User talk:Donama/2006-05-14

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This page is an archive (2005-10-21—2006-05-14). Please do not alter it in any way. Archived by — Donama 02:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Howdy

Hello Donama,

Since you say you've been editing for a while anonymously, I probably don't need to welcome you. But I just wanted to let you let you know about the Australian resources on Wikipedia, such as The Australia Wikiportal, Australian Wikipedians' Notice Board, Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight, New Australian Articles and Australian stub articles. You can list yourself at Australian Wikipedians.

Also, assuming you're an Adelaidean, have you considered participating in WikiProject Adelaide? Help is always needed!

Again, welcome.--Cyberjunkie | Talk 08:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Cyberjunkie, you might already know me. Donama 08:17, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

In what sense? Personally? Or through your edits here?--Cyberjunkie | Talk 08:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Friendly advice

It is generally better to use the "move" button to change the titles of pages, rather than copying/pasting, since that way the previous editing history can be preserved. --Stemonitis 07:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

With reference to "Uca mjoebergi" I presume? Normally I would, but this page had very few edits and no discussion page so I didn't bother. Donama 08:01, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sheep

Domestic sheep is proposed to be moved back its original location at Sheep. Please register your opinoin at Talk:Domestic sheep. Rmhermen 22:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

thanks for letting me know (as the perpetrator). I've added my reasons. jimfbleak 06:48, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of sheep breeeds

I changed a few in the "S" section from sentence case, where part of the name is a place name. eg. [South african merino] → [South African merino]. I'm less certain about ones like [South Suffolk] and [South Dorset]. What do you think? -- Ian ≡ talk 16:36, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

It is a good question and I'd love to see the answer in a style guide. I grew up living on a farm which had white suffolk rams and we never capitalised is as a breed name, just calling them the "suffolks", even though Suffolk in the UK was where they presumably originally came from. Having been through that entire list of sheep breeds I think 70-75% of them derive from place names, some more obscure than others, so if we want title case for breeds deriving from place names I guess we can do it for all of them. I notice that some of the articles about breeds which have already been created use title case. What do we do for dogs like German Shepherd? St Bernard? etc -- I guess that is the answer. Donama 22:52, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Donama, if you look at the other breed lists: Cat breeds, Cattle breeds, Chicken breeds, Dog breeds, Horse breeds and Rabbit breeds, nearly every breed listed which has two words have both words capitalised - regardless of the second word being a place name. eg. American Quarter Horse, Bull Mastiff, Red Angus etc etc. I think there is a clear standard here that we need to follow: breed names are fully capitalised -- Ian ≡ talk 00:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay that's settled then. I've changed them to title case. Donama 02:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brookie here

Tracked you down at last! Keep up the good work! Brookie: A collector of little round things 10:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sheep in translation

Hi Donama, sorry to let you down, I am swamped with work and don't really have time to do much editing at all. I translated just the section headings from the Hebrew article, if that helps you at all - but I realise now I shouldn't have even started, because I really can't afford to go on. You can see what I've done at User:Woggly/temp (scroll down to the bottom). --Woggly 08:00, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Woggly, you've already been helpful, since now I can see we have most of these section headings covered at Domestic sheep. I might take the liberty to paste what you did on the Sheep talk page though. Cheers Donama 11:28, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] re multiple animal births

Sorry, having had dealings with you before, I should have realise that the stub would grow- I'll have to calm my trigger finger, jimfbleak 06:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

should it be be mammal rather than animal? I've never heard the term used for other groups, even those which give birth to live young, like some snakes and lizards. Jim

I really do! The current articles about twins and triplets have information about human multiple births only. Donama 06:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about delay, I've been tiling. I don't think the current title does any harm, if anyone feels strongly enough. they can always move it. I wouldn't merge it with the human article, but I . know nothing about this topic, so my advice is of limited value jimfbleak 10:43, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Possibly it is only useful to have an article about it for mammals, yes. I'm not sure what this ought to be called. Would you opt to force information about other mammal multiple births into the twins and multiple birth articles or encourage me to persist with this? Do you think it people would encourage a merge if it went to AfD? Thanks in advance for your advice. Donama 07:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Harry Kewell

