User talk:Lawrence King

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Okay, I'm hooked.

Wow, they let anyone update Wikipedia these days. -- Walt Pohl 05:11, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All too true.

Contents 1 Bible 2 Thanks for your kind e-mail 3 WikiProject Buffy 4 Re: a certain wikipedian 5 Vicki Vale 6 Wagon 7 Merging or comparing with other article 8 Was tempted to edit your user page... 9 A message from Mr. Altadena 10 List of Buffyverse-related topics 11 "The Peninsula" 12 World's Smallest Political Quiz 13 Thomasine 14 sola fide 15 Abandoned Lawrence King page 16 Ceding control 17 Paul Verhoeven and Jesus 18 Philosophy 19 Fair Use and Command D 20 re: Bots and WikiProjects 21 MetsBot 22 Contemporary Catholic Music, small correction

[edit] Bible

just my compliments on keeping the Bible article NPOV --ClemMcGann 11:38, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

You're quite welcome! I have proposed a new compromise verbiage; let me know what you think of Talk:Bible#Reworded passage about history of canon. Lawrence King 23:06, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for your kind e-mail

Much appreciated. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Buffy

Hey, I saw your comments on the Sunnydale article. I am starting WikiProject Buffy and I would love your help! Thanks!

Che Nuevara, the Democratic Revolutionary 04:31, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: a certain wikipedian

Thanks for your message. I can relate to what you said. I don't know how much energy I have, but he can't be allowed to just occupy certain pages and then spread around Wiki. Regards, Str1977 12:20, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Dear Lawrence, judging from your previous post you might be interested in this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Famekeeper. Str1977 09:58, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vicki Vale

You made the following edit to to Vicki Vale: [1]. A question: where exactly in Batman #45 does she appear? Please reply on my talk page. —Lowellian (talk) 12:15, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I was practically certain that she was not in #45 and that that was an error, but I wanted to check with you first. —Lowellian (talk) 18:11, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wagon

I see you've fallen off the wikiwagon. :-) -- Walt Pohl 15:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging or comparing with other article

There are now two Buffy chronology articles on Wikipedia:

• Buffyverse chronology (this article)
• Buffyverse Chronology Canon

I think the following work needs to be done.

1. The second article needs to be renamed. The C should not be capitalized, but more importantly, "Buffyverse Chronology canon" isn't the right name. It should be something like "Buffyverse Chronology (canon only)."

2. The "Buffyverse chronology" article has had a lot of great updates, links added, etc. But the "canon" version has not. I think it needs to be updated in the same way. Ideally, the Buffyverse Chronology canon article would just be identical to the main article with certain lines missing.

OR.... a better idea might be this. Delete the "Buffyverse Chronology canon" article entirely. Then, within the main chronology article, somehow indicate which items are considered canon. This would actually be more valuable, because then the canon-only timeline would be seen in context of the whole timeline.

Paxomen -- and anyone else who uses this article a lot -- what are your thoughts? I'd be glad to do this work but I don't want to do it without your approval! Lawrence King 04:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Old article Buffyverse chronology

Heya, I did recently distinguished the canon and non-canon throughout the whole page. the canon stuff appears in bold, the non-canon in italics, and episode flashbacks in bold italics. Also I recently moved the 'Key' bit to the top of the article to make the whole thing clearer.

Your absolutely right about the need for an update: Buffyverse chronology (canon only), though I'd hope it remains only as a daughter article, because if it becomes more used then work writing articles for the novels/comics becomes more pointless :)

Btw if your interested in helping with the 'Buffyverse chronology', Angel novel book descriptions need to be reworded before they are created as articles, they are presently almost ready except book descriptions at:

User:Paxomen/Angel novels needing rewritten 'book descriptions'

--Paxomen 18:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks for all the work updating these articles. I just spent an hour proofreading both articles and have a few suggestions. See Talk:Buffyverse chronology (canon only).

