User:Rich Farmbrough/Talk Archive 7

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[edit] Vandalism of Tookie Williams

Dear Rich,

I'm not experienced at talk, so if this is in the wrong place, my apologies. Someone has moved Tookie Williams page as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stanley_Williams_on_Wheels&action=history

Thanks, Beth

[edit] Spellsinger reverts

Rich, your bot added a link to The Weavers in the article that I've written. I've removed the link as the Weavers in Spellsinger are a group of sentient spiders, the one you linked to are a folk group. Hope you don't mind me sorting that out. Douglasnicol 18:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, not me but you! No problem. P.S. Generally add new sections to the bottom of talk pages. Rich Farmbrough 13:44 13 March 2006 (UTC).
Ah, my mistake, sorry about that. Douglasnicol 17:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Movement to impeach George W. Bush

Dear Rich,

When I went to add citations in the press today in response to the NSA issue, I noticed that there had been a POV warning on this article [1]forever. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Beth --Beth Wellington 09:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the POV tag, Rich. We'll see if it remains gone.--71.254.64.97 02:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Mirrorvax [2] added another warning to the site as soon as you took it down. This is really frustrating. What original research? This tagging seems to rise to vandalism. Any suggestions. If you check in the discussion, folks have already had extended discussions with him that have been unproductive. --Beth Wellington 02:17, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Rich,

In the support for impeachment section, why is a subsection on media editorial by a reputable business magazine less encyclopedic than a subsection on entertainers? I don't want to get into an editing war that approaches a 3r infractin. Would you mind weighing in on Stbalbach's deleting this content to the discussion page? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 04:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Dear Rich,

[[3]] today by anonymous User:70.85.195.225 again tags this article. Could you take a look. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 18:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for your vote on my RFA

Now that the voting has officially closed, I would like to thank you very much for supporting my candidacy for adminstrator and as of 18:36, 28 October 2005 (UTC) I am an administrator. I will make sure to use the additional power judiciously and I welcome any comments you may have. --Reflex Reaction 19:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[4]

[edit] Happy Diwali

Image:Diwali.jpg
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya ( Lead me from darkness to light.)
Wish you Happy Diwali
- P R A D E E P Somani (talk)
Feel free to send me e-mail.

[edit] Metrication in the UK

Metrication in the UK. Hi, I noticed your mention of aircraft parking as an exception to metrication law. I searched UK and EU sites for references to aircraft parking but found none. This exception does not exist in any legal reference I have seen. Can you provide any more background on the assertion?

Incidentally, the mention of aircraft height in the dti reference puzzled me at first. At first glance, I thought it was suggesting an exemption for the vertical dimension of the aircraft itself. That would be a weird exception and unlikely to be particularly of concern for aviation. However, it is merely an amiguous reference to use of the foot for altitude which is mentioned in legal documents e.g. Air Navigation Order. Many thanks. Bobblewik 11:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reduce overlinking.

Some people add brackets to full dates for preferences to work. Solitary months and solitary years don't have preferences.

Our discussion made me notice that you do a lot with dates. I have started unlinking solitary year links and solitary month links with the summary:
Reduce overlinking. Some people add brackets to full dates for preferences to work. Solitary months and solitary years don't have preferences.

People do all sorts of bizarre things with dates and it is fairly random and unsatisfactory. There was a discussion about modification of the Wikipedia software so that dates are automatically recognised. This would do away with the need for editors to apply '[['. It was taken seriously at fairly high levels but it seems to have fizzled out. Can we both raise the issue again together? Bobblewik 15:08, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Baseball

Hello, I stumbled across Wikiproject:major league baseball. I see that it talks about the 2005-2006 season. This seems odd to me since it seems like a season is contained within one calendar year. There is currently no discussion page to the article. The page seems like it was created by a Bot, and you have the most recent edit, so I'm guessing you are the one to ask aobut this. Should it be changed, or is it correct? Johntex\talk 22:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I know nothing about baseball, except what I learned form Peanuts and other American comedy. However I think the article refers to the "standings" i.e. rank which would hold between two seasons. USer:C2 aaron is a real person, a relativly new contributor, I'm not sure why this is a wikiproject: I've sort of asked him. Rich Farmbrough 23:16, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the informaiton. I hope User:C2 aaron is not offended I thought s/he was a bot. I'll go ask him/her about it. Johntex\talk 23:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] C2 aaron

Aaron Ryland aka C2 is not Aaron Elwen, the problematic user who was blocked along with his sockpuppets. DavidGerard did an IP chekc and Aaron was using the same IP as the other user and that it was at a highschool. C2 has admitted to being friends with Aaron Elwen. C2 was blocked by the autoblock probably. Jobe6 Image:Peru flag large.png 23:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 363

Hmm... that's really weird. How did I make that mistake? Sure, I can undelete it for you. Linuxbeak | Talk 23:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Thank you very much for supporting my rather contentious request for adminship, but now that I've been promoted, I'd like to do a little dance here *DANCES*. If you have any specific issues/problems with me, please feel free to state them on my talk page so that I can work to prevent them in the future, and thanks once again!  ALKIVAR™ 07:43, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Okay

Hey what's up? Nuthin' much here. I'm ok. New placement. Ryland 16:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification

The Joey page was a G1 (No meaningful content), but was also a duplicate article. ( See Joey (film) ) I should have been more clear, and for this, I apologise. Krzypntbllr 01:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quizme

Hello, I came across this 'random article' and wondered whether this was something that should be referred to AfD. But I'm new to this and wanted to get your opinion, since you had already wikified it and knew something about it.Crusading composer 03:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough.Crusading composer 21:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 6 Music, etc. programme listings put in article

Hi Rich. I saw you made a language change to the BBC 6 Music article. Fine. My question, as an author and contributor, is that someone made a change to all the BBC rock station websites BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC 6 Music websites, using an ip address id, to put the entire current broadcast schedule, hour by hour, in the article. I have grave doubts about this. It seems too specific and burdensome to maintain. We had simply a listing of the presenters and show names before. Also, there is an external link to the BBC stations' websites for the schedules. I don't want to edit it out unless there's some concensus feeling. I put a comment on the BBC 6 Music discussion page, ( Talk:BBC_6_Music ) but so far nothing. The poster who changed it might be well-intentioned or fiddly based on his previous contribution history ( User_talk:217.33.74.20 ). Any suggestions ? -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, very much, Rich. I'm fine with leaving it until or if things go awry. I appreciate your response. I was unsure of my Wiki-feet on this one ! We'll collectively try to keep it up to date. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 23:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BBC sites and internal dead links

Hi Rich. An anonymous contributor made changes to many of the BBC sites (see above) but also just made internal article links where there were no supporting articles. He internally linked all names in the BBC 6 Music Past Presenter list. And other BBC radio articles where there are more names.

This is very hard, if there is a list of, say, ten or even thirty items, which ones are articles and which internal links are dead-ends. I had left them as plain text until I or someone had written a supporting article, then would change the plaintext name into an internal link to the new article. The anonymous contributor has done it to all names in all BBC radio articles. Lots of dead article links.

One can't distinguish which of a list of thirty presenters, have an article. One now has to try all thirty.

Is there some policy, or so you have a take on it ? Should internal pointers to non-existent articles be made when there's no obvious intention of the contributor's writing the supporting article ?

I think it disturbs the reader's flow to point to a number of contiguous dead articles.

Many thanks in advance. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:05, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Got your message. Many thanks for your kind response. I agree also, that a slew of dead article links obfuscate the readability of the article and drilling down for more information. I guess a couple of dead article links, as you say, may encourage people to write articles. But in some of the BBC radio pages, the anonymous user made _all_ presenter names as Wikipedia articles, which is a bit more than a couple and may cause the end-reader to give up on trying to click on other live article links in the list. It's a lot of work to go and fix them. I will look into it.
The anonymous contributor who made the dead article links is User_talk:217.33.74.20 and has been asked about vandalism, although I would hesitate in this case to say it really obviously was.
But one other thing. Is it not the intention when making an article reference Wikipedia link, as opposed to plain text, that one will write the article shortly ? Otherwise, shouldn't one just leave it as plain text until he is ready to write the article ? Thanks for your guidance and help. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hi Rich. Many thanks for your further thoughts on the matter. I will follow your operative wisdom. I agree with all you and Sannse (sannse (talk)) said. I will work it out accordingly. I now know about the colours of article links that you and Sannse are talking about to distinguish a non-existent article pointer from a link to an existing and real article ! I hadn't paid attention to them before. Best wishes. -- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia UK

You have expressed an interest in Wikimedia UK. Just to let you know I've posted a draft Memorandum of Association and Articles of Association of the proposed "Wikimedia UK" charitable company on Wikimedia UK/Memorandum of Association and Wikimedia UK/Articles of Association. It is proposed that these will receive initial approval by interested parties at a meeting on 27 November. I will put together a brief agenda for the more formal aspects of that meeting soon. Memo and Arts of Association are a company's constitution, and need to be agreed before the company is formed (though they can be changed at a later date). Please feel free to comment on the relevant talk pages (I'd rather the proposed drafts are left unedited so that it is easy to see what is going on) - particularly if there is something there that you would disagree with at the meeting, details of which can be found on the Wikimedia UK page on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Kind regards, jguk 19:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jake Thackray

