User talk:Bhludzin

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[edit]

Joe I 00:41, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ERP

Welcome to Wiki, and thanks to your work on the software list, which I started because I did not want to get in an edit war on the main article, where another editor seems to think that a list of vendors is all that is needed. I had started links to individual packages because of questions raised on the talk pages by people who did not seem to comprehend what an ERP really is. There's also a volunteer who seems to think that when we do not have an article on main ERP, the answer is to remove the links from the main article. I think the answer is to leave them there, and work on developing the articles. But again, I wanted to avoid an edit war, and focus on developing the Wiki encyclopaedia of articles, so when another editor deleted a bunch of stuff from the main article, I salvaged it to start this one. Thanks again for your contributions. User:AlMac|^(talk) 16:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:AlMac|^(talk) Hi again

I am also new to this (Joined summer of 2005), been too busy to do much for chunks of time, but I had experience with other Internet and Computer stuff for several decades, so it is somewhat familiar territory for me. Yes I have become an addict here.

Plus I really like Wiki founder User:Jimbo Wales attitude that we are building an encylopaedia which can be used by any child in any poverty stricken nation. As he writes this, I am also thinking of how schools are funded in well to do nations. Western nations use property taxes to fund schools, which means prosperous neighborhoods have good schools, while inner cities, rural, and others hurting for resources. The poorest in USA are the Native Indian schools, which have to turn to Gambling Casinos to raise essential funds. Gambling Addiction is a problem that poor people do not need. You see my ideology is a mixture of traditional Liberal and Conservative ... I have taken pieces from each for my personal belief system. We need a strong economy, with plentiful quality jobs to pay for good national defense infrastructure, and fund a healthy social safety net for people down on their luck, and struggling to exit poverty.

I remember when I was a child, that only the well to do families could afford an encylopaedia, and most homes what they had was like 20 years out of date. There are equivalents on CD Rom on Computer, and from the Internet, but the poorest of the poor can't get that, so Jimbo seeking grants to put Wiki on other media. Then there are people in a ton of human languages translating this stuff, so that Wikis cropping up in scores of human languages.

I had a lot of trouble today with Wiki server errors, so I aborted trying to post stuff to your user page, and worked on my reply inside another software application, then cut & paste the whole thing when the Wiki server troubles seem to have abated somewhat. This means I may have made some mistakes with links, and need to repair them after I seen how the results get posted on your page.

Thus, I plan to address your main questions first, fix up my post when i can get it onto Wiki, then see if there's anything I missed. In here I try to address

• Feel free to ask me any questions you wish. I been on this site a few months now, have learned some stuff, while in many areas I am still a Wiki newbie. I think I have learned enough that when I do not know the answer, I know how to point someone to where the answer can be found.
• Some problems you can fix yourself, and I talk about HOW, but warn that we need to be able to tell the difference between vandalism and an honest difference of opinion, avoid doing lots of reverts, or getting into wars with people who don't seem to be willing to use the talk pages to achieve consensus
• Raising a flag when you see a problem, can be done several different ways, and I give you several links and discuss some of them.
• Raising a flag when you see a problem, is not done with templates, but since you ask about templates, I share a horrible story about template and other abuse, which illuminates that the state of art of Wiki dispute resolution is in need of some reform or rethinking. Apparently Wiki is only 5 years old, and experiencing explosive growth.

There are a lot of articles where I have done an edit, and I was in and out & not really care much about the subject ... for example from Toolbox (left side of screen) I went to Special Pages then to some particular ones such as lists of articles not yet in a category, or not linked any place, and I made obvious fixes, where I knew enough about the subject and Wiki to do so. There are a ton of articles needing that kind of support, so I work on that for a while, barely scratch the surface, then take a break from it.

But there are articles where I have an emotional attachment to what I have contributed so far, so they on my watch list, so when they get modified, I check what's going on ... do I approve & say thanks, do I disapprove & what am I going to do about it?

Wiki has a world wide audience of thousands of volunteers from a wide spectrum of backgrounds ... different cultures, ideology, politics, religion, age, gender, profession, so it is self evident there will be clashes from time to time with respect to what is correct content, how best to present it, and some volunteers insensitive to others, with recurring questions, how to deal with some things.

