User talk:The Anome/archive 2

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The agreed policy is that all words in a species' official common name should be capitalised, other than those following a hyphen if they refer to a part of the animal: "Bald Eagle", "Red-necked Phalarope", "Wilson's Storm-Petrel".

The biology convention appears to be applicable to math as well. Pizza Puzzle

...and were the mean value theorem an animal, I'd agree with you. -- The Anome 14:13 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, so much for logic...do you have some conventional ruling which you feel somehow overrids that and the convention that proper names should be capitalized? How is it easier to read Joseph-Louis LaGrange; instead of simply LaGrange. Students of the Mean Value Thoerem do not need to be on a first name basis with Joe. Pizza Puzzle

  • I'm a bit tired at the moment, and I've got to do some real work now. Three points:
    • If you have "real work" to do, why do you find these issues to be so important as to change them - at worst they are extremely minor grammatical errors; at best, Im absolutely right.
  • There is more than one mean value theorem: see the article itself
    • but only one Mean Value Theorem


  • Lagrange should most certainly redirect to Joseph-Louis Lagrange
    • And it does, LaGrange is far easier to read, most people find names cumbersome to read - it is not proper to use full names when briefly referring to somebody in passing.
  • The capital "G" in LaGrange is highly non-standard usage for the mathematician, perhaps you were thinking of places like LaGrange county, Illinois?
    • Yes, I was thinking of Joseph-Louis LaGrange, as in LaGrange county.

-- The Anome 14:26 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Great work on the SCO vs. IBM page.  :-) (also, this page is currently 37 kb long). Best, Koyaanis Qatsi 01:03 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

RE 142.177. I've been performing an experiment to see if the banned user who uses this IP range can become a valid contributor to Wikipedia. You are not under any obligation to participate in this experiment since Jimbo's HardBan order is still in place, but I would like you to consider joining the experiment. If and when this user violates our policies (such as niceness) then we can enforce the HardBan. --mav

He has certainly mellowed a bit, and sometimes makes useful edits. This should be discussed on the mailing list before we lift the ban. I agree, there should be incentives for good behavior, but Jimbo and the mailing list should be the ultimate authority under the current rules. -- The Anome 21:49 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Since nobody is obligated to enforce the ban then simply not acting is still consistent with the ban order. The order just gives anybody the right to revert his edits and the HardBan aspect legally prevents anybody from resurrecting those edits. I still want to wait and see before we try to make any official change in policy. --mav


That's why I've not been grepping his edits and retroactively blasting them away en masse: I'm only intervening when I notice him making a nuisance of himself: then I just IP block his latest IP address and then remove/rollback the most recent batch without checking them individually. -- The Anome 22:00 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

OIC. That has been my policy too. --mav

In the talk page of tensors (and that of the classical treatment), we have agreed upon doing both approaches as independant and complimentary. There are many reasons for this. If you feel that things should be otherwise, please have the courtesy to discuss it first, before going ahead and making drastic structural changes. And read the discussions regarding this structure first. -- Kevin Baas

Heh heh. So The Cunctator keeps reverting the main page to the colourless version rather than offering any detailed argument. Oh well, some things never change. Every so often we seem to become Cuncpedia, when Cunc gets an idea into his head. I was told off once by a couple of users for trying to debate an issue with him once. I was told I was wasting my time. How on some issue we will all have a debate. A consensus will be reached and then Cunc will completely ignore it and do things his way. I guess the main page behaviour as elsewhere just proves it. :-) FearÉIREANN 23:37 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thank you, Anome. I don't mean to discourage your attempts, they are very noble. I hope that the intermediate treatment works out well. It will be an excellent addition to the tensor pages.

"Many are obstinate with regard to the once-chosen path, few with regard to the goal."
-Fredrich Nietzsche

-- Kevin Baas

Thank you, Evercat! So, that's
\left\lceil \frac{mV}{n+1} \right\rceil + 1
then.

No, it's:

\left\lfloor \frac{mV}{n+1} \right\rfloor + 1

Evercat 17:25 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

About the images of U.S. counties - James F. has set up some web space, and I have been emailing him the images I've done. Hopefully we'll get all of them into a consistent naming format, size, etc. prior to uploading. What I'm hoping is that we can find some automated way to:

  1. Upload image highlighting X County
  2. Insert comments for image of X County (specifically, the original source of the images, prior to editing, asks for a mention)
  3. Add the image, in a floating DIV or some such, to the article on X County