You asked about possible copyright infringement. I am a member of a Jake Thackray mailing list, and the original author of the sleeve notes is on the same list. I asked permission before I posted the entry, and sent a link to the entry to the list when I had completed it, so I don't think there will be an issue. Regards Chris Sunderland 12:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Loblolly

Hi Rich - I found this interesting discussion on the etymology [5] (from google's cache, as the original page appears to be defunct). It seems 'loblolly' has several meanings, including a mud hole, in which the pines sometimes grow - MPF 11:41, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Islamofascism

As far as I can tell, the AFD for this was never decided as a clear redirect. Would you agree? I'm asking as you were the closing admin. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mohave

Hi Rich,

I noticed that you moved Mojave people to Mojave. This is incorrect, because as stated on the Mojave Desert page, Mojave is used to describe the desert, while Mohave is for the tribe. I am unable to move the page to Mohave however, because the Wiki won't let me. That's why I listed it on Requested Moves and added a note about it on the dicussion page. Perhaps you would be able to vote on Talk:Mojave? Thanks. --Hottentot 03:46, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

So could you please move Mohave to Mohave (disambiguation) and Mojave to Mohave? Thanks. --Hottentot 00:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, you got it. Thanks! --Hottentot 00:23, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I just found out that there is one more: would you be able to move Talk:Mojave to Talk:Mohave? --Hottentot 06:45, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. :-D --Hottentot 19:36, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mediawiki redirects for deletion

You listed these, now at Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion/Old. I've moved all the reamining Template:VfD-<article name> into the wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ space, and deleted the redirects, can you advise what redirects are in the Mediawiki space? Rich Farmbrough 16:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Add the following code to your CSS style-sheet and then view the list of pages in Mediawiki. The redirects will be displayed in indented italics. Redirects don't belong in Mediawiki space -- it should be reserved only for system messages.
/*  Copy text starting after this line */

.allpagesredirect {
    font-style: italic;
    margin-left: 1em;
}

/*  Stop copying above this line */

Thanks very much for helping perform this maintenance. -- Netoholic @ 04:00, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Great job, Rich. -- Netoholic @ 03:25, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arbitration accepted

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Webcomics has been accepted. Please place evidence at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Webcomics/Evidence. Proposals and comments may be placed at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Webcomics/Workshop. Fred Bauder 22:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Genocidal Massacre

Not to be aggressive Rich, but you're removing the Warrigal Creek massacre from the Genocidal Massacre page because "it's not in the time frame of the UN" is just plain arrogant and ignorant. Firstly, this doesn't change the fact it qualifies as an incident of Genocidal Massacre. Secondly, by your logic, the Armenian Genocide should be removed because it took place 30 years before the founding of the UN. I don't think you'd go as far as to do that. If you wish to talk about this further, please message me on my talk page. Evolver of Borg 22:10, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

By all means remove the Armenian incident, which should not be on the Genocidal massacre page. I moved the text to Warrigal Creek and did some research on the subject. For reaons I forget I didn't have time to re-write the apalling paragraph that was there, but I did put some references at the foot of the article, to help anyone who feels like creating a proper well sourced article. Rich Farmbrough 16:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
You understand when I say the Armenian Genocide I'm not referring to the Genocidal Massacre page but Genocide in general. The same principles apply to both. Evolver of Borg 21:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, then the same principle doesn't apply. This is about what belongs on which page, not what belongs on the 'pedia. Warrigal did not have a page before I created it. Rich Farmbrough 00:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Wait wait wait. I think I'm confused. What exactly are we talking about, 'Warrigal Creek' or 'The Warrigal Creek Massacre'? If we're talking about the creek, good on you for writing the article. If we're talking about the massacre, then I'm confused about what exactly we're discussing. Are we saying that the massacre should remain on a seperate page and not the creek page, or something else? Slightly confused Evolver of Borg 01:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
My opinion is that if enough data for Warrigal Creek massacre to be a decent page can be found it should have it's own page. Ohterwise a section in Warrigal Creek. I think the information should be sourced, and if possible from (checked) primary sources. I've found the name of the stockman (?) who was killed, but I don't think my source is reliable enouigh to go in the article. Perhaps contemporary newspaer accounts exist? Rich Farmbrough 01:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I've just "googled" "Warrigal Creek massacre -wikipedia" almost the only non-wikipedia refernces are to Gadener's article and the ref I cited above. Rich Farmbrough 01:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I found out about the massacre about a year ago when I undertook a genocide studies course, but I think my notes were what I wrote down on the page. Could be more though. I'll check the resource we used. Evolver of Borg 05:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Was Warrigal Creek never moved in the end, or has it just been reverted to? If the term "genocidal massacre" refers specifically to breaches of the UN Convention, then it should not be listed on that page... Nicolasdz 09:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, I have no particular information, but the date of the event seems to make it impossible to be a "genocidal massacre." Nicolasdz 19:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Rich, for now, then, let's leave it be, and as soon as I have time I'll dig up some other examples, move the "Warrigal Creek" stuff to a separate article, and create a link in the main genocide article to "Genocidal Massacre."

[edit] Mañana Será Otro Dia

  • I don't know what you mean by "stayed too long" but it's there. --Dystopos 23:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Ah. Perhaps if I had actually looked at the history I would have known what you were talking about. Ignore me. --Dystopos 23:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cat:British institutions ->Cat British organisations

Becasue this was done by a mechanism other than "move", history is lost. Regards, Rich Farmbrough 19:06, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point, though this is standard procedure at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, whether or not a bot is involved. You might want to comment on the talk page there if you think this should be changed. -- Beland 02:27, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Zimbabwe

Thanks for your pass through the Zimbabwean history pages - much appreciated. Wizzy…☎ 06:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Crannog

Hi Rich, I am not quite sure where the contradiction is in the article that you refer to. All I can see is a slight ambiguity about the usual means of access to the crannog (canoe or causeway), but a one word change would fix this. Am I missing something? --Cactus.man ✍ 20:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, glad to know I am not losing my marbles. I will do some checking and fix things up. Regards. --Cactus.man ✍ 08:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reticular Formation

Hornby Article I think it is April 1st.

Also, Can you help me preserve my images? Most of them are taken from 1) the Internet, 2) Books from the 60's, 3) Bear et al. and Kandel et al.

[edit] Fred Phelps

I see that you recently edited the Fred Phelps article. This article is currently a nom for Featured Article. I kindly ask that you go vote on it. Thank you.

[edit] Wikification

Hi, I have seen several of your edits where you wikify new aricles tirelessly. Keep up the good work. However, some of the new articles are copy-paste jobs from websites and hence, mostly copyvios. Please check the content for copyvio on google & msn search engines (the latter is better as it tracks obscure sites also, imo) and tag them accordingly if they are copyvios - so that we can clear copyvios asap. --Gurubrahma 06:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I was refering to Jagtar Hawara. Thanks, --Gurubrahma 05:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Rich, please help

I would like to request your help with serious NPOV and verifiability problems on the Arabic numerals page. I have mentioned it, yet again, here Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#December_17. Please help me recruit as many neutral and well-intending editors to the page to counter the strong and manifest bias. Regards, and thanks. csssclll (14:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC))

Hi Rich! Thanks for your intervention in this matter, and I hope things become normal on this article very soon. Our aim is to minimize any conflict. The change in article name was done with consensus, and was based on the following reasons:
  • "Arabic numeral" is a very common colloquial term for Hindu-Arabic (so fits one of the many criteria for naming on wikipedia), but it's not appropriate in the more formal context of the title of an encyclopedia article, which should be more rigorous in reflecting academic norms.
  • All other encyclopedias like Britannica [6], refer to the symbols exclusively as "Hindu-Arabic" everywhere they are mentioned. Articles in research papers and other encyclopedias (that are written by professional people who are rigorous scholars, who are paid a lot of money for their work, who are held accountable for what they write, and are peer-reviewed at many levels) exclusively use the term "Hindu-Arabic numerals".
  • According to another article on Britannica, titled "The Hindu-Arabic system" [7], the numerals are "commonly spoken of as Arabic but preferably as Hindu-Arabic."
  • Definitely preferred by scholars, e.g., as per Peter Wardley [8]
"`Hindu-arabic' is preferred over `arabic' as a more accurate and useful description for two reasons: first, it places primacy on the region where this system of numerical representation had its origins, the Indian sub-continent; and, second, it draws attention to the difference between the numerals currently used in Arabic countries and those adopted by Europeans after the introduction of various adaptations. The latter, of course, has become the internationally accepted system of numerical representation."
The editors who supported: User:kwamikagami, User:DaGizza, User:Frogular (changed later to weak support), User:Subramanian, User:Raj2004, User:Peyna, and User:deeptrivia (myself). User:csssclll, and User:Sam Spade were neutral. User:Vertaloni opposed at the time, but has since then accepted. User:csssclll does not dispute (at least did not dispute at that time) the name change. He wants certain things to be included in the article, and he has some other issues, like he wants Al Khwarizmi to be called Arab and not Persian. We have included many portions of his text in the article, and mentioned at many places the problems we have with some other portions. We haven't seen any reasonable responses to those objections. Thanks a lot for looking into the matter, and hoping to see some positive results soon! deeptrivia (talk) 15:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Sure, Rich. I think when I last saw the naming conventions, I thought popularity was one of the many criteria to decide on a name. I'll be most willing to accept whatever the consensus is, in light of this new information. Thanks again! deeptrivia (talk) 16:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 24.187.170.46

