User talk:Icairns/archive/archive 03

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[edit] Vector fields in cylindrical and spherical coordinates

Hi Ian. I don't think that your change to that aricle was correct. The function atan(y/x) is from what I know not the same thing as atan2(x, y). The former takes values in an interval of length π, while the latter takes values in an interval of length 2π, which is how the polar angle should be.

You can reply here. I will keep this page on my watchlist. Oleg Alexandrov 20:39, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello Oleg. Thanks for that. I think it is clear in the first paragraph of the article that phi must lie between 0 and 2 pi. I used arctan (not atan) to represent the mathematical function tan-1. atan2 is a maths library function, and not a mathematical function. Arctan or tan-1 is the same as used by, for example, [1], although they use theta instead of phi. Thanks, Ian Cairns 21:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

You have a good point. However, the formula

\phi = \operatorname{arctan}(y / x)

cannot be right, it will always give an angle between -π/2 and π/2. For the point (-1, -1) it will give as polar angle π/4, while we all know that the polar angle must be π+π/4 in there. If you removed atan2 (which I agree is not a real math function), one better clarify that the φ obtained by that formula needs tweaking to give correct answer. Oleg Alexandrov 00:18, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

arctan is multi-valued (as per inverse trignometric functions in general) and can give values for all sorts of ranges. You have chosen only to recognise the principal values - others exist. Setting the range of permitted values should be enough to determine an exact value. I'll repeat the earlier constraint on the actual line if you wish to make this as clear as possible. Thanks, Ian Cairns 01:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. You are right, atan is multivalued. I was just thinking under the framework in which one defines atan to be one branch of that fuction, and all the other values to be that plus integer multiple of π. Your clarification helps, but I bet engineers will still be confused. :) Oleg Alexandrov 02:19, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Persian Gulf

Thank-you for reverting the anons over the lead paragraph. My God, it's frustrating. No argument is provided, no compromise sentence is suggested. Nothing. They just come on, daily, and remove it. Marskell 12:06, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Great addition...

...on the debit card 'gram. paul klenk talk 06:00, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] thank you

I appreciate your addition with the organizational comparison on the African Union article but if you could change the size so there is no overlapping, i'd appreciate it.[User:Briaboru|Briaboru]] 23:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello Briaboru. Thanks for that. None of my edits affected the overlap aspects of the table, i.e. I left the table width at default. Which skin are you using? I'm using standard skin on Firefox browser, and I see no overlap unless I shrink the page width to half screen width or less. Then it justs overlaps the right hand infobox. How does that compare with your viewer? Thanks, Ian Cairns 23:39, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category population

A few months ago you requested that the Unsolved problems in mathematics be populated. I've gone and bumped it up from 25 articles to 38. Booya! Reyk 07:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks! Ian Cairns 14:53, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Charlemagne

Hello - I see you removed a link from this article [2]. Perhaps you have an opinion on this AFD [3]? I really don't know if this is a valid topic for inclusion in Wikipedia and would like the opinion of other editors. Cheers --PhilipO 20:07, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello PhilipO. I suspected the Order article of being a Copyvio. I have now added this to the article, the list of copyvios and voted in the AfD. Thanks, Ian Cairns 21:44, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 72.226.56.123

This guy has been annoying me for the last half hour . . . thatnks fors helping out. - orioneight (talk) 02:15, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

You're most welcome - vandals must be stopped... Ian Cairns 12:01, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cents

Please look at cent (music) and see if my rewrite has resolved your concerns about its technical, contextual, and encyclopedic content. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Fine. Ian Cairns 00:41, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User vandalism

Hi Ian,

I noticed your edits on User talk:216.64.41.146. However, I'm not sure that adding three {test} templates in one go, such as this edit really helps that much. I rather thought the point of the escalating {{test}} templates was to let a vandal know that they are being watched and giving them a chance to reform their ways.

