User talk:Nowhither

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Contents 1 Please don't use needless underscores in links 2 connected 3 Taking God's name in vain 4 Genesis on egg 5 Wikipedia:Peer review/Funkstörung 6 Disclaimer discussion 7 WP:AQ 8 If you'll excuse some thoughts on 'The 100 page challenge' 9 RAW Comsic Triggers 10 Problem with Squadron 111 badge 11 Connected 12 It's as a genitive 13 Timeline Standard 14 Persian Gulf States 15 Acharya S 16 Kunětice Mountain Castle 17 Blub 18 Acharya againb... 19 Please comment on this proposal at the Village Pump: 20 Gotta love your reply to Carson/Johnson law 21 Moses

[edit] Please don't use needless underscores in links

Hello. When you write [[connected_space | connected]] (with an underscore character) instead of [[connected space | connected]] (without the underscore), I fear you may lead some users to think that the underscore is actually needed, and then they will start writing connected_space where connected space will suffice, and that is visually unappealing and also affects the locations of line breaks. Michael Hardy 01:27, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Humbly acknowledged. -- Nowhither 03:01, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] connected

Hello again. I've started fixing links to connected. It does seem almost as absurd as linking to Abel and expecting that to be an article about the mathematician of that name. Michael Hardy 03:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Taking God's name in vain

That comment is so old I can't really remember which article it was in, so I'm not sure how to put this in context. But anyways, we need to point out that that was the meaning at one point in time, even if it wasn't the original meaning, and that it may have been the original meaning. -- LGagnon 03:57, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Genesis on egg

Re: Genesis on egg:

First, I should identify myself as the photographer of the image in question. I was, indeed, suspicious of the fact that the entire book of Genesis could be written in rather large miniscule on an egg. But, I never questioned my initial reading of the plaque (which probably said something like "Genesis on an egg"). By the way, the photo was put on Wikipedia more than two years after the trip where I took it, and my memory isn't what it used to be (that was sarcastic). After reading your comment on the talk page re: it not being the book of Genesis, I relooked at the photo, and, I must agree with you. On the hi-res version, I can clearly make out the second half of verse 25 of chapter one about 2/3 of the way down. So, I feel that it is most probably the first chapter of Genesis (the first 31 verses). And in my defence, it was not my intention to mislead the Wikipedian community by making them think that it was possible to write the book of Genesis on an egg; in fact it was an error in translation. The word in Hebrew for the book of Genesis is the same word as the one for the first section (Hebrew: parashah) of Genesis. Here's my recreation of the translating incident: the caption of the egg in the museum (which was in Hebrew) said something like "Breishit (aleph) shenichtevet 'al beitzah " which I interpreted to mean "Genesis (the first book) on an egg" but could also mean "Chapter one of Genesis on an egg". It was an honest mistake in translation, and I will correct all the captions of the photo in its myriad varations as soon as possible.

Glad this is resolved. — Nowhither 00:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Peer review/Funkstörung

Hi! I read your comments, and have replied to them. Afterwards, I noticed the bit about context on your page and it seemed oddly appropriate ;). -- grm_wnr Esc 21:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disclaimer discussion

Hi! You might wish to repeat or expand on your comments from here to here. Thank you for your help! -- Sitearm | Talk 21:22, 2005 August 17 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. It's done. — Nowhither 14:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad that you responded to Sitearm's suggestion, because I had not seen your comments at the Village pump. I have started some thoughts in a working page in my userspace, and if you have suggestions, I would welcome them. Perhaps we could collaborate there on a draft of the short piece you propose on "who writes Wikipedia" and unveil it at the same time as my proposal that we put a link to a clearly-worded disclaimer for students and newcomers in the navigation block on the lefthand side of each Wikipedia page? My thoughts are at this page.Mamawrites 15:51, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. Comments posted on User:Mamawrites/ProposalForMoreProminentDisclaimerLink. — Nowhither 11:05, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

