User talk:Karl Dickman

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Aircraft infobox 1 2 Essays Existing threads Older threads Phi Beta Kappa Projects Sandbox Standard.css Link scheme Standard.js Airbuttons.js Tablebutton.js Talkpage archives 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Thread boilerplate Thread help Update progress Welcome

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If you wish to thank me for something, I appreciate it greatly. However, I rarely take the time to respond, as I am usually engaged in other activities. My apologies, and you're welcome (in advance).

[edit] Archive

Archive 1: 2004, from May 23 to Dec 31
Archive 2: 2005, from Jan 01 to Jun 23
Archive 3: 2005, from Jun 23 to Sep 05
Archive 4: 2005, from Sep 05 to Dec 01
Archive 5: 2005, from Dec 01 to Feb 10
Archive 6: 2006, from Feb 10 to Apr 14
Archive 7: 2006, from Apr 14 to Jul 09
Archive 8: 2006, from Jul 09 to Nov 15
Current: current discussion

[edit] 90 minutes in heaven

Note: this comment is part of a synchronised thread. You can reply by clicking the [edit] link next to the comment's heading, or following this link. To ensure that you can see any further responses I make, add this page to your watchlist. Once you have replied, feel free to remove this boilerplate.

When you removed the plot from 90 Minutes in Heaven, were you concerned about copyright infringement? I'm afraid this isn't entirely clear from your edit summary.

Also, wouldn't a significantly more vigourous rephrasing of the plot eliminate this problem? Karl Dickman ^talk 17:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tl button

Hi Mark,

Per the invitation on your XEB page, I tried adding a TL button to the code, right below the Subst button (Z). I used the following code:

'TL':['3/37/Button_tl_template.png','Template link',"{{tl|","}},'Template name'],

However, it didn't like this. In fact, it caused the entire script to stop working altogether.

So I guess you can count this as a feature request. Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 01:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC) (formerly Ingoolemo)

A few more things. XEBOrder isn't allowing be to use any more than 17 buttons, which is as likely as not due to some error in User:Karl Dickman/standard.js. Also, What does XEBOrder.split do? Does it allow the end-user to add buttons between the buttons added by your XEB script. For example, a script exists that can suppress the standard editbuttons; if such a feature existed, I could reinsert the standard buttons in the order I wanted (for example, putting the standard link button right before the sub-link button, and the standard image button right before the advanced image button, etc.) Just some thoughts to chew on. Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 11:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay I've had a look:

The TL button wasn't working because it was missing a closing quote for the last but one argument (}}). The odd thing was that the missing quote showed up if you looked at the new code on its own, but appeared when you compared the two versions of the code. I have now added the TL button. It isn't a standard button at the moment so you will need to use XEBOrder to include the button.
I had a quick look at the 17 buttons issue. There was an issue if you used the all option for XEBOrder. You had to get the case right (so 'ALL' and 'aLL' did not work for example). I'm not sure if this (or any of the other changes) will fix the issue for you. Can you let me know if you still have a problem. If you do then I'll have another look.
I have updated the images with your newer PNG version - much better.
One thing, which I hadn't thought about properly, is that changes to the live version may possible affect all the XEB users immediately. I'm going to change the XEB instruction page to encourge users to test changes in a development version before putting them on the live version. At the moment I don't have any way to prevent changes to the live version because as a non-admin I can't protect the page. Hopefully some better instructions on this will help. --Mark S (talk) 19:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your final point: I just realised this: because I am an admin, I am in fact one of the few people who can edit your javascript page. I'm pretty sure that any .js file in another user's userspace cannot be edited by any other user who doesn't have administrative privileges.

Also, thanks for fixing the 17-buttons issue. I now have all the buttons in operation. Tschüs. Karl Dickman ^talk 19:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Commons

Now, you are Commons:User:Karl Dickman (Rename user) --User:Lmbuga

[edit] MediaWiki:Standard.js

Hello Brian,

Some time ago, you added a script to MediaWiki:Standard.js. Did you mean for this to be at MediaWiki:Monobook.js? The Standard.js file is not actually used within the MediaWiki system.

