User talk:Gene Nygaard/2005Jul-2006Jan

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[edit] Major cities in North Dakota

I'd like it if you'd place a vote at CFD [1]. I've made significant improvements to the implementation of the category, and have incorporated the "Largest cities" section of Template:North Dakota as a guideline for what constitutes "Major". --Alexwcovington (talk) 05:42, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

  • Just to point out... you've made a comment but haven't actually voted yet. It's important that you cast a vote to keep the debate open. --Alexwcovington (talk) 00:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pluto question

Hi, sorry to bother you, but you seem like you might know this. I realize this might sound silly, but I am trying to find out what the sun might look like to an observer on Pluto. Bigger than the other stars, sure, but would there be "daylight" way out there? Would there be much difference between day and night there?

Any thoughts, if you don't mind? Thanks much in advance. Ensiform 04:52, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Ensiform 01:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Null edits

Thanks! That had me very puzzled. I'd seen comments around about null edits but not understood what they were. I've fixed that CfD now. -Splash 00:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AT rifle

In accordance with your recent vote on the AT gun, I encourage you to move your account to User:Gene Newtown. Or perhaps you could propose some other idea at the respective talk page? Cheers, Halibutt 13:06, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My signature

You will immediately re-read Wikipedia:No personal attacks, and withdraw the one you made from my talk page. ~~~~ 18:41, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Edits at -Ril-

I noticed some of your comments on his page, and I decided to revert them. However, I do agree with you, the man needs to change his signature. He has been warned by several other users of this (including myself) but refuses to cooperate. He's just as wrong as you are - but I'd advise you not to vandalize other peoples pages in the future, please. Dbraceyrules 20:29, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] support of infobox format

I'm not clear on why you're supporting the clearly inferior infobox format. If we use a list-based specifications template, the whole point is that it can easily be expanded in the future without adversely affecting older articles - in fact, they'd be updated to the new format.

What is your concern with our current implementation of the list format, and why have you not actually raised any of them with the project? Instead of supporting the infobox and keeping them to yourself, why not support the list, explain your current issues, and get those changes considered and quite probably implemented? eric ✈ 04:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

  1. I don't see why you think there'd be any more difficulty in expanding an infobox than in expanding a list.
  2. You don't use the advantages lists might have.
  3. I like my information in columns. I don't care if it is an infobox covering part of the right of the page at the top, one going across the whole page at the bottom, with lines or without lines, with colors or without colors. I mostly just like the columns. Gene Nygaard 14:24, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm awaiting your reply at the wikiproject talk page. In particular, you still haven't addressed what the 'advantages' are of a list. eric ✈ 17:38, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why replace - (hyphen) with mdash ?

I was just wondering why ?

It seems like - is much easier to read while editing pages than mdash, which takes up far more space.

Let me know if there is some kind of method to this.

Re: AT-3 Sagger, AT-6 Spiral

Thanks.

Megapixie 13:07, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

There is some guidance on em dashes and en dashes at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) and at the dash article. Then if you want to discuss particular examples, I'll try to explain how it looks to me. I imagine there will always be some cases where there is disagreement about what is the best way to do it. In those particular articles, I think dashes were overdone in any case. In some cases, it is better to replace them with a comma or semicolon or to make two sentences. Gene Nygaard 13:15, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
You live, you learn. Some days you learn more than others. Though I still think the choice of markup is terrible. -- and --- make much better choices for en and em. Anyway — be seeing you. Megapixie 14:16, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hawker-Siddeley Hawk

In an editorial comment, you wondered if Hawker-Siddeley Hawk shouldn't be just Hawk. A little thought about the fact that initial letter capitalization is turned on in these English Wikipedia titles should tell you one primary reason why this wouldn't work, without even looking at the Hawk article. Gene Nygaard 12:23, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I didn't like the patronising tone, but you're a non-native English speaker, so I'll let that go. When you leave school you'll find a hard and harsh world out there, and you can't go around throwing up temper tantrums; unless you're independently wealthy or expect to never depend on anyone else, ever.

Hawker-Siddeley Hawk is an anachronism. The article is about all models of what is now the BAE Systems Hawk. [2] BAE Systems refers to it as the 'Hawk'. [3]

The article itself initially describes the aircraft as the BAE Hawk, which is neither fish nor flesh; it should either be BAe Hawk or BAE Systems Hawk. I can understand the Hawker Hunter and so forth being so-called, but the Hawk is an ongoing product. Compare also with the articles on A4 Skyhawk and F-16 Fighting Falcon, which avoid this problem.

Similarly, the Harrier is problematic. Currently Wikipedia has articles on the BAE Sea Harrier, which is identified in its text as the BAE Systems Harrier FA2, the RAF Harrier II and AV-8 Harrier II, which are identified in their texts as the Harrier GR and Harrier II respectively.-Ashley Pomeroy 13:19, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Didn't even look at the Hawk article, did you, since you didn't even address the issue I raised?
I don't much care about your other arguments, unless and until you propose a name change I which case I may enter the fray. I was merely addressing the point you made in your edit summary.
BTW, I am a "native English speaker" and I "left school" when you were a baby. Gene Nygaard 15:09, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Kuril Islands dispute

Thanks for your interest in the ongoing discussion and voting. Due to the ongoing discussion, several other changes were also proposed. Your current oppose vote will be construed as opposing all suggested proposals. —Tokek 20:58, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] kb ppanc

Dear Gene, please be so kind as to finally reply to my questions and provide sources for your statements. Erasing the dispute tag will not end the dispute itself. Revert wars lead to nowhere and I really believe that there are some arguments behind your statements. However, so far you provided none... Halibutt 22:21, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Also, please be so kind as to assume good faith. I'm not disputing the factual accuracy of your statements to make you nervous, you know. Halibutt
Gene, please, I beg you. Can't you simply stop this revert war and at least try to address my questions and plea for sources? I always thought you're a sensible contributor and a person able to discuss things rather than violate the rules of wikipedia and childishly and blindly revert pages to prove some point. Don't tell me I was wrong... Halibutt 14:45, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
Do you have any sources to add or could we please remove that tag? Halibutt 04:27, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing templates with links

I noticed that every single article in the category had the same table it in, which doesn't make much sense to me since most of the time it wasn't even applicable. I put the table on its own page and had not seen it discussed, though one of the articles did have an attention tag on it. You can change it back to the way it was, I don't mind that much. A tiny amount of text followed by an enormous, nearly irrelevant table didn't seem very fitting, and the table itself was formatted in an unintuitive way.

[edit] Stone (weight)

Thanks for your attention to this article, Gene. I would maintain, though, that the "inconsistency" was in the wording rather than the facts, insomuch as the Imperial system of weights and measures is "former" (i.e. no longer official in the UK, Ireland, and Commonwealth), even though the stone remains in popular use. I hope my rewording of the article will have made this a little clearer. -- Picapica 00:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to handle contributions by user:69.164.70.243

I really have a hard time following up his contributions. I'm sure there may be much of value there, but I have a really hard time filtering out what is valuable, and what is, at best, original research. So I guess the easiest thing is simply to revert everything. But it is a lot of work. How do you suggest one handles this? -- Egil 14:21, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I take it this has to do with ancient weights and measures and the pages split off from it and medieval weights and measures. Any others? I haven't really followed that, just noticed some activity with the vague idea that eventually we'd have to go in and do some cleanup work on it. I think you hit the nail on the head, but I haven't looked in detail at many of these changes. Are most of the recent ones by this contributor? I'll watch it for a while now, and take a look at hte pages as they stand now.and see if I have any better ideas. Gene Nygaard 15:39, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I've given up, and posted this request: Wikipedia:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance#Pseudoscientific_attack. -- Egil 14:47, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
I noticed your removal of some of this at mile, and hadn't noticed any subsequent change back. I'll look at that and see if I can help out. Gene Nygaard 15:00, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Burninate

Dear Gene,

I am a reasonable man. If presented with a well thought argument as to why burninate does not belong in the "Fire and Culture" section of the Fire article, I will allow its permanent excision. However, if you simply remove it without discussion and explanation, then I have no choice but to return it to the article.

The course of action to be taken by both of us is entirely in your command.--ttogreh 18:05, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient weights and measures

rktect8/8/05
I'm curious Gene, why are you reverting the addition of references
to ancient weights and measures?
I'll ask you the same question as Egil
What's wrong with discussing things on the discussion page?
If you don't understand why I'm doing something why not ask?

[edit] "Sjømil" -- I beg to differ

In Norwegian, "sjømil" is always an Ole Rømer mile. "Kvartmil" is 1/4 sjømil, i.e. for practical purposes the same as a British (and later, international) Nautical mile. A "nautisk mil" is a Nautical mile. Talk to any sailor born in the first half of the 20th century - he will use the term "kvartmil", not "nautisk mil". See http://www.baatplassen.no/i/lofiversion/index.php/t14210.html (contains a quote on the subject from "Båtførerprøven", I'm sure I can dig up more refs if you like). If someone uses "sjømil" for a nautical mile, that would be wrong usage (probably by a landcrab). -- Egil 11:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Does this boat really go 120 knots or so? [4]
Is Lofoten over 400 1,600 nautical miles from the Arctic Circle? [5]
Altavista search "sjømil"[6] 8760 hits
nn:Mil: [[Sjømil]] (nautisk mil)
nn:1941: * 27. mai - Det tyske slagskipet Bismarck vert senka av engelske styrkar 500 sjømil vest av Brest i Frankrike.
Einar Haugen, Norwegian-English Dictionary, 2nd printing 1967:
  • sjø/mil ~et, pl - geographical mile, nautical mile.
You can tweak it, but any claim that "sjømil" is not used for the international nautical mile is nonsense. The term may not be used much in current usage, but when it is used in any nonhistorical context, it is not likely any of the four-minute-of-arc varieties of a mile.
BTW, those geographical miles were not strictly limited to nautical contexts. Somewhere, I have a copy of a map of the Randsfjord area that someone sent me from a book published in the 1930s, in which the scale in th elegend is or at least includes the "geografisk mil". Gene Nygaard 12:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Is this one correct in English? M/S Estonia
compare no:MF Estonia
  • "Den 28. september 1994 mellom kl. 00.55 og 01.50 (UTC+2) havarerte skipet med 989 mennesker ombord på posisjonen 59°23'N 21°42'E, 22 sjømil i 157° sørsørøst for den lille finske øya Utö."
Gene Nygaard 13:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Looks fine. I would have written "from the island of Utö", since "ö" in fact means island (so at least for a Scandinavian, the above would read island-island). And perhaps indicated the direction as "SSE"?
Anyway, thanks for the above marvelous example: If you follow the above link of "no:sjømil" in the Norwegian Wikipedia, you'll notice it says:
En sjømil er en måleenhet for lengde som er lik fire nautiske mil, altså 7 408 meter. Tidligere ble nautisk mil også kalt kvartmil fordi en nautisk mil er en kvart av en sjømil.
This is my point exactly. (It says a sjømil is exactly the same as four nautical miles). The usage in the article no:M/S Estonia is wholly incorrect (albeit regretfully common), it should have been no:nautisk mil.
Another thing, the article in question is about historic units. A century ago, or more, the current sjømil confusion was not there.
With regards to the "geografisk mil", it is interesting that you mention it. In Norway, "geografisk mil" for distances over land is now totally extinct, but it was obviously more commonly used before. But not that common, an unqualified "mil", and also "landmil", would always be 10km (or the pre-metric version). -- Egil 15:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
PS: In fixing the error in the no:M/S Estonia article, I noticed only one other wrong usage of sjømil. All other references I could find in the Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia was to no:nautisk mil. -- Egil¨
No, it's not "wrong". It's just wishful thinking on your part, to think that it wouldn't be used for a sea mile. It often is. Change it because sjømil is ambiguous in Norwegian, while nautisk mil is a neologism always applying to a one-minute-of-arc mile, usually the 1.852 km variety.
Of course, the sea mile as a geographical mile usually wasn't "exactly four nautical miles". That's a bigger error in the no: encyclopedia, and one that had the correct information in medieval weights and measures—it was usually based on the equatorial circumference—though I had to correct the number there, since that makes it about 7.421 km, rather than the 7.408 km exactly (the number contained in the bokmål entry too) for 4 international nautical miles, or about 7.412 km for the British Admiralty miles, or 7.4130 km for 4 of the old U.S. nautical miles, etc. Gene Nygaard 23:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I believe we are probably in agreement, but we talk about different things. You claim that sjømil is being used for nautical mil. I don't dispute that, but what I say is that this usage is incorrect. Surely, an encyclopedia should describe correct usage. There is nothing wrong with mentioning the incorrect usage, especially if it is common, as long as it is labelled as such.
Wrt: references: I would not claim an English/Norwegian dictionary as a reference. What I dug up:
a. The text for "Båtførerprøven" (an official license, currently not compulsory, for driving a pleasure boat), 7422 m, ref above.
b. The online encyclopedia Caplex, says 4 nautical miles, 7408 m, http://www.caplex.net/web/artikkel/artliste.asp?funk=SOK&soketekst=sj%F8mil&S%F8k.x=0&S%F8k.y=0&S%F8k=S%F8k
c. The encyclopedia Aschehoug og Gyldendal, Store norske leksikon, 1983, says 4 kvartmil, 7408 m.
d. The encyclopedia Norsk Konversasjonsleksikon, Kringla Heimsins, 1933, says just 4 kvartmil = 4 nautiske mil, and referred to nautiske mil.
e. Interestingly, looking up nautiske mil, Kringla Heimsins of course says it is 1852 m. But, it also mentions that by a law of June 29, 1923, the term nautiske mil is the only legal unit for allowed for a ship's journal and other nautical documents, making the previously used kvartmil illegal.
My conclusion so far, is that most probably the sjømil was a geographic mile to begin with. It would seem highly probable that it was by the definition of the Ole Rømer mile, since Norway is in a union with Denmark at the time, but I would have to dig further to find good references. Anyway, it gradually was replaced by the nautical mile, which was called kvartmil (quarter mile). Perhaps, as a consequence, the sjømil became redefined as 4 nautical mile. Anyway, confusion could easily arise in this important area, hence the law that fixed the term nautisk mil, for which there is no confusion.
What I do know, is that houndred years ago the commonly used term was kvartmil, identical to a nautical mile.
What I also know, is that in 2005, the only correct term (even by law) is nautisk mil. I also know that there is much incorrect usage of sjømil around. This may be influenced by the Danish sømil and the German Seemeile, which both mean nautical mile, as far as I can tell. So if you want to add a sentence about this incorrect usage, thats fine. But the word sjømil in Norwegian certainly is obsolete. -- Egil 08:37, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
The encyclopedia www.storenorskeleksikon.no (subscription only) has 1875 as the cutoff. From that year, sjømil was 7408 m, and kvartmil was 1852 m. Before this, sjømil was 7420 m, and exactly the same as a geografisk mil. -- Egil 13:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Again, that backs up what I said; sjømil is ambiguous, without an official definition. Nautisk mil is a precisely defined neologism. The term "sea mile" is also used in English, like the Danish and German terms. The use of sjømil in Norwegian may be deprecated by some, but not pushed by anybody with enough authority to eliminate its use; and the modern as opposed to historical use is that synonym of nautisk mil.
That last bit doesn't seem credible to me. It may have become 4 nautical miles of some variety shorter than one-fourth of the equatorial geographical mile, but I'd be surprised if it were defined as 1852 m before the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference of 1929. It is possible, but it doesn't seem likely. Gene Nygaard 13:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Your point about the defintion of the nautical mile is taken, and very interesting. In fact, once one goes into details, things get more complex. Note that since Norway was one of the pioneers of the international metric system, you should not rule out that Norway would work towards, and adopt as national standard, a meter based definition before it became internationaly adopted. This obviously needs to be pursued further. Trying to go beyond the simplified explanations in the encyclopedias, at this point, for the Norwegian sjømil, I have:
  • Between 1683 untill 1824, it was defined as 12,000 (Danish) alen, i.e. an Ole Rømer geographic mile.
    • I think the relationship between that mile and the alen was always a measured quantity, though at some time the sea mile might have been redefined as slightly different from the equatorial geographic mile, to become 12,000 alen exactly. That's more like the fairly common use of the "2,000 yard" approximation of an English nautical mile. It didn't go the other way; the alen was never defined in terms of the geographical mile. Gene Nygaard 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
  • In 1824, Norway made their own standard measure of length, defining a Norwegian fot as 12/38 of the length of a pendulum of a period of 1 second. What the practical implications for the sjømil were, I do not yet know.