Hi, Dilawar Singh Babbar seems to be a copyvio but I am not able to detect it. Sikh Light Infantry is a copyvio and I have tagged it so. Thanks for the heads up, I've failed to look at other contribs from an anon IP with copy-vio stuff. Now I know better. btw, good to see that you are getting into the numerals stuff (above). Sometime back, I had to block three users for 3RR violation (details in my latest archive, in case you are interested further and have time to kill). --Gurubrahma 16:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Obliged

Please stop changing obliged to obligated. The two words do not mean the same thing in some varities of English. - SimonP 17:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] UK Disambig

Hi there. I noticed your dab changing [[British]] to [[United Kingdom|British]]. I went ahead and changed it to British as it was an event that occured in 1702. I was wondering, since from your user page I assume you're from England, if you knew if there was a custom as to what to link the UK to? Should, for example, all events between 1707 and 1801 link to [[Kingdom of Great Britain]]? Linking to [[United Kingdom]] seems a little off to me, as it didn't exist at the time, but I'm not aware of any preexisting conventions or customs. Thanks! -Rebelguys2 23:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date Wikification

Hi, Rich. I don't know whether this will affect the wikifying of dates that you do, but I thought you would want to comment if it does. Talk to you later, Kjkolb 03:02, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Surrey10

Just a heads-up that Surrey10 has struck again,at some length: [9]. I've reverted this spree, but I don't know what the longer-term solution is. Mark1 19:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Australia First Movement

I have reverted the link away from UK for British and made it British Empire, from which they wanted to seceed. No doubt their support from Irish catholics included people sympathetic to Irish Nationalists who may have been UK citizens. Harrypotter 22:43, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] High Court of Justice

The High Court is not a solely Eng institution. The correct link is [High Court of Justice|High Court]. Regards FedLawyer 10:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mike Neville

Never realised he had a mathematical connection. Mike Neville (anchorman) - was the PlanetMath paste a glitch? Charles Matthews 22:09, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mike Neville (anchorman)

Hi Rich. I have a strong suspicion that in this edit at the above-named article you made a mistake by inserting the planetmath template and putting it in the combinatorics category. I removed those for now, but please let me know if I was wrong. You can reply here. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Exorcism video

Hi, I see that you deleted an entry that someone had appended to my Talk page. I hadn't bothered to check that video, but now I am curious. Was it porn or something? Did I miss anything worth seeing? 8-) All the best, Jorge Stolfi 16:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 12:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AfD of MDM - Consultoria e Negócios Ltda.

Rich, I nominated this page a while back; you deleted it on December 27. I just noticed it has been recreated. I tried to re-nominate it for deletion, but when I put the tag in the top of the page, it linked to the old discussion, not a new one. So I'm not sure how to do that. I'd appreciate your help. Thanks. --Thunk 17:41, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] personal attacks

Why again can we not personally attack people?

No, this isn't an encyclopedia, nor any attempt to build one. An encyclopedia is based on verified facts. This isn't, but rather on whoever can log on most often to their page of choice. Wikipedia has great potential, but if you allow the status quo to continue, it will never be taken seriously by anyone with any serious standing in the academic community. But back to the point, my only personal attacks were the result of what was, at root, personal attacks against myself and two other posters, essentially calling us idiots, ignoring our serious concerns about a page, and taking control en masse. Immaturity by others is the sole root of my personal attacks, not any wish by myself to attack other users without cause. Since that situation, I've been trying to show the various fallacies of the system that need to be corrected to have something worthwhile at hand.

[edit] An old edit

I got a chuckle out of your "wikify dates" edit of the Long March 1 rocket. But treating that as if there were a date in that name and in the link to the [[Long March 1 rocket family]] screwed things up, royally! Gene Nygaard 21:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikify dates

I noticed your date wikifcation at University of Texas at Austin, and I reverted the change because it is not consistent with the examples given at WP:CITE. Generally, dates aren't wikified unless their wikification will add something to the article. I noticed that you have made this change to many articles. I was hoping that you might hold off for a second and come discuss the policy here. — Scm83x talk 23:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Be careful if you're using a bot or some other tool to wikify dates - one of the edits to United States Army changed "On 17 June 2,200 troops under Maj. Gen." to "On 17 June 2, 200 troops under Maj. Gen." — Rebelguys2 talk 23:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah well spotted. Rich Farmbrough. 19:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Also note that items should be linked only in their first instance, as per your edits to Type 209 submarine and Politics of Uruguay, to name a few. Note Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Internal links and, to a lesser degree, Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context. — Rebelguys2 talk 23:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. Rgds. Rich Farmbrough. 19:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

The wiki style sheet [[10]] says that 20th century is preferred over Twentieth-Century. Why the recent changes? Rick Norwood 21:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a lot more work than I would be willing to do on the question of whether 20th or Twentieth is preferable. Rick Norwood 23:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

  • While I appreciate that wikification of day and name allows preferences to work, I find it annoying to find extra links. I would have thought the preference would work something like Commonwealth versus US spelling. In Australia it is 11 September. In the US it is is September 11. The wikification to set up preferences runs counter to the beginning injunction at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Avoid_overlinking_dates although I appreciate that they go on later about preferences. Is it necessary though - or is it distracting? I think the latter.--A Y Arktos 00:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
At some point wikisyntax may allow date preferences and other regionalisation to work without links. Rich Farmbrough. 10:31, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Please revert all the wikifications of dates done on references. It's not only confusing but useless. Jclerman 00:08, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I noticed a problem with your edits to the Are You Are Missing Winner page here. One of the dates you wikified was emedded inside an external link (to a review of the LP), so 25 Nov. 2001 became 25 November 2001. The original format complied with that suggested at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, so I reverted it. I appreciate the effort you're putting into this project, though - I guess that's another pitfall for you to worry about ;) Flowerparty■ 16:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Hi this edit also wikified a date in the title of some meeting minutes, ie within a web reference link, - not at all appropriate to my mind and I hve reverted. Regards--A Y Arktos 20:02, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Rich. You wikified the "accessed on" dates in the References section of Thomas Brownrigg, BBC Regional Programme and BBC General Forces Programme. I've reverted these wikifications, (a) because WP:CITE doesn't support linking of dates in the References section; and (b) because the wikified dates there are very confusing for anyone wanting to follow up the references supplied... which is the point of supplying references. Just wanted to let you know. Cheers! ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 11:13, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi again Rich. I've reverted one of the two changes you made to History of ITV, because WP:CITE doesn't support linking of dates in a references section and because wikified dates there are very confusing for anyone wanting to follow up the references supplied. Cheers! ➨ ❝REDVERS❞ 18:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)


Thanks for the wikify date updates on some of my recent contributions - will get it right going forward. --Damate

While the wikifying of [[## Month]] is important, in many/most cases the year should be linked, according to WP:Dates. I'd expect, for example, that a biographical article would wikify the birth and death year but few, if any, others. Perhaps the Margaret Thatcher article might have her start and end years as PM wikified, but not the year in, say, the date of a particular meeting. —Whouk (talk) 12:31, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Ah, that's clearer now. Thanks. —Whouk (talk) 13:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Myron Evans

Hi, I have just put up a new, shorter and more NPOV version (basically just excised some uncritical description of Evans alleged achievements). I'd love to be able to cite the source for his open letter (?) demanding election fo the Royal Society. IIRC, I found it somewhere, cited in the article, and then you moved it to the talk page? Whatever, I can't seem to find it on the web now at the pro-Evans website where I think we originally found it. Can you help me find the citation again? TIA ---CH 03:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect of Leonard Stern (billionare)

Rich--looked at the redirect. Is there a way to rename the article as "Leonard N. Stern" and redirect it the other way. It seems to me that the current title is hardly encyclopedic. Even "(founder, Hartz Mountain Industries)" would be preferable, if the name by itself wouldn't be sufficient for people to find it. Thanks for your thoughts on this--Beth Wellington 23:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I follow! Was there no prior discussion on the original billionaire page. If so, it seems to be missing.--Beth Wellington 23:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corporate vandalism of Leonard N. Stern

Rich, this article has an odd edit on February 8 that eliminated all mention of impropriety. Also, this is the same man, as in the entry Leonard N. Stern. They need to be merged, rather than disambiguated by the tag billionaire. Help! --Beth Wellington 05:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank Rich. Won't have time to look at corporate bio today, but will try to work on it next week. --Beth Wellington 20:03, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Rich, Hartz has vandalized the page again, completely replacing it with its own content. Apparently, a stronger warning is in order?--Beth Wellington 21:25, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing this so quickly!--Beth Wellington 22:29, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

User:Deborah Stone went in again on 2/21/06 and vandalized this article, despite your polite request on 2/17 not to do so. Called it a "minor edit." This makes three times. Any way to stop this from happening?--Beth Wellington 17:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I check on it periodically. Blocking might work or perhaps she'll register for another account, like some here do.--Beth Wellington 17:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leonard Stern (publisher)

Both Sterns have been publishers. The latter is Leonard B. Stern. There was no article, only a deadlink, so I researched and wrote one. Maybe you could do your magic and rename it and do the redirect? Thanks! --Beth Wellington 01:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

As per your request, moved the article to "Leonard B. Stern." First time I goofed and left (writer and publisher) in move, but fixed that and edited the disambiguation page to show the new article name. Hope I did everything right. This is the first time I've ever moved an article. If you find an error, let me know.--Beth Wellington 22:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I just tried to edit the redirect as per yur instructions. Would you mind checking and see if it's right. Never encountered droodles Leonard B sounds nicer than Leonard N!Beth Wellington 21:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Droodles

