User talk:52 Pickup/Archive 4

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Contents

Parser problems

Sorry to bother you -- the name 52 Pickup was mentioned in a list of people who understand parsing and of that list, yours was the only 'name' that leads a casual peruser to think that you are playing with a full deck. I am having a difficult time with urls that contain '=' when used in the {{cite web}} template. I think that I tried to escape it once with the ISO 8859-1 code but it didn't work (or I did it wrong). Do you have some directions for this? -- carol 01:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Strange. So far I've never experienced problems with the equals sign in URLs when using this template. An example from Hieracium caespitosum:
Flora of North Amercia. Hieracium caespitosum in Flora of North Amercia. Vol. 19, 20 and 21 Page 278, 280, 284. Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
Do you have a particular URL that is giving you trouble? - 52 Pickup (talk) 09:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
First of all, thank you for taking the time to look at this. Not only is the template working with the urls that were causing me trouble, but the urls themselves are now lacking the information that I was using. I have a question about the way that wiki works. With my limited experience here at english wikipedia and please allow me to use a metaphor while I attempt to explain what happened to me, here is a question: is it typical for mostly honest human beings to be banned from authoring while a bunch of mindless monkeys jump from the tree they warred over and won (that is the metaphor, btw -- because the people who instigated my banning give a presence of ownership without knowledge and without consistency) to the tree they did not want? I have the experience of having articles deleted which were 2 minutes old and I have also had the pleasant experience of discussion which changed the content of articles I was writing. And now the experience of being banned by metaphorical monkeys and having the internet 'change'.
I have a strong inclination to raise the intellectual expectations of these public places -- I do not think that is accomplished by policy and I have at this point in time (before the changes are made to the articles and the history as it seems that eliteness among wikipedians has more to do with the ability to change things like that than it is to be actually honestly elite) the example of the Plant project to show this. This last week, policy lowered the intelligence level of the people in charge -- and as I said, it is a new experience for me but the pettiness and the sadness of the way I get followed around online and picked apart and removed from the beautiful things I helped to build.... The beautiful was in the honesty and I look now and there is no honesty left in those places. While the inhabitants of this round world earth have excluded me from everything, it felt good to find and expose several hundred years of respected biological naming of species as the duplicates they were, either duplicates by accident or duplicates by purpose. It felt really good, as if I was cleaning up hundreds and hundreds of years of clutter and inaccuracy, not unlike when I cleaned out all of the duplicate SVG maps (which was clutter only) from this list: Federal subjects of Russia and more. Feeling good was an understatement of what I felt doing that.
A gamer might have stopped at 52 duplicate maps of individual subjects of Russia. You might know if a parsing wikibot is capable of finding them and removing them -- I don't think so. A pagan gamer might have stopped at 72 (I would at the time I stopped have had to invent a couple of federal subject in order to do that) politically defined areas of Russia. I just wanted to get the job done and done right and done completely. I do not think it is worth while to write a software that is that specific of a parser when the human beings within the project can have a clear guide on how to update the maps of the ever changing political divisions of Russia. Instead though, the elite here try to change me.
Many of my accomplishments have been 'accomplished' while taking the job that no one wanted or the ones that were left as a mess and no one wanted to clean them up. When there is a little bit of clean up and things start to look good, then people are interested, not before. This experience is not limited to English Wikipedia -- it is the most recent experience of this I have.
Here is one little instance of 'talking the talk' which I loathe. Do you think that everyone who lives on this planet is French?
Sorry for the spew here. I have almost 5 years of disappointment, displacement and deep sadness which needs to be expressed and there is no place to express it. For approximately the last two of those years, I have had a relatively unaccomplished child (not my child) check everything I said here for accuracy on this English Wikipedia. And English Wikipedia checks their facts by citing their own policy. When I started playing on a wiki in 2003, it was not intended to be for a bunch of (metaphor again) self-citing monkeys. -- carol 23:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
It is true that the system here is not perfect, but so far it looks like the best one that we have. A major problem with many people quoting policy is that those who quote it the loudest tend to be those who do not follow policy themselves, or even understand what it is. This is why these particular people are not admins. Then there are those who totally ignore the opinions of others and push on without consultation, consensus, or even common sense - but most of this sort usually end up kicked out.
Deletion policy here is sometimes a problem. Some people prefer to rub out new articles before there is a chance to build upon them. I've found that the best way around this is to build up an article first as a draft in your user space, then move it to the main space (including all relevant categories and stub markers) when it is substatial enough to withstand rapid deletion. Then if someone unreasonably continues to delete it, report them to an admin.
On the whole, the people here on the English wiki are a good bunch - but there are always a few rotten apples that want to spoil the whole barrel. So hang in there :) - 52 Pickup (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your time. -- carol 05:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Did you know that the 'hook':
....was being considered for DYK before all of this happened? -- Carol 10:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I guess it is human nature to isolate and externalise any faults before looking to oneself for the cause. But rest assured, there are plenty of good (and very active) apples here. - 52 Pickup (talk) 14:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