This one seemed like a fairly mild vandal, but with a particularly egregious vandal its reasonable to jump straight to say {test3}, but I doubt it helps to insert the lesser warnings at the same time, that is probably just going to confuse them. -- Solipsist 20:59, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello Solipsist. Thanks for that. There were eleven separate vandalism edits on two main articles in a short space of time. I thought it was important to rack up the words. I usually use the simple test if there is no other history of vandalism; test2 if a minor second infringement. This one I thought was worth a little more. Your point is taken. Ian Cairns 21:12, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Degree

Please STOP adding unnecessary dab templates to articles, such as [4]. I see from your edit history you have added a million of these. This is definitely inappropriate disambiguation. If you disagree, please bring it up at WP:D or Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The following para from the Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation article you quoted reads:
"Linking back to the main article
When a page has (disambiguation) in the title, users are unlikely to stumble on it by accident. Almost always, they will get there by clicking on a link from the main article with the same name, similar to this:
For other meanings, see School (disambiguation) "
You will have noted from looking at my contributions that expanding the Degree (disambiguation) article took some effort this afternoon. Many of the linked pages already had a dab link at the top in a similar fashion to the above para. I simply completed the links for consistency. I can vouch for the fact that there were many less than one million. If you think that my disambiguation was inappropriate or inconsistent with the guidelines, maybe you can arrange for the guidelines to be corrected or better worded. Thanks, Ian Cairns 00:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I certainly will. That guideline (which is actually on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), is a reference to the fact that the article School will have a link to the dab page. Wikipedia:Disambiguation says:
Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result? Disambiguation pages are not search indices — do not add links that merely contain part of the page title where there is no significant risk of confusion.
but I'll look into clarifying the MOS to avoid any ambiguity. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Further to the above discussion, I've moved Degree (diambiguation) to Degree and adjust links accordingly. Ian Cairns 21:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Brown

Do you have a source for your recent edits to George Brown, Baron George-Brown? The explanation for 'tired and emotional' is already in the article and is nothing to do with any statement given by Brown or someone on his behalf, and I'm unaware of Private Eye directly alleging Brown had been drunk. There was a previous front cover of Eye 134 in which Harold Wilson says "Georges est un peu fatigué, Votre Majesté" which comes very close, but there would be no point in making a direct allegation because it would not be very funny. David | Talk 11:04, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I was quoting from memory of an interview that I saw on TV once. I think it is better if I revert this change - unless it has already been reverted. Thanks, Ian Cairns 11:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Avoid self-references

Please don't "tidy links" as you did in this edit: [5]. See the policy with regards to links to pages not within the main namespace in Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. You should go back and revert your own changes anywhere else that you've made such a change. Thanks. —Lowellian (reply) 20:53, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

See User:Wmahan/Articles_with_self-references, linked to from Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references. This was cleared out for September 2004, and doesn't seem to have been re-run since. However, there were over 500 recent links that I found by searching. (Wikipedia:Avoid_self-references describes itself as a style guide, rather than a policy). Thanks, Ian Cairns 23:53, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] blocking 62.171.194.36

Thanks for blocking 62.171.194.36; he was trashing Archimedes mercilessly. Jamie 12:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

No problems. Glad to help. Regards, Ian Cairns 12:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Forcing rendering

Please do not force LaTeX formulas to become PNG if inline. That is against the math style manual. By the way, if you prefer to see png formulas, you can change that in the preferences. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:34, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I note that the manual of style uses the phrase "is generally discouraged", rather than deprecating the change. The actuality is that the article is not rendering correctly. Yes, I can adjust my user settings to compensate for the faulty article rendering. I know how to do this. Most Wiki users will not know or not bother. Does this make the fault belong to my user settings or is the article itself faulty?? Thanks, Ian Cairns 23:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by not rendering incorrectly? The only problem I have is with \omega\, which looks horrible in html, like ω. Besides, if changing things, one should be consistent. So, if you believe (p,q) renders incorrectly, you should have change all other variables in that article by adding \,, like S(k). There is no hard rule in all this, and no unanimous agreement, but the consensus seeems to be that PNG is to be avoided, or at least not forced on purpose, unless there are good reasons for that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 23:52, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Exactly what I said. The article is not rendering properly - the appearance is neither correct nor acceptable. I refuse to change my user settings to fix faults with particular articles. As an administrator myself, I need to see what the general user sees. Where an article is faulty, it needs to be changed within the limits placed by policy - not by guidelines. Ian Cairns 00:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I asked for details. :) What does not render correctly? How exactly it renders? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:03, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

