year ago. So... I's back. BF 16:45 Dec 13, 2002 (UTC)

Why did you block my address when I tried to make a minor correction to the Arthur Machen biography? The message said "vandalizing pop star articles," which is rather baffling since Machen is hardly a pop star and I wasn't vandalizing.--MTS

MTS -- my apologies; you weren't the target. Someone using the same ISP and/or proxy server as you was vandalizing. The block was set yesterday; you happened to pick up the same IP address as the vandal. -- Stephen Gilbert 21:36 Dec 15, 2002 (UTC)

--- Hi, you blocked my address too and it said you blocked me cause I was vandalizing Pop stars articles?? Im a very serious contributor who writes 4 articles each day and I would never do that...from what read, Im not the only person that you did that to.

I did not vandalize anything.

I was shocked to find out that someone thinks I vandalized anything, and Im looking forward to be able to contribute once again.

Thank you and God bless you

sincerely yours, AntonioMartin

Antonio, no one thinks you have vandalised anything. I'll try to clarify. Wikipedia only lets people block by IP number. On Dec. 14, a vandal using AOL was continually vandalising articles. Several admins, including myself, blocked this person. However, AOL uses dynamic IP addresses, so when this vandal was blocked using on IP number, he simply disconnected, reconnected and was assigned a different one. He eventually got tired of this game. Unfortunately, when other AOL users dial in, they may be assigned an IP number that was previously assigned to the vandal, and thus they find themselved blocked. Let me emphase this: no one thinks that you or MTS has vandalised anything.' It's just some bad luck with the IP number that your ISP assigned you for a particular session. I am very sorry for the trouble; our blocking system is far from ideal. -- Stephen Gilbert 21:02 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

Thank you for your very civilized reply. I have only just discovered Wikipedi, and thought that I might contribute small additions here and there, and was horrified to get blocked shortly after getting out of the starting gate. Thought I'd accidentally violated some rule, perhaps. Thank you for restoring my confidence. Does the assignment of the IP number depend on the particular ISP phone number used; i.e., could I avoid being assigned that number again by dialing in to a different number? -- MTS.

Usually, you get a different IP number every time you connect, regardless of what phone number you've dialed. Thus, if you find yourself using a blocked IP number, you can disconnect and reconnect again, and a new number will be assigned to you. As you can see, Wikipedia's blocking mechanism isn't terribly effective; it only serves asa deterant for someone on a spree. Anyway, when IP numbers from large ISPs such as AOL are blocked, they should be unblocked within a day or two. I'll go clear the clocks now. Oh, and welcome to Wikipedia! -- Stephen Gilbert 10:31 Dec 18, 2002 (UTC)

You quit the mailing list too! Excellent. :-) Big weight off your shoulders, huh? --KQ

Well, I've been busy lately with school work, and now (right now, actually) I'm packing to go home for the holidays, so wikipedia may be barrels of fun again in about 3 weeks. It got to be a drag for awhile but it's not so bad lately. :-) --KQ

Stephen, thanks for the help at the Village Well (question about hebrew wiki). Do you need any help with specific tech articles in different communications fields? Switching, transmission etc.? If needed I guess a lot of it can come from whitepaper type stuff, but if things like that are helpful... -- aarrrggghhh

Aarrrggghhh (interesting name!): I do indeed need help. My area of study is human communication, and although I am also a technically inclined person, there area lot of gaps in my knowledge. The communication article will be a general overview which will allow people to jump off to more specific topics (but it's been slow going. Writing on such a broad topic is very difficult). I don't think we have any technical communication specialists here, so your contributions are very welcome. -- Stephen Gilbert 14:27 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)

here is an article you may find interesting (completely unrelated to wikipedia, even on a metaphorical level, *cough* *cough*.) :-) --KQ

Interesting, isn't it? I wonder if we could back up some and give it a shot, or if people are less patient than creative at this point. I half considered posting to the list to ask that KQ be banished because we disagree constantly over how to phrase sentences and he's grumpy about it. ;-) --KQ

Re LOC classification: I find it difficult to understand why the links to all the sub-classifications have been broken. As well as a possible scheme for Wikipedia classification, these are perfectly valid in their own right. Eclecticology 04:49 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

No offence taken, just shock and puzzlement when I first saw it. I did note that you had added some cross-references to other systems, but which you have also removed. I had no objections to these additions. Eclecticology

Dude! I just got your message about the Raelian symbol. Will do. Sara Parks Ricker

Thanks for the move of economics discussion to my User_talk:Guerby page. -- Guerby 21:59 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)

Stephen, why the move of Opera? "Opera web browser" is a case of natural Disambiguation, similar to Java programming language (which is even mentioned as such in our policy). The syntax with parentheses should not be used unless necessary. Besides, we use "foo web browser" for all other browsers. --Eloquence 12:45 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

Re2 (we have to think of a better way to have conversations between users, BTW - switching Talk pages is really not a good solution): The Opera thing has come up before. My position here is that we currently have a policy to choose "natural" disambiguation whenever possible ("Java programming language" instead of "Java programming language"). I can actually see arguments against that: Whenever people start doing this, every new entry that is added to the list is often disambiguated in the same way because it seems natural -- so we now have pages like "MidasWWW web browser", and I'm currently in the process of moving all the sufficiently unique programming language pages away from "foo programming language" to "foo". Also, the pipe trick makes it easier to use the other disambiguation format. So I could accept the change, but only if the policy on Wikipedia:Disambiguation is updated accordingly (this should be discussed on wikien-l). --Eloquence 21:43 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

I just want to thank you for all your hard work on making the Wikipedia:FAQ and daughter pages a truly easy to use utility. I am amazed at how quickly most new contributors learn the ropes around here and I am convinced that a large part of that is due to the ease of finding out how to do things. Kudos! --mav

