User talk:Donhalcon

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donhalcon is taking a long wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia when it goes back to being an encyclopedia, or when the fact that it isn't doesn't cause him so much Wikistress.


I will usually reply on this page to messages posted here.

I make it a practice to watchlist talk pages that I post to — if I have posted on your talk page feel free to reply there.

Contents

[edit] Hello; Cleanup notice

Hello. It's good to see you on Wikipedia.

I noticed your cleanup notice on Comparison of normal-order evaluation and applicative-order evaluation, which I had originally written. I understand that the material is somewhat informal in tone, and is more of a pedagogical derivation at times than an encyclopedia article, but I had it sitting around and there weren't any other articles yet. If you could describe a bit on the article's talk page about what features of the article could be improved, I'd appreciate it; you could also list the page on Wikipedia:Cleanup, to attract a bit of attention.

Have fun!

-- Creidieki 01:11, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Computer science

Thank you for your changes to computer science, you might have missed the discussion on the talk pagew, though. Your input would appreciated. Cheers, —Ruud 12:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

New posts on the talk page are always placed at the bottom. You can do this quickly by clicking on the + sign next to the edit this page button. Cheers, —Ruud 18:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
I read the talk discussion, and decided (since the page was already marked for cleanup, and little consensus was being formed) to weigh in by making some bold changes that incorporated some of the ideas being presented but didn't precisely match any one view (hence the "don't kill me" edit comment =) ). Didn't really feel like getting in the middle of Dzonatas and Powo, since they seemed to be more focused on flaming each other than on improving the article, and I thought my approach took a reasonable middle ground (CS-as-theory and CS-as-practice) so I thought I'd fire it off and see if anybody objected. I started off with the most basic definition I could and tried to mitigate Thompsci's concerns about exclusion of breadth... --bmills 18:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University of Athens Department of Informatics and Telecommunications

I've nominated the page you created for speedy deletion, not because I don't think the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications should be moved there, but because all you need to do to move a page is click the "move" tab at the top of the page, and say where you'd like to send it. However, a page cannot be moved to replace an already-existing article, so the current page can't be moved to where you'd like it to go until the runway is clear, so to speak. Once it's been deleted, the move can take place. Cheers, JDoorjam Talk 17:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Oops! My mistake. I'll do it right next time. Sorry! --bmills 15:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)--bmills 15:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem about renaming the page! You are right it is far too general.Zito ta xania

[edit] WikiProject Computer science

Hi! I just noticed that you've signed in to WikiProject Computer science, and wanted to welcome you to the project. I was wondering when you'd get around to joining, and was going to issue an explicit invitation if you didn't do it soon :-) I think you've been making some great contributions to CS articles so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to collaborating further with you in the future. --Allan McInnes (talk) 18:35, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Me too. —Ruud 18:42, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

You make some good points regarding the appropriateness of lists. However, one type of list that I think is useful is that exemplified by the List of mathematical topics. This list is autogenerated by User:Mathbot, and is essentially a flattened version of the mathematics category tree/graph. I think there's some value in being able to see every article categorized as mathematics (or CS as the case may be) in one place. It also makes tracking "recent changes" to math articles very straightforward. I've been meaning to find out if the Mathbot can be set up to also generate a list of all CS articles, but haven't got around to it yet. --Allan McInnes (talk) 22:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, lists would be a lot better if they could be maintained automatically from corresponding categories. But then isn't it really more of a high-quality category index than a list? --bmills 22:35, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Effectively, yeah. But AFAIK mediawiki doesn't have any way to generate such a category index, so we're reduced to lists. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:12, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Would you consider yourself, in general, 'antilistarian'? i.e. do you think there's ever a time when [[List of foo]] should exist? --moof 18:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't consider myself anythingarian. There are some instances when lists actually could be encyclopedic, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. I'm not opposed to lists in principle, I'm just opposed to trying to use articles to index other articles. Basically I see the Category namespace as Wikipedia's index, and the appropriate place for collections of articles. It's underused, even — people say there's no way to add information to category entries, but that's not true, because you can always put a stylized list of entries in the category's text. Yet, somehow, people seem to think that putting lists of related articles in the article namespace is appropriate in a lot of cases where it isn't. —donhalcon╤ 18:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IP range 192.87.165

