User talk:Dicklyon

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Contents 1 Your photo 2 Lynn Conway 3 "mess" 4 Dick - Perhaps you could answer these 2 questions 5 Eye: Thanks 6 Fine 7 The Area thing 8 Lake source 9 Color wheel 10 Conway page 11 References and Undue Weight? 12 Recently reverted changes to Pi 13 Point kinda taken 14 Reversion of my edit to Standard_illuminant 15 Lynn Conway Mediation 16 FPGA Inventor.. 17 Reversible Image Processing 18 WP:AIV and more 19 Image Histogram Revert 20 Transistor 21 BLP 22 Dude 23 Would you reconsider? 24 Upgrading page on Ptolemy's Theorem 25 Ray Tracing reverts 26 could you please do me a favor?

[edit] Your photo

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		To Dicklyon on the occasion of your photograph of Ivan Sutherland and his birthday! What a great gift. -User:SusanLesch 04:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lynn Conway

> Dreger has become a principal in these debates, > through her blog and her very one-side analysis

Dreger is a professional historian who wrote a professional history that was published in a professional journal that was mentioned in the New York Times. That the evidence led her to a conclusion does not indicate that >she< was one-sided, it indicates that the >evidence< supported only one side. You have every right to disagree with the evidence and to cite counter-evidence, but not to hide that information from readers.

If you actualy believed that Dreger's formal publications are disqualified because is a principal, then it your edits would also have removed Conway's comments because >she< is a principal. You are instead selectively removing sources, which suggests POV.

> you are new to wikipedia and have obviously a > single purpose with strong POV in your edits

My only purpose is completeness and accuracy. It is appears that I am adding more information to one "side," it is only because one side is less complete that the other. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarionTheLibrarian (talk • contribs) 19:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

The comments of the principals can generally be included if from a reliable secondary source. If there are some from Conway that are not from such a source, please do remove them. Dicklyon (talk) 19:15, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I am saying that peer reviewed journals and the NYTimes >are< reliable sources and that it is hypocritical remove the ones that disagree with Conway and permit the ones that agree. To avoid being POV/hypocritical one must either leave both intact or to remove both. I have left both intact; you are removing them only selectively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarionTheLibrarian (talk • contribs) 22:49, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Usually peer reviewed journals are deemed reliable, but in this case the journal you site is essentially a principal to the controversy; the editor and author are both tied up in the controversy, and ethics charges have been files against the author (Dreger) if my info is correct (but I'm not going to put info from random web pages into wikipedia). The peers doing the reviewing are all in the same clique. The rules of WP:BLP would seem to aim to exclude such writings. Do you disagree? Furthermore, the NYT certainly did not give any suggestion that they agree with Conway; they are just a more neutral source (when you don't distort what they say). Dicklyon (talk) 04:23, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I've protected Lynn Conway and Andrea James to stop the edit warring. I've warned User:MarionTheLibrarian about WP:3RR and thought I'd drop you a note about that too. I didn't delve too deeply into the issues, but following WP:BLP is paramount. Dreadstar † 07:55, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "mess"

You don't make a mess out of something just by saying it is a mess. That article begun as a stub, which is perfectly ok. What you personally think about stubs it's not important at all. It's moot to any other editor.

At some point the article had a couple of messes of my fault, but the "mess" was not even what you (or Finell, who is always well intended but, as you can see from his first post in the talk page, clearly clueless about the topic) thought it was. The only "mess" were the use of the word ratio instead of diameter and, the one Finell did spot right, was it's instead of its. Other than that, the theory was and still is fine.

And I'm sorry, but Finell himself set the tone (back when he called my contribution nonsense, even though he didn't take the time to research first). Compare the first contributions with the current article. It's better sourced, but the points are the same. And check out what Finell did, a mistake you are not a strange to either, he modified the content making it look as if the sources support parts that they actually don't. The irony is that at first he also implied that I don't know about citing.