Anyway, I would like to add it, if I can, to Monobook.js. Are there any tweaks I would have to make to it to pull that off? Karl Dickman ^talk 16:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Renamed in Wiktionary

I renamed you and moved your scripts and user pages in Wiktionary. Thanks for the note on my user page. I'm on wikibreak (mostly) this month and haven't been watching the administrative stuff much, especially the occasional, low-traffic variety. Dvortygirl 01:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Military history WikiProject Newsletter: Issue IX - November 2006

The November 2006 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

This is an automated delivery by grafikbot 22:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding standard editbuttons to XEB script

As you know, scripts exist to suppress the standard editbuttons (bold, italic, link, headline, image, etc.) I see this as a first step toward maximum customisation. For example, it make ssense to have purely formatting buttons, like underline, strike, bold, and italic right next to each other, and to have both the basic image button and the advanced image button right next to each other. The easiest way to do this would be to make the following change to User:MarkS/extraeditbuttons.js:

Karl Dickman ^talk 00:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I defintely think its a good idea to include the standard buttons within XEB so you can then group similar buttons together.

Isrc is a just a way of keeping the urls in each button definition line short. Just like you I can't see a way to do the final section of code if we use an array. The only alternative I can think of is to add Isrc to the rest of the url when each button is declared. This would make each button line slightly longer but would still be manageble.
I have just been looking at the German version by Olliminatore. As far as I can see he has added some really nice pieces of extra code. Firstly he has something to remove the standard toolbar buttons (which would go nicely with being able to add them back in whereever you want with XEB) and he looks to have some code to extend the functionality of the buttons - it looks like when you press the table button you get a popup asking what size table you want.

I will get the standard buttons added asap and then look at seeing if we can copy some of the German code over. --Mark S (talk) 17:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I seem to remember a popup for tables being imported here from the French Wikipedia, but it didn't work in Internet Explorer. Just something for you to check. Karl Dickman ^talk 19:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: I successfully added said buttons to the script. My apologies if you feel I've trespassed in any way by doing so.

Cheers and good luck, Karl Dickman ^talk 08:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That XEB buttons are not really needed, we can load these from mwEditButtons to add these to BDict (and give these simply the indexes as names (1-10)), but we need BDict first load in addOnloadHook. These give us a additional possibility to add an optional parameter for additional custom user buttons (what you've requested too). I think I will do these for the german version. —Olliminatore 12:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the buttons to the script. I have now added Olliminatore's remove buttons function to the dev version. This seems to be working for me. You just need to add something like var rmEditButtons = [2,6,7,10]; to your monobook.js to remove the buttons. The index of the buttons to remove starts from 0. I haven't tested this in IE or Opera at the moment. I also think it might be nice to make this a little simpler perhaps for people who want to remove all the buttons (for example we could have rmEditButtons="All"). I'll look into this and testing the code asap so we can get it on the live version.--Mark S (talk) 16:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Here the alternative code with paramter (var myButtons, I hope you'll give it a try). Good idea to do them with rmEditButtons="All". p.s. browser compatibility: it works for me in Opera and IE too. Cheers, looking forward —Olliminatore 17:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I've added an "all" option and it sort of works. However, it highlights a problem in Olliminatore's remove edit buttons function. Olliminatore's function is added to the page load event to remove the buttons. However, when the page is loading there are only 11 buttons in mwEditButtons. The media wiki software must be adding the 10 other standard buttons later. The remove buttons functions works fine with these 11 buttons but can't remove the other 10 standard buttons (because they don't exist when the function runs). It might be possible to run the remove buttons function later but that would risk removing any buttons the user has added themself. The only answer I can think of is to delete the buttons when XEB is running by searching for the individual buttons themselves. This seems a heavy handed way to do it. Will need to think about this or hope Olliminatore has a good idea.