[7]

    • At some point the conventional, and at least quasi-official definitions if not the primary standards, became 627.7 mm for the Danish alen and 627.48 mm for the Norwegian alen. This could have happened before adoption of the metric system (1907 in Denmark, much earlier in Norway); the U.S. yard has been defined in terms of the meter since 1893 (definition modified to worldwide standard in 1959), for example, 14 years before Denmark went metric. Gene Nygaard 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
  • At some stage, after Norway had adopted the meter convention in 1875 (they were in fact one of the 12 members of the comittee), and had become fully metric in 1887, the sjømil was instead defined by a multiple of the meter. Again, exact details need to be investigated.
  • The sjømil became obsolete as an official measure, and was replaced by nautisk mil, from June 29, 1923.
A redefinition in terms of meters before 1929 would not surprise me at all; it is only the choice of the exact number 1852 m which would surprise me. Note that the most logical redefinition would coordinate the different Earth-based measurements, by making both of them bear the same relationship to the actual dimensions of the Earth. To accomplish that, the nautical mile would be defined so that 1 km = 0.54 nmi. The reciprocal of that is 1 nmi = 1.851851851851... km. Gene Nygaard 14:05, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Relevant to the pre-1929 definition, see da:Dansk sømil (separate from da:sømil):
  • Dansk sømil var i søfarten en længdeenhed på 1.851,11 m.
  • En dansk sømil skal ikke forveksles med en International sømil på 1.852 m, selvom forskellen er på under 1 meter.
Gene Nygaard 14:37, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
With regards to the liguistic issue, and the authority of the Norwegian language, may I remind you that although any person, journalist or whatever, is of course totally free to adopt anything he likes and call it Norwegian language, the language has indeed an official definition. This definition must be followed in all schools, and in all official documents. The institution governing this is Norsk Språkråd. The Bokmålsordliste, which follow this official standard, has in the 2001 edition the following definition for sjømil:
sjømil -a el -en - -ene 4 nautiske mil, 7408 m
It really does not get more official that that. -- Egil 09:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
That is official enough to establish the existence of one definition, in one of the two Norwegian languages which spell it that way. Without any explicit statement, it is not in any way official enough to rule out any other definitions. After all, the purpose of this word list is to standardize spelling, not to define words. They don't need to list all the variants in meaning for that purpose. Gene Nygaard 13:32, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
This now seems to have ended up in a discussion just for the sake of the discussion. Undoubtedly, nynorsk has the same definition. I can look up the exact wording for you, if you promise it will help.
But secondly, I have gone to the trouble of looking up a good number of different, proper, reliable sources that says a Norwegian sjømil today is 7408 m. I have found no reliable source whatsoever claiming something else. (I would have told you if I did). So which is it:
  1. All these sources are spreading misinformation, they do not know what they are talking about, and a Norwegian sjømil is 1852 m.
  2. A Norwegian sjømil is by definition 7408 m. Using it for 1852 m is wrong. (And not that common: We have reviewed wikipeda.no and found 2 cases. Going through aftenposten.no I could only find 2, perhaps 3 cases. In one, they claimed the ship "John R" had drifted 11 sjømil. There were 101 hits for nautisk[e] mil.)
  3. The Norwegian unit of measure sjømil can mean either 1852 m or 7408 m. (In which case most people would claim it was worthless as a unit of measure).
  4. Something else.
-- Egil 14:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Re checking Wikipedia—I think you said you checked only no: and not nn:. See, for example, nn:Hav (compare HMS Challenger (1858)). Also, I'd guess that no:Radar is another, but vague enough it might be hard to prove. Gene Nygaard 15:12, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming that you cannot find wrong usage of sjømil. You can find that by the bucket. My claim is that this is plain wrong (and misleading) usage of the word. Just like spelling: Even if you can find ten thousand cases of a particular misspelling of a word on Google, this does not make that particular misspelling correct. It just makes it common. -- Egil 15:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
The Nynorsk ordliste from 2002 does not have sjømil at all. It mentions nautisk mil. -- Egil 20:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
See the ordbøker search here [8]
Note specifically the listing of both the 7420 m and 7408 m, but especially the second definition in the nynorsk listing:
  • 2 nautisk mil
Gene Nygaard 21:06, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The exact definition of the sjømil

I'll continue here, the indentation above gets a bit complicated.

Wrt the Danish sømil, do keep in mind that after 1824, the Norwegian system of measurement went seperate ways from Danmark. (There were of course political reasons behind this). So after 1824, I'm pretty sure Norway would not adopt any changes that came from Denmark, but instead participate in international efforts. (Sweden tried to persuade Norway to adopt the Swedish system, but in vain. Which was just as well, the Swedish decimal inch was not a brilliant idea at all).

But I have noted your skepticism wrt. the sjømil at various stages, which seems well founded, and I will try to find time to locate sources that go beyond the simple explanation offered by the encyclopedias. -- Egil 15:22, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comma or Apostrphe as thousands separator?

In the article gold as an investment, you have changed the thousands separator from an apostrophe to a comma. Within Europe this will create confusion, because some countries us the comma instead of the decimal point. France is one culprit. Is there any guidance from Wikipedia itself?

Watercolour 20:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Getting pissed off

I answered your question at User talk:Robbot - Andre Engels 08:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject on North Dakota?

Would you be interested in a WikiProject on North Dakota? --AlexWCovington (talk) 13:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bees as livestock?

I my county they are not technically livestock, which is generally prohibited in suburban environments. Note also that one does not raise bees on a ranch (even if that is the only economic activity), but rather on a farm. Just some trivia that I thought you might find amusing. Best wishes, Leonard G. 21:26, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what you are talking about. Maybe Category:Beekeeping being in Category:Livestock? It wasn't me who put it there. Gene Nygaard 21:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I was going by the edit tag on the edit of 17:02, 8 August 2005 in the history - Leonard G. 01:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
What I did there, of course, was to remove Livestock from the Africanized bee article; and I agree, that category shouldn't be reinstated even if the Beekeeping category is moved from being a subcategory of Livestock into the parent categories of Livestock, Agriculture and Domestic animals. Maybe you should make those moves? Gene Nygaard 01:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category name changes

Just to let you know that you are on my list for screwing up the name changes a while ago, when Category:Schools established in the 1600s were changed to things like Category:Schools established in the 20th century. I have just fixed your screwup on one of them at Carnegie Mellon University. Gene Nygaard 01:11, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

First off, I would like to ask you to please re-read WP:CIVIL. I am one of the very few people who do all the grunt work of moving the categories, especially the large ones, and I would like you to know, I did remember your comment on that particular discussion. As such I researched what was considered the 19th century and 20th century, and it clearly states on 20th century that the dates are from 1901-2000. On that particular article it had two dates, 1900 and 1912, which clearly wasn't 1600. Some of them were not founded as schools, and I did my best to categorize them appropriately. Rather than leaving me a rude comment about me being on your list, you could have just corrected the error, and informed me nicely about the mistake. Thank you for pointing out my error, and I invite you to participate in such mass moves in the future. ∞Who?¿? 01:22, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I didn't favor that silliness, precisely because of that offset and because of the incongruity between century names and the first two digits of 99 of the 100 years in that century. That's why I didn't participate in the move, but specifically pointed out the problem, something which you admit you were in fact made aware of. That, of course, is but one of several. I never looked at all of them, and never intended to do so. Instead, I found some of them by searching by the years. And neither you nor anybody else caught any of them that I noticed (you might have found some that I hadn't checked). I changed Middlebury College a while ago, for example. Gene Nygaard 01:32, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Correction. Somebody else did catch one. You (Who) got Downing College, Cambridge wrong on 6 July, but Splash (probably not a participant at CfD) fixed it on 23 July. Gene Nygaard 01:48, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
For the record, in addition to those mentioned above, I have now also changed University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Takushoku University, Montana Tech of The University of Montana, and Asheville School. I have also added the appropriate category to previously uncategorized University of Birmingham. You should have solicited help from those who favored the change. Gene Nygaard 01:54, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
It might help you both to know that, a while ago I started at the earliest dates checking this problem (as I said I would) but forgot to carry on once I got to 'E' in the 19th Century. (And yes, I do play over at CfD.) -Splash 02:14, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Although it may not seem like it, I remember checking quite a few of them, trying to get the correct year. IT is just difficult when there are so many. I try to fix errors and add cat's to orphaned ones, if I can find them. I would expect mistakes from anyone doing these, when there are so many. I do try my best to not make any mistakes and proper categorize them. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 02:29, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category: Chicken breeds and category:Junglefowls

I created category: category:Junglefowls as is instead of Gallus because it is the common english names for most species of the genus, the chicken being an exception. Its true scope is still to include all species of genus Gallus, as per the whiole structure of category:Birds by classification, which is meant to remove individual bird articles and bird groups from the overly large category:birds.

While it might not be ideal (I don't think there would have been objections if I had named the cat category:gallus), it still makes the most sense to move category:Chicken breeds down into the genus it belongs to rather than leaving it in category:Galliformes. Aditionnally, it follows the guidelines of Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories "use only the most specific category". Circeus 19:41, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

A major problem is that "fowl" is one of those collective nouns that is plural in construction and usually doesn't add an "s" in English. If a common name is used rather than a scientific name, it should be Category:Junglefowl (the same is true of your Category:Peafowls and Category:Spurfowls).
Of course, maybe I'm wrong about this and it really is like "fish" and "fishes" in English, with the "-es" form used when different species are involved.
The problem is that categories aren't as easy to rename as articles, an we might have to take it to CfD. Can you fix it without that, and if not will you take it to CfD, or do I have to?
Maybe continuing this on the cat:Junglefowls talk page where I've already mentioned this might get the opinions of other people on this point. Gene Nygaard 20:05, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
AFAIK, if it is truely a matter of grammar, than it falls under the premise of speedy renaming, though I have doubts. I can probably ask an admin directly to rename it to Gallus, since I'm the creator, if you'd prefer that for consistency? My rule of thumb is to use the english only if all species in the genus and none in other genera bear the name, though there are often exceptions or very troublesome families and orders. I had to do some heavy merging when wading through category:ardeidae. Circeus 20:22, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
I'm waiting for your answer on my proposal for category:gallus before I request a renaming. Circeus 15:41, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rktect's additions

Rktect has accused me of vandalizing his edits. So I've started collecting evidence that the consensus on his material is to be removed. Please see [9], I'd appreaciate feedback or information I'm missing. -- < drini | ∂drini > 21:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Would you consider Rktect's latest partial revert of Khet as a violation of the 3RR? Zoe 07:20, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

OK, after discussion with Drini, I have blocked Rktect for 24 hours for violating 3RR despite being warned. Zoe 07:45, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RNEP

you should archive your talk page. second, removing the sentence explaining what a joule of energy is was harmful to the article. it's difficult to understand the energies involved, especially in that article, without "real world" correlaries. please come up with a way to make that content more clear, or replace the original content. kthx, Avriette 06:48, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

There may be room for some explanation that helps understanding. The one which was there did not. Some of the problems include
  1. The one which drew my attention in the first place, unreasonable precision in expressing the energy with 8 apparently significant digits
  2. A confusing and unexplained question about whether dropping these bombs has something to do with heating water
  3. The starting point was not named for heating water to some ununderstandably high temperature.
  4. The temperature give is ununderstandable, because most people do not have experience in distinguishing temperatures, even if half or double that on an absolute scale (e.g. kelvins or degrees Rankine).
  5. The choice of a "U.S. gallon" of water, units otherwise not relevant to this article, for explaining a calculation whose input parameters were metric.
  6. The choice of those input numbers in the first place: while metric, they were overly precise conversions of English units. This problem still appears in the hypothetical. A more reasonable choice, such as 200 kg traveling at 500 m/s having a kinetic energy of 25 megajoules, would also have avoided that false precision problem in number 1 above.
  7. An unexplained connection, whether the connnection was intended or not, between the high temperature given here, and the high temperature for the melting point of tungsten given shortly thereafter.
There are even more problems than that, but this ought to give you some idea. What was there was definitely worse than nothing along those lines. Gene Nygaard 15:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SI versus other

In regard to you changing the numerical value of the unit eV. While the value from CODATA 2002 is newer than the value from CODATA 1986, the 2002 one is (as far as I have understood) not the one SI uses. Since eV has the special status within SI of "Non-SI units accepted for use with SI" and SI being the overwhelming system used, would it not perhaps be better to use the value from CODATA 1986 as SI does?

