User talk:GraemeMcRae

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Contents 1 Allow Myself to Introduce, my, umm 2 Test of ref_label and note_label templates 3 State Disambiguation Pages 4 Georgia on my mind 5 A Montana Tuv a Molehill 6 NJ & PA River Lists 7 Mt Whitney correction 8 Thanks 9 Amerindians 10 New Jersey rivers 11 Re:WVOG 12 re: over-hyperlinking 13 New York 14 double redirects done!! 15 Phoebe Snow 16 April Fools 17 {{details}} 18 XYZ Affair 19 Outpouring of warmth 20 References 21 Copyright 22 ref_label 23 References 24 Moore's Law 25 Disambig catagories 26 Categories for deletion 27 Thank You 28 SAC Nomination 29 Georgia (Wiki dispute) 30 Citation issues 31 Fairfax County 32 may refer to/ may mean 33 No References That I Know Of 34 Found One Place Using K5 35 Wallace Stevens Poll 36 Date links 37 Another LA-area Wikipedia meetup? 38 You introduction 39 Elephant and the Manual of Style 40 WikiProject Disambiguation Talk Request 41 Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess

[edit] Allow Myself to Introduce, my, umm

Hi, my name is Graeme McRae, and this is my User talk page. If you want to get my attention, please click here to leave me a new message. Remember to refrain from personal attacks, to be civil, and to assume good faith. Then watch the page; I'll reply right here. Thanks!
—GraemeMcRae 08:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a test of the eleventh reference.^[11]

[edit] Test of ref_label and note_label templates

I tried to fix the backlink, but that broke the forward link. (I reverted that change.) From this, I would say that {{ref num}} is incompatible with {{note}}. I would like to suggest eliminating {{ref num}} from this document, and change it to suggest using {{ref label|GraemeMcRae|314|^}} and {{note label|GraemeMcRae|314|^}} instead, as demonstrated here.^[314]

^[314]

[edit] State Disambiguation Pages

I like your use of the disamb template on the Illinois page! :-) Tedernst 13:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Tedernst. I went through all 50 states, and tried to use {{Otheruses1|the U.S. State}} to refer the readers to the Dab page, if one exists. When I have time, I plan to look at the 15 states that currently do not have a Dab page, and following the Wikipedia:Disambiguation guidelines, I'll make Dab pages if they're needed. --GraemeMcRae 14:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Georgia on my mind

While I'm at it, I would like to standardize all 50 states according to a naming convention that is acceptable to all. 49 of the 50 states have entries named identically to the state name. Georgia is the problem, because Georgia is the name of a country as well as of a state. The current solution for Georgia is to name the entry for the state Georgia (U.S. State), and use Georgia as the Dab page. I think the whole thing would be a lot neater and more organized if we move all the states to Statename (U.S. State), and make redirects from the simple names to the U.S. State names in every case but Georgia, where the redirect should go to either the Dab page or to the country. (If it goes to the country, then there will be a simple redirect notice at the top of the article, just as there is in many of the U.S. State articles.) --GraemeMcRae 14:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty new around here so have a hard time finding the policies I'm looking for. I researched article naming policies last week, however, for a different purpose (not US State names) and found that consistency with other articles was not one of the criteria for article naming. Having searches return the right result more often was seemingly much more important. So Georgia is simply going to be a special case, I'm afraid. Good luck with your efforts! Tedernst 15:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a test of the twelfth reference.^[12]

That's a good point, Tedernst. The most important thing is for searches to return useful results. My wild and crazy proposal does nothing to change the results that are returned for any search, so it doesn't run afoul of that primary criterion. There are secondary considerations, though, which are discussed at length in the Talk:Georgia page. One of the secondary considerations is that Wikipedia not be viewed by the growing non-U.S. user base as too U.S.-centric. As a general rule, across the board (not just for U.S. States), it makes sense to qualify names of places and things with the type of thing it is. Mississippi (U.S. State), and Mississippi (river) for example. And in cases where one use of the word predominates searches around the world and across a wide spectrum of users, it makes sense to redirect that one search to the most common result, in accordance with the first principle (that searches return useful results).
--GraemeMcRae 15:44, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe I don't understand how searching and redirects work. I thought that if I searched google for "Illinois" and there was a page at Wikipedia called "Illinois" I'd be much more likely to find that page ranked high. If the Wikipedia page is actually called "Illinois (U.S. State)", won't it be harder to find? Does the fact that the Illinois redirect page exists solve my perceived problem here? As for being U.S.-centric, this argument only applies for ambiguous names, doesn't it? Tedernst 17:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, Google. I was thinking about search results from the Wikipedia search bar. But when I google for "Georgia", it comes up with Georgia (country) first, then Georgia (U.S. state) second. This makes the google search results more valueable IMO, because the user can click the U.S. state of, say New York, directly from the Google search results without wondering which New York he'll get. As for the Wikipedia search bar, if a redirect has the exact state name, such as New York, then that's exactly where a search for New York will go, as one would expect.
--GraemeMcRae 17:54, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