There was nothing to clean up and he made a mess by doing so. If it isn't broken don't fix it. If you (I'm talking in general, not about you, Dick) don't know about a topic, it's better to leave it up to the people who know, or at least do the propper researching. If Finell thought there was a mistake, he should have gone to you, to me, or to the books.

Another irony is that you complain about me being uncivil… but you and Finell are pretty much the same. Or at least that’s how I perceive you when you use words such as mess or nonsense. Honestly, your attacks or extreme skepticism don’t make me lose the respect I have for you because all the great stuff there is about you as editor, but it doesn’t make dealing with you easy. Then again, you’re right, even though I don’t consider I attack you as often as Finell or you attack me, one is more than enough to be wrong. So I apologize. --20-dude (talk) 01:19, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Dude, an important aspect of civility is to keep your comments focused on the content, not on the editor. "Mess" and "nonsense" are adjectives that I think are often fairly applied to some of your contributions. But edits summaries like "Learn how to cite. Damn!! ... And to think that you were the one talking about cleaning messes" that attack the editor are specifically against the WP:NPA rule. Personally, I have no trouble with stubs per se, but even a one-line stub should be a coherent statement of what the topic is, and should come with a source; you shouldn't be starting an article without a source, and you should say what it is right away. Statements like "These figures belong to a group of rectangles called dynamic rectangles" that introduce important relationship among concepts that nobody ever heard of, need a source; this one was unsourced, then sourced, presuably wrongly, then unsourced again, in your early edits, and I think we're still not sure it's verifiable. I really hate to see such stuff in stubs. Dicklyon (talk) 15:34, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

It's fun to be the prosecutor for once, haha. In a Kepler triangle you have a middle reason- extreme reason proportionality between the cathetus(or is it cathetuses?) and the golden section is both their sum and the hypotenuse... that doesn't happen with the rectangle triangle of the mid section of the golden pyramid... the middle and extreme reason proportionality happens between the adjacent cathetus and the hypothenuse(AC=1 and H=φ), and the oposing cathetus is neither Φ nor φ of the adjacent (like in a Kepler), but root-phi of the adjacent. The lenght of the opposing cathethus has something to do with trigonometry... but I have not done any trigonometry exercise in years so I wouldn't know that part.

It is also part of one of the rectangles I mentioned to you, the root-phi, sometimes known as penton. When you draw the diagonal you have two of these triangles. the diagonal is phi of the smaller side

I'm thinking of naming that triangle after my favorite person in my thesis, haha. I'm calling it dibs, the Torre triangle, hahaha. --20-dude (talk) 04:19, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with your terminology about "reason" and "cathetus". But looking up cathetus I see the plural is catheti. Please explain in equations or something what you believe the golden pyramid shape and its medial triangle are, and what you believe the Kepler triangle is, so I can follow why you think there's a discrepancy here. And don't take so much delight in the possibility of catching me in an error; it's not such a rare event as you think. Dicklyon (talk) 04:26, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

In reveiwing what you said, the bit "It is also part of one of the rectangles I mentioned to you, the root-phi, sometimes known as penton. When you draw the diagonal you have two of these triangles. the diagonal is phi of the smaller side" is something I can totally agree with, whether "it" refers to a Kepler triangle or the medial triangle of the golden pyramid as described on the golden ratio page. Again, what I fail to grasp is what you are saying the discrepancy is. Dicklyon (talk) 04:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

φ²:1:φ ≠ sqrt(φ):1:φ ... in reviewing the Kepler triangle article I noticed where the problem. In formulas and paper it seems ok... but it is not. φ:1:sqrt(φ) seems the same proportion as φ²:1:φ (because you squared the numbers) ... but it is not. A φ²:1:φ triangle isn't even possible to draw (if the catheti are 1:φ the hypothenuse wont be φ²)... I guess that means the Golden Pyramid HAS a Kepler triangle indeed, but the article about the Kepler triangle is wrong.