Haven't looked at your alternative code yet. Will do when I get a chance. --Mark S (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

By the 'ten other standard buttons', do you mean the ones that have been MediaWiki:Common.js? If so, you can suppress them (thanks, Olliminatore) by adding mwCustomEditButtons = []; to your local javascript file, or to the XEB script page. Karl Dickman ^talk 19:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Karl Dickman is right (I forgot the other custom buttons are now standard too), we should delete them all (if we would extend the eraseButtons function (you can correct my typo "erease", or better called removeButtons!?), it must be indexes from 0-20. That would be too complicated/ elaborated for an user friendly parameter). —Olliminatore 20:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Plus, I don't think that extending the indices on your script would work, i.e. I don't think that ereaseButtons(15,20); would successfully erase the sixteenth and twenty-first buttons in the toolbar. I seem to remember trying that, and didn't succeed. Karl Dickman ^talk 23:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

At the moment you are right, because the function is not modified (in de: are no custom standard buttons). But if you really want it, it would be easy to do, connect both lists:

first made a copy: var mwCustomEditButtonsOld = mwCustomEditButtons;

then erase those: mwCustomEditButtons = [];

Because the mwEditButtons is filled after the mwCustomEditButtons. Then put this line in the erase function:

for (i in mwCustomEditButtonsOld) mwEditButtons.push(mwCustomEditButtonsOld[i]);. —Olliminatore 23:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

For the record (and this is just summarizing what Olliminatore has already said) and so that I don't forget, the buttons are working like this:

mwCustomEditButtons is populated with the 10 extra standard buttons
monobook.js is called and we add the XEB buttons
mwEditButtons is populated with the standard buttons
The eraseButtons function is run which removes the standard buttons from mwEditButtons

Olliminatore's proposed code should work fine and would allow any of the 21 standard buttons to be removed by index number. However, I would need to adapt the remove all function I added and probably hard code it to remove 21 buttons. I think this overall approach is the best way forward. I'll test it on the dev version as soon as possible. --Mark S (talk) 07:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I have now changed the rmEraseButtons function so it can remove all the standard buttons. You can now specify either rmEditButtons=[2,3,4] or rmEditButtons="all". The code is currently in the dev version. I also want to have a look at Karl Dickman's alternative code for adding the standard buttons in and then test again before moving this up to live. That might need to wait until this evening. If you want to test the code or suggest/make any other changes that would be helpful --Mark S (talk) 07:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editbuttons script at MediaWiki:Common.js

The buttons on this page interfere with MarkS's editbutton script. Is there an easy way I can suppress the script at Common.js? The only way I can think of is by enclosing the script at Common.js with a statement like if(mediaWikiCommonJsButtons!='no') { button script } and adding var mediaWikiCommonJsButtons='no'; to my personal script page.

Can you think of any alternatives to my proposed solution? Karl Dickman ^talk 00:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding mwCustomEditButtons = false to your monobook.js should do the trick. —Ruud 00:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't work: your solution also kills Mark's editbutton script. Karl Dickman ^talk 16:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

How about this change. If I make it, it won't break anything, will it? The main problem with your solution, as I said in the previous comment, is that it kills any other editbutton script. Karl Dickman ^talk 17:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Try adding mwCustomEditButtons = {}; just before including MarkS' script in your standard.js. I'd try to avoid adding more global variables unless really necessary. —Ruud 16:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Nope, that didn't work either. And FWIW, I tried two different ways of adding the variable to Common.js today (see the page history), but neither of them worked: both killed all editbuttons. Karl Dickman ^talk 01:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Would you care to take a look at User:Karl Dickman/standard.js, see if I did anything wrong? Karl Dickman ^talk 01:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's another possible way to kill the additional buttons: find some way to enclose them in a <div> tag with an id. Then, I can suppress the id of that tag using my CSS. Karl Dickman ^talk 17:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks name change

I have renamed you on wikibooks, your username is now wikibooks:User:Karl Dickman. --User:Wknight8111 (WB:Whiteknight) 18:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editbuttons at MediaWiki:Common.js

As you probably know, there are ten buttons from the XEB script you originally wrote that have now been added to the Common.js. Of course, they are redundant for those of us who use XEB; also, their order can't be customised.

