User talk:Bantman

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[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I thought useful:

Feel free to contact me personally with any questions you might have. The Wikipedia:Village pump is also a good place to go for quick answers to general questions. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be Bold!

[[User:Sam Spade|Vote Sam Spade for Arbiter!]] 18:41, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Aquarium

Thanks for the nice note. I'll pass by the article soon and give it a couple of minor tweaks. (You'll soon get used to that at Wikipedia!) Cheers, and welcome. --Wetman 01:30, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Hello again. I had some further thoughts regarding your excellent article and added them to the Nitrogen Cycle section. Hope they fit. Red Goat 17:27, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Wow! That's fantastic work on Aquarium... you really have taken all my suggestions on board! I think that's awesome :-) However, it almost makes me feel churlish for saying this, but now the lead section is too long. Doh! Can we shift it to no more than three info packed paragraphs? I reckon after that give it a little longer on peer review and then submit it to WP:FAC. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:02, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I think it's ready for FAC now :-) Great work! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:04, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As you requested on WP:RP, I've added a diagram to Aquarium#Nitrogen cycle. —Ilmari Karonen 23:32, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] MTR

Hello, I really appreciated your comments about the MTR in the featured article discussion. I tried my best to address them, and would apprciate your re-evaluating the article. Thanks! Páll 21:31, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Steve Dalkowski

I've made some significant edits to this page which should address many of your concerns. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated. Zerbey 17:52, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] CUPS

Have made an attempt to fix the lead section. What do you think? Please respond on WP:FAC :-) Ta bu shi da yu 02:49, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Congrats

Your featured article is scheduled to be shown on the main page on January 28! So congrats on a brilliant article and working so hard to get it to featured article status! - Ta bu shi da yu 23:32, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 1951 glitch

Something went wrong on your last edit of 1951. Most of the page got duplicated. I reverted the edit to clear this up, but I probably therefore dropped your intended edit. Can you look this over?

BTW, this has happened twice before on 1951. It might have something to do with the "births" and "deaths" subsections having duplicate names; I don't know.

--A D Monroe III 04:07, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Diamond

Great work so far, keep up the good work. But while you are adding so much info, why not take a second to cite individual facts? That makes later fact checking so much easier and helps improve the demonstrable reliability of the article. The percieved lack of reliability is about the only thing wikipedia's critics have left. So do what you can to head that off at the pass by using inline citations. The Wikipedia:Footnotes has a great way of doing it. It is still in a bit of development, but works well now and any problems can be fixed in the future. Thanks - Taxman 22:21, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I left a response on my talk page for continuity. - Taxman 23:39, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Hii; I've been watching your rennovation of diamond, and I must say I've been quite impressed. I am a trained gemmologist, and although I do not specialise in diamonds, I have graded a few; I've also several reference texts which may prove useful in building up the article's currently weak citations. I'm glad to see most of my contributions to the article have been retained; my edits to the article were mostly made early last year, back when it was a featured article. Its featured status discouraged me from making any major edits (plus I'm a lazy git), and sometime in the interim the article was removed as an FA. Some text I had added apparently did not survive the test of time. I did notice the current FA nomination, but decided to leave it be until the "spotlight" had passed. I didn't want to step on your or anyone's toes (and I hate edit conflicts), and besides, you seemed to be doing an excellent job at cleaning it up.

The article and most of the spin-offs (though underdeveloped) you've created cover most areas fairly well, but I can recognise several weak spots (namely enhancements and imitations). There may be some POV issues with respect to the four Cs (not in the parts I wrote, of course; *grin*), but that's hard to avoid due to the subjectivity of the whole affair. For example, I'm still a bit uncertain about the insisted inclusion of the "important" maximum/minimum distance between the eye and the diamond; it's not very helpful that this factoid's only "citation" is a link to a BBS thread. This factor may be important to certain grading systems (of which I must be unfamiliar; the ones mentioned are dated 2004 and 2005), but certainly not to all of them. Diamond grading systems are notoriously inconsistent, of course; the article should say that there is no de facto standard, although the GIA's colour and clarity grades come closest to being universally accepted. I do know that Pagel-Theisen's Diamond Grading ABC: The Manual (9th edition, 2001; considered a "bible" by diamond graders) makes no mention (that I can recall; I'll have to read it cover to cover again) of eye-to-stone distance, aside from the distance being varied (when using a loupe) until the view is sharp. (It is true that the book predates the systems mentioned, but change is slow in the diamond world.) I don't quite understand why such a factor would be important in grading cut, which has to do with measured proportions and the imperfections of polish which necessarily are examined with a microscope. Anyway, I know you didn't write that bit. Just sharing my thoughts.

I have a lot of technical knowledge of the subject, with references to back it up. I want to work with you, though, so that we don't end up duplicating each other's work and/or conflicting with each other's edits. I'm also not sure what you intend the structure of the article to be in its "final draft" (no such thing on a wiki, but you know what I mean), so I'm hesitant to add any new content before I understand the situation more. I know you're trying to keep the article's size to a manageable level by using summary sections, but I can't decide where I should best begin fleshing things out. Is there a particular area you might like assistance with?