Any help you could give by way of automating any of the above would be greatly appreciated! -- Wapcaplet 02:42 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Brilliant work on Ley lines. I wanted to balance the initial rather credulous page by debunking some of it, but couldn't do much more than add the statement that ley lines probably arise by chance - I didn't have the maths to do it properly, so thanks for taking up the challenge and (I sincerely hope) laying the whole silly business to rest! GRAHAMUK 10:51 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I second that. It really makes the link with Chaos magic possible. I was wondering how to work that one in. Harry Potter 00:12 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Why have you moved snowballing to snowballing (sexual practice)? If there is another use of the term snowballing that needs a Wikipedia entry, you need to make snowballing a disambiguation page. Otherwise, the page should be moved back. Unless, of course, you know of some policy that I'm not aware of. Do let me know... -- Oliver P. 11:19 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd say this is a good thing. Snowballing to me is throwing snowballs at one another, the other thing surprised me! If someone was looking for articles about harmless winter activities for cold weather, they might be surprised to find the explanation as such. In other words, it does have a second, (and much more obvious and banal) meaning. GRAHAMUK

The throwing of snowballs! Just never got round to it. -- The Anome 11:21 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Aha! :) Erm, except that snowball redirects to a page about the Simpsons' pet cat! Hmm... How often is the throwing of snowballs referred to as "snowballing", anyway? And would we really need any article about the throwing of snowballs? Couldn't we just refer people to the article on snow? Do we really need a disambiguation page, do you think...? -- Oliver P. 11:34 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I thought you might be interested in the opinion poll going on now at Talk:Clitoris. MB 17:54 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks so much for fixing the table on history of post-communist Russia! I would have been able to solve that problem myself! 172

I invite you to comment on talk:ley line - Harry Potter wants to remove your excellent stuff to a different page, and only offers some vague arguments for doing so... Evercat 11:18 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Hello Anome, I've answered to your question about copyright on my talk page Nikola 11:33 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I was just curious about what your plans are for uploading U.S. County images. There aren't too many states left now, and a bunch are ready for uploading. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help! -- Wapcaplet 16:51 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Alas, I've looked at a bot for doing the interaction, and I'm not sure I have the time to do what's needed. I'll get back to you soon. -- The Anome 19:08 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


OK, I've built an uploader. What file names and comments do you want? Is just the last component of the filename going to be sufficient? Then I can just upload "Map_of_Alaska_highlighting_Aleutians_West_Census_Area.png" with comment "Map_of_Alaska_highlighting_Aleutians_West_Census_Area.png created by Wapcaplet licensed under GFDL." Is that OK? -- The Anome 20:36 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The file names should probably be the same as on James' site. The comments for each image can be something general like this:

Original outline map in public domain, courtesy of [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/index.html The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin], modified to show counties. Released under GFDL.

It's not even really necessary to customize these on a per-image basis. -- Wapcaplet 20:47 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Okay, here's a proof of concept:

Image:Map of Alaska highlighting Aleutians East Borough.png

Please check this to see whether it's OK, and when you have a sufficient batch of clean pages to upload. How far along are you with your map generation? -- The Anome 21:24 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That looks great! Do you want to wait until all of the states are done, or can you do the existing ones and come back for the rest later? All of the stuff on James' site under "Ready to upload" are good to go, as far as I know. The rest, hopefully, will be done in a week or so. -- Wapcaplet 21:31 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


How many of them are there/will there be? Are you doing them in alphabetical order, by any chance, or state-by-state? I'd prefer to only upload them once, so some sort of clear boundary between runs would be helpful. -- The Anome

I'm not certain how many there are - each state tends to have around 100 counties, so 5000 is a good ballpark estimate. I'm not doing them in any particular order, so if you want to go ahead and do the ones that are there now, I will have James put all future ones into a different directory for the second run. Or, if you'd rather wait until they are all finished, that'd be fine with me. -- Wapcaplet 22:00 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

OK, let me know when you are ready for a run. Then I'll set things going within a day or so. -- The Anome 22:07 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I like your idea of linking from the attribution to the US County page. I see you've gotten started! A few new states have been posted to the website (Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin), as well as several US maps highlighting each state; you probably haven't gotten to these yet, but please hold off on them if you have. We've been using a width of 300 pixels for all states, and letting the height vary proportionally, but it got out of control on Illinois and Indiana (which look twice as big as Texas, since they're tall and skinny).