And another reference to the eleventh reference. ^[11]

I'm in way over my head here so will respectfully bow out and check out the U.S. States project as your other commenter below suggests. Tedernst 20:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you on that, Tedernst! I think I'll join that project and see if I can pull in the same direction as the team.
--GraemeMcRae 20:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A Montana Tuv a Molehill

Your contribution to the Montana article was a good one, but would prefer you not appear to single someone out as you did in your edit summary. That article and a few others had undergone a few minor edit wars due to the insistence of a few that what are actually not normally recognized as Great Plains states, but rather Rocky Mountain states, still be recorded as the latter over the former. I tried to reword it to compromise and must have inadvertently left in and or added redundant wording as a simple oversight.--MONGO 18:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I also see you are a new user so I very much welcome you! Let me know if I can be of any help.--MONGO 18:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Mongo, I certainly meant no disrespect; quite the opposite. I singled you out in an effort to draw attention to a potential philosophical debate over how much "stuff" should appear in the italicized indented area above the first words of the article proper out of respect for possible reasoning I was unaware of. Before I did so, I checked Montana's Talk page to make sure there was no discussion there of any such debate. I think a more politic way I could have handled it (and I will do it this way in future) is to go ahead and make the edit with a comment that doesn't mention any particular person, and then put an entry in your Talk page explaining my thinking.
--GraemeMcRae 19:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

You are most welcome here and are obviously going to be a fine contributor. If you feel alienated by anyone or if you want to become more involved with a group, consider joining Wikipedia:Esperanza or simply ask me a question and I'll either have an answer or direct you to someone who does. Happy editing!.--MONGO 20:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

You may wish to check out a WikiProject Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states as that may have more info on naming conventions and the standards that apply to articles involving U.S. states.--MONGO 20:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

---

[edit] NJ & PA River Lists

Hello,

No grand scheme, just making the lists more complete.

I wasn't planning on doing more than that, but got "drawn" into editing a few disambiguation pages as well a bunch of river pages.

I wasn't planning on composing from scratch actual river pages, but I might put in some basic information for the many blank pages, then let others elaborate - I like the format you propose.

Thanks for your input  :-)

--Gjs238 03:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mt Whitney correction

  "Thanks for noticing how I mixed up 14,494 and  14,994.  Just  an  oversight
  as  I  was  quite tired when I did the edit.  By the way, since I am sort of
  new here, how do I write something without getting this box around my text?"

  Jer 16:03, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Jeremy

Hi, Jeremy. Welcome to Wikipedia. I'm pretty new here, too, and I gotta tell you, this is just great!. There's a real sense of community, because we all have a shared purpose: to make the thing better and better. If you look at "recent changes" you will see from the sheer number of changes that lots and lots of little fingers are working day and night to improve it. Your change was no exception, even though you made a little goof. If you hadn't gone in and made the change, the height would have stayed 500 feet too high. You changed it by three feet, which caused me (how? see next paragraph) to wonder why the meters and feet disagree with one another. If you look at the talk page, you'll see I goofed, too, reverted my own change, scratched my head, and then fixed it. It all started with your involvement, so that's a really good thing. Keep it up!

You might wonder how your change caused me to get involved. It's because I made a previous change to this page (having nothing to do with Mount Whitney), and so I started watching the page, mostly to see if someone would get annoyed at my change and revert it. I don't want to annoy people, as you can imagine. Since I'm watching the page, whenever it changes, my curiosity is piqued, and that's how I got involved in this. There's a ripple effect, too, because I went to the Mount Whitney page, and saw the elevation is wrong there, too, but in a different way. I went to its talk page just to see if there was a raging debate there over the height of this mountain, and if so, I would contribute on the talk page rather than making a change that would annoy people. It's a good thing, too, because there was a discussion there, and a request not to make changes to the elevation without first discussing them, so I respected that, and added my two cents to the talk page.

Regarding your question, if you begin your paragraph with a blank, then not
only does a box appear around it, but the font is monospace, which is  good
for examples of computer printout and the like.

--GraemeMcRae 16:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thank you for rolling your sleeves up on the Human sexual behavior article, I have that on my watch list for vandalism, but the more recent inclusion of the 'how to' flummoxed me on how to start improving it. Alf ^melmac 17:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Amerindians

I asked Al-Andalus the following question (his reply follows):

I notice you changed the term "Native Americans" to "Amerindians". Does this reflect a consensus? Are you planning to start a war with the bot who seems to be changing "Indian" to "Native American" across the board? --GraemeMcRae 02:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

No, I am not at war with the bot. My change of Native American to Amerindian is not as dramatic as you paint it. You mentioned how the bot is changing "Indians" to "Native Americans", and I agree with this because it disambiguates "Indians".