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1a

Thanks, you're too kind! You might like the redundancy exercises and the advanced editing exercises—the latter are work in progress, and each exercise probably a little long; if you happen by at your leisure, feedback would be welcome. Tony (talk) 12:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I've only managed a quick glance at those pages, but I will give them a more thorough look. Right now I'm working on my first serious attempt at a GA (maybe FA one day ) article - Flag of Germany - and your page has been very helpful in cleaning up my text. But since then, your page has also been handy in working on text at work. Thanks a lot. - 52 Pickup (deal) 15:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

{{Recentism}} / Category:Articles slanted towards recent events

Nice work with the cat(egory). You may be interested that I withdrew the TfD (should I close it myself?). Also, when you find the time, please take another look at the template. I created a /doc and added parameters. Dorfklatsch 20:16, January 9, 2008

The documentation helps a lot in making the usage of the template clearer - nice job. Hopefully now people will use the template correctly. Thanks for bringing this template to everyone's attention. - 52 Pickup (deal) 21:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, apparently I needed to cry before getting to work. A common pattern with me... After looking around a bit, I removed Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating since there are no other subcategories in there and it seems to be mainly for articles. Maybe Category:Underpopulated categories is more appropriate? I didn't add it for now, as I was not sure if it belongs in there. I did add Category:Wikipedia editorial validation and Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month. The latter will (hopefully) cause SmackBot to auto-add the date in transclusions, like with other maintenance templates (including e.g. {{fact}}) and their respective categories. Dorfklatsch 01:49, January 10, 2008
I'm not entirely sure about the exact placement of the category, but now that such a category now exists, I'm sure that the people responsible for various clean-up activities should be able to take care of it. I've also alerted the people over at Wikipedia:Recentism, asking them to keep a better eye on how the template is used. With Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month, SmackBot shout be able to handle the auto-dating (possibly removing the need to mention date in the documentation). I don't know if SmackBot will now do the autodating automatically, of if the bot needs to be asked first - I know very little about bots. 52 Pickup (deal) 06:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Seems to work: [1]. I adjusted the template with code stolen from other maintenance templates to include articles into subcategories sorted by month if a date is present. So there is now a subcategory Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from January 2008. To format the page, {{MonthlyCleanupCat}} apparently needs to be put on the subcat page manually (judging from e.g. [2]), which I did for the January 2008 subcat here. I also boldly included the category in Wikipedia:List of monthly maintenance categories ([3]). Dorfklatsch 13:56, January 10, 2008
Ah, so that's how it works. Good job! - 52 Pickup (deal) 14:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Kōryū-ji

When you have time, please take a second look at Kōryū-ji. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 20:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Good job. The signifigance of the temple's history is now a lot clearer so it can no longer be seriously considered for deletion. - 52 Pickup (deal) 08:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.PNG