Gee, gosh, thanks. I appreciate it. Wikipedia has made all the rags and tags of information in my brain actually worth something. Ortolan88

Thanks for your message concerning the Winona Ryder photo. I seem to have missed out on most of the discussion between Isis and some others about copyright questions and just thought it would be the other website's rather than Wikipedia's problem if that photo were really protected by copyright. Personally, I'd consider using such an image "fair use" (we don't want to sell it or earn money by publishing it, do we?), but of course I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to start that discussion all over again. I don't even like Ryder as an actress. I just came across that picture of hers and thought it might fit in with her article. By all means, remove it. Thanks again, and best wishes, --KF 16:41 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Hi,
Thanks for your note on my talk page. Yes, I am very interested by non-violence. I wrote this Experiments in non-violence. What do you think of it? And I mainly work on the French Wikipedia, so that's why I only answer now. Yann 17:39 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for your contribution to the debate about football. I felt outgunned and needed all the support I could muster. Thanks. Mintguy

Just got your welcome message. Thank-you for the comments. Although I'm not yet a monastic, I hope I can be of some assistance to this wonderful community. Your User page is quite impressive. Keep up the great work here at Wikipedia. Usedbook 19:32 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind commentjimfbleak 20:14 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Steven, would you take a look at the Hawaii map that you're using. It appears to have ghosted images of the islands on it. Sfmontyo 22:21 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. On the naming rules AAAAGH! There was an agreed convention which Taku totally tore to shreds and this stage I don't know what to do. Logic suggests that standard english form be used or english wiki. There may be exceptions where for example a form of address is so similar to the english form that it seems pointless to change it (eg, referring to the duc' d'Orleans rather than Duke of Orleans). I personally favour always using the name of the state or the geographic area in a monarchical title. Taku has a problem using the standard Emperor {name} of Japan (though he has no problem perversely with a page on emperors of Japan, and of saying someone was emperor of Japan in the article text). My suggestion is that in that case simply put '(Japan)' after a name, so that worldwide wiki users will know where on the planet the emperor in question was located, ie {name} (Japan). But Taku is 100% opposed to this, or any form that isn't pure Japanese, even though this isn't Japanese wiki. As far as I am concerned, there are three issues:

In Japanese, people would use the title 'emperor' after the name. I think this is unworkable on wiki. When translated into english, the Japanese form is invariably inverted. I see no reason why on english language wiki the same rule should not be applied, with the title preceding the name, ie Emperor {name}. That is the way it should be, to ensure that readers worldwide can understand and immediately recognise the format. That is the view of Japanese people I have asked, Japanese academics I have asked, etc. But Taku says no and will not budge on the issue.
Where a monarchy still exists covering the same territorial unit, the standard procedure is to use the state name in the title, as in {name} of {state}. Some months ago, after a major row, that was the agreed format applied to Japanese emperors, particularly as the modern Emperor explicitly calls himself Emperor of Japan in all his english statements, press releases, etc. Taku undid all of that and will not allow that form to be used, leading to vast numbers of emperors with no indication to wiki users of what they were emperors of.
If it can't be used (and I still think it should), my alternative suggestion was to use Japan in brackets after the emperor name, to give some geographic indication of location to wiki users who don't know Japanese imperial history. Again Taku won't accept this.

Quite frankly, Taku's 'solution' has made a complete screw-up, with unrecognisable forms of names, unrecognisable geopolitical locations and vast numbers of screwed up links which Taku declines to fix. I am all in favour of returning to the standard format, but I think the best compromise is to invert emperor and name to the english language version 'Emperor' {name}' which even Japanese people accept in english, and to put Japan in brackets afterwards to clarify where geographically that person came from. That I think is a workable formula and if you want to try that you will have my full support. I'm afraid that I got so fed up with Taku's attitude and refusal to budge from pure japanese to try to come up with a formula non japanese people could follow that I gave up. Someone certainly needs to redo all the links but I got fed up having Taku come along and change them all back again to his version, leaving twice as many broken links as there had been before I had sorted them out previously.

So if you want to be brave and sort them out, go ahead. I'll help out where I can. At some stage people are going to get so fed up with the mess that they will all gang up on Taku and yell a collective 'No'. But somehow finding a solution to the Iraq situation seems easier than trying to sort out the links and facing the wrath of Taku.

Sorry for going on so long. The best of luck with the plan. STÓD/ÉÍRE 22:31 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

I do hope you are right. I think it makes logical sense, but somehow I fear World War III may erupt (again)! I'll pray for you. :) STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:46 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. It appears that my browser or system was having problems. I rebooted and it went away. Sorry about the false alarm. Cheers, Sfmontyo 03:47 Mar 25, 2003 (UTC)

- 3) 豎&#30505sv

Why are you moving the Japanese emperor pages? Is there anything else called Sujin in this encyclopedia to differentiat from? --dan

It's a long story, dan. The short version is this: the articles reside at a variety of different titles, including "Emperor {name} of Japan", "{name} of Japan", "{name}", "{name} emperor", "{name} Emperor", and probably more. Some of these articles have chains of broken redirects four or five levels deep. I'm going through the entire list and moving each article to "Emperor {name} of Japan" and making sure all the redirects go there. Then, if the people working on those articles decide to rename them, they can do so. See Talk:Emperor of Japan and the participants' personal talk pages for the full story.

Good work. In the last few weeks the entire section on wiki about Japan, japanese emperors etc had become a cross between a black hole and the Bermuda triangle. I'm sure Taku thought he was doing the right think but even Japanese academics said he was wrong. A ray of logical sunshine has appeared on wiki again. Though I'm sure you can expect a queue of What the f@*k do you think you are doing? messages. STÓD/ÉÍRE 04:18 Mar 27, 2003 (UTC)