User talk:Nickshanks/Pre‐admin

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Anyone who wishes to send a comment to me, please append it here.

[edit] Welcome Nick!

Hi Nick, welcome to Wikipedia! I noted your arrival when you edited the HFS+ article. Great to see that you've decided to contribute. If you have any questions, I'd love to help you as much as possible, so feel free to leave a message on my talk page. — David Remahl 10:38, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] San Francisco City Hall

Any more inspiring photos that need context? You got me going there! Wetman 00:57, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So! how's Hodge 301 now? Wetman 20:11, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Flemingsberg

Sorry, I shall leave the article now, but I was looking on RC and saw this page, I always feel the need to tidy up articles if I can (as per wikipedia advice :-)). User pages and subpages are a good place to experiment without them being interferred with, or else adding the {inuse} boilerplate text. I hope your student becomes a valuable wikipedia contributer! Darksun 19:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Planet Template

Aligning it up with the planet "templates", eh? Let me know once it has stabilised so I can update my AstOrb Browser tool. This is a small application (for Windows) which browses the AstOrb.dat data base downloadable from the MPC (and elsewhere) and which facilitates greatly the creation of Wiki entries. I'll be glad to send it to you if you intend to keep bashing at asteroids like me. Contact me by e-mail at D.U.Thibault@Bigfoot.com if that is your wish.

Urhixidur 23:06, 2004 Sep 8 (UTC)

[edit] Wilkommen

Hello, I just wanted to say that you rock. That is all, thanks. —Joseph | Talk 04:09, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Radar

The Los Alamos page says that radar was developed at the MIT Rad Lab. Which is true, even if it was a joint Anglo-American effort (which it clearly was). The ground-breaking work on radar was done in Great Britain, of course, but full development into a usable system was accomplished only with the massive resources the US government was willing to spend on the project during the war, when England was under bombardment. I put back in the part about radar in the Los Alamos article, but I added a line mentioning that the initial work was done in Great Britain, hopefully that will strike you as fair (it is silly to mention the Rad Lab at MIT in the context of the name 'Radiation Laboratory' without noting that it did a completely different thing from Lawrence's Rad Lab). --Fastfission 12:49, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sorry! I was just a bit pissed off after the Enigma article reminded me of the film, which managed to neglect any mention of Bletchley Park. Then i saw that saying radar was developed at MIT (which I misinterpreted as radar was invented at MIT).

[edit] Pagina prima

Hi Nick. I always really liked the fact that the Latin Wikipedia's main page was so distinctive from the others and I think a lot is lost if the heading is removed. I do however like the content of the boxes you have on la:Pagina prima/Nova but the left column needs to have more in it to match the length of the one on the right. Perhaps a featured article could go there? Angela. 22:20, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Hi. The new la main page is looking great now. :) Angela. 14:43, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] User page on it.wiki

Hi, on it.wiki an anonymous user has created it:Utente:Nickshanks..may be you, or perhaps not. If are really you, can you confirm it (after logging in it.wiki) in page it:Discussioni utente:195.137.85.17? You know, each user page is "reserved" (for habit) to the user, and if you don't registre as Nickshanks in Wiki, probably someone will delete your page! Thank you again! Ancem 12:30, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that was me, sorry – i forgot to log in.

[edit] West Bridgford

I don't have anything much to say about West Bridgford. I have never been there. On the other hand, I did write much of the article on Beeston. My largest contribution to small British places is my article on Whitnash. The last time I looked no one had edited it since I put it online. David Newton 17:35, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Received Pronunciation

What are you doing on Received Pronunciation? Can you please move the experiments to a subpage of your user page? We don't want complex formatting like what you're doing in the wikitext. If you want to suggest a new feature, discuss it on wikitech-l. Nohat 18:55, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about all that, I thought wikipedia supported HTML, so i added some spans so people could hide the sampa or ipa as per their preference. I was rather surprised to see it encoded <span> as &lt;span&gt; !!

I then panicked and tried to fix it as fast as I could before anyone noticed the mess. I tried anchor tags with no target, since they do not introduce any formatting which would need to be cleared, but they didn't work either, same bug. In the end I had to resort to <u> and just hope no-one wanted to underline them :-)

Anyway, it's all fixed now, it works and looks good. I have added .sampa {display:none;} to my monobook.css file and it works wonderfully. I will report a bug against <span> and <a> when I find out how. Nicholas 19:03, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The general consensus is that HTML in articles is bad. SPAN elements are not enabled and don't bother trying to get them enabled because there are a bunch of people who don't want them (but irrationally will allow inline div elements). I understand the problem you are trying to solve with the hiding of SAMPA, but creating a solution on one article that works for one user and adds a bunch of complex is not ideal. Making a template would be a better solution. In fact, I suggest you do that; unfortunately it still isn't ideal because templates are limited to being used 5 times on a page. Nohat 19:10, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ahh, well it only works for one person on one page because a) I've not publicised it yet, and b) I've not done all the other pages yet. I tried inline divs too but that wouldn't work because adding "display: inline" in the tag's style attribute overrode the "display: none" in the stylesheet. I also agree that HTML in articles is bad. Perhaps something like: {style="font-weight: 800;"|BOOM!} would be a good way of doing it. It looks like a template/table/wiki sort of way of doing things, the equals sign before the pipe being the distinguishing factor.