Do you have a way of suppressing them? Adding variables to Common.js seemed to kill all editbuttons. The best way I can think of is to enclose them within a div tag and suppress the id of the div tag using CSS. Karl Dickman ^talk 17:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no really problem. In the new version of XEB (which is optimized and more dynamically) you can manually choose each button (XEBOrder). —Olliminatore 19:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I know how the XEBOrder variable works. The problem that I'm trying to deal with is the duplicates of the XEB script at MediaWiki:Common.js. Frankly, I would like to have all of my formatting buttons together in one sequence. This would be bold, italic, underline, strike, superscript, subscript, and small. I couldn't do this with XEBOrder, because the order of the buttons at MediaWiki:Common.js cannot be manipulated in any way that I'm aware of. The only way I can think of dealing with them is to find some way to suppress them, and control all my buttons with my personal javascript. Karl Dickman ^talk 19:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, I see only now you have asked before similarly, and MarkS answered (today) with: remove the standard toolbar buttons. Which is a solution, if he would copy this function (ereaseButtons from me, example option: var rmEditButtons = [6,7,10]). Either this function must (modify) do the same with mwCustomEditButtons for the buttons in :Common.js, or you must simply first delete them all: mwCustomEditButtons = []. (p.s. my automatic signing script don't works on this site :-P) If any additional question you can ask me here or there. —Olliminatore 20:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks so much for a good solution (finally). Note: by finally, I don't mean "took you long enough", but rather, "I finally found someone who could help me." Karl Dickman ^talk 02:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name Change

Hi, i would like to change my username. Please can you advise how?! Thanks! Chavatshimshon 22:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Go to Wikipedia:Changing username. Follow the instructions there. Karl Dickman ^talk 02:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More on XEB

One final thing: at User:Karl Dickman/standard.js I tried adding some buttons by adding more to the variable BDict at my local .js. However, that didn't work. I assume I got the syntax wrong for whatever I was doing. When you get a moment, I would appreciate it very much if you could take some time to help me out.

Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 08:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Example custom button for XEB:

document.write("<script> addCustomButton(Isrc+'1/13/Button_enter.png','Line break','<br style=\"clear:all','','\">') <\/script>");

Hmm ... I updated the code, I can't say way but the code must be in script tag (local it works without). Currently you can only add buttons at the end (or beginning, or end of standard buttons), but we could make a optional parameter for additional custom buttons, which are changeable in order too. (don't forget to share your ideas) happy editing :) (p.s. I was a bit inactive in wikipedia) —Olliminatore 09:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I really suggest an user friendly parameter like

var myButtons={
 'Mm':['http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Button_blockquote.png','Insert block of quoted text','<blockquote style="padding:2em;">\n','\n<\/blockquote>','Block quote'],
 'Ba':['http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Button_enter.png','Line break','<br style=\"clear: ','all',''\">']
}

Here the code therefor that works: [1] —Olliminatore 17:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

This code is now on the dev version. I'll try and test it tomorrow. --Mark S (talk) 21:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm having some problems with the code. Whenever I open any Wikipedia page, it gives me a popup that says:

intiButtons
mwEditButtons.length=0
mwCustomEditButtons.length=10

This popup appears twice, and I must click OK twice before I can see the page I went to. Karl Dickman ^talk 17:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I see: it's your debugging report. Here's what I suggest: add if(user=='MarkS') { \\debugging code here }; that should help prevent those of us who are also checking out your dev source from having to deal with the debugger thing. Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 01:55, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

You mean if(wgUserName=='MarkS')? Or you can made a debug parameter var debug = true;, so more user can test it. p.s. Maybe I wrote a hint on the dev talk. —Olliminatore 09:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I have commented out the code and will add something to stop the messages popping up for other users (although in my defence this is the development version of the code !). The reason for the popup boxes is that I'm having trouble getting the remove edit buttons to work. The problem is that firefox and IE/Opera fire the onload event at different times. Specifically it seems to me that IE/Opera fire the onload event after drawing the toolbar (so you can't use the event to remove buttons from the toolbar). Even worse is that in IE/Opera it appears that the standard 10 toolbar buttons are added immediately before the toolbar is drawn (so you can't remove the buttons). When you include the extra 11 buttons that English Wikipedia adds in Common.js to mwCustomEditButtons rather than mwEditButtons it all gets very confusing. I've started a new page called Development notes which contains some technical information on how the toolbar buttons work. If you have any extra info (or know of links to other places in Wikimedia/Wikipedia) that might be relevant then please expand this page. In the meantime I'm going to do a bit more testing. --Mark S (talk) 17:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh* I think I've tested only with IE6 and Opera8.5. Here the fix for Opera 9 [2] I now install IE7 (IE6 works). —Olliminatore 20:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll have a look at this tomorrow. Testing tonight (before your fix) suggests the biggest problem is the 11 extra standard buttons added on en wikipedia. In Firefox these are added before the onload event fires (so I can remove them). However, in IE (and probably Opera) these are added very late on in the process. Development notes contains what I believe is the order the various functions run in. If you use an onLoad routine then the toolbar has been drawn before the onLoad event runs whereas if you setup the toolbar directly in monobook.js then these extra 11 buttons are added to mwCustomEditButtons after the monobook.js code has run. Hopefully your code will fix this. --Mark S (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