Hi. I am writing to you regarding the comment you made on my talk page about the map Image:Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.PNG. I'm sorry for not replying to you earlier, but I did not want to modify the map right away: because the nominations announcement was imminent, I would in any case have had to update the map again in order to include the countries which were nominated for the first time ever. Therefore, I preferred to do all the necessary modifications at the same time. I have now updated the map by including these countries AND by taking into account the suggestions you made. Here is the old version of the map. This is the current version. Do you like the current colours ? If not, what other colours would you recommend ? BomBom (talk) 15:22, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Württemberg

I hope that helps! If you are so inclined, another article which could use your infobox magic is Saxe-Weissenfels, a red-link I turned into a stub. Olessi (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. If any others come up, just shout. - 52 Pickup (deal) 19:37, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Kosovo (UNMIK)

I'm trying to achieve consensus within this article to have it merged. Since you participated in the AfD discussion, the consensus of which is disputed, I wondered if you would like to comment on the new discussion I am holding on the article's talk page. I am contacting all editors who participated in the AfD regardless of their vote in the interest of fairness. - Fritzpoll (talk) 22:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Nominating you to become an administrator. You just need to kick the ball

MJCdetroit would like to nominate you to become an administrator. Please visit Wikipedia:Requests for adminship to see what this process entails, and then contact MJCdetroit to accept or decline the nomination. A page has been created for your nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/52 Pickup . If you accept the nomination, you must formally state and sign your acceptance and answer the questions on that page. Once you have answered the questions, you may post your nomination for discussion, or request that your nominator do so.

It'll be fun! When you're successful, I'll go out and buy an "oil can" of Foster's and drink it out of one of my steins my brother brought back from Neu Ulm, West Germany. —MJCdetroit (yak) 00:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Fosters? No no no no no! Don't do that to yourself. Due to very successful marketing, the whole world has now been convinced that this is our national beer. In fact, no Aussie touches the stuff and you'll be very lucky to find an Aussie pub that sells it (apart from the tourists traps, of course). There are plenty of decent Aussie beers that never leave our shores - although now that I'm more than spoilt for choice here in Germany, I don't need to worry too much about the amber fluid these days. - 52 Pickup (deal) 20:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


You've got a few optional questions from other editors. They appear to be the standard run of the mill questions; id est their not "stump the chump" questions. They are optional, but answering them goes a long way, not just for those editors who asked them, but for other editors who just want to get a "good feel" for you as an editor without having to do a CIA-style background check on you for themselves. Also, I've revised the nomination a little because I misread your userpage. I thought that list on the bottom was FAs that you've worked on, so I had to strike the part about working on FAs. If you have worked on an FA, please state so in Sandy's question. —MJCdetroit (yak) 03:40, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
To be honest I don't know if I've ever had a Foster's and yes it is the only Aussie beer that comes to mind. Thanks for the warning. —MJCdetroit (yak) 20:54, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This user is currently being considered for adminship. To view the discussion and voice your opinion, please visit Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/52 Pickup/Archive 4.

On the lines of the Rfa - you might find it advantageous not to respond to opposes, especially if the issue had already been raised elsewhere on the page. Agathoclea (talk) 10:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh. From looking at past RfAs, responses to Oppose votes seemed to be standard, if not expected. Thanks. - 52 Pickup (deal) 10:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Brisbane

Just a reminder that WikiProject Brisbane needs your help. There have been a number of changes to the project page over recent days and I hope you could spare some time to take a look, be bold and add some touches yourself.

There is plenty that needs to be done to get more Brisbane articles up to FA standard. Please come and discuss this and lets see if we can build up this project.

Your details were taken from Category:WikiProject Brisbane members Nicholas Perkins (T•C) 05:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Research on the RFA process

Hello, I am an anthropology student researching the Wikipedia Requests for adminship procedure. As you are currently going through this process, I was wondering if you would be willing to answer a few quick questions.

