User talk:Punctured Bicycle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This user is currently busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.

[edit] Washington State

Hello. Generally, if a redirect's been sitting there for over a year, I would personally think it ought to stay that way, barring a good reason to change it. Any good reasons ought to be put on the talk page, right? Correct me if I'm wrong... (sorry about the "rvv", I got lazy with my edit summary, not the first time that's happened... My apologies.) Cheers. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 04:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for responding and not reverting... your good faith is greatly appreciated. Anyway, the "don't change things that've been there for a year+" was just referring to how you changed it without mentioning it first on the talk page... something that I did well before I changed the redirect over a year ago. When others (long after the change was made) brought up concerns, I did my best to answer them. Apparently their concerns were satisfied, since they didn't come back. Let's see the crux of the matter, though... what should "Washington State" point to? You're right when you say "Washington State Department of Transportation" uses "Washington State" correctly... however, no one would EVER refer to WSDOT by "Washington State". It's a non-issue. "Washington State" is NOT how one refers to the WSDOT, the WSDOJ, etc. So what's the issue there? All that matters is whether "Washington State" more properly refers to Washington or WSU, and I don't know what your argument is for that (simply saying it's subordinate is irrelevant: Georgia has been a disambiguation page for as long as I can remember). I await your response. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 23:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I hear you. However, that's not how redirects work--you're going about it from the wrong direction. The question we should be asking is this: if you tell someone, "hey, you know that sovereign region west of Idaho and north of Oregon? How would you get to its Wikipedia article?" ... they'd type in "washington" or perhaps "washington state", or if they knew what they were doing and were careful, "washington (u.s. state)" or "state of washington", all of which would take them to Washington. If we asked that person "hey, you know that institution of higher learning in Pullman? how would you get to its Wikipedia page?", they might type "wsu" (which wouldn't take them there, but there's nothing we can do about that), "washington state university", "wazzu", or "washington state". All of these would take them to the correct article, except "washington state". However, if the person was typing with capitals, the university-searcher would doubtlessly type "Washington State"--the state-searcher would most likely put "Washington state". That's the reasoning I used when I mde the redirect, at least.

As for WSDOT, etc... the reason "Washington State" is appropriate is because in department names, as opposed to WP articles, you capitalize every noun whether it's proper or not. Right? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 04:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Alright, so the question gets boiled down to "what's more natural?" We do write for an international audience, but would that international audience honestly type in "Washington State" looking for the state? I get what you say about how the lazy university-seeker vs. the diligent state-seeker, but I still believe a VAST majority type in "washington" or "washington state" to get to the state while some do type "Washington State" to find WSU. Doubtlessly, there are SOME who go to Washington State when they're looking for the state... but we have a header on top of the page for them, so the impact's the same as a disambiguation page would be (plus, they get to find out that "Washington State" is not how one refers to the state). Such a solution wouldn't work in reverse, however--the header on top of Washington is already crowded, and we'd have to make people scour a disambiguation page to find the university. I'm not sure how big a point that is in the large scheme of things, but it frustrated me back last year that it took two clicks and a scroll to get to what I thought the most logical destination for "Washington State" was... along with the fact that "Washington State" properly refers to the university 90% of the time. =/ Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 04:58, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal at Bananadine

Hi! I remember you added a very sensible proposal to merge Hallucinogenic effects of banana peels into Bananadine, just over a month ago, which I was intending to support and/or perform the merger, but I forgot about it until someone else reversed the merge. Anyway, to cut a long story short, your original merge tags are back in place and I've listed a merge proposal on Talk:Bananadine, I'd appreciate any comments you might be able to add to it. Thanks - Psychonaut3000 02:29, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Germany FA

Hello, when the voting for featured article status for Germany began, you objected mentioning the concern that not enough paper references were provided. Since then I have looked through the subsections of the article and added a number of books to the reference list, especially for the history section. Also, other users have added more primary sources in the form of inline citations. Could you please take another look at the state of the article and give your view. TSO1D 21:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)