I've rambled quite enough, so I'll wrap this up by saying: Great work! -- Hadal 05:26, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gregory, thank you for your generous offer! Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! I am actually not an expert; just a poor guy who spent his life savings on a diamond about a year ago, and did a little research to make himself feel better before doing it. And of course I am God's gift to copyediting, so I do what I can ;) Anyway... for the main article, my remaining tasks are:
  1. Clean out the External links by removing irrelevant links, moving to sub-articles when necessary, and moving to the References section when appropriate.
  2. Reworking the History section (based mostly on the — in my opinion — excellent reference of the American Museum of Natural History's website)
  3. Finding sources and writing the Industrial diamond industry section, and filling out the diamond supply chain and sources sections (I don't believe current references will have enough to do this satisfactorily).
  4. Figuring out what the heck to do with the symbolism section — some of it could easily be moved to history (and I was 90% done doing that until I had second thoughts about it), but overall the section is problematic in that I'm having trouble a) imagining a way the section will flow well internally, and b) imagining a place in the overall article the symbolism section "fits" into. It aslo needs rewriting, which I've been putting off because it's difficult; the April birthstone and LifeGem bits are noteworthy I suppose, but sort of strange and out of left field when it comes to integrating it into the article.
As you noted, the article is already quite long and I'm guessing that when I'm done it will be around 40 to 45 kb. My plan was to use this article as a summary of all the various facets (haha) of diamond as a topic, with a little heavier weighting on actual diamond characteristics (what I've called material and gemological properties) and natural history, as the article is titled "diamond"; and a little less weighting on industry, history, symbolism, etc. Nonetheless, I'm concerned that it will be too long once I'm done, but I don't want to cut anything. It's all so important! :) I don't think it's terrible to have an article like this at that length though, so unless the villagers come to the gates with torches and pitchforks, I'm happy to let it stand that long.
As I see it the real issue, and the one that I am certain you have vastly more capability to address than I, is all of the subarticles. All that I did was move the original text to the new subarticles I created, so that I could abridge and rewrite with abandon. (This may have been foolish, but if I rewrote each subarticle as I created it, I'd be weeks away from getting to where we are now on the main article.) The result is that the subarticles are basically just sections of the original article which failed so spectacularly on FAC and was, in my opinion, substandard. The intent was to weed out detailed information in the name of brevity and clarity, but in many cases what I've written is (of course I have to say this) substantially better than what is to be found in the subarticle, minus many of the technical details. I guess I'm saying that in my view, almost all the subarticles are weak points. An expert such as yourself, with definitive references in hand, could blaze a glorious path of retribution... er... I mean, judicious edits... through the subarticles. I've always thought that a summary article is only as good as its subs. (Speaking of which, I think it's probably appropriate to have a diamond grading systems subarticle; I just haven't created it yet because I have nothing to paste into it!) Ideally, we finish this (what I consider rough) redo of the main article, then redo the subs, then come back to the main article and polish it up with any new things we've learned (or errors corrected) while doing the subs. Of course, this rough redo of the main article can go simultaneously with the sub rewrites.
(This brings up an issue that is germiane not only to this article, that I'm not sure what to do about... I'm hoping you have an idea about what is right. In a summary article, is it proper to list as references all of the refs used on important subarticles, or just list them on the subs and leave them off the main article? For example, if we have a source that says a diamond scratches at 200 GPa, we site it on the material properties of diamond article; if in the main article we then use the sub as a reference to say "diamonds are hard", do we list the reference on the main article too? What if we say "diamond scratches at 200 GPa" in the main article? I'm unsure what proper procedure is here.)
Regarding the specific issue you raised re: viewing distance, I agree with you -- I think the whole topic is dubious at best. As far as I understand it from looking at the talk page, the whole thing arose out of a misunderstanding of microscopy and magnification multipes, and has nothing really to do with actual grading methodology. Of course I could be wrong.
So, you're making a generous offer to help, and I'm more than pleased to take you up on it. Most important to me is that there is nothing factually wrong or misleading in the main article. As you can see from my list of remaining tasks, I'm not going to tinker anymore with the properties sections for now, so by all means if you want to correct or clarify anything, go for it. (I try to work in section edits, precisely to avoid edit conflicts which are odious.) I'd shy away from adding much more factual material to the article in those sections, unless it's currently really missing the point on something. Instead, I feel that the real attention needs to go to the subarticles. Almost all of those need to be completely rewritten, and as stand-alone articles many, well, don't stand alone very well. They could all be significantly expanded, and that is where your technical knowledge would be of best use, IMO. I hope we can work together on those too; it can get lonely working alone :)
And you thought you were rambling... ha! Now, why do I have trouble keeping articles under 32k? Bantman 06:32, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
Oh, right... a proper lead section needs to be written too, of course. I'm leaving that to the end. Bantman 07:41, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
Hi again; and thanks! Sorry about the delay, but I was busy last night with more fish stuff (I like to write articles on subjects I'm not yet an expert on as in the process I can learn a great deal). As you've seen, I've taken your cue regarding the subarticles and started my editing with Material properties of diamond. I think it could easily stand alone now, but I'll likely come back to it later on to improve it even further. I'll leave any main article edits til after I've done everything I want to the subarticles. I included three references (I hope my format is okay), but there's room for a few more.
Speaking of references, I'm not sure what to do about the main article in this regard. I've never written a summary article, so I'm as unsure as you when it comes to deciding whether to include every single reference used in the summary sections in the main article's references. Your remarkable editing skills have mitigated the problem, however, as the way you've summarised the topics makes it easy to reference everything said with fewer sources (due to the low incidence of nitpicky facts or figures). I think we can get away with only referencing the most important facts on the main article (though I realise this would be arbitrary).
I'm also a bit abashed to hear of your troubles with the symbolism section, as I wrote almost all of it (ack!). That was back when the article was much, much smaller; someone else started the section but left it at two lines of text, basically parroting DeBeer's marketing pitches. I couldn't let that stand, so I dug into my jewellery/goldsmithing history texts to get a few basic facts. Someone added the tempered diatribe against DeBeers later on, and I'm glad you've relocated it. I do hope it's salvageable; could it be melded into the history section? Perhaps rename the section to "Cultural and symbolic history of diamond"? Or nix "and symbolic" altogether. We gemmologists aren't historians, unfortunately, but I tried my best. :)
Now, off to slowly blaze through another subarticle. I'll try to keep myself to one subarticle per day; I want this article to be featured by the end of April at the latest! *shakes pompoms* -- Hadal 07:30, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What a couple of long winded fellows we are!  :) You'll have to stop flattering me before my head gets too big!
Re: the symbolism section, let me remove my foot from my mouth. My problem with it was that it's so different from the rest of the article that it's hard to find a good spot for it in the story arc of the article. On the other hand, it's too important and too good info to delete or even relocate. I did a little bit of clean up on it (really relatively minor), and I'm feeling better about it now. There's still a touch of inspecific language and grammar issues that I want to clean up, but on the whole I think it'll stand fine more or less as-is. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of!  :)
I think your take on the references issue sounds good; let's go with that until somebody says something different. As long as things are referenced on the subs, it will be easy to connect the dots and update the summary article if needed.
I'm hoping to finish up what I want to do with the main article by the end of this week. The big pieces I have left are the supply chain section and the intro, with a little general copyediting to do too. Once I do that I'd like to get into the subs with you... we'll have to touch base and make sure we don't duplicate each other's efforts.
Really, great work on that first subarticle. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress... don't worry about hurrying yourself though; I myself tend to work in fits and starts, and then let things fallow for a few days (in addition to keeping things from becoming tedious, it's a great way to get a new perspective on things). As long as you're working on fish topics too, check out aquarium; I pushed that to FA a couple months ago. I'm quite proud of it... but I think diamond can be even better. With your work I'm confident it will be. Onward and forward, forward and onward! - Bantman 04:45, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
Hi again.. I haven't quite disappeared, but my free time (and energy) has been unexpectedly truncated. I've spent what free time I have working (offline, in fits and starts!) on the diamond simulants article, and I hope to have it done sometime within the next 24 hours (or even before my head its the pillow, if I can manage). I think I may have gotten a bit carried away, because by the time I'm done it'll be near 30 KB. But like you I never want to edit anything out, and I think it's all worth saving. You've obviously noticed my expansion of diamond enhancement, and your edits and expansions to it were excellent. (I'm apparently horrible at proofreading or otherwise critiquing my own work. Your expansion to the intro was perfect, and I felt like slapping my forehead for neglecting to draw the same lines.) I'm also glad to hear the symbolism text isn't a lost cause! And, as always, your edits to it were a significant improvement; as was the mother-of-all intros you wrote for diamond. (My apologies if I'm giving you praise-induced encephalitis, but it had to be said. ;)
As for aquariums, I did indeed notice you had turned it into a feature; and bravo! (I really should frequent FAC more often, it seems.) I'll admit I haven't read it _entirely_, but I fully intend to over lunch tomorrow. Just a few months ago the subject was little more than a couple of paragraphs and some spammish links, and now the subject has an article to really do it justice. I have five tanks, and although they all sit empty nowadays, I was once (up til 4 years ago, when I was 18; I started at about age 10) an avid (freshwater) aquarist. I even managed to get a flock of bronze corydoras to breed (I see you wrote that article too!). I should really start a tank up again this summer. I miss having a school of Congo tetras to gawk at (which is even more satisfying when you've grown them from plain jane juveniles, I've found).
So, yes.. rambling becomes us. I don't mind one bit. :) After I finish the simulants article I'll take a stab at one of the four C articles. As they are now they could all be merged into one diamond grading article, but after I'm through they'll probably be much, much longer. Here's to hoping things stay on track. -- Hadal 04:14, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Gregory, glad to see you are still on the case! I figured we were all distracted by the 24-hour-plus "read-only" wiki outage the other day. I myself have been doing things that are almost totally irrelevant, filling out decent articles for red links from diamond -- N.W. Ayer & Son, volcanic pipe, and especially Argyle diamond mine now have decent enough articles attached to them (or at least starts). I'm glad you don't mind me swooping in on your newborn, really lovely articles and sprucing them up a little bit... as they say, two heads are better than one. I'm sure you would have thought of the same things yourself; collaboration just helps things go faster. It's very easy to get possessive and defensive, and I'm so glad you aren't. Regarding the rest of the subarticles, I think I'm going to try and tackle the diamond industry article next. Not sure when I'll get to it though, hopefully by the next few days I'll put something together. And I'll be sure to swing by any big edits you put up; don't mind my (minor, minor, minor) cleanup -- "standing on the shoulders of giants".
I only have one tank up now; I had a second set up to raise my corydoras sterbai fry, but they're all grown up now. - Bantman 06:56, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