This is odd. I've updated the XEB code as you suggested. I actually copied the piece of code that does the onload hooks from the German version. In Firefox its working fine. However, in IE7 its not drawing any of the XEB buttons all. It does seem as if the execution order of the various steps matches my notes in Development notes. After this test I added the German version of XEB to my German account (SMark). That version works fine and adds the buttons in, so its not my browser. I'm left with two possible explanations: (1) somewhere in the code (on the English version) I've made a mistake or (2) The German and English versions of Wikipedia execute in a slightly different order. Is it possible for you to have a look over the code for me and test the English version to see if the result is different to the German version. --Mark S (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

In general I think IE tends to have problems with XEB. Until I got to college and started using the computers here, I never met a version of IE6 that could execute XEB at all. Karl Dickman ^talk 23:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

~~Yes that IE (is not working for me too) bug is new in wikibits.js, I'll report this. —Olliminatore 01:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)~~

I think and hope I solved the putative IE problem :/ (works now really for me) [3] (look at addOnloadHook(initButtons)) p.s. sometimes the IE is a mystery —Olliminatore 04:48, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I have copied over your code from the German version and it looks to be working for me too. There is one issue to sort and that is the eraseButtons function can't handle the extra 11 buttons inserted by the English Wikipedia (they are added to mwCustomEditButtons rather than mwEditButtons). I did have something that solved this once before so I will try putting that back . Hopefully I'll get a chance tomorrow to look at this and tidy up the code in general. Then hopefully it will be ready to go. I'll post another update as soon as I have looked at it again. In the meantime thanks for all your help. --Mark S (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The code looks fine now and I have tested it. I have updated the eraseButtons function to handle the extra 11 buttons in English Wikipedia. I have also added sorting to the rmEditButtons variable in case the user defines the buttons in the wrong order. My intention is to do another quick test tomorrow and then relase it at some point tomorrow. I'll will also look to update the documentation at that time. If you have any comments or notice any problems let me know and I will delay the release. --Mark S (talk) 20:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quiting smoking userbox

Hi, i saw that you fixed it before. I'de like to ask you what I'm doing wrong when i upload images, I'm usealy just to read up the wikipage on it, but i have and i dont know what i'm doing wrong. I often upload an image and see that it is not showing up, instead a red link shows. This happens almost always. Now I squared up the image for the Qsmoking userbox and its not showing up. Please tell me, thanks. Chavatshimshon 04:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem may your browser. If you purge the page cache (by hitting CTRL+F5 in Internet Explorer or hold the SHIFT key while clicking reload in Firefox), that may solve the problem.

If the problem persists, and you are certain that you have the right link, it is probably because the Wikimedia servers are having trouble updating the site. In that case, just give it some time and the problem should rectify itself.

Also remember that it is not enough to specify licensing information from an image; you must also state its source, either by providing a hyperlink or tagging it as an image you made.

Cheers and good luck, Karl Dickman ^talk 23:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Noahide laws

I am making 7 boxes on my page for the seven law of noah, and by mistake took a catgry instead of an article. I cant realy find an article covering all sexual fidelity so im settling for Promiscuity. Nice being in touch. Chavatshimshon 00:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Safiyya bint Huyayy

Having trouble with continuous reverts on the above mentioned article. This woman clearly was a concubine of Mohammad, as clearly depicted by the content of the article itself, one paragraph it titles 'her capture' etc. Please advise. Chavatshimshon 13:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I have posted my opinion on the issue at Talk:Safiyya bint Huyayy. Based on my reading of the article, I am forced to disagree with your interpretation; I explain my views in some detail on the talkpage. As I have not read the Quran or any comparable piece of Islamic literature, this really isn't my area of expertise, so feel free to correct me with citations from those sources.

