User talk:ALoan/Archive3

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edit User talk:ALoan Archives

• Archive to 19 August 2004
• Archive to 14 October 2004
• Archive to 22 November 2004
• Archive to 31 December 2004
 

• Archive to 11 February 2005
• Archive to 30 May 2005
• Archive to 31 July 2005
• Archive to 30 September 2005
• Archive to 31 December 2005

• Archive to 28 February 2006
• Archive to 30 May 2006
• Archive to 31 July 2006
• Archive to 30 September 2006
• Archive to 30 November 2006

Contents

[edit] John Vanbrugh

Hi

I really like the improvements you have done at John Vanbrugh, changing the headings into sub headings (I didn't know how to do that) Bishonen and I are trying hard to bring what was a poor page up to standard, it was placed on 'featured page' without us knowing, which was flattering , but has put us under stress to finish it.

Castle Howard, Blenheim etc. are intended to be linked when there is more on those pages than there is at JV. which will be very shortly (I hope) at present they are poor stubs, with one photo under copyright review. I really don't think that particular heading is the place to place those links. I have great text chunks removed through shortage of space from JV to dump on those unsuspecting stubs in the near future, which will be edited into half decent pages, could the links wait until then, as at the moment they detract from what is purely an architectural appraisal, rather than article on the place. Giano 21:49, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I wonder if it will ever be finished anyway, sounds like you had a good stoical education like me. Giano 22:04, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thankyou for nominating John Vanbrugh, and your very kind words, I hope every one else shares your view. I am a little concerned though about a large gap though that has appeared at Blenheim, and could the pictures not be little larger and flamboyant, this is baroque after all, I'm not too sure how to rectify it myself, I've left a message to this effect on the talk page. Thanks Giano 14:25, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi Aloan, Please don't think I don't appreciate your efforts on behalf of Bishonen and myself, because I do, really do; but this article is about providing the best information there is - free. It is something, one of the few thing I feel passionate about, most of my pages are sourced from books not readily available, some are even privately published; and God knows where Bishonen is finding that information, its a first for the internet that's for sure. So I will not contemplate John Vanbrugh being dissected, because somebody can't wait 5 minutes for a page to download; at times I use computers older than me (well not quite, but you know what I mean) The whole point is for the information to be there, easily (with patience). Thanks for your help so far Giano 20:47, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What happened at John Vanbrugh?

Hi, ALoan. I noticed there were some page update problems today, after the big Wikipedia read-only thing this morning, so I'm wondering if perhaps that accounts for the strange things that happened at the John Vanbrugh page while I was trying to edit it. What it looks like is that you edited it while my "inuse" tag was on it, removed the tag, and reverted my effortful recoding of the small actor images. (I wanted to get rid of the big ugly frames that were making especially the oval images look bad on the page. I've only just learned how to upload pics at all, and David Remahl had kindly written me a step-by-step guide to follow for this--it took a long time. :-( ) But I'm assuming you wouldn't do that, at least not without an explanation on the Talk page. Do you think it may have been due to some complicated edit conflict? (I didn't get an edit conflict, but maybe you did?)

Oh, and now I see that a sentence from the lead section has been doubled, also. It appears both in its original place and in the Play section. That probably does mean an edit conflict. I don't understand it, but I'm hoping you do. Can you fix it? Sheesh ... I'm deflated at the poor result of my work today, but I can't believe you'd deliberately remove my inuse tag and invite such a mess.--Bishonen 16:53, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Could you please write to me on my own page, as I am not Giano and don't get any "New messages" alert when messages appear on his page? Yes, I had gathered that a frame comes automatically when you use a thumbnail. That's the way the images were before I changed them, so I wrote "Recoded actor images to remove clumsy frames" in the edit line, trying to make it clear I was making a change. Four hours with the inuse tag is a lot? I didn't know that, but now I do, it won't happen again. It was the only time I've had for serious editing this whole week, so I indulged myself with the tag (having gotten a nightmare of an edit conflict the last time I tried to do any major edits). I'm sorry if I seemed to be shutting other people out. Please feel free to continue editing today, I have other things to do.--Bishonen 17:14, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think I know and am comfortable with the wiki way. I have no objection at all to my text--or rather, text that I've written, I know it's not "mine" once it's been posted--being edited: I'm only trying to help around here, just like you, and I don't think it's fair to cast me as that famous cliché, the editor who jealously guards her "carefully crafted prose". But I think there is also a culture here of discussing changes and especially reverts on article Talk pages.