Having said that, when I replaced "Native Americans", I did not replace it with "Indians". I replaced it with "Amerindians", which like “Native Americans”, has no ambiguity in whom it is referring to.

Now, the reason I chose "Amerindians" over "Native Americans" - both of which are good, unambiguous terms, unlike Indians - was for the benefit of the American reader. The reader might think "Native American" was referring to Amerindians native to America (i.e. USA), rather than Amerindians native to the Americas in general. Although "Native Americans" applies to everyone native to the American continent, the use of "Amerindian" diminishes the possibility of people inadvertently assuming "Native American" is referring to those of the USA only. Al-Andalus 07:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC).

[edit] New Jersey rivers

Hi graeme - just wanted to let you know that I've slightly modified the messages you put on Talk:List of New Jersey rivers and talk:Albertson Brook. if you use a live stub template on patges like that, they end up in the stub category with all the "real" geography stubs, so I've "neutered" them. Oh, and thanks to all the good work on NJ rivers, it's possible there may soon be a separate NewJersey-geo-stub (I'll be proposing it in the next series of geo-stub splits at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals in a few days time). Grutness...wha? 09:59, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

That's fine, Grutness, I didn't think about that problem when I wrote that. Maybe I should have "nowiki-ed" the whole thing, and then we could copy and paste it from the "discussion" view rather than the "edit this page" view. I'm still learning this craft, as you can see. It's good that I have a whole lot of teachers such as yourself and the other editors in this community. --GraemeMcRae 15:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re:WVOG

Thanks of making me look like an idiot. --Boothy443 | comhrá 05:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re: over-hyperlinking

If you're going to do it, you have to do it to excess. Not merely six or seven words in the middle of a line but the better part of an entire paragraph.

I would suggest looking at some of the examples on the Talk page to see the density of links that others have found necessary to make their points. By the way, it's actually worse if not quite every word is hyperlinked - and even worse if some of the hyperlinks are rigged so they will always be red. Good luck. Rossami (talk) 03:12, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New York

Yes, yes, and yes. I had thought about leaving an apologetic note here about shortening your summary, but when I saw how little I had managed to take out, I thought that apology might be presumptuous. I would still like to trim it some, but, as you have indicated, its pretty close to the bone already. And yes, the New York History article certainly needs work; I'll see what I can do (and when).

So thanks for the summary— it was greatly needed, and thanks for the (implicit) promise to work on the NY History article.

— Mwanner | Talk 17:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] double redirects done!!

Congradulations, you finished them off! If I new how to give people barnstars i would give you one. Night--Rayc 04:29, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phoebe Snow

I agree with your suggestion, esp. creating separate articles about the singer and the album. Unfortunately I know too little about either one to help. There should also eventually be a separate article on the train line named after Phoebe, I can work on that. Regards, Sysin 10:51, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] April Fools

Hello Graeme, I think your April Fools template idea is pretty good. I did in fact make some comments that Wikipedia should try to work with April Fools instead of against it, but the idea is more important than the particular implementation. With that said I think the verbiage you left on my talk page is pretty good. Have you started to discuss it with others? Perhaps Wikiproject April Fools is in order (I would join that in a heart beat). I had the idea that a set of standard joke articles could be maintained and brought into the Wikipedia on April first, taken out on the second. I definitely think that working with the April Fools jokes is the way to go; I was on the receiving end of an admin's frustration at the April Foolers when I was a brand new contributor here (over the M1126A Fryker article (which I maintain is tasteful, well done, and high quality - perfect attributes for a Wikipedia April Fool's joke)). One question: are you interested in April Fooling out the Wikipedia when the time is right or are you just planning ahead and trying to relieve some of the stress when the next April Fools comes around? Either way I think it would be a step in the right direction. Take care, Triddle 16:48, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

In the spirit of boldness, I moved your reply back to your own Talk page, because I like to keep conversations together. I hope that's OK with you.--GraemeMcRae^talk 17:35, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{details}}

Dear MarSch, I made a change to the "details" template that provided more flexibility in wording to an editor. I understand that details is used for the summary format, and I read the whole rationale for the format, which is like news format, in which the reader gets to choose how much detail they want to read. Rather than attempting to defeat or circumvent the spirit of the format, my change was intended to make the format more accessible to editors. In particular, my change wasn't intended to allow editors to move the "details" template to parts of the article other than immediately following the heading.