Could you tell me who doesn't think allowing markup (HTML or otherwise) is a good idea. I will point them to w3.org and fix things while they come to their senses. :-D I'm a nice guy really, I just see the light of a semantic web, and wikipedia can be a big part of that. Nicholas

Also, what's wikitech-i?

The basic idea of what you're trying to do is fine, but the approach you're taking won't get you very far. (That's not a threat, just a fact based on personal experience). Basically, the powers that be, i.e. the developers, are against allowing HTML markup in articles proper. Of course, certain things are not supportable in wikitext and require HTML. Since the introduction of templates, there has been a general consensus that when complex HTML is necessary, we want it in templates. I am actually presently working on a system for inputting out representing phonetic data on Wikipedia. And wikitech-l is a mailing list used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. See mail.wikipedia.org. Sorry this isn't more coherent, but I gotta run. Nohat 02:14, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Astronomers

About your friends' pages, I noticed one of them and looked through your past edits. Sorry if this bothers you, but those pages were not encyclopedic. I don't feel the need to discuss editing each page you have touched - you don't own them. As you mentioned, you knew someone would edit out the breezy, non-encyclopedic stuff at some point. While it may amuse you to write humorous stuff about your friends, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia.

I know, but since there was nothing there anyway I figured it would make a few people laugh till it was updated with better info. I don't mind and wasn't upset, except perhaps that they hadn't been given a bit of a longer run. Please try to not be so serious all the time, it'll do your health the world of good :-) Nicholas 00:36, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Circumcision

I assure you, I'm not stalking you. Circumcision, as you can see, is a pov hotbed and it's on my watchlist. I'm not watching your contributions. Rhobite 00:22, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

No problem, I will give you the benefit of the doubt! I put a query on the talk page about the line you have questioned, please explain why you think it's not npov - I have tried to explain why I think it is. I stumbled across the page via the hotbed that is Talk:Clitoris and from there female circumcision. I feel the latter is a much better article than it's male counterpart and was trying to help out.

[edit] Wikimeet

It'll probably be the first Saturday in June next year. A new UK notice board has just been started UK wikipedians' notice board the exact date will be announced there.It'll be nice if you can come.You are very bad with your photo names. Most of them have nondescriptive names such as IMG_0998.JPG. Those that do have a proper name are inaccurate. There are no warts visible on any of the warts and all photos, and I can't see cheese anywhere on the cheese photo only a rather good looking young man ;-) Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 06:28, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Copied from VFUD

i'm cleaing uo the undeletion page. I'm cop[ying this here to make sure you've seen it as i am about to remove it from VFUD Theresa Knott (The torn steak) 08:01, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Jonathon Ive

This article has mysteriously disappeared, despite not appearing on VfD, and not qualifying for speedy deletion. Could someone please restore it - it was a stub, but I was working on it. Nicholas

You aren't looking for Jonathan Ive, are you? Jonathon Ive has no deleted edits and does not show up in Wikipedia:Deletion log. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:12, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've created a redirect. Guanaco 01:12, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Programme

I noticed you just moved Chinese space program to Chinese space programme. This is a big "no-no" here. British and American (and Canadian and Australian, etc.) English coexist here. This article was clearly first written in American English so I have moved it back. Rmhermen 12:56, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

But programme and program, whilst being homophones, mean two different things. The former is used to denote a schedule or event (e.g. television programme, the outline of a school sports day, etc.). It is a noun. The latter is used to primarily in the IT industry to denote compiled, executable instructions. It is both a verb and a noun, and the two are not interchangeable. I was correcting the usage, the matter was not a international english vs. american english consideration, Wikipedia's policy on which I am quite aware and abide by.

Here are the entries from my dictionary (OED 3rd Ed.):

program n. series of coded instructions for a computer. —v.t. (p.t. programmed) instruct (a computer) or express (a problem) by means of this. programmer n.

programme n. plan of procedure; list of events or of items in an entertainment; these events etc.; broadcast performance.

This is a British English distinction, not an American English one. Program is used in both senses in American (and often in Canadian). Rmhermen 13:45, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

In that case the only unambiguous usage is to use both terms as outlined above. As an silly analogy, how about if someone from Boston moved Truck to Ladder (vehicle) citing that all trucks are also called 'Ladders' in Boston. It is not better to use the least ambiguous, most common definition? As an administrator you should be aware that it is official Wikipedia policy not to use the language the original author wrote in as you cited when reverting them, but to favour more common spellings over less common ones. Nicholas 16:55, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In American English, as far as I understand, there is no distinction. See the various entries at [1]. However, I think it may be appropriate to use "programme" in the title of this article, iff British English is taught and used more than American English in China. — David Remahl 16:56, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I doubt there is much confusion of meaning between these to spellings. As to which is most common, note these uses:

• "Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program" Australian Department of Immigration [2]
• "Canadian Program Certification" from Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
• "program of overseas aid" from Amnesty International (which was started in Britain)
• "embark upon a program of enormous reformation" New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
• "REFORM PROGRAM OF WEST BENGAL" from India's Ministry of Power