"A linear functional on L^\infty(G)" is unreadable.
"A linear functional on L^\infty(G) \," is readable
Maybe you have configured your own user settings such that you cannot see this. As you are an administrator, I would have thought you would have wanted to see what default users would make of the articles, rather than see your own preferences? Ian Cairns 00:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
To me both render as png. My preferences are also default, "HTML if very simple or else PNG". What are yours? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:14, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
"Recommended for modern browsers" !! I am using Firefox v1.5, which is fairly modern. Ian Cairns 00:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, here are the facts on the ground.

  1. I use Firefox too, version 1.0.7. Not as new as yours, but not too old either (one year or less I would guess)
  2. The default preferences are "HTML if very simple or else PNG". I made a totally new account to check that.
  3. To me, even pure HTML renders perfectly fine, see this 
    ''L''<sup>∞</sup>
    which renders as L∞.

I did not tweak any thing either in my preferences or my browser. Wonder what you think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Firefox v1.0.7 is about Sept 2005 - less than 3 months old. Your L∞ comes out fine on my 'modern browser'. However, the previous L^\infty(G) does not - the latter is not fit for purpose. My deduction is that there is something badly wrong with the standard preferences. I do not think my setting 'Recommended for modern browsers' is in any way my fault - I do not remember adjusting this, but it seems to be the Wikipedia-recommended value for a modern browser, judging by its name. Or to put it another way, my earlier edits changed the rendering from unusuable to usable as far as 'Recommended for modern browsers' was concerned; your reversions have put them back to useless. Ian Cairns 00:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I changed my preferences to 'Recommended for modern browsers'. L^\infty(G) looks perfectly fine (the infinity is a bit down and a bit smaller, but that is more acceptable than an oversized L^\infty(G)\, which shows up if your font size is not the same as the size of PNG images.
Also, I fail to see what is useless about (p,q) for which you forced PNG. Looks good to me. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
The previous text was: ":τ(1) < \cdots < τ(p)" - I have a Maths degree and I know Greek lettering, but I can't make out which Greek letter was used. By forcing to png or by rendering correctly, the tau is visible. Ian Cairns 01:04, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

That does not explain why you changed the rendering in L^\infty(G) and in (p,q).

By the way, I am typing this from a brand-new Firefox 1.5 with absolutely default setttings, just to see what the default user sees. I must agree with you that τ looks a bit strange, but not as bad as ω (I agree that omega — ω is awful). However, on my very default browser, (p, q)\, and L^\infty(G)\, appear huge, way out of proportion to any text around them. That last thing was what motivated the guideline in the math style manual.

In short, I would argue that if you do care about the default user, you should not force PNG, except, if you wish, for Greek letters. There is no hard rule, and our argument is a bit pointless, as there is no good solution to math rendering on the web, but the guideline about avoiding PNGs is the best compromise in my opinion, at least until we get MathML. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:17, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notability of books

Hi there

Wanted your opinion on notability re books, as I've been a bit surprised by your category Victoria Cross books. But you're an admin and I'm a newbie, so its likely I'm just confused... Can you give me some guidance as to what constitutes a book notable enough to have its own WP article, as opposed to just being listed in References, or in a "List of Books about the VC"? I'm guessing WP "Isn't a Non-fiction Catalogue", but I can't find any policy or even discussion of this. All thoughts gratefully received... JackyR 01:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello Jacky