Consider the section on state symbols in the Washington article. That section once said simply, see Washington state symbols, and had no content whatever. This wasn't particularly helpful to the reader, because it didn't give even enough information for the reader to decide if he was interested in knowing more. So I added a single sentence to the section giving some examples, and I wanted to put a "details" template at the top. This is how it looked:

State symbols For more details on more details on this topic, see Washington state symbols. The State song is "Washington, My Home", the State bird is the American Goldfinch, and the State fruit is the Apple.

This was OK, and I suppose I could have left it at that, but I wanted to stay in the spirit of "summary format" and yet provide better cues to the reader. That's why I boldly proposed a change to the template (by actually making a change to the template). Now the section looks like this:

State symbols For a complete list of state symbols, see Washington state symbols. The State song is "Washington, My Home", the State bird is the American Goldfinch, and the State fruit is the Apple.

Why am I going on about this instead of just taking your advice and using Template:For? Because the most important reason to use the Details template is not to generate text. I could just type the text myself. No, it's because if editors embrace the summary format and use Details just under every heading, then (1) the Wikipedia will contain a much richer source of "subject breakdown data", and (2) the Details template could be changed later to systematically provide an icon or other cues to the reader that would enrich the reader's experience of the encyclopedia -- something that changing the "For" template just couldn't do. In short, the change to Details was done to allow the Details template to be used more often by editors for exactly the purpose it was designed for.—GraemeMcRae^talk 16:31, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Graeme,

thank you for your explanation. I'm glad you like the idea of this template. However I feel that in proper usage it should become clear from the summary what is to be expected of a summarized article, together with that article's title. If the text of the template is variable, then I think it is less clear what is going on. Specifically on the washington article, one sentence paragraphs are not well liked in featured article candidates. The Washington state symbols article should probably be moved to list of Washington state symbols. The plural title is hinting at that too. I would be interested to hear more of your views on making this template more useful, specifically your point (2). BTW your talk link on your signature is not working.--MarSch 11:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

MarSch, for point 2, I was just thinking of some small icon like a file folder opening up -- nothing very clever, but then I'm not a very clever person. I think someone else might come up with a much better icon. The point is that if the templates were applied (nearly, because nothing's perfect) uniformly in all the articles, then a "sprucing up" of the templates would dramatically improve the look and feel of every article.—GraemeMcRae^talk 12:45, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Unfortunately a lot of people also insist on templates like this one to be plain text. See for example the {{disambig}} discussion.--MarSch 12:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] XYZ Affair

Thanks for correcting my error. :) freestylefrappe 05:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Outpouring of warmth

Recently, I wrote an 822-word discourse on the subject of efforts to improve the Flesch-Kincaid readability of a single sentence of an article. I write in a personal style — a lot of first- and second-person pronouns — but I stuck fairly closely to the subject at hand, raising what I thought were genuine issues: to improve the readability of an article, it's hard to avoid making it choppy and losing nuance. Yet, to leave it at a grade level of 17 or higher might disenfranchise a large fraction of our audience. After posting this story on the talk page of the article in question, I received the following heartwarming response from a Sysop:

Please stop wasting the time of other user's with your personal stories -- no matter how tantalizing they may be. No one cares. And you're wasting space.

—Posted with an edit comment of Stop complaining

Can you feel the love?—GraemeMcRae^talk 05:47, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

---

In fairness to the Sysop in question, I admit he was right. I was wrong to put such a wordy treatise on the talk page of this article, because the gist of it wasn't about the topic of the article, but rather about the process of improving an article, using this article as an example. My writing would have been more appropriate here in my User talk area, and to the extent that the subject of style is raised, my writing might have been also appropriate for the talk page of the appropriate article on style guidelines in the Wikipedia namespace. The way I took care of this particular transgression was to simply move the entire text off of Wikipedia and onto my own personal website.

Even though he was right, the Sysop could have gone about correcting me in a more friendly manner. The fact is that I'm still pretty new around here, and my judgment regarding what kind of writing is appropriate for each kind of page is, well, still in need of some refinement. As it turned out, this was a very positive learning experience for me. I learned two things. First, on the Talk page of an article, it's important to stick pretty closely to the subject of the article, and not so much on aspects of writing articles, tantalizing though they may be to me. Second, when addressing someone who seems unaware of proper Wikipedia protocol or decorum, assume they mean well but are a little confused about what is appropriate, and treat them with kindness.—GraemeMcRae^talk 20:56, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] References

314. ^{^} This is an example of an out-of-sequence numbered footnote 314. ^{^} This is an example of an out-of-sequence numbered footnote

[edit] Copyright

You wrote (on my talk page): DESiegel, I saw your explanation of copyright, and I understand that court decisions are not covered by copyright. However, the website http://www.justia.us/ asserts a copyright, so I wonder if it would be proper to copy, say, large sections of the Roe v. Wade decision. Would that violate Justia's copyright? Or are they simply wrong to assert a copyright to this text?—GraemeMcRaetalk 20:24, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

First of all IANAL. That said, my understandign is that no one can validly claim a valid copyright in Public Domain content, which includes US court decisions. (There was I belive an early court case where one publisher of SCOTUS decisions sued another claiming copyright infringment, and the suit was dismissed on the ground that there could be no copyright in them in the first place, so the question of copying was irrelevant). Anyone can compine PD content with original content, and claim a copyright over the combined work. Thus Justia's site as a whole can be copyrighted, the arrangemetn, highlighting, indexing, and commentary they add to decisions are protected. But the raw text of the decisions themselves are not protected by copyright.