Thanks for checking the redirect. Sorry the last note lacked punctuation--the sticky keys option invoked itself at the library and I would have had to reboot and lose what I was working on to get rid of them. Droodles are fun. There are a slew more at the droodles homepage. Did know Stern had published them, since I wrote his entry. Didn't realize Price was born in Charleston, WV. By the way, your note to the Hartz pr woman was very nicely done.--Beth Wellington 00:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adolfo Farsari

Hi, Thanks for Wikifying the dates in the photographer articles I've been creating. Would you mind reading this article on Adolfo Farsari and suggesting on the featured article candidate page whether you think it's worthy of featured article status or not? No worries if not, but I'd like your sage commentary. Thanks. Pinkville 23:59, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV

Hello,

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV. Please add evidence to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, --Tony Sidaway 16:25, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page name for temperature articles

To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:09, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My reversions

I reverted your two LoPbN edits that i've noticed so far, with a specific reason for each species of change w/in the page. If it's important enuf to you to ask why, i'll explain.
--Jerzy•t 23:34, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Obliged

This is the third time I have contacted you about this issue, and you have yet to respond to me. Please stop changing obligated to obliged, the two words do not always mean the same thing. - SimonP 22:30, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for responding. I had left comments on your talk page twice in the past on this issue, but I guess you must have missed them. I note other users have also complained about these changes. I'm not sure if you are aware but obliged and obligated can have two different meanings. Consider these sentences:
He was obliged to her because of her actions
He was obligated to her because of her actions
They each mean a very different thing. One means he was grateful, the other that he was bound. - SimonP 22:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The two words have become quite confused, so each is often now used in place of the other and many consider them as interchangeable. However, there is no reason to make articles less precise merely because you dislike a word. This reminds me of a recent conversation on the Village Pump. There is a natural tendency for the encyclopedia to move to "lowest common denominator English," there is no reason to help it along. - SimonP 23:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Responses

Hi, I hope you are not planning on indescrimnate reversion of my edits. It seems this is just the sort of behaviour that you are accused of in arbitration. Please also see Wikipedia:Administrators#Reverting. If you want ot discuss the meanings of the word, you had only to ask, rather than just say "I am reverting a few of your edits" then block reverting. Rich Farmbrough. 22:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. The distinction is not as clear cut as perhaps might first seem the case.
OED agrees that legal requirement is included in "oblige" (as opposed to obligate), in its lengthy articles. More accessibly the American Heritage Dictionary says " To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means." Mirrim Webster has "to constrain by physical, moral, or legal force or by the exigencies of circumstance".
Furthermore Webssters 1828 made the reverse distinction, saying of "Obligate" "Until recently, the sense of this word has been restricted to positive and personal acts; and when moral duty or law binds a person to do something, the word oblige has been used. But this distinction is not now observed."
There are of course cicumstances where "obligate" is to be preferred, in direct quotes and in the technical senses of the word from finance and more importantly biology.
Rich Farmbrough. 23:23, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Danish 1st and 2nd Divisions

Hey.

You can not change links and template boxes for Danish 1st and 2nd Divisions to first and second. There are created a lot of articles for those two divisions and EVERY SINGLE PLACE are there standing 1st and 2nd, so it isn't that easy changing it. If it should be with letters, the F and S in first and second must be capitalised. Kalaha 15:56, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skyblue70707

His name is Skyblue70707, almost all his contributions seem to have been related to whatever Skybluz is. He seem to spend more time on his User: page than actually contributing real content to real articles. Maybe he is confused about what Wikipedia is. His name and that almost all he edited is related to Skybluz indicate that he have an agenda, and maybe he is only interested in promoting something with a direct relation to him. He seems rather silly and suspicous. Frap 17:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dates and Numbered lists

Thanks for wikifying my articles & for the tips! Akina66 22:34, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lots of edits to be had

You have been hitting a bunch of my pages recently with date fixes. If you are looking for a lot of pages that need date fixing go to my user page under pages I have created and you will see many that need help. I figured I'd throw it our there while you were on a roll--Looper5920 12:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Karen Dotrice

Hi! I had to repair some of your changes to this article; dates are automatically linked in refs, and your edits made the brackets visible (for example, [[18 February]]). Write me with any questions :) RadioKirk talk to me 00:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Well (and quickly) spotted, web reference templates are more of a problem for me now that references appear in the middle of articles as well as at the end. Rich Farmbrough. 00:20, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Thank you! It just so happens, I wrote the article, so it's on my watchlist; the ref templates were changing in the middle of my efforts to win FA status, so I'm familiar with the confusion ;)
Incidentally, see my question on Talk:Matthew Garber. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough. 00:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Did, and replied already ;) RadioKirk talk to me 00:26, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Minor Barnstar
Pretty much every article on my watchlist has been touched by the improvatory hand of Rich Farmborough, and I feel it is time I paid my dues to he :) Thanks Rich! Jdcooper 16:47, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link(s)

The last time I looked, the MoS was neutral between singular and plural, explaining that though using the plural when there was only one link was inaccurate, many editors preferred it. Has this changed? I can't remember where in all the mountains of material it was. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:34, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, and sorry to have made you late... Now that you're back, the section I was thinking of was Wikipedia:External links#"External links" vs "External link":
Some editors use the header "External link" if there is only one link, but others use "External links" in all cases. There is currently no consensus on which is better. Editors who always use the plural form may prefer it for any of the following reasons:
  1. experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading
  2. people may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled "External link" since it seems that there should only be one link
  3. using "External links" gives greater stylistic consistency to Wikipedia
The converse arguments are:
  1. Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights.
  2. There is no evidence that a significant number of people would be dissuaded from adding links. Besides, additional links would often be redundant.
  3. Use of "External links" to head a section containing a single link is fundamentally incorrect, a poor precedent to set in an encyclopedia

--Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights." Yes, I thought that that was a touch optimistic (although I've corrected a fair few singulars to plurals as I've wandered around the place). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 23:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My responses to Mel

Thanks for the comment. I'm just going out, so I'll check when I get back in. Rich Farmbrough. 18:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(headings)#Standard_headings_and_ordering (I'm going to be late now!) Rich Farmbrough. 18:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Well "Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights." is certainly dubious at best, there are at least 8,600 "External link" sections with more than one link! I'll concentrate on those, and a bunch of other things for now. Rich Farmbrough. 23:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some stuff from Trey

I'm very confused. Judging from your contribs, you seem to be running a bot to change "External link" to "External links", but you didn't post your intention on Wikipedia talk:Bots to do so, and you're using your regular user account and not a bot account. Am I right on these points, or am I missing something? --TreyHarris 09:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

It looks like, based on consensus at Wikipedia talk:Bots, that you need to get approval prior to your edits whether or not you're using bot software once your edit frequency gets fast enough. You made over 500 edits in an hour, so that definitely qualifies. --TreyHarris 11:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ditto to Trey

Hi, no I'm not using a bot, although I probably should be. I got as far as registering a seperate account and looking at pywikipediabot, but it seemed very complicated. What I generally do is open bunch (99) of tabs in Firefox and batch edit the pages - sometimes it crashes Firefox. When I'm working on dates (which I don't think can be simply robotised, to many quotes, URLs, internal links etc.) I let myself get sidetracked on other formatting issues, but these external links I want to get out of the way. If you know of a simpler bot than pywikipeidabot I'd be very interseted (oh, I've looked at AWB as well which is a great tool.) Rich Farmbrough. 10:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Of coure the big advantage with a bot is that it can be throttled to a slow rate (say 1 per min) and left to its own devices (subject to proper testing of course). Rich Farmbrough. 10:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikifying Dates is often unnecessary

Hi. I noticed you wikified some dates on one of the essays of Franci Fukuyama (as well as quite a few other articles). I was wondering what was the purpose? I can understand wikifying dates when they are fairly relevant to the item being discussed. In this case, the date of publication is fairly arbitrary (the magazine is only published on Sundays - thus the exact date is clearly arbitrary, and the year 2006 is so common to so many things that it is almost irrelevant) and thus it is unlikely that the user is going to click on that date for more related information. In my experience, going around wikifying dates just beacuse they can be wikified only adds irrelevant noise. It isn't that different that me wikifying random words in a sentence -- while it is possible for me to do this, do you think it adds much value or is it more of a distraction and busywork? (unsigned comment by User:Bhouston)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). This is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. It's cool if you sign messages on other people's talk pages with ~~~~. Rgds, Rich Farmbrough. 16:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Overlinking dates

