User talk:Timrollpickering
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[edit] You helped choose Rwandan Genocide as this week's WP:ACID winner
AzaBot 23:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] You helped choose Black hole as this week's WP:ACID winner
AzaBot 01:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Survey Invitation
Hi there, I am a research student from the National University of Singapore and I wish to invite you to do an online survey about Wikipedia. To compensate you for your time, I am offering a reward of USD$10, either to you or as a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. For more information, please go to the research home page. Thank you. --WikiInquirer 03:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)talk to me
[edit] You helped choose Atmosphere as this week's WP:ACID winner
AzaBot 01:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Doctor Who/U.N.I.T. dating
It is with great relief that I have traced the article UNIT Dating Controversy to you, as I have one very big question about it--or perhaps it is two very closely related ones. You say that in The Green Death there are on view two calendars, one showing a leap year February with the 1st and 29th falling on Sundays and therefore 1976, while another shows an April (expressly labeled as such, or is that the only 30-day month in '76 that matches this calendar?). The February is seen at a Global Chemicals guard station in the location film, of course, but the 1st and 29th are in the third column of dates from the left. For this to be Sundays, the far left column must be Fridays. This American has never seen such a calendar, and British writers/fans Paul Cornell, Martin Day, and Keith Topping state in their book, Dr. Who: The Discontinuity Guide with no ifs ands or buts that it shows the key dates on Tuesdays (which is how I read it), and is therefore 1972. Other sources have referred to this as a 1972 calendar, so I'd like to know how you get Sundays/1976 (justifying Sundays is all that is necessary, of course), just to have all the evidence at hand. I'm also unaware of any other calendar in this story, and, again, no other source mentions one, so I ask you to specify the location of the April one. Please respond as soon as it is convenient for you, as I would find an alternative interpretation to the conventional one fascinating. And failing that, the article would need to be revised, which should not be put off. Thank you. Ted Watson 20:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
- I recall writing 1972 but can't remember much more - or where the April calendar is (although everyone has said the year is unspecified). I'm not sure where people have got the 1976 date from - and it also seems strange that the BBC would go and specifically manufacture one (whereas a 1972 one is much more likely to be an existing one from a prop cupboard). It's possible I misremembered the day (too many of the guides in circulation just say "February 1972" and don't specify the day that determines this).
- If the 29th is in the third column then it could be either a Tuesday or a Wednesday - most calendars I'm familiar with put Sunday at the end, though there are exceptions. A screenshot showing this calendar would be hand to see if the days are actually specified to settled this for sure. Timrollpickering 23:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
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- First of all, according to postings on the general U.N.I.T. article's discussion page, YOU wrote "1976," YOU wrote of the April calendar, and YOU wrote "Sundays," while no other discussion of this serial that I have encountered mentions so much as one of these things, yet here you seem to be laying these statements off onto other people. Secondly, while I have seen SOME calendars that put Sunday at the end, THEY are the very rare exceptions in my experience, and obviously Cornell, Day & Topping felt the same way if not stronger, as they made absolutely no allowances for the alternate layout being possible (perhaps they determined that there was no such leap year February within the requisite time frame and failed to say so; I myself do not know if there is or is not one). They--quite correctly--indicated that the calendar can't be read (you can't even make out the date numbers; there is shading to differentiate between actual days and empty slots), that the only reason it is definitely a leap year February is the fact that it has 29 days, no more and no less (and there is no question that the 1st and 29th are in the third column from the left, incidentally). It does not appear to be a BBC prop, however, as the scene was filmed at an actual factory's guard station and the thing is simply on the wall in the background (hence, the difficulty in reading its print). I have encountered incompatible accounts of the reality of this location, some saying that it was a just-constructed facility that was yet to begin operations, others that the company had moved out and it had been lying empty and unused for a year or two. Given the latter, a calendar that is about one year out of date (production was in early 1973, of course) makes perfect sense. While it could be argued that it IS a BBC prop to pay lip service to the concept of the U.N.I.T. era being in the "near future," it is far too subtle-in-effect yet troublesome-to-execute--as opposed to "BBC 3" in The Daemons, "Prime Minister Jeremy" elsewhere here, the inflations of both the population of London and the Olympic high-jump record in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and the female P.M. in Terror of the Zygons--for that theory to be plausible. Besides, even you have now implicitly conceded that the "Sunday" (and thereby 1976) reading doesn't work, given the actual layout of the calendar, which you have not conceded to, I acknowledge. But at least I now know that the 1976 reference in and of itself needs to go; I won't do that at this point, as I feel that the entire rewrite, whatever we eventually decide it comes to, should be done all at one time. Ted Watson 19:47, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
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- Having gone back and checked I definitely wrote "1972" when adding that section - see [1] and also the very first version of separated dating page [2]. Yes I made a mistake regarding "Sunday" - this was either misrecollection or the sources I was using (I remember once doing the calculations myself and working out that 1972 was the only year so was clearly mistaken in typing that). Mea culpa. As you'll see above, I'm deely sceptical that such a prop would be bothered to manufactured - the series production team doesn't seem to have cared as much about this as fans (and Doctor Who book writers, some of whom seem to take pleasure in throwing contradictory clues into their texts) and the calendar is either a stock prop or already part of the location.