  • Do you believe that the current RFA process is an effective way of selecting admins?
  • Do you notice a difference between users who are nominated vs selfnoms?
  • Is a week an appropriate length for process? Should it perhaps be longer or shorter?
  • Do you think the user's status in the community changes while the user is undergoing the RFA process? How about after the RFA process is over?

If you are willing, please leave your answers on my talk page or e-mail them to me.

This research will not be published academically, as this research is primarily to demonstrate the feasibility of doing online ethnography in online only communities such as Wikipedia, though I intend to make my findings available on Wiki. Your name will not be associated with any information you provide in any published work. If you have any questions please let me know. Thank you. --Cspurrier (talk) 18:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Your RfA

See my two questions for you.

I think you can fix the policy knowledge/preparation issue others raised by going through everything on Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list then answering my question about this affirmatively. It's several hours work, but you really need to do this if you haven't done it recently.

Good luck! --A. B. (talk) 15:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Congrats, admin! Bearian (talk) 20:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

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Rfa

Best of luck with the Rfa Nicholas Perkins (T•C) 11:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much - and thanks for your support! - 52 Pickup (deal) 14:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Opinion/Perspective

Perhaps I should mention at the outset, you've encountered me before as User:Ooperhoofd -- in 2007. My reasons for changing names have only an oblique relationship to what follows here. Although not particularly relevant for you to know, the name change does make sense in a peculiar context of Japanese era names (nengō) and the subjects which most occupy my attention as a Wikipedia editor.

Japanese calligraphy by Satow. The kanji reads "敬和" (Kei-Wa), literally "Respect and harmony".
Japanese calligraphy by Satow. The kanji reads "敬和" (Kei-Wa), literally "Respect and harmony".

You offered a 3rd-person perspective in January at Talk:Kōryū-ji#Wrongful deletion. I simply ignored User:Bueller 007's response. What if I had done something -- anything -- differently? Can you think of a constructive response which might have been worth trying?

I'm persuaded that my moderate response here was likely a causative factor in User:Bueller 007's more abrasive gambits which developed elsewhere. Without getting into that, I'm just wondering if this thread represented a plausible missed nip-it-in-the-bud opportunity. Maybe not? --Tenmei (talk) 16:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

