User talk:Gadfium

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Please add items to the bottom of this page. I will normally reply on this page to any conversation started here.

Contents 1 Tu Pounamu IV 2 Username classification 3 Talking of Auckland schools 4 Deleting information 5 Herb Green 6 Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia 7 Deleting from TV2 page 8 New Kohukohu Article 9 Pacific Islanders 10 Moving 11 Bot readding deleted articles 12 admin 13 Māori monarchs 14 Infoboxes for NZ towns 15 redlinks on school articles 16 Liz Shaw? 17 Nelson Airport 18 Removal of talk entries 19 Move request 20 removal of content in addition to warnings on my talk page 21 Revived discussion concerning fair use in portals 22 Comma splice 23 Please merge duplicate articles

[edit] Tu Pounamu IV

User:Helenalex alerted me to this page. This looks like a bit of teenage fun at work - I reckon it should be deleted. Have a look at User:GerradPier and User:Johannesemmanuelle - seem to be similar. As I said to Helenalex, 'I used to live in the Bay of Plenty and knew the family of the Paramount chief of Ngāti Awa, never heard anything of TP4. I even saw their whakapapa going back into the 17th century, not a TP in sight. Title 'chieftain-prince' is dodgy. On Aquinas College, Tauranga he backs up TP4 with a reference to Grey - that is false too - Grey definitely doesnt mention a TP4.' Cheers Kahuroa 04:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you put up TP4 for AFD pointing out what you know about the Grey reference. TP4, although very short, probably doesn't come under the speedy deletion heading. If it's deleted, we can then remove it from Aquinas College. You could just remove the Aquinas College material, but I've removed it at least twice without making that stick. Having other editors get involved would be welcome.-gadfium 05:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Username classification

Hi Gadfium. I have a strange question. I was wondering where your username comes from, how you came up with it. I didn't know where to add you on the Classification of admins :) Aecis^Brievenbus 00:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

My name comes from a character in the Iain M Banks novel, Feersum Endjinn. Gadfium is a fictional human in the far distant future.-gadfium 04:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

So my first guess of "metallic" would be out. :) Regards, Newyorkbrad 04:37, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

You're thinking of gadolinium, which is one of the more interesting lanthanides, although only a chemist would understand.-gadfium 04:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I've heard of gadolinium, and I knew that gadfium was not an actual metal, despite the suffix. Depending on my mood and what you were writing, "gadfium" has always made me think either of something metallic, or of "gadfly." Newyorkbrad 04:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I've added myself under "Literary".-gadfium 05:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I see Radiant! removed my name. C'est la vie.-gadfium 22:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talking of Auckland schools

Turns out that this ip This Ip is registered to some schools in Auckland, I relised that by the contributions one person couldn't have vandalised that rapidly, looked on IPINFO, and it notified of a school, the block needs softening. Retiono Virginian 16:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that there is any policy against blocking a school or similar institution to prevent vandalism. Students at that school can still read Wikipedia as normal. Since the block is anon-only, any student who has an account can still edit if logged in; they just need to create their account from home. Given that the IP address represents Saint Kentigern College, which has the highest possible socio-economic decile, I'm sure every student has access to the internet from home, or at least from a friend's place.

Should a teacher want to have the IP unblocked, there are instructions on the talk page on how to request that. I'm also watching the talk page, so I will see any inquiry there.-gadfium 18:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting information

Please do not delete content from articles on Wikipedia, as you did to Marshall Islands. Your edits could be considered vandalism, and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 19:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your warning. I am deleting a large quantity of unreferenced and likely copyvio material added by one user under several IP

[edit] Herb Green

Hi, I have added inline citations to a source for the statements I made about Herb Green. I did add the source when I first edited the article, but only as an external link. I've commented on the other issues on the talk page. -- Avenue 04:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia

The guy who first proposed the project seems to be gone. I took the initiative to activate the project above in his absence, as I personally guess you all have enough members to give it a go. Good luck. John Carter 18:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting from TV2 page

I got your message about removing the current primetime scedule from the TV2 for the reason "Wikipedia is not a directory", but why? All the Australian and American TV channels have it, plus I don't think it acts as a directory. Please, either remove them all, or allow New Zealand TV channels to the same thing. Laydan Mortensen 07:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a All or nothing argument. I agree that such listings should be removed from all TV channels, but I have better things to do than fight that battle. The policy I quoted (WP:NOT#DIR) said specifically Wikipedia articles are not: ... TV/radio guides.-gadfium 08:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I have raised the matter at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Television#Current_primetime_television_schedules. Please contribute there.-gadfium 20:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Kohukohu Article