Rmhermen 17:47, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

Anyone can find typos to support their cause. Do you want me to produce a longer list from more official sources? That would be a silly exercise. Wikipedia has the following existing traits which I have observed since you started this dispute: All US programs are spelt the american way. All non-US programmes are spelt the international way. Go look for yourself. China, not being a part of america, should follow the latter policy. Do you still disagree? Nicholas 18:28, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to barge in here, but I think you are misinterpreting the Manual of Style guidelines. It says "For the English Wikipedia, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English (American, British, Canadian, and others). However, there is a certain etiquette generally accepted on Wikipedia". One of the principles of ettiquette is "Articles which focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally aim to conform to the spelling of that country (for instance the British "Labour Party"). A reference to "the American labour movement" (with a U) or to "Anglicization" (with a Z) may be jarring." There is no reference to "International English" as you put it. And barring any further evidence, the type of English used in China is as yet undetermined. As such the guiding principles are 1) "Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. For example, don't use center (American) in one place and fibre (British) in another." and 2) "If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please don't be too quick to make accusations!)", which essentially privileges the style of the person who first drafts the article. older≠wiser 18:56, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I am glad, Nicholas, that you like British spelling. However these examples are not typos. One of the oldest rules on Wikipedia is that we respect the first author's choice of spelling. It vastly cut down on the edit wars we used to have. Now this debate is moving back to the everything "not about America must be British" form of anti-Americanism -- we had this debate years ago -when we formulated the rule. Rmhermen 19:02, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

I stand by my dictionary and what I consider to be common knowledge that the two words have different meanings and are not interchangeable. One cannot be replaced by the other, so changing between the two or discussing it as a british vs. american thing is a void argument, akin to saying Pear is the american word for Apple and insisting all apples be called pears, in addition to the fruits already known as pears. This was honestly not one of those cases (in any case I would only revert changes from english to american, per WK policy, though I don't recall having done this in a single instance since I've been on here, 3+ months continuous, and about 18 months sporadically). I intended no anti-americanism in this particular matter, I would piss off far too many of my friends if I were anti-american :-). On another matter, since you just said above "One of the oldest rules on Wikipedia is that we respect the first author's choice of spelling" why have you moved pages I created which used programme? This contravenes your own principle. I am going to write a series of summaries covering indian, chinese (already begun), pakistan, us, russian (already begun), european, japanese and brazilian national space programmes (maybe others if I can get the info) and intend to have spelling consistency across the series. Nicholas 21:26, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Selenite Legalities

Nice start on lunar gov. Have you read http://www.iasl.mcgill.ca/spacelaw/moon.html yet? AlainV 02:01, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A long time ago I had, thanks for the reminder though. I will link to it and put in my comments on the declaration's ramifications. Nicholas 12:38, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Change default preferences

Hi Nick. Changing the default preferences wouldn't prevent stubs being created. All the option in Preferences does is turn links to stubs a different colour. I think a hard limit on page length would cause more problems than it solves. Currently, it easy to find short nonsense pages via Special:Shortpages. This would be harder if people started pasting in lots of junk to make their page long enough to save. Also, it would cause problems for pages that really are meant to be short, such as templates and disambiguation pages. Angela. 15:32, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure changing the colour would deter them from clicking the links. Secondly, it might be confusing to have so many different link colours for newcomers who don't know the meaning of them. Also, it's quite a strain on the server to check for stub preferences, or at least it used to be. This might not be the case now that we have page caching and parser caching etc. Anyway, if you think it would useful, you can suggest it at Mediazilla:. Angela. 02:01, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Nick. Since I very rarely edit on the Latin Wikipedia anymore, it probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to vote on RfA there. Good luck with your application though. :) Angela. 13:11, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Archaeology categories

Hi Nickshanks. Could you explain what you're doing with the archaeology categories? The British archaeology category covers a wide variety of topics; sites, cultures, tools, archaeologists etc. I hope that it will become a useful introduction to the subject. If you wish to add sites to an Archaeological sites in Britain category, please do not delete the other listings without explaining. Cheers adamsan 18:01, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi, yes it's quite simple, I'm separating out the sites from the general 'roman britain' type entries. I am putting them into a category who's name conforms to the format the rest of Wikipedia uses for archaeological sites, and making that a subcategory of both british archaeology and archaeological sites by country. This improved categorisation will take a while to complete, so please be patient. Nicholas 18:04, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think I'm done now. Could you look through British archaeology and verify all sites have been moved into British archaeology > Sites. I also created a Roman sites in Scotland category since one didn't exist. Nicholas 19:32, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cool, nice work. I suppose Jorvik could be separated out as a site as well as a tourist attraction and Aubrey Holes are an element of Stonehenge so might be more comfortable in the sites category. I'll take out Votadini from the sites list as they were a tribe. Great stuff though and I will start adding to your scheme from now on. adamsan 20:18, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I looked at Jorvik, but decided not to move it because it didn't really seem like a 'site', just the Norse name for York. I have subsequently been thinking about amalgamating the Roman sites in England/Scotland/Wales categories into their parent Roman sites in Britain category, as I don't think Wales and Scotland have enough sites to warrant their own subcategory. It seems unnecessary, what do you think? Nicholas 20:23, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've just found Roman sites in the United Kingdom which lists a few and which I guess will need incorporating somehow into the new system. As for Jorvik, I suppose it depends on your definition of archaeological site which I had a go defining a while back - could it go in both categories as it is certainly something that has been archaeologically investigated? adamsan 21:02, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well I'll leave it up to you to decide upon, as you're better placed than I am to make such calls. I'll move on for the time being. Find another corner of Wikipedia to spring clean :) Nicholas 21:12, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Nicholas, is there any pattern to the way you're rearranging categories? i.e., moving Category:Dorset for no obvious reason? Joe D (t) 19:40, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just that 'location' categories are usually at the end of the list - I try to arrange categories in a Most Relavent -> Least Relavent order. Nicholas 19:42, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] rail crash information