(Resetting indent): That diagram was a great find! I've translated it into English, uploaded it to Commons (here), and added it to the diamond cut article. I've yet to expand the accompanying text, but I'll try to get around to that by the weekend (hopefully sooner). I must say I found your Argyle mine article very informative. I hadn't seen the Gems & Gemology issue you used as a source (nice of the company to make the relevant article public in PDF form!), so all of my knowledge of the mine had been gleaned from passing references and asides. I feel much less ignorant now. ;)

I'll eventually take a crack at creating a new image or two to illustrate diamond simulant, though unfortunately I currently only have a (coloured) YAG, sphalerite, and sphene at hand. I'm also not so great at photographing cut stones, apparently. I've set my very next task to be polishing off the enhancement article with at least one more reference's worth of detail. Can't make myself too many promises as I'm in a rather changeable mood. I do know, however, that this has been the most productive collaboration I've yet been a part of on Wikipedia. :) -- Hadal 05:14, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the indent reset; I was about ready to do it myself. :) I've been agonizing for weeks now over the status of diamond industry, and now am leaning toward deleting it as a subarticle and just letting what is in the main article, stand as-is. The problem is that I don't want to delete much of what's in the main article because I think it's valuable as a part of a top-level overview of the topic, but at the same time I don't want to develop the topic into a larger article (because I don't have the desire or energy). I need to recuperate from this mental defeat for a few days before I select another subarticle to attack, although I'm leaning toward copyedit duty in the face of superior technical knowledge and sources available to others (yeah, I'm talking about you!).
I concur that this is by far the best collaboration I've been a party to here; it's very exciting! :) - Bantman 00:24, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BC/AD vs BCE/CE debate on the Diamond Page

I have read the debate and while discussion may be entirely academic, it is in the wrong place. You wrote

BC vs. BCE has been discussed ad nauseam on the talk page, and the page should be left as-is in that stylistic selection.

The real concern is that you are writing for the Wikipedia and their style is to use AD & BC, not BCE & CE so you should follow their standard. Please take this up with the organisers of the Wikipedia and leave the era identifiers as BC & AD until there is an agreement to the method that is agreed upon in the Diamonds article. It's about CPU usage, not just style.--21:19, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

If you diagree, please take it up with the wiki gnomes of Wikipedia, don't change the diamonds page any longer.--05:18, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the quote. So now back to the lack of consensenus on the article. It seems there is none as others have sided with the BC/AD rule and you still have not answered the question of redirect pages as the standard. Glad to discuss it. Please leave the page alone--I will do the same--until you can convince me on a technical level. --06:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I have not agreed to stop editing the page, I have agreed stop editing to let you attempt to convince me, and you have not. I will be working on a new project to determine if your opinion has consensus or not. This fact is currently being debated on the change pages.. As for my talk pages. That's what history is for. Thanks. --14:58, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I have done some analysis of the discussion. If anyone would like to see the work, please contact me. With the RFC aside, the discussion can be summarised as following

  • AD: 6 (six) brian0918™ , Dewet , Doovinator , Gene Nygaard , Jasper , Walter Görlitz
  • CE: 2 (two) Bryan is Bantman/Bantman, Hadal
  • CrucifiedChrist and Taxman just want the debate to stop.

The summary below was ignored.

The real consensus is to not change the era markers from AD & BC to BCE & CE. Even before I weighed in, the consensus was 5 to 2 that we should stay with AD & BC.

We appreciate your authorship and desire to make this your own article, but it's public domain and you don't hold the copyright. Please follow the consensus decision.

Let's unlock the page. I believe that Bantman or Hadal should make the changes to AD & BC. Thanks. --06:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Camel cigarettes slogan (N.W. Ayer & Son)

Hi I am almost 70 years old and have a very good memory. Long before TV, Camels had an ad on the radio with a slogan as I quoted, including the "mild, mild". To get something more definitive, you would have to consult audio libraries or the cigarette company itself - they might have a record. Or their agency. Is there no response there? I was just checking random pages, and I have never in my life heard the ad without those two words. I have not, however, watched television (more than perhaps a total of 6 hours) since I graduated high school in 1952 and I believe TV ads were allowed for some years. If the slogan was on packages rather then on radio, the assonance would mean little and space would be at a premium. Therefore, if the slogan appeared on a package (including carton), space considerations - to allow larger type, less clutter, etc) may have won over assonance (you can't hear assonance in print!) and the words deleted. I can also remember well Lucky Strike ads, with the intonations of an auctioneer rattling off bids and ending with "Sold to American". Also they had "LSMFT". Incidentally, my sister smoked, and died of cancer at age 27 in 1956.