While I have not had a good look through Bueller007's edit history, and I am not familiar with the history of your relationship with this user, your conduct with regards to the Kōryū-ji article was not all that bad. The only negative point that I have is that you should not use article talk pages to air criticism of a particular user (even if your criticism may be well-founded): discussion on article talk pages should be confined to the article itself, and perhaps this may be a contributing factor to his subsequent (and unacceptable) abrasiveness. But your conduct on the whole was, to me, fine.
I believed that you made your case clear in that the article was significant, with only the need to reword things a bit to provide the right context. In bringing the matter to Third Opinion, I believe that, after my comments and your subsequent work on the article, the article has improved - and that is the main objective here.
I must admit that I am concerned by Bueller007's recent comments, with the inappropriate title "Wrongful deletion", my aching arse. His tone here is not acceptable.
At the moment, the best advice I can give you is to keep cool, be sure of any edits you make, but do not get involved in any edit warring. I'll be keeping an eye on this article for now. - 52 Pickup (deal) 11:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I have emphasized your words in one sentence above: His tone here is not acceptable. But, frankly, the easy follow-up responses which come to mind are unsatisfactory -- they're mere gambits which have already failed or seem unpersuasive in ways I can't quite parse well enough. For today, the one example which most gives me pause is something to do with Weimar Germany ....
In that period in which you were being considered for administrator status, there were a number of questions to which you'd provided thoughtful answers. These questions/answers were open for all to read, and I seem to recall that your "Weimar answer" addressed an issue of a pernicious, low-grade inflammation which persisted across a number of months and a range of related subjects. I didn't divine a new and better way of dealing with User:Bueller 007; but I felt there was something there which might help me. Sometimes we confront problems, issues, people which are best ignored; but this feels like something I'm going to have to deal with again and again if I don't address it now. In any case, I'm sure there was something there that I need to figure out ....
At this point, I'm just struggling to come up with a constructive way of looking at I-don't-know-what. I need an alchemy which reduces this into a malleable form. I'm really floundering here. Intervention is not my first choice here, rather it's amongst the least favored options.
In this context, I do like these words of yours:
A certain amount of detachment is required to write for Wikipedia. Everyone has a bias, but you need to look through that and get to the facts. This is an encyclopaedia, so facts always take precedence over opinion.
Perhaps this becomes a fortuitous encounter with a Gorgian knot in your first week as a new administrator, because this isn't a problem YOU can fix. I dunno -- see User talk:WJBscribe#Deaf to good advice
I'd like to frame this as an opportunity for you to help me figure out a reasonable next step with an uncertain set of plausible risks and pay-offs; but I can't quite pull it together yet. --Tenmei (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Please do not modify other peoples' entries on talk pages in any way - it is not allowed (however good your intentions may be) and can inflame the situation.
Looking at my Weimar example, it was not easy to solve this problem and required a lot of work, both off- and on-line - all for a single word, sounds a bit silly to go to so much trouble, but it has proven worthwhile.
This was the process I followed in attacking this problem. Maybe this can help you:
  • First and most important, do nothing until you have clearly identified your problem and you have all the necessary facts at hand to solve this problem. This can take a lot of research. To achieve the clarity you need, you must take the time necessary. During this time, you may be tempted to keep correcting edits as you see fit. Don't.
  • If it helps, compile your notes in a page within your user space.
  • Get your argument clear, and make sure you can back it up - and do not simply choose the facts that support your argument: such arguments are generally shot down very quickly.
  • Once you're ready, go to the problem article (or if there are a lot of articles, go to the highest profile article, or most active article, or maybe even a relevant WikiProject) and lay out your argument on the article Talk page. Now is the time to get other people involved in a constructive manner. Stay focused on solving the problem - there are many other cases where a problem has degenerated completely out of hand (see Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars for examples of what not to do)
  • Make your changes once they have stood up to reasonable scrutiny.
  • If a particular user starts to cause trouble, go directly to them and discuss it on their talk page. Perhaps they have a valid point to make - there is always that possibility, so be prepared to accept that you might not be as correct as you thought. But no matter what, keep cool and keep civil.
What I have listed here is not a set of instructions for what you must do for your particular problem, but just some ideas from my own experience that might help. But I think you first need to step back for a bit and have a good think about what exactly you are trying to do. I don't mean that you shouldn't ask for advice (everyone needs advice from time to time), but asking for involvement is different. - 52 Pickup (deal) 18:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
This is a good, helpful, constructive. I am copying your plausible, step-by-step template to one of my sandbox pages -- the one named after Sado Island. As it happens, Sado was used after the 8th century as a place of exile, as something like a penitentiary island. This was not Botany Bay, but perhaps it can be construed as a bit of a nod to your Aussie background? Thank you/arigato (ありがとう). Unfortunately, I see critical elements of my Bueller-problem are still up in the air; but having taken even this much in hand is good. I'm encouraged to feel a little less perplexed. Thanks again.
I'd forgotten it until I re-read your prescription, but I think I can point to a very small non-dispute where a bit of the "52 Pickup Plan" worked for me -- see Talk:Martin Heidegger#Kuki Shūzō. I "get" it. --Tenmei (talk) 19:08, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
どういたしまして and good luck! - 52 Pickup (deal) 19:37, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

You are now an administrator

Congratulations, I have just closed your RfA as successful and made you an administrator. Take a look at the administrators' how-to guide and the administrators' reading list if you haven't read those already. Also, the practice exercises at the new admin school may be useful. If you have any questions, get in touch on my talk page. WjBscribe 19:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