So for example, there was recently an edit war on Global warming controversy and Climate change area, because there is what the scientists can agree to, what people understand about the science, what the political interests have to say, which of these are believed by the general public, and reliability of sources generally available to be cited as references on Wiki articles.

There were several people on several sides who were undoing each other work with reverts (I explain this below with respect to vandalism). Now the Wiki administrators are not interested in who is right or wrong here ... it is the purpose of the Talk pages of an article to reach a concensus on how to resolve disputes ... what the Wiki administrators do not want is this edit warring where there are bunches of people with different WP:POV (point of view )fighting each other over content, so all the people on all sides of the edit war were blocked for 24 hours editing those articles.

There is a Wiki policy that if you are caught doing 3 reverts same day same article, you can be blocked from Wiki access for a short time period, by sysop administrators.

It would sound like this rule might make it difficult to fight vandalism.

Well individual one time vandalism action we all expected to clean up, but if there is a case of one vandal repeatedly attacking particular articles, we are supposed to suggest to the Wiki administrators that user or IP address get blocked for longer time period, then after the block, one revert fixes the situation. So if you think about that, it makes sense. We not want to be spending all of our time reverting stuff when some vandal has been identified.

User:AlMac|^(talk) 08:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki Help

If you look at my user page User:AlMac I have a user box that reads as follows:

This user answers questions at the Help desk and Reference desk, occasionally asks some, and checks on New user needs, but is not yet good enough here for know-how competition.

Some template images on my user pages may be broke ... I explain that further down.

Notice the links here.

• The Help Desk is a starting place to go to raise general questions about doing things on Wiki, both technical and policy.
• The Reference Desk is for asking random factual questions, like we would do at the reference desk of a public library. The answers include how to find answers in which articles on Wiki, via Google, and other.
• I check both regularly because I find very educational the Q+A dialog going on there.
• People post questions there, then pretty soon other people post answers. Anyone can do it.

User:AlMac|^(talk) 08:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template navigation

You might want to take a look at this page, which I wrote for a young man in India. User talk:Jayant412/Userbox design kit

The circumstances of me adding this were

1. a few weeks ago I met him at the Reference Desk
   1. I was very impressed with his good questions and told him so
   2. You see there's a lot of people who post stuff to the 'Eeference Desk who
      1. Seem to be posting homework questions
      2. Seem to be incapable of reading the instructions at the top of the page, such as the notion that you should select the area of the Reference Desk such as Humanities, Science, Math, Language, Miscelaneous other, and post your question with a title, and a question at the foot of the page.
         1. Some people post the same question in multiple areas
         2. Some people post new questions inside the Q+A of other people questions
         3. Some people post a title with no question
         4. Some people post a proper title and question, this gets answered, they incapable of seeing it, they repost the question
         5. Apparently there is a culture out there in the world that not know that using ALL CAPS on the Internet is not civilized. I suspect they must be using a keyboard that is incapable of lower case. There are keyboards in the world like that, you know
            1. There was an interesting discussion recently regarding the Spanish Keyboard which does not have a Tilde (~) key. What are those people to do, since Tildes are part of Wiki communication protocols, and also important in several programming languages. Well its a nuisance, in which I think the Spanish language Wiki needs to set a different standard so as to cater to people from Spain who have that different kind of keyboard..
         6. There are a lot of spelling errors in questions at the various Wiki desks, so that it is not obvious that the same question is repeated with many different spelling error headings
         7. Many people do not understand the nature of the Reference Desk that you post a question, then shortly other people make answers. If you need more clarification, post your follow up question in the same thread. They do follow up questions in new subtopics without links to the earlier Q+A so new people trying to answer have a hard time not duplicating the earlier answers.
   3. So we volunteers who answer questions at the ''Reference Desk were quite taken with this lad from India who apparently had read the instructions at top of page, and was doing as they has advised, knows several languages in which English is not his first language, communicating far better than several other people I have known from that part of the world, was not asking homework questions, was asking extremely mentally stimulating ones, using the Reference Desk the way it was intended to be used
2. after he got his own pages operational, I said hi there
3. he asked me about the userboxes & I posted HOW TO on his talk page, and also answered some of his other questions
   1. I did tell him that I had discovered userboxes only 2 days before he asked me about them, so I also pointed him at other people more knowledgeable about them than I
4. I then moved my answer about userboxes to a secondary main article page to show him how to do that, and added to that article as I figured out other stuff