The fact that you got only a few hits just means memories are poor and nostalgia for old radio ads is low. Here's a link which purports to have the line (but I can't guarantee which agency did it- you could find out by the year which I would guess from nearby logs to be 1953)

Pdn 17:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC) (moved from Bantman's user page)

[edit] Accident at WP:FAC

There was an editing accident (probably MySQL error or cut-n-paste error) on Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates that resulting in the page contents being duplicated. A number of edits had occurred by the time it was noticed, but I tried to preserve everything while removing duplicate material. Just in case, mosey on over and check if your vote stuck. If you have any questions, respond on my talk page. Thanks!

-- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 20:52, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

[edit] Rude Messges

I really don't think there is any excuse for rude emails. In the UK most companies will sack people for sending rude emails. It is difficult enough to construct a nice email and I have been spoken to/fired from jobs for sending emails much tamer than the ones that I have received on this web site (the one from David Brooks). I think that people need to realise that there is no excuse for sending rude emails. They would not be rude emails to a colleague or boss, so why do they send rude emails to other people on this website. I think that they need to make a policy that people who consistenty send inflammatory emails should be banned from the site. There was no excuse for that man saying that I did not have any courtesy.

We are all volunteers. If I did something wrong then I am open to criticism, but I do not appreciate that David Brooks saying that I did not have any coutesy. The way he acted, you would have thought he ran the place. In his page he said he is a journalist, so I can only assume that he scours wikipedia and other websites for news bits to write about because it is his bread and butter and he must earn a living from it. Most of the rest of us poor slobs have regular jobs and don't get all anal about a little mistake here or there becuase after all it is a free website. People don't have to contribute to the website if they don't like the quality of it. Also, rather than saying that I did not have any courtesy, he could have sent me an email telling me the correct way to do it. That would have been more appropriate.

With regard to body language, I compiled that piece perhaps 7 years ago and sent it to Janus Publishing along with the manuscript for Blind to the Molesting Hands. The editor left soon afterward, and they said they were not going to publish my essays because it did not do the story justice. I can only assume that the editor or someone else in that company decided to take my essays with him when he left the company, and used the essays without my permission. That is the only explanation that I can come up with for what happened. Sarah Ferguson was accused of plagerising, so perhaps on a psychic level someone picked up on my words. It is also worth noting that patents for inventions usually all come in at around the same time, but they have to give the credit to one person even though several people submitted them at the same time. It is the nature of the universe that when people are ready to accept things several vessals will come to dissimenate that information. Of course, I am not for one minute suggesting that I am a vessel that has something really outstanding or interesting to say, but perhaps that is how the confusion started in the similarity between the articles. I don't know how that happened, but I do know that I wrote my article close to 7 years ago. I do not know how it was so similar in nature to that other article because I have not looked at the website or read the piece, and I am not about to contact the person on the website to say that I am the copyright holder for it. I do have the article on my computer and it has the date and time stamp, so if anyone wants to take me to court then perhaps I can use that as evidence. I have enough copyrighted information to my name already. Regards,--TracyRenee 13:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Body Language

It does not bother me re body langauge. I said from the very beginning that if people did not like it they could delete it. I have enough work of my own on the internet that I have copyrighted on the internet that it does not matter.

I did go back and re-read David Brooks email before I deleted it, and it was not as awful as I and originally thought, but it still wasn't very nice. He said I was dumping articles and expecting other people to clean up and all kinds of things.

I personally have copy-edited a lot of articles and I have never become enraged or angry. I have just done what I could. I cannot copy-edit all articles because I don't know enough about the subject. Today I did an article on induction and it was obvious that it was a presentation that someone had done, but I edited what I could because I happen to know a little bit about induction having been in the USAF for 15 years as a radio relay repairman. The point is, David Brooks did not know me at all, yet he felt he had the liberty to send me offensive emails. I doubt very seriously he has even the remotist idea was induction is, yet he feels he has the right to criticise other people.

The only time I have ever been even the slightest bit critical was when someone put a post up about some writers, and the grammer was really bad. I edited it and posted about the quality of the grammer, and said I hoped it wasn't the writers who had that kind of grammer. The person who posted sent me an email back and said to feel free to edit, which is what I did.

Perhaps I should just stick with what I know, which is a little bit of grammer and a little bit of everything else.

--TracyRenee 19:10, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

Thanks for stepping in with the above person. I have to take a bit of the blame since my message that wasn't exactly soothing - I should learn not to check "new pages" for more than 10 minutes at a time; I get so irritated at all the glop being dumped on wikipedia that my tone gets harsher than it should. I admire your patience, which accomplishes more in the long run than scolding, although in this particular case I'm afraid it's going to be an awfully long time. - DavidWBrooks 19:16, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A Query

Bantam,

Thank you very much for emailing me, but I did not see my message so much as a dispute as a complaint about the fact that one member of the group is sending inflammatory emails.

I am also curious to know what your position in the group is because although you have not been rude to me, your emails have been very condescending, treating me as if I am a five year old. I would have been much happier with your correspondence if you had not been speaking down to me.

Just so I can have some clarity of the situation, would you be kind enough to tell me exactly what your position of the group is. What is your title and who appointed you to that position?

On the message of deleting the rude emails that I received, my son, who was abducted by his father, reads wikipedia. I do not have a very good relationship with my son and only speak to him on the phone. My son has a problem with treating people with disrespect,and I try to teach him to treat people with respect, but it is difficult because his father did not raise him to respect other people, and we live in a world where people are not treated with respect. I am worried what my son would think if he was to look on my page and see all of the rude emails that people have sent to me. I still think that the people in this group should be careful of their emails. You have gone to great pains to tell me over and over again so repeatedly what high standards wikipedia has, but I have not really seen those high standards, especially in the form of emails that have been sent to me.

I would also like to say that with regard to my son, he got involved with some religious freak over the internet, and even ran off with her with my money, and as soon as the money ran out she dumped him. She sent me several emails in the same condescending, patronising manner that you did, and this girl/woman did a lot to damage my relationship with my son. I hope you can appreciate, therefore, that it takes a lot more than sending a few emails to someone trying to appear to be superior to make an impression on my psyche. I suppose that I have been through too much in my life to be taken in by other people. --TracyRenee 06:07, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Persona.l

[edit] Personal Issues

I don't usually talk about my personal issues, but I wanted you to have a little bit of understanding. My son reads wikipedia and what is he going to think if he just happens to look at my page and finds all kinds of emails from people attacking me.

