User talk:Davidkinnen

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[edit] Welcome!

Hello Davidkinnen, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! -Poli (talk • contribs) 14:22, 2005 July 25 (UTC)

[edit] President Kennedy School

I was wondering why you changed the alterations made on the 1/5/2006? They were accurate. As an employee of President Kennedy school and Community College I am slightly baffled to wy you reverted the text. If you could explain this underneath i would be much greatful. Thankyou.

Such a comment that was reverted was not appropriate for the type of article that was posted, this is an encyclopedia and as such each article has a specific focus and should be clearly referenced. I created the article and wish it to be factual accurate, as far as I aware that line was not factual accurate. Davidkinnen 19:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should go and ask the person in question, I think you will find he would agree with the statement, and find it humourous also.

[edit] WP:RM

I have made some format change to your entry on WP:RM. Please read the guidelines on WP:RM

to make sure that all the steps needed for a requested move have been completed. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:52, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Cleanup

Why did you put Dark Jedi up for cleanup? Please reply on its Talk: page. --Maru 21:31, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] CSYS

Thanks for minor cleanup on CSYS; I see that you pointed directly to the relevant Higher page instead of 'Higher Grade' which then redirected itself; I can see the reason for this, as it's probably less error-prone and more logical (or is it...?!)

Wasn't sure about that "secondary educational" vs. "secondary education" when I wrote it. Although I went for the former, on reflection I think your version is better (it's hard to decide when you've spent a while writing something; sometimes it becomes clearer when you take a step back). --Fourohfour 13:33, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Fellow gay Christian returns greetings

Hey, David. I'd have responded earlier, but I couldn't figure out how to find your User-talk.

Cheers for the hello. I am a qualified RE teacher myself, but the classroom just didn't suit me and I quit with stress. Freelancing as a writer now, and might go into a local primary school in the Fall to do workshops on either RE or film.

Good job on the RE article. --Dave Rattigan

[edit] Advocates, etc.

Just a short note to thank you for your message and to compliment you on the reformed Faculty of Advocates page and the amended Advocate page. You are correct to remove the merge request. --Lucifer(sc) 15:09, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Plaitiff

Reverted your changes to this article. My understanding is that the term defender is used also in civil cases in Scotland and is in fact less common with criminal cases (where "accused" is typical). When there is an appeal, a petition or an application then the person opposing it is a "respondent". This is true of criminal cases. The terms for someone seeking an appeal vary, but include "appellant", "suspender", "noter", "advocater" and "reclaimer" depending on the specific procedure. Note that someone can be both an appellant and pursuer, or indeed respondent and pursuer, depending on how the previous stages of the case have played out.

Hope this helps.

Lucifer(sc) 16:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


Further to the above and your comment to me I agree with what you say, but my perception of how your changes read to the old Palitiff article was that it appered to imply that the term defender was not used in civil contexts.

Lucifer(sc) 15:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lord President/Lord Justice General

David, I'm afraid I've had to revert your change to the Order of Precedence for Scotland, in which you had replaced reference to the Lord Justice General with one to the Lord President. We had discussion earlier in the year as to whether LP or LJG should be the main title, but when it comes to precedence it is his role as Lord Justice General that gives him his place in the pecking order, even if in modern times the role of Lord President is more important. If you check any reference giving the Order of Precedence, you will find that the LJG rather than the LP is listed.--George Burgess 08:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

  • A month ago you kindly inserted an image of the trial judges on the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial page. Could you manage to do the same for the five appeal court Judges, headed by Lord Cullen, Lord Justice General to accompany the new appeal section?Phase1 15:57, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Crown Office/ Procurator Fiscal

You've created a link to the Procurator Fiscal on the Crown Office page. At the moment this leads straight back to the same page. Are you intending to separate out the PF material again? There's now sufficient material to justify that.

Created Procurator Fiscal article Davidkinnen 20:26, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bankruptcy cleanup

An Award
Am most pleased to award this Barnstar recognizing your excellent work reorganizing the geographically-biased, and too-lengthy, main Bankruptcy article

Flawiki 11:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Education in Britain

Thanks for your message David- You're right that I neglected education in Scotland in the new article I wrote. In my defence, I mainly did so because Scotland has had a sensible, uncomplicated policy of having all comprehensive schools. Also, I didn't think there were many operational differences between comps north and south of the border. My experience of Scottish Education stopped when I was nine, so perhaps I shouldn't have extrapolated so much (particularly in the wake of devolution).

