User talk:Camembert

You know you're getting old when you have a talk archive... And now I have another one, I'm virtually geriatric, I guess.

Queries, praise, criticism, requests, all welcomed. Rants tolerated. As a rule I answer on the talk page of whoever leaves a comment or question rather than on this page.

thanks for cleaning up after the graffiti artist. Kingturtle 03:43 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

No problem, glad to help. --Camembert

You might be interested in the Chicago Tribune story referenced on Talk:Paul Wittgenstein, regarding the recent discovery among his wife's effects of the Hindemith concerto that (at least the article says) had never been performed in public. Also some interesting information in related stories about how the Wittgenstein's money, at one time safe in Switzerland, was extorted from them by the Nazis in exchange for the granting of "mixed-race" status, allowing Paul to keep his passport and his sisters to remain unmolested in Vienna.... -- Someone else 23:02 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Alma's influence on Mahler, and on the perception of Mahler after his death, is worth an article by itself...

I hope you get a chance to add this in. I confess that it was her - emotional generosity - that seems to overshadow the rest of it. I don't know whether to believe half the peculiar things I see on the Web on THAT (complete with an artist's conception of the anatomically correct Alma doll!). I agree on the Hindemith, too <G> -- Someone else 00:50 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC) (PS: Alma apparently wrote some lieder, before foreswearing art for Mahler, and they've been recorded. Who knew?)

sigh*. And Dietry Fiber was doing so well, having given up the troublemaking aspects of its previous multiple personalities. Does this nonsense on the list of people around in WWII mean we are back to square one again, with nitpickedly rows over nothing, edit wars over facts he doesn't actually know but thinks he knows, renaming all over the place, changing list orders, and jumping after everyone has agreed something to announce 'I disagree' and rewriting everything? I thought the two weeks of silence were too good to be true. *major sigh* STÓD/ÉÍRE 02:12 Apr 5, 2003 (UTC)

How do you know of Victor Bergin? I got to study with him at UC Santa Cruz. Kingturtle 18:44 Apr 6, 2003 (UTC)

I'll answer on your talk page. --Camembert

Thanks for your swift action re. Talk:Bass guitar. --rbrwr

Happy to help. --Camembert

I take it you didn't approve of my moves:

nigger to the word 'nigger'
fuck to the word 'fuck'

Too bad, I was going to make a nice disambiguation page out of nigger:

Two prominent books are entitled Nigger:

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy
- review by James Withers
Nigger: An Autobiography by Dick Gregory (with Robert Lipsyte), 1964.

See also:

the word 'nigger'

On Laurent, after whatever you did (I'm guessing you removed spaces at the beginnings of paragraphs?), it doesn't crash me anymore. Thanks. -- John Owens 01:10 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Camembert

I think we may be fighting over Jacqueline du Pré. I reformatted her page today to include what I believe is the correct accent, and I also reformatted pages which refer to that one. Sorry - accents are a pain!

I redirected from the unaccented page to the accented one.

The text of the accented page is also improved, with some of the links fixed etc. 141.241.82.216 13:56 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC) aka User:David Martland when logged in!

I've responded on your talk page - there wasn't a problem really, I was just stitching the edit histories of the old and new articles back together. --Camembert

Thanks for the notice on the upload problem; I've filed a bug report and hopefully will get a chance to fix it. :) In the meantime I've cleared out the bad entries from the database (just ignore it in the log.) --Brion 00:11 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks :) --Camembert

the year three million and a bit - we had it because apparently it's when the world is going to end according to hindu mythology, and somebody confused hirself with a stand-up comedian... ;-) Martin

Heh, I must remember to mark that in my diary ;) --Camembert

Please help. One guy say okay for pictures on Album cover, a nother say no pictures. Information with facts being deleted repeatedly not vandalism? I don't understand at all. I thought edit meant adding or fixing an article but you say its okay to delete anything I like. Sorry, if I'm not all sure on your Amrerican laws. Explain please or tell me where I go for explanation. Thank you.User:Wei Chin Ho

Thank you much..User:Wei Chin Ho

I don't understand your question? Please make sense of it or are you just trying to make fun of me too? Olga Bityerkokoff

Repeat: I don't understand your question? I am user Olga Bityerkokoff. Why should you question my log in name? There is nothing in the Sandbox that says I would be obliged to answer another users questions. Please, no more insults and please mind your business politely. Have I done something to someone here that deserves your friends calling themselves John Owens and Infrogeration to degrade and insult my family and for you to conduct a CIA interrogation? What's next, my bra size? Please go to another chat website if you want that conflict or kinky stuff. I understood this was an encyclopedia. Am I wrong? Olga Bityerkokoff