Also, that guy David Brooks got very personal. He verbally attacked me by making comments about my lack of courtesy, saying that I dumped articles and expected other people to clean them up, etc. That is very personal and was much more personal than me saying a few things about my son. I don't have a good relationship with my son and I don't want him to read offensive material that other people have written and sent to me just to upset me. If my son was to read those things then he would feel very justified in his very negative feelings about me.

Also, wikipedia is a community, but in addition to criticising people all the time they should also try to promote an area of respect and courtesy. Do you think that guy David Brooks had any courtesy for me when he sent me that inflammatory email?

I made a point of reading your page and you stated that you have done a lot of editing. Perhaps you should try your hand at writing a few articles. I also noted that you are in the glee club at college. Oops, that was personal. It seems that we never can get away from dealing with personal issues.

It really is difficult not to get personal with people when you strike up an email correspondence becuase that is the whole nature of the correspondence. For whatever reason, you have decided to use the internet to reach out to people, and for whatever reason you have decided to get personal.

I spent all day thinking about you and what your motivation is for getting involved in wikipedia. I know that you have not been in wikipedia very long, according to your page. I also know that you do a lot of editing. I also know that you really like the glee club, although I cannot remember what the glee club is. I thought to myself, what does Bantam get out of wikipedia? The only professional reason that I can come up with is that perhaps you might want to get into publishing and see volunteering at wikipedia as a way into the door.

I got into wikipedia out of boredom, personally. Working in an office can be pretty tedius, so I liked to look at the site. I have also contributed a few articles, but I don't know how many people have deleted out of the sheer pleasure of it. I did not even know you could send messages to people until someone sent me a message, and the first time I received a message I thought, gee, I have made some friends here. Unfortunately, most of the messages have not been very nice, so I have deleted them. I don't want to clutter my page up with messages that are not very nice, so I hope that you can understand.

As far as I am concerned, the matter re my original grievance is resolved, so there is no need for you to email me any more if that was why you emailed me. I don't really get into non-personal issues on my free time because I have to spend so much time at work having to deal with people who are not very nice, but I must deal with them to earn a living. I therefore prefer to spend the rest of my time either in my solitary pursuits of writing, reading, crocheting, or sometimes emailing friends. I have no desire to enter into communications with people to discuss the next big article or to complain that someone put a comma in the wrong place.

Good luck in whatever it is you decide to do with your life. I would also like to point out that the internet is a vehicle where people can pretend to be whatever or whoever they like to be, but the true test in our success lies in how we relate to people in the real world and how we get on in paid employment. Any reprobate can fire off an inflammatory email, but it takes true courage to show tolerance and understanding for other people.

Regards,--TracyRenee 19:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to play these psychological mind games with you any more. I only ever emailed you in the first place to be polite, even though according to you and David Brooks, I don't have any courtesy.

I would like to point out for the record that you played no part whatsoever in resolving any disputes or grievances that I may have had, and in fact you just upset me even more with your unsolicited emails to me saying the things that you did. I just responded to your emails because I thought you might turn out to be a nice person.

I think you like to play mind games with people, reel them in, and then slam dunk them. I have met lots of people like you, who have sent me unsolicited emails, pretending to be my friend, and then when they got my trust to slam dunk me. The game you played is nothing new. It is probably a favourate passtime of many unevolved souls who get into the internet because they can be anybody they want to be and nobody will ever be the wiser. In fact, it is a quite common game that people like to play because they can feel superior. But feel superior to who? Anybody can bash out an email telling other people what to do, but they would never do it face to face. You would never tell me face to face the things that you emailed me becuase you know that I would either walk away from you or ask you how you dare to speak to me like that.

Don't forget, it is you who started this email correspondence, not me. Before a few days ago I never knew you existed, yet you reached out to me over thousands of miles becuase you had a deep primal need to let me know that you do exist. You emailed me, I did not email you, so it was you who wanted to touch another living soul, not me. If you did not want to be acknowleged for your worth as a human being then you never would have emailed me. You would have simply ignored my email that I posted on the message board, but you had a need within youself to validate your existance in a world where you are often considered insignificant, and you reached out to me, even though you do not want to admit it. It was not I who reached out to you because I do not need to validate my existance in the world, but you reached out to me for your own justification and validation that you are a human being worthy of contact with other human beings who are quite capable of getting on with their lives without you.

You sent me unsolicited emails and I responded in an open honest heartfelt manner. I bared just a tiny bit of my soul to you, but you are not ready to really know people, even though you made an initial attempt by emailing me and then backing down,which I suppose is why you use such an impersonal medium as the internet to correspond. If you really wanted contact with people you would do it face to face and not on a screen where you can pretend to be anybody you want to be. You caught me off guard with that little psychological game that you played, although I should have seen it coming because I have experienced it so many times in the past, over the internet and one to one.

Good luck with whatever it is you do, but perhaps you should stay out of mediation because you not only did not resolve any disputes, but you just upset me as well. I don't think you should give up your day job.


--TracyRenee 20:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Size of featured articles

Liked your comment at Wikipedia talk:What is a featured article#Size. Completely agree with you. Hydriotaphia 22:21, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Eldfell

Hi Bryan, thanks very much for your comments on my FAC nomination of Eldfell. I just wanted to see if you felt they'd been addressed to your satisfaction now? I think I've covered everything you suggest, except as I say, info on the submarine effects is not easy to come by. Anything particular you had in mind for that? Also, my confusion of east and west - you said you though from other context that the map arrow must be south instead of north - what was that context, because it must be wrong as well? Thanks! Worldtraveller 11:24, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi WT. I'd make these corrections myself but I'm so unfamiliar with the subject, I can't tell when what seems inuitive is right. :) In the "the eruption begins" section, third paragraph, it says "activity soon became concentrated on one vent, about 0.8 km north of Helgafell." If the main vent is where Eldfell cinder cone is marked on the map, it actually appears east or southeast of the town. In the "evacuation" section, first paragraph, it says "lava flows were already moving slowly into the western side of town"; from the map it appears that lava flows were moving into the eastern side of the town; the west end looks unaffected by lava flows. Those are the only things I noticed; love the article -- fun read! - Bryan is Bantman 17:05, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
OK, the vent was indeed 0.8km north of Helgafell, which was the old volcanic cone southeast of town. I've tweaked the wording to try and make the relative locations of Helgafell, the town and the new vent clearer. And you're absolutely right that lava flows were actually moving into the east of town, and never got near the west. Thanks for catching those! Worldtraveller 18:08, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ibn Nafis & the circulation

Hi,

I noticed that in June 2004 (!!!) you added the datum that Ibn Nafis discovered the circulatory system in 1242 in the article Ibn Nafis. However, this disagrees with the date of 1268 given in circulatory system by a whopping 26 years! I looked online for a source to no avail; do you have a reference for the datum in question? I would like to fix whichever article is in need of fixing, but I can't do it without a reference and unfortunately I can't find one myself. (Internal inconsistencies drive me crazy!) Thanks for your help.