You popped a cleanup tag on Harry Kewell. I'm guessing it's for non-NPOV, but could you put a note on the talk page.--Commander Keane 04:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Commander Keane (always loved your username), I apologise that I was too lazy to write a list of cleanup tasks for the Kewell article. It's done now, but I simply won't have time to edit it for a couple of weeks at least so need to hand off on this one. Cheers Donama 00:52, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] please let your hands away!

Doname or better let me know your name!

So, please let your hands away from my link! It is very important that people know that our link comes from Switzerland! Who gives you the right to delete my flag?

Is it? Why? Or do you mean it's important to say it's in Schweizerdeutsch? Is it in Swiss German (I can't tell)? I don't understand why you want the Swiss flag there. It's completely irrelevant to the article. If you want a little flag to indicate the article is in Swiss German then fine, but I recommend it be the same height as the text. Do you need any help with this? Donama 01:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems that you don't have better things to do than to destroy the work of others!

So, please unterstand it is not in your responsability to delete any work of others!

The answer to these questions is that every editor has the right to edit Wikipedia articles. We all own every bit of Wikipedia and nobody can claim ownership to the text or flag they added - it's just a Wikipedia principle. In fact it is every editor's responsibility to maintain articles, keep them relevant, up to date, etc. Donama 01:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Best Regards

Strictly speaking the links to German/Swiss language websites shouldn't appear on the English Wikipedia anyway, but since there is no equivalent article on the German Wikipedia we leave them there for now. Does that make sense? What do you think? Donama 01:31, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brookie here

Hi hope you're keeping well. I have been looking at Edward Davy Wedge and wonder if there any more categories that apply to an early Aus' colonist. Brookie :) - a collector of little round things! ^(Talk!) 13:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ballarat East

Hi Brookie here - someone has posted this article from the 1911 Britannica and it is well out of date - can someone with local knowledge update it - if you know anyone or a group can you plug it? Thanks - hope all's well Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Talk!) 09:25, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

I noticed that "Listerdale Mystery" is a wanted page however there is a "Listerdale mystery" page. Since it is a question of a simple correction so that all the links point correctly how does one go about correcting it? --jp

You can make a new article at Listerdale Mystery with one line saying

#REDIRECT [[The Listerdale mystery]]

Then it should automatically go to the The Listerdale mystery regardless of capitalisation. Of course, if you think the original article is badly named, then you might want to move the existing article to the new name (and put the redirect from the old name). If you'd like advice on how to move an article to a new name, let me know. Cheers! Donama 07:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I just checked, and in this case a "move" seems more appropriate. See the button next to history. Use that to simply move the article. Normally if the article name change would be controversial there is a longer process, but it sounds like this one wouldn't be controversial. Donama 07:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

• Put in a redirect. On 12:54 9 March 2006 Jadepearl already did this. Anthony Appleyard 08:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism on one's watchlist

I have some vandalism on my watchlist page. How do I correct this? --jadepearl 00:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Go into the vandalised page's history. See the version just before the vandalised one - click on this version (by clicking the date). Click to edit the current page (which is editing the same article, but in the format it was in before the vandalism). Put some message like "reverting vandalism" in the edit summary box and then save it. Good luck, and thanks for reverting the vandals! Donama 03:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Donama. I guess I was not being specific enough, the vandalism is on my actual watchlist list not one of the articles. So when I go to "my watchlist" and start scrolling down my list I find vandalism (nothing obscene but very distracting). This is the page I am only able to edit by removing articles from my watchlist that I am watching however, this particular vandalism is not one of the items that I can remove. Does this help clarify?

