User talk:Piet Delport/Archive 2006

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page is an archive. Please do not edit the contents of this page. Direct any additional comments to the current talk page.

edit

Archives

2005 (2) – 2006 (34)

Contents 1 SAIX proxies 2 Invitation 3 Template:for vs. Template:othersuses2 4 Translation request 5 Kung fu 6 Link in the Yamato Article 7 Bos telefoon 8 newLISP article 9 welcome to WikiProject Programming languages 10 interesting conversation on models of concurrency 11 Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot 12 HCoop 13 Edit at Revision control 14 (programming language) 15 Dragon cleanup 16 Rutgers University 17 re: Hand (disambiguation) 18 Generators and Ruby 19 Sascha and Miro 20 Programming language disambig. 21 Pagan's Mind album touch ups 22 Grand Illusion 23 MoS:DAB and the Still Life disambig page. 24 Ocean (dab) 25 Slight omission 26 Eternal September note 27 Roedy Green 28 Bookworm 29 Hey 30 Riptide 31 Seed7 32 Twisted fix 33 Emo semi-protection 34 Medcab

SAIX proxies

I see you have a list on your user page; I've taken it and amended it with a few more. If you want, please contribute any others to User:Dewet/SAIX proxies; you can also substitute this list as a template, by using {{User:Dewet/SAIX proxies}} anywhere. Thanks, dewet|™ 08:23, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the changes; I didn't actually think to check the contributions, I just tried DNS names. dewet|™ 15:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I've sent an email to Tim Starling (according to meta:XFF project), with the details of the proxies, and he replied that they have been whitelisted. So hopefully everything's sorted out now. dewet|™ 08:26, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

If i understand it right, this means the real client address (via the X-Forwarded-For header) will show up in Wikipedia now, instead of the proxy address, which is fantastic. Thanks! --Piet Delport 09:11, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

That's how I understand it, too. So now vandals can be targeted much more accurately. Cheers, dewet|™ 09:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Invitation

Fasten 19:55, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Template:for vs. Template:othersuses2

Hi! I think that Template:for is more appropriate than Template:otheruses2 in cases where the name of the article can refer to several things within a field. The recent example is generator (computer science), where I would like the disambiguation to point out that it's not just for other fields but within computer science too. Perhaps a time for a new template, if you don't consider Template:for appropriate markup? --TuukkaH 10:12, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, "other uses" already includes "other uses in computing". :) What prompted me to change "For other uses in computing, see Generator (disambiguation)." was that it seems to imply that the disambiguation page does not cover non-computing uses of the term.

In any case, template:for is probably not the right template for that context: as far as i know, it is generally intended to be used to link to particular other topics, as in {{for|the rock band|Frobnitz (band)}}, not for generic "For other uses"-style disambiguation (which the various otheruses templates have covered).

I don't think a new template is needed. If anything needs changing, it's probably the title of Generator (computer science), since it only describes one kind of generator you find in computer science. A qualifier like Generator (programming) might be more appropriate. --Piet Delport 11:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

If you look at the disambiguation page, there are several things generator can refer to even in programming. I don't think it's possible to always give a field that excludes all other uses.

The use case is this: the readers type the article name including the field, find the article in a search, or follow a carelessly disambiguated link. They are most probably looking for a topic inside the field, and now they get one. I suspect that it doesn't help a lot if there's a simple link to "other uses". The article would have to start "One thing generator can refer to in programming is this..." If the readers were expecting a totally different field, I'd think they'd click the disambiguation link at once in any case, or go to the fieldless title. If there was logical inexactness in the disambiguation, I don't think it mattered that much. --TuukkaH 06:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Translation request

Piet, Please translate this english article (only two lines) of Afrikaans Wikipedia to Afrikaans language because there is a problem. Please ... - Vaikunda Raja 23:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Piet Delport 03:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Kung fu

Hi there, I noticed that you have redirected kung fu to Kung fu (disambiguation). There has been a concern that most readers who are looking for "kung fu" are actually looking for "Chinese martial arts", hence the redirection there. Also, about 300 articles currently link to kung fu, so everyone who clicks on those links will now have to read the disambiguation page before reaching "Chinese martial arts". What do you think about those issues? Thanks. Shawnc 02:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Apologies; i was not aware of this concern. I made the edit without much thought, based on the general principle of directing unqualified terms to their disambiguation pages. I definitely agree, however, that most or all of the unqualified English uses of "kung fu" refer to the Chinese martial arts, and so the redirect is appropriate. (I would restore it myself, but the regional web cache i'm going through has recently been blocked from Wikipedia; until that is fixed, i can only edit this user page.)

