User talk:Howrealisreal/Archive 1

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[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia

Welcome, newcomer!

Here are some useful tips to ease you into the Wikipedia experience:


Also, here are some odds and ends that I find useful from time to time:

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can most easily reach me by posting on my talk page.

You can sign your name on any page by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Best of luck, and have fun!

ClockworkTroll 04:07, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Condi

The current text makes it perfectly clear that this is Dr. Rice's opinion, so I think the requirements for factual accuracy are considerably reduced: we're just asserting that Rice believes something, not whether what she happens to believe is true. As for a link between 9/11 and Iraq, the quote itself makes this clear: "Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the actual attacks on America." She is just claiming that

  • Saddam Hussein's government was dysfunctional
  • it was symptomatic of serious societal problems in the Middle East
  • it was these problems that have contributed to the rise of Islamic radicalism
  • Islamic radicalism was one of the causes of 9/11

I don't think this stance is especially controversial; it is certainly Republican orthodoxy, and similar sentiments have been expressed by a wide range of figures, even those who don't support the war in Iraq. As with any claim, particularly one made by a political figure during an election campaign, there are bound to be people who disagree — but I don't see Rice's claim as being particularly controversial or dishonest. Prefixing any statement that might be subject to debate with "controversial" or "hypothetical" seems a little silly, no? I think any reasonable reader will see the quote as Rice's opinion, no more and no less, and we can let them make up their own minds how reasonable they find that opinion to be. Neilc 23:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you think Hussein's secularism is of any relevance to Rice's statement, go read it again. She is not claiming that Hussein directly supported Islamic radicalism, rather that the repressive political environment created by his dysfunctional regime — and those of the other regimes in the Middle East — contributed to the growth and appeal of Islamic radicalism, which in turn was one of the causes of 9/11. If you think that's not the case, please elaborate. Neilc 01:08, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't think it's a matter of Rice using "ambiguous" wording or my taking advantage of "loopholes", I think Rice is making a perfectly clear statement that apparently you didn't read carefully enough initially. The neoconservative notion that the best way to make progress against Islamic radicalism is by reforming the governments in the region and introducing democracy (by force, if necessary) is utterly common knowledge, I would hope. This argument has been made by many people (regardless of its truth or falsehood); it has been in many of Bush's speeches, it has been discussed by countless pundits and debated in a bunch of books. That's what I mean by "not controversial" — within most circles, I doubt her statement would have raised any eyebrows, although of course not everyone would agree with her. Rice is asserting a fairly common neoconservative argument, and I don't think we need to confuse the issue by adding caveats and qualifications. Therefore I don't agree with your latest edit, although I will wait for your reponse before making any changes. Neilc 01:43, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree Rice's statement is not universally accepted as true, but I don't think that's essential: we are documenting Rice's belief in a fact, not the fact itself. I think the text as it originally stood complies with NPOV, which states:

Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view. -- Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder

So the truth or falsehood of her statement, or the number of people who agree with her isn't really the point. We (i.e. Wikipedia) are simply asserting that Rice holds a belief, not that her belief is true, false, or anything else. Regarding addding qualifications, I don't think it improves Wikipedia to add qualifications and caveats to an otherwise clear and concise passage of text: I'm not saying "[you are] imposing qualifications on [my] edits", I'm saying you are adding a needless qualification to the article. Sorry to be stubborn, but I still don't see the need for your edit :-) Thanks for the pleasant discussion. Neilc 04:29, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] FMA

I'm all for helping fix up the Federal Marriage Amendment page, which definitely deserves at the very least to be streamlined, and probably deserves an overhaul. I'm a little at a loss for ideas this morning, but will definitely put my mind to it. Offhand, I agree that chronological constructions are good -- indeed, there was talk of FMA both inside and outside the Bush administration well before the marriages in San Francisco, so that should be documented and included in the entry, and is a good place to kick things off.