User:AlMac|^(talk) 08:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:AlMac|^(talk) HOW TO DO LOTS

If you look at the table of contents of my talk page, you can see that as I learn stuff on Wiki, I been organizing HOW TO this and that, many of which are cut & paste from other people asking questions, and me seeing "Oh, I will want to be doing THAT also." so I copy the answer, to have them all in one place for convenient reference. This is growing in size, so I plan to move it to a secondary main article page of my main active page, like I did for the young man from India, I just not yet got around to it. When I do so, I will put a link to it on my user pages.

One of the subtopics (it was # 2.8.3 but everything subject to subsequent changes) is titled How revert which has to do with how to fix things when we realize they been vandalized.

[edit] Vandalism

Now vandalism is different from honest difference of opinion.

Example of vandalism ... I was working on the Hurricane Katrina article and noticed someone had made changes to the chart of wind strength, storm surge size, etc. with words related to sex. At the time, I did not know how to do reverts, so I went into history & did cut & paste to put stuff back the way it was, just with respect to bad stuff done by that one user.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and there are some people on the Internet who have nothing better to do than make trouble for other people. I am amazed at how well Wiki is able to deal with these people, considering how other kinds of web sites seem helpless against this threat.

[edit] ERP differences of opinion

The stuff on the main ERP article, what belongs there, is a difference of opinion. I think that a lot of the ERP articles are stubs in need of expansion, and that there ought to be lists of major products, then people who know something about each of those products add to them. This other guy thinks that all that is needed is list of major commercial vendors, not list of major software products. Then there's other people editing who obviously have had bad experiences trying to install and ERP who think that bad experiences is all there is to an ERP. I am in favor of open source ERP, which I think is a very healthy trend, but I recognize that 95% of the ERP out there is commercial software, so both need to be in the encyclopaedia. This is a WP:POV issue, that I think is better handled by having separate main articles on

• What is an ERP
  • Articles on each of the applications inside most any ERP
• ERP Implementation Challenges
• How do commercial and open source ERP differ from each other, and what other options are out there ... I am aware of some, but their market share is microscopic now, although that was not true for all of history ... open source ERP has only been a strong contender in last decade or so, home brew ERP used to be the only choice 50 years ago
  • Main articles on each ... commercial ERP and open source ERP
• What are the major ERP packages, on basis of market share in various nations and computer platforms
  • What is in those major ERP packages
• What vendors are the major ERP players
  • Articles on each of those vendors
• Historical and contemporary challenges facing all the ERP vendors and their clients

I try to say this in some talk pages, then this becomes like a check list of some of the articles I plan to work on ... I may put this on my personal user pages. This is in my opinion. If several other Wiki volunteers share my opinion and enthusiasm, then a Wiki project can be started, to help those volunteers organize resources, make to do lists, tell the group when they working on things on the to do lists, and when they got done, check it off. I do not feel that I am sufficiently experienced in Wiki yet to start my own project, but some projects have been started by other people as a result of some of my suggestions various places. User:AlMac|^(talk) 08:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki Images in Turmoil

Some images may be gone from my user page. This is because there is some current turmoil going on with the design of templates and userbox images.

