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Contents 1 Archives 1.1 "*english* wikipedia. *english*" 1.2 Snow Crash 1.3 Incorrect Forth (programming language) disambiguations 1.4 Usurpation 1.5 For disambigging Titanic 1.6 Bid-tv 1.7 WELL experience 1.8 Your input is requested 1.9 Susan Napier 1.10 Semiprotection 1.11 Invasive weed optimization algorithm 1.12 Oolong tea 1.13 NGE 1.14 Iowan writers 1.15 Thanks!!! 1.16 Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can 1.17 Suggestion 1.18 Alfred W. McCoy references problem 1.19 Hamlet's Mill

[edit] Archives

• User talk:Gwern/Archive/1 -(9 September 2006 - 17 November 2006)

[edit] "*english* wikipedia. *english*"

Excuse me!

Can you explain me what you meant *english* wikipedia. *english* in Omar Khayyam's article summary?

thanks.--Soroush ^{☺talk | ☼Contributions} 11:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

What I mean was that, barring unusual circumstances, external links should be to English websites, as this is the English Wikipedia - if there are useful Dutch websites, for example, links to them should be added to the Dutch Wikipedia's article for the simple reason that they're the ones who could use it. --Gwern (contribs) 20:38 28 November 2006 (GMT)

Thanks for your reply. --Soroush ^{☺talk | ☼Contributions} 10:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:External_Links#Foreign_language_links: "English language links are strongly preferred in the English-language Wikipedia." --Gwern (contribs) 17:06 29 November 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Snow Crash

Hello -- I finally replied to your reply to my comments on the Snow Crash talk page. --Venicemenace 16:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have it on my watchlist - no need to go out of your way to tell me. --Gwern (contribs) 00:59 1 December 2006 (GMT) 00:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect Forth (programming language) disambiguations

I noticed you are disambiguating this article incorrectly - it is Forth (programming language). --Sandy (Talk) 17:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, you are right. Pywikipedia assumes that the link names given on the disambiguation page are correct. I'm going to go fix those redirects now. --Gwern (contribs) 19:44 1 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Usurpation

I responded on my talk page at length, but just wanted to let you know, I've finished my reworking of the proposal. If you'll be so kind as to handle the publicizing, I'd appreciate it. Essjay (Talk) 09:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I greatly appreciate the work you've done. I'll go do that publicizing now. --Gwern (contribs) 19:56 3 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] For disambigging Titanic

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		Here's a present for entirely disambiguating Titanic. 'Cause it's just frikken' beautiful now. ♠PMC♠ 03:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bid-tv

Hi, I am currently researching improvements to the Bid-Tv article. My revert was more aimed at changes by the Bid-tv employee rather than any criticism of your work. I'm glad you agree about the postage charges, though it is hard to source those as Bid-tv like to mention them as little as possible.

I've also informed the Bid-tv employee of Wikipedia's policies regarding conflicts of interest and NPOV. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shakehandsman (talk • contribs).

I'm not surprised, but I can tell you from my experience here: if you get into conflicts about information one party or the other sees as non-neutral, the best thing to do is buckle down and source it really well, with a minimum of analysis and editorializing - both of which I tried to remove from that section. If you can do it solely by using quotes from unimpeachable sources, that's even better; for example, did you notice how I quoted the ASA decision in the paragraph, and so corrected a misleading sentence? --Gwern (contribs) 01:37 6 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] WELL experience

Hm, more information about my Well experience? How about asking that question on my Questions page? I'd be happy to talk about it, and if you think it would be useful to other voters, I'll do so. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 04:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I can hardly complain if I won't even bother to ask about it. It seems a bit late, but better late than never... --Gwern (contribs) 04:36 6 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Your input is requested

Your input would be appreciated at this Request for Comments. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been little but an onlooker in these cases. The editors who point to the other pages to read are quite right. --Gwern (contribs) 17:01 6 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Susan Napier

Hi Gwern! Thanks a lot for the offer about the article. As I say on the Lain talk page, it's issue 88 of Science Fiction Studies, that is, part 3 of volume 29. It's from November 2002. I don't have the page number, but the article name is "When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain", by Susan J. Napier. I appreciate the effort. Having this one would make Wikipedia the most comprehensive source about Lain on earth. If that's not what WP's about, I don't know what is. :)--SidiLemine 16:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I went to my library today; alas, there were no electronic copies to be had, of any sort, because they carried Science Fiction Studies.... so I just scanned in all 17 pages or whatever. I can't put them on Wikipedia or Commons, for obvious reasons. Do you want me to email you the PNGs? If so, email me with the desired address; and remember, each PNG is about 3 megabytes, so make sure your email service can handle that. --Gwern (contribs) 03:21 7 December 2006 (GMT)