Also, since the value is listed under the section "SI and related units" in the Energy-article, it might be misleading to use CODATA 2002 if SI at the moment still prefer CODATA 1986 in regard to eV.

What do you think?

Martin Ulfvik 04:31, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Who is this SI? What makes you think he or she or it prefers an obsolete value? Gene Nygaard 05:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
SI is the abreviation for The International System of Units. It is the system determined by the organization BIPM. They officially determine such things as what a metre, second, kilogram etc. is. SI is the system more or less the whole world (especially science) adopt. Even countries such as USA and UK who still use some non SI units in the form of yard, mile, pound etc. still adopt SI because they have their units defined by SI-units, so if SI changes something, it automatically changes the non SI units.
As far as to why the value from CODATA 1986 is still used could only be a guess on my part. One reason could be that just because a value is listed as 1.60217653(14)×10−19 doesn't mean that the true value has that uncertainty. It just means that the uncertainty listed is in regard to the outcome of the experiment(s) performed. Maybe the result of CODATA 2002 is still under investigation as to whether it can be regarded as truth enough for world standard. Again, that's just me guessing though.
Martin Ulfvik 06:38, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I know what SI is. My point in asking about who it is was that it is a system of units, not a person or a collection of people who make decisions and who "prefer" anything.
Of course, SI is also a system which does not, and never will, include the electronvolt.
The BIPM doesn't "determine" SI, either. It is just the technical group, responsible for day to day operations, the keeping of the standards and handling orders for publications and the web pages and the like. What is in SI and acceptable for use with SI is handled by its sibling organizations, the CIPM with the theoreticians who recommend certain actions, etc., and the CGPM, the actual decision-making organization.
However, the CGPM does not define electronvolts.
The brochure put out by the technicians at BIPM was printed in 1993. NIST's Special Publication 811, containing the same value for the electron volt, was published in 1995. Much of the BIPM website is an html version of that 1993 document, also available in .pdf format, plus some in a later supplement.
The BIPM brochure cites CODATA as the source for the value it uses. That's because the current CODATA value is the value conventionally used for this purpose. Note that nobody defines the electronvolt in terms of joules; it remains a measured quantity. The generally recognized authority for what should be used for this is CODATA.
The CODATA values are not a publication of some individual's experiments subject to validation. They are a considered analysis by experts in the field of metrology of all the published data, to determine what is the best value at the times of the various publications of these values. Gene Nygaard 15:23, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Just thought I'd stop by and say thanks for setting me straight on the CODATA validity. Atleast the miss-change of the value made you update it to CODATA 2002 (was 1998 values before), so something good came out of it.
Martin Ulfvik 16:51, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The pous (and other pages)

Despite your attempts at cleaning up, I definitely suggest these pages be redirected. Please see Talk:Pous. -- Egil 12:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Egil you are remarkably uniformed when it comes to standards of measure and come across as a bit silly raving about magic cubes and pyramidiots when trying to show there was no such thing as a range of values for the divisions of different Greek pous.

I have cited references to measures like the Persian and Egyptian artaba which you deny ever existed and expressed a desire that you should begin to cite sources rather than continue to sling mud and speculate.

Its up to you. You can make an effort to show me your scholarly erudition or you can make it dramatically clear that you have no ground to stand on. Rktect 16:34, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Exact division of one Greek into other Greek units is unproblematic, but this subject is fully covered elsewhere already. -- Egil 18:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Just for the heck of it why not cite the source that you feel "fully covers" the subject? Rktect 18:22, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gabriel Mouton

In your edits of the above article, you specifically left the values 1 virga = 0.001 minutes of arc = 1.85 m etc intact, even though the article originally specified that the virga of Mouton was ~2.04 m. Is there a special reason for this? You also left intact the statement What's interesting about this is that Mouton was proposing that there be a relation between time and space.. Is there a special reason for this? Is this sentence in your opinion meaningfull and relevant? -- Egil 17:43, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

No. I ws going to mention the discrepancy, but didn't have time to figure out what was going on, and ask about it. Note that you also used the "minute of arc" as being decimally related to that 2.04 m unit, so either you or Rktect or both have some explaining to do. Was the "minute" defined differently? If you feel different numbers are appropriate, change them. The time and space applies to any use of a pendulum as both a time-keeper and a length standard; but the wording is clumsy, or trying to imply more than is actually there. A century later, Jefferson copied that idea for either of his proposals for revamping the English customary units, including the decimal system based on a foot. Gene Nygaard 02:43, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Please find "my explaining" at User_talk:Egil/Sandbox/Gabriel_Mouton. If anything is unclear, I would appreciate feedback. -- Egil 13:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The value for a minute of arc is 1/60 degree or 1/60 of 111 km or 1.85 km. Mouton derived this using a second pendulum at sea level so his value was very accurate. All Mouton’s units are decimal multiples and divisions of each other. Had Mouton used a value of 2.04 m for any of his units it would have implied a minute of arc was 2.04 km, which implies a degree of 122.4 km, he would have looked foolish. Rktect 18:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
You look foolish when you break up sentences with bullets. Try to make this comprehensible. Pay attention to spelling and possessives; the little things matter, nobody is going to treat you as anything other than a crackpot as long as you don't change your ways. You know you are a bad speller, and prone to typos. Invest in a spell-checker. Gene Nygaard 17:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
That's better. He wouldn't necessarily "look foolish" unless he claimed a unit about 2.04 m long to be a decimal fraction of the 10−n (where n is an integer) of a minute of arc, in the meaning of 1/(360×60) circle. I don't yet know the details myself, so any specific references on that particular point would be welcome.
Of course, Mouton also did not use exactly 111 km for his minute of arc, nor did anybody before him. You still haven't explained what you think this value should be, if expressed more precisely today. What should it be, to 6 significant digits in meters or kilometers, in other words to the nearest meter? That is, not 111.000 but 111.xyz—what are those next three digits? Gene Nygaard 19:27, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
The Roman value for the pes is 296 mm. Mouton's value is within 1 mm of that. The stadium is 625 x 296 = 185 m. Mouton's value is within 1 m of that. There 8 stadiums of 625 pes to a mille passus. 5 pes x 1000 = 5000 pes = 8 x 185 = 1480 m. There are 75 Roman miles to a degree = 75 x 1480 =111 km.. Moutons value is within 1 km of that. If you try and play with 3 points of decimal on a mm. then you have to deal with things like the coefficient of expansion of the material you are measuring with.
The Great Circle Circumference (GCC) of the earth was divided into 360 degrees. Angular degrees were an invention of the Babylonian astronomers whose math skills were pretty decent. The Egyptians used Dekans and a year of 360 days to which they added 5 epagonmenal days each year. (Gardiner § 266)
The GCC of the earth is 24902.727 miles and the degree is 69.17 mi. A minute of arc is 1/60 of a degree or 1.153 mi = 6087.3 ft = 1.8554192 km. That is to say Moutons Milliare is close to the Roman value but the Roman value is even closer to our value. I would allow you to say that his value is within round off error, equal to the Roman value, egual to our value. His Centuria is 1/10 of that and consequently equal to both the Greek stadion and Roman stadium which are 1/8 the mille passus, milion or milliare.
[Gk. mile passus mia chilioi]
[websters mile 1911]
(Miles has spelling variations. mia, milla, mille, milli, mil, myl, myle, mylios, milli are)
Webster's English Dictionary
"mile \'mi-(*)l\ n [ME, fr. OE mi-l; akin to OHG mi-la mile; both fr. a prehisto]ric WGmc word borrowed fr. L milia miles, fr. milia passuum, lit., thousands of paces, fr. milia, pl. of mille thousand, perh. fr. a prehistoric compound whose constituents are akin to Gk mia (fem. of heis one) and to Gk chilioi thousand, Skt sahasra - more at SAME : any of various units of distance : as  : a unit equal to 5280 feet  : NAUTICAL MILE"
Supposedly that was one of the contributions of the Pythagoreans at Miletus. I wasn't there so I don't know for sure, but starting with Thales the Greeks began traveling to Egypt and talking to various groups of people whom they seem to have found interesting.
Plato tells us through Critias, and Solon, about how in the Reign of Neco I about 600 BC the Egyptians commisioned the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Libya and they returned through the Pillars of Hercules as a new ocean empire coming forth from the Atlantic in control of territory which was larger than Libya, Asia and Europe combined because it consisted of the waters that surounded them. Historians and Geographers began collecting the accounts of these and other voyages and putting them into documents like the Periplus of the Erythrian Sea.
Subsequently carograhers like Marinus and Ptolemy began inventing ways of displaying the surface of a sphere on a plane surface and Geographers begin getting serious about checking out the value of a degree. The Greeks, Persians, Arabs and Romans turned to Egypt and discovered that they worshipped measures the way the sons of Israel worshipped the Law. (The philosophy was called living the Life in Ma3't and was all about doing what was right and proper, emphasising accuracy in measure and craftsmanship in keeping things straight and square and on the level)The Greeks began noticing that the Egyptian measures were a pretty good system so they adopted them. Herodotus mentions the itrw being the same as the schoenus and gardiner explains that the aroura was the same as the st3t.

[edit] Request for arbitration, rktect

For your information, I have now submitted a request for arbitration: User:rktect -- Egil 11:33, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] sos

I have edited sos as you suggested, checking and replacing the links and rewording the content. Rktect 02:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC) sos ended up a good page, I was sad to see it go. Rktect 18:30, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

A good page? You are weird. In your latest efforts, you described it as a piece of land, or a unit of measure of area, or something along those lines. But from your earlier attempted explanations, I had a vague idea that it dealt with some concept of sociology or political science, but I didn't have the foggiest idea of the details. It was, and remained, incomprehensible gibberish, with even more incomprehensible section headers in the last incarnation. Gene Nygaard 18:56, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Sos was a page that examined Wikipedia in the analagous context of the transition from nomadic pastorialist internet hunting and gathering to settled agricultural social stratification based on contribution to the community. A consideration of the positive and negative sanctions of land tenure and sustenance. The choices between Security in adherence to Laws and Freedom as a state of Being without Limits. A choice to join the covenant to be law abiding and do what is right and propery over outlawry and being placed under the ban. Using the code of Hammurabi it looked at things like the limits on royal encroachment and the rights and obligations of land ownership. The development of community looked at through the development of consensus on common law norms, nores, attitudes, and values. The protection of written law codes and the standards by which they are measured weighed and judged. Land is property, turf, your area that you irrigate, weed, fertilize, tend and harvest. The form of contracts, the assessment of value, blessings and curses to bind the deal and boundary markers and milestones. Rktect 23:53, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rajgir

Have tried to edit Rajgir. Would like you to comment if it is okay now since I am quite new to Wiki edit.

TV 15:23, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ceiling Balloon

Hi, I noticed that you changed the order of the imperial/metric on this page with the note that the "originals first, to SI". The SI were the originals and I converted them to imperial as I'm in Canada and the manual was new enough to have the metric info. The SI weight is now incorrect as the manual says 63.5 Kg with no imperial given. By the way what is the term you would use for imperial? Thanks CambridgeBayWeather 03:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

The manual may be "new enough to have the metric info" but that info is not "new" with that manual; it is a conversion of the English units in an earlier manual or some other source, even if the original wasn't stated there. (Nor was any source credited in the article.) The fact that both the volume and the pressure, as well as the mass, turn out to be such round numbers in English units are a dead giveaway. This isn't a precise measurement of some particular object; it isn't a definition of anything. The numbers are just a rough description of what these cylinders "typically" are. I have merely restored the numbers from which those metric numbers came, and have converted them more reasonably based on the obvious imprecision of the measurements. There is nothing whatsoever "incorrect" about the current values. FYI, the use of "Kg" rather than the only correct symbol, "kg", is also a pet peeve. Gene Nygaard 03:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nitric acid vandalism

The person who edited the Nitric acid page after you (most recently as of now) gave what look to me like instructions for procedures which could seriously injure someone. Since you're likely more competent than me in determining such matters, could you double check the changes to make sure I'm wrong? —Firespeaker 08:30, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert in lab safety. The whole recipe bothers me; I don't think it should be there. It looks better to me after Slavakion's edits than it did before. Maybe you should just delete it and discuss it on the talk page there? Gene Nygaard 08:43, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Manual of Style

Please expand your most recent answer at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, otherwise we cannot fully include your concerns in the discussion. Your simple one word "No" answer to a complex question, while it is to be admired for its brevity, is not helpful in first finding common ground and then consensus. Thanks. Unfocused 06:52, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] acre width and breadth

I saw where you reverted another poster unless s/he could justify the units s/he used as descriptions of the width and length of the acre. The definitions of acre width and breadth can be found in Klein Chapter 4 10 Greek orquia (fathoms) = 1 amma (chain). Chapter 5.p65-73 Rood/rute/rod at 16.5 to 24 feet in length with the rute at 12.36 to 12.47 feet. gYRdan/Yerde/yardarm/yard. In France 22 pieds to a pole. Belgic chain 661 feet. Chapter 6 p 76 cite of Bodelian manuscript "Sixteybe foote and a half maky a perche and in sum countre a perche ys 13 ffot. Fourty perchys in lengyth makyth a rode of lande, put 4 thereto to brede and that makyth an acre." The square rode is thus 10 acres, the yerde is 14 acres, the hide is 70 acres, the knights fee is 560 and the square mile is 640. Rktect 10:18, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

What's your point? Can't you ever write intelligibly? None of this has to do with my reversion. Gene Nygaard 11:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Efficiency v efficacy

The word efficiency is incorrect when used with devices converting one form of energy to another. Please look on talk page where ~I have explained --Light current 04:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I replied to your comments at Talk:Electrical efficiency. Gene Nygaard 12:31, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conversion

I messed up the temperature conversion on Glacier National Park (US). Do you have a link to an accurate converter, as I used Google, but it didn't look right when I did it.--MONGO 07:09, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

Your conversion would have worked, had it been a temperature reading. That's where the problem lies, and no converter is going to be of much help there. It's just something you need to recognize.
A temperature interval is different from a temperature reading. If you are talking about differences in temperatures, then the conversion factor is T°F = 1.8 T°C. Every change of 5 °C is a change of 9 °F. The different zero points don't matter when you are talking about differences in temperatures, so you don't add 32 as you would in for readings. Gene Nygaard 11:18, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
I understand...thanks.--MONGO 12:49, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] millibar

hi Gene,

we both did edit millibar and the text now published there is looking a little confuse:

The millibar is not an SI unit of measure; however, it is still used locally in meteorology when describing atmospheric pressure. The SI unit is the pascal (Pa), with 1 millibar = 100 (Pa) = 1 (hPa) = 0.1 (kPa). Meteorologists worldwide have long measured air pressure in millibars. After the introduction of SI units, many preferred to preserve the customary pressure figures. Therefore, some meteorologists use hectopascals (hPa) today worldwide for air pressure, which are equivalent to millibars. Others continue to use millibars under their own name, and in Canadian weather reports, the normal kilopascals are used. Similar pressures are given in kilopascals in practically all other fields where the hecto prefix is hardly ever used.