• In the western world there is a concept of fair use of copyrighted images that does not apply to the laws of other nations, particularly in Asia, and even in the USA this fair use is limited, and may not apply to userboxes.
• The software used for templates has the capability of templates inside of templates, but this can be a drain on the Wiki servers, so as more people find the icons and think "Oh cool, I want to use that" and then a sub-group get good at making them more sophisticated and sharing with everyone, we have something that other people perceive is an emergency in need of repairs.
• I saw some discussion of this ... there is a process where stuff is nominated for deletion, because
  • it does not meet encyclopaedic standards and can't be fixed,
    • or is not notable, like there are people going around writing up articles on every town hamlet in the world, every church, every school, every street
• then various people approve or disapprove, seeking a consensus ... I also saw that the Wikiboxes design group had become aware of the template within a template server load, and were working on fixing that, and they are an enthusiastic bunch, so I figured that they would work through the problem and get it resolved. They figure out what fix is needed, then they send a software bot out to check all links to people using some image, to apply the standard fix, with comment in person's history why this is being done
  • If you interested ... that group at Wikipedia:WikiProject Userboxes... you might want to visit the talk page and ask for help on templates, since
    • I am not skilled at creating them
    • people there are not only proficient in template design, what templates exist, ditto images, ditto these bots
      • Also see WP:AUM technical explanation of how bad template design can sabotage Wiki server performance. Since I am not familiar with the programming language involved, this stuff is still a little above my head. I have read it several times, in time my head will rise to this level.
    • and they understand the ramifications of what needs fixing in how people have been doing this stuff
      • I am no expert on this, but it would appear that use of {{if}} in user box eye candy and template design, is part of what is causing excess server load. ie. templates inside templates. I have several of these on my pages, that took me forever to get working, so I leaving it to the experts to resolve this
• but the server load problem continues while they working on this
  • you may have noticed a growing number of Wiki errors recently while you trying to access some pages or do some editing
• there are about 700 people who have been elevated to sys/op administrator status, and a portion of them elevated to a higher status. One of them decided that the server load problem was an emergency, and that some of the userboxes were contrary to Wiki standards, and that the deletion approval process was too slow, so she went out and deleted hundreds of images and userboxes
• she was seen to be doing this activity which was in violation of the policy that before you delete stuff, there is an approval process ... proposed action, why, discuss, get a concensus
• this led to a WP:RFC request for comment, which has become unpleasantly hostile, because
  • on one side there are people, like me, who like the consensus building process, and feel that this is an abuse of power by a system administrator who thinks she is above the rules that apply to everyone else
    • and as we see later, there are other administrators with similar views
  • on another side there are people who think we should be devoting our time to building articles for the encyclopaedia, not in making pretty pictures on our user pages that are for introducing ourselves to the community
    • and there are allegations on how this activity can be abused, but instead of working towards policy to prevent abuse, it is throw the baby out with the bathwater
  • and also while I understand that the server drain issue, and intellectual property rights, are topics that ought not to be covered by the consensus approach, a lot of people not understand that.
• if you interested in this, check out links
  • my user talk page User talk:AlMac
  • Wiki Dispute Resolution Process (was # 5 on the list)
  • WP:RFC then within many Request For Comment, there is one on Kelly Martin, who is the administrator who did the mass deletions of templates and images starting end last week, but as soon as she was notified about the RFC, she stopped doing so, letting the group know that she had just started these deletions, and planned to do thousands more of the deletes, and why she planned to do so. She also joined in the discussion at the talk pages of the Wiki Userboxes project
• this led to a new policy discussion about what belongs in templates and userboxes, and where it is Ok to use fair use stuff on Wiki
  • various people propose a policy (there were 10 proposals there the last time I looked) then various people express their approval or disapproval of the various proposed options
• During this "discussion" some userbox box fans got quite hostile against administrator Kelly Martin, and created images that were uncivil to the extreme, and some of the people doing this were themselves administrators, so other administrators blocked them, and deleted those images. The rest of us not got to see how bad they were, because they been deleted.
  • There were also administrators who took Kelly Martin side and felt that the userbox fans were being unreasonable, and blocked some of them for what seemed to me to be very innocent things, like posting on talk pages a link to the RFC to debate Kelly's actions, and urging other Wiki enthusiasts to join in the discussion. There are some Kelly supporters who call this the creation of a lynch mob.
    • • I guess I am at risk of being considered to be part of the mob because I added my 2 cents several places on the WP:RFC process
    • Other administrators thought they were being unreasonable, and blocked them for a time period. As soon as blocked administrators got back on, they blocked the administrators who had blocked them, claiming the blocks had been uncalled for. This continued, with multiple cliques of administrators disagreeing with some actions, declaring them to be wrong, undoing them, and blocking the perpetrators, who when their blocks expired, doing same back at you. . More administrators see this war, declare it to be a violation of Wik behavior, block both sides, and then they become targets when the victims get back on again, thus mushrooming the number of parties to these disputes