Btw, how do you call the catheti? just adjacent and opposite sides? I can even imagine geometry without using an equivalent of that word.

btw2, I ment middle and extreme ratio. I have problems figuring out how to use reason, mean and ratio. The last one is particularly confusing. In Spanish ratio only means half the diameter of a circle, not both half the diameter and proportion as in English. When I fist start reading about golden ratio in English, since a ratio of a circle is used to generate a rectangle with golden ratio, I had a real hard time understanding it.--20-dude (talk) 07:23, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

No, the Kepler triangle article is not wrong. Read the figure caption again; those are areas, not lengths. And don't confuse ratio with radius; thanks for explaining that "reason" was a translation problem; that's what I suspected, but I had forgotten that you were Spanish. Hopefully you can appreciate now how it was perceived as "nonsense". Dicklyon (talk) 15:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dick - Perhaps you could answer these 2 questions

There in Commons on the Talk page of the author for the color cube:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SharkD#Color_Cube

Doug youvan (talk) 05:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I was a bit confused, but looking at the history noticed that you had just left a question there; use four tildes to get a proper signature (you probably used 5, which gives just the time). As to Erwin Schroedinger, he did some good color stuff, but I haven't seen anything about contructing color cubes with xyz. I can review his "Outline of a Theory of Color Measurement for Daylight Vision" in Sources of Color Science, which I have in my office, on Tuesday; his color work was all about 1920, well before xyz was defined. As for the shading, I don't know what he did; I met Henri Gouraud last week, and he's a cool fellow. Dicklyon (talk) 06:28, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Eye: Thanks

for removing the gobbledegook (acuity) from Eye. I've been wanting to do that, but I don't have the background to be able to defend the removal, had it been necessary. --Hordaland (talk) 16:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fine

But what can I do with your tone and Finell's? It's not like if you were polite either. Your tone is somewhat rude, always with the threads, pressuere, and with the underestimating and condescending tone (although, to be fear, it is most probable you don't notice). You're being quite unfear there.

Even you knew what Finell was triggering there. I serious and honestly got tired of taking his crap and indirects. God, I hate indirects, such a sneaky pasive way to insult (I'm talking about indirects in general). Btw, I do appreciate the fact that you wrote re-read CIVIL instead of read CIVIL, that's the sort of respect I'm talking about.

To avoid this sort of thing I'll just ignore Finell (at least on talk pages) next time.--20-dude (talk) 06:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You can try to ignore the rude bits and focus on the content issues; if we say you've made a mess, focus on that mess, not on us; if we say a statement is nonsense, address that statement, not us. And if we make personal remarks about you, by all means do call us on it, instead of escalating it. It would help a lot if you would edit more carefully, reread your edits, and then read and re-read comments on your edits, instead of being so dismissive of people who are tired of cleaning up after you. And keep in mind that being civil is required; being polite is optional, but often helpful. Dicklyon (talk) 06:15, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Area thing

I didn't get what you said about the picture of the Kepler triangle. But my point is still that φ²:1:φ ≠ sqrt(φ):1:φ , and that article states the opposite.--20-dude (talk) 08:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see where an article states that. Which article, where? Dicklyon (talk) 14:29, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lake source

I replied to you on Talk:Source (river or lake). —Lowellian (reply) 14:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Color wheel

There was a lot of images that didn't really seem to contribute much to the sections they were beside, and there was a lot of image stacking—which should typically be avoided. No worries about the revert, but you can remove a few of the images if you want to. I deleted a bunch because they really didn't seem to contribute much to the article (though they were quite interesting), and there were a lot of overlapping happening (in images and [edit] buttons) and things being pushed out of the way. The image beside the reference list at the bottom for example looks pretty bad—the two digit numbers overlap the image border. Also note that I have a wider resolution than a lot of users (1280px wide) so the way it looks on my end is likely wonkier than the way it looks with most 1024×768 res monitors.

On a separate note, you might want to consider archiving your talk page Help:Archiving_a_talk_page. Firefox's spell checker hasn't caught up yet because there is so much text in this field, and every character I type lags behind. It's no big deal, but your talk page is getting pretty huge and it does take a while to load. Cheers, and have a good day! _{TIM KLOSKE|TALK} 22:24, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll work on the layout and maybe prune a few. Dicklyon (talk) 23:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conway page

I've inserted the edits we previously discussed. Please check that I have done so accurately.