So, I was bold, and created Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia, and made links to it from Wikipedia, Help:Contents, and collaborative writing. Check it out! Mamawrites 09:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AQ

Looks like you have a consensus of the interested parties for your suggested new page design. Please go ahead with it. Thanks for your interest. hydnjo talk 15:11, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Done. — Nowhither 15:18, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Well that didn't take long for someone to screw-up! How about adding (with your eloquent style of course) something at the bottom suggesting that YOU DON'T ASK YOUR QUESTION HERE - YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO GO TO ONE OF THE LINKS ABOVE. ;-)

Discussion continued on Wikipedia talk:Ask a question. — Nowhither 11:47, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] If you'll excuse some thoughts on 'The 100 page challenge'

I found this very interesting and a useful way to think about Wikipedia. But I have a more positive outlook: I feel the relevant question is 'how does anything of worth, sometimes even excellence, come out of such chaotic, free-for-all editing?' It seems to me that there are at least two things that are responsible for the successes of Wikipedia. First, the majority of people will only edit something if they believe they can make it better (an admittedly smaller majority are correct when they believe this). Second, the better an article is, the less likely it is that vandals or crazed editors will touch it - old warehouses get smashed while stain-glass windows remain perfect for centuries. The result is that, although there are many bad articles and bad edits, the tendency over time is for Wikipedia to improve.

True, it will be the central cluster of popular articles that improve the fastest (the more collaborators, the better the article), but the more obscure articles will still, on average, improve over time, at a slower rate. True again, the outer circle of less read and lower quality articles will itself grow over time, but not at the same rate: at some point it is going to be only really obscure articles that need writing and, eventually, few articles will remain to be written. So my prediction is that, unlike the web, which has no guiding remit, we will find high quality information in Wikipedia become more widespread than your 30% and tend towards, if never reach, 100%.

(The same test on the Encyclopeadia Britannica would be interesting: I very much doubt it would be perfect)--Dast 01:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

"If you'll excuse some thoughts ..."? Well, I'll excuse them this time. But in the future, I'd better not catch anyone doing any thinking about the stuff I write.

[End of joke]

A few more thoughts. First, let's distiguish between quality of writing and quality of information. I was mainly addressing the former in my post. The latter is much more difficult to judge; my guess is that the quality of information found on Wikipedia tends to be rather high. But, of course, the standards should be higher for information. Just about anyone can recognize bad writing. Bad information is more insidious.

Second, your question is a very good one: "How does anything of worth, sometimes even excellence, come out of such chaotic, free-for-all editing?" And I think your answers are pretty much on target. There is always a tension between "vandalism is easy" and "vandalism is boring". The latter is why there isn't much of it. The former is why it is such a pain. As long as we have a large and growing community committed to fighting vandalism, Wikipedia will improve.

Third ... but how will it improve? Will the average Random article get better over the years? I said "no", due to Wikipedia's never-ending spreading, with work done by poor writers. You said "yes", due to a limit on Wikipedia's breadth. So the next question is, "Will Wikipedia's breadth reach natural limits relatively soon?" And I don't know the answer. But consider a traditional encyclopedia. The best of these, in their day, were thought to be exceedingly broad. But Wikipedia beats them all easily. We have articles on every named character in a number of fictional universes, a separate article for each individual year, going back for centuries, and every date within the year, articles on gobs of obscure topics in highly technical fields, etc. We have a continuing downward trend in how notable you have to be to get listed. Wikipedia is nothing if not broad. Could it be that what comes next (which might be just a later evolution of Wikipedia) will be so broad that, with our current mindset, it would amaze us .... I don't know. But it's interesting to think about.