  • There were also administrators who felt Kelly Martin had been premature in the mass deletion, and they started undeleting what Kelly had deleted.
    • There were also administrators who felt the undeletions were improper actions, who blocked the undeleters for some time periods. As soon as blocked administrators got back on, they blocked the administrators who had blocked them, claiming the blocks had been uncalled for. This continued, with multiple cliques of administrators disagreeing with some actions, declaring them to be wrong, undoing them, and blocking the perpetrators, who when their blocks expired, doing same back at you. . More administrators see this war, declare it to be a violation of Wik behavior, block both sides, and then they become targets when the victims get back on again, thus mushrooming the number of parties to these disputes
• There were also other administrators who took up the mass deletion where Kelly Martin had left off, leading to the same patterns against them, WP:RFC request for comment on their actions, people doing undeletions of what they had deleted, administrators blocking each other, WP:RFC on the undeletions and blocking each other.
• This is called a Wheel war which I had to go look up what that means, after other administrators admonishing inappropriate behavior and using certain technical language I was unfamiliar with.
  • I am dismayed to see that the 700 or so people who have been elevated to administration ranks, have among their number the same kind of human frailties we find in the thousands of ordinary volunteers who manage to get into mere article edit wars.
    • I think the mass actions by administrators, reversing each other, also contributes to server problems
  • Plus there are now well over 100 people so embroiled in this that they have not edited any encyclopaedia articles for several days. Plus several long time wonderful contributors have quit the project in disgust.
    • I speculate that many of them are youngsters with no experience in project management resolution. I think that when I can get back on again, I shall suggest to the boss of bosses, User:Jimbo Wales that when his time permits he read the old computer classic Mythical man month and apply that analysis of permutations of people communicating in a large computer project to how he has structured Wiki dispute resolution.
• Another topic of contention is the bots which were spawned by the experts in the Wiki boxes project, before the mass deletions began. As these bots work their way thru Wiki, fixing the templates on thousands of Wiki pages that violate WP:AUM, they are coming to userboxes that got deleted by User:Kelly Martin and her army of deletion clones. I would not be surprised if some of the administrators engaged in both deletions and undeletions are also using bots to help them do this.
  • Since it was a server emergency to make these repairs as rapidly as possible, the software did not allow for the possibility that the boxes they were trying to repair, had in fact been deleted. I think that when a bot hits a deleted box, things getting screwed up worse where that box is, and the bot continues on to another incident. The programmers who launched the bots, they know know about the army of deleters, so they can fix the bots, but those programmers have been blocked from Wiki access because
    • They launched bots that screwed up Wiki
      • which would not have done any damage had Kelly Martin and her clones not done the mass deletions without consulting the relevant talk pages of Template design and userbox management pages, like the programmers had done before designing the fixit bots
  • Their use of the WP:RFC against Kelly Martin, and some intemperate remarks, and possibly other actions which I cannot see because they been deleted, was seen by Kelly Martin supporters in Wiki administration, as inappropriate
  • I suspect this will lead to a policy debate on bots and resolution of emergencies
• The collection of WP:RFC debates this has spawned, has now escalated to a request for arbitration by the next level of stewards of Wiki, who are at a higher level of system privileges than the 700 or so administrators.
• Kelly Martin and the other administrators mentioned in the various WP:RFC have been asked to recuse themselves from this debate, other than presenting their sides, because some of them are also stewards on the arbitration committee, which many administrators and ordinary volunteers say is not about userboxes, but administrators not following policies that are set for ordinary volunteers, that require discussion before precipitous action, while other administrators are saying is exactly about silly user box eye candy that is messing up server performance, and inexperienced newbies who not yet understand many basics. Some of this language is far from polite civilized.
• I was disappointed to see that initial comments from arbitration committee members was that they had already made up their mind on one side or the other, and also used disrespectful language to the other side. This may have to go all the way to the top {User:Jimbo Wales}.
  • It is now obvious to me that we volunteer contributors who get into a dispute with each other about content, we really need to resolve our differences on the talk pages, so that our disputes do not have to be resolved by these administrators. I wonder at their average ages and experience in management of anything other than this volunteer project.
• When it comes to Wiki dispute resolution, I am a newbie observer (I previously involved on computer security topics) so I not know what's typical behavior among the folks who are very experienced in Wiki input, but seem to lack competence when it comes to dispute resolution. They remind me of when I was a volunteer on a games convention, where we had less than 100 volunteers. Some of the younger volunteers, less experienced with the need to reach consensus, seemed to apply a concept of rule lawyering to con organization, where they more interested in playing the rules, than joint effort towards the ultimate objectives. It is real good for Wiki that its founder, User:Jimbo Wales, is also a parent. This gives him some relevant experience.

