User talk:Preslethe

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If I start an exchange of messages by posting at your Talk page, please, reply at your own page. I'll keep an eye on your page for a while to see whether you reply.

If you start an exchange of messages by posting at my Talk page, please, look for my reply on my Talk page—unless your message is about a specific article, in which case I may well duplicate your message, and post my reply, at that article's Talk page.

You can see old messages in the History of this page. — President Lethe 16:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

For some months now, I've been on a hiatus from Wikipedia, sometimes checking in not even once a week. I expect this to continue for some months more. If you want to contact me, please, use the "E-mail this user" link, under "toolbox", in the left column of this page. Thanks! — President Lethe 17:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 RfA thanks 2 Barnstar question 3 RAF Northolt 4 No problem 5 La Amistad 6 Date linking 7 Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess 8 Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

[edit] RfA thanks

Thank you very much for participating in my RFA, which closed successfully today with a result of (62/18/3). I will go very carefully at first, trying to make sure I don't mess up too badly using the tools, and will begin by re-reading all the high-quality feedback I received during the process, not least from those who opposed me. Any further advice/guidance will be gratefully accepted. I hope I will live up to your trust! Guinnog 14:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)}

[edit] Barnstar question

How do you get a barnstar?

Wi-king 16:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Wi-king. For you to get a barnstar, someone should award you one—or, I suppose, you could award one to yourself. See Wikipedia:Barnstars. — President Lethe 16:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RAF Northolt

I didn't remove the audio because it was outdated but because it was a redlink which I now see got changed/vandalised a month ago. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, O.K. Thanks for letting me know. — President Lethe 01:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No problem

Hi, and thank you for saying thank you ;-). I also would like apologize if my edit summary sounded a bit harsh. I just tried to "shortened" what I meant to say. I do appreciate the hard work you put in the US article and the mistake of confusing population with households is actually quite common. Have a good one... Regards, Signature^brendel 05:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] La Amistad

Greetings. Good work on the grammar/clarity of the La Amistad article. In the text for that article you asked about the legality of human trafficking at the time of the La Amistad incident, and I wanted to let you know I've changed that text and commented on the article's talk page. I also changed a bit of the text in the paragraph that describes La Amistad as a slave ship to make it somewhere between the original and the changes you made so that the article would express as clearly as possible the difference between La Amistad and a "true" slave ship. Thanks. Geeman 10:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date linking

Hi. I wondered if you would be interested in contributing to User talk:Guinnog/date linking? --Guinnog 18:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doing something about the ridiculous date autoformatting/linking mess

Dear Preslethe—you may be interested in putting your name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers. Tony 04:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: your comments on the date/time issue about choosing a single format

I agree with you. Problem is, there have been massive discussions over the same thing in regards to CE/AD and even as you mention American English/British English spelling. In fact, "color" and "colour" are both allowed in wikipedia and none is recommended over the other. I prefer consistency in all aspects, and would prefer for a specific form of English and a specific CE/AD time period to be chosen, etc., etc. Do you think we should start some comprehensive movement on this? I would be willing to join you in that. But I anticipate that fight to be *much* harder than the current one of just de-linking dates, which I think is also important and easier to accomplish if we don't try and change the existing consensus on everything from date time formats to English spelling to unit consistency. --MattWright (talk) 03:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi there.

Yes, both spellings are accepted (though there are recommendations about when to use which). But my main point is that we don't have any silly game of linking the words and having special display for their spelling. Having different national spellings doesn't bother me. I'm also not bothered by reading the date in different ways, as long as it's properly punctuated. But I am quite tired of how much I and others have spent time and effort on such a thing.

The main reason for which the battle to delink dates right now is so hard is that people are hung up on the idea of having specialized date display encoding.

If we completely removed the option of specialized display (apart from using a standard old piped link) from the table, people would be stuck with the sole question of whether a cross-reference was relevant. This would be true even if we allowed both "December 10" and "10 December" (regardless of cross-referencing). They might still fight about it; but at least they'd be fighting only about the relevance of cross-referencing.

My reason for suggesting a standard also for writing even non-linked dates is just to get the main benefit of standardization: one rule for everyone to play by, and the ability to direct any 'deviants' to the rulebook. We all drive on one side of the road within one country not because it's morally right to be on that side as opposed to the other, but simply because standardization makes it easier to deal with more-important things.

I would accept multiple standards for writing non-linked dates, as long as there were rules about those standards (including their commas ;)), and as long as the issue were entirely separate from the matter of cross-referencing. I would also prefer that we not introduce more codey syntaxy stuff; still, at least a new code would at least separate the matter of date display from that of date cross-referencing.

I bet a survey of all Wikipedia readers would find that most cared not much about whether they saw "December 10" or "10 December". This is an issue of much more fickleness than, say, spelling: British English has had colour for centuries, while Americans have had it without u for close to 200 years; but, while "December 10" is supposedly American and "10 December" British, the fact is that putting the date before the month is standard in the U.S. Armed Forces, while The Times of London and some other prominent British newspapers regularly write "December 10". I myself must have about seven ways of writing the date, in different contexts; I doubt I'm unusual in being able to understand more than one date format.

Sorry I'm babbling on.

If you described in more detail your comprehensive movement, I might be able to answer you more definitely. I think what I've written above, while it was intended only to deal with the date issue, may show that my opinion differs from yours on some other issues. Still, I'm curious about the details of your proposal.

I'm not spending much time at Wikipedia these days. I'm just giving some attention to the dates just now because maybe, just maybe, a turning-point has finally arrived.

Feel free to message me more; but I'm likelier to be aware of your message if you use the "E-mail this user" link at the left of this page.

President Lethe 04:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can