I didn't block those IP addresses earlier because at the time it looked to me that all of those IPs had stopped hours before, the most recent edit that I noticed was about 10 hours previous to when I removed everything. Two of those IP addresses had not even recieved warnings for their actions. I made the call then, and if it was the wrong one, I apologize, but there was nothing that indicated to me that an immediate block was necessary. Mo0[talk] 00:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rochkind web log links

Why were my links to Marc Rochkind's web log deleted from the SCCS article? The note says they are "vanity links", but the log entry discusses Marc's recollections of creating SCCS. I think they are relevant to this article and I would like to see them included. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Seitz (talk • contribs) .

Wikipedia is not a blog, and as such blogs shouldn't be included in the wikification of the main body of articles. If you feel that that particular blog will retain stable content that adds to understanding of the encyclopedic content of the article, feel free to add it to the External links section of the article. --bmills 05:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Want to delete sth?--> contest it

I don't agree with your reason of deletion of computer architecture form computer science: "contested content should be removed until consensus can be reached (see talk page))" There are much more contest for things like International Tibet Independence Movement. But these pages are still there and I do not bother to delete them. There is only a few things people have 'consensus' in this world. --Leo 01:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, you're free to disagree; however, on articles with highly debated content (including computer science), it's generally best to discuss changes before making them, especially when several other people have already expressed their objections by reverting an edit. As a reader, I would prefer that some possibly-true information be omitted, rather than having possibly-false information exist in an article; it's much easier for a reader to learn more by researching on their own than for them to have to look up every uncited claim because some may be wrong.
From WP:CITE: "Disputed edits can be removed immediately, removed and placed on the talk page for discussion, or where the edit is harmless but you dispute it and feel a citation is appropriate, you can place {{citation needed}} after the relevant passage." I chose to remove it immediately, and brought up the issue on the talk page. --bmills 01:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists, cont'd.

Main article: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of basic computer science topics

Lists are almost never encyclopedic, and categories are nice. --bmills 02:25, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Not really interested in this, but these are some truly horrible arguments for deletion. My set of encyclopedias has no categories as far as I know. It does have an entire book that's just an Index.--T. Anthony 09:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and as such uses links instead of list of articles. Think of the category namespace as Wikipedia's "index" volume. --bmills 16:35, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Great, an index with no capacity for alternative names or annotations. Kappa 08:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
We have redirects for alternative names, and an encyclopedia index generally doesn't have annotations beyond basic categorization. --bmills 16:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
We don't put redirects in categories, and when I look at Britannica's index [1], it seems pretty nicely annotated to me. Kappa 16:42, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
If you're searching by category, redirects are unnecessary (the redirect target should be there anyway); if you're searching by name, redirects are automatic (and categories are more or less unnecessary — all you need are disambig tags). The annotations in the Britannica index are precisely those two forms: redirects to other articles, and disambiguation tags — both of which are already present in Wikipedia without some difficult-to-maintain list. --bmills 17:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
You seem to be assuming that users know all names/spellings for the target, so they will recognize the one we happened to choose. Also you seem to be suggesting that we should add disambig tags to every article, whether they need them or not, which is a radical change in policy. Futhermore lists allow different annoation depending on the context, while disambiguated article titles are invariable. Kappa 17:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

What I'm assuming is that users are capable of using Wikipedia's search features and/or Google (which has spelling-correction built-in). You'll note that the Britannica index doesn't contain misspellings, though it does contain rough categories for each entry -- which Wikipedia already has, in the form of the category system. --bmills 18:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