—MarionTheLibrarian (talk) 15:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Re my question on the talk page there, I still don't know why you think I agreed to something like that. Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References and Undue Weight?

Hi,

I understand that I have put in my references incorrectly (see hair texture entry which I realize that you will erase), but I don't understand your last comment about the entry placing 'undue weight' on the Afro as a hair texture. After all, it is generally known among the scientifically literate that modern humans originated in Africa. Thus the big question in terms of hair texture variation is why, how, and when did much of modern humanity lose this trait in favor of straighter hair? So why is explaining this based on the evidence problemmatic?

Thanks, Afiya27 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afiya27 (talk • contribs) 17:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

At least fix the form of your edits. Don't captitalize non-proper nouns (not even in headings); use the four-equals heading level; don't add double blank lines; no colons. Then other editors can at least look at your work as serious and decide where to go next. I fixed the first one as an example. Dicklyon (talk) 19:27, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recently reverted changes to Pi

You recently reverted changes made to the article on Pi on the basis that the changes provided only a reference to another article, Van Wijngaarden transformation, which was itself said to be unreferenced. Actually the article on Van Wijngaarden transformation was not entirely unreferenced because it, in turn, contained a reference to Sequence transformations, which contains good support from secondary sources. Admittedly this is all rather indirect, and so I've improved the articles on both Van Wijngaarden transformation and Pi by directly including the secondary source and, in the case of Pi, reinstating the deleted text. However, it is generally considered good form on Wikipedia to assume good faith and to attempt to improve imperfect edits made in good faith, rather than simply deleting them, so I would respectfully request that the text on Pi not be deleted again without a full discussion on Talk:Pi.--Dash77 (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Still, a wiki article is never acceptable as a source; just add the ref and it will be fine. Oh, you did; good, that was my intended effect; I find that reverting gets lazy editors' attention better than other method, and being lazy myself, I sometimes just go that way. Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Point kinda taken

But what does that mean, is my somewhat instinct of ignoring Finell somewhat right? I hate when he does that kind of comments, what should I do?

That's kind of the thing, I know replying as I was would be the wrong move, and that his comments are wrong and ofensive...so what? Ignoring him?--20-dude (talk) 02:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ignore the personal stuff, and answer the content-related stuff. That's the only way to make progress. Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Btw, how did you find out Hambidge did coined the term? --20-dude (talk) 02:51, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I didn't. Did you read anything I wrote? Dicklyon (talk) 02:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Because I'm sure there are other 6 (or so) dynamic rectangles he does not talk about. Let me check your comment there, I'm not sure if I read it.--20-dude (talk) 02:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion of my edit to Standard_illuminant

Hi, I was wondering if you could explain why you reverted my edit: [1]. I don't see the point in linking to a redirect page when we can just link to the actual Journal of Physics D page instead. It's possible you were mislead by my edit summary: on reviewing it, I admit it sounds more like I was removing the link than retargeting it. Anyway, if you could shed some light, I'd appreciate it, as right now I'm a bit confused. Scog (talk) 20:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I reverted it to remind you that redirects serve a valuable purpose in allowing the source text to be kept simpler; and if you bypass all the uses of a redirect this way, the redirect sometimes gets deleted as orphan, and then it doesn't serve its purpose any more. Dicklyon (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Point taken. Thanks, Scog (talk) 20:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lynn Conway Mediation

Hi, I've accepted the 2008-06-01 Lynn Conway mediation case. Please feel welcome to participate and comment. BrownHornet21 (talk) 00:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. I took a long look over the request on my talk page and ran a checkuser, per policy and have indicated the result there. You should probably communicate this to MEDCAB when you get the chance - Alison ^❤ 04:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FPGA Inventor..