As you know, I recently added the Kohukohu page. I appreciated your recent edit. Is it correct Wiki usage to make this page a stub? Have you any other thoughts about the article - I am researching more content? Ksidnas 18:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The page is sufficiently well developed already that a stub tag is not really necessary. I'd like to see a section added on the current status; what's the current population? Nearest major town and the distance/time to that town - I assume Kaitaia. A picture is desirable on every article. Inline references, such as the one you added to Hokianga, would be good too.-gadfium 19:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, I was working on a picture. Ksidnas 19:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pacific Islanders

Once again, an anonymous user or users who take issue with Filipinos not technically being considered/qualifying as "Pacific Islanders" are back, deleting facts and legitimate information in that article and replacing it with weaselly POV statements over the course of several edits in a row. I mention this here since you were the last person to revert such edits, the last time they occurred a few days ago. Adrigon 05:26, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification, but my previous edit to the Pacific Islander article was to restore it after a very significantly inferior version replaced the previous one. I have no opinion on whether Filipinos are Pacific Islanders. This is a content dispute; if you cannot resolve it on the article talk page, please look at Wikipedia:Resolving disputes.-gadfium 05:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving

Hi Gadfium. An article of mine Italian submarine Barbarigo was overnight retitled just Barbarigo without good reason. Are you able to give your opinion about this? - my response is on the talk page, with reasons why I think it wasn't right to change the name. Cheers GrahamBould 11:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a little outside my area of expertise. Mostly, an article takes the simplest name which is not ambiguous, although Wikiprojects can set a standard for names in their area. It seems to me to be reasonable that ship articles get a suitable prefix such as USS xxx, even if xxx is unambiguous. I'm not sure that "Italian submarine" is quite the same sort of prefix, unless that's a direct translation of what was on the subs papers.

Barbarigo is a surname, and we have articles on at least four people with that surname. There's also an article on a school at St. Gregory Barbarigo School, and the Palazzo Barbarigo. Clearly, the name is ambiguous. If someone types only this name into Wikipedia, how sure are we that they are looking for the submarine and not one of the other articles? If the answer is pretty sure, then the submarine could have that article name, but should also link to Barbarigo (disambiguation). I suspect that the submarine is not the principal article being looked for under that name, so the article Barbarigo itself should be the disambiguation page.

I suggest you contact the moving admin on his talk page, and point out your objections. He only followed a move request which appeared to be uncontroversial, since the original Barbarigo article was not a disambiguation page, but a stub on the submarine. He appears to specialise in processing Requested Moves, so I'm sure he can sort out the matter for you promptly. Feel free to refer him to this page if he wants to see my uneducated opinion.-gadfium 17:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot readding deleted articles

That is a great suggestion for workaround a known bug.

Just currently the bot first accumulates the found articles locally then writes them on wiki. I usually check the 3000 latest articles, while in reality we have ~2000..2500 new articles a day. Thus, there are some intersections. The the bot puts the results onwiki it checks the latest version of its result file and the board itself and if the articles are already there it would not re-add them, but if the results are deleted it is re-adding them.

I intend to fix the bug, by using not the latest version of the bot results but the latest revision by the bot itself. I have not figured out how to do it yet. If you strike an article down but keep its title for awhile the bot would not add it. The solution would work until I will fix the bug Alex Bakharev 07:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] admin

do u get paid to be an administrator? and do u have to check for vandalism alot? ksmith3 00:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm just a volunteer like every one else. I don't have to check for vandalism, either. There aren't set duties for an admin, but when you apply you're expected to indicate what you'll do with the tools. Many admins start out very active and then drop back their activity a bit.

The large majority of what I do on Wikipedia doesn't need admin tools. I do use the admin rollback button when I'm reverting vandalism to articles on my watchlist, but there are other tools available (such as VandalProof) which any editor in good standing and some minimum number of edits can use. I do occasionally block badly-behaving editors or delete inapproprate pages, but other admins do a lot more of those things than I do. People ask me for advice sometimes, but that's because I've been around a long time rather than because I'm an admin.-gadfium 04:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Māori monarchs