Welcome to Wikipedia - hope you like it here. Yes, I'm an admin, but it's "no big deal", as Jimbo Wales says. The VC book articles weren't created by me. I created the category that contains the books. I did this to separate the books from the soldiers. At one point, both books, soldiers and lists of soldiers were in the same VC category. I edited some book articles to adjust the category from VC to VC books. I'm afraid that I'm more of a maintainer / catalogue maintainer rather than a Wikipedia book expert. I've also looked fairly quickly and can't find anything appropriate to your question. I'd proceed with caution and just use common sense. Wikipedia has articles on many types of books of very different interests. Do you have a particular example in mind? Regards, Ian Cairns 01:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. It's not that there's a particular book I'd like to list, more that I'm seeing other examples and wondering which to emulate. The VC project has confused me. Obviously its trying to replicate what it had on its home site, rather than coming at the data from the WP side, and I'm wondering if this has thrown up anomalies, or good, replicable practice. It seemed strange that books likeMonuments to Courage rate an article, when surely all it will ever contain is a synopsis and publication data. Should I be creating articles for all the reference books I use? For all the non-fiction on my shelf? This could turn WP into a catalogue.
Between my Q above and receving your reply, I tentatively raised the point on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration. Obviously I don't want to upset anyone, and I should add that I think it's wonderful that this data is going to be part of WP. Perhaps at 6 weeks I've just reached that stage of Wiki-initiation where over-confidence kicks in... Hence the cry for guidance! As I say, all gratefully received! JackyR 13:26, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TPMS

Please visit Talk:TPMS. Thank you. Tedernst | talk 22:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Done (a few days back) Ian Cairns 22:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] vandalism by 209.158.161.194

I notice that you warned 209.158.161.194, he's since vandalized emotional intelligence.

Thanks for alerting me and for warning anon. I'll keep a watch on him. Ian Cairns 22:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 198.234.202.132 vanalizing again

198.234.202.132 is back to vandalizing yet again - could he be blocked permanently? Anarchist42 18:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me. I've warned the anon and will keep watch. Ian Cairns 22:44, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nicholas Eliot, 9th Earl of St Germans

Your article indicates that Nicholas Eliot was "sometime MP for South Huntingdonshire". There does not appear to be a constituency of that name, nor does his entry in Who Was Who indicate that he was ever MP for anywhere. What was your source?--George Burgess 18:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for challenging this fact. I've rechecked my immediate source of data without success. I have some further sources to check, but am not hopeful of finding any corrobation. As a result, I'll remove this allegation and will cite my source if attempting to reinsert. Thanks again. Ian Cairns 21:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long and short scale reference: Geneviève Guitel

Hi Icairns, you deleted my reference to Geneviève Guitel with the comment: "no confirmation in google - please cite your source".

About two years ago, I saw with my own eyes this "long and short scale" use by reading a book of G. Guitel in an academic library. It should be the work: "Histoire comparée des numérations écrites", Geneviève GUITEL, éd. Flammarion, Paris, 1975. (I don't remember the exact page, and there is a small chance that it was another work, but certainly by Guitel.)

I only saw your deletion just now. I understand the care to have only good, accurate informations. However like I'm certain in my affirmation, I'll add it once more. Simultaneous I promise you to refind the exact reference within one week. If this is not the case you can delete it definitively. However this will not be necessary. I know the the good bookshelf very well.

Lucky Luke 09:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The book reference above will be fine if you are certain that this supports your addition. Ian Cairns 09:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, Icairns. That's exactly what I intended. I'll try to hurry. Have a good day, Lucky Luke 10:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism by 194.83.157.3

This user just vandalized the Revelation page. I'm not an admin so I cannot take disciplinary actions, but this user seems to have a history of vandalism. The Jade Knight 18:49, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me Jade Knight. Ian Cairns 20:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the Field Hockey Article

Hi, I'v provided the link for the information but you have deleted it again. Please put it back, here it is:

Every matchs has one referee. It can be either male or female. Currently, the best female referee in the world is an argentine woman called Soledad Iparraguirre [6].

Thanks and sorry for the missunderstood.


Excusme, but that's not a list of the best umpires of the world. It's just a kind of award for umpires who were in more than 100 matches. I can swear you that Soledad Iparraguirre is the best in the world and when I found any internet probe for it I well send it to you.

Thanks and Sorry for the mistake.