I did put in something about schooling in NI, although I did so at the bottom of the article on the Tripartite System, which now you mention it may not be the best place for it. The main article on education in NI has a good coverage of the basic points, and the only major thing left out seems to be the exams.

In any case, it's very good of you to put in information from the regions- that was one thing I found very hard to find in the course of my research. Thanks for offering to sort it out. --Evil Capitalist 14:31, 2 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Comprehensive school

[edit] Comprehensive system

Whilst I appreciate - and welcome - the additional detail I am not happy about the tone and approach of recent edits. References in favour of comprehensive education have been removed and replaced with dubious party political references. For example you have deleted the reference to the fact (please note - fact) that Margaret Thatcher during her time as education secretary continued the policy of the previous Labour government on comprehensive schools. In fact most of the changeover from the tripartite system to the comprehensive system happened in the period 1968-75, mostly under a Conservative administration.

The material on the merits of the system is now biased because you have deleted the main arguments in favour which were:

"Supporters of the comprehensive system argue that it is unacceptable on both moral and practical grounds to select children on the basis of their ability. They also argue that comprehensive schools in the UK have allowed millions of children to gain access to further and higher education, and that the previous selective system relegated children who failed the eleven plus examination to a second class and inferior education."

Additionally the current article makes a whole series of evidence free value judgements about comprehensive education – such as:

“There is a widespread perception, shared by many of the system's advocates, that the comprehensive system has not been the success hoped for.”

“Academic performance is usually well below selective schools. This is unsurprising, since selective schools will have a natural advantage over comprehensives. However, it can be argued that the difference cannot be explained by differences in students alone.”

Who argues this? Where is the evidence for this assertion?

“In spite of the intentions of a ‘grammar school education for all’, many comprehensive schools lack resources and good teachers.”

Whose intention was it to provide a 'grammar school for all'? What evidence exists that the lack of resources and teachers is worse in comprehensives schools? Supporters would argue that teaching in a grammar school is easier than teaching in a comprehensive and that grammar school teachers would not be able to cope in the comprehensive environment.

These are not isolated examples and I am considering a wholesale rewrite of both these pages. But I feel I ought to seek comment from the authors – a courtesy not extended to me as the original author – before I do so.

Shropshire Lad

[edit] And further

I've now looked at some of the other contributions made by Evil Capitalist. I'm inclined to modify my condemnation because this is someone who has clearly put a lot of research into the contributions. But the entire tone reeks of political bias. Some mention of party politics is inevitable in this debate, but the entries paint a polarised picture that is at odds with the facts. One of the main reasons for the demise of the tripartite system was its unpopularity with middle class parents, who did not relish the prospect of their child going to secondary modern school. Authorities, such as Solihull, which have tried to ressurect the eleven plus have discovered this, and failed as a result. I've revised the Comprehensive school and Comprehensive System pages, and if I have time will systematically work my way through the others. But I resent having to do this. All Evil capitalist has to do is stick to factual reporting and the entries would be fine.

Shropshire Lad 08:11, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scottish Wikipedians' notice board

Since joining Wikipedia I have learnt an awful lot, and one of those things is the value of teamwork. It has become increasingly apparent to me that there are absolutely tons of people out there devoted to editing the Scottish articles, but we communicate only haphazardly. To begin to attempt to remedy this, I have initiated a notice board for all Scoto-fans!

You can find it using this shortcut: WP:SCOWNB (yes, I know that it ain't very "short", but our nordic neighbours had first call on WP:SWNB).

Please sign up and post notices, or at least Watch the page.--Mais oui! 15:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Divinity

If you're going to make large-scale changes to an article (especially removing a whole section) you should explain yourself. I have no idea why you made the changes that you did to Divinity, and think that you were wrong (especially your removal of the section explaining the academic discipline), so have reverted them. If you think that your edits were justified, could you say why at Talk:Divinity? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:19, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Ancient Scottish University

I notice that you never changed the Template:Infobox Ancient Scottish University and just want to point out that I don't mind that in any way. I suppose you could add the principal, while keeping the offices there now, but I leave that to you and the other Scots to discuss. Tupsharru 09:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Globalizing quorum

Is the concept of "quorum" really so different in other parts of the world? Could you give me and other editors a clue on its talk page about what to look up to find out about quorum from a global perspective? rspeer 16:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] United States Constitution

I don't know if there are a written guideline about where to put interwiki-links, but I've always found it quite obvious that they should be put in the "external links"-section, as they are external links. And also, there seem to be a consensus about it thought I've never seen interwiki-links anywhere else than in the "external links"-section.- David Björklund (talk) 22:38, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I've found a guideline in the matter, Wikipedia:Sister projects where they deal with the matter and there it says: "Link to sister projects should be placed under the See also or External links sections of the article.".- David Björklund (talk) 23:00, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page name for temperature articles

