User talk:Mel Etitis/Archive 28

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[edit] Dhul-Qarnayn

Hi ME. Can you please verify the content and the context of Dhul-Qarnayn? I am asking this from you because I believe you may know a little about the subject.

IMO, the article is a bias because it presents only one face of the coin about the identity of Dhul-Qarnayn. While this identity has been debated for centuries between scholars -and no consensus has been reached yet, the article presents only (as a fact) that he was Alexander the Great. Some editors are trying to push this opinion forward and give no way to present that as a theory among many others. The intro says all and therefore it looks like if the article is just a mirror of Alexander the Great.

As a consequence, the article experiences an edit war that I don't know when it can end. -- Cheers Svest 17:54, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Mel. Cheers -- Svest 07:06, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rule of People v Rule of Law

Right now Wikipedia is going through a period of conflict between a rule of people and rule of law. It is seen in extreme cases such as the anonymous vandal that has been attacking me for weeks - he has more than enough power to attack me, but I have absolutely no power to deal with him. More troubling to me is how it shows up in a pervasive contempt by rather ordinary editors - not vandals or trolls, or even particulary POV warriors - who simply do not follow the rules, and then use the generally permissive stance of the wikipedia - and the cumbersome nature of doing anything about anyone other than the 3rr - to continue to degrade the quality of the work. Part of the problem is that, as Hobbes pointed out, law relies on a certain moral outrage which, when expressed, tends to end any possibility of peaceful outcome.

I'm not sure how to address this problem, partially because individual attempts tend to be seen as idiosyncratic, and often bog the editor or admin in question down into the mire. My suggestion is to have reasonable people who you know who will back you up on reverts - one scofflaw is usually willing to revert 4 times because he can get away with it, but not the 7 it takes to stop to editors. "Calling for back up" may be an informal mechanism to deal with the present break down of formal mechanisms, but it is something I urge people do when they reach a rule of ko situation on a page.

Best

Stirling Newberry 17:54, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Atheism copyedit

Could you please specify what parts of Atheism that you read prompted you to put the "copy-edit" tag there? I've already copy-edited most of the article, and I see relatively few grammatical and spelling mistakes on the page (though there are plenty of other types of things to be improved on the page, certainly), so if you could pinpoint what types of problems you saw that would be of great help, especially considering that it's a rather large page. -Silence 18:15, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:67.18.109.218

I've been keeping track of (and been a frequent target of vandalism and attacks from) this one, and given your recent block of him, I thought you might find this of interest: User:Gamaliel/todo#67.18.109.218_.28talk.C2.A0.E2.80.A2.C2.A0contribs.29. Gamaliel 18:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bryan Adams, Bryan Adams (hockey player) and User:Michelle1

(She's handling it this much better this time, but...) User:Michelle1 is again apparently trying to dictate what is Wikipedia policy as to the Bryan Adams article (in particular, the disambiguation issue). See User talk:Nlu#hockey player etc. Since you had much more luck with her last time than I did, can you step in and discuss the issue with her as well? Thanks. --Nlu 21:54, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Be happy to dismotivate one more Wiki-fan

Well fine, feel yourselves like kings here. Make your statements. I'm deleting my account and stop adding something good to that thing. It's not worth it. Because you are not ready to change, to improve. You've made your rules here. But without changes you won't go far. You will be on the same boat. Even rules are a subject to be changed. But you do not comprehend it. It always happens when Philistines have the power. Do it on your own. Bye. Be happy to dismotivate one more Wiki-fan. Ex-fan. Beautifulstranger 22:16, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] loazi

Anyway - just a friendly reminder to check talk pages before using admin powers :). Take care :). Ryan Norton T | @ | C 00:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Sections and Subheadings

I noticed that you are a respected admin and knowledgeable about writing style (both in wikipedia and in general) and you mention citing "Wikipedia:Use subheadings sparingly" often. I have taken to adding sections often, even when I am only making a small contribution to the content of an article (see [1]). Does my usage of sections (and formating in general) show a good understanding of their purpose and application in wikipedia (see [2], [3], [4])? I am mostly looking for pointers, and hopefully a vote of confidence. Thanks. Smmurphy 15:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Madonna albums

Thanks for cleaning up after me at the Madonna albums. My impression was, and I believe that I am under this impression owing to a previous exhchange with you, that the wikilinking of years was "deprecated". Can you point me to some guideline about when, and when not, to wikilink years? Jkelly 23:08, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xanadu house edit