My undo at Tuheitia Paki had mostly to do with the conventions about titles and monarchs in articles - you generally don't pepper the articles or infoboxes with King, Queen etc, and because I was dountful about some of the terms used. As to the edits by that IP at Styles of Address, I have heard Tuheitia being referred to as Te Arikinui as well, on a news report... but doubt whether the protocol is codified anywhere that is verifiable or whether such a source might specify 'oral address' style. Maybe leave for a while and delete as unverified? Kahuroa 08:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll leave it for a while and see what happens.-gadfium 08:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes for NZ towns

Just thinking out loud here to you and Grutness here. Other countries use the Infobox template or a variant of it for the info panels on town or city pages. We Kiwis don't - we use tables, ie lots of code on each town page, not standardised, and here's the rub - much harder to cut and paste into other language Wikipedias (like the Māori one). Has anyone ever thought about this in terms of coming up with a standard template? If they did, I'd like it to include the Māori name of the town as one of the items - oh that would make my job so much easier!!! But seriously. The Aussies have Template:Infobox Australian Place with subtypes like town etc... I realise that a deal of consultation would have to take place as to what is important to include, but we could just hijack the aussie one and tweak Kahuroa 08:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a very good idea. Probably best to raise it at Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' noticeboard first, to see if anyone else has suggestions. Without looking into it, I'm surprised that each country seems to have its own city template; why is the standard one not enough? Is it that the standard one has too many options, not all of them relevant? For example, we won't want to add timezone info to each city, because apart from Chatham Islands, NZ has only one timezone.-gadfium 18:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers. Might have a lot at how various countries do it and then propose at the noticeboard. Kahuroa 23:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] redlinks on school articles

Hi Gadfium - silly question, but why remove all redlinks from school articles? I noticed your recent change to Logan Park, and while I agree about Liz Shaw, Chris Donaldson is a big enough name that he is likely to warrant an article at some point. Surely some kind of latitude is possible where a person genuinely should have an article - last time you removed redlinks from this particular school, I put them back and wrote the required articles! Grutness...wha? 00:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I typed a lengthy reply to you a couple of hours ago, and now it is nowhere to be seen :-(. I must have previewed it and forgotten to save it.

There is an informal policy - but no official policy that I am aware of - that all links to people from the year articles (eg 1970), and the day of the year articles (eg 1 January) must go to appropriate articles. This makes it very easy to remove vanity for people adding their own birthdays to such articles. If someone also creates an article on themselves, it gets dealt with by normal CSD and AfD processes. To allow redlinks on these articles would require the editors who check them to regularly check the notability of the people. This could be made slightly easier if we put external links for people who don't have Wikipedia articles to establish notability, but there is still a requirement to verify that the external link is a reliable source.

Last August, I raised the idea at Talk:Invercargill that we should exclude redlinks from the names of famous Invercargillites, for similar reasons. The one response I got agreed with me. I also raised the more general question relating to New Zealand town articles in a more general forum; but I cannot now find the discussion. Since then I have been removing at least some redlink names from New Zealand town articles. I am not sure if it has ever been discussed, but I have been also applying this policy, with considerable leniency, to New Zealand schools since I started regularly policing them about the same time.

By considerable leniency I mean that I usually only remove redlink names from a school article if the list of alumni makes no assertion of notability, or a google search fails to confirm the assertion made. Very rarely, I have removed redlinks where there is a marginal assertion of notability but the number of redlinks in the section seems to be growing out of control. I'm particularly likely to do this if someone keeps adding more redlink names, because I don't want to get involved in arguments about who is worth having on the list and who isn't.

In this case, Chris Donaldson was described as a 100 m runner. That is not an assertion of notability. As a high school student, I was not athletically inclined, but I was forced to take part in athletics events. I choose the 100 m because it was the shortest such event. I suspect many students do the same. I should have googled to check notability, but on this occasion I did not. I agree this was a mistake on my part. The anon who added the name should also have included more information on why Donaldson was notable.

At the same time as seeing this addition to Logan Park school, I noticed that the article on Liz Shaw had been deleted as a result of a complaint to the Wikimedia Foundation. I'm very happy that the article was deleted, as I voted for deletion at the last AfD, and have since had to defend it against vandalism and POV pushing. I note that Shaw complained after it was deleted. This side event may have distracted me and prevented me from doing my normal check of the other redlink in the article.-gadfium 04:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - that all makes sense. I suspect it is probably worth doing a google check each time, though I can definitely understand if a deletion slips through in this way. I totally agree with you about Liz Shaw, BTW. Grutness...wha? 11:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Liz Shaw?