Wow! I'm impressed. I don't have your email, and I can't wait, so you can just email me at lecomptoirdutabac at yahoo dot com. Oh boy. Actually, I'm not that worried about yahoo; it's more my local connection that's gonna have to work extra (I'm on a 128k split between 4 PCs!). Any chance you might reduce that size a little while keeping it readable?--SidiLemine 11:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't know how to reduce the size and still keep it readable, I'm afraid. They should be wafting their way through the ether to you now. --Gwern (contribs) 14:37 7 December 2006 (GMT)

I'm pretty sure the address is correct; Maybe you could try to send them one by one? The other thing is that yahoo makes some pretty freaky stuff with addresses sometimes: you might want to try lecomptoirdutabac@yahoo.fr, but I'm certain that the address I gave you is good. If you packed them in a bundle, then try each in its mail. Isn't there somewhere you can upload them, even for a very short time?--SidiLemine 09:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

After a lot of work, I discovered file upload services and got one to work; your magical link is to FileHO. Hope this works. --Gwern (contribs) 19:06 8 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Semiprotection

Hi, thanks for your note here - let me follow up on that and get back to you? Give me a few days or so? I'll come back. --HappyCamper 22:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, sure - so long as you do remember to come back. It's not exactly a time-pressing issue. --Gwern (contribs) 02:37 8 December 2006 (GMT)

Okay, I've lifted it. Thanks again for dropping by :-) --HappyCamper 02:32, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Great! The last time I tried to persuade an admin to lift needless protection, things didn't go nearly so well. --Gwern (contribs) 04:18 9 December 2006 (GMT)

What happened? That's really unfortunate. I've been here for quite a while - stuff like that can really eat at morale. --HappyCamper 05:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it was a month or two ago; I'd rather not go into it. She was quite adamant. --Gwern (contribs) 05:06 9 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Invasive weed optimization algorithm

Sorry, I did not got why my article on "Invasive weed optimization algorithm" is deleted? I was quite busy for few months and did not check Wikipedia. Please let me know how to retrieve my article. Thanks (Please post your comments on Talk:Invasive weed optimization algorithm) --- ALI REZA 08:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

You want to know why it was deleted? See the deletion logs. --Gwern (contribs) 18:19 8 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Oolong tea

That's one interesting way of making tea. Where did you learn it? Sjschen 07:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I hung around the rec.food.tea Usenet newsgroup for a while; I tried to reconstruct what I read of gongfu for oolong, but I eventually wound up with that method. Works better than all the other things I tried. --Gwern (contribs) 07:12 9 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] NGE

I undid your revert. The section he edited was about the manga, and if the manga is still being published it should not say it ending. Above that section is the anime, which states that has ended. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 20:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah. My bad. --Gwern (contribs) 20:23 9 December 2006 (GMT)

No prob :) we all make mistakes, just wanted to point it out to you so that you don't make the same mistake twice. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 04:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's kind of odd that the manga, which is a separate work both artistically and in terms of chronology, is merged into the TV series article. We should really break it out eventually. --Gwern (contribs) 05:40 10 December 2006 (GMT)

I think since there are differences between the 2, mabey we should split the article between NGE(Anime) and NGE(Manga) since there are quite a few differences. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 21:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Iowan writers

May I ask why you created Category:Iowan writers and redirected Category:Iowa writers? Except for Hawaii--covered by Category:Hawaiian writers, because there's some interest in ethnicity as well as residence--all the other "writers by state" categories are in the form (Name of state) writers: So Pennsylvania writers or Texas writers, not Pennsylvanian or Texan. Do you intend to rename all these categories? And if so, why? --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 17:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Because that makes more sense. They are writers from Iowa, not writers about Iowa. If an American goes and writes some books, she isn't an "America writer", she's an "American writer". Similarly, if she were French, she wouldn't be a "France writer" but a "French writer" and so on and so forth. I had assumed it was just the Iowan category that had mucked up its grammar, but looking at the supercat, it seems I'll have to fix the rest. I'll wait for your reply, though, before I being. --Gwern (contribs) 17:45 10 December 2006 (GMT)