(Btw, I think you can see in my previous message that I wasn't objecting to that lead section sentence being copied into a different section, merely noting that it now appears twice, which I thought suggestive of an edit conflict accident (?).)

But I regret firing up at what was, after all, an apology. I should have been more gracious. --Bishonen 18:49, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] About Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt

(also posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt)

I'm not surprised that this Wikiproject has been going on without your knowing -- a lot of discussions, agreements etc. take place without many of us knowing about it. I've contributed to WP for about 2 years now, & I'm still surprised at what I find has taken place long after a decision was made.

Anyway ALoan, about the points in your post:

  1. Concerning your work on Pharaoh (which is badly needed), I've been spending the last few weeks pulling together a list of kings of Ancient Egypt & their reigns per the ideas the few of us have tossed out. It can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Temp. Consider this a "proof of concept", something tangeable that we all know just what we mean by standardizing our names & dates after Ian Shaw's book mentioned above. Unfortunately, there were some issues in adopting that work for our purposes (e.g., holes in the list of rulers, tracking down some well-known alternative transliterations, etc.), so I had to make some modifications. My methodology will be published on the talk page to that article, but my goal was to favor no one interpretation while making the end product as useable as possible.
  2. As for your template, I'm not sure where & how that will fit into Wikipedia. Would you edit a few relevant articles & show us what you intend?
  3. And as for the articles for the dynasties -- you're reading the words of the man who has been writing the content of most of them, & I admit that they are uneven. My primary intent was to simply get some kind of content up (in the hope that material will attract more contributions) & as I proceeded, the standard I began to follow was to (a) include a table of rulers for that dynasty; (b) mention in the article the more important rulers of that dynasty; & (c) try to include some non-political history in the article. I'm sure more needs to be done. -- llywrch 21:18, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You probably want to add yourself at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt#Participants, no? :-) Noel 14:59, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] About me being a Sockpuppet

I am not. I'm just new. Meikal 11:15, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WP:RM

It's probably a good idea to let the discussion due down before doing the move - I think that last comment on the Montreal move came in only a few minutes before you did the move! As discussed in the Talk: page, in almost all cases there's no harm at all in a minor delay. Noel 16:03, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, you gratuitously changed the format i) without discussing it, and ii) to be different from that specified in the instructions at the top of the page. I really don't like all the extra headers (I know the buy you automatic subect attribution in the log, but the look ugly as all getout), so I propose to revert that. Noel 16:11, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I replied to your Talk: points over there. As to the other points: Thanks for having good thoughts about my point about disambigs - yes, I know it's not policy (yet :-), and it will obviously take a while for me to research past discussions, etc, and life of course will go on while I do that. On delay, I don't think I have anything I can usefully add to what I already said on the Talk: page, which is that there's almost always absolutely no harm in waiting a bit, and someone might have a bright idea (e.g. the comments about accents, which were still flying just as you did the move). I'm cautious on RfD (where I do most of the admin grup), and it seems to be fine. If you disklike the new format too, I will definitely revert it (and take care of moving the Montreal discussion, etc, all in one fell swoop) - and grateful thanks! :-) Actually, RfD seems to have roughly the same level of traffic as RM. Noel 16:43, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, the single headers are definitely an improvement, to the point where it doesn't cause me to grind my teeth! :-) Honestly, I can't see why you think date headers are more appropriate for RfD, but whatever. I do prefer the dates, probably mostly because I'm so used to RfD, but also because it allows me to quickly scan down, and, without having to grub around the fine print in the entries, see how old they are. Plus to which I just find the bolded titles overstated - I like the understated nature of RfD listings. And they also take a lot less space, too. It's just going to be wierd, going back and forth (as I mentioned, I do most of the lifting on RfD). Maybe the answer is to go back to just RfD, and let you all handle RM.... Noel 21:22, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"like" is way too strong a word to use for my attitude to the new headers! I merely said they were an improvement over the previous suggestion, which I really despised! I still prefer the RfD style. And, no, it's not too difficult to follow - we have strict formatting rules (always a blank line beween items, no blank lines between comments on an item) which make it easy to keep straight. Check out this for a recent good example. Some go through quickly only because they correspond to a Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#Redirects case, and don't require discussion, just an admin. As to Montreal, now perhaps you understand why I prefer to be cautious and slow! :-) Noel 15:39, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia

When you and User:Neutrality did the Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, you all forgot to remove the Template:Move from it's talk page. C'mon, people, please don't make such elementary errors; I really don't have the time to double-check everyone else's work for errors (I stumbled across this by accident). Also, what happened to the edit history? I don't see it in the Talk: namespace, and the pages weren't swapped. Noel 19:51, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good point about you not having time to check either! :-) Sorry, I was cranky about recently having had to fix a whole bunch of things people had broken, at least one of which was unfixable (we lost a huge chunk of edit history for a major article, sigh). Noel 13:58, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It was some Greek university. I decided not to bother the developers with it - they have so much else on their minds that it didn't seem worth diverting them. We made a note of the name of the users on the article's Talk: page (it was only one or two people).

Also, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave it to you all to take care of WP:RM; I'm too busy, and I'm just not going to have the time. Good luck with it! Noel (talk) 17:52, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Gold Star

That is really kind of you Aloan, I shall display it on my user page when the debacle is over. Giano 22:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, ALoan. An ex-Soviet honour will do me fine, as some Wikipedians including Giano already think of me as based somewhere near Stalingrad. The login function is totally out right now, at least from here in the permafrost: this is Bishonen speaking.--213.238.211.112 22:52, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Breastfeeding and DanP

You've spent a lot of time at the breastfeeding (talk) article discussing circumcision with DanP. Thanks for your contributions both in that debate and on the article itself - I think it is now acceptable to all parties and is deserving of the FA status you helped it achieve.

Having seen numerous other edits by you (nice work on Blackadder so far!) I can see that you're a very valuable wikipedian. Great work.

/end sycophantic text

violet/riga (t) 22:47, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] My nomination

Cheers for letting me know about the nomination acceptance - I hadn't realised - and thanks for support. violet/riga (t) 15:10, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Cheers

Thanks for the "... shiny" joke on Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates

[edit] Hieroglyphics on Pharaoh

I really can't take credit for the hieroglyphics: I noticed that a contributor had done this over on http://de.wikipedia.org/pharao & just copied what she/he had done. Now I just have to figure out how to make it work for other words. -- llywrch 19:00, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] John Vanbrugh: yikes!

ALoan, help, what on earth happened to the headlines, do you see it too? On my screen, the automatic TOC figures have suddenly appeared in the headlines themselves, as for instance "3.2.1.1 Cibber's Love's Last Shift". The figures don't show up in the edit field, and also not if I view the current page through the History, but if I go to John Vanbrugh from somewhere else, they do. Looking like a total train wreck when they're deeply nested like they are at the plays. Is it just me (Mozilla for mac)?--Bishonen 00:55, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You see that horror all the time and yet you nominated it for FA...? Anyway, no, I hadn't changed the prefs and reloading didn't help, but today the numbers are gone nevertheless. Glad not to have to look at them, but what a weird option that is. Could anybody want to be told "you are now entering the first subsubsubsection of the first subsubsection of the second subsection of the third section" every time they move to a new paragraph? That would make the text seem cumbersome and boring (=too long). I would have tried to come up with a flatter chapter hierarchy if I'd realized some people see numbered headings. But, well, I suppose it doesn't bother people who're used to it. Thanks for replying, ALoan.--Bishonen 10:27, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Baroque#"Baroque"