Forget the problem. I asked another Wikipedian who stated that it was a totally different problem altogether. Sorry to bother.

[edit] Thanks for Welcome

Im not sure if this is right way to do this - but thanks for the welcome message you sent me when i signed up... Mikelake 04:29, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly how it's done. If you have any questions about Wikipedia editing, please just ask. Look forward to seeing you around on Wikipedia :) —Donama 02:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bail out or bale out?

For "escape by parachute", my copy of Chambers Dictionary authorizes both spellings equally. I am British. I am more familiar with the spelling "bale out". Perhaps this is yet another case where usual UK and USA spellings differ. Anthony Appleyard 08:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

First, "bailing water" is never spelt baling water and I doubt you'd find that in Chambers.

For the parachute bailing, we use British English almost exclusively for the most part in Australia too, yet I've never once seen this use of bale (as in "bale out of an aircraft") although it is evidently an alternate spelling of bail. But since "bail out of an aircraft" is the way it's spelt at least 50% of the time in Britain and close to 100% of the time elsewhere (according to this WorldWideWords article), don't you think this information should go at the Bail disambig page on Wikipedia -- and there is already a link to this from Bale. Donama 01:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I just saw this old discussion, and I thought I would add a link to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, which gives equal weight to both bail and bale in terms of: 1) Scooping water, 2) a parachute descent, 3) rescue from a difficulty.

I am just pointing this out as the WorldWideWords article you mentioned doesn't seem to take account of the use of bale in terms of water. Happy editing. :) Road Wizard 21:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CSIRO is ACOTF

Hi. You voted for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation as Australian Collaboration. It has been selected, so please help to improve this article in any way you can. Thanks. Scott Davis ^Talk 15:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old Skool Esperanzial note

Since this isn't the result of an AC meeting, I have decided to go Old Skool. This note is to remind you that the elections are taking place now and will end at 23:50 UTC on 2006-04-29. Please vote here. Thanks. --Celestianpower ^háblame 20:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NOTE OF THANKS

Donama, am so very pleased that you agre with me that Jazzper's sources are reliable, and thankyou for standing up for what is right.

Jazzper, I hate to say this because your enthusiasm on the Theory of Portuguese Discovery of Australia article has been boundless, but have you read WP:NOR which means "no original research permitted on Wikipedia"? Tijuana has called into question whether your works were published by a "reputable" publisher, whatever that means. I aksed him/her why he/she thinks that's the case, but it is likely because you, the author, are quoting them on Wikipedia. I have no idea whether "Jazzper's sources are reliable", but I hope we can find out. — Donama 03:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

No thanks for your wasting everyone's time inventing publishing houses and book titles for use on Wikipedia. I hope you'll understand my declining your Jazzter award. — Donama 04:35, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Jazzper

Thanks, this answers my questions re books by the mysterious Jazzper completely. No more wasting time wondering about Doobi either :) Cheers — Donama 04:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Glad to be of service. Snottygobble 04:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

From User talk:Tijuana Brass:
Apologies for using your talk page as my whiteboard again. Snottygobble has answered my question here... so all sorted :) — Donama 04:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Haha, it's no problem. Sorry I took forever to get back to you. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 04:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please, have a Barnstar

For your efforts re many Australian content-related articles (and your levelheaded and community minded approach to editing generally), I bestow upon you this barnstar. A little late for ANZAC day 2006 - perhaps you can wear it next year. Colonel Tom 11:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Burnside Map

City of Burnside, South Australia -- please tell me if I made a mistake, — Донама 06:31, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I would like: [1]

• The shape of the city traced from the blue lines and given a slight tint inside
• For roads (red) to be traced through
• For road labels to be outside the shape itself
• A good colour scheme (I have no idea what would look good/suit)