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers: Please advise regarding your linking to arbitrary dates. This does not appear in line with the rationale expressed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), & Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context. -- Krash (Talk) 18:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Krash. The overlinking aspect refers to things like October or October 2004 or October 2004 or 17th Century or 421 BC. Full dates like 11 September 2004 or September 11 will show up differently depending on how each user has his preferences set, and should be linked where they appear in article txt.
See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Usage of links for date preferences. This is to allow date preferences to work. The section Avoid overlinking dates starts If the date does not contain a day and a month,. Rich Farmbrough. 21:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Be that as it may, I think that Wikipedia would benefit from a less liberal application of the Manual of Style, remembering to only make links that are relevant to the context. Also, you misrepresented the quotation from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates). The complete quotation should read:
"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so."
-- Krash (Talk) 23:06, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
"If the date does not contain a day and a month, date preferences will not work, and square brackets will not respond to your readers' auto-formatting preferences. So unless there is a special relevance of the date link, there is no need to link it. This is an important point: simple months, years, decades and centuries should only be linked if there is a strong reason for doing so." This is exactly the point I was making. "simple months, years, decades and centuries" is the subject of that paragraph, not full dates. Rich Farmbrough. 23:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Hey Rich, I feel as if you are taking the rules too literally. If you are going to fix up dates please do it in the articles you are making other contributions to. I feel as if you are doing some type of strange "drive by overlinking" which you can just barely justify. I notice on this page that you have gotten more than a few complaints about this issue as well as a few warnings. --Ben Houston 22:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Well over several ten of thousands of edits, I've probably had a dozen "complaints" and the same number of queries. Some of the complaints were justified (editing errors), which I have fixed, and some were not (almost all of those were happy after a simple explanation). Rich Farmbrough. 23:17, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Krash. I came here to post a comment about your linking-dates in the external links for Sousveillance, and saw there were already some comments on the topic of over-linking. (imho) The spirit of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers#Avoid overlinking dates) rule, is to only link a date, if the date is an important aspect of the context. sep'11, jul'4, dec'24, jan'1, etc could/should be linked. But it's not useful if the date is arbitrary (a date of album release, article publication, etc). --Quiddity 22:41, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi, this is to allow date preferences to work. If you set them you will see 11 September and September 11 ([[11 September]] and [[September 11]]) the same way. The MoS is very clear. Section 1.2 [11] explains date formatting. Section 1.2.1 is a caveat warning against linking just years or just months or just year-month combinations - which I generally remove when I come across them. Rich Farmbrough. 23:19, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Understood. I think in the case of the sousveillance date-link, i'll just remove the date altogether, as it doesnt add anything or have relevance. thanks :) --Quiddity 23:21, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

While I welcome constructive contributions to the Joan of Arc article, I believe your contribution violated the clause at WP:NOT about random collections of unrelated information. When a page gets cluttered with trivial links it becomes harder for readers to glean meaningful information from chaff. It goes much too far to Wikilink every date where I confirmed a site access throughout a list of nearly seventy footnotes. You're an active editor and I'm sure usually a very productive one, but I see you've already disregarded feedback on this issue from several other editors.

I cannot share the opinion that every Wikipedia editor who does not complain is delighted with your work. I wasted half an hour this evening removing link clutter, time that I had planned to spend adding new footnotes and correcting some syntax problems in the article text. Then I visited your talk page, read how you dismissed several other comments, and almost decided it would be a further waste more of my time to give you any input. Rein this activity down to a reasonable level. You've gone overboard. 68.101.254.59 04:55, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External link vs External links

"Some editors use the header "External link" if there is only one link, but others use "External links" in all cases. There is currently no consensus on which is better. Editors who always use the plural form may prefer it for any of the following reasons:

  1. experience shows that future editors often add links without changing the section heading
  2. people may be dissuaded from adding links to a section titled "External link" since it seems that there should only be one link
  3. using "External links" gives greater stylistic consistency to Wikipedia

The converse arguments are:

  1. Wikipedia's community-editing leads to prompt correction of such oversights.
  2. There is no evidence that a significant number of people would be dissuaded from adding links. Besides, additional links would often be redundant.
  3. Use of "External links" to head a section containing a single link is fundamentally incorrect, a poor precedent to set in an encyclopedia"

My own view is that 'link' looks better where there is only one link; looks wrong otherwise to me. I don't feel that strongly about it; nevertheless I may revert if you change singular ones to the plural description, as I have done in a couple of the Iain Banks book pages. Why not dig out other good links, and change it from singular to plural? Or else try and edit out my POV in (for example) Dead Air which I (and everybody I know who's read it) considers his weakest book. I wrote basically the entire article and I couldn't help let it show in what I wrote.

I've done a lot of work on developing all of the Banks book entries, so maybe you could discuss in talk if you want to change formatting like this? If nothing else I think all the Banks books should be fairly consistently treated. Thanks Guinnog 21:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Mel Etitis had already drawn my atention to these paragraphs, two comments up, and I am leaving singletons alone - there are enough misdescribed plurals(*). I would certainly not take offence at your changing back those in the Ian Banks canon where appropriate. I am afraid I have only read a few Iain Banks books (though almost all Iain M Banks) so I can't help much with that, but will do what I can. Rich Farmbrough. 21:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your edits. I have retained most of them, and standardised them across all the Banks books. See what you think. Guinnog 22:54, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Athletics Weekly

Your article Athletics Weekly has appeared in the Dead End Pages list because it is not wikified. Please consult the Wikipedia Guide to Layout for more information on how to write a good, wikified article. I would encourage you to revisit your submissions and {{wikify}} them. Thanks and happy editing! James084 03:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The anal wink

Thanks for putting in that link. As a physician I was bothered to see the information about misuse of a rectac exam put into a small article about a normal physiologic reflex, but with the social problem of spurious expert testimony the sad truth had to remain. The linked to article is better than the bit in anal wink. Kd4ttc 16:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I was suprised the articles weren't linked! Good to be appreciated. Rich Farmbrough. 23:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

These things require such care here. There is a definite way to be politically correct on Wikipedia. I started to monitor anal wink on the random chance of seeing it on articles for deletion. folks thought it was a hoax, thinking such a bizarre name couldn't be real. I stopped the deletion with an explanation and it was sitting on my watch list mostly to prevent well meaning mistakes to delete. Well, you might be aware of how political injustice stories get a passionate following around here. So to my chagrin the misuse of a rectal exam gets added to the Anal Wink article. It looks sort of goofy there, but I dared not change it lest the wrath of historically-knowledgeable-wiki-enthusiasts start an edit war. So now I can clean the article up a bit and get the relevent bits separated and stay Wiki-PC! Thus my appreciation of haveing the better link included. It was amazing to read about what mischief can be done by an "authority." Steve Kd4ttc 23:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ILO redirect

Hi Rich. I noticed that you recently changed ILO to redirect to ILO (disambiguation). Previously it was set to International Labour Organization, and a {{redirect}} was on that page. It's no big deal, but are you opposed to my changing it back. After looking at the disambig page, I think it would be reasonable to assume that most ILO enquiries would be looking for the UN body. Cheers. --Bookandcoffee 21:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you've got a good point about this. It could go both ways, and I'm not bothered enough to change it! (And if I did, then 6 months from now, someone else, who thinks different will talk to me about it, and I'd have to copy your note over to them... :) --Bookandcoffee 05:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LINKS!!!

Hello,

I'm sorry you're having to go back and correct my edits involving External links. I know it should be links - my eyes just aren't picking it up. They will from now on. Thanks. Michael David 18:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing picture question

Hi there! I have contributed with the picture (that I named) Image:Spotted hyena Kenya.jpg, but as you can see, it's gone. I added it to the Hyena article last year. Since I am most active on the Norwegian Wikipedia, I did not see this until today... Can you help me find out why it has been deleted? Thanks!! Could you please answer on my own discussion page? :-) Regards, Helga76 22:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opinionated material in MR-GO article

If you want this material to be kept, you need to provide better source citations for the opinions expressed in it, per the verifiability policy. See Talk:Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal#MR-GO and the Port of New Orleans. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Shome mishtake... My edit was to make the bolded headings into real headings, wikify a few dates and remove a redundant phrase. Well done for improving the layout a good bit more, as to content, although I read one of the references, I don't feel qualified to make substantive changes. Rich Farmbrough. 00:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Oops, my apologies... the material I'm concerned about was added by 24.252.127.38, not you. Sorry. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wilbur Ross

I don't even want to start thinking about moving this without help. It seems we should have the main entry under his full name: Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. That was one choice among about 4 or 5 (I may be exagerating) that refer to Wilbur Ross. Or maybe we should leave it at Wilbur Ross, since it's simplest? What do you think?--Beth Wellington 17:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation!--Beth Wellington 04:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date links

Since you have taken an interest in date links. Please be kind enough to vote for my new bot application. bobblewik 20:04, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Huh?