The claims regarding the Xilinx founder as the inventor as the creator of the FPGA was highly misinformed and failed to do their due diligence. Ross Freeman references the Petterson/Page patent's in all of his patent's and their work predates his by a minimum of five years. In fact all FPGA design patents reference this foundational work. There are two patents by Peterson/Page done at this time, one for shift programmable and one for Ram programmable. Where Freeman expanded the number of gates at the programmable node the single gate approach shown in these first patents clearly show that the design for field programmable logic( or re programmable logic) was patented and in use years before Freeman made his marketing claim. Backed by the patent office records, its just fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.148.72.66 (talk) 15:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT. But changing the claims without citing reliable sources is a step backwards. Dicklyon (talk) 18:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reversible Image Processing

Dick - What do think about starting a new article on algorithms used in image processing, with a specific focus on looking into references and citations having to do with whether particular steps in image processing are reversible or not reversible? Doug youvan (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What is the point of reversibility? It's not something I've generally concerned myself about, except in compression/decompression, which needs to be at least approximately reversible. Do you have a good source to start with? Dicklyon (talk) 18:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

You just nailed the major interest: compression/decompression, but the discussion actually came up over the inner workings of Photoshop. Photoshop stores a history, and it would seem that history has to be images in most cases (because of loss or gain in information), but in a few cases an algorithm could regenerate history. Reference to Photoshop serves as a well known example. This should be generalized. I can look for source material, and drag in things like Shannon entropy and Markov chains if necessary. My interest would actually be in matrix algebra (a single RGB frame is a rank 3 tensor). This might be better discussed with applications so that the esoteric mathematics is contained. Do you know of a discussion page where this could be explored? Doug youvan (talk) 00:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Most non-trivial photoshop ops are not reversible; it just keeps an image history. I'm still unclear on what article topic you have in mind. Whatever it is, make sure it's a notable concept that you get reliable sources for. Dicklyon (talk) 06:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AIV and more

Hi there! I removed your AIV report because AIV is only for simple vandalism, and not stuff like this. If I may ask, what's up with you and BarbaraSue? I'd like to help resolve the issue. Cheers, Master of Puppets _{Call me MoP! :)} 23:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there a better place to report persistent WP:BLP violations? It amazes me how she will keep up her attacks even after we have agreed to mediation: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-06-01 Lynn Conway. Dicklyon (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No matter; she got herself indef blocked already. Dicklyon (talk) 05:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image Histogram Revert

Hi Dicklyon,

I'm new to editing Wikipedia, so I thought the link to the Computer Vision page was enough of a source; now I know better!

I'm acutally editing another computer vision article where I made a link to image histogramming. Since the current image histogram page seems to be mostly about photography, I just thought I could add a nod to object detection in the computer vision field. Unfortunately, the ways that histograms are used in object recognition are varied and numerous (which would require an explaination longer than I can afford to offer now). In the future, I'll be back to do a better job.

Nice meeting you, RC64

RoninChris64 (talk) 05:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a discussion of the application of histograms in vision would be useful. But the snippet you wrote didn't make sense to, and I figured a revert would get your attention to the problem, which it did. I look forward to a more complete and sourced contribution from you. Dicklyon (talk) 05:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Transistor

Most of the article has no references so I'm not sure why you had to WP:BITE my head off. Why don't you remove the rest of the unreferenced material there? It will be a VERY short article then! Anyway I will reinsert my material with several references for each point. Hhcox (talk) 02:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been in a snappy mode lately. Sorry about that. But when I saw "many musicians hold..." and "vacuum tubes are held...", my weasel word alarm went off. I didn't check the rest of the article, just removed your contributions because no matter how bad an article is, adding weasel-words point with no attribution or source is not an improvement. Rather than work on contributions that are not an improvement, I sometimes take the lazy way and just revert them, in hopes of getting the editor's attention to what the problem is so he'll work on it. So, I hope you'll work on it. Find out who so holds, and attribute the holding to them with citation; if you want help formatting a citation, let me know and I'll show you how it's done. Dicklyon (talk) 02:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BLP