You may be interested in live updates from an industry insider here.

• BesigedB 22:17, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Hello, Latin scholar and gentleman!

Your message on my talk page suggests that you weren't paying attention. Well, ipse dixit. I'm on your front page because you invited people to be there: "If you're a friend of mine, or would like to be, please add yourself to this list"; and I forget where I first noticed your name (probably at the end of some wise comment) but it was enough to send me to our Latin playground to support your sysop nomination; where nobody has added a yes or no since. Best of luck! Robin Patterson 21:28, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] List of English words with diacritics

I'm the one responsible for growing that list. I had already started a list of loan words in English that had retained their diacritics that I had created thinking that I might submit some of them as a guest wordsmith for the http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/ A.Word.A.Day mailing list. When I first started my list, I looked everywhere on the internet and was very surprised that I when I couldn't find an already made list. [I was surprised that I didn't find a Wikipedia article for the A.Word.A.Day mailing list, which is one of the largest mailing lists on the internet.]

I then took my list and added some other words that I found in lists on the Wikipedia (see the links at See Also). The crazy thing is that I'm am still finding words that should be added. I just added doppelgänger today. [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 05:35, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

replied on my user page [[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 12:39, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Woman

Hi,

I'm glad you're interested in helping to improve the article Woman. But I would like to request that you use the talk page before making any more changes to the image on that article. Thanks, Rhobite 21:13, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Shepherd's Historical Atlas

Hello again! Another score! The image you uploaded now graces Empire as well. Shepherd's maps are unrivalled for clarity and beauty. Can you upload any more of them? --Wetman 09:50, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] kannada audio files

hi,

It might take me a bit of time to ready that, as I'm preparing for my exams. cheers, --Hpnadig 20:13, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

[edit] Kannada pronunciations

Here's a audio file: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~kulki/kannada/varna.html. You can listen to that for pronunciations. --Hpnadig 15:44, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] British Empire Map

Hello! Thanks for your kind words about my british empire map. I made it using a template that's been floating around wikipedia. I can't tell you who created it, but here are some more examples of it: Image:Country_positions_Iraq_war.png and Image:Gaymap.PNG As for making a map of all the areas that were once governed by London, I was going to do that, but came across problems involving how much of France once owned. If you can help me out with that, I would be more than happy to make such a map. Earl Andrew 21:07, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Iapetus 707 1408 0.jpg

Hi Nick,

The above image that you've listed for speedy deletion is used in Iapetus (moon) and therefore I can't delete it just now. Can you sort out the image in the article please? -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 21:52, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Being rather new to this commons lark I wasn't aware that that's what would happen. I'll go and try it now. -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 01:50, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Debra fischer 1.jpg

Greetings. Did you take the picture Image:Debra fischer 1.jpg yourself? If not, where did it come from? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 20:48, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I have amended the licence information for the photo. Nicholas

Nick, deleting user pages is kind of unusual in wiki.pt. Could you give me a good reason why you want it deleted? Please answer at your wiki.pt talk page, so i can get a official request of yours. Cheers, muriel@pt 14:41, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Could you explain in more detail?

Dear Nick,

You left a message on my talk page scolding me for a message that I had left for hpnadig, deleted two of my messages, and threatened to have me banned from Wikipedia.

I'm somewhat confused by all of this. I know I'm sometimes clumsy in social interactions (I have Asperger's syndrome), but I usually do OK online, where I can take my time and review my comments to make sure that they don't break any official or social rules.

Judging by your outrage, I must have done something terrible, but I'm not sure what, or what I should have done differently. I know we're not supposed to do personal attacks, but does telling someone that he doesn't write well constitute a personal attack? Since even you admit that the writing in question was sub-par, I don't see that saying it out loud was evil. I might have said it BETTER -- can you tell me how I could have done it?

I used to just change people's writing without any comment, but had people telling me that this was rude and that I should communicate with people who have taken usernames and try to collaborate with them. But it seems that here I should just have corrected hpnadig's edits without saying anything.

I'm also confused by your deletion of my message to pchere. I left that because I was trying to follow the rules about communicating reasons for my edits, and I thought that I was being friendly rather than rude.

