User talk:Eisnel

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[edit] Welcome

Hello there, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page or how to format them visit our manual of style. Experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the help desk. Meelar 20:04, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for anti-aging--we really appreciate it when people help.

No problem, Meelar. I'm enjoying this, what a great place! Thanks for dropping me the nice note. - Eisnel 20:13, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Caps

I must admit, I like your version better. Sometimes I have to make a tough choice between Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) and English one. BTW, another such case is Black book. Thanks. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 08:18, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] other languages

At Jules Bordet you ask, "The English article should link to English external pages. Those links should go in the appropriate foreign language Wikipedia. (is this correct?))" I'd say not. There will be times we should link to a non-English source (but English language sources should be preferred). Sometimes, for example, I've used German or French webpages for information, and if a webpage is a source, it ought to be cited. I completely agree with you removing the two links you did, but because they really have no useful information about Bordet, rather than because they're in Spanish...-- Nunh-huh 23:10, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, of course it's just my opinion, but then... you asked for it<G>... - Nunh-huh 23:22, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You told me exactly what I wanted to know, thanks! =o) - Eisnel 00:13, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Lin Newborn

Thanks for the great job on Lin Newborn. Architeuthis 00:23, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your nice note re: Lin Newborn. And I really like the WikiGnome concept! In time I hope to start calling myself one as well. =o) - Eisnel 07:15, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] TV Naming conventions.

At some point in the past you expressed an opinion on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). I have instigated a new poll on that page. I am hoping that this poll will properly allow all users who have an interest in the subject to express their views fairly before we come to a consensus. I have scrapped the poll that was previously in place on that page because I believe that it was part of an unfair procedure that was going against the majority view. I am appealing to all users who contribute to that page to approve my actions. I would appreciate it if you could take the time and trouble to read the page carefully and express an opinion and vote as you see fit. Mintguy (T) 16:42, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Golden ratio

neat graphic, dude, it pleases my aesthetic sensibilities. Ground 17:01, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I have a hard time understanding the equations without the help of colorful graphics. =o) Eisnel 22:33, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

People are doing a lot of work to improve the Golden ratio article. Your line segment graphic illustrates the ratio wonderfully. Thanks for creating and contributing it. If I might suggest a tweak, consider extending your color scheme to the labels: a blue, b red, a+b green. Just a thought. Finell (Talk) 09:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for the compliment. It was a long time ago that I made that, I hope I can still find the Freehand file on my computer. If I get time I'll try to tweak the color scheme, but lately I haven't had the time to do very much Wikipedia contributing. -Eisnel 19:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current events

Eisnel, I noticed that you took "current" off the Tucson, Arizona article as a descriptor for Richard Carmona being Surgeon General. I don't have a problem with current information on Wikipedia and actually think it's one of its benefits vs. printed encyclopedia: We can change the information when it's out of date. If you feel strongly about retaining that edit, I'm wondering if you've any good ideas on how to indicate when he was surgeon general. I think it's informative to know that he wasn't in office during the seventies, but was appointed in the 2000's (without having to read his article, of course). --ABQCat 23:23, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, I don't really feel strongly about it. A while back I read that articles on Wikipedia should be written in a manner that makes them as timeless as possible, so that it's not a maintenance nightmare to update things when they change. Of course, like you said, there are plenty of places where being current is advantageous: having the name of the current US President on the US President page is great! And we know that someone will change the name of the President the moment the office changes hands. But I thought it unlikely that when Richard Carmona left his office someone would actually come to the Tucson page to update it in any timely manner; I don't think anyone changing the dates on the Richard Carmona page would really say to themselves "Ooh, I'd better stop by the Tucson page while I'm at it." =o)

So I figured: 1: Well, it's not crucial to let people know that he's the current Surgeon General, just that he's a Surgeon General. 2: I doubt anyone would think to update this when he leaves office. 3: None of the other names indicate whether they are current or former (would it be similarly important to know that John Denver is no longer alive?). 4: If anyone really wants to know more then they can click on Carmona's article. So I guess that my points #1 and #4 disagree with one you made; I don't think it's germane to an understanding of Tucson to know when Richard Carmona was Surgeon General, and if anyone wants to know more they can easily click on the link and find out. But, as I said before, I don't feel strongly about it, I just felt that it wasn't necesary, and removing it made the article just a little bit more timeless. I do agree that an advantage of Wikipedia is its ability to stay extremely up to date, but it still serves us well to be timeless when and where reasonable, especially on articles that one wouldn't normally think to update when an event occurs. But if you want to put it back, you'll find no objection from me.