Dickylon, if you put that paragraph back yet again, I will delete it as unsourced BLP, with respect to the named editor of the journal. I will then block you for the combined violation of WP:B:LP and 3RR. and block you. I could block you immediately for violation of 3RR, but I refrain from it for the moment, in the hope you will not repeat this. DGG (talk) 05:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Can you explain that a little better, please? What statement, or part of statement, do you consider to be unsourced, or inadequately sourced, in that short paragraph? And would you really block someone that you are involved in a content dispute with? That seems very un-admin-like. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Please note that I had already updated the source on the first sentence to an article published by The Daily Northwestern that says, "Mathy said Dreger was wrong to submit her article to the ASB, which is edited by Kenneth Zucker, who has had contact with Bailey and has similar views on transsexuality. By doing this, she said Dreger sought to bypass the peer review process, which ensures research remains unbiased." Is this not sufficient to say that the archives and its editor are "involved"? Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not in a content dispute with anyone, having never edited the article. I gave an opinion on the use of sources on a related article. I shall block you without the least hesitation. ( To assert that the editor of a journal published a one-sided attack on a scientist is a violation of BLP, and must be supported by a reliable secondary source saying that he did that., A student newspaper is not a RS for matters of this sort. You will need a source from at least one academic journal or the like of unimpeachable reputation for this material. If you want to try to write a paragraph on the controversy, and have such a source, put it on the talk page. This has gone too far. There is no tolerance for BLP whatsoever.

Incidentally, not that it is anywhere near as serious, are you aware that you have broken 3RR on that page by your last edit? I am not as quick as most admins to block for that, or I would have done it already. (and yes, I did warn the other editor). DGG (talk) 05:33, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

serious but friendly advice--stop now, and continue the discussion tomorrow. DGG (talk) 05:39, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem. There are plenty of other things to work on tonight. Dicklyon (talk) 05:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dude

Your name is invoked, by both sides, in this exchange on my Talk page. Finell (Talk) 04:48, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm flattened. Dicklyon (talk) 04:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Would you reconsider?

Your revert of my external link on RGB Color Model? Doug youvan (talk) 04:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

... and here, too? 14:47, 27 May 2008 Dicklyon (Talk | contribs) m (5,218 bytes) (Reverted 1 edit by Doug youvan; Per WP:EL, WP:COI, WP:SPAM. Doug youvan (talk) 04:55, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The external link survives here in Color: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Color&diff=214918939&oldid=214797698 Doug youvan (talk) 05:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll take care of it. Dicklyon (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Upgrading page on Ptolemy's Theorem

Hello Dick

What do we need to do to tidy up this article to David Eppstein's satisfaction?

I don't have huge amounts of time available but would like to know what it takes to create a 'featured article' and perhaps invest some effort working in that direction. For starters I suppose a lot of the diagrams in the corollaries section could be improved by redoing in SVG format.

Don't know what else to do about referencing or about all the proofs - maybe you have some suggestions?

Regards, Neil Parker (talk) 10:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know; have you been discussing with him? It seems to me that an article with so much dense math would never be selected as a featured article. At least, that would be my complaint about it. By the way, you never responded to my talk questions addressed to you about that page (I don't recall if it was on your user talk, or the article talk). Dicklyon (talk) 17:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Am not sure which talk questions? You said you couldn't find anything about sines in Hawking's book and I responded here].

I think the theorem is historically important so it's worth cleaning up the page as necessary to create a featured article. But if 'dense Math' automatically precludes it then there's not much can be done since it's a Mathematical article. Maybe one could subsection off some of the proofs and corollaries leaving the main page with just the examples and various historical references?