What happened to the article? I can't find a AFD or anything? - SimonLyall 04:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It was deleted as a result of a complaint to the Wikimedia Foundation. See the deletion log and also see User_talk:Makemi#Liz_Shaw. The contents of email to OTRS are confidential, so we'll never know who complained. There is a little more information at User_talk:Makemi#Deletion_of_Liz_Shaw_(New_Zealand).-gadfium 04:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, It's a pain deletions or moves sometimes don't show on watchlists, Interesting the user who claims to be Liz doesn't appear to be the one who complained. - SimonLyall 05:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nelson Airport

I hope you don't mind me correcting your link to Nelson Airport in the Nelson article (the previous link referred to an airport in Nelson, British Columbia in the Dominion of Canada...)

Are you a Mainlander (or even a Nelsonian) yourself since I often notice you on NZ related pages?

My grandchildren live in Nelson so Tá súil agam cloisint uait... Gaimhreadhan

Not at all; it was careless of me to have failed to check the link.

I'm just another fabulous Aucklander, although I have lived in Blenheim in the past. I've travelled around quite a lot of the South Island, but the last time I was in Nelson was about eight years ago. I'm Irish, but came to New Zealand to escape the troubles. Was last in Ireland in 2003.-gadfium 00:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I've an aunt in Blenheim but only ever transit through Auckland Airport when I can't get an international connection from CHCH. I wish you a belated happy St Patrick's day! (I still have the misfortune to reside 400 yards from the irish land frontier (with 6 of our neighbours discovered floating face down in the water in recent years). Thank goodness things can be discussed here with a little more light and less heat...Gaimhreadhan 02:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of talk entries

Hello, you recently removed a talk comment by an anonymous user, asking why his information was removed (diff). I think people are entirely justified to ask why their information was removed, your behavior is only aggravating the issue. Do not bite the newcomers. -- intgr 11:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Bizarre_vandal_on_Hans_Reiser. This is one of a series of IP addresses and sockpuppets reinserting the same or a similar rant. There is no need to reply to each sockpuppet each time. In this case, Do not feed the trolls trumps WP:BITE.-gadfium 18:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I was not aware of this incident. -- intgr 01:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If I need to revert further such material, I'll include a link to AN/I.-gadfium 01:15, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move request

Hello Gadfium, how do you do? I'm asking if you can please move Aerial platform, incl. talk page, to Platform truck for me (mirror everything I guess). Can't do it myself, as Platform truck is already a redirect.

Reason, as I stated on the talk page of Aerial platform, is that I want aerial platform to point to Aerial work platform instead, a much more generic article than the firefighting vehicle. I will then link to the more specific Platform truck. MadMaxDog 09:37, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Done.-gadfium 09:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] removal of content in addition to warnings on my talk page

I appreciate your removing the inappropriate warnings Rebroad left on my talk page, but if you look at the diff you also deleted a comment of his and my response, and I'm not sure why. If there's no reason for removing those comments (they were some of the tamer ones in my opinion), could you do a partial revert? If there is a reason behind the removal of those specifics comments, I'd really appreciate knowing what it was. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   20:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

My mistake. Fixed now.-gadfium 22:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahh thanks. Did you mean to add back one of the warnings? Miss Mondegreen | Talk   22:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to remove it in the first place. This doesn't mean I approve of that warning. I am removing a warning ({{uw-vandalism4im}}) which seems clearly inappropriate, without making any comment on the other discussion on your page.

That's what I figured. I think it looks nice with the afg barnstar...the dichotomy is amusing. Kinda like a truck I saw today with a skull and crossbones and a one of those stick figure family drawing bumper stickers. It's an interesting picture at any rate.

Yah, I was just checking to make sure--I didn't want to remove the comments myself (for some reason I'm even hesitant about removing vandalism), and I wasn't quite sure what you were getting at. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   08:49, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revived discussion concerning fair use in portals

I am contacting everyone who participated in the discussion that became inactive in December. Due to the length of the previous discussion, I have proposed a new amendment and you like you to weigh in so that we may actually have a consensus on this matter as it doesn't seem there exists one either way. -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria

[edit] Comma splice

See comma splice.  :) JackofOz 06:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please merge duplicate articles

Hi, would you please merge these articles 1. Schaum's outline and 2. Schaum's Outlines with the same contents and different names? I'm not sure what to do. Thanks —F^red11⁴ 02:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

One is just a redirect to the other. It makes it easier for someone to find the article by providing several different search terms for it. See WP:REDIRECT. Nothing needs to be done.-gadfium 05:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)