Please respond to my comments at the article's talkpage, so that everyone else involved in the dispute can critique them.

A closing FYI: reversions of the sort that were done to your edits are not 'vandalism', as defined by Wikipedia policy. The editors who reverted you may have been doing so to push a point of view, or for any number of non-vandalistic reasons. Under our definition of vandalism, an edit constitutes vandalism only when it was made with the sole intent to deface the site.

Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 03:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, you did indeed check a dictionary as i proposed and you have made four good points. I make one point which as you will hopefully agree resolves all four of yours. I therefor am re-including the term for the second time in 24 hours.

The article below describes the massacre of her family, whole tribe by Mohammad and his men. It is taken from the Banu Nadir article, some of it is even in this article. My one point is that is impossible to call her "marriage" a choice anything other than an attempt to save her life, her captor killed her husband, her whole family, tribe, not only did she accept his version of Godly events she as his slave no doubt did anything he wished, from cooking or cleaning to fellatio. Looking back from a very different more civilised world we can acknowledge that her so called 'conversion' and 'marriage' does not rob her of her title concubine.

Battle of Khaybar: 627-629

After their expulsion from Medina, Banu Nadir, along with the other Jews living in Khaybar, understood that Muhammad might attack them again. The Nadir chief Huyayy ibn Akhtab together with his son joined the Meccans and Bedouins besieging Medina during the Battle of the Trench. Huyayy ibn Akhtab attempted to recruit Banu Qurayza within Medina to fight against the Muslims. Both of them were killed by order of Muhammad alongside the men of the Banu Qurayza.^[1]

Muhammad and his followers attacked Khaybar in May 629. Although the Jews put up fierce resistance, the lack of central command and their unpreparedness for an extended siege sealed the outcome of the battle in favor of the Muslims. When all but two fortresses were captured, the Jews managed to negotiate their surrender. The terms required them to hand over one-half of the annual produce to the Muslims, while the land itself became the collective property of the Muslim state.^[2]

The agreement, however, did not cover the Banu Nadir tribe. Muslims killed all the men of Banu Nadir and divided the women among themselves.^[2] Safiyya bint Huyayy was the daughter of the killed Banu Nadir chief Huyayy ibn Akhtab and widow of Kinana ibn al-Rabi, the treasurer of Banu Nadir, whom Muhammad's followers first tortured, demanding that he reveal the location of the tribe’s hidden treasures, and then killed.^[3] Muhammad took for wife Safiyya bint Huyayy.

I made these last words bold just to show how ambiguous it is to say 'took for wife'... Might I also say... in the middle ages too, women in Europe were abducted and held as concubines, and yes it was considered normal then and yes they had the word concubine then too but didnt use it, so what?! Therefore in the case of an article about a european women abducted in the middle ages, whether she apparently subscribed to her captor's religion or not, the term concubine should be mentioned.

Chavatshimshon 04:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, its not over yet. Jossi is a sensible person and will realise, as you will too, the idea he presented was that it is sources that are required to simply rephrase wife with concubine or vis virsa, or to add it ...is a stark mistake. Sources are not requisite... for adapting/improving rephrasing, titles, status or names on an encyclopedic standard. Titles of this sort in this case quite simply require reading the excising content of the article... and from this article one is easily afforded to conclude she was a concubine of Mohammad as well later wife of sorts. If I would have a wider knowledge of WP Guidelines I'm sure I could furnish links to these rules. Also, it may be she got on with life and didn't try to poison him, unlike a certain other Jewish concubine of his, but then that's called Stockholm syndrome, not tell me was Natascha Kampusch her captor's concubine or wife? She thinks she was. I hope this extends your view at this point. FrummerThanThou 07:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tables in aicraft designation sequences

Hi Saxbryn, I noticed that you converted some tables in some aircraft designation sequences to pipe format. While I wholeheartedly support the reasons for so doing, your actions in this particular instance broke with wiki renderer. If I have a table as the variable in a template, the table must be in HTML format rather than pipe format or it won't render correctly.

