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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dante Alighieri (talk | contribs) at 10:03, 14 May 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

User Talk for maveric149

If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it (score = 82).
Problem now is, sleeping has switched from a full (i.e. normal) to part time occupation.... oh well - you only live once, there's plenty of time to rest later...

Older messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4, talk archive 5, talk archive 6, talk archive 7, talk archive 8, talk archive 9, talk archive 10, talk archive 11

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)
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