- Bryan is Bantman 23:10, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Hello, User:Bantman. I dunno... I think I copied that from 1242 and Timeline of medicine and medical technology. Not sure though .... Anyway, I'm glad that someone is checking all these little details. Thank you. -- PFHLai 23:19, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

[edit] Pulmonary circulation

Hi,

The date comes probably from The Penguin Book of Medicine and it is clearly not a very credible source of information.

It is indeed hard to dig out something on the net but I have succeeded, please see

http://www.islamset.com/isc/nafis/iskandar.html

There seems to be support for the 1242 date.

Alternatively you could also try to consult a Lancet article

Ibn Al-Nafis and the pulmonary circulation. Lancet 1978;1:1148

but it is not available online I think.

I hope this is al least a bit helpful.

Regards,
Kpjas 00:05, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unfinished FAC business

When you have a spare moment and feel up to it, could you take another look at Technetium and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Technetium. :) --mav

My apologies, I know I've left you all hanging! :) I will try to get to it soon. - Bryan is Bantman 03:57, May 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Caonradin

Thanks for the picture of Conradin, learned something new there. Eixo 00:46, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Glad to help! I just did 1268 fairly recently, and when I read your article from DYK, I immediately recognized the black & white image as a copy of the original I knew of. Love the article! - Bryan is Bantman 02:52, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

Thanks for adding the Battle of Ngasaunggyan article. As part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, I have replaced the generalized {{stub}} tag with {{hist-stub}}. When you create new articles, it would be great if you could use these more specific tags whenever possible. Thanks, and continue contributing to Wikipedia! Russ Blau (talk) 19:44, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Destructive fishing techniques

Hi there, I just spotted your edit summary for Aquarium on the live RC feed. There's stuff on "destructive fishing practices" in Fishing which relates to collection of live fish for the aquarium trade which you might want to demerge and use (it's a bit of a dogs dinner of an article!). "Destructive fishing practices" might be a bit of a broad title, unless you're going to include things like dynamite fishing and bottom trawling. If there's anything I can do... Anilocra 23:02, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow! That was quick. Anilocra 23:06, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. There's definitely a good article or two to be had there somewhere. I've been thinking about taking a big stick to the various fishing related articles and trying to knock them into some sort of logical shape for a while (I might be crazy, but I don't think the best bait for catching pickerel belongs on the main fishing page!). I've just finished working on Myxobolus cerebralis (I spotted your comment - got me there :) ) so I'm looking around for something else to do. Maybe I'll take it upon myself to shepherd some newbies into a collaborative effort on this. Baaah, baaah... :) Anilocra 23:36, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Case cracking

Heh, actually I've known about it almost since it started. While doing RC patrol I was noticing a lot of changes to the Puget Sound page a while back by new users. I asked on some talk pages about it and their teacher told me that it was a class project. See Talk:Puget Sound. He eventually listed it on that page of class projects, and that's when I found out that it wasn't just that article but five articles. CryptoDerk 18:55, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, also, regarding contacting the people in charge, I talked with him on IRC and I think he's pretty clear on things since reading that page about school projects. If you notice someone in the future doing something that might be a class project, point them there. CryptoDerk 18:58, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Boleslaus'es

Boleslaus the Pious and Boleslaus V of Poland had the same first name, belonged to the same dynasty and died on the same year, but beside that they were two diffrent people - so I removed the merge tag. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:09, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

I did a little googling and looking at different Wikipedia sources and couldn't determine whether they were the same or different persons. I figured a merge tag was a good way to get someone more knowledgeable to weigh in; and I figured that would be you -- thanks! - Bryan is Bantman 20:27, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] container pages

Hey Bantman - Jguk is using a bizarre scheme whereby 'articles' (template container pages, really) are built using transclusion (not unlike the FAC page). What's worse is he is using the wikipedia:namespace from WikiProject subpages to hold article prose and then linking directly to that from the headings on the container page. For an example see: 2005 English cricket season (8-30 April) (a page he is putting through peer review at Wikipedia:Peer review/2005 English cricket season (8-30 April) with the intent of finishing it up before FAC). Please add your input on this practice at Wikipedia talk:Template namespace#transcluding prose. I'm telling you this because you talked me out of a similar idea during the FAC size discussion. --mav 22:29, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Volcanic Pipe image

Hi Bantman — I noticed you had put up an image request for a diagram of a volcanic pipe, so I put one together for you: Image:VolcanicPipe.jpg. Let me know if this is what you were looking for, or if you want anything changed. — Asbestos | Talk 01:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kangaroo mouse

Hi Bantman, I just wanted to let you know that an article you wrote, kangaroo mouse, is now featured in the Did you Know? category on the Main page. --Aranae 16:07, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Updated DYK query Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Kangaroo mouse, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

[edit] WikiProject Years Survey

Hi. To get everybody thinking, I've created a survey about Year pages here. I'm telling all the participants of WikiProject Years and everyone else who has shown an interest or participated in the discussion. If you could check it out it would be appreciated, and tell anyone you think may be interested.Trevor macinnis 03:17, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Updated DYK query Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Capitoline Museums, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

[edit] Re: Diamond infobox

My first thought: spiffy! I honestly can't think of anything to amend; I even like the colours you've chosen. I do wonder whether the new box should be inserted before or after the mineral infobox in the properties article, but that's not a big deal for me. (Probably before, if only for consistency's sake.)

I'm quite glad to see you're still actively improving these articles, because over the past few weeks I've become somewhat distant from the site due to several concurrent crises. While I am having something of an early-life crisis (trying to figure out exactly where I'm heading), most of the drama stems from the neighbours, whose oak tree fell on our house on the 5th, and whose chimney (along with the house attached to it) continues to lean precariously against (and slice into) our house, creating a major safety hazard and inevitable water damage. The falling tree caused significant damage to the roof, as well as decimating the backyard (it knocked down two fences, damaged the deck, and flattened many expensive perennials). I now have some idea how tornado victims must feel, except that we have other people (rather than nature) to blame.