I don't want to open a big discussion there, therefore I come to you to talk about a possible better way to include all view's, how about:

The millibar is not an SI unit of measure; however, it is still used locally in meteorology when describing atmospheric pressure. The SI unit is the pascal (Pa), with 1 mbar = 100 (Pa) = 1 (hPa) = 0.1 (kPa). Meteorologists worldwide have long measured air pressure in millibars. After the introduction of SI units, many preferred to preserve the customary pressure figures. Therefore, some continue to use millibars under their own name, most others use hPa which are equivalent to millibars and they could stick to the same values. Similar pressures are given in kilopascals in practically all other fields where the hecto prefix is hardly ever used. In Canadian weather reports, the normal is kilopascals.

how do you feel about that? (Wilhelm.peter 08:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC))

That looks okay, but don't put the symbols in parentheses except the one following spelled out pascal. Otherwise, the remaining problems don't really have to do with any changes you are proposing here. My wording of the Canadian part was clumsy.
Before my last edit, your edits gave the misleading impression that hectopascals are now universally used in metrology. They are not.
BTW, I don't like the hanging on to obsolete units by cloaking them in marginally SI renamings. It's as silly as the dS/m used for electrical conductivity by soils scientists (can you figure out the ever-so-handy obsolete units they are hanging onto in this case?). As the NPL, the U.K. national standards laboratory, points out: " This choice was made, despite the fact that hecto (x 100) is not a preferred multiple in the SI system, to avoid having to change the numerical values on barometer scales."[10] (In most cases, they wouldn't have had to be changed anyway.)
The interdisciplinary nature of SI is as important as its international nature. Nobody should have to learn quirky units just to understand the measurements in the jargon of some particular field.
Nobody (well, almost nobody) used "hectopascals" before the 1990s.
The "After the introduction of SI" part remains misleading, because the SI unit of pressure wasn't even given the name "pascal" until 19 years after the SI was introduced, late in 1979, so nobody used either kilopascals or hectopascals before then. I've never seen anybody use hN/m² as a unit of pressure (N/m² were the SI pressure units in the 1960–1979 time period), either—maybe we'd all be better off if the pascal had never been given its own name! Gene Nygaard 11:59, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

partenses had been in the text, i must have overlooked it. will change as you proposed, nice to have that worked out with you Wilhelm.peter

[edit] Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressure

hello Gene, i have updated our talk there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_conditions_for_temperature_and_pressurea little, but i am no expert in that field, found also that Standard atmosphere got already a link in wikipedia, and I am not sure where such thing should be located... kindest regards Wilhelm.peter 17:05, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Standard atmosphere redirects to atmospheric pressure, and I agree with that choice; it seems to be a better redirect than one to standard conditions for temperature and pressure. There are, of course, also the technical atmosphere and the bar, a couple of different "atmospheres". Gene Nygaard 02:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More on Gabriel Moutons virgula

For what its worth, the NASA document with John Quincy Adams on the history of measures has now been updated. -- Egil 23:09, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tonnes

You said "Tonnes or metric tons are an unnecessary varieties of English issue". Bollocks. Everyone in the English-speaking world understands tons. Anyone familiar with metric (or who can appreciate that 'tonnes' and 'tons' are damn near the same thing) can appreciate tonnes. While megagrams is a perfectly workable construct, you're not going to find anybody who can relate to it without a whole lot of headscratching. Frankly, I'm at a loss to understand why it was that important to you that a revert was necessary. Please enlighten me. Denni☯ 01:13, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

In the United States, "tonnes" are every bit as unfamiliar as megagrams, or more so (megagrams are fairly common in technical journals in some fields, including soils science and agricultural science). They are just as likely to cause a whole lot of headscratching, with less assurance that it will be figured out correctly once the headscratching is done.
The other reason, of course, is that the official symbol for metric tons is "t", not "T". But, of course, either of them might be used for long tons or for short tons as well, so there is great ambiguity in the use of a symbol for any of these tons.
The many other problems with tonnes is that they are often pronounced the same as when spelled tons (except in Canada, where because of French being an official language as well, they are often pronounced the French way in English. In French, of course, tonnes are just as ambiguous as tons in English, even though if tonnes are used without other qualification, in today's world they are almost always metric tonnes. Other tonnes will be distinguished with an adjective, just as short tons usually are in some parts of the English world, and long tons usually are in other parts of the English world—but the biggest problem with any tons of any sort is that they are all too often not identified, and they are used for not only three different units of mass and three different units of force, but many other units of quantities such as energy and power and who knows what else. Megagrams, OTOH, are units of mass, not well enough established when grams force were legitimate units to even see any use of megagrams-force, as you do with the kilogram-force and even tonne force (used in some Wikipedia articles even). Gene Nygaard 18:40, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Headings in science articles

Hi,
Please take another look at your post to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science. It looks as though you wrote "with" instead of "without". --Smack (talk) 03:46, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I did mean "without". Gene Nygaard 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your thoughts please

Can you look at Power plant GWh does not equal GW for me please? Wtshymanski drew my attention to something that appears to go on in the power industry, namely using watt hours per year. The phrase that was debated was The Kariba supplies 1320MW of electricity to parts of both Zambia (the Copperbelt) and Zimbabwe (6400GWh per annum).. I am happy to leave the article alone but I was wondering if you had come across a convention like this? Bobblewik 02:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Medical record

I see you reverted my edit on temperature, I thought orginal section in the Medical record article somewhat misleding, inappropriate content (for the article) and some inaccuracies. I wont immediately revert back, but raise the following points:

  • Firstly thanks, 98.6F indeed not same as 36.8'C (strange I had always accepted this conversion at face value - and I'm a doctor !) - and so yes my edit was wrong  :-)
  • The need to record temperature in the medical record is what is required in this article, not a full discussion on all different methods of measurement and their relative pros & cons. So I wanted to cut down on the fuller discussion (the article will get longer as other sections are completed).
  • Likewise core temperature spent too much discussing other methods and so I simplified that too and place the additional info in a new article of Temperature examination
  • Having the current blind links to oral temperature & rectal temperature is not, I think, appropriate as neither ever will need be a full article and both can be encompassed in a single page (hence Temperature examination)
  • Thermosensative material skin measurement is not primarily used in operative measurements (but thermocouple sensing is), as the devices are sold in the tens of thousands as a simple children's thermometer
  • Thermocouples need direct contact with what the are to measure the temperature of. Ear thermometers do not touch the ear drum, but rather measure the infrared heat emmission. Thermocouples are though indeed found in electronic thermometers, but of the types used for oral, armpit or rectal recording. Thermocouples therefore have replaced glass thermometes containing alcohol or mercury (latter now been banned from use in Europe due to toxicity if the thermometer breaks open).

I welcome your thoughts on re-reverting the entry (with the correction to the celcius/farenheit equivalence)... David Rubentalk 00:43, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The only reason 98.6 °F is considered "normal" anywhere is because it is a nice, round 37 °C on the Celsius scale—but even that information was missing before I edited it today.
So yes, your insistence on saying 36.8 °C = 98.6 °F was a major reason why I just reverted, rather than even attempting to figure out what else you were doing.
Of course, your same mistake needs to be fixed in your new temperature examination article.
Something of that information about why some people think of 98.6 °F as "normal", even though the experts are pretty unanimous that that is too high, belongs in the article.
I'll reserve judgment on the necessity for, and accuracy of, other changes. Gene Nygaard 03:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] comparative metrology

Your comment suggests I'm giving you too much information for you to process easily. Let's try it as a process of asking and answering questions. Put three questions at a time on my user page and I will give you whatever you require in the way of references and cites. Rktect 01:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

You are the one proposing changes in this article. Why don't you put forward three questions at a time? Include not only what you want to add, but also what you want to remove which is already there. The compare screens in Wikipedia editing don't work very well at all for total rewrites. Gene Nygaard 02:12, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Celsius

Not sure what you meant when you said that this sentence, "Beause of this Celsius is kept as a derived unit and is acceptable for use for measuring differenes." was, "probably inaccurate too, depending on what was meant." I'd agree that it was an, "unnecessary addition." At the spot where it was but I'm considering adding the thought back in at another spot; but first I wanted to talk to you to see if we agree on it's accuracy. The specific idea that I want to to include is that Celsius is acceptable for measuring temperature differences, but not temperatures, where it is marginal. I'm working off NIST SP 811 and an email conversation with NIST's Barry Taylor though I'll wait to dig out evidence until I see if we disagree on this part. Cheers, --Pdbailey 03:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Quite the contrary. It's acceptability for measuring temperatures was never in doubt, even before it was added to the SI. The clarification was that it is also acceptable for measuring temperature differences, where there is no difference between it and kelvins. It would be downright silly to declare it totally acceptable for that purpose and unacceptable for measuring temperatures. Gene Nygaard 04:01, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I disagree with your conclusion. I'm basing my conclusion on an email conversation I had bith Dr. Taylor about a year ago. I'll try to dig it up. As I recall it (and it's been a year), Celsius is acceptable only for differences in temperature because it doesn't measure thermodynamic temperature. What it comes down to is that it is in SI because the Europeans can't kick this obviously traditional unit and want it in there as a crutch. It's not much different than including fahrenheit, which is also an [Affine transformation] of Kelvin.--Pdbailey 23:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
My conversation with Dr. Taylor was not illuminationg. However, in SP 330 it reads, "Because of the way temperature scales used to be defined, it remains common practice to express a thermodynamic temperature, symbol T, in terms of its difference from the reference temperature T0 = 273.15 K, the ice point. This temperature difference is called the Celsius temperature, symbol t, and is defined by the quantity equation t=T–T0. The unit of Celsius temperature is the degree Celsius." So it looks like to me that you are only explicitly allowed to use C for differences and none of the sections allow it for anything but temperature differences. That said, one could argue that C is inherently a temperature difference from 273.15 K, but that's shakey ground in my mind. --Pdbailey 02:41, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
As a person living in Bulgaria and travelling across Europe I can assure you that here the water still boils at 100 degrees Celsius and the ice melts at 0. In short, a whole continent is using degrees Celsius to measure absolute temperatures and not differences only. Even during my visits in U.S.A. I was watching BBC World as their weather forecast was much easier to comprehend (Texas getting 31°C instead of 88°F).
The current state of the article is simply wrong. Yes, I perfectly know that one step in Celsius scale is equivalent to one kelvin. However you might admit that expression 1°C typically is read as absolute value, and thus equals 274,15 K. Encyclopedia is created by people who know something for the people who do not know it. -- 193.68.0.204 16:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out what the point of this post is. If it is that Europe uses Celsius as a traditional measure of temperature, I'm not sure what that's got to do with anything. We use Fahrenheit in the US. However, the article in question regards SI units and Celsius is only in the SI for measuring differences. --Pdbailey 21:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
No. Degrees Celsius were always for measuring temperatures. What the resolution in the 1960s did was to clarify that they are also acceptable for measuring differences. In other words, they were getting away from the 1948 implication that intervals are treated differently from readings. Gene Nygaard 03:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Short/Long tons

On Indiana Harbor... you claim that you guessed which kind and than added a metric conversion. Please no. Even an ambiguous "ton" is better than an actually incorrect link and conversion. In this case it was correct as short tons as I verified the original numbers. Rmhermen 12:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't a wild-ass guess. It was based on the fact that short tons are usually used in U.S. reports of inland commerce. But in any case, I disagree that leaving them as ambiguous is better; identifying them spurs people like you, who know where to look, to check it out—and correct it if I guessed wrong. That's much better than leaving it ambiguous, and even if my guess is incorrect and unchanged, that's no worse than a multitude of readers making the same incorrect guess. Thanks for veryifying it. Gene Nygaard 13:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Units of mass in precious stones

Feel free to contribute at Talk:Diamond. Bobblewik 14:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vacuum change noted to Tearlach

Gene, See: I was a bit slow here, thanks.... Glad you understand the field. Scott 13:30, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Church of Avaldsnes

I've removed the link you wanted to keep (you reverted the change to Church of Avaldsnes)

I did that because it contains nothing useful except contact information and text about the earlyer throne at the location of the church, nothing about the church itself. Although there are a lot of contact information about a local museum, opening times, what it cost, etc. This is not about the medieval church, but could possibly be used in an article for that museum.

Is there any reason at all to keep this link?