But I don't know if I'll have time to work on the Angel book descriptions. Lawrence King 06:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Was tempted to edit your user page...

...purely to raise a smile. I wholeheartedly agree with your Philosophy statements (especially NPOV and silly links) and imagined a change to your Philosophy line:

Finally, I hate the practice of adding tons of irrelevant links.

to become

Finally, I hate the practice of adding tons of irrelevant links.

I guess that whether you like it depends on whether you have the same peculiar sense of humour as me ;-)

Euchiasmus 09:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

*grin*

What's most disturbing is that finally and irrelevant are wiki articles at all!

Hmmm... how about doing the whole thing: Finally, I hate the practice of adding tons of irrelevant links.

Everything but the "adding" is blue. Interesting. I didn't expect to see articles on "of" or "the". As they say, "Wikipedia is not a dictionary." Yet I expected an "adding" article. Or at least if I had wikified the root word — [[add]]ing — I would have expected an add article. But even that doesn't exist. Very disturbing.

Thanks for the comment! Lawrence King 03:32, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Ordinary words should not be linked. It is possible to link almost every word Drogo Underburrow 07:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A message from Mr. Altadena

LK: Thanks for the kind words and assistance with my articles. I am really getting the hang of wiking-out! When I first put my article on my web site about the Mount Lowe Railway, I was e-mailed from a fellow in Vancouver (disambig) Canada who said he went to school with me at Eliot Jr. High. He loved the photos and the memories after 29 years. I thought to myself, now if I had published 20,000 books, he probably would have never seen a copy. But within a week he caught it on my web site.

So what's fun about Wiking is we can be anywhere in the world and share our articles.

User:Mmanning

[edit] List of Buffyverse-related topics

Hiya, you maybe interested in the fate of the following article List of Buffyverse-related topics, it has been designed as a comprehensive list of every topic relating to the Buffyverse, as well as links to discussion and revision histories. It is now up for deletion. If you're interested take a look at the article, and share your opinion in the deletion forumn on whether it should be saved or deleted. -- Paxomen 22:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Paxomen, I'm unsure how I would vote on this. Who will be maintaining this page? It seems that a category has a lot of advantages. Furthermore, I am uncomfortable with having graphics (especially lots of interesting graphics) on a list page; are all the graphics duplicates of graphics that already exist on their own pages?

It seems to me that list pages (in any version) are indexes, and there's a reason that a real book doesn't illustrate it's index: the index is there for a specific purpose and nothing else.

But I don't want to vote to delete a page you have spent a lot of time on, because we've done some good work together on other Buffy pages! LK

Update: After a bit more reading, I will vote not to delete; my reasons are in my vote. LK

The graphics are all duplicates of images already used on topics from the index, do you think they are a distraction from the list itself? -- Paxomen 12:22, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it a distraction, but they seem out of place here. But you shouldn't value my opinion very much here. I tend to be a text-search person with a good memory for page titles, so I very rarely use indexes or categories of any kind during my own navigation! Lawrence King 02:02, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I like pretty pictures too much (gotta get out of that phase) :) should the index survive, i'll open up a discussion on the talk page about whether images should be smaller, fewer, or non-existant. Thanks for your help. -- Paxomen 18:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "The Peninsula"

Since you left a little comment questioning the extent of this (the S.F. Peninsula), I thought you might be interested in an ongoing discussion of this subject over at Talk:San Francisco Peninsula. No clear decision on where it ends, but it's at least mildly interesting. --ILike2BeAnonymous 03:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World's Smallest Political Quiz

Thanks for the addition to the criticism section on the World's Smallest Political Quiz. I hadn't heard that one but it makes sense. Two other topics that are left off are Gun Control and Abortion. Liberty4u 03:06, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thomasine

Please do not redirect from the article namespace into my (or anyone else's) userspace. If you want to direct to the article in my userspace, please transclude it (Don't move it - copy the contents) into the article namespace. Phil Sandifer 15:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sola fide

OK, I've commented on Talk:John 3:16.