BTW, it's good to meet a fellow Tucsonan. I stop by the article occasionally out of home sickness, since I was born and raised there. And I can identify with what you said about sewage, I lived in Flowing Wells for a few years, and considered it a good night when the sewer stench wasn't overpowered by the tallow stench. =o) - Eisnel 23:56, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

[edit] Creation vs evolution debate

Hey, thanks for the excellent addition to the links and the wikification. I don't suppose you'd care to drop by the page and do a bit more substantive work? It needs as many clued-up editors as it can get. It doesn't matter what your views are: I'm pro-science and pro-evolution but I'm not for a biased article either way. I'm going to be trying to replace most of the article's assertions with sourced claims that the "debaters" actually make.

BTW, I hope that given time you'll change your mind about schools. Supermarkets come and go -- if they became as important a part of their community as schools, I'd vote for them to be included too. Still, my criterion for inclusion is quite simple: is it possible a reader would put this name into the search box, and if they did, what would they expect to find? If the answer truly is "nothing" then there should be no article. But I think if I looked into an online encyclopaedia that claimed to contain (or try to contain) "all human knowledge", I'd be surprised not to find schools in there. YMMV.Dr Zen 08:05, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. I agree that the Creation vs evolution article needs a good bit of cleanup and has parts that could certainly be worded better. I'll admit I was afraid to touch it because it's a controversial issue, and I suspect that many of the people who have it on their watch list might tend toward knee-jerk reverting of any large edits. But it does need changes, so I hope enough people can be bold enough to make it a nice article. I'll try to make it a point to watch the discussion page, and maybe build up my courage and try some refactoring. =o) BTW, I am very much pro-science and pro-evolution, and like you I take great pride in being an unbiased Wikipedia editor (I'm not so biased outside of Wikipedia... or even on the Wikipedia Talk pages).

Regarding schools, I might change my view over time, and it's certainly a viewpoint that I haven't thought about much, but here's where I stand presently: A school certainly has much more redeeming social value than a supermarket, and it's much more highly revered, but I just don't feel that individual schools are notable in-and-of themselves. There are lots of schools out there, many of them also come and go, and there's really nothing notable to say about a vast majority of them. Sure, you could give stats about them, but you can give stats about many things that aren't notable or encyclopedic. Although schools teach knowledge, I don't think that having a directory of all schools is an important part of capturing "all human knowledge" (which I don't feel is the same as capturing "all data"). Having every school is the job of a directory. You mention this as a criterion: "is it possible a reader would put this name into the search box, and if they did, what would they expect to find?" When it comes to some "John Adams Elementary School in Springfield", the only search box that I think a user would type that into would be a telephone directory's search engine. I think in an encyclopedia, people exploring human knowledge would want to know: "what is an elementary school", "why do we have elementary schools", and "what do elementary schools teach?". At the same time, I feel sorta bad about that, because I realize that some Wikipedian's might aspire to catalogue every school — just like some have put so much time into cataloguing every city — which does seem like a noble endeavor... but is it an encyclopedic endeavor? I fear that it sets a bad precident, and soon it will be hard to explain to people why we don't allow them to catalogue every bank or police station, or even (as an extreme example) every person. Just my two cents. UPDATE: I really should add that this is a view I haven't thought about a whole lot, and my mind can be changed. You have some pretty good arguments on your page in support of including schools. I will continue to dwell on this issue. (Eisnel 09:17, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC))

I think it's pretty cool that you recognized me both from the evolution page and from the VfD discussion (even though it's the only time I've been to VfD in months). =o) BTW, what does YMMV mean? Happy Wikiying! - Eisnel 08:59, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful replies on both questions. I look forward to seeing you on the creation vs evolution page. I agree that there's no need to avoid bias on talk pages, so long as you're clear that you are listening to the other side too and, one hopes, that your bias is not doing the editing for you. The subject area is very much in the grip of POV pushers -- which contentious area isn't? -- but they are at least amenable to discussion (mostly -- the worst offender is actually on the science side, I'm sad to say!).

I think your argument on schools is perfectly valid. I'm not sure we should worry so much about what we "allow" though. People should contribute what they feel like contributing is my view. But, as I said, your view is different, not wrong. Still, I'm glad you're thinking about it and I'm glad to have a civil discussion on this subject with a thoughtful editor.