In response to your msg to me: Please stop removing content from Wikipedia that people have worked hard to create. It is considered vandalism. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. --Mel Etitis (??? ??????) 12:36, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

um...listen Mr. Wiki-addict...anything I did was an attempt to update the fate of the Xanadu house. Do you think your work is more important than the FACT that the house is gone and that I was trying to tell people that here?? I've never updated anything here and thought I was helping...forgive me! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.197.137 (talk • contribs) 04:03, 18 October 2005

  • The anonymous user is correct, Mel Etitis. The edit was not vandalism, it was simply information without a given source. I have added a source, there is also a website with pictures of the demolition of Xanadu. — Wackymacs 06:21, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
The set of edits on which I was commenting were these — the removal of a large chunk of text, with no explanation. --Mel Etitis (??? ??????) 08:16, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
  • You always have arguments with other users, Mel, registered or not. Has it ever occured to you that perhaps your professor-like demeanor just isn't suitable for an online community? It's very hard to gauge someone's expression without seeing his face, and most of the time, you seem to be quite robotlike and aggressive, not to mention somewhat judgmental and quick, too quick to jump to conclusions. And playing up your academic side doesn't help - people think you're trying to put on airs or something. But sometimes, you do get along well with people, let's not exclude that. Don Diego 17:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Either Don Diego (talk · contribs) is DrippingInk (talk · contribs) or shares exactly the same rather peculiar terminology. In either case, I'm not interested in this sort of pointless attack. --Mel Etitis (??? ??????) 21:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I wonder where you get your misguided impressions. Furthermore, if you ever want to get along with people, especially new ones, you have to learn to accept criticism and not regard it as a "pointless attack". As for that bit about DrippingInk, I cannot see a greater dissimilarity between our writing styles. I doubt that DrippingInk would have learned to write better English and with a cooler head in the few months that he has been away. His very comments in your RfC reflect his adversarial attitude towards you. Note that my attitude is as impartial as it can get, which is very. Please, for once, accept comments and. This is not a pointless attack. This is my judgment, based on many months of working with you. Don Diego 10:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for your copyediting after my omissions/carelessness on Confucianism. --Dpr 02:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RfC: Pop music issues

See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Pop music issues. --FuriousFreddy 05:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Courtland Mead

Hi, You removed a My Space link from Courtland Mead. At first sight it did look like a fake but after i went on that website and did Alot of digging, i found that the link was 100% genunin. the evidence was his picture gallery, Aswell as a picture of him as a kid {which i can confirm is him} the pictures of him as a adult/teen do look like him aswell. thanks - Agent003 12:18, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sandy Lam

It seemed that the Sandy Lam article has been attacked by anon vandals for some time. Are there any thoughts about banning any of them (although I suspect "they" are one and the same person). There're some very clear denigratory edits which people who don't know the artiste would be easily misled, hence my concern. Mandel 17:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bancassurance

User:Merovingian has deleted this rediret, doubtless in error. Rich Farmbrough 23:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vanity article

John Louis Da Silva Here's another one by an anon. editor, for your magic delete button this time. Thanks. WBardwin 05:21, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted move-to-Wiktionary

It had been inactive for over a month. Would you prefer that I restore it? --Merovingian (t) (c) (e) 08:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I already know

..that I have given you some stars already, but I have just passed my 5,000th edit and am very happy!!!

...So, I give you this Working Man's Barnstar for all that you do. Molotov (talk)
22:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Image:Working Man's Barnstar.png...ALmost forgot it.Molotov (talk)
22:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greek language

I've tried to do a cleanup, while the nationalists were quiet. It may be worth trying to fight this one again.... Septentrionalis 22:53, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Pop_music_issues

Two items I would appreciate your input upon. The first is Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Pop_music_issues, and the second is a third opinion needed at Talk:First and Last and Always. I'd list it at WP:3O and spare you the bother, but, judging from its recent edit history, I've been the only one offering third opinions in a month. Jkelly 01:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

But before you add anything to the former, you might take a look at my comment here. -- Hoary 02:23, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Misled

It seems then that you too are misled. For you seem to think that you have a talk page also. However, you do not. In truth, Mel Etitis, is a user and each user has a talk page and therefore Mel Etitis has a talk page. However, you have no talk page. In reality, all users, whether registered or not, have talk pages. Why else would there be talk pages for IP addresses, and templates for those talk pages, if they were not meant to contact the user? As discussed with User:who here, each user has a talk page and therefore when I am user: IP my talk page is user:IP. This is the reason that when you talk to me at my talk page it tells me that I have a message. Otherwise the page would serve no purpose.

In essence, talk pages are ways of communicating with a person. The talk page for Mel Etitis happens to be the place where you go to receive communication directed to you, and thus it serves its purpose. Despite the fact that your talk page remains the same, that does not mean that I do not have a talk page. Anytime you want to reach me, you just have to leave a message on my talk page. Just because you don't know where my talk page is, or when I will be able to read what you have written, that doesn't mean that I don't have a talk page. Even though your communication may not always go to its proper recipient, if you are smart enough you will find a way to contact the recipient. Additionally, if your communication is important to the recipient they will find it.