Hoping for some enlightenment, Zora 22:14, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Zora, I was not aware you had asperger's so allow me to first respond to the above and then to clarify some of the points I originally made:

• Any comments that got removed when I posted were not of my own doing: I clicked the little + button at the top to append a comment to your user page. I have no idea if this is correct or not, but I suspect that if others come along and add comments before I've finished mine, they will get removed. Were both of the missing comments made within half an hour or so of mine, or were they old comments from days before?
• I did not threaten to have you banned, I warned you that what you did, should it continue, would get you into trouble with the administrators and you *might* get banned, depending on how serious things had got. But that's talking hypothetically.
• I was not outraged, but you did seriously upset Hpnadig and he expressed to me that he considered leaving the english wikipedia because of your comments. I had no qualms with you saying that his writing was sub-par, but the manner in which you did so, and most importantly the fact that you told him to stop editing and go away are what upset him and angered me. For the record I don't know Hpnadig and we have only spoken a couple of times on here to one another, but he came to me for solace when he read what you had told him to do. Since you requested, Here is how I would have worded a comment to Hpnadig about his contributions:

Hi there, I noticed you have been expanding the article on Bollywood films with more detailed descriptions of the films. I hope you don't mind, but as it seems English was not your first language I have amended the descriptions to be more concise and improve the grammar used therein. ~~~~

My main complaint was not that you commented or that you said his contributions were below par (though that was badly worded), the main reason I didn't approve or what you had said to Hpnadig was because you told him to stop editing. We are an open community and all contributions are welcome, those that can be subsequently improved upon will be, just as you did.
Again I just want to apologise for removing other comments on your user page, that was completely unintentional and I point the finger of blame at bugs in the Wikipedia software :-) I hope this clarifies matters for you. If you ever want to ask me to look over a comment you're worried might be taken badly, or that you have not got confidence is correct, just let me know and I will respond quickly. Thanks, and try not to frighten the little ones :) Nicholas 22:38, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dear Nicholas, thanks for the clarification. I'll write hpnadig and apologize for my clumsiness. Even though I'm socially maladroit, I don't want to cause pain.

I suppose it wasn't you, then, who deleted messages that I left on TWO talk pages, hpnadig's and pchere's. It must have been the users themselves. Given the timing, I thought it was you. So don't worry about that. Zora 01:09, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article on User page

You appear to be using the page User:Nickshanks/United States as a site for an article. I guess thats okay, but you really shouldnt place it in a category. Ive asked for clarification, but I think Wiki doesnt want User Pages listed in article categories. I would recommend moving the material to an actual article. Thanks -Husnock 9Feb05

Further to that, I notice that you used Move Page to move the article here. That wasn't a good idea: you should just have copied the text. You will now find it difficult to move the page back unless you are an administrator and can delete the article which is currently sitting at the original location. If you need help contact me when you are ready to move the article back as otherwise you risk losing the page history. Still not to worry. Good luck with the edit! -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:18, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I forgot about that. Yeah I created it and was going to write something, but then decided to put it in my user space till I was finished, and subsequently forgot about it. Is there a way to list all the subpages of my user page and see what else is lurking there? Nicholas 00:48, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User_talk:Zora

On User_talk:Zora you wrote: he came to me for solstice when he read what you had told him to do. You may wish to change "solstice" to solace, as I assume that's what you meant to write. --Viriditas | Talk 05:32, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Heh well spotted - alas such is the consequence of three hours sleep :-) Nicholas

[edit] maps

I am sorry you did not understood me. I do not have thousnds of vector maps to offer. I may give you the vector for the few maps I've uploaded to wikipedia, but as they were all made from rasterizing bitmaps they're not very precise. Google for "java map projections" and you'll find my little dirty secret. --Alexandre Van de Sande 21:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Swaziland king image

I've nominated the second Swaziland king image that you loaded for deletion on WP:IFD. The first image seems to me to be fairuse, but the second doesn't significatly add to the article, so not fair use.

Okay. Nicholas

[edit] Kuwaiti Dinar translation

Hi Nick,

I've translated the Kuwaiti dinar article you requested (from de:Kuwait-Dinar). Hope it's a help.

SteveW 16:14, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Article: de:Kuwait-Dinar
• Corresponding English-language article: Kuwaiti dinar
• Worth doing because: english article is pitiful.
• Originally Requested by: Nicholas 03:49, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Status: Translation complete - SteveW 15:52, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Other notes:

[edit] Having trouble

I am having trouble with a simonP. I edit Arete (virtue) and he immediately reverts the edits. Him and his friends have deleted [Classical definition of republic] and after the many facts and the quoting of material they will not acknowledge they won't even let an external link and the talk is ongoing at Talk:Republic. This man doesn't know what he is doing. I ask that someone step in and stop this please. This man has no expertise in the classical field. He is an anonymous user. WHEELER 16:58, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hello!