Now given that there are no copyright issues, it might be argued whether copying "large sections of the Roe v. Wade decision" to wimipedia would be appropriate. in general large sections of original text are not appropriate, but should be linked to, or copied to wikisource. But that depends on the details of what you were going to copy and what page ypu were going to copy it to. DES ^(talk) 07:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you.—GraemeMcRae^talk 22:36, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ref_label

What are you trying to do to {{ref_label}}, and where did you document the behavior? (SEWilco 06:05, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

Gosh, I hope I didn't break it, I was very careful, and I know how important it is. I am supplying a default third parameter that allows a ^ symbol to be used at the bottom of the page to refer back to the reference. This fixes a problem with ref_num in which the backlink just didn't work at all. With ref_label and note_label, the forward link and backlink always work. However, before I made my change, a backlink of ^ didn't work. This was the subject of a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Footnotes as well. I documented it on Template talk:ref. —GraemeMcRae^talk 06:14, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that default only works the first time. Because unless there is something automagical about that default, all links after the first don't point at each other. So an ID is mandatory, and it would be better to remove the default so the required parameter will be visible to editors on Preview. (SEWilco 06:25, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

All such default links only point at the first ref_label/note_label. Better for {{{3}}} to be displayed to remind editors to define an ID. To see use of multiple links, look at Jew. (SEWilco 06:44, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

Now I understand what you mean. I am not advocating or encouraging the use of the "default" third parameter as a way of making multiple links to a single footnote. My changes to ref_label and note_label do not affect the usage in which all three parameters are specified. The documentation of the use of multiple identical references in the text is unchanged in {{ref}}.

The usage of ref_label and note_label in which the third parameter is allowed to default is very specific: When you want to have a single reference in the text, and a single note at the bottom of the page that link to each other, and it is desired for the note at the bottom of the page to have a ^ symbol as the refer-back character. This replaces the deprecated usage of ref_num, which never worked properly for this purpose (the backlink didn't work). Please refer to the footnotes, below, and their references in the text, above, for examples of this usage.—GraemeMcRae^talk 06:51, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I looked at Jew, and I'm happy to see that my changes to these templates didn't break this usage. For an example of the usage I'm trying to fix, please see footnote 4 of Wikipedia:Footnotes—GraemeMcRae^talk 06:56, 10 November 2005

That makes both the article and the templates fragile. The article breaks when someone else tries the same incantation to the same source, and any article breaks when one or two editors forget to define the 3rd parameter. The template's usage becomes more fragile, rather than producing an error at edit time. Can that arrow character be in an "id" so that character can be given to ref_label when that behavior is wanted? (SEWilco 07:03, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

I wish the arrow character could be used in an "id", but, alas, it causes an html syntax error. I will illustrate with an unlucky footnote 13. ^[13] —GraemeMcRae^talk 07:08, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

For an example of the first reference to the eleventh footnote, and the second reference to the same footnote, please see what I've done, in the references section, below.—GraemeMcRae^talk 07:02, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I made {{note_label}} display a caret (uparrow) when the 3rd parameter is "none" so the first ref_label can create that kind of uplink. Please revert your other changes. (SEWilco 07:50, 10 November 2005 (UTC))

Wow, that's groovy! I never knew there was an "if" statement. That's absolutely the best of both worlds. Thank you very much for taking the time to understand my objectives, and working to implement an ideal solution!—GraemeMcRae^talk 07:56, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually there is no "if" statement. It's a trick. Look at the code and see what a mess is needed because some people won't accept ^a as a backlink. (SEWilco 15:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC))

[edit] References

11. ^{^ a} This is a test of the eleventh reference.

12. ^{^} This is a test of the twelfth reference.

13. ^{^} This is an unlucky footnote.