Well, it's not just writers. All the "by state" categories are done that way: Actors by state, Lawyers by state, you name it. Perhaps you ought to reconsider before starting such a sweeping change. It may not be grammatically unassailable, or congruent with national identifiers, but I think "Michigan writers" is much more immediately understandable than "Michiganer writers" or "Michigander writers" or "Michiganite writers" or "Michiganian writers". And which one of those are you going to use, by the way? Sleeping dogs, I think. --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 17:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

"Whereof we cannot speak, we must be silent." In Michigan's case, I'd probably just go "Writers from Michigan", which has no ambiguity even if it is one word longer. But if it is all those categories... I'll leave it as a long-term project. It's wrong, but it's not wrong enough to demand immediate rectification. Even with a bot helping, that'd take a while. --Gwern (contribs) 18:05 10 December 2006 (GMT)

Thinking about it a little more, I have to add that, although (state) (occupation) may be "wrong", as you say, it is a very common idiomatic construction. What seems more usual: "Floridian writer Dave Barry", "writer from Florida Dave Barry", or "Florida writer Dave Berry"? The last, it seems to me. And this pattern carries over to all states & occupations: "California lawyer Robert Shapiro" or "New Jersey rapper Redman" and so on --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 18:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Myself, I'd prefer Floridian. Running Google searches, only "Floridian" brings up any actual examples. --Gwern (contribs) 19:34 10 December 2006 (GMT)

For Dave Barry, specifically, perhaps. But a search for "Florida writer" (and narrowing the search to reduce the number of irrelevant constructions) nets 1,300+, including The Florida Writer Magazine and several versions of "John Doe is a Florida writer." "Floridian writer" shows 31 results. Searches using other states & occupations show similar disparities: e.g. "Minnesota carpenter" 450+, "Minnesotan carpenter" 2. And there's this from Wikipedia itself, from Demonym: 'In the case of Canadian provinces and territories and U.S. states, it is non-standard to use demonyms as attributive adjectives (for example "Manitoba maple", not "Manitoban maple"); they can be used only predicatively ("Ben Franklin was Pennsylvanian.").' --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 05:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

All right, enough: you've convinced me. --Gwern (contribs) 05:34 11 December 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Thanks!!!

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		for going (litterally) the extra mile to make sources for Serial Experiments Lain available. This spontaneous effort was appreciated. SidiLemine 16:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really into the barnstar craze, but I felt I had to do something. I am truly endebted to you. If there is anything I can help you with, let me know and I will.--SidiLemine 16:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

[edit] Suggestion

Generally, bots that make unsolicited edits to talk pages come with some sort of flag so users who simply don't want to be bothered or who don't like what it is doing can opt-out, since PocKleanBot doesn't seem to be an opt-in sort of thing. --Gwern (contribs) 19:24 12 December 2006 (GMT)

Hi. I don't personally feel that opt-out is necessary in this case because if the bot has written to your talk page, it will not do so again in future. However, others have suggested as you have, so this is in discussion. Many thanks - PocklingtonDan 19:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I have also modified the text on the bot's user page to make its actions clearer. Thanks! - PocklingtonDan 19:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

So it will only ever nag you once? If so, that should probably be mentioned as well. --Gwern (contribs) 19:34 12 December 2006 (GMT) 19:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it will not post a notice if that user has already received a notice. Where would you like to see this noticed? I don't want to put too much meta-data (ie about the bot) into the template, would prefer the tempalte was 100% about the article involved, to avoid distraction- PocklingtonDan 19:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Putting it on the user page would make most sense: I thinki its functionality isn't being fully described if it doesn't mention that it will only nag a user once - as it is written, the number of nags is open-ended. --Gwern (contribs) 19:39 12 December 2006 (GMT)

Hi, the template for user pages is at Template:PockKleanBotCleanup2. By all means feel free to edit it to improve witht he text you would like to see, so long as it is reasonable. Thanks - PocklingtonDan 19:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alfred W. McCoy references problem

Hello Gwern. A recent change you made in this page 'broke' the references (caused an error message to appear in the page). I reverted your change, then re-did the conversion to <ref> style using User:Cyde/Ref_converter. I haven't the slightest understanding of what is going on, I just pushed the buttons. If you want to check that I missed any of your changes (or if you want to revert the whole shebang) take a look at the page. Thanks. EdJohnston 21:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hamlet's Mill

Hey. I see you are preparing an article on Hamlet's Mill. I vote for that! If it's really so hopeless from a scholarly standpoint, that would be a disappointment. Perhaps it's just a poetic vision. EdJohnston 21:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)