• I having lots trouble with those Wiki error messages getting in the way of editing today, so I ended up cut pasting via my e-mail, and do post to you later. It is also possible that I have been blocked, and not yet realize it.

User:AlMac|^(talk) 08:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:AlMac|^(talk) Sig

Al Macintyre http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html

[edit] A humongous Thank-you

Thank you very much for responding to my request for expansion on the major teachings section. It would be great if you stick around for a while at the article and its talk page (or maybe even join the Wikiproject on Mormonism), but you've done quite enough as it is.

And yes, I am also addicted to Wikipedia.

Keep up the good work! --Trevdna 15:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I see no reason not to have a List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but please make the suggested change of external links to internal ones. That is really the only problem that I can see with the list. u p p l a n d 10:47, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Good work on this list. I was just wondering if we had a list for this topic, and was shocked to find it RfD'd, but you've greatly improved it since the request. With the table, it's extremely useful. Cool Hand Luke 08:50, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I know it is frustrating when someone lists an AfD on a work in progress - and can't see the vision of it - be patient. I have played with the page some here - so the information and all your hard work formatting is not lost. Although I agree with your comment re linking to the pages - it would be helpful with phone #s etc for people; however, since that is the main objection I have removed them. Trödel•talk 11:00, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to remove the announced column - if you haven't already - I haven't had time to mess with it - in fact, haven't even been able to look at it since Sat. Anyway - as the list improves, it would be nice to get some small pics to put in the table - I have a friend who has pics of most North American temples. What ideas do you have for additional columns? Trödel•talk 22:24, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Excellent work on the list, and acccompanying articles. You've done an excellent job! I hope you join the Wikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement, and please make sure to add Mormonism-related articles to List of articles about Mormonism. -Visorstuff 20:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment and the heads up. I added all of the articles to the List of articles about Mormonism. Bhludzin 16:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Be sure you add WP:LDS to your watchlist so you will be aware of any requests and issues that come up from time to time. Tom Haws 19:02, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why add New Jersey and Lincoln centers to JFK Center in DC?

Isn't it sufficient to have the link to other arts centers? Vivaverdi 22:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't add them - they were there already. I only added the link to the list of major concert halls. Bhludzin 03:18, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Gates' House

Nice job on this article. It was interesting read. -Gavin 01:20, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! That makes it all worthwhile... (the addiction, that is). I also read your Talk page, which lead me to the Life article which really interested me. I've already made a contribution - I listed "consciousness" in the See Also list because I think that the topics are similar. Bhludzin 03:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rapid transit, light rail, etc.