Thanks for the ligature. I'm the mother of the Acadian word list. Chiac is my mother tongue. I loved the link to the guerilla UK spelling campaign! Peace.--Sonjaaa 16:03, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

De rien. Voulez-vous traduire mon page utilisateur en français acadian pour moi? Nicholas 16:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Bhuza.jpg

Could you provide a source for Image:Bhuza.jpg? And, if possible, replace the {{unverified}} tag with a more suitable image tag. Thanks, LeonWhite 18:34, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Done. Not sure what the tag ought to be, so left it for someone else to do. Nicholas

Tagged as ((fairuse)). I've asked for permission at the website. — Zeimusu | Talk 04:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Standard Midwestern

Hi -- is the term "Standard Midwestern" really common? The reason I moved Standard Midwestern to General American in the first place is that all the published linguistic work on the accent I've ever seen has always called it General American. I've never seen Standard Midwestern in the linguistic literature, and I've never heard it used except maybe by nonlinguists who weren't sure what to call the accent of Americans without a noticeably regional accent. Anyway, that's why I prefer the wording "occasionally called 'Standard Midwestern'" to "also commonly called 'Standard Midwestern'". But if Standard Midwestern really is a common term in the literature, and I've just overlooked it (which is entirely possible!), then of course "also commonly called" is correct. --Angr 16:33, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps not in literature, per se, but it is a term I've heard used here (UK) by non-linguists when talking about accents, and disambiguates against the non-specific "general american" accent which is so-called by us to cover any accent vaguely american-sounding.

On another note, whilst I have your attention, is there an easy way to convert unicode to HTML entities? I am writing a transcription of my english user page, as spoken by me, in IPA and when I'm done would like to quickly convert it (as the english wikipedia doesn't do unicode, grrr!) Nicholas 17:06, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An easy way? Not that I know of. If I need to convert Unicode symobls into their HTML entities I usually just use the search-and-replace function of Microsoft Word. Shall we compromise and say "sometimes called" rather than "occasionally" or "commonly"? --Angr 17:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. Could you give your input to this: la:User:Nickshanks/IPA - I't currently quite a broad transcription because I can't find anything on the web that teaches me how to recognise the finer details (e.g. 'more open' and 'less open' - more/less than what?) I also can't find the unicode for the linking unberbar. Any pointers? Nicholas 18:21, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know, Unicode doesn't have the linking underbar, only the linking overbar at x0361. Not that you need a linking bar anyway, since Unicode has separate symbols for affricates at x02A4 and x02A7 if you don't like writing them as two symbols without a linking bar. The IPA transcription on your page looks pretty good, though I would make the following suggestions:

• you might use [ˈnɪkl̩əs] rather than [ˈnɪkəl̩s] for your first name. "Nicholas" is pronounced like "nickel" [ˈnɪkl̩] followed by [əs], isn't it?
• Do you really not have linking R in phrases like "center in" and "father and"?
• Do you not have a T in "Hatfield" and "Hertfordshire"? If the T is glottalized to glottal stop, you should use [ʔ] to represent it; as it currently stands they look like "Haffield" and "Harfordshire". This might apply to "eighteen" as well, which you have transcribed as "ay-teen". I for one pronounce it "ayt-teen" with either an extra-long T sound or with a glottal stop followed by a simple T, but then I'm American, and the American accent is often more conservative than British accents.
• I notice everything is non-rhotic except your middle name, which you have given a rhotic pronunciation.
• You might use [ə] rather than [ʌ] for the last syllable of "Nottingham" since the convention is to use the former in unstressed syllables and the latter only in stressed syllables. By the same token, the stressed vowel of "university" should be transcribed [ɜː]
• "of" in "first of May" and "University of Hertfordshire" is usually reduced to [əv] in normal conversational speech. (You left the vowel out of the penultimate syllable of "university", too.)
• The first vowel of "nineteen" is usually transcribed [aɪ], at least for RP, but you may well be correct that your pronunciation is [ɑe]. Since I haven't heard you speak, I can't say.
• Most people write [kw] rather than [kʷ] in English, because it behaves like a cluster of two sounds rather than like a single sound in English. But phonetically the two are virtually identical.
• This is just a matter of personal taste, but I tend to avoid using the period that marks syllable boundaries unless it's absolutely necessary. It's unnecessary and IMO makes the transcription harder to read. Also, especially in English, it's often quite unclear where the syllable breaks are, or if indeed some consonants might belong to two syllables at once.

--Angr 19:15, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Safari PDF support

Works for me on Panther. http://www.mcmillan.cx/~alistair/pdf_test.html AlistairMcMillan 21:39, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Hgc92_8bit_med_res.jpg

While working on the untagged images project, I came across this image you uploaded, and the license is pretty clearly a non-free one. I listed it for possible deletion. Just letting you know in case you want to try to save it.. Rebrane 05:52, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

In response to your comment on my user page, I think you're mistaken -- go look at the usage rights again. [3] Specifically, under section 2, they list a number of additional conditions of use, most troublingly an obligation to "promptly provide sample copies" "upon publication". Am I missing something? Rebrane 15:45, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

All we have to do is send them the URL of wikipedia. Why is that troublesome? Nicholas 15:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category:UK Wikipedians

Hi, just to let you know that the list of UK participants at the UK notice board was getting rather long, so I have replaced it with the above category which I have added to your user page. -- Francs2000 | Talk 30 June 2005 20:32 (UTC)

[edit] London bombings

Thank you for your unkind, anonymous remark. Not true. I was copyediting the text correctly. See the talk page. - MPF 8 July 2005 11:19 (UTC)

My request was neither unkind nor anonymous, and my edits are to correct typographical errors. You reverted me in error. Nicholas 8 July 2005 11:25 (UTC)

It was anonymous - I had to view the history to see who posted. That may have been an accidental error, but it did not come over as a pleasant request. - MPF 8 July 2005 11:27 (UTC)

Yes, I realised I didn't put the ~'s but as I was logged in, it wasn't a concern.