CongratsBalloonman (talk) 20:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Conrgats! - Milk's Favorite Cookie 20:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Very sorry for the confusion regarding my oppose. Congratulations on becoming an admin. Rudget. 21:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Congratulations, (and I'm sorry I haven't created that article for the map yet, but right now for some reason I'm fairly motivated to complete it). cheers --Stor stark7 Talk 21:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Congrats on becoming an admin! Thanks,--Mifter (talk) 22:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Congratulations! Now that you are fully armed with the .45 caliber of adminship, load up on ammo over at WP:CSD, and when you're comfortable with the criteria, go over to CAT:SPEEDY and execute something! It's good stress relief. —MJCdetroit (yak) 01:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Congrats! Don't listen to all of them: I'ts ok to delete the main page/block Jimbo =D. Well not exactly. Good luck, Malinaccier (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulation as well - As an admin you will be a further asset in the areas you are already good at. Agathoclea (talk) 22:12, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations. I'm sure you'll do fine. Pedro :  Chat  22:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations as well. I see you've added yourself to CAT:AOTR... please consider reviewing the material there and developing your own recall criteria. ++Lar: t/c 00:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

User talk:AGK#My RfA

Hello, 52 Pickup. You have new messages at AGK's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} template.
Regards, AGK (contact) 21:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

your RfA

Hey, I just have one question. That 52 pickup, is it a chevy? RC-0722 communicator/kills 22:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Heh heh. You'd be surprised how often I get that question. Then again, maybe you wouldn't be so surprised :) 52 Pickup (deal) 23:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


Affinion Group Article Request unblock of Shearwater63

Affinion Group Wikipedia article

Deal,

I am new to the Wikipedia World and am learning from mistakes. I was not aware of the 3RR rule. I am trying to do the right thing.

I appeal to your judgment regarding the edits to the Wikipedia article for Affinion Group. I appealed to Vary stating that the previous posts to this page were obvious negative attacks designed to hurt or take revenge on this company. The principle of the Wikipedia site is to offer neutral point of view and usable information for Wikipedia readers. There is nothing in the following information pulled from the NPOV page of the site that states that Wikipedia can be used as a complaints board or a vehicle to cause damage to individuals or companies. I explained to Vary that the company is no longer a part of the Cendant conglomerate that was the force behind the negative experiences some people had with products and services offered. The history section of the article show clearly that there is a history with Cendant and that should be sufficient. Affinion is under new ownership (Apollo Management) and has dramatically changed it's business model and no longer participate in any of the practices that the complaints site. Affinion should be allowed to stand on it's own merits. Thanks for your consideration.


Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable.

For article specific questions or discussions on NPOV please go to the Neutral POV notice board.

All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles, and of all article editors. For guidance on how to make an article conform to the neutral point of view, see the NPOV tutorial; for examples and explanations that illustrate key aspects of this policy, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ.

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies. The other two are Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. Because the policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three. The principles upon which these policies are based are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. Their policy pages may be edited only to improve the application and explanation of the principles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.101.244 (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Unsolicited advice: avoid blocking or unblocking for a few days as a newbie sysop. Bearian (talk) 20:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


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Your user page

"Unfortunately, common knowledge about Germany in the English-speaking world is generally focussed on the Nazi period. While I abhor all that happened during that time (as everyone should), there's more to Germany than that." You are completely right. I too am dissapointed that is so little focus outside Nazi period on Germany. For example the use of famine as weapon against exploited natives in Africa, plans to starve Polish population in WW1, first examples of ethnic cleansing made by Bismarck. Truly much is to be written on Germany outside the Nazi period. People focus on Nazis, while forgetting what the history of Germany was before the Nazi period, this sometimes leads to idealisation of Prussia or German Empire who comitted their own atrocities. Happy editing--Molobo (talk) 08:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Quite right. The focus on the Nazi period is extreme. For example, go to almost any bookshop in an English-speaking country and look in the German history section - anyone would think that the country only existed from 1933 to 1945 (and maybe from 1914 to 1918, too). Before the 20th century there is very little public knowledge about the region. The history of Germany after the Nazi period is another area that is also ignored by many, leading many to think that the country these days is full of nothing but Lederhosen and Neo-Nazis (both wrong, from years of experience - although that it not to say that they do not exist). To the best of my knowledge, no nation has a totally unblemished history, so other wrongs should be mentioned - by the way, wide-spread criminal mistreatment of natives by colonial powers is not a purely German thing, believe me. But by the same token, no nation has had a totally evil history throughout all time, neither has any nation not suffered (whether it is deserved or undeserved is not for us to say), so all aspects are valuable. We are not here to glorify nor demonise anybody, just report the facts and let the reader figure it out for themselves. - 52 Pickup (deal) 11:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Amarrg block