[edit] Moore's Law

Please don't start an edit war over the fact that Moore's law is an urban legend. It is, and that's all there is to it. If you want to NPOV the repeatedly proved and well-documented FACT that Moore's law is false, then the least you could do is not support the POV that it's a true fact. If NPOV is a way of supporting common misconceptions against the truth, then NPOV is worthless. 24.200.176.92 09:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that edit wars are no good for anyone. It is certainly worth noting in the article that the "Law" is nothing more than an observation that has held up (with various caveats, which should be spelled out) in the past. Moore himself has been caught offguard by the popularity of this so-called law. This can all be explained in the article in a NPOV manner, and I see your point that without this side of it, the article is not as objective as it could be. I will discuss it further on the Moore's law talk page.—GraemeMcRae^talk 12:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig catagories

Hi. I notice you've been changing the categories of a large number of dab pages to things like 2LCdisambig. May I ask why you are doing that? Categories such as 2LCdisambig are contrary to the Manual of Style for dab pages Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#The_disambig_notice --RoySmith 04:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• Gosh, I hope I didn't foul things up. I'm just trying to be helpful. There is a notice at the top of Category:Disambiguation that says:

Important: This category is becoming very large. If appropriate, please try to move content into subcategories. Articles should not be listed in this category if they fit in a subcategory

I took heed, and noticed that quite a few two-letter combinations were already in existing subcategory Category:Lists of two-letter combinations. When I examined a few of them, I saw that their template was {{2LCdisambig}} rather than {{disambig}}. So I changed the rest of them to match these. I didn't read anything in the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#The_disambig_notice that goes against what I'm doing.—GraemeMcRae^talk 04:29, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I used template {{L2Cdisambig}}, not category L2Cdisambig, by the way. This was an existing template, that used an existing category, which is a subcategory of Category:Disambiguation. I read everything I could before I started doing this; I really hope I didn't miss anything.—GraemeMcRae^talk 04:32, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

P.P.S. I see that there is a list, Wikipedia:List of disambiguation types of templates that should be used as appropriate in disambiguation pages. I used only templates that are on that list.—GraemeMcRae^talk 04:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• Not to worry, I can see how this is all very confusing. I've removed the notice on Category:Disambiguation. Basicly what's going on is there is one editor who went off on his own and started creating dab categories willy-nilly. After extensive discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation by a large number of people involved in the disambiguation project (which, I hope you would like to join), it was decided that all these splinter cats were the wrong way to go, and we're still in the process of cleaning up the mess. I didn't realize that the notice you saw still existed. I can certainly understand how it would lead you in the direction you went. --RoySmith 04:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, my gosh. Sure, I'll join the project, and start working with you instead of at cross-purposes. At this point, just about every two-letter name has been changed to use the {{2LCdisambig}} template. While I changed them, I also moved the template to the bottom of the page, and did other minor cleanup, so not all was for naught. At this point, perhaps it would be appropriate to simply copy the text from the {{disambig}} template into the {{2LCdisambig}} template so they become functionally identical, and then set about changing the text of the 500 or so articles that use {{2LCdisambig}}.

The other "cleanup" that I did was to use the {{LND}} template for a number of disambiguation pages that have letters and numbers in them. The same fix may be appropriate for these.—GraemeMcRae^talk 04:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh! I have a good idea: add the category Category:Disambiguation pages in need of cleanup to the unapproved templates! That way, they will naturally show up in the category, and members of this project will find them and fix them.—GraemeMcRae^talk 05:04, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

On quick read, that sounds like it might be reasonable. My suggestion would be to bring up your idea on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation and see what the rest of the crowd thinks. If you want to officially sign up, all you need do is add your name to the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation. Glad to have you aboard! --RoySmith 05:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

There's no need to add them to the cleanup category - if we want to find these pesky new dab templates later we will just do a "Whatlinkshere" from the respective Template pages.--Commander Keane 05:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, Commander Keane, but should the contents of Template:Disambig be copied to the "pesky" templates, so they will render the same, and categorize the same?—GraemeMcRae^talk 05:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

The proposal at the Project seems ok , so I'll retract my first statement here. And of course replacing the template contents is a bad idea.--Commander Keane 07:32, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops! I replaced the template contents, but just of those two templates.—GraemeMcRae^talk 07:34, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categories for deletion

Please don't depopulate categories that have been nominated for deletion until consensus is achieved that they should be deleted. Depopulation before hand just creates more work for people when the category does not end up being deleted ... which does happen, believe me. Courtland 13:36, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi there. I just wanted to let you know that I've restored the 2LCdisambig template to its old wording, plus a TfD tag. Normally, I would have talked to you directly about this beforehand but (a) I felt some urgency in stopping depopulation of the tags and (b) Courtland has clearly already made the point that you should go through TfD without a response. Believe me: I'm not trying to piss you off—I've got enough enemies already—but I'd like to see this done right.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:55, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to reply to me on this page—I've got it watchlisted—so that this thread doesn't resemble one side of a phone conversation.