Nice rewrite of my paragraph on the modern use of the term. It still says what I said, but it is now presented much more cleanly. Thanks, Leonard G. 03:21, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I changed the hidden link for Byzantine from Byzantium to Byzantine Empire, which had no "Byzantine" (the word) section, which I added, then put as an example of Byzantine complexity Taxation in the United States, whose intro seemed far to simple to serve as an example, so ... well let's just say that taxation overview now reveals some of that Byzantine complexity.

I had not noticed your edit of the empire article section - when I went back to tweek it it read so smoothly that I just thought that I had written it rather well ;-). Do you have other areas that you specialize or are interested in?. My primary contributions are mostly technical in nature and nice edits such as yours are always welcome, as my interest and knowlege often exceed my writing capability (which has greatly improved during my work on WP). Best wishes, Leonard G. 18:24, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Template:CurrentCOTW

Are we no longer including a notice on the article page that this a collaboration of the week? It seems it was used last week, and I see no note of this on the WP:COTW pages. Lexor|Talk 12:51, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wow

Wow! You really like our stuff that much. Thank you very much, ALoan, I was quite floored by your compliment. It's got to be about the nicest thing I ever heard.--Bishonen 20:51, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ship class vs lead ship

What were you attempting to do? I can't make sense of of what I'm seeing on my watchlist. Stan 22:17, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks. It would sure be nice to be able to add a comment for page moves... Stan 14:08, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Vanbrugh portrait placement

Hi, ALoan, did you happen to notice Wetman's change to the top of the JV article? What do you think? There was certainly a problem there that wanted addressing, but any solution seems to bring other problems instead. Please see my message on Wetman's talk page: I don't suppose there's any way of getting all or even most of the features I ask for? Well, no, I thought not.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (Talk)]] 18:12, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] UKCOTW

Don't we need to wait until 6pm to decide whether Religion in the United Kingdom or Monmouth Rebellion becomes WP:UKCOTW (24 hour voting extension, given both were tied at 4 votes at 6pm yesterday)? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:51, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh..er.. I'm not sure actually. On Talk:UKCOTW it said we were using the "Golden goal" system which I assume means the first one to take the lead wins, but I'm not sure if that's how its been done before... Joe D (t) 11:55, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Culture of Greece

Culture of Greece is this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article.

[edit] COTW

You might be right, but with full user talk pages, putting it at the end will add a lot to the time required. Nice to see the national parks article so well received on WP:FAC, by the way. Filiocht 13:44, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I've done another 20 all at the bottom and added the header manually. You're right, just a little more time needed. It would be good to add the header to the template. Filiocht 13:54, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)
My solution, such as it was, was to type the header once, and then copy it and the template before saving. Then I just pasted the lot on each new talk page. Filiocht 14:14, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Looks like you finished the list before I got your message? Filiocht 15:43, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Or leave it until the next winner? Filiocht 16:27, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'm just about to shut down my PC for the day, so no more help from me, I fear. Filiocht 16:32, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Well, the article seems to be gathering some interest, at least. Filiocht 10:06, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Culture of Greece

Thanks for the heads up on Culture of Greece. Looking at the damp squib that last week's UKCOTW turned into, would it be worth doing something similar for people there too? -- Graham ☺ | Talk 18:56, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] A large request

If your able to (my browser / bandwidth does not permit) it would be great if you chopped up History of Jews in the United States (pre-20th century), or directed it to somebody who can / wants to. Just figured I'd remind you, since the other article is off Wikipedia:Collaboration_of_the_week now, and you showed some interest. Cheers, Sam [Spade] 23:26, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WP:FAC