Agtfjott 01:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Years standing alone - David Thompson (explorer)

I won't revert over it, but I strongly prefer all years wikilinked in an article when I read it. I very often want to open a second tab in my browser to check what else was going on in the world at the time of the year mentioned in order to gain context for what's being discussed. I won't link second occurences of the same year, but the first of each is, I think, an appropriate link point. Unfocused 05:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Aircraft specs policy

Several weeks ago, you voted in the WikiProject Aircraft Specifications Survey. One of the results of the survey was that the specifications for the various aircraft articles will now be displayed using a template. Ericg and I have just finished developing that template; a lengthier bulletin can be found on the WT:Air talkpage. Naturally, we will need to begin a drive to update the aircraft articles. However, several topics in the survey did reach establish consensus, and they need to be resolved before we implement the template. It is crticial that we make some conclusion, so that updating of the specs can resume as soon as possible. You can take part in the discussions here. Thanks, Ingoolemo talk 06:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] English Units

Re: your update "English units" is rarely limited to those common in the U.S., to the exclusion of those used by people who think hundred is written in digits as 112 and there are 160 fl oz in a gallon.

I'm not clear what the point of the reference to 'people who think hundred is written in digits as 112 and there are 160 fl oz in a gallon' was.

If you meant 'the English' or 'those who use Imperial units', say so. If you want to make a point, make it on the talk page and refer to that, not by making what appeared to be a half-baked and partisan sideswipe at whoever it was you were referring to. There's not enough room for this type of thing on the edit line without it coming across as some vague and undirected insult (and fudging the point of the edit).

If you think my edit was biased, or something, it wasn't meant to be. But your exact criticism isn't clear from some throwaway comment.

The sentence you altered wasn't meant to imply that Americans are the only people who use "English units" or that imperial units aren't English units; rather that people in England (or the rest of the UK) are more likely to refer to their units as "Imperial" and the people most likely to refer to "English units" are Americans, when discussing (by default) *their* system.

Is this incorrect? Please clarify this.

What is the Imperial System referred to as within the US (as your alteration of the sentence implies that it isn't known by that name there)?

Fourohfour 14:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The point is that "English units" isn't "more commonly used by Americans to refer to their ... slightly different U.S. customary system"; it is used more generally to include not only the ones we use, but also the variants we don't use.
The term "imperial system" in the United States is used only to refer to the volume units based on the imperial gallon and imperial bushel as defined in the 1820s. A rod is never an "imperial unit". A foot-candle isn't an "imperial unit". Of course, a U.S. liquid gallon isn't an "imperial unit" either, though some people outside the U.S. would include it in their broad usage of "imperial units" to mean "English units".
In the United States, miles per hour are not "imperial units". Pounds-force are not "imperial units". Troy ounces are not "imperial units". Cords and acres and horsepower and British thermal units and inches of water are not "imperial units". They are, however, all "English units" or "British units" or "customary units" (often in conjunction with "U.S." or "English" or "British").
However, the stone and the long hundredweight (never used for measurements made in the United States) and long ton (which is used in the United States for some purposes) are "English units", just as the short hundredweight and short ton are.
We Americans seldom bother distinguishing our units from other English units; when we need to do so, something like "U.S. customary units" works fine; we don't refer to all that foreign stuff, other than the volume units mentioned above, as "imperial" to distinguish them from those customary in the United States.
Granted, we are more likely to be referring to the units we do use than the units we do not use, it's just that that is not due to a limitation inherent in the terminology we use. As such, it not of any real significance to this article. Gene Nygaard 16:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it could be reworded to distinguish your point about when the term "English units" is most commonly used, from what "English units" means when Americans use that term. It seems like you were reading what was written differently from what I was reading. Gene Nygaard 16:11, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Then it sounds as if either you would be more qualified to write something about this than me, or that such an edit would bloat the intro too much, and it should be left "as is".
Fourohfour 19:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Manual of Style 2

On your reversion of my edit of Manual of Style (mathematics), removing the {{style}}, you say "take it up on the main talk page".

  1. Why? It doesn't look as if it was ever agreed to.
  2. Which "main talk page"? Manual of Style or Category:Wikipedia style and how-to?

Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:02, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello? I'm trying to be WP:CIVIL, rather than engaging in a revert war, but I'm not getting any response here or on the talk page. Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that; I thought I'd rsponded long ago. I'd say the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style page. The other pages in that navigation box all have the box, don't they? Gene Nygaard 15:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the response, and sorry about my tone. There are two pages I've been involved with lately which have had probable violations of WP:CIVIL, at least in the talk pages and edit descriptions (RJII (revert to RJII. Reason: definition is original research. Fraudulent interpretation of sources.) ) Some of my frustration may have leaked into this comment. Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Units

Is that general Wikipedia policy? It's just that the other units in the article seem also not to be the original way around. Paul Beardsell 13:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

It's just good general conversion policy. The original measurement is often the best indication we have of the precision of the measurement, and by putting the original first, we can also guess at which one is most likely wrong if a conversion error has been made.
It isn't an absolute rule as stated in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Measurements, but a default at least. It can be modified, for example, in tables with one column in metric units and the other in English units.
Another guideline is in Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/page content, "It is a suggested project standard to have Imperial (English) units first for US and British aircraft and metric first for everyone else's." Of course, Canada is probably a Rodney Dangerfield ("gets no respect") in that discussion, and the De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver built in 1947 was designed in English units. Gene Nygaard 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The other reasons are good but the ones you give in the first paragraph are persuasive on their own. Indeed, if Wikipedia policy happened to contradicted your 1st para then the policy would have to be changed, IM(H)O. Paul Beardsell 17:16, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pune

Image:WikiThanks.png

Thank you for your contribution at Pune.
Please keep it up!!! - P R A D E E P Somani (talk)
Feel free to send me e-mail.

[edit] MRAA

You may want to check my user-page, to find out who won the "Most Reverted Admin Award". Any objection is welcome. Most reverted admin award 09:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] torque and Newton-metres

I beg to differ about torque and Newton metres.

With torque, the force and the distance are at right angles (the x (cross) product).

With joules, the force and the distance are at zero angle (the . (dot) product).

Tabletop 09:29, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

It's newton-meters (or newton-metres), with a lowercase N in English (leaving out the hyphen is okay).
My candy bar weighs 40 g and has a food energy of 880 kilojoules. What force and what distance are we talking about?
A 12 gram bullet has a muzzle velocity of 900 m/s². That means it has a kinetic energy of 4.86 kilojoules when it leaves the gun. What force and what distance are we talking about? Why confuse things?
We don't need a poorly worded explanation in the units section.
  • "The joule, the SI unit for energy or work, is also defined as 1 Nm, but the Force N and distance m are in the same direction ."
You changed the symbol from N·m to Nm. See NIST SP811, which actually uses this unit as its example.
The word "Force" shouldn't be capitalized.
The normal symbol for force is italic F, and for distance s or d, not N and m.
Your claim is somewhat understandable, if we are working with a formula for finding work done by an object exerting a certain force due to gravity lifted against that gravity. But it is only confusing if the examples such as I gave above come to mind when a person tries to figure out what a "joule" is.
Maybe there is some way that your point can be made clearly, so that it would belong near the top in the units section, or somewhere further down. I'm not convinced that is the case, so if you have any ideas about it you might bring it up on the talk page so that I and other editors who might be more receptive can comment on it. Maybe a link to dot product would be helpful (cross product is already linked in the introduction). Gene Nygaard 14:13, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fractions and plurals

Gene, I'm sorry but you are wrong when you say that decimal fractions less than one take the singular. "0.6 watt per month" sounds extremely awkward - "0.6 watts per month" is correct. Similarly, 0.7 solar radius sounds wrong, This page has a paragraph describing why this is. Worldtraveller 11:06, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Your columnist seems rather innumerate to me. He or she didn't even mention the most interesting thing: the fact that in English, the number zero takes the plural form.
The rules may indeed vary somewhat, depending on the linguistics notion of countable (which is quite different from the mathematics notion of countable). What your columnist apparently fails to understand is that many experts put all units of measurement into the class which takes a singular if the absolute value of the number is greater than zero and less than or equal to one.
The CGPM official definition of the ampere and the mole (semiofficial English version), from the BIPM SI brochure [11] (also found in Wikipedia articles such as carbon-12 and SI)
  • "The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed 1 m apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10–7 newton per metre of length."
  • "The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12."
NIST Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), Section 9.7: [12]
  • "If in such a single-unit case the number is less than one, the unit is always singular when spelled out; for example, 0.5 kPa is spelled out as 'five-tenths kilopascal.'"
NIST Letter Circular 1137, Metric Style Guide, [13]
  • "Units: Names of units are made plural only when the numerical value that precedes them is more than one. For example, 0.25 liter or 1/4 liter, but 250 milliliters. Zero degrees Celsius is an exception to this rule."
This is another convention which basically serves the same purpose as the leading zero before a decimal fraction—only the singular form works with any kind of fraction. Sure, there are many people who fail to follow that rule, too, but just like this one that is the nearly universal rule (with some well-specified exceptions such as batting averages in baseball).
Just look throughout Wikipedia. You will find many, many examples of this singular form for numbers less than one. See, e.g., pound ("exactly 0.45359237 kilogram (or 453.59237 grams)"), space elevator ("about 0.2 kilogram per kilometer"),
To change the subject slightly, why are there so many style guides with rules like this?
  • "fractions: Spell out amounts less than one, using hyphens between the words: one-half, two-thirds, four-fifths."
Are the authors of these guides too innumerate to realize that the numbers in $0.75 and 0.45359237 kg are fractions?
Are they too unimaginative to think that somebody might actually use common fractions more complicated than "four-fifths"? We never see them using something like their spelled out version of 175/192 as an example. Gene Nygaard 13:04, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Diamond

Are you kidding me? You're going to come in again and extend an utterly pointless edit war? I generally avoid the word troll to try not to escalate things, but coming in as this other user has and changing something as highly disputed as the date issue is classic disruption and trolling. Don't add to it please. - Taxman Talk 22:29, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

It was the longstanding, original usage in the article, and there never was any consensus to change it. Gene Nygaard 22:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
The editors that used the original usage stated their intent to change it. More importantly, continuuing a worthless edit war is a bigger problem than any of it. Again, don't add to it. - Taxman Talk 18:17, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
They're certainly entitled to have their say in it. Get over the notion that it's their call. It isn't. Gene Nygaard 20:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Gene, you are correct and based on the talk pages for the diamond section, the consensus is that the original authors are not following the will of the group. --Walter Görlitz 18:53, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Paris-Tours

Thanks for repeatedly removing the route map for the Paris-Tours bicycle race. People like you really get up my nose, you know nothing about pro cycling but you remove a useful map (which took ages to draw) because it has kms and not km on. People like you have nothing to contribute to Wikipedia, you are just a sad person who has nothing better to do except spoil a good article. Get a life. - Mick Knapton

It doesn't have "kms" on it, it has "KMS" which is even worse, with the capitalization error in addition to the adding s in plural error. I wouldn't think it would be any great problem for you to fix it in the program you used to create it in the first place, and upload the corrected version. But it might not look so good if I have to do it by using my crude graphics tools on the jpg image instead. Gene Nygaard 13:33, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
BTW, you pretty much blew any chance of getting any sympathy from either me or any other editor of that page by repeatedly reverting not only my deletion of the image, but also my change of "kms" to "km" within the text as well. Gene Nygaard 14:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jguk 2 Arbitration request

Since you were involved / gave evidence in the first arbitration case involving User:Jguk and date notation, I thought you would be interested in a new arbitration request that has been lodged, again regarding User:Jguk and date notation. Please see WP:RFAr#jguk 2 if you would like to comment. Sortan 19:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

...for calling me spiteful. Molotov (talk)
20:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome.
The point I was making was that once you've made your contributions to Wikipedia, you lose control of it. If you don't like the way it ends up, that doesn't give you the right to blank a section of the article out of spite. In other words, if you don't think your teammates are giving you enough playing time, you can't just take your ball and go home. Gene Nygaard 20:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't talk to me like I am an idiot...and learn civility please. I do agree - I guess - that the article belongs to Wikipedia, but it does not excuse you personal attacks. Molotov (talk)
00:27, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comma or Apostrophe as thousands separator?