Thank you for your patience. I will endeavour to put a bit more thought into my redirect "fixes" in future. --Piet Delport 02:48, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I've restored the redirects, now that my access is back. --Piet Delport 02:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your help! Shawnc 07:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Link in the Yamato Article

A link to the Operation Ten-Go article was inserted as a footnote for a specific reason, which I'm sure you will understand if you read the discussion page.

Please do not remove it without gaining a consensus on the talk page first. It is a stop gap measure and should be replaced by a proper footnote to a source outside of Wikipedia, but in the meantime it serves to identify the source of a controversial statement.

Spventi 22:08, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

There's no need to overreact; it's a simple case of a duplicated link, not a controversy. (Yes, i did read the talk page before making the edit.)

Besides, if/when a better citation about the controversial machine gunning is found, the right place to add it is in the main article about Operation Ten-Go, which is already referenced by the paragraph in question. --Piet Delport 02:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Bos telefoon

Hi, met 'n naam soos joune weet ek al lankal jy is van Azania.. Dewet hulle het 'n "Bush Telegraph" vir Suid Afrikaners geskep, soos van vandag af.. Ek stel belang om Python te leer gebruik. Ek het Clipper ondervinding.. Groete Gregorydavid 14:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Ek het myself daar gaan lys, lyk interesant. --Piet Delport 21:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

newLISP article

re your edit today: I think you might be wrong. Look at kozoru's project... Cormullion 14:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll revert your edit later today unless you provide some facts to backup your claim that the philosophy of newLISP definitely does not encompass distributed agent-based computing ... Cormullion 16:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't be silly. :)

Firstly, the burden of evidence lies on you, not on me.

Secondly, that newLisp allows the convenient implementation of basic distributed systems is not surprising or interesting: it's the kind of functionality and expressiveness you'd expect from any high-level language of this kind. There is nothing about newLisp that makes it stand out from the crowd when it comes to being "an excellent language for implementing distributed, agent-based computing projects". (Unless i've missed it, in which case i'd be grateful if you corrected me.)

If you're not already familiar with languages/platforms like E or Erlang, by the way, you might want to look at them to get a better idea of what actually means to make this kind of claim. --Piet Delport 19:39, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Supporting evidence is easy to produce: [1]

'Surprising' isn't the only criterion for adding facts to Wikipedia articles, and 'interesting' is subjective - if you know it all and are surprised by nothing, then good for you, but why should I care? But I repeat my assertion that part of the newLISP philosophy is as I stated. Whether newLISP succeeds or not isn't really the point.

I don't consider that you have sufficient knowledge to revoke my edits without any prior discussion. I haven't seen any evidence of your authority on the subject of newLISP.

I read on this page that this isn't the first time that you've made ill-considered edits to other people's entries. If you're an experienced Wikipedian, perhaps your experience has gone to your head, and you're starting to edit without thinking or starting a preliminary discussion on the Talk page beforehand. Cormullion 20:11, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I already read that blog post as part of my background research before removing the claim from the article, and i don't think it supports your position. The most relevant statement it makes is that kozoru "needed a small-footprint, agile tool like newLISP" to write their distributed system in. While being small-footprint and agile are admirable qualities in any programming language, it does not imply that the language is "excellent" for distributed computing.

I am not questioning any assertion of yours about what is or isn't part of newLISP's philosophy: that's not within my scope of knowledge or interest. However, the claim in the article not about newLISP's philosophy; it's about the language's suitability and support for distributed, concurrent computation:

newLISP is an excellent language for implementing distributed, agent-based computing projects, where dozens of different newLISP instances run concurrently and communicate with one another over a network, in response to changing demands.

For a problem domain that's this hard, this is a strong claim for any language to make. Yet there is no indication that newLISP tries to solve any of the problems taken on by other languages aimed at concurrent/distributed computing applications; let alone that newLISP is an "excellent language" among these.

--Piet Delport 00:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

welcome to WikiProject Programming languages

I look forward to working with you. Ideogram 02:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Likewise! --Piet Delport 02:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

interesting conversation on models of concurrency

I see you are interested in distributed concurrent computation. I had a very interesting conversation with Allan McInnes on his talk page comparing the process calculi with the Actor model. You might want to take a look. Ideogram 02:46, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I share your interest in theory applied to implementation techniques, but my theoretical knowledge is still very nascent. It's not an easy field to find learning resources for, but hopefully, Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming will get me on track. (I'm currently waiting for my copy to be delivered.)