Thanks for the effort, though. Cheers, Karl Dickman ^talk 05:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello Karl Dickman, I wasn't aware of this, excuse my preciptious conversion. I will look out for this particular situation in the future. Thanks for your message. Greetings, Saxbryn 19:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gravitational flux density of Earth

All the formulas you need to calculate it:

http://www.imath.kiev.ua/~symmetry/Symmetry2001/Bedrij589-601.pdf

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I already know it, and you can actually calculate it extremely simply, without any of the formulas listed there. Have you calculated it? If you haven't, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the result. Karl Dickman ^talk 23:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I am all ears... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

$G=\frac{F_G}{m}=\frac{m g}{m}=g$ , where $G$ is the strength of the field, $F G$ is the force caused by the field, $m$ is the mass of an object in the field, $g$ is the acceleration due to gravity. Now, lete me explain what this means.

[edit] Gravitational and electric fields

The gravitational flux density is the same quantity as the gravitational field strength, just like electric flux density is the same quantity as electric field strength. What do I mean by this? Allow me to explain using a common technique for visualising electric and magnetic fields (it can also be applied to gravitational fields) is the concept of "lines of force", which was developed by Michael Faraday.

In the case of electric fields, lines of force start at positive charges and terminate at negative charges. Consider the case of a single positively charged body: it should have lines of force radiating from it in all directions like the spokes of a wheel. The larger the charge of the body, the more lines of force it has. For a negative charge, the lines of force should enter it from all directions; the field looks the same as that generated by a positive charge, but the arrows point in the opposite direction. Now consider two charges of opposite sign but the same magnitude (illustrated here). Some of the lines of force generated by the positive charge radiate into space, while others curve around and end at the negative charge.

Now consider a small positively charged body with a charge $q 0$ , such that $q 0$ is negligible relative to the charge $\pm q$ of either charge in the dipole ( $q_0 \ll |q|$ ). In Physics, we call this a test charge. If the test charge is acted upon by no other force than that generated by the electric field, it will follow a line of force to come to rest on the negative charge.

A similar visualisation can be used for gravitational fields: lines of force start and end at a mass. But with gravitational fields, the concept of direction gets a little confusing, so I'll try not to go any further.

One final thing: if I define a region $S$ with an area $A S$ , then the number of field lines that flow through $S$ is equal to the electric or gravitational flux (flux=flow) through that region. The number of field lines per unit area is the flux density. Remember that we said that the density of the field lines is proportional to the strength of the field? Flux density is the same thing as field strength.

[edit] Vector fields

These days, we express electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields as vector fields. I'm sure your at least acquainted with vectors. They are mathematical constructs with magnitude and direction. One way of visualising vectors is to draw an arrow from the origin (at point $(0,0,0)$ ) to a point $P (x 0, y 0, z 0)$ . That vector can be expressed in coordinate form as $\langle x_0,y_0,z_0 \rangle$ . In a vector field, each point is assigned a vector, and each component of the vector is a function of its coordinates. So a vector at any point $(x, y, z)$ will have coordinates $\langle P(x,y,z),Q(x,y,z),R(x,y,z)\rangle$ where $P$ , $Q$ , and $R$ are functions of the variables $x$ , $y$ , and $z$ . I'm sorry if this is to mathy for your; but having some idea of what vector fields are is extremely useful in understanding some of the math. Go to the articles on electric field, vector field, and dipole; you can see some nice pictures of vector fields there.

Here's a great example of a vector field equation that defines the force due to gravity ( $\mathbf{F_G}$ ) under the influence of a single mass $M$ : $\mathbf{F_G}=\left \langle\frac{-GMx}{(x^2+y^2+z^2)^\frac{3}{2}},\frac{-GMy}{(x^2+y^2+z^2)^\frac{3}{2}},\frac{-GMz}{(x^2+y^2+z^2)^\frac{3}{2}}\right\rangle$ . Using the very useful substitution $\mathbf{r}=\langle x,y,z \rangle$ , we can simplify this to $\mathbf{F_G}=-\frac{GM\mathbf{r}}{|\mathbf{r}|^3}$ .