I hate to interrupt your run, but if possible, do not yet upload:

  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Delaware
  • Vermont
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey

If you can't stop it now, don't worry about it. We can just overwrite them later. The rest of the states should be okay, though. Sorry for the hassle - I should have checked these a bit more carefully beforehand. -- Wapcaplet 16:26 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)



I've stopped the bot. I'll manually delete the directories for those states. -- The Anomebot 16:30 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Tell ya what... I'm having doubts about the whole batch. Our original plan was to keep them at a consistent size, but the heights vary from 100 to more than 500, which could really do bad things for consistent article appearance. I will resize all of them to 300x300 max. If you prefer, I can just e-mail them to you as I finish them. -- Wapcaplet 17:10 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ergh. Forget I said that. I should have just waited longer before asking for help uploading these :) Okay. Here are the states to go ahead and upload:

  • Alaska (looks like you've already done most of it)
  • Arkansas
  • Colorado
  • Hawaii
  • Iowa
  • Kansas
  • Missouri
  • Monatana
  • Nebraska
  • North Dakota
  • Oklahoma
  • Oregon
  • South Dakota
  • Texas
  • Washington
  • Wyoming

That is my final answer. There may be more, but these I am sure about. They all have a maximum height of 300, and any less than that is fine. Sorry about all this nonsense! I really appreciate your patience. -- Wapcaplet 17:31 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)


OK. I've deleted all the files except those in those directories. Re-starting the bot, just for a test. -- The Anomebot 21:00 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It is not a matter of whether I agree with the argument or not, but that the argument is not well put in light of the issue. As i put on the talk page:::Yes but the problem here is that this is not an excellent argument, it is waffle and it does not deal with the long debate around this issue which Watkins himself was involved in (See The Ley Hunters Manual}: "But this chance (by accidental coincidence) increases so rapidly in geometric progression with each point added, that if 10 mark points are distributed haphazard on a sheet of paper, there is an average probability that there will be one three point alignment, whiule if only two more points are added to make 12 points, there is a probability of two three point alignments. It is clear that a three-point alignment must not be accepted as proof of a ley by itself, as a fair number of other eligible mark points are usually present. A ley should not be taken as proven with less than four good mark points. Three good points with several others of less value like cross-roads and coinciding tracks may be sufficient." This has been developped by Peter Furness and Robert Forrest and Williamson and Bellamy have given a good review of the material in Ley Lines in Question. As to the question of "expectation", the example of Coin tossing was used to illustrate precisely how bad the question of expectation was used in this piece. Therefore the probabilty piece should be removed until something a bit more relevant is produced. As for the first section, yes this does need more work, not just on it, but also around it, which is why i have been working on ordnance Survey, O. G. S. Crawford and Alfred Watkins himself.Harry Potter 23:09 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think there are several issues here:
a) Watkins is talking about there only being ten or twelve points on a map. Is this because the number of feartures was much less then than now (probably thanks to the innovations of people like O. G. S. Crawford
b) The probablistic explanation is poorly put - e.g. in the comparison of w with d, it is moving a line length d across a square (or is it a circle, because the word diameter appears in the text) and does not take account that many lines connecting two points randomly selected within a square would be of shorter or longer length.
c) No account is taken of the fact that ancient monuments are not distributed randomly
d) In such books as The Ley Hunter's Companion ley lines with 6, 7, and 8 points are put forward, so the pictures of all the 4-point lines are beside the point In fact the probability argument ends up showing that such alignments are very unlikely in a random distributioin of points, as shown by the maths on the talk page.
e) Two other key questions are side stepped in this mathematical model: the size of the monuments and the earths curvature - "This can be ignored when dealing when keeping to one sheet of a inch map" says Watkins and he is unable to come up with answers to these questions "which are clear working instructions".

Clearly this needs reworking before being put up again!Harry Potter 00:21 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)


No, you just haven't understood what was written there properly. See my reply on the talk page, and consider the large d values in the examples given. For my conculding argument: take a look at the 5-point and 8-point alignments generated from London's pizza restuarants on the talk page. Actual data, actual alignments. -- The Anome 02:08 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think there's a problem with the Colorado maps; I was adding them to the articles and noticed the one for Broomfield County, Colorado is missing. I tracked down a map on another site [1] and it looks like they may have redrawn the lines. - Hephaestos 23:55 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Please, can you let User:Wapcaplet know? I'll stop downloading images for a bit. -- The Anome 23:58 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Anomebot is now officially a bot. --Magnus Manske 09:39 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Feel free to resume uploading states anytime. Also, after some lengthy discussion, we seem to have come to a consensus regarding the too-tall states (Illinois, etc.). James has created re-sized versions and placed them on his site; he re-sized them all, but I think the only ones that will be different than what you already have are:

  • Arizona
  • California
  • Delaware
  • Idaho
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Maine
  • Minnesota
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • New Jersey
  • New Mexico
  • Ohio
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • Wisconsin

I probably missed some; in any case, the images of these states in the above location are good to go whenever you are ready. Thanks! -- Wapcaplet 02:45 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Downloading them now. -- The Anome 09:14 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Uploading has now reached Kansas. -- The Anome 10:37 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


Note: Just testing. Can someone please add this account to the registered bots list, please? -- The Anomebot 12:21 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Just to confirm, Anomebot is me. (See the edit history of this page for proof). -- The Anome 12:22 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Note: There are currently 1180 files to download. Doing so at one every 4 minutes will take 3.2 days. One every minute will take just under a day.