I have checked the Wikipedia Manual of Style, and your claims about punctuation and link positions are incorrect. I've added details at the London bombings talk page. - MPF 8 July 2005 11:40 (UTC)

Hi - Thanks for your comments about my hyphen changes, but when viewed on my IE browser the existing characters came out as "box" characters. As the hyphen had been used elsewhere on the page (e.g. double-decker), and displayed correctly, I fixed the others. And they're still there as hyphens, not your strange, more unhelpful characters. Can you cite anywhere that proves my edit wrong? Stephenb 8 July 2005 18:41 (UTC) Additional: even the hyphen page does not use &#8208! Although I admit the alternative Unicode codes do work on Firefox, this does not seem to be sufficient justification! Stephenb 8 July 2005 19:08 (UTC)

[edit] Yet Another London Wikimeet

Heya,

We're organising another London meetup, for Sunday the 11th of September; specifics still to work out, but it will probably be fun as ever, and involve a few drinks and a nice chat in a pub. We'd love to see you there...

James F. (talk) 22:07, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode numbers

I think  tags must be used because the Unicode numbers look way too small, too ugly, and not everyone can see them. They may appear as squares, which is too bad when the numbers are important.--Jyril 16:25, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quaoar

Hi Nick,

I see you were able to confirm that 50000 Quaoar is pronounced with a [kʷ], not a [qʷ]. Could you document on the talk page were you found that? I don't have access to a Tongva dictionary, and was only going by the impression I got over the telephone that the consonant was uvular.

Thanks, kwami 18:51, 2005 July 30 (UTC)

Ahh, you're perhaps better placed than I am then, as I am going by pronunciations by people at my university astronomy departments, who are all english speakers (and by the non-IPA spellings in the article itself). :) It was my assumption that the person who put it originally typed q because Quaoar begins with a Q (i.e. it was an error). I'll change it back until we have anyone who is qualified to say one way or another. Nicholas

Thanks. I didn't know about the IPA template when I put that in, and used ad hoc symbols for browser compatibility. The Tongva woman I spoke to said it wasn't like an English kay, but what she meant by that I don't know. (Labialized and unaspirated?) The way she said it it could have been uvular, but that wasn't clear. I would like to confirm some day. kwami 00:44, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Actually, since you have a university library handy, could you check out a Tongva grammar or dictionary, or get one thru interlibary loan? (Actually, that might be hard; the only thing I come up with is Továngar : world : a Gabrielino word book by Anne Galloway, Malki Museum Press, c1978, but it's only 36 pages long. That just might, however, show whether labialized velars and uvulars contrast in Tongva; if Tongva only has one of them, that will settle the issue.) kwami 01:19, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Thanks for restoring the Greek in Ixion. I assume that it was removed because it can now be found in Wiktionary, but in other cases the Greek has been removed by people who didn't understand why it was there. kwami 23:20, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

Actually I found it in Google's cache :-) Nicholas

[edit] Hatfield House

I notice that you put an extract from a visitor's pamphlet into the article about Hatfield House. If it is such an extract then the text would be copyrighted to whoever wrote the pamphlet. Did you get permission to include the text in the article? David Newton 11:52, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

The leaflet has no copyright attributed to it and is given away for free. Since no copyright is claimed the content would be suitable, would it not? Nicholas 15:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

The fact that the leaflet is given away free makes no difference. Copyright subsists immediately an original work is recorded in a tangiable form, ie written down, recorded etc. You say that, "The leaflet has no copyright attributed to it …." I presume that means that there is no copyright symbol with a year of copyright on the leaflet. That is bad practice if it is true, but it still does not necessarily mean that the leaflet is in the public domain. Did you check with the people at Hatfield House to see what the situation is? If the leaflet is an anonymous work it will be under copyright for 70 years from creation. Somehow I doubt that they are still using a leaflet from the 1930s. David Newton 07:19, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biloxi

I reverted your edits changing Biloxi to a town. Biloxi has a city council and city hall, rather than a town hall. Check out their official web page for verification. If you have a source stating otherwise please post it when making a change. Thanks! --Holderca1 14:53, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Apple typography

Hi, I don't know if you are aware if Apple typography is on FAC, so just pinging you. :-) Its a great article, but I have some doubts regarding Indic languages, which I have put up on the FAC candidature page. Regards, pamri 07:10, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Meetup

Heya,

Just a quick note to remind you of the London Meetup this coming Sunday (the 11th of September) that you signed up for (as 'probable', so hopefully it's just a small push to get you to 'definite' ;-)). It's at the Archery Tavern, just next to Lancaster Gate tube station, from 13:00 (BST) onwards.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Yours,

James F. (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Ahh... thanks anyway. Nicholas 15:24, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Planetary classification nomenclature

Hi Nick,

There is a another list of Star Trek planet types @ Star_Trek_planet_classifications. I have submitted the page you started to a VfD as it does not yet contain much detail and the other page seems to be more complete. Gloop 11:21, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dental nasals