Does that make sense? Thanks for the offer to do this, cheers! michael ^talk 03:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's the image, added to commons. I kept the unflattened Photoshop source file in case I made a mistake or you want to change the colour scheme. Michael, if you want the source file, please email me. — Донама 06:31, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely spectacular, cheers! I really could not have asked for something better in design. A few things though, would you be able to label Fullarton Road (the unnamed road closest to the CBD), move 'City of Mitcham' down to the left of Mount Barker Road and where 'City of Mitcham' was put 'City of Unley'? Again, thanks! michael ^talk 14:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Re-export later today, Michael... Do you want any colour changes while I'm at it? — Донама 03:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

No, colours are fine! michael ^talk 03:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, absolutely perfect. michael ^talk 14:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sheep --> Ovis move

Sorry, I didn't know that this Sheep was one of your pets. Usually when I post something on an article's talk page there are about 2 reactions per decade. See for example the vivid discussion at Talk:Ovis#Sheep vs Domestic Sheep problems. I did the same shuffle before with Goat and Capra (genus). My reasoning was that most people looking for information on goats or sheep are looking for information on the domesticated species, and will look up Goat or Sheep. I am firmly convinced that they vastly outnumber the people who want an overview of different species in the genus (from which they arrive one click away). Most don't probably even know there is more to it. The situation I created is very similar to how Cow goes to the domesticated beasties, not to Bos, same again for Cat which does not go to Felis, and so on. I'm not quite clear why you think that is sub-optimal for Sheep, but if I am correct in understanding that you want Sheep to exceptionally lead the reader to the genus and not the domesticated species, then all you need to do is to change that redirect page.

I tried to adjust all links into Sheep to go to Ovis if more appropriate, but found only one case, at Bighorn Sheep. All other links, previously going to the genus page, were actually meant for the domesticated fuzzies. Lambiam^Talk 03:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

commented on the above user's page, but i'll hold fire for now, jimfbleak 05:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the discussion to Talk:Ovis and replied there. Lambiam^Talk 11:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Pell

I was working on an explanation of the NPOV tag for the Talk page (it's there now), but it took me long enough to write that you responded before I'd finished it. I really must learn to write explanations and have them ready before editing article space, so I don't leave people guessing like that :-)

Basically, my problem with the representation of his comments was that Pell's actual speech referred to both tolerant and intolerant aspects of Islam; the ABC and sundry other media outlets quoted him only on the intolerant aspects, and your edit interpreted the ABC's coverage in a way which was quite understandable, but not really accurate to what Pell had said in the first place.

(Will respond to the rest of your comment later, when I have a bit more time.) --Calair 07:06, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Couple of questions

I didn't mean for that list to intimidate anybody. I think those things are bad habits, and should be avoided, but it's like "um" in speech - everybody does now and then. (One of my other bad habits is 'basically', as in my comment above ;-) I just wanted it up on my userpage to encourage people to think before they use those words, and to explain my reasons in case anybody came there trying to figure out why I'd deleted something.

In this case, though, it probably just caused confusion; I did chop out a superfluous 'controversial' in passing, but as per previous comments the main issue I had with that section was unrelated.

As for point/counterpoint and alternatives, it's probably easiest to explain by example. The usual evolution of a Wikipedia article goes something like this: a fan of the famous Joe Bloggs notices there isn't an article about him and creates one, full of positive facts about him (and probably some inaccurate bits as well). Then one of his detractors comes along, takes exception to the article, and introduces negative facts (and inaccuracies) while challenging what's already there. Then another fan shows up, or the first one returns to the article, and so on. The end result is something like this:

"Joe Bloggs risked his life to save soldiers under his command in World War I. He had to resign from Parliament after it became known that he had pressured a judge to acquit one of his friends on a charge of embezzlement. His daughter Mary Smith spent a fortune founding an orphanage... however, her own daughter later accused her of neglect."