Why? Dragons flight 22:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changing dates

Hi,

Your "date correction" bot has done some damage to Yuriy Yekhanurov. Namely, it replaced parts of correct image name (i.e., within "*" in "*.jpg") with wikified dates. Can you modify the bot so that it does not replace text within [[Image:]] tag? Thanks. Sashazlv 04:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Thanks for spotting that. Incidentally it's not a bot, it's search and replace, I always do show changes before saving, and I normally spot problems with image names. I'm not sure if I can improve the search and replace to automatically avoid images. Thanks again. Rich Farmbrough 13:48 26 February 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Deletion of Shia views

I happened by chance to notice that a user called User:Blingpling is going around deleting Shia views in articles like Abu_Bakr. It's a bit out of my area but I thought you might be interested as you edited this page JQ 05:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback

Please do not patronise me. Thank you. Ambi 06:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The matter of Dr. James R. Russell's article

Hi Rich. Perhaps you can help out. I wrote Professor/Dr. James R. Russell's article as he is indeed a world known scholar in his field and very notable. I checked that his colleague, Dr. Wheeler Thackston had an article, which he has since 2004. They are both in the same department at Harvard, and on comparable par. Dr. Russell's opus "Zoroastrianism in Armenia" is a major work published by Harvard University amongst other works of his. The article is not a vanity article and Dr. Russell who occupies the Mashtots Chair in Armenian Studies, at Harvard University, which is a very prestigious chair, is more than noteworthy. As much as Dr. Wheeler Thackston is. Dr. Russell's article is James R. Russell. I have no idea who User_talk:Dsc is and why the person flagged it. The stated objections are not valid. The warning should be removed. I don't know where else to turn to. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 20:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich for getting back on this situation. I will go do some other things. I hope someone keeps and eye on this. It's nutty. Cheers. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:27, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for your kind message. It isn't really resolved. User:Sannse formerly of the Wikipedia arbitration committee had removed the warning in the light of reason, and the person User:Dsc has slapped on the warning again on Dr. James R. Russell's article without any discussion. I do hope this gets resolved but (a) I don't feel the warning is justified and it should not be there (b) the person has taken no time to discuss it as per your suggestion, and (c) I have no easy internet access on this end due to serious outages, and (d) the objection by the person does not stand up to reason and a test. I am writing this from a stand-up kiosk in a library. If you could do something appropriate, I would be appreciative. The person is acting in my opinion, irrationally. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 21:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for getting back to me. The debate on the Armenian Genocide has nothing to do with Dr. Russell's erudition and scholarly accomplishments. Plus, the website cited, is unsigned, and can't be rationally used for the article's merit, which is based on Russell's scholarly work. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 22:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. See my comments there also, when you have a chance. I put more into the discussion with a level head. I am not part of nor versed in the Armenian debate. I take your points on the further citations on the articles and ISBN on the books. One has to chase these things down a bit when one has time. Thanks again. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 23:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. Thanks for your help on the matter. I hope it works out for all concerned in the middle to long run. Much appreciated. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 18:24, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Rich. I fixed up the references, citations, ISBN numbers and other loose ends as per your suggestion. Thanks. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 02:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello Rich. Thanks for your kind help and suggestions. I think it might be all right now. It was a lot of work. As for a GFDL photo ... that might be a little tricky, but will look into it when I can. ;) Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alberto Ríos

Rich, help! I created this article and then realized that because of the accent there should be a way to look it up under Alberto Rios but I didn't know how to back that page point back to the original. I recall something about temporary pages etc. but didn't want to muck it up. I just went back there and Alberto Rios is a candidate for speedy deletion. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 01:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Nmpenguin had taken care of it and now he's explained how to "do" for myself. Thanks, though.--Beth Wellington 17:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date Discrepancies

Hello,

When I come across a discrepancy in an important date (e.g. Date of Birth or Death), where the date cited in a Wiki Article differs from other reliable sources, I always enter this fact in the Discussion section of that Article, and then ask what others' thoughts are on this. What I am reluctant to do is to unilaterally change the Date myself at that time. What do you think about this? Michael David 15:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Working Families for Wal-Mart

Rich, Cmh has POV problem with a story I started. When you have time, could you take a look and see what needs to be done to remove the tag. Thanks!--Beth Wellington 03:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Cmh removed the tag. Thanks! I've already thanked him on his talk page.--Beth Wellington 21:05, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

In a related issue, there's a vote to delete an admittedly rough article (but only a day old) that's odd, in that the arguments are poorly researched and all in favor of deletion. Could you take a look-see? Thanks!--Beth Wellington 05:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in. By the way, I didn't know you were in England until I saw the category at the bottom of your user page. Love the pig Latin and old English babel boxes. What a hoot! --Beth Wellington 01:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about banner on my Watchlist

Hi Rich. This is a silly question, I'm afraid. When I bring up my Watchlist, this banner apppears :

"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."

Is this just a general announcement which requires no action on my part, or is it saying something which requires my action ? Does it mean someone has requested to email me ? I don't have it setup for email intentionally. Thanks in advance as ever. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rich for your kind response. I will look into it further. Bests --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 19:01, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help

This message has just appeared on my Watchlist Page.


"Wikipedia e-mail confirmation has been enabled. To receive Wikipedia e-mail, you must go to Special:Confirmemail, request a code, and follow the link in the e-mail."

I followed the directions & received instructions to Log in; I did this; nothing further has happened. What am I missing? What does this mean? I'm still new here. Michael David 18:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Michael, this means that Wikipedia now "knows" you really have access to that email account. Imagine if someone put an enemy's email address and went around insulting people, to generate badmail. Or even f someone simply mistypes their email address. I don't know why this message was put on the watchlist, though, seems like a funny place for it. Rich Farmbrough 23:08 2 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Thank you!

Rich,

Thank you for the explanation of that e-mail message on my Watch List. It does make sense after all. My work (in many ways, life) has been sitting across from flesh and blood people trying to help them untangle the emotional knots they have found themselves in. There I'm comfortable because it's familiar to me. It's taking me longer to be comfortable sitting across from a machine that is essentially 1s & 0s. I am comfortable with the information within Wikipedia, where my task is to extract that information and, in my own way, hopefully improve on it. I saw that message & wondered what it was wanting me to do & why. Thanks for straightening it out for me. The wetter my feet get at this, the more comfortable I feel with the structure, the more I will be able to contribute to the content. Right now I'm still learning. Michael David 04:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Big Sur

Thanks for taking the time to read and make some fixes on this article. It's much appreciated.Scooterboss 11:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please review

Paphos The Arsenio Hall Show Robert Scott (VC) Max Mosley Rich Farmbrough 21:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Standardisation units, imperial, metric etc

Hi Rich, As you describe yourself as a fixer, UK based & seem to have experience with bots to fix things, I wonder if you can help...

During recent discussions about featured article status for Chew Valley Lake I was challenged that the units (particularly for volume, but it applies to other areas) used in the article discriminated against some users eg;

"Even worse. "Customary" units are not provided throughout. " & "The other is the use of imperial gallons and cubic meters, neither of which are used in the U.S. (but who really wants to see acre-foot). Rmhermen 00:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC) Acre-foot certainly makes no sense, this unit isn't used in the UK as far as I know. Water volumes here are conventionally quoted as so many million gallons (Imperial ones of course, not US gallons). Cubic metres (not meters :-) might be a good choice. What a fine muddle we get into over units! Chris Jefferies 17:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC) But you see that you are giving British English readers two ways to understand the volume but giving American English readers zero. That doesn't seem right. Rmhermen 01:43, 3 March 2006 (UTC)"

Do you know of any policy on this & could your bot (or any other) semi-automatically standardise them & if necessary put in the volume measure in the other units expected? Rod 12:22, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot re: Henry the Navigator

Your bot is making edits like this one: [[12]] which have no impact on the article as it appears to the user, nor on the workings of Wikipedia. These are merely stylistic preferences being enforced by a bot. This wastes storage space (for the edit entries in the database), bandwidth (for the edits themselves), and degrades Wikipedia's performance for no return on that investment. Please, tune your bot so that it does not make stylistic edits without a concrete benefit. -Harmil 16:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Harmil,
Well, spotted, that edit should have changed "Early Life" to "Early life" (process already fixed), I think no more invisible edits should occur. I'll check a sample of a hundred, if you see any, please let me know. Rich Farmbrough 18:00 5 March 2006 (UTC).

This edit moved the stub template to a place three (!) lines below the interlanguage links instead of leaving it above the categories where it belongs. AFAIK interlanguage links should always be the at the bottom, below categories and person data.—Wikipeditor 13:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

This appears to be standard AWB ordering. It makes sense because the stub template will, presumably, be removed, so having it easy to find is a good idea. I'm not sure if there are any guidelines about it, I'll investigate, and ask on the AWB page. The two blank lines seem odd. Rich Farmbrough 15:13 7 March 2006 (UTC).
The extra lines allow for an icon on the stub which otherwise can overwirte text. Rich Farmbrough 12:18 8 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Wikitext readability

Hi. Thanks for cleaning up headings with smackbot. I noticed the bot eliminates spaces in all of a page's headings. I've always been adding those spaces, because it makes the heading text much more easily readable in the edit field if it doesn't run into the equals signs. —Michael Z. 2006-03-05 17:18 Z

Example:

==External links==

== External links ==

Thank you for your cleanup edit on Austintown, Ohio.[13] I would ask, however, that you not remove spaces from the headings (as you did for "External links" but for no other heading), for the very reason cited above: it improves readability for editors without changing the displayed text. Far too many Wikipedia editors squeeze edited text so much down to the essentials, the result looks like it was meant for a 16KB TRS-80 computer. (Take a look at most of the TV-show articles' "Trivia" sections sometime — they're as bad as obfuscated C programs.) Because Wikipedia is not paper, we have the luxury to use spaces and blank lines judiciously to make it easier for editors to quickly scan articles for material they wish to edit. This is defeated when every optional space is squeezed out of the text. I would appreciate your assistance in not adding to this problem. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
And now I see that your bot also removed a bunch of blank lines around headings for Herndon, Virginia.[14] I truly fear for the ease of editing of Wikipedia if you are making so many mass edits that you've managed to hit two random cities that I happened to be watching within 2 hours of each other. Please stop this counterproductive, pointless byte saving! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:20, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Smackbot: "Agjacent" counties

Hi there, I noticed that SmackBot had made some automated changes to Rockland County, New York, and in looking at them I realized that "Adjacent counties" was changed to "Agjacent counties." A cursory glance at other county articles that the bot edited shows that the mistake was made in several places. Just thought I'd let you know...is there a quick way of going back and fixing? Or do each of them need to be corrected individually? :: Salvo (talk) 03:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll fix them. Rich Farmbrough 08:18 6 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks :) :: Salvo (talk) 12:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alcoholism article conflict

Hello Rich, I suppose it was inevitable. I find myself in the first conflict since coming to Wikipedia. It involves the Article on Alcoholism, most specifically the Section headed ‘Alcoholism as a disease’. This Section is extremely biased and presents facts that are simply not correct. For example, the paragraph “Currently there are no validated medical or scientific procedures or tests to determine if one has the so-called disease of alcoholism or if one is a carrier.” The use of the phrase ‘so-called’ speaks for itself, and, this is simply not true today. I attempted to correct it, but a person who identifies himself as “David Justin” immediately reversed my edit. His name is in red, and he does not have either a User or Talk Page. I made my case on the ‘Alcoholism” Discussion page under the heading ‘Alcoholism labeling>be careful’ in which I included this:

'Today, and for some time now, there are highly accurate tools and other instruments that can accurately diagnose the disease of alcoholism. This is but one of many: SUDDS-IV.'