closed


Post-war German maps

I am curious about the map of post-war Germany you made. In particular, what are the two yellow areas in the blue area in the upper left? It seems to imply two small areas of US control in the British zone? And why is the area in the lower left "hashed"? It seems to imply joint French/US control? Maury (talk) 00:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Yes, those yellow areas in the north-west were part of the American zone: the state of Bremen. This city-state consists of the two separate cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven and has done since the 1820s. The Americans wanted naval access in their zone, so they took Bremen.
  • The hashed area is the Saar protectorate. It is hashed because, unlike the other zones, Saar was completely removed from Germany and became a separate country, although under French protection (no US involvement here). Saar even had its own team at the 1952 Olympics. In 1956 it became part of West Germany as the Saarland. Maybe a different colour or pattern is needed for Saar in that map... 52 Pickup (deal) 14:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

1990- , Bremen (state) in dark green

1949-1956, Saar (protectorate) in pink

An accuracy issue in the article on Egypt.

I have found an accuracy issue in the religion section of the article on Egypt. I have commented on it and suggested a correction on the talk page. I would like someone to fix it since the page is locked. I'm new so please forgive me if I am not using this wiki system properly. The link for the talk page is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Egypt Thank you. Joe Cargo (talk) 19:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The page is only semi-protected, which means that very new users, such as yourself, cannot yet edit it. In 4 days you will be able to edit this article. If nobody has made the change that you have proposed before you get the chance to do it, make sure you have proof behind this statement. See WP:Reliable sources and WP:CITE for more information. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. - 52 Pickup (deal) 19:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

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Happy First Day of Spring!

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Thanks :) 52 Pickup (deal) 18:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

March 2008 edition of the WikiProject Germany newsletter

The Germany WikiProject Newsletter
Issue II - March 2008
From the editor

This is the second issue of WikiProject Germany's newsletter. The newsletter is intended to help all members of the project to keep up with new developments and coordinate new collaborative efforts. If you think anything should be featured in the next issue, please leave a note at the Newsdesk
Other areas where you can help
  • Assessment requests: Some open Requests for assessment need to be answered. To see new assessment requests as they come in, you can watchlist the assessment page.
  • More task forces and subprojects: As this WikiProject covers a very large topic area, it is helpful to add more task forces that focus on specific aspects of Germany. Currently, we have a Mainz task force, a Munich subproject and some joint task forces with other WikiProjects. Any project member is invited to start a new task force. Suggestions for possible topics:
    • Transportation in Germany
    • German politics (the political system of Germany and the biographies of its politicians)
    • German Democratic Republic

Be creative! If you have an idea, just suggest it on the project talk page (don't forget to watchlist it).

  • Categorization: Uncategorized Germany stubs need to be categorized
Project news
  • Cities and municipalities task force

The task force dedicated to creating and improving articles on all German cities and municipalities is happy to announce that there are now (at least) stub articles for all municipalities of Germany. Now the task force is looking for help in fleshing these out a little bit. The current phase of activity for the task force is to copy in infoboxes from the articles in German Wikipedia. If you want to help, even just for a few articles, look at the instructions and links here

  • Article Assessment:

There are now way over 26.000 articles tagged as part of our Wikiproject and many still need either an importance or a quality assessment. Also there are many more out there that do need to be tagged like approx 8000 municipalities. If you would like to help take a browse through Articles needing Importance assessment or Articles needing a basic quality assessment.