Hi, I just wanted to say that I certainly value your contributions and I hope I am not getting under your skin. I simply have high standards about what should be a featured article. I think high standards for FA's will be the single most important thing to really making this project great. Part of that is making sure all important statements are attributed to another primary source. Anyway, thanks again for your good work. - Taxman 01:49, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WP:FAC--Page

Ah, I see. Thanks for the note. All's well that ends well, I guess. Niteowlneils 00:52, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attila Jozsef on RfD

I'm really tempted to move this one over to WP:RM, but the lister has used such idiosycratic formatting in his comments that I don't know how to make the entry look right on that page. You want to take a crack at it? Noel (talk) 03:10, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] VfD Old

I don't know anything about SimonP's being asked to stop doing the clearing of VfD/Old, but there were some concerns that I was tangentially a part of. In some cases, usually schools, SimonP was deciding that the consensus wasn't sufficient for a deletion, was removing the VfD header, and restoring the article to a clean space, taking it off the VfD/Old queue. In more than one of those, users had serious questions about the votes that he was counting as "keeps." This reached a critical stage with a number of people going through his previous decisions. I do not know about any requests for him to stop, as I said, but the concerns raised by other users and admins were certainly real. Geogre 02:13, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Excuse for for butting in on someone else's discussion, but I wondered why that page was in such a bad state yesterday. I hope my mass clearout didn't go unnoticed. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 01:55, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Culture of the United Kingdom

You voted for Culture of the United Kingdom, this week's UK Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 01:55, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] COTW

Glad to be of help. I'll try to remember about the header. Filiocht 12:57, Nov 15, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attila Jozsef again

Hi, I need to decide what to do about this. This guy's request didn't get much support, and most people were against it, but that was before the requestor came up with a long rationale about why it was the right thing. Do you think WP:RM could provide any additional insight on whether this is the right thing? Technically it is a move, so in some sense WP:RM is the right place for it anyway. Noel (talk) 23:38, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I was leaning in the exact same way - since he's unknown, there's no "common" English usage, so with accents would be OK. I would do the move, except that the people who did weigh at in the start said "no", and I'm reluctant to blow them off. Sigh, guess I'll take it up on Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (use English), and see if I can get a policy worked out. Noel (talk) 11:20, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've done my spiel there. If you would leave an opinion, I'd be grateful. Thanks! Noel (talk) 11:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Palladian architecture

Hi, Aloan thanks for your vote and copyedit. This on Featured page was a bit os a last minute, spur of the moment decision - where the two images of Stourhead are side by side, do you think one of them needs to go - probably the one that's bent (clearly from a curved book, I mean), when I take it out the text goes funny; whatever it doesn't look too good side by side, and both are not really necessary, just seemed a shame at the time to leave one out! Thank Giano 12:50, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Its OK thanks - I think I've fixed it, but making the images smaller, the flaw in the one is less obvious. See what you think. side by side the flaw was very obvious this way, I think, less so 213.122.21.167 16:56, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)


[edit] House of Lords

Nice to talk about something other than architecture, but would you agree that to the British people, the H of L is now no longer the highest court to which they can in desperation go. (This has nothing to do with me going fox-hunting tomorrow!) Giano 14:47, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but I'm currently representing a client in Strassbog against the British Government! More to the point, and of far more interest right now, trying to sort vandalism on my user page, picture of Adolf just appeared, and won't go, think its because I voted yes to swastika any ideas? Giano 20:01, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Come on don't take offence! Giano 20:06, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No inclination at all. Sorry. I come home to sink a bottle of red wine and switch off from that, and play silly buggers on this (planning an National Heritage, is actually is my field - pardon the pun, hence the interest in architecture). But that silly article on the House of Lords does not mention Europe once, now what does that say to you? Giano 20:17, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK we won't go round in circles, I'll be bold at a later date. Now how can I get Uncle Adolf off my user page, its your medal by the way he's screwed up Giano 20:47, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] COTW

Thanks for your comments. I'll be mindful of the exact time in future and will make sure to leave an edit note. AndyL 16:27, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Victorian era

You voted for Victorian era, this week's UK Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 02:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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