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- The statements about the April calendar and the 1972 dating both come from Lance Parkin's A History of the Universe which has an appendix devoted to UNIT dating and is, IMHO, a much better source for continuity matters than the Discontinuity Guide as it gives good footnotes to each of its dates. Timrollpickering 20:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
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- Just to let you know that I have read the above, including the note/link. My time is quite limited today, and I need to pull some sources to confirm things before I compose a full response. Later.... Ted Watson 23:02, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
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- I still say that your original draft that you posted on the discussion page of the general U.N.I.T. article said "1976" when I looked. It doesn't NOW, and the History listings indicate no activity on that page since last October, but that means that "somebody" is a great hacker. That aside, here is the relevant passage from Andrew Pixley's "Archive" feature on this story from Doctor Who Magazine #320, 21, Aug. 2002:
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- "On Friday 16 [February 1973], shooting took place at the former RCA International factory at Bryn-Mawr in Breconshire; the magnetic tape plant was chosen as the Global Chemicals Research Centre because it had been empty for 16 months. The BBC set up the security office at the gate, which contained a February 1972 calendar."
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- Admittedly, he doesn't quite say that the calendar was already there, but he does come extremely close (although I do allow the implausibility of a place that has been closed for 16 months having a calendar that is only 12 months out of date left on a wall; the most likely explanation of this is that nearly 30 years on, the estimate of how long the place had been empty--not really important for Pixley's purposes--was four months out). Furthermore, Andrew flatly states that it is for Feb. '72, and he makes no mention of any other calendar in the serial (surely you don't expect me to reproduce the entire article to prove this?). Between this and the fact that nobody else that I am aware of--which is extensive--has mentioned the alleged April calendar, I call the reliability of Parkin's book into question (if indeed you have accurately quoted it; I don't have access to a copy myself) and maintain that the reference to April be deleted from the article, and Sundays/1976 be changed to Tuesdays/1972. Sorry, but this is how I see the situation. Ted Watson 18:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
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- It has occurred to me that if we eliminate the reference to the apparently non-existent April calendar, we would also have to relocate this passage from "Contradictory clues" to "Established dates," as there would no longer be any contradiction here. Ted Watson 19:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
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- If I hear nothing from you in the next week, I will eliminate the reference to the April calendar, change "1976/Sundays" to "1972/Tuesdays" and relocate it to "Established dates" myself. Ted Watson 19:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
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- I did not write 1976 as I have shown (and find your claims about hacking to be absurd) so have no issue on this. But the April calendar has been sourced by the author of one of the best guides to continuity on this so I wouldn't dismiss it - I'll see if anyone on Outpost Gallifrey can focus the source.
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- As for moving it to established dates, I think that would be dodgey. A calendar showing a clear year is a different thing from the dialogue clearly stating a date. (Also there's still a contradiction because the story also shows "Jeremy" as Prime Minister - which was not a ridiculous prediction of the near future in 1972/73 but certainly not contemporary.) Timrollpickering 19:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Vandalism
Hi Timrollpickering. You reverted my edit to Robin Hood as vandalism. I can understand that it looks that way to you, but I feel this is a different situation. While RC patrolling I saw the original edit [3]. First I googled on the term and found that this name is indeed connected to Robin Hood and not present in the article. At that point I couldn't classify the edit as vandalism anymore. So I added the references that I found so that other patrollers could see my results, eventually people watching the page could incorporate the new information properly in the article. In retrospect it would have been wiser to move the line to the talk page instead of leaving it at the top of the article. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, calling me a vandal however I didn't like.
Best Regards, Sander123 10:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Barnstar
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The Parliamentary Barnstar | |
| I, Sam Blacketer, award you this barnstar for your exceptional contributions to producing high quality articles about notable Parliamentarians of the inter-war period. Sam Blacketer 12:06, 18 March 2007 (UTC) |
[edit] WikiProject University of Oxford
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As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject University of Oxford, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the University of Oxford. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks! Casper Gutman 15:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC) |