However, I wouldn't lead the article with a chronological account. With FMA, there deserves to be an overview that truly gives a sense of the legal reach and implications of a constitutional amendment regarding marriage. (For example, the FMA in the form voted on last year might by the Senate almost certainly would have undone the reasoning behind many other important Supreme Count decisions, such as Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, which permits heterosexual married couples access to birth control.)

I appreciate your interest in this particular entry. I have little doubt FMA will be introduced again in the new term. (Karl Rove said as much on November 7, five days after the election.) My hope is that this time around, the mainstream media will have a better understanding of all its implications. You probably wouldn't be a Wikipedist if you didn't believe, as I do, that this is a medium which can change the world for the better. The truth is extraordinarily powerful. I appreciate your investment in it. Sandover 17:56, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Working Families Party

Glad to help with the WFP article. There's probably some more that could be done with it too. And good luck with that Letitia James internship, local politics could presumably benefit from an idealist or two. Also, I wonder if you are interested in collaborating on other New York politics articles. In particular, Politics of New York could use some more attention. Thanks.--Pharos 21:53, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cut and paste moves

Hi,

If you want to rename a page, please use the "move" function instead of cutting and pasting the contents of the page. We need to do this in order to preserve the edit history. See Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page. On another note, I disagree with moving Legal issues of cannabis to Cannabis (law). The parentheses imply that the article is about a law named "cannabis". Rhobite 03:26, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to Wikinews

Hello!

Welcome to Wikinews. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy being a journalist here and being a Wikinewsie! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! CGorman 14:49, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Peru mercury poisoning story

After I signed up for the Miami Herald and read their article, I googled and found another source of information which had more details.

Thanks for double-checking my work.

Regards,

— DV 05:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

P.S.: If no one welcomed you to Wikinews yet - welcome! (Usually the Admins welcome everyone, so perhaps you archived your welcome already?)

[edit] Sprawl

Yes, I generally agree with you, but even historically, Brooklyn was considerably more dense than any modern suburb. Additionally, dependence on some means of transportation (be it car, streetcar or ferry) is not a criteria for sprawl. There is a fine line between suburban development (such as the streetcar suburbs of the early 1900s) and actual sprawl. Since the term is so loaded, I think it would be misleading to put it into an article about a Brooklyn neighborhood. Darkcore 01:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{PD-NYGov}}

Have you verified that the government of the State of New York actually releases material into the public domain? Most states do not. If so, detailed references on the template's talk page would be a very good idea. --Andrew 23:31, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Images taken by the state of New York are copyrighted by the state government, and are not public domain. Please remove this template. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 18:55, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I was rather curt to you, and my abruptness could have easily been taken as rudeness. Thanks for cleaning up, and thanks for taking it well. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 20:03, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gowanus Canal

I think a bit more work could be done on the article before a resubmit; I'll be posting some of my ideas to Talk:Gowanus Canal.--Pharos 20:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blade Runner

Hey... my FA of Blade Runner is stagnating because of some phrases that are poorly written and a "mite pretentious". Although I agree with the criticism, I cannot really "see" these problems, hence I cannot fix them. Hopefully you get back in time to help out. I'm going to try and recruit a few others in case you can't make it. - RoyBoy 800 15:41, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Coo. Ummmm, well I've recently moved Soundtracks and Themes to seperate articles. I plan to augment and improve the themes summary, and add an image or two; what I'm trying to figure out is if there is a section or two that can be added to the article to ensure its Featured status 3rd time around. (Although I'm trying to diffirentiate this article from Casablanca, for some reason I don't like the sectioning there)... I was considering making a section for Philip K. Dick, moving mentions of him in Creators there and expanding on his misgivings about Hollywood, Ridley and how it was resolved, then his death. - RoyBoy 800 17:16, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Cigarette#Junk_science response