— DLJessup (talk) 15:18, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that consensus has been achieved, through extensive dialog on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) clearly states that the only template that can be used to assign a category is {{disambig}}, with specific exceptions. Depopulating the categories is a side-effect of changing disambiguation pages to use the correct templates.—GraemeMcRae^talk 16:44, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. I didn't read the previous thread until I had already performed the TfD, so I didn't know where your consensus was from. Once I found out that the consensus was from the WikiProject Disambiguation, I figured that the editors working on that project would simply provide a quick consensus for "Delete" on the TfD. Surprisingly, the TfD has flushed some lurkers out of the woodwork who have started questioning why the disambiguation allows a {{TLAdisambig}} template, but no {{2LCdisambig}} template, which is actually a good question. My gut feel is that there's no real need for the TLAdisambig either, but I'm hesitant to be any more impetuous than I already have been.

— DLJessup (talk) 23:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I've said this before elsewhere, but it bears repeating: WikiProjects are for implementing consensus and for fleshing out proposals prior to seeking consensus, not for achieving it. Disparaging someone by labeling them as a "lurker" because they are not part of a WikiProject that is in an interest area of theirs, even remotely, is not good form. Consensus is not the product of discussions among likeminded people, as most WikiProject groups are of likeminded people, but rather the contrary ... it emerges from discussions among people who represent all sectors of a problem area. Courtland 01:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Lurker is not a term of disparagement, or, at least, I don't use it as such. In many, many arenas online I have been a lurker, usually because I didn't feel that anything I would want to say hadn't already been said by someone else. I'm not a part of any WikiProject, so I'm certainly in no position to slam others for not being part of one. I was not clear about what was surprising: it was not that people who hadn't participated in the discussion had started participating, it was that they came out against the deletion. I figured that a lot more of the WikiProject Disambiguation project would have cast votes on the TfD, and that people not on the project would have split about 50-50. Instead, very few WikiProject people have come out, and all of the non-project people thus far seem opposed to the deletion.

— DLJessup (talk) 05:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

To clarify my reaction, I have almost invariably seen the term "lurker" used as a term of disparagement. I can appreciate your having used it neutrally. Thanks for your clarification. Courtland 13:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank You

Disambiguation (particularly WP:DPL) is a particular interest of mine too! You did a great job on Thank You, and the finer points of the MoS get learnt gradually (I'm still learning). A very wise disambiguator (Wahoofive) once told me "Correct isn't the goal. Effective is the goal" - that's what it's all about, making dab pages effective. Unfortunalty there isn't a magical formula, and each dab is different. If you've got any questions about dabing, drop me a note (or the project talk page is good too). --Commander Keane 18:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SAC Nomination

This article is a current shitty article candidate. A shitty article should exemplify Wikipedia's most outrageous, atrocious, and downright fucking shittiest work, and is therefore expected to meet several criteria. Please feel free to leave comments.

Just a good gesture of humor :) --K1vsr (talk) 16:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• I'm honored by the nomination. I sure hope the voting goes my way, and the article is accepted as truly shitty!—GraemeMcRae^talk 17:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Georgia (Wiki dispute)

Hi there Graeme, I stumbled across the discussion on Georgia, and was fascinated to see a poll from 2003 with discussion until 2005 (perhaps the poll should just be closed). Either way, i understand the main problem (though i couldnt be bothered to read through all the comments), though i might have a slight alternative.

A similar dispute occurred about the name Macedonia, currently claimed by a country calling herself [[Republic of Macedonia|Macedonia], and Greece, who has a region called Macedonia (region). The dispute is about more than a name, as both also claim to be the heir of the old Macedon. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the UN has decided to stay neutral in the dispute, and insists on calling the Republic of Macedonia the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" as not to anger Greece. The Macedonians, hardly surprising, think this prefix is ridiculous. Suffice to say, its a hot potato.

At first, the article on the current republic was located at Macedonia (country), which i personally think is really ugly, and even somewhat disrespectful. To my mind, it should be possible to accomodate all countries without brackets; theres less than 200 countries in all. The solution in this case was to adopt the constitutional name of the republic for the article; and this might also be a lot better solution for Georgia. Republic of Georgia would, in my opinion, be a lot better place for the article currently on Georgia (country).