Hi, you might want to edit the {{consonants}} template to include the dental and postalveolar nasal consonants. Zeimusu | Talk page 14:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Belay that request. I tried doing that, and got a recommendation against it.  Denelson83  23:54, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the dental and postalveolar nasals are included in the symbol [n]. That is, [n] is not specifically an alveolar consonant, just a coronal one. There is a diacritic in the ExtIPA specifically for alveolar, but the distinction isn't often made. Same goes for [t, d, s, z, l, r]. kwami 01:53, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting to know! thanks for the info. It might be nice to link to those from the table nonetheless, makes the articles easier to find. What do you think? Nicholas 22:48, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kristen

That article is not a speedy delete - please use WP:AFD. Thue | talk 11:37, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

The same with Ashley Script. Or at least you have to find an admin knowledgeable in the area. Thue | talk 11:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Hej Thue. Make me an admin and I'll qualify :-) I'm a registered Mac developer that gets issued copies of new Mac OS releases in all supported languages. I have 15 years experience using them from System 7 to Mac OS 10.4, the current version. I am certain that no fonts called Kristen or Ashley Script ever shipped with the OS in any language, though whether or not the fonts exist elsewhere I do not know. Perhaps the user who created the pages installed the fonts along with a piece of software they use often, and re-installed that software whenever they installed a new OS too, thus never realising what the true origin of the fonts was. Whatever the reasons, the pages should be removed until the true existance/source of the fonts can be established. Most of the articles are simply {{font sample}} templates. Nicholas 12:16, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

While you are by all probability completely right, since I don't have personal knowledge in this area I would be more comfortable if you would just use 10 minuttes to list the articles at WP:AFD. Thue | talk 08:48, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Font Samples

You are creating images to replace the font sample template. Are there any you can't do? I have about 50,000 fonts :-) Nicholas 23:58, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't have that many but are 50,000 fonts of yours on Wikipedia articles -- Thorpe ^talk 15:58, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of copper in Sweden

Hi Nick. I read the above article with interest - it's something I knew nothing about, despite a keen interest in all things Swedish. Just one thing I was wondering - I thought the article might be more accurately entitled "History of copper currency in Sweden" - as it stands, the title of the article makes it sound like it should deal with copper in general in Sweden. Do you have any opinion on this? Cheers, CLW 20:09, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I was hoping it would get expanded by others. Move it, rename it, delete it, re-write it if you like. This is Wikipedia. Nicholas 21:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] From Biquipedia

Hi Nicholas, I'm Willtron, from Biquipedia (Aragonese Wikipedia). I've just translated your user page into Aragonese, you can see it here. I've omitted the Wikimedia Babel, because there's no templates for any language in Aragonese Wikipedia at the moment. You can upload your photograph if you want. I like the idea to have user pages in many Wikipedias, I have user pages in an, ast, ca, en, es, fr, pt and commons. If you want I can also translate your English user page into Spanish. Regards --Willtron (Talk) 21:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, your user page in Spanish Wikipedia is translated. You can see it here. --Willtron (Talk) 19:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your RfA

I have removed your RfA from the RfA list because you haven't answered the candidate questions. You can add your RfA back when you have answered them. — JIP | Talk 17:47, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] You're a sysop!

Hey there. I'm pleased to let you know that, consensus being reached, you are now an administrator! You've volunteered to do housekeeping duties that normal users sadly cannot participate in. Sysops can't do a lot of stuff: They can't delete pages just like that (except patent nonsense like "aojt9085yu8;3ou"), and they can't protect pages in an edit war they are involved in. But they can delete random junk, ban anonymous vandals, delete pages listed on Votes for deletion (provided there's a consensus) for more than one week, protect pages when asked to, and keep the few protected pages that exist on Wikipedia up to date.

Almost anything you can do can be undone, but please take a look at The Administrators' how-to guide and the Administrators' reading list before you get started (although you should have read that during your candidacy ;). Take a look before experimenting with your powers. Also, please add Administrators' noticeboard to your watchlist, as there are always discussions/requests for admins there. If you have any questions drop me a message at My talk page. Have fun! =Nichalp «Talk»=

Please also add your name to WP:LA. User:Nichalp/sg 07:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Congrats on adminship

Well done - no oppose votes says something. Dlyons493 Talk 07:01, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I am quite chuffed. Nicholas 21:03, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Congrats Nick. I thought, you were already an admin. :-) --Pamri • Talk 13:46, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Congrats! :) --H P Nadig * ^{\Talk \Contributions} 06:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Popups tool

Congratulations on being made an admin! I thought you might like to know of a javascript tool that may help in your editing by giving easy access to many admin features. It's described at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. The quick version of the installation procedure for admins is to paste the following into User:Nickshanks/Pre‐admin/monobook.js:

// [[User:Lupin/popups.js]] - please include this line 

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

popupShortcutKeys=true; // optional: enable keyboard shortcuts
popupAdminLinks=true;   // optional: enable admin links

There are more options which you can fiddle with listed at Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. Give it a try and let me know if you find any glitches or have suggestions for improvements! Lupin|talk|popups 23:20, 20 October 2005 (UTC)