For this reason, I don't need a talk page in the traditional sense, because my talk page works for me how and when I need it.

134.250.72.174 00:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC), the former 134.250.72.176

[edit] Dhul-Qarnayn again

I think a bit of mediation will be helpful here . I am not saying that the version written by me or Zora is perfect , but the version that is being pushed by Zeno has been copy pasted from anti Islam site , & is full of baseless assumptions & lies (compare tafsir Ibn Kathir to the claim about him from Muslimhope site) . Secondly he is not willing to accept that DQ might be somebody other than Alex . He is also pushing "flat earth theory" base on the very same assumptions . He is not willing to give importance to Muslim scholars , rather he keeps on reverting the article to Orientalist claims . I am not saying that Orientalist claims shouldnt be stated , but the whole article shouldnt be based on their claims . I mean there are countless theories about Jesus made by athiests ( his being born of Virgin Mary ) , do we write the whole JESUS article from their POV .F.a.y.?????? ???? /c 04:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dashes and hyphens

Hi, Mel. I apologize for wasting your time, as I'm sure the information I want is somewhere in Wikipedia, and I'm sure you've answered this question to others. But could you tell me, or direct me to where I can find out, when Wikipedia articles should have ndash, or mdash, etc. In some articles, I find double hyphens taking the place of dashes, and I think they should be changed, but am not sure which kind of dash to change them to. Also, I sometimes find n or m dashes that stretch all the way from one word to the next, and sometimes I find spaces on either side (which would be my preference). From a grammar and punctuation point of view, I do know when to use dashes – I'm just not sure how long they should be and how they should be spaced. Thanks. Ann Heneghan (talk) 10:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You can ignore my question. Jkelly very kindly provided a link to an earlier answer you gave to the same question. Ann Heneghan (talk) 16:13, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] James Cole has reappeared

The James Cole article is back. Since you were the one (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Cole) who deleted this article the last time perhaps you could be the one promoting its speedy deletion. 66.167.252.227 23:47, 21 October 2005 (UTC).

[edit] Last Night a DJ Saved My Life

Of course it's not a reasonable split (the page on the original 1983 song was only made by you-know-who after he read a complaint by someone who was looking for information on that very notable song...and came up with more Mariah Carey fancruft). There shouldn't have been an article on Mariah Carey's version in the first place (as the article attests to, her version was a flop). But don't stress yourself with trying to request or push for a merge, lest we have all these kids crying again about having to uphold encyclopedic standards. The best thing you can really do is inform other people of the problem; if you bother enough people, maybe some of them will start realizing the problem at hand, here. That, or the articles could always be tagged for what they are:

 This article or section may contain an excessive amount of information with limited interest or intricate details.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. (March 2008)

The Mariah Carey, Britney, Christina, and 'nem articles are a lost cause, at least for now until some sort of serious action is taken. I'm turning my concentration to fixing up other articles, where people won't complain and resist their being cleaned up. --FuriousFreddy 16:21, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Next time you decide to delete an image...

Leave a message with the original uploader first and tell them what the (potential) problem is: wrong/outdated tagging, copyvio, etc. That way they can fix the problem themselves before going thru the trouble of re-uploading another image. In the case of the Shiver music video image, it was uploaded almost a year ago so it used the old {{screenshot}} tag which is probably outdated now; if that was the problem, you should simply contact the uploader (myself) so I can change the tagging to {{musicpromo-screenshot}}.

A common courtesy, really. --Madchester 22:40, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, no problem. See, I usually save a copy of an image that I upload to Wikipedia. But for some reason, I never saved that particular image so I had to look for the video and screencap it again with some video editing software. Not everyone saves a copy of what they upload, so I think it's better to warn someone before you delete something so if it can be fixed, we won't have to go through the hassle of finding a similar picture to re-upload. Thanks for the reply. :-) --Madchester 14:54, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to treat a newbie...