David Justin's response was incomprehensible gibberish.

AND: the final paragraph of the main Article includes this:

The idea of "alcohol as a disease of the community" or an "environmentally mediated or caused disease" is not as widely discussed or I am not aware of it as much. I see alcohol as an "environmentally caused disease" in many cases.’

The use of the word “I” in an encyclopedia article is unheard of, and I believe represents one person’s very biased POV.

A great deal of progress has been made in the area if alcoholism diagnosis. I believe the Article in Wikipedia should reflect this fact.

I will not become involved in a debate with someone I know nothing about, or cannot communicate with directly. I do want this important Article to be accurate, and up to Wikipedia’s high standards. How do you think I should proceed from here?

Michael David 13:38, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Personally I would appreciate it if both of you would realize alcohol dependence is not a disease. Alcohol dependence can be treated in a couple of weeks tops and then the person is no longer alcohol dependent. If alcoholism is a disease we should be able to detect it whether we are drinking or not. In fact if it is a disease even though we have never had a sip of alcohol, we should be able to test and detect it. Does such a test exists? No. Can one take a blood test to determine if they have this so-called disease? And your link is not diagnosing a disease it is about diagnosing alcohol dependence. Alcohol dependence is not a disease.
And an "environmentally caused disease"? Is that like second hand smoke? A wiki article is not the place for you to promote your personal belief and definitions regarding alcoholism.
I just reworked the test part I added to the article in a fashion I think makes it more clear. Instead of removing my comments over and over how about discussing it on the talk page? And if this is an issue you want to pursue please find me a test for the disease of alcoholism. I'd like to take it to make sure I do not have it. In fact I'd like my 2 year old daughter to take the test to make sure she is nto walking around with this disease. If she has a disease called alcoholism I'd want her to know about it sooner than later so she can plan to abstain permanently.
Finally, the SUDDS-IV diagnostic criteria does not even mention the word disease. It talks about alcohol and drug addiction/dependence. Mr Christopher 16:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Rich

Thank you for your input regarding the ‘Alcoholism as a Disease’ issue. I have been a practicing psychotherapist for 40+ years, with a subspecialty in the Dependencies. I have seen tremendous progress in that time with professionals researching and finally solving some very touchy issues regarding the use and misuse of psychoactive chemicals & their effects on a person. The critical part of the ‘disease concept’ is that it removes this disorder from the hands of those who would paint it as simply a problem with the person’s behavior. Categorizing it that way has proven not only problematic with the self-concepts of the patient; frankly it has given ammunition to those who have tried to stand in the way of adequate funding for the research. I am not going to quibble with anyone over whether it’s a disease or not. The only person who needs to understand is the patient. All else is bullshit. Michael David 18:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation needed

Rich, J.C. Penney (the store) and J. C. Penney (the man) are so close it seems like there should be some pointer between them. Thanks.--Beth Wellington 17:57, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at it. My two cents (pennies?)--while it may be the usual practice, it is an arcane one which makes it hard for the non-editng user to find the correct content. (and hard even for the novice-editor user). Especially since there's little visual difference to the reader between the two. Don't know if those who do such things would want to consider this usage. Alternatively, I might have filed J. C. under his full name with a redirect from the initials. 'Nough said. So, are you this Richard Farmbrough] or is it just a common name?--Beth Wellington 17:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2 Bot Visits

Hi, A page I created has had it's last two edits made by AWB assisted robots Bluebot & Smackbot ([15], [16]). It's good that you guys are cleaning up but couldn't you colloborate? What Smackbot did in visit 2, could have been done by Bluebot in visit 1. --kingboyk 02:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is some overlap between the tasks they've worked on - and the timings. SB is working on Caps in Headings BB is working on many different problems with "See also" and "External links". That's why we hit the same article. In theory it shouldn't matter because if the change is already done the second bot will do nothing - but we had slightly different settings/versions so a small change occurred. I've upgraded to the latest version since that run, so I hope that will not happen again. I've also requested a feature to reduce solely minor edits. Rich Farmbrough 11:27 8 March 2006 (UTC).
I believe Bluebot and Smackbot are owned by two different users. On the other hand, I also had a watched page visited by both bots, both commiting a minor error. I've detailed it below:
The following code:
<sup>[[Aleut Restitution Act of 1988#External Links|[1]]]</sup>
As you can see above, Bluebot (or Smackbot) judged [1]]] as a mistake, and fixed it by changing it to [[1]]. However, the singular [ and ] around 1 are decorative, and the other two ]]'s right of the "1" are to end the internal link.
Just to let you know about this, but on the other hand, I appreciate the work Smackbot has done! Kareeser|Talk! 06:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
This is very useful, and I will pass it back to the developer User:Bluemoose. Rich Farmbrough 11:27 8 March 2006 (UTC).
Thanks for that, and for your reply on my talk page. --kingboyk 19:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot changes to aircraft articles

Please keep SmackBot away from aircraft articles using the airtemp template for specs. This template requires the use of </li> and <li> tags to properly format specs not included in the template. When SmackBot replaces these tags with the asterix, it messes up formatting. Thanks! - Emt147 Burninate! 06:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, easily done. Rich Farmbrough 11:28 8 March 2006 (UTC).
P.S. AWB has been updated to avoid this problem in future. If it happens again please let me know. If you think there's a significantnumber of damaged articles, let me know and I will try to find them all and revert. Rich Farmbrough 17:24 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Only a couple of articles were affected but I wanted to give you a heads up. Thanks for taking care of that! - Emt147 Burninate! 20:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] smack bots change in Maruti Omni

Your bot tried to do something unsucessfully and had to rv its action. If you can tell me what 'RM caps in section headers' means I'll do it manually. thanks.

--hydkat 06:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that, and for letting me know. Bluebot had already made the change, the bad change is a bug I think, and I will pass back to be fixed. Rich Farmbrough
Thanks for your reply. But you didn't tell what 'RM caps in section headers' means... I only have an assumption to go by :(.

--hydkat 11:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove capitals in section headers. :) I guess you assumed right. Rich Farmbrough 11:39 8 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] SmackBot: Parsis != Persian people

On 7 March Smackbot apparently added a bunch of people that are Parsis to Category:Persian people. Thats a far stretch. Calling Parsis "Persian people" is like calling descendants of the pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower "Britons". -- Fullstop 09:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. Can you give me an example? Thank you. Rich Farmbrough 16:08 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Sorry, my mistake. Mea culpa. -- Fullstop 16:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alcoholism Article Thoughts

Rich,

You’re right, there are two Sections entitled ‘Social Impact’. They both contain similar material. I believe one could be worked into a Section focusing on ‘Public Health Issues’.

Actually that would be merely like trying to rearrange the passengers on the Titanic hoping this would keep it from sinking. The fact of the matter is the entire Article needs a major reworking. It is trying to do & be too many things. The result: it merely creates confusion about a very important subject.

When I read the Article’s present form, I try to imagine an adolescent trying to make sense of their family life; knowing Dad or Mom is drunk all of the time; has heard the word ‘alcoholism’ used in school, and reaching for an encyclopedia to find out what it’s all about. I am in no way suggesting the encyclopedia should be geared to adolescents, but the average reader should be able to readily understand and to follow it. Anything beyond that and you have a textbook.

To me, an encyclopedia Article about a subject should state the current definition of that subject; a history of the birth, evolution and impact of that subject; and references to more in-depth materials the reader can go to if they want to learn more. It should never offer opinions, or even hint of bias. All this, of course, without being so dry it crumbles before you eyes. This is what writing style is all about.

Again, the present Article on ‘Alcoholism’ needs a great deal of work if it is to be helpful to anyone really trying to learn about it.