- In the article gold as an investment, you have changed the thousands separator from an apostrophe to a comma. Within Europe this will create confusion, because some countries us the comma instead of the decimal point. France is one culprit. Is there any guidance from Wikipedia itself? + - + - Watercolour 20:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) for a discussion of this (Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) says use commas, and some would like to change that.) Note that the use of an apostrophe in this context is so very unusual in English that it hadn't been mentioned, until after I had edited this article and just mentioned it today or yesterday. Gene Nygaard 21:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Standard enthalpy, standard entropy

Thanks for your unswerving drive to put degree signs where they are needed! As such, I was a little surprised to see you removing them from the standard enthalpy and standard entropy sections of hydrogen peroxide and replacing them with superscript zeros. The degree sign is a recognised symbol for denoting either the standard state or the assumption of ideal behaviour of gases, see De Paulo, J.; Atkins, P. W. (2001). Physical Chemistry (7th Edn.). W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0716735393. . The correct symbol is <sup><s>o</s></sup>, as in ΔHo. Now that I have figured out how to make it appear in HTML, I will change the relevant templates and (more slowly) articles. Physchim62 16:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this and straightening me out. I'm not sure where I got the notion that it should be a superscript zero; I think it was from someone else's usage on Wikipedia, maybe from some textbook too. As you figured out, I have been adding some missing degree signs, and that one didn't look right to me (I've never seen anything about this in connection with any degrees or the degree sign, for example). A superscript struck-out o. I'm not going to look for them too often, but will probably do that when I'm editing the articles containing them. Gene Nygaard 17:14, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] revert problems

I am very sorry, I have not done any reverts since I found out about this problem unless I had changed my monobook code to see if it had been fixed. If it had not, I went back and manually reverted it, which semmed to solve the problem. Again, I had no intention of doing this, it was just recently brought to my attention. Thank You, Phinnaeus • T+Σ 10:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Yellow Grass

Hi, I just want to thank you for your help with polishing Yellow Grass, Saskatchewan. I will be making some more additions to it later and adding in all the references, I hope to get this as a featured article some day. --Cloveious 05:19, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I was probably getting in your way, too. But I'd done a bunch of changes in the whole article, only to hit an edit conflict. I just wanted to get at it while it was on my mind, so I did a section at a time, to reduce the chances of us running into each other. I'm done for now, maybe I'll look at it in a few days. Gene Nygaard 05:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Manx (cat)

Now I'm just waiting for the British spelling nazi....she will appear and claim the entire article should use British spelling becasue the Isle of Man is part of the UK. Personally I think since there are a lot more Manx cats in the US, you should use US spelling but I've given up arguing.Pschemp 06:28, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Space before unit symbols

I noticed you putting in spaces in Philip Toosey and Rice. In both cases, you are in error. British English, which is the style for the Toosey article, doesn't use a space between the unit and the number; as for putting a space between the degree and the number in the rice article, for either American or British usage, you are in error; the American usage guide the Chicago Manual of Style says degree symbols are without a space. I'd suggest you stop making these edits and go back and remove the damage you have already done. --DannyWilde 16:30, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers):
  • 'The reader should see a space between the value and the unit symbol, for example "25 kg" not "25kg".'
National Physical Laboratory, the keeper of the standards for the U.K., [14]
"A space is left between the numerical value and unit symbol (25 kg but not: 25-kg or 25kg). If the spelled-out name of a unit is used, the normal rules of English are applied."
BIPM (the keepers of the international standards) SI brochure [15] (this unofficial--only the French is official--English version uses British English, with "litre" spellings and the like, and it uniformly and consistently uses spaces between numbers and units).
That may have been recommended by some style guides in some places in the past; it is not correct modern practice. You may have to check through the archives of the talk pages in the MoS, but British usage has been discussed in connection with the rule stated there, with the conclusion that the rule you state is obsolete.
There is disagreement for degrees of temperature among some style guides; Wikipedia has gone with NIST (also a U.S. standards-setter, counterpart to the NPL) and NPL and others in prescribing them. Degrees of arc are a different story, consistently agreed to butt to the number. Gene Nygaard 16:58, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
As far as degrees Celsius go, there is no exception for them in the NPL rule.
Furthermore, it is very, very clear in the NIST Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), 1995:[16]
7.2 Space between numerical value and unit symbol
In the expression for the value of a quantity, the unit symbol is placed after the numerical value and a space is left between the numerical value and the unit symbol.
The only exceptions to this rule are for the unit symbols for degree, minute, and second for plane angle: °, ′, and ″, respectively (see Table 6), in which case no space is left between the numerical value and the unit symbol.
Example: α = 30°22′8″
Note: α is a quantity symbol for plane angle.
This rule means that:
(a) The symbol °C for the degree Celsius is preceded by a space when one expresses the values of Celsius temperatures.
Example: t = 30.2 °C but not: t = 30.2°C or t = 30.2° C
Can't get much more explicit than that. Gene Nygaard 10:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually you can as there are actually seperate Unicode characters for degree ° (&#x00B0;), Degree Celsius ℃ (&#x2103;) and degree Fahrenheit ℉ (&#x2109;). KelleyCook 16:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Those are legacy characters only for compatibility with certain old code pages in certain East Asian syllabary languages. They are not for general use, and not even for new use in those languages in Unicode text. I sure hope you aren't adding them to Wikipedia articles. Gene Nygaard 17:03, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


Here is Society of Automotive Engineers Standard TSB003, Rules for SAE use of SI (Metric) Units, May 1999:pdf file
7.3.10 When writing a quantity, a space is left between the numerical value and a unit symbol. For example, write:
35 mm, not 35mm; write 20 °C, not 20°C.
Exception: No space is left between numerical values and symbols for degree, minute, and second of plane angle. Example: 45°. However in SAE Practice, the ° symbol is not used for plane angle. The word degree is spelled out.
Again, explicitly dealing with degrees of temperature. Gene Nygaard 11:01, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
U.S. Government Printing Office, Style Manual, 29th ed. (2000), section 10.6:chapter 10 pdf file
  10.6. Any symbol set close up to figures, such as the degree mark, dollar mark, or cent mark, is used before or after each figure in a group or series.
$5 to $8 price range
5′–7′ long, not 5–7′ long
3¢ to 5¢ (no spaces)
±2 to ±7; 2°±1°
but
§ 12 (thin space)
from 15 to 25 percent
45 to 65 °F not 45° to 65° F
Thanks for your insight. I have two problems with this.
First, you're quoting standards laboratories, who know about standards for measuring physical constants. It seems to me that when discussing typographic conventions, you should be quoting publishing guides by people who know the conventions for publishing. The Chicago manual of style is much more convincing than the standards lab document for me. Further, the NIST guide also says a space should be used with percentages; this, like the space with the degree, is incorrect for virtually any printed source I can lay hands on, including most scientific material, and most publishers would regard a space with a percentage sign as a gross error. I invite you to find evidence otherwise. My guess is that the NIST guide was thought up by scientists, not publishers. In the end, the NIST and the physics laboratory in the UK are not who decide what is correct in print.
Second I disagree with reverting my edits to degree symbol and the manual of style. The manual of style should give guidance one way or the other. Do you think people are going to search through thirty archived talk pages, indexed only by number, before deciding how to write a degree or percentage sign? Why not rewrite the entry, rather than just delete it? The manual of style is clearly at fault in not containing guidance on the degree issue, and whatever has been decided on talk pages should have been clearly written out in the style manual and backed up with authoritative references from a publishing house, such as the University of Chicago press. Further, if you wish to alter the degree sign page to say that some use a space and some do not (there is a useful comment on my talk page, by the way), that would be good, but just blanking here is not a good way to go. --DannyWilde 11:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a publication of the US government, so please justify why you put the spaces there in contravention of the usual typographic rules before adding them again. --DannyWilde 00:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Nor is it a publication of the University of Chicago Press. Have you mixed us up with Encyclopædia Britannica, which was owned by the University of Chicago from 1941 to 1996?
Wikipedia Manual of Style has chosen a style for us to use, just as we chose a style in our MoS for punctuation inside quotation marks which is also contrary to the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style. Live with it, or go through the proper channels and get the requisite consensus if you'd like to change it. Gene Nygaard 01:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Severn crossing

I noticed you made some interesting edits to Severn crossing recently. The one that concerns me though is probably the most minor. You changed a link description from "The bridges' operating company" to "The bridge's operating company". The company in question is apparently responsible for both (all three if you consider the bridge over the Wye to be a third) bridges, and therefore, surely "bridges'" would be correct. I could just have set it back as it was, but thought I'd mention it to you first in case you had a logical reason for the change that I hadn't considered. --SMeeds 18:52, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

You are probably right. I had some second thoughts myself after sending it, but didn't follow up on it; I was thinking of it more as serial bridges, with one replacing the other. Apparently I hadn't read it closely enough. Gene Nygaard 21:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Webster's Dictionary

Salve, Gene Nygaard!
I noticed you've been changing redirects regarding Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Last year when I wrote the Webster's Dictionary article, there was a stub for the Third, and, I believe, the Second editions. I merged them all into the main Webster's Dictionary article. There was some discussion about these moves at the time and you probably were not aware of them. Unless major expansion is planned to the Webster's Third article, it is my intention to consolidate this material once again with the main article and put a redirect on that page. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 20:49, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there'd be major objection from me, so prepare for --DannyWilde 00:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)battle royale if that is your intention. Just look at that What links here list. This specific dictionary is a major reference work in the English language. That other hodgepodge isn't. It doesn't belong just lumped together with any dictionary whatsoever that can add "Webster's" to its name, by numerous different publishers at different times (even though you do make some effort to limit it to a discussion of one line of them, too much so given the actual state of affairs). The separate article for the Second should also be reinstated. Gene Nygaard 21:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC

[edit] When changing a link ...

move the article it points to! Your edits to Canon FD destroyed a link to Canon FD 35-70mm AF lens (now corrected). Thanks, —Morven 05:30, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Must have been one in the text; all of them in the tables were redlinks before I changed them. But it is probably the title of the article linked to that needs to be fixed. There should be a space before the unit symbol. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) Gene Nygaard 07:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Diwali

Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya ( Lead me from darkness to light.)Wish you Happy Diwali - P R A D E E P Somani (talk) Feel free to send me e-mail.
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya ( Lead me from darkness to light.)
Wish you Happy Diwali
- P R A D E E P Somani (talk)
Feel free to send me e-mail.

[edit] thanks for disambig help

Yes, I botched it. Going too fast, I suppose. Sorry for the inconvienence and thanks much for the help! Tedernst 23:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] argyria

Hello ! what was your reference for your statement concerning argyria ? I hope not one of these ad-pages for colloidal silver... i added some references on the talk page at argyria. regards, Michael Redecke 00:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not my statement. Neither your edit nor your edit summary made any sense, however. Gene Nygaard 00:49, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{foreignchar}} vandalism

I've added {{sockpuppet}} templates to the user pages of all the foreignchar vandal accounts I know of, to make it easier to keep track of them. They currently link to User:Diacrit and Category:Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets of Diacrit, but that can be changed if and when someone finds out who the real user behind all these sockpuppets is. I'd suggest centralizing discussion of these vandal accounts to User talk:Diacrit. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:35, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hochkönig

I don't understand the query in your recent edit to Hochkönig. It reads why is it separated by a "pass" which is 65 m higher than this "peak"?, but I cannot find any difference of 65m between any figures. To which numbers are you referring? --Stemonitis 16:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Danios

error - resent below

[edit] Danios

I spent many hours considerably updating those pages. I called the fish "Danio abolineatus var pulcher" etc. in the manner used, because that is what they are known as to aquarists who are familiar with Danios. If there are conventions that have been broken in good faith and people see a need to change something like that, a polite message of explanation to the original poster accompanying the change would be far better (especially with a new contributor) than just changing the page and removing a hyperlink that had been put there by someone who knows just a little about the subject. (especially when the convention apparently broken is very minor as this appears to me to be)

While I accept that within wikipedia internal site meaning of the word your actions were not vandalism and accordingly apologise, your actions seemed to me to be vandalism, which is why I used the word (not being aware of the wikipedia definition at the time)

Wikipedia depends wholly on people voluntarily giving their time to supply information to it and I have, as a result of this, been somewhat dissuaded from spending more time providing more such information to wikipedia, or encouraging others to do so.

Kerripaul 19:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore, please in future limit your edits to subjects in which you have sufficient knowledge to comment. The Rocket Danio is not "often kept as a pet", in fact there are probably less than 1000 people worldwide who keep this species as a pet as it has only been exported in the last 6 months, and then only to a limited amount of shops (only 3 in the UK at present)

Kerripaul 21:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chernihiv

Dear Gene, "Chernihiv" is the correct English spelling of the city name. Have a look in any modern English language encyclopedia (Britannika, Encyclopedia of Columbia, Encarta, etc.) and you will see "Chernihiv" there.--AndriyK 20:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Approximation of circumference

Back in August, you commented in Template talk:Planet Infobox/Earth about approximation formulas for circumference. Well, here are two of the best! P=)
Let Oz=\arccos\!\left\{\frac{b}{a}\right\}\quad (e=\sin\!\left\{Oz\right\});\,\!

\sum_{TN=1}^{UT=\infty}\frac{\sqrt{1-\left[\sin\!\left\{\theta_{tn}\right\}\sin\!\left\{Oz\right\}\right]^2}}{UT}\approx \left[\frac{1+\cos\!\left\{Oz\right\}^{1.5}}{2}\right]^\frac{1}{1.5}\quad (Muir's\ approx-1883),\,\!

\approx cos\!\left\{\frac{Oz}{2}\right\}^2\left[1+\frac{3\tan\!\left\{\frac{Oz}{2}\right\}^4} {10+\sqrt{4-3\tan\!\left\{\frac{Oz}{2}\right\}^4}}\right]\quad (Ramanujan's\ 2nd\ approx-1914)\,\!

Ramanujan's 2nd approximation of 1914 is by far the better one! ~Kaimbridge~ 01:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

So, what answers would you get for that orbital circumference using these two? Gene Nygaard 01:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I see we have differnt issues at play here (and I'm just figuring it out now, as I go along!).
The elliptical parameters aren't what they appear (I'm not bothering with TeX):
   Aphelion = a = 152,097,701 km;
 Perihelion = b = 147,098,074 km;
semi-major axis = .5*[a+b] = 149,597,887.5 km;
 (cos{Oz} = b:a = 0.9671288456884696764)
tan{.5*Oz}2 = e = 0.0167102192535974145;
(not sin{Oz}, which equals 0.2542868377193129681)
So, based on the orbital circumference being π*[a+b] (i.e., 2π*"semi-major axis"), then the answer is simply 939,951,248.725 km. If, however, it is based on the actual perimeter between a and b—i.e., requiring integration—then the answer is 940,016,865.853 km.
On the other hand, if we let a = 149,597,887.5 km and b = a*cos{asin{0.0167102192535974145}} = 149,576,999.826 km (cos{Oz} = 0.999860375), then the answer is 939,885,629.854 km—which is the answer you came up with (I have no idea where "80.229.231.194" came up with "924,375,700", which gives a radius less than b/perihelion).
Thus, I suspect the correct answer is 940,016,865.853 km, with 939,951,248.725 km just being the simple perimetric approximation—I would get rid of the "Tm",though, and just keep everything as km. ~Kaimbridge~ 16:45, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
The circumferences of the outer planets' orbits will get very ungainly if you switch to km. Terametres allow for easier comparisons. Best bet is to give both. Urhixidur 01:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay, "80.229.231.194" got "924,375,700" from NASA, which still seems way off (I just e-mailed them with an inquiry)—so, for now, I'll revert it to that value (though that is probably rounded, as they give 152,100,000/147,100,000 for Aphelion/Perihelion, yet they give 149,597,890 for the semi-major—go figure!). ~Kaimbridge~ 17:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin?