I placed the following on the Talk:Cigarette#Junk_science page, thought you might be interested: JesseW 10:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(Also a RFC response) Here's a possible wording(I would have added it but I'm too tired right now to find a source, and I think it needs one): "According to {As reputable a source possible}, these studies were deeply flawed due to their strong bias and poor methodology, and were considered to be junk science." Howrealisreal, would you find a reputable web page(guesses: Americian Cancer Society, Science mag article, or something like that) to put in as a source for this? (Make sure they do say the studies were flawed for the reasons listed and that they do refer to them as junk science. I agree with you as for the facts, but the glory of NPOV is that sourced facts are better, and I agree with that even more. Thanks to all of you for contributing to the 'pedia. JesseW 10:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Convention on Psychotropic Substances

Please vote on this article. It is the sequel to Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Thanks, Joo-joo eyeball 14:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] the S. P.

This should be on your talk page, I think. Anyway. You seem to be the last one to have done anything major to the Sunset Park page. The could use some work. In particular, that reference to the movie at the top is out of place. A mention of the Basilica of OLEP would also be appropriate, as this is the most awesome architectural thing in this part of Brooklyn.--FourthAve 01:35, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Responding to your message, yes I meant OLPH, the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and not the misstyped 'OLEP'; the church does have its own web page.

It actually probably merits its own wikipedia article; compare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Basilica_churches_in_North_America This would best be done by someone from inside the parish itself.

The mention of the movie at the very top, with an indent is almost a disambiguation; I see there is no article for the movie Sunset Park.

I would de-link the link the non-existant "waterfront" article ("Brooklyn_New_York_waterfront" would be a better tag, but even here the New York Wiki project would likely intervene and impose it's own naming structure).

It has been some time since I lived in Brooklyn, otherwise I wold be more aggressive about editing or creating such articles.--FourthAve 13:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] repeat vote

can you please look at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Duveneck School (2nd Nom.) it is being voted on again Yuckfoo 04:45, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Health issues and the effects of cannabis

I've moved your request for article peer-review to the specific section for this in WP:WikiProject Clinical medicine/Collaboration. This is a new subpage as the sections on articles being started or for peer-review request recently got (unhelpfully) moved into archive. Also an intermediate level had recently been proposed at WP talk:MCOTW#Collaboration on articles. I hope the new subpage therefore protects specific page requests from future bulk-transfer into archive and gives a better overall structure to WikiProject Clinical medicine :-) David Ruben 08:09, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Warning of vandals

Hello. It's usually best to use the {{test}} templates -- all of them -- before reporting a vandal to be blocked. In general I will not block someone who has only been warned a couple times, but if they have received {{test}} through {{test4}} ane are still vandalizing, there is no doubt. Also, I would politely suggest that you consider being more kind to people, even those you judge to be vandals. Not everyone who makes a bad edit is a vandal, and it's a terrible thing for a well-meaning person to be berated and called "mindless" and so on. Even if the person was patently vandalising, it doesn't accomplish much to do this, except give them the rise they wanted. Cheers --Ryan Delaney talk 20:11, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I really understand your frustration. Please don't think I am saying you are in the wrong about wanting to deal with vandalism. The issue here is how it is dealt with. When someone makes a personal attack against you, making a personal attack in return only escalates the situation and resolves nothing; this is why personal attacks are forbidden under any circumstances according to WP:CIVIL. Similarly, vandals are warned thoroughly before they are blocked because very often, vandals will give up after a few warnings, removing the necessity for a block at all. And the honest people who weren't really vandalising will get the idea that they are doing something wrong without getting blocked after their first test edit.