But on the pages I looked at it wasn't [[automobile|car]] it was deleting the word car altogether, in some articles where the person wasn't american, the story never mentioned America and in fact nothing in the page referred to America at all. STÓD/ÉÍRE 23:45 Apr 15, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for the gentle clarification, Camembert. I will use [[automobile|car]] as I go forward. Although I had made the decision to replace car with automobile on my own, based on that blind spot in my international knowledge, please note that User:Goatasaur had suggested that I do the same on my talk page, so I'm not the only person with this confusion. I thought I was correct, and I'll be happy to change now that I know I'm wrong. I really do try not to be an ignorant American. Catherine 00:03 Apr 16, 2003 (UTC)

I love finding monumental mistakes in supposed accurate publications. My favourite was a history book on Britain and Ireland that looked fanastic, read well, then . . . um had Charles I winning the English civil war, George VI abdicating to marry Mrs Simpson (which must have come as a surprise to the Queen Mother if she read it!), and Eamon de Valera winning the Irish civil war, which if he did, sort of explains how he ended it in prison at the end of it. Or am I missing something? Or a newspaper article telling us how famous people, including Mother Theresa and Princess Diana would spend the millennium eve! A bit like the famous magazine described in detail Royal Ascot, right down to how well the Queen looked, which was quite a challenge as Royal Ascot was cancelled. (But then I'm someone to talk. I had to do a review of Dublin's gay pride parade on a Saturday for the following Sunday's Sunday Independent. But that section of the paper "went to bed" on Thursday. So they had me imagine what the Gay Pride march would probably be like. Luckily it wasn't cancelled and readers thought I was actually describing the parade, not describing the previous year's one. (The previous year I had described the previous year's one!!!) Oh such fun writing imaginery facts for newspapers. (Though nowhere like the middle east journalist who was given a large some of money to go to Baghdad to cover the war. He thought he would stay at home, hide in a broom closet in the TV station and with someone's help, do radio broadcasts and then film reports using a bluescreen backdrop onto which CNN & BBC images were projected. But the idiot blew it by walking around the streets one day, being seen by people who then asked . . . "but he is supposedly in Baghdad!!!" He was caught and fired. ÉÍREman 01:49 Apr 21, 2003 (UTC)

I went to look at your "Making fun of Britannica" article, but all of the science was over my head. :) -- Zoe

Actually, I'm delighted with the idea of a recording of "I Loves Your Progy", but somehow doubt I will ever hear one<G>. -- Someone else 01:13 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)

Camembert wrote: Why are you removing all instances of the words "refers to"? They're overused, I agree, but sometimes they're used correctly. Often what you leave behind when you take them out makes no sense (due process, for example).

Hi Camembert. I'm not removing all of them, although watching the "recently changed" log won't show you all the examples I looked at and left alone. I'd estimate I've left about 40% of the ones I've examined untouched. As for the "due process" example, that was my mistakes and I've fixed that one. Regarding the bigger picture of "why", it is mostly to stamp out two sorts of usages:

Dog refers to a four legged canine -> A dog is a four legged canine.
This article refers to the canine usage -> This article describes the canine usage.

◈¡◈

Fair enough. I agree that it's a phrase usually mis-used. --Camembert

I am not perfect. If 80% of my changes are improvements, then I apologize for the other 20%, and wikipedia remains improved. -◈¡◈

Of course, you're quite right. I was probably being unduly suspicious. --Camembert

Oh you'll love this, Cam. The multiple banned user Adam/Bridget/Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason/Dietary Fiber has returned from the grave to haunt wiki as Shino Baku. Oh lovely! Something he wrote on 172 triggered off an instant realisation in me and in 172 separately and simultaneously that it had to be Adam again. His edit pattern is the same. His style of argument is the same. His assault on articles associated with 172 is the same. And in particular is hideous tendency to wade into a debate, wait until a conclusion had been reached, then intervene by insisting on something which everyone else had abandoned, cropped up again on the China talk page (where he resurrected a row Sirub had abandoned, with a one line comment on 172's page that was word for word what each of the earlier Adam family members would say, with only the topic in the sentence changed. How many times has this creep been banned? ÉÍREman 06:45 Apr 25, 2003 (UTC)