As i've only just now mixed in the discussion, i thought i'd run it by you. What do you think? GOod idea? The Minister of War 11:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

• Dear Minister,

I think that's a good idea. In general, it makes sense for the "bigger" political division to have naming preference, while the more "popular" destination should have disambiguation preference. Disambiguation preference means this: if 90% or more of searches for, say, Widget, are for Widget (silly object) then Widget should be a redirect to the silly object, and the first line of the silly object page should say "For other uses, see Widget (disambiguation)". If there is no overwhelmingly more popular destination, then the disambiguation page should be called, simply, Widget, and it should list all the widget pages according to the manual of style for disambiguation pages. To me, that's just simple common sense, and not worthy of hot debate. The fact that this kind of thing is hotly debated causes me to become bored with the effort, which is why I stopped talking about it shortly after putting in my two cents.—GraemeMcRae^talk 15:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Citation issues

You may be interested in reference/citation content/format issues in Talk:Global cooling#Citation format poll (see preceding discussion) and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/SEWilco#Response. (SEWilco 05:53, 30 November 2005 (UTC))

Thanks for drawing my attention to that. I echoed your views in the first poll, but I'm not familiar with the dispute in question for the RFC, so I didn't comment. In general, it makes great sense to use internal reference-footnote linking, with the concentration of detailed external references at the bottom of the page. Not only does it make the text more easily verifyable, but when the link does go dead, there's a whole lot more context available to someone who might want to google for the reference to correct the dead link.—GraemeMcRae^talk 18:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Yup. WP:V expresses preference for greater citation detail over lesser. WP:FES also approves of citations. (SEWilco 04:42, 2 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Fairfax County

Hey,

I wanted to know I just read your posts, and I appreciated the effort you went to verify my addition. It was based on a front page article in the Washington Post I had read the few days before I added that. I also had found a Census report online confirming this, but the exact wording of the article and the report differed, so I worded it oddlt intentionally. I will do some more research in the near future to reassess it's validity. Anyway, thanks for you help. :D

-Zidel33

[edit] may refer to/ may mean

...thx for your comment. Maybe my english is not that good here. refer sounds a little bit weaker and so can be used more broadly? But this really sounds like a good question. Maybe we should discuss this with more people and than standardize on one solution. What I don't like is "X can mean" , I prefer "X may mean" because it's softer. The first is more exclusive as if it can only mean the following - but WP dab-listing might be incomplete. Do you think I am right with my english at least here? For this referring-thing I will think about it, I can imagine even in german I would have need to discuss this a little bit Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No References That I Know Of

GraemeMcRae,

No professional references that I know of. I've heard the term in my neck of the woods used over here by higher ed/public ed folks.

I'll keep looking. Please modify/edit the article to your liking.

Thanks for the input,

Kandy5000

[edit] Found One Place Using K5

Please check out this link: http://fgcc.org/cca/html/k5_kindergarten.html

K-5 is the inaccurate way to write K5.

Sincerely,

Kandy5000

[edit] Wallace Stevens Poll

This is to invite you to respond to the editors poll on the Wallace Stevens talk page at Talk:Wallace_Stevens#Editors_Poll. You have either contributed to the talk page or have made a substantial contribution to the encyclopedia page within the past three months. Thank you. --Halcatalyst 01:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date links

Since you have taken an interest in links. Please be kind enough to vote for my new bot application to reduce overlinking of dates where they are not part of date preferences. bobblewik 20:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

There is yet another proposal, this time at: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#linking_of_dates. Thanks. bobblewik 08:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another LA-area Wikipedia meetup?

There is a proposal for a 3rd LA-area meetup at Philippe's on Saturday, 24 June 2006. If you are interested in another meetup, please visit the proposal and comment on the date and location. ^BlankVerse 08:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] You introduction

Hi Graeme. I enjoyed your description of yourself and of how you have learned to use the wiki and cooperate over changes. I work at a HE institution in the UK and am involved in introducing new e-learning technologies to teaching staff. With this in mind can I quote your description? It will help get across to staff (and students) the necessary good practice involved when making changes to other peoples contributions. Kind regards, Andy Oliver.

Certainly, Andy.—GraemeMcRae^talk 22:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Elephant and the Manual of Style

I didn't realize that. Thanks for bringing it up. When I looked at the diff, I noticed that the surrounding text was mostly english (metric). According the Manual of Style, we should put the measured value first, and the derived value second. I really have no idea which one is which, but I assume that they are already in the proper order.

By the way, I'm not going to start an edit war, so you can change it back if you see fit. alphaChimp ^laudare 17:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with your guess that metric is probably the measured value and that English is probably the derived value. I think your course of action is right. Thanks for the quick and courteous reply (did you get to see Colbert, btw?...it was really funny). alphaChimp ^laudare 17:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Disambiguation Talk Request

This is a form message being sent to all WikiProject Disambiguation participants. I recently left a proposed banner idea on the WikiProject Disambiguation talk page and I would appreciate any input you could provide. Before it can be approved or denied, I would prefer a lot of feedback from multiple participants in the project. So if you have the time please join in the discussion to help improve the WikiProject. Keep up the good work in link repair and thanks for your time. Nehrams2020 21:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess

Dear Graeme—you may be interested in putting your name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers.Tony 15:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)