- - Newsletter Bot Talk 14:08, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

This newsletter is delivered by a bot to all members of WikiProject Germany. If you do not want to receive this newsletter in the future, please leave a note at the talk page of the Outreach department so we can come up with a better spamlist solution. Thank you, - - Newsletter Bot Talk 14:08, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

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Re:Flag article help

Hi 52. I'm not sure I'm that great at copyediting, but I'm happy to give the article a fresh pair of eyes by tomorrow. JPD (talk) 08:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

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Autolink complaint

Template_talk:Infobox_Settlement#Auto-linking.3F


Can you give that a look when you get a chance? It concerns one of your edits to Template:Infobox Settlement. Nothing super critical. Hope all is well. —MJCdetroit (yak) 01:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

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New class: Needed

Hi 52 Pickup. I added a comment to your post at New class: Needed. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

PSI

(cur) (last) 13:12, 8 April 2008 52 Pickup (Talk | contribs) (3,213 bytes) (reverting all edits by PSI - text lifted from http://www.pharmaceuticalsociety.ie/) (undo) (cur) (last) 13:06, 8 April 2008 PSI - The Pharmacy Regulator (Talk | contribs) (3,512 bytes) (undo)

You made this edit. The PSI Regulator and the http://www.pharmaceuticalsociety.ie are the same body. Are you preventing it from making a change to the Wikipedia entry for the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Otoolepw (talk • contribs)

I did indeed make this edit. Even though User:PSI - The Pharmacy Regulator and http://www.pharmaceuticalsociety.ie are one and the same, this added text had to go. Nobody is stopping this user from contributing, BUT the added text was lifted word for word from www.pharmaceuticalsociety.ie which is copyrighted. Even though the text on that site may have been written by the same person as this user, that is still not acceptable by Wikipedia's copyright rules. The text on that site is copyrighted, and that is that.
As I said, nobody is stopping this user from contributing. Either 1) the copyright on the PSI site has to be replaced with permission for text from this site to be reproduced (and not just allowing reproduction on Wikipedia); or 2) present the information in this article in different words (and not just change one or two words within the text, that doesn't cut it either). This second option is probably the simpler. When it is clear that content has not been partially or wholly taken from the PSI site, then there is no problem. Of course, since the user clearly has a vested interest in this article, it is also important to not present the article in a promotional or otherwise non-neutral manner, otherwise there will be more problems.
Again, see Wikipedia:Copyright for more information. Hope that helps. 52 Pickup (deal) 13:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Admin assistance sought

Could you please look at Special:Contributions/Jackmantas. It appears that the user is a WP:Single-purpose account who is trolling A Sniper, massively breaking WP:Etiquette and maybe even WP:Point. At [4] the user appears to make personal attacks. Sniper has tried to keep responses based on the article and has placed a notaforum notice, reverting or removing the most obvious bad faith personal attacks. Sniper has also asked for admin assistance at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Jackmantas but it doesn't look as if an admin has investigated the user's many diatribes, which started as blanking attempts and degenerated into name calling. It looks as if every edit the user has done is connected to Sniper, so this looks like trolling. Gracias for the help. 128.241.111.27 (talk) 04:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Welcome

Cheers for the welcome! +Hexagon1 (t) 22:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

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Deletion?

Should this be deleted? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_SRS/Secret_Page --What does this button do? (talk) 04:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Former Country

Thank you very much for repairing the template and for the alert. AWB was meant to tweak a category, but, this template using a /doc page, nothing happened. Or at least, I'd've assumed nothing would've happened. I've noticed AWB doesn't seem able to handle /doc pages, so perhaps it's now time I left a message/request on its page. Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've just posted this on the AWB talkpage. Sardanaphalus (talk) 10:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Roll Call

I beleive that you previously expressed interest in this article's discussion. There is a roll call being taken here. Thanks, --DerRichter (talk) 21:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

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