Yes, I am a protestant, and I do believe in sola fide. Nonetheless, I do believe strongly along with James that our works show if our faith is really genuine. I don't get it how you can believe that Christ's death is not sufficient for salvation. If I am reliant on any part of my own righteousness for salvation, no matter how great my works then I am surely doomed, since my own righteousness is so stained? Brusselsshrek 12:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, as a catholic Christian myself, I do believe that Christ's death is sufficient for salvation. Would you agree with the following statement: We are not saved by our works, nor by our faith, but by the grace that Christ won for us on the cross. Not faith or works, but grace: this is the Catholic view, and I think that most Protestants would agree with it. After all, faith and works are both ours, so they can't be the source of our salvation: salvation is not something we can earn, either through our actions or our beliefs.

But then, the next question is: does this grace automatically save all humans, or is there something that has to happen within each individual in order for this grace to be applied to him or her? This is where Protestants and Catholics usually answer differently. Protestants (perhaps, like Luther, emphasizing Paul's letters and the Gospel of John) often seem to say that it is faith alone that lets Christ's grace apply to us. Catholics (perhaps emphasizing the first three Gospels and the letter of James) usually say that this grace needs to be accepted by us, and we accept it by our faith and our works. But "works" doesn't mean giant projects like feeding all the homeless people, or making pilgrimages to far-away lands. Rather, it's an inner choice: do you choose good, even though you will often fail to live up to this choice? If you deliberately choose the evil path and stick to it, then you would not be saved despite your belief. This is one of the many reasons we can't judge others: Suppose Person A is choosing good, but because of human weakness keeps falling back into sin; and suppose Person B has truly chosen evil. Their actions might look very similar from the outside! But A has saving works while B does not, even if B believes the doctrines of faith.

Yet I'm not sure that the Protestant and Catholic views are all that different! I have asked Protestant friends of mine, "Suppose you believe in everything Christ did, but then you consciously say, 'Yes, I believe that you died for me, but I reject you and the grace you offer!', then are you saved?" They almost always say "of course not".* Many of them say "Belief isn't enough, you need a saving faith." Perhaps what some Protestants mean by "saving faith" is what some Catholics mean by "faith, ratified by works"?

* I say almost always. I have a couple friends who believe in predestination, and they insist that if you truly believe in Christ, you will inevitably end up doing good works -- you have no choice. Therefore my hypothetical person who believes in Christ but rejects him is simply impossible. I don't believe this theology, but it is certainly a logically consistent answer.

Anyway, that's my poor attempt at a summary that you may or may not even be reading.... Lawrence King 20:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course I have read it. Now I need to reflect on it. Brusselsshrek 08:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abandoned Lawrence King page

When I first read the "* I have abandoned..." text on your User:Lawrence King page, I thought you were saying that you were not editing the Lawrence King page any more. Now, by looking at your extra "*" change, I understand that this paragraph is a reference to other pages and not the page on which it appears itself. My mistake I know, but you may wish to try and make it clearer to people who scan your page and land on the bottom quote. (P.S. I have not forgotten the scripture debate above - my thoughts are now pretty clear, but I need to find the time to respond) Brusselsshrek 11:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Aha, it never occurred to me that it might be read that way! I'll fix it. Thanks for the tip! Lawrence King 02:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes, that's muuuuch clearer. :-) Brusselsshrek 11:23, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ceding control

On another user talk page, apropos of a certain article: I have agreed to let you have complete control over this page. I hope that this is a huge exaggeration and that it's understood to be one. You're free to drop out; that other person is not free to expel you or anyone else. -- Hoary 07:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, and I shouldn't have said it. Among other problems with my statement, it might be pointed out that if I were to drop out of Wikipedia entirely I would not be ceding this article to a specific user, but rather to six billion other editors and potential editors!