— Nowhither 12:13, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RAW Comsic Triggers

Thanks for tidying those up, they are much improved by your edits. Alf 12:39, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. :-) — Nowhither 17:44, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with Squadron 111 badge

Hello. I've provided the source information for the badge on Wikipedia:Help desk. Both that RAF Marham website and the official RAF listing for the squadron show the badge with numerical "111s" and not roman numerals. As it seems to be Andrew M. Ockenden's or the RAF's error I've suggested he contact them. Mark83 09:54, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! — Nowhither 10:05, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Connected

Couldn't resist tarting it up :) Alf 11:20, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

And you did a fine job. — Nowhither 01:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

No prob Now', least I could do to return your efforts on RAW's Cosmic Triggers. Alf 07:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] It's as a genitive

Haha, touché, Nowither, you are right, It's can be a genitive, for characters or people so imaginatively called It. I liked your story, despite stories employing It as a character being my bête-noire (how they mess up divine grammatical rules so! Seeing 'It's' as a justified genitive is truly traumatic!). However, my statement was not that It's was never a genitive, but that it's is not one. Unfortunately, autofix changed it. Perhaps I should add a technical limitations sign above, to clarify my standpoint ;D. iINAG ;) 09:20, 30th August 2005 (UTC)

Glad you liked it. :-) — Nowhither 01:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline Standard

Thank you for your comments on Wikiproject Years. I too hope to get things moving along. I wrote the survey to solidify the proposals and am pushing for an update to the standard to be ready by the end of the month at the latest. I'd appreciate your thoughts, and if you'd check out the survey and make any edits you feel are warranted to the example year I think we can get the standards improved substantially in very little time. Thanks again - Trevor MacInnis(Talk | Contribs) 00:58, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Will do. — Nowhither 18:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Persian Gulf States

Please stop reverting this page. The link to the Persia page is quite useful, as it is quite likely a person reading that page might want to know the various meanings of Persia. Having two links to Iran one after the other, is helpful to no one. - SimonP 19:58, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

See User talk:SimonP#"Persia" link on Persian Gulf States. — Nowhither 20:12, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Acharya S

Acharya S and Talk:Acharya S are drawing some fire. I've tried to ask this question in the talk page, but 24.64.223.203 (talk · contribs · logs · block user · block log) keeps censoring the name "<censored :-) — Nowhither>". Where did you find her real name? I couldn't find it in a websearch. Thanks. — Phi beta 21:05, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Answered on Talk:Acharya S. — Nowhither 00:01, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Voteing is not disscussion. While on the odd occastion it can be a useful way to bring matters to a head on this occastion this is not the case. At this time disscussion appears to be vaguely useful. If it ceases to be we can go to RFC. As the survivor and observer of many edit wars I can say polls solve nothing (although in this case it would be tempted to see james lose hevily that isn't quite enough of a reason to go on).Geni 01:56, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kunětice Mountain Castle

I'd changed the name of the article. The original one "Pardubice Castle" is different building inside city of Pardubice. The source you used the information uses invalid naming. Pavel Vozenilek 21:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. (further comments on User talk:Pavel Vozenilek) — Nowhither 00:59, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Picture fixed. The link was indeed to something else, I replaced it. Pavel Vozenilek 01:36, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blub

Where were you able to find Blub? I found no references to him anywhere when searching Google. Let's talk on the discussion page. jp3z 02:16, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Acharya againb...

OK< Ive contacted other admins here. I need to knwo how my aruilc eis bias, and James si not, or at elats why its sseen this way.

Can you help? PM Me on my page.

Above unsigned comment by ZAROVE 14:05, 27 September 2005

[edit] Please comment on this proposal at the Village Pump:

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal for a new navigation link

Thanks in advance! Mamawrites 11:20, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gotta love your reply to Carson/Johnson law

On Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk#Where does this stuff come from?, when someone wrote "The Carson/Johnson law of human behaviour: 80% of all questions that begin with the word 'why' can be answered with the simple sentence 'people are stupid'", I almost couldn't resist replying "Why do people quote the Carson/Johnson law?". Then I read your list of answers, and I'm relieved to see that "can" does not mean "can only". Common Man 16:52, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moses

There is as much evidence that Moses ever exsisted as there is that the Red Sea parted. In other words, there is none.

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