...with editing attitudes? I'm sorry, but I recently came across a two-month-old Wikipedian who deem it pointless to discuss wholesale changes in the talk page and who made lots of controversial hacking and trimming in bio entries. He calls it "obvious improvement"; I beg to differ. As what he does is not clearly vandalism, I'm at a loss to minimize the damage he does. He (User:Iago Dali) is editing at an astonishing rate, mostly , in the hyper-"lite" style . We are having a discussion at Talk:William Shakespeare about this. Just wonder what an admin can do to stop, or prevent, such things from happening. Can an admin warn then ban based on poor editing etiquette (ie. no prior discussion of large-scale changes)? Mandel 16:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Lester Bowie

You wrote: There's room for disagreement, perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of point "sectionising" an article when all but a couple lines are in the one section ("Life and career") (see Wikipedia:Use subheadings sparingly). Note also that headings should be uncapitalised except for proper nouns (and, of course, the initial letter). --Mel Etitis (??? ??????) 17:49, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

You're right. I did that a bit hastily, didn't really think about it. Sorry. Karol 17:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ergative verbs

Hi, Mel. You may remember that I sent you a message a few months ago asking you how to stop the ergative verb article from redirecting to unaccusative verb, since they're not the same thing. I have been intending for months to start an article on ergative verbs, but was too busy until now. I've finally done it, but it's the first article I've started, apart from a minor biographical article, so I'd appreciate if you could take a look at it and make any changes you think are necessary. You can be as merciless as you like – I promise that I won't report you at WP:AN/I for "biting me"!

I was wondering also if it is, by Wikipedia standards, long enough to be considered an "article", and if not, where do I get a template for a linguistics or grammar stub? My experience with stub templates is generally that I see one on an article I'm reading, and then I see what it looks like when I press the "edit this section" button to open up the box.

Many thanks. Ann Heneghan (talk) 18:10, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clive Stafford Smith

Hi. I didn't see the short CLive Stafford-Smith article until last week. I merged it and redirected it to the new Clive Stafford Smith without the hyphen. Hope that's ok with you. Please let me know. Joaquin Murietta 23:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tart 'n' Tinys

You're right; cleaning up after that user, I'm so used to his nonresponsiveness to any messages that I sometimes skip the edit summary. Thanks for leaving a message on his user page. tregoweth 15:25, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Hello Mel. Please see this[5]. Thank you :) --a.n.o.n.y.m t 19:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your support Mel and nice comment too. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 21:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Shiver

First take a chill pill! I'm not offended, but you'll scare away a lot of newcomers with that attitude.  :-)

Now for your points:

  • If you visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs, it shows that all dates are wikifiied within the infobox, even the year of the album's release in the chronology.
  • Also, there's no problem with bolding the song title within the chronology. As indicated in the introduction to Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs: A lot of this project has been lifted directly from the Albums project. This project is not yet fully defined. Feel free to add stuff to make things clearer. As a result, many contributors have been bolding the song titles, as is the suggested convention in WP:ALBUMS. For example, "Do You Want To", "Let There Be Love", "Gold Digger", etc. I just updated the example infobox to align it with the Albums coventions.
  • If you've viewed the video, the band is performing in a "studio-like" environment; it's set up to show the band performing, but it's in no way an ideal location for actual recording on master tapes. Saying that the band performs in "a room" or "indoors" does it no justice either.


The only mistakes I actually overlooked was the tour title and amp vs. amplifier. I've fixed those changes myself. I added a caption to the thumb as well.

Cheers. Don't be so hostile next time. :-) --Madchester 19:37, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Note that the MOS's intro states that it is a style guide. The following rules do not claim to be the last word...Rules and regulations such as these, in the nature of the case, cannot be endowed with the fixity of rock-ribbed law. They are meant for the average case, and must be applied with a certain degree of elasticity...Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required. There is a lot of flexibility in following the rules suggested by the guide; they're not written in stone.
Since there's already existing conventions described specifically for songs in Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs, I think they're more appropriate for this article. And note that it's an infobox, not actual sentence that contains too much "wiki-linking". If you have any reservations about the style formats of the song infobox, I think they should be addressed on the project page, not simply towards myself.

Cheers. :-) --Madchester 21:55, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Multi-site Church

Mel,

You recently deleted a link on the Multi-site Church entry that is an important link to information about multi-site churches. Your reasoning was listed that Wikipedia is not a link farm. I agree and have been very discerning over the links I have included on that entry. I could add 200 links about multi-site churches if I wished, but I could not justify the placement of most of them. However, in this case, I believe the Multi-site Revolution blog is a great starting point for anyone interested in multi-site churches. It is authored by various leaders in the multi-church movement and would prove to be a valuble resource for this topic.

Please reconsider your reasoning for removal. I will yield to you for final decision and appreciate all the assistance you have provided the Multi-site Church entry and the rest of Wikipedia.

David Russell 21:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Mel. I can live with the changes you've made. Those were the only two blogs I felt were purely informational out of the many that I had come across. If you feel that multisite.blogspot.com doesn't live up to the standard, I concede to your removal of that link, though I do think the author does a good job of compiling resources and articles on the topic. Between the two, I believe the one that remains is the most insightful. David Russell 22:13, 24 October 2005 (UTC)