That still doesn't answer the question of what to do about alternative correct names, like "Remembrance of Things Past" and "À la recherche du temps perdu". The point of annotating an index is to tell users something they don't necessarily already know, a category can tell you that everything in it is a French novel, but you knew that already, what you want to know is probably who wrote it and when - and a convenient index like List_of_books_by_title will give you that. Kappa 02:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Alternative correct names are already handled using redirects. For example, a user entering "À la recherche du temps perdu" into the search box and hitting "Go" will be redirected to In Search of Lost Time, from which he or she may easily ascertain the author and date of writing. The point of an annotated index is arguably to warn the user away from a lengthy lookup of an article that doesn't match what he or she is looking for; however, search results already contain edit summaries.
Consider what the typical user is looking for:
  • Information on a specific topic, such as "À la recherche du temps perdu", handled by redirects.
  • Information on a general topic, such as French novels, handled by categories and general articles (like French literature).
Also, is it possible to add redirects to categories? I'm not entirely sure what the technical limitations are on that, but it seems useful (so that, for example, one could have a category of French novels by French name).
—bmills 02:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
With your system a user who doesn't know the exact name but would recognize if they saw it is out of luck. Users looking for particular items of a class would much rather be given some clue as to what distinguishes one from another (e.g. date, author) than simply handed an inscrutable list of article titles, randomly disambiguated. If I could chose between a video store which gave me a film list including the title, year, genre, actors, and director, and a store which just gave me a plain list of titles, I know which one I would go back to.
I think it's possible to add categories to redirects but AFAIK no-one does it - it's a bit of a kludge because the categories would all have to be on the first line with the redirect statement. Kappa 03:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, let me add some clarification. I'm not opposed to lists that add some significant additional content as a navigational aid; in my experience almost none of the Wikipedia articles entitled "List of ..." fit that description — more often than not they're just enumerations. There are appropriate locations for annotated lists, including the Category namespace and the Wikipedia namespace; it may even be appropriate to include reasonably-sized lists as part of articles to which they pertain. However, isolated lists do not belong in the article namespace, as they are not encyclopedic articles.
As far as ease of navigation is concerned, a reader of a category ought to be able to either select their desired article or select an appropriate subcategory. If this is not the case, then the category system needs to be made more precise. For example, Category:American novels currently lists A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court directly, rather than having a useful subcategory — say, Category:Mark Twain novels. This is not a failing of the principle of categorization, but rather one of its current implementation — we spend so much time maintaining decentralized lists that the centralized category system suffers. Ideally, categories and lists should work together rather than competing for time — see my previous discussion with Allan above.
Heirarchical categories have the capacity to be much more useful than you seem to believe. To use your own video-store analogy, when is the last time you went to a video store that gave you a list of films containing title, year, genre, actors, and director? Last time I went to a video store, they had the videos categorized by genre, and within each genre they were alphebetized by title. To get information on year, actors, and director, I had to pick a box up off the shelf and read it. Wikipedia is the same way: articles are categorized by "genre" and alphebetized by title within a category; to find more information, you need only open the article.
—bmills 04:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Handle change: bmills --> donhalcon

To avoid confusing people (in the long run), I've started signing my posts with my username rather than my (otherwise preferred) handle. Same me, different signature. —donhalcontalk 06:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

If you prefer bmills can can request a name change at Wikipedia:Changing username. Can take a long time, though. —Ruud 16:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Nah, I'm content where I am, but thanks for the suggestion. —donhalcon〒 16:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Quicksort implementations deletion

Hi there. I'm the creator of quicksort implementations and I somehow overlooked the deletion. I just wanted you to know it's cool with me. My original goal was just to get the content out of the quicksort article, and well, it's still out. I'll just make sure I update the HTML comments at quicksort to point to its new home for interested contributors so they don't go ballooning the main article again. Deco 19:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I updated the comments that I found, though they'll need to be updated again once it comes out of transwiki over at WikiBooks. I've got quicksort watchlisted so hopefully we can keep it from exploding again. In the meantime, you might be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of hello world programs. —donhalcon╤ 20:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Editor war

Could you please be a little more specific about the tone tag? Even specific sections would help- is it the lists of pros and cons, the final paragraph, the intro- what? --maru (talk) contribs 17:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

It's mainly the list that needs work. I'll add comments to that page's talk. —donhalcon╤ 17:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comparisons