Have you looked at the join-calculus? --Piet Delport 03:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

No I haven't. That looks interesting. Ideogram 03:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

Stubs GNAT Programming Studio Skyfire Visions of Atlantis Peccatum Communicating sequential processes Bunched logic Court and Spark First-class function Casey Grillo History of programming languages Limnor Squirrel programming language Masterplan Dreams of Sanity Shaaman Freedom Call ARS based programming Sirens (film) Comparison of programming languages

Cleanup Code (computer programming) Tar (file format) Synchronization Merge Byte-code Blind programming Melodic death metal Add Sources Self programming language Packet switching Iris (Stargate) Wikify Joseph Martin Kraus Ruud Programming PLT Scheme Expand Mfx Magic number (programming) Helstar

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 19:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

HCoop

Hi Piet, this is ntk from HCoop (are you a member?). I see you added a link to HCoop on the Cooperative article. This is flattering but probably unwarranted. I don't want anyone to get the impression that we are spamming wikipedia, so I removed it. There were already a lot of links there, including some spammy ones that I have removed. It should probably be limited to cooperative links of more general interest. NTK 20:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, i'm not a member. I just added the link after stumbling across the website, trying to find more information on Wikipedia, and seeing that it was not listed among the other cooperatives.

Thanks for taking the time to clean up the section. --Piet Delport 14:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Edit at Revision control

Good point about tigris.org and CollabNet--when I restored them before I was reacting to the characterization of them as spam links, and didn't even stop to consider whether they belonged in the article on their own merits. · rodii · 17:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

No problem. --Piet Delport 17:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

(programming language)

In reply to Talk:Python programming language#Article naming - sure, I'm with you on that. In addition to what you've already said, I'd note that the cited guidelines have identical text, and give no justification for the recommendation. The guideline seems to date back all the way to 2002 or earlier [2] (possibly to early Nupedia) and was duplicated on the other page in 2003 or earlier [3]. Seems like a good time for a revision. People seem to like the word "cruft"... Let me draft a complaint, which I'll pass to you for comment before publication. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

We, the undersigned, note that programming languages have distinct names like other objects (sensu Wittgenstein 1921) of everyday parlance; for instance, Perl, Python and C#. Convention on Wikipedia is that when several subjects share the same name, as in the case of python the snake and python the programming language, a modifier is appended in parentheses to distinguish the articles, e.g. Enlightenment (concept) and Enlightenment (window manager). Only what can be properly considered the name of the object described goes before the parentheses by convention.

We believe that programming languages are tools in the same way as other software, for instance Blender (software), COPS (software) and Multisync (software); indeed, they are objects that can be referred to by their names and properties. We therefore question the convention that they be treated differently in having article names such as Python programming language, when the correct name of the language is simply "Python".

We include in this proposal the suggestion that the same convention be adopted for all communication protocols, machine or human, including written and spoken language, since we see no case for these being different, and indeed, existing Wikipedia guidelines do not state any reason for the convention of omitting the parentheses in these cases. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to amend, copyedit, whatever, probably just edit it here and send me a quick message when you have a version you can agree with. If you don't make any alterations, feel free to post this in an appropriate place - maybe here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. Cheers. Samsara (talk • contribs) 12:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Piet Delport 00:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

In that case, I'll take the above as agreement and add your signature to the proposal. Please confirm whether this is okay, or go ahead and change it. It's now posted at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Proposal: parentheses for programming and other languages. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Great. We should probably draft a replacement for the current policy/guideline pages; i'm a bit strapped for time at the moment, though. --Piet Delport 15:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone especially needs to draw up the list of articles that need to be changed when the policy change becomes accepted. The opposition will make its appearance once we start moving articles to the new names. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 21:24, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Googling Wikipedia for "* programming language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" seems to be a good first approximation. --Piet Delport 22:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Do we know how quickly Google refreshes? If it refreshes quickly enough, we may not need to compile the list. Otherwise, it will be better to have a list to avoid us checking entries that have already been changed. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure, but probably a day or more, at least. There's always the Wikipedia search and categories, though. --Piet Delport 09:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Dragon cleanup

Nice job cleaning up the Dragon (disambiguation) disambiguation page - looks much better now. Kuru ^talk 20:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; i'm relieved that the heavy editing didn't upset! --Piet Delport 20:45, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Rutgers University