To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AIV vs VIP

Hi Davidkinnen. I noticed you added an entry to Vandalism in Progress. That page is only for very specific cases, as described by the page's guidelines. Your alert would be better placed on Administrator intervention against vandalism (WP:AIV), where it will usually be processed within minutes. Many alerts that are incorrectly placed on Vandalism in Progress are never dealt with, simply because they become old before an administrator gets to them. Thanks for your efforts. :) --lightdarkness (talk) 06:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] University of Aberdeen

Hi, thanks for your comment about this article. The reason for why I changed it to the new infobox is simply because I was following in the instructions on this project: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Colleges and Universities, which I guess is trying to promote a standard university infobox. There is a principal label in that infobox, and I changed the vice-chancellor label to that on this particular page, so that there's now a link right in the label directly to the principal article. Did you have any other Scotland-specific issues with the infobox or does that change work for you? Cpastern 10:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Independent school (United Kingdom)

Were in the WP:MOS does it recommend page names from (UK) to (United Kingdom)? I thought these things were covered by WP:NC. When a page name has been agreed upon with WP:RM is is customary to discuss further moves on the talk page before doing it! --Philip Baird Shearer 13:54, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

See WP:NC#Prefer spelled-out phrases to acronyms, the specific guideline: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) which says "Acronyms as disambiguators: As disambiguators, well-known acronyms such as "US" or "UK" are encouraged, to minimize typing. So, the preferred usage is Great Northern Railway (US)". So please consider reversing you change--Philip Baird Shearer 20:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Master of Arts

I was wondering if that page itself should be the dab. From what it looks like the other two meanings are very specific and not nearly as widely used as the first. Therefore shouldn't the graduate degree be on the main article with the other two being linked from Master of Arts (disambiguation)? gren グレン 04:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changing dated wikify and cleanup tags

Hello, Davidkinnen. If you want to change a cleanup tag to a wikify tag or vice versa, please replace the whole tag rather than modifying it. For example, on performance audit, you changed {{cleanup-date|November 2005}} to {{wikify-date|November 2005}}. The problem is that there is no category for articles marked for wikification in November 2005 because they were all completed and the category was deleted. You can just replace the whole tag with {{wikify}} and a robot will put it in the appropriate month. Thanks, Kjkolb 09:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion

Hello! I noticed that you have been a contributor to articles on Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion. You may be interested in checking out a new WikiProject - WikiProject Anglicanism. Please consider signing up and participating in this collaborative effort to improve and expand Anglican-related articles! Cheers! Fishhead64 22:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kent-Meridian High School

Per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kent-Meridian High School, I just thought you'd like to know that the consensus for deleting High School articles now appears to be swinging back in favor of deletion. So this may indicate the beginning of another campaign to remove most High School articles. Your opinion on the AfD article would be appreciated. It might be helpful if a notability standard for High Schools could be agreed upon. Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lord President

You've amended the article on the Lord President by altering "he" to "they", in an attempt to make the article gender neutral. I have always understood "they", used in this way, to be grammatically incorrect - a plural form where a singular is required. There is only ever one at a time (although some might say that in recent weeks we've almost had two!). While I am skeptical about the value of gender neutrality in relation to an office that has only ever been filled by males, if it is thought necessary then my preference would be to use "he or she" or repeat the reference to the Lord President - that is the approach used in drafting Acts of the Scottish Parliament--George Burgess 14:24, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scotland-law-stub

David, please see new proposal at:

Thanks. --Mais oui! 08:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] St Andrews University

If it's not too strange to ask a fellow Wikipedian, can I ask what St Andrews Uni is like? I'm an A2 student, perhaps thinking of going there. I notice from your user page that you once studied there. I don't know how long ago that was, but I'm assuming that as a teacher you're pretty well qualified to talk about the quality of teaching there etc.

How good would you say is the teaching there? How exactly is education organised? How good is the Sciences department there (I'm planning on studying Computer Science)? What sort of culture is it there, from some pictures I've seen it looks quite traditional, but as its Scotland I'm assuming it's a bit less uppity than Oxbridge? What's the town like? What's the countryside like? (I'm into hiking/hillwalking.)

If you can find the time to answer, thanks.--Uberisaac 18:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Ta for the advice. --Uberisaac 21:02, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Welcoming Congregation" restructuring

Please see my comment on reorganization of the "Welcoming Congregation" topic (replying there). Thanks! --Haruo 07:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

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