Even before the tree fell, its crown branches were leaning over and against our roof, abrading shingles and allowing squirrels and raccoons ready access to our attic. We asked the neighbours to do something about this tree last year, because it was clearly a problem; it also had quite a few dead branches, all of which hung menacingly over our deck. They completely ignored us; we spent $2,500 on roof repairs just last spring. One month to the day of complaining to the city about the tree and chimney, the former comes crashing down. (The city never took action, so we plan to file a claim of damages with them as well.) Even though the fallen tree was pressing against both our house and the other neighbour's, the tree's owners were not prepared to do anything about it—until the city issued them an emergency order, forcing them to. They still refuse to pay for any of the damages (caused by both the tree and the chimney), which may total c. $65,000. Since they've just sold their house(!) for $650,000, we'll have to move fast to try to put a lien on their property before the deal closes, sometime in September. Something tells me the new buyer hasn't been informed of these recent developments. (The chimney has actually been a problem for over a year, but the real estate agent said it wasn't her problem). The owners have Vermont plates and have only lived here for about two years, so we don't know how the legal situation might change if they move across the border.

While this is all happening, an entire circuit in this house has fried, meaning I have to wait until the evening to plug my computer in (as it's sharing power with major appliances). These days, I rarely have the energy to do more than check my mail. If worst comes to worst, we may have to sell this house; I may also have to cancel my university application for this year, and use the student loan for more pressing needs.

I'll cut my rambling short(ish) and spare you at least a dozen more paragraphs. Thanks for asking for my input, and thanks doubly for creating the infobox! I can't promise anything, but if I catch a break from the madness, I'll take a crack at beefing up the synthetics article. I've begun to miss the energetically focused feeling of writing articles. Cheers, -- Hadal 02:42, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Shrimp farm

Thanks very much for your detailed comments! Could I ask you to help me address your concerns? I'm not sure I'll be able to address them all by myself. I could use some help. Lupo 07:28, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Could you take a look at the article now and see whether your concerns (except the reorganization) have been addressed? If not, what is still missing, and what technical terms do you feel need explaining? Lupo 07:51, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

Updated DYK query Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Nurek Dam, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Sorry about the references, They were mixed with the external links. I have fixed this. Please take another look. -- Samuel Wantman 08:32, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of Alaska

Still on? I tried to address your objections. Toothpaste 01:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello, it's been five days since I addressed to objections you made, or tried to. Would you please look at History of Alaska and change your vote if I met the objections at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Alaska, or abstain if you prefer, or at the very least explain what still needs to be done? Toothpaste 03:04, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] your comments about me

I normally don't take the time to personally respond on a person's talk page about comments, Bantman, but you seem to think I have abused the system: Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Terri_Schiavo

Have you actually read the last three reviews of Schiavo? Yes, I understand you have your opinion, and I respect that, but I don't respect your opinion if you have not actually read the entire page about the FA-nomination.

  • If you have not read the entire page: Then, you have no persuasive power for me to consider your views as arguably correct.
  • If you have read the entire page: Then, why do you think the past three (3) reviews had many positive comments and suggestions for Fa-nomination? (Yes, there were three prior reviews, two peer reviews and the recent FA-nom., in which the vote was closer than you imply.)

I initially suggested that the edit war was a reflection on the editors, not the page, which has improved much in the past months -and even then it was FA-worthy, many suggested.

  • My father weighed in on the edit warring issue: Did you even read that? If you haven't read the entire page in the FA-nomination, then you are not persuasive to me -or Mark, if he thinks like me; and, he can rule against a unanimous decision, in case you haven't heard.

Come and read the entire page, before it gets too long, and then I will --if you certify, and give me your word that you've read it all, then I will respect your opinion as much as I respect your right to have it.

I certainly respect you as a person, based on my own belief system, whatever it may be.--GordonWattsDotCom 02:24, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I will respond in brief to your comments.
  1. My comment was made for the benefit of others, not for you; therefore I don't care if you respect my opinion.
  2. I have not read the entire history of nominations; I trust other editors' characterizations of such. My comment regarding abuse is in response to your actions vis-à-vis the renominations etc., not the content of the previous FAC nominations.
  3. I don't care what your father said, it carries less weight than the opinions of other editors who have earned my respect over many months.
  4. Mark is not all-powerful on FAC; he is merely the instrument of community consensus. I'm sure he would agree. If the community were to disagree with him, we could overrule him, or take away the powers that have been given him (informally; his power is due to the deference of others, and nothing else).
  5. "Abuse of the system" can be defined as following the letter, but not the spirit, of the rules. I feel that you are doing this, and your legalistic defenses are insufficient in my view.
-Bantman 04:12, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. One point that seems important to me us the following the spirit of the law, which is, I think, the higher standard: For that reason, I am perplexed by the axiom: The more improved the article gets, the less support it gets: That trend has followed through all four reviews -this one being the fourth -and that is not logical: To follow the spirit of the law would imply that the improvements in the article would be followed by improvements in the reviews, so either the prior reviewers were wrong to praise it, or the current reviewers are wrong to dissent.
I am not asking that you cart blanc accept my father as some figure of authority, but his opinion is no less important simply because he is too busy to edit here. Would you like it if I devalued your opinion? No. I disagree on merit, not because of "respect earned," although I do respect the efforts of persons who come here and -for free -try to improve things.
"I have not read the entire history of nominations;" Thank you for being honest. (Some wouldn't be.) However, unless you have read the evidence, you are not qualified to offer a judgment on the dispute. How would you like it if a judge simply said "I'll take so-and-so's word," but not check the evidence. Really, if you do to others, then when it eventually happens to you, your defenses are not validly accepted by others. Have faith in the system of those who defend you, and gain the strength necessary to properly defend others, no matter whose side that may be; your method of taking others' word is only slightly more reliable than throwing dice, lol. When I vote on a matter, I research it properly, to show respect for the other participants, and I hope my example will encourage you: I have read the page from cover-to-cover, not because I am the nominator, but for the same reason I do so on all votes which I execute: Respect and wisdom.--GordonWattsDotCom 04:30, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
You have made a choice to focus on how you perceive you are being wronged by others, and ignore the fact that you are disregarding long-held community standards. That is your decision, but that is why you are running into so much resistance, and why I don't think we can have a useful dialogue here. That is also why I choose not to take you as an example of a good way to participate here at Wikipedia; I believe many of your tactics are counterproductive. I have seen sufficient evidence; one's knowledge need not be encyclopedic to be able to make an informed decision. Why would I defend someone's opinion which I do not support? I defend their right to have it, just as I defend my right to attack it. - Bantman 04:53, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
"one's knowledge need not be encyclopedic to be able to make an informed decision." Well, I admit you are right; it is more efficient sometimes to take shortcuts that usually work, but not only do I think I'm right, but also, I feel you are caught in a catch-22 loop: You won't read the page because you disagree -and you disagree because you won't read the page. Circular. You have a right to prioritize, but I think you would enjoy the personal answers that I gave to almost every single criticism, and, yes, sometimes I admit I'm wrong, and I hope that doesn't surprise you. ~~ If you took as much time looking at the evidence as you do in arguing with me, you'd be a lot more informed, and spend less time overall; I have done my part to help fellow-editors publish a high-quality page -and I took time to address every concern raised, and remaining silent only if I had already answered that question. Don't get stuck in a circular catch-22 situation; If you're that restricted on time, maybe Wikipedia is not for you, but that's only my opinion. I hope that helps; I did my best.--GordonWattsDotCom 05:03, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Katamari Damacy