Do you think I could ask you to do an Afrikaans translation of the first introductory paragraphs of the Rutgers University article? —ExplorerCDT 02:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Here, or as a stub on the Afrikaans Wikipedia? --Piet Delport 09:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

• As a stub, if you wouldn't mind. If you're up to translating the whole thing when we get the English article done, I'd be much appreciated, but a little bit is more than enough. Thanks. Anything you need in any of the languages I speak (see user page), I'll be glad to accomodate. —ExplorerCDT 16:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

re: Hand (disambiguation)

Heh, no problem. Sean Black started saying in the admin channel that he was removing disambig-cleanup tags, so I had to hurry up and save what I could... (sean's a good guy, he's just not a frothing MOSDABer). --Interiot 14:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Generators and Ruby

Piet, can you take a look at my question about why you think that Ruby would not support the concept of Generators and hence should not be listed as a supporting language? See Talk:Generator (computer science)#Generator in Ruby --The emm 15:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Piet Delport 12:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Sascha and Miro

"It's a dirty work, but someone has to do it." :-D - Matias 18:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Programming language disambig.

I've continued the inquiry at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages regarding the use of ( ) to disambiguate programming langauges. If you would weigh in, it would be appreciated. atanamir 21:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Pagan's Mind album touch ups

Cheers for touching up all their album pages. They're some of the first I did, so I was probably copying bad/old wiki code when I plugged them up. Looking much better now, thanks. Dace59 12:58, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Grand Illusion

I think you should stop redirecting this to the disambiguation page. The 1937 Renior film is far more important than two obscure albums by obscure rock bands and a seattle movie theatre, and is the primary use of the phrase/title. While I think it was wrong to move Grand Illusion to Grand Illusion (film), I see your reasoning. But Grand Illusion should redirect to the more notable/important film (which mentions the disambiguation page via a disclaimer), rather than a disambiguation page seeking to aggrandize three insignificant other articles. —ExplorerCDT 19:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll have an extremely hard time defending your position as NPOV. (Seriously: Styx is an "obscure rock band", and their triple platinum breakthrough album an "insignificant article"?) It's not relevant how famous or important the old French film might be: there's simply nothing about it that somehow makes it a primary topic for something as open-ended as the title "Grand Illusion".

(Also: "seeking to aggrandize"? It's just a standard disambiguation page, mate; you're imagining any such intention behind it.) --Piet Delport 22:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Read the thing about "primary topic" guideline on the disambiguation page. Your move of Grand Illusion to Grand Illusion film while bold was disingenuous. The disambiguation disclaimer at the top of it was sufficient. I'm currently asking an admin to move it back. Compared to the 1937 film, the other articles under the title Grand Illusion are obscure, it's not POV, it's fact.—ExplorerCDT 22:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't understand your vehemence about an issue as benign as this.

I assure you, i'm quite familiar with the guidelines in question, which is why i don't think the film qualifies, however notable it is. Things like school and Rome have clear primary topics. "Grand Illusion", on the other hand, is the title of multiple independently notable works; the film simply does not have any special, overriding claim to it. (It's not even the film's real French title...) --Piet Delport 23:00, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

(providing a third opinion) Without a doubt, the article should redirect to the disambig page. the film has no clear entitlement to the name, in fact a google search revels at least two other items "grand illusion" could refer to. so please change appropriately and stop reverting the change. Stuph 01:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

MoS:DAB and the Still Life disambig page.

Meh. I don't want to be annoying, because anyone working on cleaning up disambig pages is a good thing, but I rather disagree with some of your changes for the disambig page at Still Life (disambiguation). Normally, I would just shrug it off, but since your contribs indicate you do quite a bit of disambig work... Anyway, I disagree with removing the periods at the end, for reasons I've stated on the talk page of MoS:DAB. Unfortunately for me, not enough other people seem to want to overturn that guideline, so I'm not here to refight that battle. However, I would like to comment on the style you seem to use for entries in general. Two things- one for your album sections. You have, for example:

• Still Life, by A. S. Byatt
• Still Life (Aqualung album), by Aqualung

My version was:

• Still Life, a novel by A. S. Byatt.
• Still Life (Aqualung album), an album by Aqualung.

A subtle thing, but since the idea behind the list is that you can complete the sentence "Still life can refer to, in music, (ENTRY)." If you use a preposition like "by Aqualung," then you should really leave out the comma entirely as you are creating "'Still Life' by Aqualung" as one phrase. I prefer to keep the comma, myself, but then it sounds considerably more natural to have the "is a" type finishing to the phrase, even if it is seemingly redundant with the parenthetical note. Plus, it keeps consistency with those list items that really do need the "a blank" phrasing.