[edit] User:168.212.65.126

I noticed that you were the last person to block this user. I have just reverted a piece of vandalism he did to Francis Drake, and notice that he has since vandalised Vasco da Gama (which I have not reverted). While I am accustomed to giving people first warnings I am not sure how to proceed with such a consistent vandal. Please advise or take appropriate action. Thanks SMeeds 00:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. I have blocked him for persistent vandalism. Thanks again, Ian Cairns 00:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Duckbill's Reading comments moved to article.

[edit] John Ogdon

Image:WikiThanks.png I'd like to thank you for your contribution at a classical pianist's article. The whole category still needs a lot of work, but the more people are helping, the more we can do :) -Missmarple 15:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page name for temperature articles

To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:09, 12 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Redding

Hello Icairns. I see you've done some editing on the Redding page, so maybe you could answer my question. Currently on the disambiguation page, there are links to several pages with the word 'Redding' in them (i.e. Noel Redding). I'm simply trying to create a page for the band called Redding, but the link isn't working. It seems that the reason is that the page called Redding is already the link to the disambiguation page itself. Do you know of a way I can create a page called Redding? Thanks! Reddingmusic 05:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

(I've done subst:Welcome and provided some suggestions at User talk:Reddingmusic, and made an edit on Redding. Duckbill 11:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Long scale - short scale

Hi Ian

I was reading the Talk:1000000 and noted your comments talked about why long scale and short scale are preferred options for discussing the differences in number names, e.g.:

"American vs British is not a well-defined criterion. American vs European doesn't work either - since the UK is part of Europe. The simplest way to express this is short scale vs long scale if you wish to contrast the systems."

I'm having some trouble trying to find more-or-less authoritative references that use "long scale" and "short scale". I prefer these terms to American vs Anywhere-else as I come from Australia and we don't fit any geographic region nicely!

May I ask what your sources are for those terms?

Cheers Allan T

Hello Allan - Thanks for this. The reasons are hopefully explained in the article Long and short scales (and partly in Billion / Talk:Billion#"Short scale" and "long scale") which should have been linked from the discussion. These are essentially neutral terms taken from French usage. All other attempts to name this difference have failed for one or other reasons - hence why Dpbsmith introduced the Long and short scales article and why it has stuck. Ian Cairns 08:00, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Year zero

Shifted to Talk page:Year zero  -- Paul Martin 06:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about editing of Hendrik Wade Bode article

Can you please correct the type of your recent edit of Hendrik Wade Bode to minor, since it only involved a minor link correction. Thanks. Dr.K. 02:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'm not aware that it is possible to change these things after the event. I take your point about it being minor, and will be more careful in future.Thanks, Ian Cairns 18:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
It can be done by saving the existing version once more and making it a minor correction with the remark that the previous revision was also a minor one. Thanks. Dr.K. 19:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "southern europe"

To whom it may concern, For Europeans, there is no such thing as 'Southern Europe.' This concept does not exist; it would be analogous to defining a "Central United Sates." I don't mean here to imply a monolithic reading of European culture, but Europeans take offence to such interpretations of their geography. In other words, the correct terminology is Mediterranean Europe. Thanks.

I state my name on my User page, and it appears many times on this page. You know who I am, which is more than I can say for your anonymous posting. At least you could have added four tildas, as you are asked to do on editing talk pages. The spelling of Mediterranean in the original edit was so poor that I doubted whether this had been posted by a European. It created a bad link from a good link. As such, there was little point in leaving the edit as it was. For further discussion of your posts, I suggest adding named contributions to Talk:Southern Europe. I can confirm that Southern Europe is a term used in the UK, at the very least, for, and synonymous with, the Mediterranean countries of Europe. Thanks, Ian Cairns 10:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blanking of IP talk pages

Hi Ian,

Blanking of IP talk pages is not considered vandalism - it's actually quite useful when there's so many messages that many of them are stale. Cheers, Alphax τεχ 13:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Compton, Berkshire, England