Many thanks for your help, by the way! - Lawrence King 08:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Lest I appear too amicable, let's have an argument! If you mean what I think you mean on your user page about they, please read this, and then if you wish this, this, and this. You should enjoy them, in one way or another. -- Hoary 07:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ummm. Well, I do wish we had a gender-neutral pronoun that was clearly singular. I used to insist that "man" and "he" and "his" were both masculine and gender-neutral, since my mom (a pre-Baby Boomer feminist) always found inclusive language silly. But in fact, today "man" does not make people think of humankind, and "he" certainly doesn't make people think of "he or she" -- so we need gender neutrality.

In my school papers I end up using singular they, because I find that I can use "he or she" once but using it over and over is annoying, as one of your articles pointed out.

Your Sean Lennon article is interesting; it seems to suggest that "they" functions as an indefinite pronoun to some degree. This does seem to reflect usage to some degree.

So I guess my fundamental gripe is that I don't think that "correct language" should necessarily follow usage....

As an irrelevant side point, Latin has masculine/feminine/neuter distinctions almost everywhere, except, oddly, in the singular third-person possessive: his/her/its = eius, while the plural their = eorum or earum depending on gender.

Maybe my main gripe is in translation. Psalm 1:1 (RSV) begins with "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked." In the NRSV it reads "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked." Would you consider this sentence to be singular? If not, would this still qualify as a valid translation, given that the original Hebrew is in the singular? - Lawrence King 08:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm in a bit of a rush now, so I'll be brief. I see no reason to think that "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked" is singular. I know nothing about Hebrew, but let's imagine that the original sentence were not in Hebrew and instead were in English, reading "Happy is the person who does not follow the advice of the wicked". This clearly isn't about a single person; rather, it's about a postulated generic person, as probably (and we hope) exemplified by many actual people. This use of the grammatically singular generic is common in many languages. Offhand I don't know if it's lacking in any language that (unlike, say, Japanese) compels a singular/plural distinction; but if it were lacking, I'd happily see it translated into the plural (more closely equivalent to "Happy are people who..."). All in all the sentence you discuss seems a valid translation. Hoary 10:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paul Verhoeven and Jesus

I quote from the Paul Verhoeven article:

Since he is not a professional Biblical exegete, his membership in the Jesus Seminar has occasionally been cited by opponents of the Seminar as a sign that this group is less scholarly than it claims.

You added this to the article. Can you maybe quote one of these allegations? Or could you provide a source where Seminar opponents call the Jesus Seminar unscholarly? I believe that would make the quote above more encyclopedic. Thanks, Ilse@ 01:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Done! See Paul Verhoeven#Other activities.

Let me know if this looks POV to you. My intention was to state the criticisms, not to imply that I agree or disagree with them. - Lawrence King 01:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

There's more information at Jesus Seminar#Criticism of the Jesus Seminar, but I think that the Verhoeven article should stay focused on Verhoeven. - Lawrence King 01:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

When you mentioned there was critique, you just made me curious what people were saying, because you didn't tell what it was. I think the passage gives just enough info about the Seminar now, and is still from a neutral POV. - Ilse@ 02:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy

I found myself in such agreement with you, I copied your Philosophy section onto my own user page. Drogo Underburrow 05:04, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't see it!

Was "Underburrow" an actual Hobbit last name? I don't recognize it, and it's not in Foster's encyclopedia.... Lawrence King 07:23, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops....I think I must have forgot to hit "save"! No, its not a Hobbit name...it just sounds like one....I made it up. Drogo Underburrow 07:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair Use and Command D

Chris,

You edited my user page [2], removing a copyrighted image of the cover of the comic book Kamandi # 5.

Can you clarify why you believe this is necessary? I certainly want to be a loyal Wikipedian and obey its rules, and I also want to obey the applicable laws of the United States. But, as I'm sure you can understand, an edit to my user page -- in particular, the removal of an artpiece that is clearly fundamental to the entire design of my user page -- is something that I hesitate to accept unless I am persuaded it's necessary.