All those things may well be true - that method of editing is pretty good at winnowing out anything that can't be substantiated. But it's very disjointed, and doesn't help the reader understand how all those apparent contradictions coexist. Half the editors are making sure the positives are included and the other half are championing the negatives, like prosecution and defence lawyers trying to make their cases; nobody's working on reconciling those pictures. What I'd prefer would be something like this:

"Joe Bloggs regarded loyalty as the greatest of virtues; this led him to risk his life to save soldiers under his command, but also led him into disgrace when he disregarded the law by pressuring a judge to acquit one of his friends. His daughter Mary Smith was an ardent socialist who believed all children should be entitled to the same opportunities, leading her to found an orphanage rather than spend money on clothes for her own child."

Neither of those tales fit comfortably into the adversarial style of writing, because they're not black-and-white. The same factor makes Joe Bloggs both a hero and a crook, which doesn't appeal to an editor who just wants to concentrate on one of those things. But I think they make a lot more sense than disjointed unrelated facts.

Actually writing in the latter style is not at all easy, and one has to be careful to avoid over-interpreting and turning it into original research. But I'd like to see more editors at least thinking about it as an approach worth exploring. --Calair 10:41, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Calair, first, nice work cleaning up the George Pell "Islam comments" section. It's obvious you put a lot of effort into representing the facts in an exceptionally clear manner without resorting to directly quoting Pell -- and that is more difficult than it seems at first. And second, on your approach to creating articles, it really made me think. So thanks for that. I mean, I do see pitfalls with trying to explain Joe Bloggs' loyalty with both positive and negative examples. Even though I really like this approach I just sense that people would find it too unencyclopaedic because you are introducing your own interpretation -- which kinda sucks. Seems to me that even though Wikipedia IS an experiment in democracy, it is still considered to be a strictly published-facts-based experiment (at least according to WP policies) whereas the approach you describe is somehow too advanced -- it's almost a spiritual approach, if that's the right word. Anyway, I keep it in mind for future article development :) Cheers — Донама 03:22, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand why the no-interpretation rule is important, and the Joe Bloggs example does run afoul of that. The Mary Smith bit might be a better one, if the explanation could be backed up by her correspondence or something of that sort.

I don't think it's possible to write all articles this way, and it might not even be desirable - convoluted theories patched between known facts are often just as bad as no theories at all. What I'm really driving at is that a good article shouldn't be just a thinly-veiled debate, because that leads to the neglect of information that doesn't support either side of the debate.

Now I think about it, George Pell's recent speech might be a useful example. Suppose the speech was considered significant enough to merit an article in itself, written by two camps of people: Pell supporters doing their utmost to defend him (within the bounds of Wikipedia convention), and opponents doing their utmost to denigrate him.

The article would probably end up as a combination of two descriptions, along these lines: "Pell described Islam as an intolerant and violent religion" and "Pell presented both positive and negative descriptions of Islam". Both of those have some truth in them, and can be supported by facts in the form of quotes, but neither really tells the full story.

I could add a third, intermediate reading: Pell's speech presents both positives and negatives, but is subtly weighted towards the negatives. That, also, can be supported with facts - for instance, his positive examples are generally qualified ("optimists say that...") while his negatives and given simply as statements of fact. I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure the raw word-count is also weighted towards the negatives.

But even with that added interpretation, something important is missing. In wrangling over whether Pell was saying "Islam bad" or "Islam OK" or somewhere in between, all three camps have unwittingly limited the analysis to one dimension. It's certainly an important dimension, perhaps the most important of the speech, but concentrating on that dimension to the exclusion of all others means missing a lot of what the speech was about.

For instance, although he starts with the question of whether Islam can peacefully coexist with Western democracy, the last third of his speech is about the how. He blames secularism for some of the problems Western societies have experienced with Islam, and declares that a religious understanding is necessary to tackle the problem - "In the present challenge it is religious people who are better equipped, at least initially, to understand the situation with Islam. Radicalism, whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness. But if we are going to help the moderate forces within Islam defeat the extreme variants it has thrown up, we need to take seriously the personal consequences of religious faith. We also need to understand the secular sources of emptiness and despair and how to meet them, so that people will choose life over death."