Both me and the other supporter have no idea what you mean by "three out of six sections are one section". It doesn't make any sense; I only see two subsections, and there are eight sections. - A Link to the Past (talk) 05:59, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Second request for you to clarify; if you don't, I'll request Raul to strike your objection on the grounds that it's not actionable. - A Link to the Past (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
I think 12 hours is a little short to expect a response -- some of us sleep after all. No need to get combative. - Bantman 15:46, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Combative? I'm just being encouraging. Being combative would be to not give a second request. Anyway, you DID make edits after I sent you the first request. - A Link to the Past (talk) 23:41, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
Combative is threatening that my objection would be striken if I didn't hop to it and clarify ASAP. I think a neutral observer could tell the difference between what you said and "encouraging", and see that the difference is vast. Threatening to have one's vote striken within such a short time period and for such an easily remedied offense is combative. 48 to 72 hours is a more reasonable time frame to give someone adequate time to reply.
Regarding the specifics, my first edit after I received your notes was to respond to them. You made two requests, including your threat, while I was offline. Your requests were posted 6 hours 29 minutes apart, during which time I made no edits; in fact, I made only one edit between my first two posts to the FAC page in question, two minutes after the first FAC post. So I am afraid you are incorrect in your understanding of the relevant facts.
I hope we can keep this from becoming antagonistic; I fear I have offended you by some of my comments and if that is the case, I apologize. However, I do think that you could benefit from some constructive criticism on how you choose to interact with the FAC community, and I have tried to provide that in the interests of all. - Bantman 00:25, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
There is nothing about what I've said that is even remotely counter-productive. I left the second response after you edited Lakitu, but I left the first one before you edited it. Unactionable objections can be stricken, you realize, and that was in no way actionable, since you yourself said the statement didn't make sense. - A Link to the Past (talk) 00:47, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
I have never edited Lakitu; please get your facts straight before referring to them as evidence. I made a typographical error which was corrected as soon as I was made aware of it. In my opinion, you were overzealous in 'defending' the article, and I told you so. I told you so because I don't appreciate being bullied, and thought you'd like to know that's how your comments were perceived, so that maybe you could choose your words and actions a little more carefully in the future. A little patience and humility would go a long way toward making your interactions with others more pleasant and your time on Wikipedia more productive. - Bantman 01:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
But then you're becoming combative, when you know that my assuming you edited Lakitu was a misunderstanding and continuing to say I was being combative. - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:16, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
You were trying to use my edit history as evidence supporting your position; therefore your statement that I edited Lakitu is material and goes to show that you assumed what my actions were, without checking. You were rude in your messages to me, and wrong in your depiction of the facts. All I wanted was a simple note saying it was a misunderstanding; you are the one who has chosen to escalate it. This is making it hard for me to accept your actions as good faith. - Bantman 01:26, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Idea: Read what I say. For instance, you could read that I said you edited Lakitu (which you didn't), instead of claiming I am... I dunno WHAT the Hell you thought I was plotting. I mean, of course, it's not a crime to assume that everyone is trying to plot against you, but it is plain silly. Or, how about you read that fun little sentence where I called it a misunderstanding? Too big of a strain for you? Stop trying to make me look guilty because of a mistake of mine. You're ignoring the facts so that you can say you cannot accept my actions as good faith. You made a mistake in your saying, which started this, I made a mistake in misreading that Brian guy as your name, so before you go accusing me of wrongdoing because I thought you were ignoring the request, actually consider that your statement was involved in the argument. - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:49, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
PS: Sorry for any insulting comments. But I tend to do that when people are being combative towards me. - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:49, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] [Damacy]

Uh, could you slash any objections that have been acted on? It's confusing to figure out what's still bad and what isn't. - A Link to the Past (talk) 15:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 1254

Well, I would not consider 13th century "obscure", for one :-) (Even if I know more about the 17th). I would also consider that royal marriages are significant (especially when Eleanor was the mother of the next king and he was apparently very fond of her). If I remember correctly, the marriage had something to do with his father's war against the Alphonso of Castile, her brother. I'll check. - Skysmith 11:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of archaeological periods

I noticed in List of archaeological periods that (1) you corrected a 30 year gap between 3330 BCE and 3300 BCE that appeared to be the result of a typo in the source document, and (2) there is a 4 year gap between the Byzantine Period, which ended in 634, and the Early Arab Period, which began in 638. Can you comment on those gaps?—GraemeMcRaetalk 16:35, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Good catch! I looked a little further into it, and it appears to be the result of typos in the online version of the source I originally used. I added another reference that seems to have the correct dates, but will leave the original reference because it contains the citation to the original print source. Thanks for flagging me down on this! Bantman 18:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, no problem, I'm glad to help. Thank you for researching and making the changes.—GraemeMcRaetalk 04:45, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Wikipedia:Wikifun

Hi, I've noticed you've taken part in Wikifun before.

Just to let you know, Round 11 begins today at 0900 GMT. Dmn 04:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Aspen

Hi Bantman - yes, it is standard botanical format; what it is saying is that the aspens are in the genus Populus (poplars), and in the section Populus of that genus (when a genus is divided into a number of sections, one of the sections, the one described first, retains the genus name as its section name; the other sections get different names). I guess it could perhaps be worded a bit more clearly for those not familiar with botanical conventions, I'll see if I can think of something - MPF 00:14, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikifun round 12

This is to invite you to participate in the next game of Wikifun.
Round 12 will begin at 11:00 UTC on Friday January 20. 2006.
-- Ravn 17:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Speedy deletion tag

There's been a great amount of debate regarding notability concerns for schools (of all types). You might want to review Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools and Wikipedia:Schools for more information on this. In general, there are no criteria under Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion which easily apply in this case. The appropriate action to take (if any) is to submitted the article to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. There are instructions on that page (see "How to list pages for deletion") on how to nominate an article for deletion. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help. All the best, --Durin 18:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

  • There certainly might be support for something thing like that. --Durin 19:52, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your image description translation request

Hello! A while ago, you requested Russian2English translation of an image description; just wanted to remind you that the diamond is ready. If there's anything I can do more, let me know. Regards - Introvert ~? 06:25, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aquarium FAR

Aquarium has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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