First of all, is the objection to the image in general, or to its use on my page? In other words, according to the image's own Wikipedia page ([3]) it's a fair use image. You haven't deleted this image, nor objected to its use in the relevant article (Kamandi). Would you agree that these are permissible under Wikipedia policy?

Assuming that you don't object to these, then I presume your objection is to the way I used the image on my page, not to the image per se. What exactly is the objection, then? I wasn't using the image in a misleading way or for profit. I was using it to make my page into a faux-version of a comic book character page. Regardless of whether I succeeded in being funny, the deliberate comparision is clear (compare the actual Kamandi page to the old version of my page [4]). In my opinion, any reasonable reader would recognize that this is an attempt at humor, and would not believe that Larry King is actually a comic book character. I'm not claiming this qualifies as strict "satire" per se, but surely it falls under fair use? - Lawrence King 22:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC) [Copied from User:ChrisGriswold.]

I'm glad you are asking. The fair-use rationale is that the image is being discussed or used to describe something being discussed; fair-use images are for Wikipedia articles only and do not belong in any other namespace. I got the humor, but it doesn't matter what else is on your page: The image's being there violates its copyright. I apologize for any distress this may have caused you. You didn't do anything wrong. You just didn't know that bit of the complex information surrounding fair use, and it looks like you are doing a good job contributing as well. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 23:15, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying this is Wikipedia policy, or the law? I believe that the law allows fair use for satire purposes.

You mention specificially that fair-use images are for use in Wikipedia articles only. Suppose I downloaded my own fair-use image that wasn't being used for any Wikipedia article. I certainly could legally use that on my own website unrelated to Wikipedia. Why is my user page more restricted than this? - Lawrence King 17:29, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I found under WP:FU, Policy # 9, that Wikipedia fair use images are not permitted on user pages. I accept this as a Wikipedia rule, and won't violate it.

As a matter of law, I do believe that fair use is permitted for satirical purposes. The policies on the WP:FU page assume that the sole purpose of Wikipedia is as an encyclopedia (which, IMO, is not true of user pages) and the policies are designed accordingly. In other words, I think the policies are more restrictive than they need to be legally. But, regardless of whether I am correct in this matter, I will follow the current policy! - Lawrence King 17:37, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The satire has to be about the copyrighted item you are using, and in this case it was not. It was about you, and the image is only tangentially related, so it does not satisfy fair use there either. Additionally, the difference between using a copyrighted picture on your web site and your user page is that Wikipedia owns your user page. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 21:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re: Bots and WikiProjects

Thanks for the heads up. Katr67 05:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought of this when I realized that Levada was in California, then Rome, then Oregon, then California, and then Rome again. So he should be in your WikiProject Oregon also, by that logic.... - Lawrence King 05:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MetsBot

Thanks for raising your concerns about tagging project pages. Unfortunately, I think you should bring your proposals up on WP:VPR, as MetsBot's request page will not be read by basically anyone except me. Project tagging is something that's done by many bots, I was simply doing it for the California WikiProject. I intentionally left out people who were just born/lived in California in the run, but some may have slipped in due to their placement in other California subcategories. Thanks. Also, I don't think it would be rude to remove a tag of small relevance. —Mets501 (talk) 10:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contemporary Catholic Music, small correction

Nice job handling POV in this article, which is a hornet's nest for those on the inside of it. One small thing: in two places on the page, you make reference to "Mel A. Cymbala" who is one of the editors of "Gather" and a Director at GIA - His actual name is "Michael" Cymbala. I don't know where the name "Mel" comes from, but it's not a name by which he's known to any colleagues. (from Rory Cooney)

Thanks for the kind words! Although I can't take full credit; many folks worked on the Contemporary Catholic liturgical music article, including several who are serious about NPOV.

I think I know what happened: I brought in a notecard and pencil, and took notes from the Gather hymnal after Mass. I must have abbreviated "Michael" as "M'el", and then been unable to read my writing later. I've fixed it. - Lawrence King 03:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)