Hi, I think it would be better if you placed these articles on AfD. Prod is only for uncontroversial deletions, which these certainly aren't. You also may wish to write a one or two paragraph reason why these should be delted, as people are unlikely going to be convinced by a single sentence. Cheers, —Ruud 17:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, you should always give a reason when prodding and re-prodding is not allowed, See WP:PROD. —Ruud 17:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I did give reasons, in the form of clearly-readable cleanup tags. If someone wants to object, then they should actually object rather than reverting all the tags (including cleanup tags)! —donhalcon╤ 17:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That's how prod works. This REALLY is a matter for AfD. —Ruud 17:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Ruud's got this figured right. What you did by 'prodding' all those articles was, I believe, an act of vandalism. --OscarTheCattalk 17:59, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
By "all the tags", I meant all the cleanup tags, not all the prod tags. I have no problem with people removing prod tags if they object to the article being deleted, I'm just extremely annoyed that people were removing cleanup tags along with them even though the quality of those articles is quite poor. It was not an act of vandalism; I sincerely believed that at least some of those articles (esp. those with mostly anonymous edits) would not be contested, and in such cases prod is appropriate. I still believe that all the articles I tagged should be deleted — how is expressing that opinion through official channels even remotely vandalism? —donhalcon╤ 18:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)ly
I don't think what you did was vandalism, because you probably weren't aware of the rules. Also it would have been better if you added the cleanup tags and prod in two different edits, so I didn't have to rollback the cleanup tags together with the prod. Finally, remember that adding a cleanup tags doesn't excuse you from posting a message on the talk page explaining specifically what needs to be cleaned up. Cheers, —Ruud 18:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I try to use cleanup tags which are as specific as possible (you'll notice that not one that I added today is {{cleanup}}); I believe that most of the time they are self-explanatory. When they aren't, or when someone asks for clarification, I try to provide it. —donhalcon╤ 18:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
It might be a better idea to start a Wikipedia:Centralized discussion. This has a much higher chance of succeeding, because people nom might feel that potentially useful information might get deleted byh such a mass nomination. —Ruud 18:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That may be productive; I'll look into it. —donhalcon╤ 18:19, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Please remember Wikipedia:Proposed deletion policy: If anyone removes Template:Prod from an article for whatever reason, don't place it back. If the template was removed and replaced, the article will not be deleted. If you still believe the article needs to be deleted, list it on AfD. Thank you so much and I look forward to defending the Comparison of webmail providers article. --Cumbiagermen 20:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Right, I had only re-added them because I thought they were removed because they lacked talk-page explanations rather than because of some objection. I was unaware at the time that non-objection was a valid rationale for de-prodding, but am now aware of that fact and am complying fully with the policy. —donhalcon╤ 21:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Come back soon

I definitely don't agree with you on everything (though I have agreed on some things), but you and your contributions will be missed. Have a nice break, but come back soon. --Karnesky 04:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind sentiment; I've just been experiencing a lot of wikistress lately and need to reclaim some of my free time for less stressful things. —donhalcon╤ 06:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll second Karnesky's comments. Only just realized that you were gone (after wondering why I hadn't seen your name show up in the edits on my watchlist for a while). Come back soon! --Allan McInnes (talk) 04:42, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject C++

The WikiProject C++ aims to increase the quality of C++-related articles on Wikipedia, and has discovered that you have participated in the editing of them! So don't hesitate, join us! --Deryck C. 15:36, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] yeah, you need a rest

Wikipedia is what it is because people are putting a lot of human knowledge on it, including specialist knowledge. While it's no doubt improved by the fact that people are going around doing nice tidying & indexing, I think anyone who would put a "how important is this?" tag on a page that *says* it's about a "holy war" needs to take a nice, long vacation & try to relax.

Fortunately, if you aren't sure how important holy wars are, you can click on the link that's on the page & it will explain it!

Holy wars (in computer science) reflect serious methodological questions and can divide faculties and researchers to the extent that their research is inaccessable to each other. However, it is the nature of computer science that we actually all take this and everything else in a fairly tongue-in-cheek manner..., thus the tone for the page. I think you will find a lot of computer science and AI researchers will find that page quite useful. And while I take your point that the general reader might not, if they take the time to look up the cross references a little, then maybe they will.--Jaibe 16:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DOM and deletion

wikipedia is a mutual effort and as such will always differ from a commercial encyclopedia, if you dislike that you don't have to use it. However constantly setting deletion into well writen articles, whose content can be inferred out of their headline, shows that you didn't understand a mutual free-spirited effort very well.

This regards for instance the DOM article, which i happened to came along. There are lots of other tags u can use if you want to want to let others know that they should revamp their articles.


regardsSlicky 16:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

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