Secondly. As the MoS:DAB examples themselves indicate, if there's no article to link to but merely a description, a "NAME" isn't necessary. As in:

School may refer to:

• A swarm of fish

Not:

• School, a swarm of fish

Obviously this doesn't apply if it's a related word not the actual one, but still. Since it appears that there will never be an article on this random unaired television series, but it's the same name as the page ("still life" and not "Still life with flowers" or something), I personally prefer not to have anything there. So:

• An unaired 2003 US television series.

Over

• Still Life, an unaired 2003 US television series.

All that said, it's good to see another editor helping clean up disambig pages. You also caught an error I left in my version- I'd left the italicizing of the video game entry wrong before, so thanks. SnowFire 22:04, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I'll attempt to explain my reasoning:

• Qualifiers: "Foo (thing), by somebody" versus "Foo (thing), a thing by somebody"

Like other editors, i feel the repetition of the clarifier in the description can get, well, a bit repetitive. (Especially when you have a whole bunch of albums in a row, for example.) I generally stand back and ask myself: Does this actually help the user find the page they're looking for, or is it just adding clutter to what could be a more compact and unique entry? To me, this is the golden rule for deciding what goes into a description.

(Obviously, entries without clarified titles should always get them in their description, still.)

• Trailing periods

I agree with the convention of leaving them out for pretty much the same reason as above: entries appear cleaner without them, to me. (Besides, it's in accord with Wikipedia's main style guide for bulleted lists.)

• "Still Life, An unaired 2003 US television series"

You are right that this kind of entry doesn't make sense if there's not going to be an article. I've gone back and added an appropriate redlink (which i seem to have missed the first time around), but if it goes long enough without an article, and there's no evidence of potential notability, then it can probably be removed.

--Piet Delport 09:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. It's no big deal about different styles, but there are cases where even a redlink is unreasonable, and in those, I prefer to not repeat- heh, which is exactly the same argument you use for leaving out "a blank" after entries. I will say that that's a nice thing when categories are important- if you have "in music," then you don't need to add "by the band foo" rather than just "by foo."

As for the convention on bulleted lists, I would say the same thing, except in support of my position. Since each entry is a complete sentence (when added to the introduction), periods should always be added. SnowFire 21:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ocean (dab)

Hi, thanks for cleaning up Ocean (disambiguation) and for putting back the commas that I had mistakenly removed. But I don't agree you putting "Billy Ocean" back in, so, instead of senselessly doing a rv, I thought I'd tell you I left a note on Talk:Ocean (disambiguation) with my reasons. Thank you. --maf 12:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; i responded over there. --Piet Delport 15:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Slight omission

You forgot to mention that you're a loser on your user page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.167.91.220 (talk • contribs).

Eternal September note

The "non-sensical" link you had removed from Eternal September (which has subsequently returned to the article) was an example of "Software programs exist which display the date in accordance with this reckoning — for instance, September 4086, 1993 for the date November 8, 2004." - Check the site out again and look at the timestamps of posts. Search4Lancer 00:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Given that description, i was expecting a nice, sober web page describing just such a software program (a date conversion tool?), instead of a free-form Japanese BBS with a "Release Emergency Mittens" button and thread topics like "Frankpa whips it out".

Maybe the linking context could be tweaked a little? --Piet Delport 01:03, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Roedy Green

Speedy deleting the article was a mistake, as on a second look it does claim notability. However I point out to you that the point of a {{hangon}} tag is not to stop an article from getting deleted altogether but to indicate that there is a discussion on the talk page - which did not exist when I looked at it (apart from the single post in 2004 and a post in July). I have nominated the article for WP:AfD so it can be properly debated there.--Konst.able 09:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It didn't exist because i was busy writing it. :) (Hence the {{hangon}} tag...)

Thanks for AfDing it. --Piet Delport 10:17, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Bookworm

I don't like silly edit wars, so I haven't rv'd your re-ordering, but can't for the life of me see why you've just popped the overwhelmingly most common meaning of the term below (1) a worm which doesn't really exist, and (2) an obscure comic strip which is itself named in reference to the "overwhelmingly most common meaning", and an even more obscure game where again the names "works" mainly because of the primary meaning. Please consider moving it back to the top of the list, or at least leaving it there if I do this sometime in the near future --Snori 19:50, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are not a popularity contest or a collection of dictionary definitions. They're a navigational aid, intended to point readers at the articles they are looking for.