The underlying policy here is WP:FAITH. Believe me, when you apply it in all you do, you will get better results. You never want to be the person who was more hostile or less willing to compromise. Vandals will be vandals, but you can still choose to deal with them in a patient and rational manner. I hope this helps. --Ryan Delaney talk 20:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The anon "expert" at Asian fetish

Your point at Talk:Asian fetish#The term itself was very well taken. It's obvious that several users have tried and failed to resolve the dispute with the anon "expert" who won't cite any references for his POV-laced writing. I listed the article on third opinion earlier, but I've delisted it now that some other editors have joined in the discussion. Would you consider a request for comment regarding the article or the problem user? (I'd recommend we try some of the other things at Wikipedia:Resolving disputes before that, since an RfC is a pretty serious issue - could lead to an WP:RfAr, which could get us blocked in case we did anything wrong, etc., so it's best to try the less risky ways of resolving the matter first, such as a Wikiquette alert. Also, which version of the article that has the Urban Dictionary reference to "cracker chasing"? I remembered seeing it in an earlier version of the article, but I couldn't find that edit when I was looking for it just now. It would be useful if we needed to provide evidence that the "expert"'s writing was POV and not well-referenced.) --Idont Havaname 23:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Asian fetish at Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive

Well, we could give it a try. I agree with you that it would probably draw contributors of many different viewpoints, and I'd like to see the article have more of its claims backed up by scholarly sources so that it doesn't read like a very smart-sounding angry person's rant. (Or higher visibility will land it on AfD, in which case we'd all know just how encyclopedic the topic really is... we'll see, but it will probably help the article either way.) I wouldn't mind having a listing of it there; the worst people can say is no. Thanks for asking me for my opinion about this! :-) (Also, a side note: You might want to leave your talk page discussion up instead of blanking it; it's easier to follow - see Wikipedia:Avoiding common mistakes. Sometimes editors voting at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, for example, complain about deleting talk page discussion.) --Idont Havaname 02:40, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Don't worry; I don't think that what went on there was your fault. I'm guessing that the anon who was making a scene there was the same guy who wrote / seems to think he owns most of the Asian fetish article. He doesn't seem willing to read and follow our policies despite what I've been telling him. He just seems to be one of those users who's just using Wikipedia as a soapbox, and it's probably best to just ignore him unless he's willing to be civil and to realize that an article from his POV is not NPOV, any more than an article from my POV would be NPOV. I don't know that I'd go so far as to call him a troll, but sometimes I wonder about his intentions and his unwillingness to register an account. If he continues to try to draw attention to himself like this, it's best to not feed the trolls. --Idont Havaname 01:12, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Open House New York

You may be interested in my note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject New York City#Open House New York October 8 and 9.--Pharos 19:38, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Religious Pluralism - Article Improvement Drive

Hi Howrealisreal,

I wanted to inform you that we have worked out a new outline for Religious_pluralism, which you support for the Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive; you are invited to take a look at that new structure, propose changes and participate in implementing it. --Robin.rueth 13:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] herb

Agreed. It also has a very first world bias whereas most of the marijuana is grown in the third world where consumption levels are probably similar to in the western world, SqueakBox 17:13, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Emergency department

I wonder if you could consider supporting this article at Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. Its an important place, where we all go by ambulance if we are very ill, and, I think, worthy of a comprehensive article.--File Éireann 20:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

 Thank you for your support of the Article Improvement Drive.
This week Emergency department was selected to be improved to featured article status.
Hope you can help…

Many thanks for your support!--File Éireann 23:44, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Newmont Mining

Hi there, sorry it took me a bit to get back to you. Somehow things have gotten busy this week. I'm glad that you're back. Ideally what I would like to see is the two of you talking over these disputed points. At this point I can't take as active a hand in pushing the talks forward (you see on the talk page I was starting to take it point by point), although I do plan to watch the discussions. What I'd like for you to do is comment on the intro, say whether it's OK with you or not, and if you can both agree on it, move on to the next paragraph. Sometimes that's the only way to make real progress. Since the article is protected, you can use the talk page to work out edits in a more productive way, and you don't get one person pasting stuff in while the other one just takes it back out. I'll be watching the page, but would like to see the two of you as the main drivers in the discussion. · Katefan0(scribble) 20:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

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