Moved to Edward Jenner Institute talk page

[edit] Wikipedia survey

Hi. I'm doing a survey of Wikipedia editors as part of a class research project. It's quick, anonymous, and the data will be made available to the Wikipedia community later this month. Would you like to take part? More info here. Thanks! Nonplus 00:15, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italy, German

Hi. I noticed this revert. I've been looking at some of the other changes the editor's been making, and I'm wondering what the policy should be. Category talk:German speaking countries seems inconclusive. Certainly, German is an official language in Italy (for example), at least in Trentino-Alto Adige, as the article says. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello. Yes, I have a problem with the category names under any such circumstances. These should be French-speaking countries or better Countries where French is spoken. This should be discussed, and the above issue taken on at the same time?
Most countries will have more than one language spoken, particularly near borders. Is it an official national language? e.g. Switzerland having French, German and Italian, etc. Ian Cairns 18:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's interesting. Take the case of Namibia. German has not been an official language there since 1990; however, a third of the population speak German. Is it not a German-speaking country? (And don't forget Romansch for Switzerland!) --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Edward VII of the United Kingdom

For some reason, I kept reading it as Nov. 8 that he was created PoW. It makes a lot more sense if it was Dec. 8. Boy, that will teach me to try to do too many things at once!! Prsgoddess187 18:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CreationWiki

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CreationWiki

As a contributor to the page CreationWiki, I feel it fair to warn you that it has been nominated for deletion. Please make your opinion known. PrometheusX303 20:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look. BW, Ian Cairns 00:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Well done and thanks on Lupin family

Well done and thanks for Lupino family! Cutler 10:15, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I`m sorry that I vandalised the Neil Warnock page but I dont remember vandalising the Earley page.

[edit] Excel type boxes

Hi, i dont mean to bug you, but i dont know what to find what i am looking for, and your an admin, so i thought you might be able to help. Do you know where i can get information regarding the construction of boxes on wikipedia pages? Like the excel type boxes with different columns and rows. Any help would be great, i have been looking for the past hour and cant find anything. Thanks. --Geppy 06:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Surnames

Brookie here - thanks for the note - I had noticed the cock up and it was on my list of corrections to make when I had a momemnt - well spotted! Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! (Whisper...) 09:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization of military ranks

I reverted your re-categorization of Schout-bij-nacht from Category:Military ranks to Netherlands - the latter would be correct category sorting method for a Netherlands subcategory (Military ranks of the Netherlands) or an article on Dutch military ranks in general, not for an article on an individual rank. The only result is that the alphabetical order in the category gets messy. I noticed afterwards that you have made several similar recategorizations and would ask you to either revert them or put them in relervant subcategories. Uppland 11:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The intention was that these belonged in subcats of Military ranks by country, as you spotted - this was a half-way point in clearing out country-specific Military ranks from general Military ranks. I was diverted to deal with some other vandalism. Ian Cairns 11:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
OK. Please note that some of these ranks belong in several subcats. As you see from the article, Schout-bij-nacht is also a historical rank used in the Swedish navy during the 17th and 18th centuries (it says "Scandinavian navies", but I have no idea if that is correct or just written by someone who didn't really know the difference; I rewrote it partly some time ago and added references concerning Sweden, but I have no idea about Denmark-Norway (the only other Scandinavian navy at the time). Same thing with Rittmeister and probably others. Uppland 11:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • The term military ranks of 'Ancient Greece' (albeit an improvement on Greece; Ancient Rome does work) is historical fiction, the Ancient Greeks were mostly outside Greece (Italy, Asia Minor etc.) and never one Greek state, but a pleiad of rivaling poleis, often at war, until the Macedonian Alexander joined -and 'drowned'- them shortly in a far larger empire that quickly desintegrated till the Romans politically elmiminated the succeeding diadoch states. And there have been many rival military ranks, incompatible uses etc. during their long history - if you must bunch them up (an alternative is not self-evident) then rather use some phrase like 'in Ancient Greek', as language/culture was about the only thing they all sort of shared Fastifex 09:23, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Be bold in your editing. Ian Cairns 12:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
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