Hi Bhludzin-

I'm putting continuing our discussion here because it's only peripherally related to the River LINE article -- hope you don't mind. Anyway, I really wish I had the time and energy to weed out all the cruft that has accumulated on the list of rapid transit system page, but I really don't. To my mind, this is problem with using the extremely vague term "rapid transit" to describe a rather specific category -- heavy line metros. (I believe "rapid transit" was a compromise between Americans who preferred "subway" and Brits who preferred "metro" or "underground".) Honestly, I think that most rail observers would agree that the stuff I pared off of that page were light rail systems, not metros. The River LINE, for instance, has deisel power trains, street running, low platform boarding, and half-hour headways. The Pittsburg T, SF Muni Metro, and Newark Subway systems are the direct descendents of streetcars, not heavy-rail metros, and having a few in-tunnel miles downtown does not a full-on rapid transit system make. Anyway, my point is that I know that rail system categories are squishy, but if these systems aren't light rail, then the distinction between "light rail" and "rapid transit" has no meaning and we might as well just lump everything into one big "rail-based public transit" category. --Jfruh 21:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of articles about Mormonism

I noticed your recent additions to the list of articles, and appreciate the effort to keep the list current. It is a tough job. However, I moved your most recent entry to Mormon pioneers. Please note that most of the lists of people are alphabetized. Thank you. WBardwin 07:07, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirtland Temple

Great addition, thanks for putting that in. I wanted to add more content along those lines, given the huge importance of the Kirtland Temple to the LDS movement, but didn't have much in the way of resources. Nicely done. Deadsalmon 23:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early life of Joseph Smith

The article Early life of Joseph Smith, Jr./Stable is currently being proposed to be made a Stable version, this nomination is a test of the process detailed on that page. As you have edited that page recently, please review the stable version of the article and join the discussion at Talk:Early_life_of_Joseph_Smith,_Jr./Stable. dml 00:12, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dad

Hiya! I'm at school but have permission to be on the computer. I just showed Mr.Mills your National Museum of Anthropology article. He said it was awesome! love,IamHermionie 13:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC) (Rachel)

Hey, I don't think you'll get this message for a while, but where do you suggest I start on editing here? I have a few ideas on adding stuff, but I'd like your advice. Love you Lots-IamHermionie 22:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

                P.S. Are you an Administrator yet?

[edit] List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I have determined not to get in an edit war again - but Gellerson reverts contrary to the views expressed on the talk page - can you help??? Trödel 21:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC) PS - I was working on getting this up to Featured List status before I was distracted - see my talk page for suggestions from featured list regulars.

I misunderstood what Trödel was doing - and have left Trödel's edit as-is except for fixing spelling and a duplicative heading. Denvoran 23:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hiya Dad

I just finish my english and reading finals and I am TIRED! Please take me home! JOKING! Spottedleaf 14:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] License tagging for Image:Laie hawaii temple.jpg

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[edit] Question

I was just on the page Warriors (book series) and saw that a very useful list of terms in the series was deleted. I wanted to find out who deleted the list and why. Could you tell me about a list of who edited what on that page? [Click here] to go to Warriors (book series). Love You, Spottedleaf 16:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC) (aka Bookworm) It's your birthday, you can surly take 1 minute off of work to answer? Actually, you're probably on Age of Empires which is an awesome game and I would'nt want to take u away from that so BYE! Spottedleaf 19:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temple pages

giving credit where credit is due :) - I wanted to make sure he realized my small "wikignome" type activities, while useful, is not the heavy lifting of writing the articles :)

I agree re Paris - I got into that because of a notice on the admin/personal attacks, and because of the conflict I had before - thought I might be able to offer an independent view. But it has not turned out that way - thanks for all the good work you do! --Trödel 02:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by geographic region

Wow - that is some work - working with tables in wikipedia is a little combersome - I just wish there was an easy way to transfer excel tables into it :). Thanks for the note and I'll see what I can do - my edits/day have dropped off some - and much less substantial lately - work, kids and all. --Trödel 01:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Hey - what do you think of the blue headings - and the idea to remove the status column since the status follows the chronological order - I think it would be good for those without 1200px wide screens - like my laptop.