Hi Gene. Are you interested in being nominated for adminship at all? You seem to do a fair bit of vandal-fighting, and have a truly stupendous number of edits for the time you've been here. --Bob Mellish 17:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming convention

I'm not contesting your vote but I just wanted to make sure that you'd read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Norse mythology), rather than just the talk page of it. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 02:07, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AfD

I've opened up an AFD for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Naming conventions (Western nobility). I strongly disapprove of someone doing a cut and paste of one article, moving it to a new (badly named) page and editing it without a consensus. Feel free to cast a vote on the issue. [[user_talk:Jtdirl]] 23:50, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Hello there, Gene. I must admit I was left speechless after seing your comments at my RfA page. After all the attempts at compromise from my side (some of which are visible even on this very page), after we spent so much time discussing the darn AT rifle's name you still claim that I crossed any border there? After you unilaterally moved the page and failed to provide any sources for roughly two months, instead offending me on several occasions you still find my behaviour there disputable? I must say I was severely disappointed and took that personally. I doubt you would change your mind and do not ask for it, though the matter is explained pretty well by Piotrus on my RfA and by me in Talk:Kb ppanc wz.35. Halibutt 17:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Don't be lying and claiming that I "unilaterally moved the page". That propensity of yours for altering the truth is one reason I'll continue to oppose your nomination.
Furthermore, there was no obligation for me to provide any sources; it was your proposed move which failed, and you were asking for sources related to an irrelevant point. Not only that, but I actually did provide sources, even though the point was irrelevant.
As far as I can tell, the only time I ever moved the page was to revert an unsupported change on 29 July, contrary to the requested moves voting. On July 22, I redirected the abbreviated Polish name to the unabbreviated Polish name of an apparent duplicate article (likely what is now this article), before VioletRiga moved the article that longer name back to the Anti-tank name later the same hour. Did I change the name at any other time? Gene Nygaard 18:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually that July 22 change of your cut-and-past duplicate to a redirect took place after your move of the name of the original page a few minutes earlier, and before that move was reverted by VioletRiga a few minutes later.
All right then, I'm sorry, I thought it was you who moved the article to the "English" name, though now I'm not so sure about it. Anyway, you were asked to post sources both in the talk page and in my edit histories, which was fully in accordance with WP:CITE and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Yet, I can't find the sources I asked for at the relevant talk page. I provided mine and they're all there. Sadly, you did not provide yours. At the same time you continued to violate the WP:AD by erasing the dispute tag in order to prove a point and turned down the attempt at a compromise by GraemeLeggett, not to mention my attempts at compromise above. You also managed to offend me on several occasions (drag your butt elsewhere, remarks on my logic circuts...), assumed my bad faith and stated that clearly despite my clarifications, ignored my apologies at the talk page, ignored the WP:CITE and yet you still claim that it was my behaviour that was wrong there..? I wonder how would you react if you were treated the very same way... Perhaps I should find one of your articles, ask someone to move it to some absurd name, then offend you at the talk page, ignore your pleas for sources and then simply withdraw. After some time I might even start claiming that it was actually your fault...
BTW, as a sign of courtesy you could reply at my talk page. I don't plan to monitor yours. Halibutt 19:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I still believe you opposed my candidacy because you couldn't handle an accuracy dispute properly and not because you found my actual behaviour wrong. But still...
Thanks. WikiThanks.

I would like to express my thanks to all the people who took part in my (failed) RfA voting. I was both surprised and delighted about the amount of support votes and all the kind words! I was also surprised by the amount of people who stated clearly that they do care, be it by voting in for or against my candidacy. That's what Wiki community is about and I'm really pleased to see that it works.
As my RfA voting failed with 71% support, I don't plan to reapply for adminship any more. However, I hope I might still be of some help to the community. Cheers! Halibutt 05:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translate river names?

Hi! You moved Weiße Elster to White Elster a few weeks ago. I don't think that is a very common name for that river in English, let's discuss it (and other translations) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers#Translation of river names. Markussep 15:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting Icelanders

rv; incomprehensible edit summary, Haukur--do you think only Icelanders were born in 1928?

Sorry. Your edit left the article exactly as I was saying it should, didn't it? Entirely my mistake. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 00:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sorting Norwegians

I wonder why you categorise Yngve Hågensen as Haagensen and Terje Søviknes as Soviknes. In various categories the Norwegian letters æ, ø and å are sorted correctly after x, y and z, so why substitute them? --Eddi (Talk) 00:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

When I read Norwegian, I expect indexing in accordance with the Norwegian alphabet. When I read English, I expect indexing in accordance with the English alphabet. If this were http://nn.wikipedia.org, I'd expect Norwegian indexing (including, for example, é indexed as e). It isn't--it is en.wikipedia.org, so I expect æ indexed as ae.
Note that when many densely populated categories such as births by year have navigational aids listing the alphabet, the letters listed are the 26 letters of the English alphabet. TO use Norwegian indexing causes especially serious problems when it is the first letter involved. It is the same order even if it doesn't occur as the initial letter.
Note also in Swedish Å precedes Ö, but in Norwegian Å follows the equivalent letter Ø. The Norwegians will normally index Ö with Ø; the Swedes will index Ø with Ö, and the Germans index Ö (a letter in general use in their language) with O. Just one more reason to use English indexing in an English wikipedia.
The Wikipedia default order is none of those orders; it is numeric by unicode numbers. That's why it needs help to get correct sorting order in English or any other language. Gene Nygaard 00:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Note specifically that on Category:Norwegian politicians as it stands at the precise time of this posting, Laila Dåvøy follows Øystein Djupedal and precedes Odd Einar Dørum. That is not correct sorting order in either English or Norwegian. Guess we're all a bunch of Swedes, eh? Gene Nygaard 01:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
I have noticed the sorting of Dørum and Dåvøy, but in an otherwise English environment the alien Swedish and Norwegian alphabets are so similar that we can live with the difference. As to your categorisation project, this is all good and well with the proper support, otherwise such a large undertaking may appear as a private initiative. --Eddi (Talk) 01:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps I stated my question too subtly: Do you have the proper support for your categorisation project, or is it a private initiative? Thanks. --Eddi (Talk) 16:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Could you please point me to a guideline on alphabetical categorisation, or a wikiproject dealing with such things? Thank you very much for your assistance. --Eddi (Talk) 21:44, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
It's not that you are too subtle; it's that you are trying to throw out a red herring. Just consider that you might be better off not rocking the boat, or you might get into more arguments about the proper names for the articles as well. For example, there's no reason to have someone who is buried in Arlington Cemetery under the name of Larry Thorne in an article whose name is Lauri Törni. With the proper name of the article in accordance with Wikipedia naming conventions, we'd have no difficulty deciding how to index it.
Most of the articles are already properly indexed, including the difficult ones, by editors other than me. I'm just doing some of them that need to be properly indexed. Obviously, you don't have any guidelines to say that we should index in the Norwegian alphabet in English Wikipedia, nor that we should index on the basis of Unicode numbers rather than normal English indexing. So if you have any problems with my indexing, argue them on an individual basis if you'd like to. Gene Nygaard 22:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Paul Métivier

Why without the accent then? Bart Versieck 14:47, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Because we don't index Métivier after Mzurzak. Keep that in mind as you are editing. It also doesn't hurt to understand that it might also be a good idea to use the Metivier spelling at least once within the text, using the English alphabet; there's no good reason to hide this from some search engine searches, and the undisplayed piping I added isn't going to help in many of those search engines.
It's absolutely essential, of course, to have the redirect from Paul Metivier, which already existed. Gene Nygaard 15:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining it. Bart Versieck 16:18, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Math markup

Ok, I'm not quite a big fan of math markup, but I used it to make the equivalence formulas more visible, because that's the most important element of information on that page, from my POV, and it was barely visible in some cases. Mabye you agree with something like this:

1 V = 1 W/A = 1 m2·kg·s–3·A–1

Waiting for your answer. --Mihai -talk 20:20, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Heading HTML tags do appear on the TOC and they also add the edit link, so it's not good. You were right about the 200% size, I didn't thaught for the moment that there are peoples who use large fonts, but the world is big an you never know. It seems OK to make them 150% and if you agree, I could start modifying them. Another question though, should we make links towards rarer used composite measures like Wb, or T in the formulas? --Mihai -talk 21:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My Question on Your Comment

A had left a note here: Maybe my TeX is worse than text, but is the content of my edit worth unreverting?
Thank you.
-Gracenotes 22:58, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I hope you accept my challenge there. Gene Nygaard 17:18, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Björk

examples are bad if there are extraneous issues; find something better

Do you mean the 'ö'? Do you consider the current location of the Björk article controversial? - Haukur 15:31, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I mean your example is bad because it combines the issue of whether or not to include her patronymic with the issue of whether or not to use the edh and other Icelandic letters. You can discuss it somewhere else if you like; it simply isn't appropriate for illustrating the point on that page because of the multiple issues. Gene Nygaard 15:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hyphens and en dashes

Hi! Can you please come and check out User:Chocolateboy's comments on the current hyphens vs. en dashes guideline on Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)? I have not been here long enough to understand the issue, and a solution must be found quickly. He says that this manual and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes) are inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia, or something like that; I need to look up past discussions to figure out what's going on. A revert war depends on your assistance! lol, well there are less dramatic ways of putting it. Thanks. Neonumbers 23:09, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ship displacement

On USS Whale (SSN-638), you changed the displacement to

3,860 t. surfaced (3,920 t),
4,640 t. submerged (4,600 m³)

I see the conversion error you corrected in the first line, but why the volume measurement in the second? —wwoods 01:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

A floating object displaces its weight. A submerged object displaes its volume. Archimedes' principle]. And there are just too damn many things called "tons". These tons are based on 35 ft² of seawater.
That said, I don't often see people converting dived displacement to volume units. So if you want to change it, I'll let it go; just can't do it myself, however, because it doesn't make any sense to me to express this in mass units. Gene Nygaard 02:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Date links

You made some elequent and succinct comments on date linking when not needed for date preferences. You may wish to make similar comments at: Wikipedia_talk:Bots#Bot_permission_please.3F. Thanks. Bobblewik 22:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pound

Re: your note to User:Chaosfeary about Pound. Chaosfeary has been blocked for the last several weeks for bulk conversion of pages from American to Commonwealth English over the objections of other editors and admins. He may not yet even be aware that his account has been unblocked.--Srleffler 20:03, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Newton's law

In the article of Newton's laws of motion, I modified the link of danish wiki because it was linked to Newton's 2nd law. PLEASE DON'T REVERT. “Love” is the plural form of “lov”, which means “law” in English. Try [17] --Hello World! 08:14, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I trimmed the ending spaces at the same time I modified the above interwiki.--Hello World! 14:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for typographical changes

to the Sample rate conversion page. I was just learning wikipedia at the time, and missed many of the problems you fixed. (Others were in my original writeup). LouScheffer 06:14, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation pages

Please accept my apoligies on creating the ML page a disambiguation page. Thanks, --Kilo-Lima 14:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top 1000 Scientists: From the Beginning of Time to 2000 AD

Hi,

I placed the above article in the copyvio box. I see from the history that you've spent some time on it. I'm sorry if this is wasted effort. I'm pretty sure this is copyright since the list is subjective - the word "Top" has no objective meaning wrt scientists. The only difference between this article and a List of scientists is the opinion of Phillip Barker. His written opinions are copyright. Regardless, I think this article was created merely as a means to further the boasts of Ashoka Jahnavi-Prasad and his fans/relatives (the history of the anonymous user 202.138.112.252 gives it away). See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ashoka Jahnavi-Prasad and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Johnubiprasad (which mentions the Top 1000 book).

Cheers, --Colin 16:50, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Overprecision on unit conversions

Hi Gene. Is it really worth your time to fiddle with kg to lb conversions on aircraft pages? The difference is miniscule (454.5454545 g if you use 2.2 vs. 453.69407 g with your conversion) and the numbers are approximate anyway. Anyway, thanks for your help in cleaning up various pages! - Emt147 Burninate! 21:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I can appreciate your crusade for ultra-precise conversions but please leave the numbers alone if you don't understand the reporting conventions for aircraft or at the very least please be consistent. In the F-4 article you tweaked thrust by miniscule amounts and then grossly rounded the fuel capacity to the nearest hundred. What gives? Aircraft specifications are extremely variable and condition-dependent, and every single reference except perhaps some engineering manual cites specs as a rough representation of the aircraft. Thus, the 454 g vs 453 g per pound difference is simply irrelevant. And kindly refrain from accusing fellow editors of sloppy writing (re your post on my talk page). - Emt147 Burninate! 19:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
You are confusing two things, accuracy and precision. Furthermore, that gallons figure was for a hypothetical, nonexistent plane, more precision would be ridiculous. I agree that the pound-force figures for thrust are likely overprecise, but unless you or I can show where that overprecision crept in, I don't see any reason to change it. Who knows, maybe that 79.6 kN was correct, rather than the 79.4 kN you changed it to—but if it was correct, then it should have been listed first and the conversion to lbf should have been in parentheses, and it should have been 17,900 lbf or 17,890 lbf and not 17,845 lbf (and not 17,895 lbf either; that would be unwarranted precision). Gene Nygaard 21:23, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • You know what, this is not worth it. I give up, do whatever bizarre manipulations and significant digits you want. - Emt147 Burninate! 00:22, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] indexing gone wrong

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gustave_Mal%C3%A9cot&diff=prev&oldid=35149314

you removed the accents for no reason. — Dunc|☺ 18:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, if you're talking about the category sorting changes he's making, what he has done is fine. The text in the category sort string never appears on the screen, and accented letters should probably be sorted as if they were unaccented.--Srleffler 20:25, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
That's right. Gustave Malecot should appear before Eric Malling, before Etienne-Louise Malus, and before Stephane Mallat, whether or not any of them have accent marks. BTW, have you noticed been messing around with the character list which appears below the edit box? How in the world am I supposed to be able to make all those funny squiggles, now that the characters aren't listed there? Gene Nygaard 08:14, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lux

The plural of lux is lux, not "luxes".--Srleffler 20:21, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