So, each kind of force field can be expressed as a vector function, magnetic fields are usually denoted by $\mathbf{B}$ (magnetic flux density/magnetic field strength) and electric fields by $\mathbf{E}$ (electric flux density/electric field strength). I will use $\mathbf{G}$ to denote gravitational field strength. I use bold to denote vector quantities here; that is the difference between $\mathbf{G}$ (gravitational field) and $G$ (Newton's constant): the former is a vector, the latter is just a number (or scalar).

One final properties to remember about vectors: their magnitude. Remember how we said that a vector can be represented by an arrow drawn from the origin to a point $P (x 0, y 0, z 0)$ ? The magnitude is equal to the length of that arrow, which, by the Pythagorean theorem, is $\sqrt{{x_0}^2+{y_0}^2+{z_0}^2}$ . The magnitude of a vector is denoted by $|\mathbf{a}|$ . Magnitude is a scalar quantity.

[edit] How fields act on charges and masses

At any given point in an electric field, the force that is caused by the field on a particle of charge $q$ is given by the equation $\mathbf{E}=\frac{\mathbf{F_E}}{q}$ . Likewise, a graviational field acts on a particle of mass $m$ with the relation $\mathbf{G}=\frac{\mathbf{F_G}}{m}$ .

This last equation is the one that I introduced you to way up at the top of this rant. By Newton's second law, every force is equivalent to a mass times the acceleration caused by the force. Thus, we can say that $\mathbf{F_G}=m\mathbf{a_G}$ , where $m$ is the mass of the object being acted upon by the field and $\mathbf{a_G}$ is the acceleration caused by the force of gravity. Plugging the expression $m\mathbf{a_G}$ into the equation for $\mathbf{F_G}$ , we arrive with the relationship $\mathbf{G}=\frac{m\mathbf{a_G}}{m}=\mathbf{a_G}$ .

Remember that at the earth's surface acceleration is approximately g (9.80665 m/s²). By definition, the magnitude of the acceleration due to gravity must always be g ( $g=|\mathbf{a_G}|$ ). So we are left with the conclusion that the local gravitational flux density $\mathbf{G}$ is the same thing as the local gravitational acceleration.

[edit] Conclusion

At this point, you're probably wondering why I said that the solution was so simple. Well, the solution really is very simple: I could have just told you that $\mathbf{G}=\frac{\mathbf{F_G}}{m}=\frac{m\mathbf{g}}{m}=\mathbf{g}$ . Partly, I felt that if I just tossed the equation at you you wouldn't appreciate the beauty of the result; partly, I just love lecturing on my favourite physics topics. I did my best to make it easy to understand, but you have to realise that I've packed about two weeks of math and three weeks of Physics into a few paragraphs.

Now it's time for me to tell a story. At the end of my AP Physics class my senior year of high school, we had spent a lot of time talking about electric and magnetic fields, field lines, fluxes, flux densities/field strength, electric and magnetic forces, etc. I had known for a while that gravitation can be portrayed with the same kind of fields that electric and magnetic forces can. So I sat down and thought about the implications of this. I decided to calculate the field strength at the earth's surface, and realised, with a shock that it was g. All that crazy stuff about vectors, lines of force, fluxes and flux densities boild down to simple acceleration. It was like some brilliant piece of poetry or an essay.

There are stories about how Einstein, upon learning Maxwell's equations, was so excited by them that he would lurk in coffehouses and corner passerby to lecture them on Maxwell's equations. If you can get to the point where you understand Maxwell's equations, they have a kind of indescribable beauty, like your favourite song or favourite sonnet.

Anyway, sorry about the rant. Hope you enjoyed it. Karl Dickman ^talk 04:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Beware of what you ask for... I should tell myself :) But I really enjoyed it. You really have a knack for explaining things. Thanks a lot. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Safiyya Round 2

See User_talk:Jossi#Safiyya

[edit] Category:Military robots

Category:Military robots. Have you ever seen this category? Most of the subject articles are UAVs, should it be deleted or perhaps revived? FrummerThanThou 21:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Convair B-36 FAR

Convair B-36 has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 04:12, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, that was dumb - I just realized that Ingoolemo redirects to you, and you made the nomination. Sorry :-) Sandy (Talk) 04:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../k/a/r/User_talk%7EKarl_Dickman_2fc9.html"

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