Also - noticed the change to 14 temples in UT - ooohhh - very controversial - I wonder if any of the arguments about bluffdale be used there as well in the "counting"

Finally, I got permission from the guy (Ryan Passey) who did the temples that dot the earth site (http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Gym/5686/temple/temple.htm) to use his graphics - he licensed them cc-by-sa so I will be uploading them to commons. The only thing is that they are a little out of date. I am going to try to edit them a little to bring them up to date but I don't have good graphic editing software. Any thoughts? --Trödel 23:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't clear about what we can and can't use - we can use his "dot" graphics - and any pics he personally took - he also gave me the names of some of the other photographers, and some are "borrowed" from the Church, etc. So it isn't quite as good as it could be - but it still is good. By editing the graphics I meant I am going to take graphics like this one:

And add the new temples - like Draper using the appropriate circle from the Key that Ryan created (based on status) so that they are up to date. --Trödel 17:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Radical changes

I am still unsettled abou whether I like it that way or not - In some ways I really like it - in others, I'm not so sure. I have tried the weird Style/Notes thing - and it just doesn't fit right for me. Maybe we could have "Style" and then a "Notes/Status". The format works great for the Under Construction/Announced - it is just the being refurbished ones that are troublesome. I'll see if I can come up with anything creative. Thx for the comments - and I want to say thanks for starting the list - it was a great idea and it is funny now to think that the article was struggling for its very life at first - typical WP:BITE --Trödel 17:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Please check the updates - I left the chronological order but split the status/notes into two columns - was thinking we could do something useful like little trivia stuff or other notes on the temple. Let me know what you think --Trödel 01:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of this proposed change to the list Talk:List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/New Format#Using a template - Also - do you want me to remove the Africa graphic - or leave it there to remind me to make more :) --Trödel 03:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images you've added

I am planning on copying all the images you've added that are licensed under conditions that meet the requirments for commons, to commons. That way they are available to the Wikipedia's in other languages. See commons:Category:Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where I am cataloging all of the temple images that have free licenses.

Let me know if you have any objections. --Trödel 18:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] [{Technical evangelist]] merged; please help

I have merged your work at [{Technical evangelist]] with Technology evangelist. You might like to drop by and copyedit the new combined article. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temples of CJC

As a contributor to the different lists of temples, I was wondering if you could give some feedback concerning the addition several columns to the Comparison of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints page. thx --Trödel 22:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I am working with User talk:Bytebear to develop a standardized list of parameters and a way to put all the data in one place, rather than having to edit it in each location. He also created the maps, as well as started the Temple architecture (Latter-day Saints) article. As to the image and stuff - I am ok with adding it - in fact I don't see any problem with it getting too long since, as you state it is for camparing, and users can scroll back and forth - just may need to repeat the name of the temple periodically. See Comparison of wiki software#Comparison table for what I mean. --Trödel 20:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DADDY!

I need your honest and sincere opinon on this matter. *cough* *cough* *straightens tie* Go to here and tell me if you think this book is a copycat off any other books. *cough* LordoftheringsStarwars *cough* I can see the resembleces, but I didnt think of this AT ALL when I read the book. You can take any book and compare it w/ others and see similarites. I honestly got really mad at the people who were saying this because it seemed REALLY unfair. Why complain about something you either dont have the guts, brains, or heart to do? Go out there and write your own book and see how people treat it. sheesh. the movie was kinda bad , i hafta admit. i was kinda disapointed. but it was good never the less. Love u. see u soon. --Spottedleaf 23:54, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Carthage Jail

I see you've worked on LDS project and have edited this article. Might I suggest an addition? It needs information on who owns the building now, if it is open for visitors, stuff like that. As is, the article ends at 1844. Cornell Rockey 16:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

PS > maybe these categories would be useful to expand the article? [Category:Prison museums] or [Category:Prisons in Illinois] Cornell Rockey 16:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flower

Dad, what is the centre of a flower called? There seems the be many different names. Did they seperate the centre of the flower into different parts?  ??? Arya 15:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CHICOTW - AT&T Corporate Center past editor

	Chicago Collaboration of the Week
In the past you have edited AT&T Corporate Center. This week it has been selected as the WikiProject Chicago Collaboration of the week. Each week a Chicago related article in need of attention is selected as the Chicago COTW. Feel free to come help us improve it towards the quality level of a Wikipedia featured article. Your input in future selections would also be appreciated. See the To Do List to suggest a change or to see an open tasks list.
	Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago

TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 15:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)