This also explains what a one-paragraph aside about global warming is doing in the middle of a speech about Islam - he sees secularism as an important weakness in how we deal with Islam, and environmentalism makes a convenient illustration of secularism's weaknesses (in his eyes). Without understanding that Pell's speech is targeting secularism as much as Islam, that wouldn't make any sense.

In the 'controversies' section of an article about Pell, this doesn't matter quite so much; a lot of the controversy was over specific elements of his speeches, rather than the speeches as a whole, so we can get away with analysing them piecemeal. But if we were trying to offer a good analysis of his speech, it would be a serious deficiency to present it merely as somewhere along the axis of "Islam good --- Islam OK --- Islam bad", and the pro/anti method of writing tends to encourage that.

Whew, that was a long and rambling answer, but I hope it makes some sort of sense. I'd better go do some work now :-) --Calair 01:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I see your general point here. There's a voice telling me though that we're not meant to be providing analysis of anything in Wikipedia -- simply summarising published facts. Of course, in reality Wikipedia is full of Wikipedian's personal analyses (otherwise known as opinions :)). Anyway it was from this perspective that I tried to add information to the George Pell article but kind of failed because in trying to summarise it I seem to have dumbed it down or misrepresented it. — Донама 07:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty hard to avoid doing that sometimes. I've seen it happen in peer-reviewed scientific work by highly-regarded researchers; it only takes a few layers of interpretation and summary to seriously distort the original. I like to go directly to the source when it's available, but it's not always easy to do that. --Calair 00:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brookie again

Hi Donama - would you be interested in me nominating you for Admin'? Shout if you are - hope you're keeping well. Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 18:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey Brookie, I don't particularly aspire to be an admin at this point. I don't have enough time to devote. Although, the idea of being able to instantly delte redirect pages over which I need to move an existing page does tempt me ;) Good to hear from you -- likewise hope you're doing well up there. — Донама 00:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - shout if you change your mind - you'd make an excellent Admin'! --Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! ^(Whisper...) 09:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Communes

Hi, I have some of the programming needed to do commune stubs completed but the problem is finding the time to do the remaining work. If you look at the Arrondissement articles and my postings on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject French communes you'll get an idea of what I'm planning. Dlyons493 19:43, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey Dlyons, you basically mean automated stub+infobox creation? Do you need a hand with any of this? (I've been looking at the Dutch municipalities and French communes projects and decided we should do the same for Australian towns and cities, not so much from a Nationalistic inspiration but just one of providing information about every location in a country). — Донама 06:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Thanks mate

Thanks muchly! It's nice to be appreciated ;-)--cj | talk 11:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Senate

The idea is to have a category for every member of the senate, sorted by name, with members categorised by seat being supplementary rather than a replacement. Can you discuss at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics before removing any more pls? Snottygobble 02:36, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Verifiability

I guess you're right about the verifiability. In a way it doesn't make sense since I could write a book and cite myself, but okay. I'm writing a lot of stuff from memory right now and will find citations later on. I only intend to add information that is very unlikely to be disputed. A lot of what I'm doing is trying to link related articles together. Bmcassagne 05:52, 13 May 2006

[edit] Blowout (well drilling)

I disagree with your removing apostrophes from BOP's. This is the common usage in the oil field. Bmcassagne 02:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

On apostrophes, "BOP's" is a contraction for BOP is, like for "this BOP's not going to work" --> "this BOP is not going to work" so that's why I don't think it is useful to use an apostrophe after an acronym when you're making it a plural. The problem with this habit is well documented. Also, even if it's common on the oil field, people outside the oil field will want to be reading this article. Common usage on the oil field doesn't make it right. It makes it like jargon that's all. — Донама 02:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)