Hello there Anomebot, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need advice on mass editing using a bot, visit Wikipedia:Bots and make sure you don't screw anything up or you're in big trouble. If you need pointers on how to use a bot appropriately, read the FAQ or ask the master. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. -- Rambot

[edit] Recent Changes

The Anomebot's edits are currently visible in Recent Changes, even though Markus has set it to be a registered bot. Currently, there do not seem to be any complaints, so I am letting it run. Is there any chance of a developer checking the current codebase to see if the bot registration is working ok? -- User:The Anome posting as The Anomebot

sounds like a bug. Follow links on Wikipedia:Bug reports? Martin 10:18 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The account already has bot status. Strangely enough, your edits still show up. I haven't checked yet, but I suspect that the code that checks for the bot flag is not triggered on image uploads. --Eloquence 13:58 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think that's what must be happening. Normal edits are indeed hidden, but image downloads are not.-- The Anomebot 15:55 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Would it work to mark them as 'minor', so the 'don't show minor edits' preference would let us filter them out of recent changes? --Delirium 18:30 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I don't think I can do that (there's no means to indicate that to the software) -- what is needed is for a developer to put the appropriate line of code in the Recent Changes code. Then all the downloads will disappear from everyone's sight. -- The Anome 18:37 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Uploads...
That's right. My mistake.

Looks like the uploading is proceeding nicely! I've been busy this week with work and plans for moving, so I unfortunately haven't had time to finish the rest of the states. I have finished a couple, though. Should I e-mail them directly to you, or would you prefer for them to be posted to the same website as the others? Either one is fine with me. Thanks again for your help uploading all these. -- Wapcaplet 12:30 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Please post them on the same website. You can re-use the same directory as last time, I've got update management sorted now. -- The Anomebot 13:01 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ad hominem attack on articles is a poor policy. No one does it but you - I suggest there is more reason than just "experiment" to join Mav in a truce.

Belief that user X "is" user Y, as defined only by yourself, since you seek no second opinions, and have no special insight, and executed only by yourself, since you have no allies in this political vendetta to promote bias, is not a sufficient reason to do what you do to articles in quite sad shape, due to your interventions. The fact is, no one but us trolls actually care about fixing some of the Larry's Text stuff, and getting it sanely integrated with the rest.

It's past time to adopt some of the smarter solutions User:MyRedDice has suggested. The Wikimedia foundation is supposedly there to replace this absurd patchwork of sysop opinion, with respect to what ought to be in the Wikipedia, and what censored out.

I owe no apologies and offer none, certainly not to Mav, but, that's all over. Now that you are the only one who believes in your own judgement, or this "punishment works" or "hard ban" game that arises clearly and only from your own politics and ignorance of people who run blogs not encyclopedias, I suggest you engage in some dialogue "with Wikimedia" about consistent standards. That might be constructive.

As it is, your selective censorship (reverting some edits you believe to be from your phantoms, but by no means all) is simply evidence of your own political bias. It does not stop me, and never will, but it does reveal much about you.

Truce suggested: no objection will be made to substantive edits or raising of NPOV dispute if you don't trust what you read. Why should you? You have the same right to do these things, with little attention, as others do with bad judgement. This is just normal editing. Raise the disputes without reading, as you have done in the past. Be as suspicous as you feel you need to be.

However, for unsubstantiated, uncommented "reverts" that have no validity other than ad hominem and which degrade the quality of the whole Wikipedia project, allies will be sought to "second" or "vouch for" things - this will leave people engaged in personality-driven edit wars that distract them from quality content. This is at best random interruption of well-meaning folk.

I suggest we avoid it.

To the contributor of the comment above:

  • I appreciate your point of view.
  • I also believe that the balance of probability is (judging by IP address and writing style) that you are the person whose edits I have been enforcing the ban on.
  • Please understand that we have to do this sort of guesswork for users who will not abide by our policies, but insist on not creating accounts.
  • If you are this person, you will remember that you were banned permanently from Wikipedia some time ago, but that some people are seeking to encourage the new behavior that appears to be associated with your IP address range
  • I am not interfering with these efforts
  • You also seem to be engaging in the dialogue that was sought, and have made many useful and cooperative edits recently
  • Perhaps you should now e-mail Jimbo (who I understand runs the Wikimedia Foundation) to see if you can get him to lift your ban?
  • Until this is the case, please appreciate that you will sometimes be the target of what you see as "selective censorship" if your previous behavior appears to be re-emerging

-- The Anome 20:07 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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