Be healthy. Michael David 14:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A note about AWB

See this edit by SmackBot - It did nothing but decapitalise "Trading Card Game", which is a proper noun. Are jobs like this suitable for a bot? --Celestianpower háblame 16:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for letting me know about this. You make two points, firstly that "Trading Card Game" is a proper noun. Certainly you could argue for "Pokemon Trading Card Game", "Neopets Trading Card Game" or "YU-GI-OH! Trading Card Game" needing capitals, I think it's harder to argue for the =term on it's own. Similarly I have a copy of "The Hobbit, the Book of the Film", I would not talk about it as the Book (that's reserved for THHGTTG or holy books :). To a lesser extent the same applies, for example, to Pepy's, one could say "in his Diaries" or equally reasonably "in his diaries"
Your second point, whether is this a job for a bot, is simpler. The bot isn't mindlessly replacing all section headings with slightly lower case variants, it's currently only changing about 200 specific headings - like "Selected Filmography" to "Selected filmography". Of course there's always the risk that someone's written book called Selected Filmography, but that is within the bounds of acceptable risk, IMHO. Rich Farmbrough 16:58 8 March 2006 (UTC).
Sorry, I got my wires crossed. The Pokemon ones are the only article with "in the trading card game" headers I assume - would it be possible to change this to "In the Pokémon Trading Card Game"? --Celestianpower háblame 17:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I would be happy to do that, probably tonight, maybe tomorrow. Rich Farmbrough 17:05 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Rich - also in this edit, you removed the spaces in the section headings and after each "*" (bullet point). I feel like those spaces help the readability of the articles source... and they don't affect how the page renders. Please don't change them arbitrarily. -- Netoholic @ 17:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with the decrease in readability when editing (per [17] and related edits). Some of us don't have large screens and/or perfect eyes (any more!) — Bellhalla 18:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
OK since several people feel this way, I've turned of reduction in surplus white space. Rich Farmbrough 20:18 9 March 2006 (UTC).
Have you? I've just had Ethotoin and Felbamate touched by Smackbot (11th March). As far as I can see, the only reader-visible change was from "Side Effects" to "Side effects". I have no problem with that change if it brings the article into line with the MOS. However, there are over a dozen other invisible changes to each article, which make the Diff extremely hard to compare. These all involve whitespace that (AFAIK) only concern editors. Is there even any official consensus regarding which whitespace style is correct? I like to check "bot" changes as sometimes they do screw up the article (particularly foreign words) but having to compare whitespace changes is tedious in the extreme. In addition, it can make it near impossible to compare two human versions if a bot has done this much work in-between. Please, please change your bot so that the only diffs I see are ones that make a difference to the visible article, and only changes that are sanctioned by the MOS. I do appreciate that bots are useful (especially the ones upgrading my citation templates) but these hidden changes are quite harmful to the ability of editors to use the history mechanism and waste our time. Colin Harkness°Talk 10:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, for the rest of the capitalisation run, I've turned it off, and this time I've saved the settings.... Rich Farmbrough 10:57 11 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Oregon falls (sic)

Dear Rich, Yes i would just like to know Why you deleted my page. Oregon Falls is a very good band in fact it was my cousin dayton niemans band i know alot about that band and wasted alot of my time trying to make that page. I dont know who you are to delet a perfectly good page.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Poonch12 (talk • contribs) .

Answered on your talk page. Rich Farmbrough 19:32 8 March 2006 (UTC).
Hope you don't mind Rich, but I userfied it. It was still a valid speedy deletion and had no incoming links. He can work on it in his user space until he's satisfied WP:MUSIC and everyone's a winner :-) --kingboyk 19:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
NO probs. Rich Farmbrough 20:07 8 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] ImDB

Interesting. I believe that ImDB allows juried submissions (I tried to straighten out the double entries on Leonard B. Stern). Of course, your common name might rule you out! If the information is readiliy accessible, I'd be glad to advise the Grand Poobahs over there.--Beth Wellington 17:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An 'in depth' response

Rich,

(I never know where to post a direct response, on your page or mine – please bear with me, I’m still a kid here!)

No way did I mean to suggest controlling the depth of an Article. In some of my writings a person needs scuba gear. What I really mean involves the structure. As you know in technical writing there is first an abstract, where the reader can grasp the essentials of the subject; this is followed (if they care to go on) by the full text that includes all of the material. Perhaps in Wikipedia it could go something like this: The first that appears after a search would be the Main Article page containing the basic information relating to that subject; then, attached to each paragraph or section could be a ‘read more’ link by which they could go to another page that covers the deeper and more esoteric information. If I read you right, that’s what you were suggesting. I agree with you completely.

Be healthy. Michael David 20:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SmackBot and George Jones

SmackBot broke a link in the George Jones article. [18] Everything is back to normal now, but you might want to somehow try to prevent the bot from doing that to other articles. Thanks. --TantalumTelluride 22:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's a potential problem with AWB. I've reported it, and no doubt it will be fixed RSN. Thanks. Rich Farmbrough 23:02 8 March 2006 (UTC).

Also broke a link in the YMCA article[19] Cometward 21:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, AWB is now fixed, so I'd better find a way of identifying any past errors. Not to hard I think. Rich Farmbrough 22:02 10 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Smackbot, Caps and Dates

In its task of removing caps in headers, Smackbot is changing "Middle Ages" to "Middle ages" (as on the page List of French language authors) It seems to me the expression "Middle Ages" demands caps (see the article Middle Ages). On the same page Smackbot also changed the heading "20th Century" into "Twentieth century", which would be fine... if it changed all the other sections too (19th Century... 16th Century...), instead of leaving the page a hybrid of date formats. Should I go back in and change them all? -- NYArtsnWords 00:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. You might be right about the Middle Ages capitals - bother! I've done the rest of the centuries on that page. A mixed style page was a "known risk" - there are many thousand section headers on WP with unnecessary caps, I did the 15 most common recently, and am now doing the next 200+. Twentieth Century was in this batch, the others weren't, I guess I should have included them anyway, had I thought of it. Rich Farmbrough 01:11 9 March 2006 (UTC).
PS I'll check the MA thing and revert them if necessary. Rich Farmbrough 01:11 9 March 2006 (UTC).

While your making corrections, your bot ate a capital "C" in an Supreme Court "Opinion of the Court" subhead. Those should stay capitalized as well, since we're talking about "the Court" (but there was only the one digested). Cheers! BD2412 T 04:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I see your point. Thanks for letting me know. Rich Farmbrough 20:59 9 March 2006 (UTC).

For Jesseca Turner, SmackBot is adding back-slashes to the section heading. See this edit. --Rob 11:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorted. Rich Farmbrough 11:49 10 March 2006 (UTC).

[edit] 1969 Coal Mine Safety and Health Act

Rich, I'm about to write an entry for the 1977 act. Is the title for this one correct, or should it be somehow otherwise named? I want to make the two consistent. Also, this article was started without a reference by by Alex Horovitz, who despite his bio note saying he contributes regularly to media plagarized it from the external source I've added as the reference in his original version,[20]. (The reference by the blocked sockpuppet was actually to the 1077 act.) You might want to take a peek and if you concur, let him know whatever wiki rule applies to this situation.--Beth Wellington 05:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

After looking at the indexing in the category for U.S. laws, I decided to use neither the year, which indexes everything from the twentieth century uner "1" nor the word "federal", which would index all federal laws under "f."

I think that Alex's original 1969 article was a copyright violation. Hopefully I've changed it enough that it is no longer the case. Should an administrator, if he or she agrees with my assessment on the original article point that out to him? It doesn't need to be listed now, as there is a reference and I've paraphrased.--Beth Wellington 23:24, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Been off-line and am leaving to drive tomorrow to Ohio to give a poetry reading, so didn't reply before now. I guess it's not a copyright violation, but it still seems right to give credit where credit is due. Love the word "crosspatch!" Superpowers? H-m-m-m. The ability to leap tall piles of data in a single bound. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Wikiman! Seriously, i appreciate all your efforts. Your humble scribe, --Beth Wellington 04:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging for Image:Brimingham_Central_Library_fire_jan1879.jpg

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[edit] Notice of response

Hi, you asked me a question and I responded. Many thanks. bobblewik 16:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] regex

See User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/dates.js. Regards bobblewik 22:36, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] September 11 Wiki

Sounds good to me. If you can, please ask for some who have been active over there to support your nomination. If that doesn't happen I'll use discretion to do it in a few weeks until there is some community view on whether you should be one there. Jamesday 23:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Surreal Barnstar
I hereby award you (well, actually your SmackBot) this barnstar for all the constant edits that it's been doing to articles I've worked on. While I'm glad it's cleaning up my editing detrius, I can't help but feel that it's stalking me for some reason. ^_^;;; み使い Mitsukai 15:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rambot demographics to past tense

Hi there. I noticed that you've done a bit of work with some of the articles that were originally created by Rambot, putting the Demographics section into the past tense. I thoroughly agree that these look ridiculous in the present tense, and it's something that I've been doing as well, when I've hit the Random Article button and come across them. However, it's a pretty thankless task, and even with both of us plugging away, it'll take a while to get through all 30,000! Is this something that SmackBot would be able to help out with at all? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 17:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I shall let them go for now, then, and let the bot handle them in its own time. Regarding complaints, you might just want to be aware of this, though I've also had no complaints about actual changes I've made. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suicide sub-categories

Rich,

Something to think about.

I am currently writing a journal article on ‘creativity and suicide’ - exploring why creative persons take their own lives. As a part of my research I have constructed a rather extensive database of persons in history who have committed suicide and, importantly, the methods they have used. I know Wikipedia has an extensive list of persons who have committed suicide and, in some cases, the method. As I have been cruising Wiki I have been adding the method of suicide information to its Articles. Is there any way, or, for that matter would Wikipedia be interested in, somehow also creating a separate listing category based on the method of suicide. In the cases of drug OD I have also subcategorized the type of drug. Perhaps it could be done in the form of additional categories, e.g.: ‘Persons who have committed suicide by gunshot’. I still have a lot to learn about the mechanics of Wikipedia. I searched it to see if I could find any such categories, but couldn’t find any. If such categories exist, please let me know. If not, I would be willing to help with a project to create them.

Be healthy. Michael David 23:54, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
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