I left a response on David's page but I don't think there was anything further thereafter. Neil Parker (talk) 19:18, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to my remarks at the bottom of User talk:Neil Parker. Are you saying that you replied on my page, which is why I don't see a reply there? Dicklyon (talk) 20:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I presumed that would be the correct 'protocol' (?) Neil Parker (talk) 19:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ray Tracing reverts

You have twice deleted perfectly good content from the Ray Tracing article on the grounds that it's "not cited". I think we can both agree that the content you deleted contains more information and is more clear that what it was replacing. If you think something needs backing up, then why not use the {{fact}} tag instead of deleting meaningful work? (See WP:Revert#Don'ts and WP:Avoiding common mistakes; "deleting useful content"). Deleting stuff actually prevents people from fixing problems.

When I provided some pretty good sources, you deleted the whole thing again because you apparently didn't like the way they were formatted. I don't think it's quite fair to just delete everything that's not to your liking out-of-hand. Wouldn't it be more helpful to fix the problems you're talking about instead? I'm of the opinion that content with sparsely-formatted citations is far better than no content at all. As such I am revering your deletion. Timrb (talk) 12:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not a big deal to put it back and do the refs right. You asked if I was happy now, and a revert with edit summary was the easist way to reply. So I'm lazy – I succeeded in getting your attention, but not your cooperation, so I suppose I screwed up. It would still be best if you'd work on fixing it, since you're familiar with the sources, rather than leaving it for others to clean up after you. Dicklyon (talk) 14:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I understand why you're upset about people making you "clean up" after them. I strongly disagree with your method of dealing with it. What gives you the authority to come along and punish people for leaving work to be done? Really, I was "cleaning up after" Cdecoro, who was himself "cleaning up after" the guy who left a messy contribution before him. That's how wikipedia works. Things can't get better if every incremental improvement gets deleted because it's not "perfect".

Sure, you may get a guy to fix his own edit, but 1) you'll piss him off, 2) once you delete his edit, now he's the only guy who can fix it, and 3) he may not check back or care.

Poor citation seems "lazy" to you? Well reverting instead of fixing is even lazier. Punishing people for "lazy editing" is therefore hypocritical (at least they added something), and your victims will rightfully get ticked off at you for it. If there's a shortfall you want to draw attention to but you don't want to take on the burden, then use the appropriate templates. That's what they're for.

I'll take a look at those sources and the WP:cite page when I get to it, but in the meantime, if it really is "no big thing", then there is an obvious contribution you could make.

I really hope you'll reconsider this practice. Timrb (talk) 16:06, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It may be a poor strategy, but it's not based on any presumed authority, nor intended to be punitive. And anyone who wants to help can resurrect and work on the changes. Lazy meets lazier is a good way to put it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I appreciate your concern about proper citation, but Timrb makes a good point in that when you simply revert, instead of adding "citation needed", I'm the only one who knows that that information exists to be resurrected at all. The best correction is that someone who knows the correct citations would make them, rather than reverting because one doesn't know what better action to take. That said, I've now added cites to the original source papers; is this satisfactory to everyone? If you dont like how they are formatted, please explain on the talk page and I'll address that. Thanks Cdecoro (talk) 21:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] could you please do me a favor?

Hello,

I am a master student at the Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Currently I am wrapping up my master thesis titled “Can Wikipedia be used for knowledge service?” In order to validate the knowledge evolution maps of identified users in Wikipedia, I need your help. I have generated a knowledge evolution map to denote your knowledge activities in Wikipedia according to your inputs including the creation and modification of contents in Wikipedia, and I need you to validate whether the generated knowledge evolution map matches the knowledge that you perceive you own it. Could you please do me a favor?

1. I will send you a URL link to a webpage on which your knowledge evolution map displays. Please assign the topic (concept) in the map to a certain cluster on the map according to the relationship between the topic and clusters in your cognition, or you can assign it to ‘none of above’ if there is no suitable cluster.
2. I will also send a questionnaire to you. The questions are related to my research topic, and I need your viewpoints about these questions.

The deadline of my thesis defense is set by the end of June, 2008. There is no much time left for me to wrap up the thesis. If you can help me, please reply this message. I will send you the URL link of the first part once I receive your response. The completion of my thesis heavily relies much on your generous help.

Sincerely

JnW^talk 05:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll have a look and see if I can help. You can send to my email via wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)