YMMV is interwebnet speak: "your mileage may vary". It means, roughly, you may have a different view on that. I'm not sure where exactly it comes from but it basically has the idea that I know you might have a different view and I'm not trying to be categorical about it. Dr Zen 09:24, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Buys-Ballot's law

Hi Eisnel,
You wrote the article on Buys-Ballot's law. I wrote the current article on the coriolis effect, and in that article I give a general treatment of the coriolis effect, the coriolis effect as it is incorporated in meteorology.

Your treatment of the coriolis effect is incomplete, but whether the article on Buys-Ballots law should be altered accordingly is not a straightforward matter. The coriolis effect is quite wonderful physics but it takes quite some explaining.

The main difference is that the coriolis effect in meteorology occurs for all directions of motion, not just for motion that starts out as north-south (or south-north) motion. --Cleon Teunissen | Talk 15:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pope Benedict's Page

Heya. I just wanted to say thanks for fighting off all the vandals on Pope Benedict's page. Great job! Skybum 17:53, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks! I'm just one of many. At any given time there's always at least one person who's dominating the history page by doing reverts, it just so happens that at the moment it's me. I'm sure someone else will come along in a few minutes at take over that task, which is good because I need to go eat lunch! =o) -Eisnel 17:56, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pope template

There is a disagreement over the form of template to be used for popes. One user designed what I think was an extremely clean, visually attractive layout. One or two others replaced it with the standard and IMHO decidedly inferior version. IMHO we should be using the new version as a replacement standard, not using the inferior standard as the one to use. I have asked people to vote on the issue on Template talk:Infobox pope. Your opinions would be welcomed. FearÉIREANN 22:57, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Act of Accord -- 1960 or 1961?

Hey Eisnel! I've been working on the Wars of the Roses page lately since I am doing some research for university. I recently added the date for the Act of Accord as 1461, which you corrected to 1460. You seem to be quite right -- I just copied the date from the Wikipedia article about the Act of Accord: it says 1461 there... If you're really sure it was 1460, we should correct it there as well, shouldn't we? Anyone more infos? -- Nicapicella, 26/Apr/05

• Heya Nicapicella. I changed it to 1460 on the Act of Accord article at the same time that I made the change to the Wars of the Roses article (I wonder if it needs to be changed anywhere else?). I did a Google search, and every date I found for the Act of Accord is in 1460; more specifically, October 1460. I couldn't find consensus regarding which day in October it occured; some sites said the 10th, some had it nearer the end of the month. The 1461 date set off alarm bells in my head when I realized that Richard died at the very end of 1460. However, I'm certainly not an expert in this area, and I haven't checked any offline resources, such as a printed encyclopedia. So I can't claim to be 100% sure about this. If, in your research, you find an authoritative exact date, that would be great! I might also put these comments on the Act of Accord talk page to see if anyone else can help figure this out. -Eisnel 22:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Wheel of Time Merge

Since you commented positively on this merge, I wanted to let you know that Lowellian (talk) has reverted all the articles involved in the merge. Please join the discussion and see if we can all come to an agreement. This note is to alert you -- I hope that future discussion of this can mostly take place at talk:The Wheel of Time#Book Merge. I will be following that page. DES 16:27, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Minneapolis meetup

Hello Eisnel. I'm contacting you since you are listed at Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Minnesota. I'm going to be at a conference in Minneapolis and am planning a Wikipedia meetup for October 8. If you are near Minneapolis at that time, please see Wikipedia:Meetup/Minneapolis. Angela. 20:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conventions for television shows (again)

I saw that you were active in the first vote for naming conventions of television program(mes). Well it has raised it's ugly head again and I would appreciate any comments you have to make about my new proposal for naming television shows. Please leave comments here. Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 21:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Kalki Avatara statue.jpg listed for deletion

dbenbenn | talk 22:58, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minnesota meetup

A meetup of Wikipedians in Minnesota is proposed: please stop by the discussion page if interested. Jonathunder 23:00, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Reminder: Meetup October 29, one o'clock, Mall of America. Jonathunder 15:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tae Jitsu

Hello, I just wanted to let you know that the Tae Jitsu article you created has been nominated for deleteion (see:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tae Jitsu). You might want to go and take a look. 141.154.151.37 21:22, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned non-free image (Image:X Prize logo stars small.jpg)

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[edit] Minnesota Meetup

Jel 21:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)