There is some authority for luxes as plural. But you are right, NIST SP 811 cites American National Standard for Metric Practice, ANSI/IEEE Std 268-1992 for lux as the plural. I'll defer to that for now. Actually, I think part of it is just people not understanding the difference between a "3 lux camcorder" which is like a "ten-foot pole", yet saying that the length of the pole is "ten feet". Gene Nygaard 08:10, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] D.C. coordinates

I noticed you reverted my edits on Washington, D.C.. It would really help if you instead joined the ongoing discussion on the talk page. With your edits, the geographic coordinates are now entirely missing from the infobox. Also, not sure why you object to using the coordinates for the United States Capitol? You didn't explain why when you reverted. It makes perfect sense to use coordinates for the U.S. Capitol. Please read the article further, where it explains "Washington, D.C. is divided into four quadrants: Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest. The axes bounding the quadrants radiate from the U.S. Capitol building." Thanks. --Aude (talk | contribs) 19:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I see in the geography section, it says "38°53′42″N, 77°02′11″W (the coordinates of the Zero Milestone, on The Ellipse)". I still think the U.S. Capitol makes more sense to use for the coordinates, as it's the origin of D.C.'s quadrants and street network. I posed this question on the Talk:Washington, D.C. page and will let consensus decide. Thanks. --Aude (talk | contribs) 20:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help

Started an article about a week or two ago that has several volume measurements that need to made understandable to folks like me. If you scan through it you'll see what I mean...Glacial recession...any help would be appreciated.--MONGO 03:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Hi, just a note to say that you only need to add name to categories if you want it indexed by something other than the first name which probably wouldn't be the case in Frederick Augustus III of Saxony (unless you wanted him indexed under Saxony, in which case you would put Saxony, Frederick Augustus III), Regards Arniep 02:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Arniep. I did realize that in this particular case, but I added it to one of them because somebody had already misindexed it under Augustus, a second given name, rather than either Frederick or Saxony, in a couple of categories (others were default, without added keys, so I just added one to show that's the way I meant it to be). Gene Nygaard 03:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consistency in conversions

Gene, is there a reason why you round the conversions to the nearest 10 or 100 in some articles (MiG-3) and leave them "as is" in the others (P-36)? This is bordering on disruptive. - Emt147 Burninate! 04:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Because they are of different precisions. And, because converting 2,699 kg to the nearest pound gives you 5950 lb, when you round off the 5950.2764563698459037130628983023 lb my calculator shows. That is just an accident, of course, that the nearest pound is divisible by 10. (The question of whether the original may have been 2,700 kg and only ended up as 2,699 kg after a conversion to pounds and back is a separate and distinct issue.) The precision of the conversion should match the precision of the original. It can never be an exact match, of course, unless the units are related by powers of ten. But the converted result should be the one slightly more precise or slightly less precise than the original; of course, it isn't always possible to tell whether or not zeros in the original are significant. This is all pretty conventional stuff; there are dozens of other editors on Wikipedia who know how to do it properly as well. You might sometimes quibble with my choices, but if your choice is more than one significant digit more or less than what I have, maybe you should take another look. Gene Nygaard 04:28, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
  • 363 vs 365 mph is not a real difference, neither is 20 ft of ceiling, 3 mi of range, or 4 lb of takeoff weight. You can have very significant variations (e.g. 10-20 mph or greater variation in top speed) between two aircraft flying in identical conditions at identical weights due to subtle differences in surface finish, airframe, engine wear, etc. Aircraft performance specs are like blood pressures, anything beyond the nearest 10 is overprecision. The only absolutes are the physical dimensions - length, wingspan, height, and wing area. Hence, I cite the unconverted numbers directly from the references and round the conversions to 5 or 10 or 100, depending on the magnitude of the number. This is not correct in the global sense of precision but it is absolutely correct for aircraft. The only exception are the world records which are sometimes reported to the nearest hudredth or so. - Emt147 Burninate! 05:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
To pick some numbers out of a hat, a change from 16,396 lb to 16,400 lb is not a change of 4 lb of takeoff weight. Rather, it is more like a change of ±60 pounds or so. And perhaps even more important, a change of minus three syllables as you read it.
You should be looking for systemic error in your sources. Is there some reason that the precision is consistently overstated? There likely is. Find out why. For example, does a source consistently give numbers which look like they are to the nearest pound, ending in any digits, yet if you multiply those numbers by some constant such as 0.45 or 1/2.2 or whatever, you end up with a series of numbers that end in a couple of zeros for everything? Gene Nygaard 12:21, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Your reply makes no sense. What three syllables? How is 4 lbs equal to 60?

I cite sources only in the "native" units and convert the other ones. My sources are considered trustworthy in the aviation history community. I think the problem is that you are picky about numbers but know little about aircraft. As the result, you obsess over minutia and miss the big picture.

Anyway, my original question was why YOU round the converted numbers in some articles and don't round the same numbers in others. - Emt147 Burninate! 00:48, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Long March

32 days in that month I guess! I came across the month of Apri1 today.... Regards Rich Farmbrough. 21:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your I-16 edits

1) Soviet aircraft did not have speed measured in knots. This is strictly a US phenomenon. Please stop making these types of corrections on subjects you know little about. 2) Again, you un-rounded weights and dimensions but rounded the previously un-rounded climb rate. This is bordering on disruptive editing. - Emt147 Burninate! 15:28, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Knots are by no stretch of the imagination "strictly a US phenomenon".
Furthermore, in any case there is no guarantee that the source of information about Soviet aircraft is not a U.S. source, perhaps on original estimates made by U.S. experts. It's not like this was something published by a 1930s Soviet Union manufacturer of military aircraft. They tended to be rather secretive about things like that.
I round the results to correspond to the precision of the originals. If the originals are stated with false precision, fix them. But no matter how you look at it, 1,383 kg is not 3,049 lb.
Note specifically for the climb rate, for which you substituted the likely original 14.7 m/s for the previous conversion to 882 m/min, if we assume that the original measurement was accurate to the nearest tenth of a meter per second as stated, that would correspond to a rate in this range in feet per minute:
  • (14.65 m/s)(60 s/min)(1 ft/0.3048 m) = 2883.858... ft/min
  • (14.75 m/s)(60 s/min)(1 ft/0.3048 m) = 2903.543... ft/min
It sure looks to me as if 2,900 ft/min would be the appropriate conversion. What problem do you have with that? Gene Nygaard 15:54, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I'd say that the range figures above suggest at least a possibility that the 14.7 m/s figure is itself a conversion from an original expressed as 2900 ft/min. If that's to the nearest hundred feet, it would be in the 14.478 to 14.986 m/s range, and once again 14.7 m/s would be a good conversion. Gene Nygaard 15:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Speaking of what the Soviet aircraft had and didn't have—they didn't have power measured in English horsepower of 745.7 watts. Rather, if the Soviets expressed a measurement of power in horsepower, it was the metric horsepower of 75 kgf·m/s = 735.5 watts. Hope you'd go fix all those conversions, too; I haven't gotten into that yet. Gene Nygaard 16:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
That means, for example, that in Polikarpov I-16 the 900 hp should likely be 660 kW rather than 670 kW. Gene Nygaard 16:32, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Re you knots argument—saying that these speeds shouldn't be expressed in knots is like saying that many of these Russian jets should not have their thrust expressed in either newtons or in pounds-force. Gene Nygaard 17:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

You are totally missing the point again. It DOES NOT MATTER. 10 kW either way, 10 kg either way, 10 km/h either way, is well within the variation seen in normal aircraft. Doubly (quadruply? tenfold?) so in hand-built aircraft. Because I understand this phenomenon and because I understand that specs are presented to give a general idea of the aircraft and are not meant to be the flight manual, I will continue to use the commonly accepted conversions of 2.2 lb/kg, 0.746 kW/hp, etc. If it bothers you, you are welcome to change them but your efforts are pointless because you are trying to create precision where there is none. So long as the reader learns that an airplane weighed about 2,500 lbs and flew at about 250 mph, the point comes across perfectly. There is probably not a single I-16 built that had every one of the weights, dimensions, and performance figures listed in the specs. But you could get there by gathering a dozen of them or averaging across the entire production run of 7,000.

The airspeed indicators of Russian aircraft are in km/h. The airspeed indicators of British aircraft are in mph. The airspeed indicators of US aircraft are usually in knots. Therefore, it is incorrect to list the knots as the first value for a Soviet aircraft. - Emt147 Burninate! 23:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

No, you are the one totally missing the point. There is, of course, uncertainty and imprecision in any measurement whatsoever. However,
  1. The precision of the measurement should not be overstated in the numbers used, and
  2. the process of converting to other units should not add any significant error and uncertainty Gene Nygaard 07:03, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This has nothing to do with precision. The accuracy of measurements is rather low and greately dependent on the particular aircraft. Fighting for ultra precision when the accuracy is low is kind of moot. Besides, the precision is unknown (and again, widely dependent on the time period and the instruments used). - Emt147 Burninate! 17:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] F-111 conversions

I don't have my calculator ready to hand, but are you sure about this one?

  • Rate of climb: 7,890 m/min (25,890 ft/min) --Surgeonsmate 23:01, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, unless I continue to do something wrong when I try to check it (wouldn't be the first time) (7890 m)/(1 ft/0.3048 m) gives 25885.826771653543307086614173228 before rounding on my calculator. If you are asking if the numbers are correct, apart from the accuracy of the conversion, that's another story for which I don't have the answer.
It was 7,890 m/min (25,550 ft/min). That would make a meter about 3.238 ft or 3 ft 2 7/8 in, or a foot equal to 308.8 mm.
I use Windows, and always have the calculator that comes with it at hand, with View set to scientific so I have trig and logarithm functions. Gene Nygaard 23:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I've found a converter and checked. You are spot on down to the umpteenth decimal place. Please excuse me interrupting you. I'll now go have my head screwed on properly! --Surgeonsmate

[edit] Soyuz launch vehicle and seconds vs kgf*s/kg

Gene, you do not have consensus on Wikipedia to use kgf*s/kg to replace Seconds in measuring specific impulse. I know seconds infuriate you, but I also know that you find 10x as many references in Sec than kgf*s/kg. Please accept that the industry uses Seconds; not exclusively, but predominantly, and that's the way it is. This debate has floated around several pages including Specific impulse and you are not convincing anyone. Please accept the consensus. Please put Soyuz launch vehicle's units back the way you found them. Thank you. The other edits you did were clearly positive and I appreciate you making those. Georgewilliamherbert 23:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Fortunately, there is no requirement that we achieve consensus before editing Wikipedia.
If I hadn't had to add the SI conversions, I probably wouldn't have bothered to clarify the non-SI units.
Furthermore, you are smarter than User:Wolfkeeper is. When you see that "LB-SEC/LB" on the NASA graphic at J-2 (rocket engine), where thrust is in "LB" and weight is in "LB" you know what it means—the "LB" wouldn't be there if they canceled out. You know that these units are indeed lbf·s/lb in standard, modern notation. You know how those two different units are identified in almost every Wikipedia article, and you know that most the Wikipedia articles include SI equivalents for these measurements, and that in the SI version those "LB" for thrust are always in newtons (usually with the kilo- prefix in aircraft articles), and the "LB" for engine weight is always in kilograms in SI (the image itself is at Image:J-2 rocket engine.jpg).
It's not just Wikipedia, of course. Just as in Wikipedia, there are zero NASA web pages which give the "weight" of any engine or any aircraft or spacecraft in either pounds-force or kilograms-force or poundals or newtons or dynes or whatever. It is always in kilograms and pounds (occasionally a "ton" of some sort, often unidentified, of course). Gene Nygaard 14:31, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I apologize for overstating my case. I should know better than to underestimate the Mars Climate Orbiter people.
Google
weight kg OR lbs OR lb site:.nasa.gov    74,500 hits
weight lbm site:nasa.gov    235 hits
weight lbf OR kgf site:.nasa.gov    346 hits
Of the latter, only a very few give the actual "weight" of any object in units of force, but some do purport to do so, including:
ASCENT, STAGE SEPARATION AND GLIDEBACK PERFORMANCE OF A PARTIALLY REUSABLE SMALL LAUNCH VEHICLE http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltrs/PDF/2004/aiaa/NASA-aiaa-2004-0876.pdf which uses weight in "lbs" and thrust in "Klb" within the paper, but in one table gives
Table 1. Characteristics of Small Launch Vehicle
Characteristic Booster Second Stage Third Stage
Gross Weight, lbf 88,727 23,859 4,080
Dry Weight, lbf 28,915 3,166 1,104
Note that no location is specified, even though these "weights" are given with five apparently significant digits. The acceleration of gravity, even if you limit yourself to sea level on Earth, varies by one part in 190, so obviously these aren't really force measurements. How much force would that "88,727 lbf" booster exert if it were on Launch complex 39A at Cape Canaveral, so you suppose? I'll bet it wouldn't be 88,727 lbf. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it would be much closer to 88,596 lbf than 88,727 lbf.
Some of those in the latter group talk about making calculations with a "weight" in lbf, but don't actually give any actual measurements of that weight for any object. But several others such as http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/5810/docs/Chen_Veres_2005.pdf give measurements such as "Weight (lbm)" and the lbf hits are only for thrust. Gene Nygaard 15:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC) (correction 15:24, 31 January 2006 (UTC))
Of course, as far as specific impulse goes, it doesn't matter in the least whether that force is actually 88,596 lbf or 88,727 lbf. The specific impulse will be exactly the same, whether you measure it in pseudoseconds (lbf·s/lb = kgf·s/kg) or in SI units (N·s/kg = m/s). Gene Nygaard 15:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

They are hardly more trivial. Almost every article has birth and date categories as the first categories up, and I have never had a complaint about alpha-betizing cats. It's a matter of opinion as to which categories are more or less important. JackO'Lantern 13:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, you can't say that any more: you've had a complaint now. And since you've only been editing a month, not having had any before is not terribly significant. (crossposted to JackO'Lantern's talk) Gene Nygaard 14:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Part of my point, of course, is that it is equally valid to alphabetize numbers after letters. Gene Nygaard 14:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)