The common dictionary definition of "bookworm" does not have any article; it appears on the disambiguation page only because the entry can link to the larger book article, which briefly discusses "bookworm". Please see the Manual of Style, specifically #URL anchor notation and #Order of entries, for how and why this is so.

With that out of the way, thanks for approaching this civilly. --Piet Delport 12:06, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Correction! It does have article, at Bibliophilia (cleverly hidden in the disambig page's "see also" section, among other places). I created an appropriate primary topic link for it. --Piet Delport 12:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey

Uhm ek wonder maar net waar naby Kaapstad jy woon... --Adriaan90 14:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Durbanville/Bellville area. --Piet Delport 16:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Cool... ons het eers in Boston, Bellville gewoon, maar nou woon ons in Strand. Dis nogal crap hier. Hoe oud is jy? --Adriaan90 20:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

23. Jy? --Piet Delport 22:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Cool... ek's 15 O.O --Adriaan90 08:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Riptide

I'm new to this process and see that there is a special use for disambig pages. However, I did a Google search for rip tide and the wiki page came up, which does not state that a rip tide is a distinctly different phenomenon from a rip current.Lascorl 17:23, 6 November 2006 (UTC)a NOAA scientist.

The disambiguation page doesn't say they're different, but it also doesn't say they're the same.

The purpose of disambiguation pages is not to define, but to include just enough information to let the reader find the right article. A rule of thumb for what to include: each bit of information about an article should directly serve to distinguish it from another target article on the same disambiguation page.

In this case, the distinction between rip current and rip tide (and undertow, for that matter) does not serve any disambiguatory purpose; they have same target article. However, if rip tide ever gets enough written about it to get split off into its own article, the disambiguation page would have to distinguish them.

Anyway, i've reworded the summary line to be more general and inclusive of both phenomena. I hope this is OK, and that i haven't put you off editing Wikipedia! --Piet Delport 01:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Seed7

Hello, at Talk:Seed7 you wrote (referring to the deletion of the Seed7 page) that "For the record, i agree that the article should be kept.". There is a discussion about the deletion of Seed7 now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seed7. It would be nice to share your opinion (and vote) in this discussion. Zron 08:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! --Piet Delport 11:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Twisted fix

Thanks for cleaning up my edit of a few days ago; it was a case of editing while sleepy; I thought I fixed it up but must've forgot to hit "Save page" or just hit "Show preview" and thought "Oh, that looks good!" MeekMark 14:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

No problem! --Piet Delport 18:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Emo semi-protection

Thanks! As per Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy#How, can i simply replace the {{sprotected}} header with the appropriate categorization, or is there a protocol involved? --Piet Delport 06:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by appropriate categorization. Can you elaborate? -- tariqabjotu 06:33, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Removing the template, and adding Category:Semi-protected.

I'm pretty sure this is OK (according to the policy); i just wanted to confirm. --Piet Delport 06:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. It's probably not a good idea to do that though as the article won't be semi-protected permanently. -- tariqabjotu 07:31, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

How so? The vandalism has been going on forever, and will almost certainly just continue if the page gets unprotected.

Emo (slang) faces exactly the same problem, and it is under long-term semi-protection. (If anything, Emo has more of an excuse to be semi-protected, since it's a stable-content disambiguation page: legitimate edits to it are already very infrequent, and of those edits, almost none are made by non-regular users. In other words, the potential negative impact of long-term semi-protection is about as low as it's possible to get.)

I realize how heavy a step semi-protection is, but i hate seeing how much valuable anti-vandalism time this article sucks up, compared to how little impact long-term semi-protection will have on its legitimate editing. --Piet Delport 08:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Medcab

Hey, I'm your friendly cabal mediator, I'm looking into the case, and if you accept me as the mediator I hope to see you on the talk page. - Francis Tyers · 15:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! --Piet Delport 16:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, as Wizardry is refusing to take part I'm afraid this mediation cannot go any further. You have been civil and reasonable in your requests and this will reflect well on you should you choose to take this further in the WP:DR process. I would probably recommend doing an RfC next. Or possible ask for a formal mediation. If you do choose to set up an RfC I will be more than happy to comment. Please leave me a note on my talk page. - Francis Tyers · 14:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it looks like escalation has been averted. Thanks again for stepping in. --Piet Delport 03:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)