User talk:Menchi/Stardate 0.0001

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I mostly replied on this page to your comments and inquiries, unless it is a notice for me to participate on another Discussion page.

If I do not reply soon, it is probably because I am in meatspace. Either that or you happen to be a troll, perhaps literally. :-) -- Menchi 11:21 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Greetings

Hello there Menchi, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page and experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Thank you for the welcome! Menchi 07:43 Dec 16, 2002 (UTC)

[edit] Chen Shui-bian

Hi Menchi,

I noticed you rearranged the first sentence of the article on Chen Shui-bian. Specifically, you removed a transliteration and rearranged the commas. Here's the previous version:

Chen Shui-bian (1950-) (陳水扁) or Ah-bian (阿扁) as he is colloqually referred

And here's the revision you made:

Chen Shui-bian (1950-) (陳水扁) or (阿扁), as he is colloqually referred

Was the Ah-bian transliteration incorrect? It seems inconsistent to transliterate the formal name, but not the colloquial. Also, to the uneducated reader (me) who doesn't recognize the characters, it looks as you're saying that Chen Shui-bian is the colloquial name and the two sets of characters are perhaps slightly different representations of it.

Could you help clear this up? Thanks, Dachshund

Hi Dachshund, I've re-edited the sentence to make it clearer.

[edit] 中文Wikipedia

Hi, Menchi. Just pass-by and introduce the florishing Chinese Wikipedia. Have fun! Ktsquare

Thank you for the introduction.

[edit] Chinese family name

Hello. Nice edits in Chinese family name. It would be great if you could add more Cantonese pronunciations. olivier 03:15 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

A trilingual chart (Table 1) created on Christmas 2002. -- Menchi

[edit] Native Korean character format

Hi, I've seen that you edited some entries about korea. I think it's already clear without in Hanjas, and in Hangeuls to them who understand korean or chinese characters. soax

Hi Soax, I understand it can look a bit cumbersome, but some people who are not from East Asia don't know that Hanja and Han'geul are two different writing systems in Korea. To them, they might actually look quite similar; even though to you, they are obviously very different. And to have those two links, people can read the articles on Hanja and Han'geul and get a better understanding of that aspect of Korean culture. Menchi 06:00 Dec 23, 2002 (UTC)

Hi, I've seen you use the old romanization system. The official romanization of South Korean was changed a couple of years ago. You can find the links to the official romanization in Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians/South Korea, and I think there, we should discuss some details about korean entries. For example, if or where we should put Hangeuls, Hanjas, and so on. User:Xaos

[edit] King's name

Menchi, regarding "Qin Zhao Xiang Wang". I used "Xiang" because it's the pinyin romaization for "襄". A search of the term also yielded other sites on the same ruler. Would you be reading any other romanizations or taking "殤" instead of "襄"? I would like to know if there is another western romainzation of the same person. Thanx -- User:kt2

The first transliteration was a typo. -- User:kt2

[edit] Viewing Zh WP

I don't have the problem in Chinese wiki but Brion's adivce is worth trying. Also noticed you were looking for way(s) to Convert CJK Characters to HTML Unicode. Here's the method I use -- User:kt2

[edit] Viewing Chinese Characters

Hi Menchi,

I should probably ask this at the pump, but thought you might be the best person to ask... why can't I see the Chinese characters you use? I just get little squares. I guess it is a font thing, how can I get whatever update I need? Sorry to be so dense!

p.s. I hope you saw my reply on my talk page and everything is OK with it. Let me know if not :) - sannse 08:42 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Hi Sannse, your assumption is correct. The square appear in place of the CJK characters is because the lack of the font in your computer. You can download traditional Chinese from this site from Hong Kong and simplified Chinese from Microsoft. If these two fonts don't work, there are tons of alternative fonts on this page about Unicode fonts. The author of the font page also created another page with general info about "Unicode character ranges and the Unicode fonts that support them". --Menchi 20:51 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Menchi, that sorted it - much better :) -- sannse 21:56 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for sparing my blushes... :) Martin
What were you embarrassed about? --Menchi 23:51 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Han-geul Input Program

Hello. I just thought you might be interested in knowing that Microsoft offers a thing called global IME (Input method editor) for each of CJK (with fontpack if necessary) for Win95&98 of non-CJK language versions. With that, it seems one can type Han'gul directly in a browser window. IMEs are available on the web for free. --Tomos 06:47 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC) (I'm not affiliated with microsoft. :)

Thank you for the info. --Menchi 08:44 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Esperanto Etymology

Saluton! I noticed that you asked Brion VIBBER about Esperanto on his talk page, but he doesn't appear to be here right now, so I thought I'd say a few words. There's an online Esperanto-English translator at http://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/traduk/EO-EN/Translate/ and there's a link there to one that goes in the opposite direction. But it doesn't give etymologies, so it's not really what you're after! The problem is that Esperanto roots are often based on words that are similar several languages, so the etymologies would be very confusing! But I've just done a Google search for "edzo etymology", and turned up this message in a Yahoo! Group, which has a nice discussion by Don HARLOW of the word "edzo". Apparently Zamenhof said it was a back-formation from "Kronprinzessin" (German for "wife of the crown prince"), but later commentators have suspected that the true source was the Yiddish word "rebecin" (or "rebitzin" or "rebbitzin" or "rebitzen" or "rebbetzin", according to various random webpages), meaning "wife of a rabbi". "Suko" is similar to Latin "succus", Italian "succo", and also similar words in Slavic languages (e.g. Polish "sok"). And so on... Not sure that helps much, but there you go... Gxis! -- Oliver P. 17:45 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

There is an Etimologia vortaro de Esperanto, but it's a big (and expensive!) multi-volume work, which I've never seen in person. What I would recommend though is Lingvo kaj Vivo by Gaston Waringhien: mainly a collection of essays and articles on various aspects of the language, it's got among other things a fascinating treatment of the early development, including examples and analysis of some of the remaining fragments of Zamenhof's pre-1887 versions of the language. There are etymologies on a number of not-obvious words (including the infamous edzo) and affixes in this section as well as an exploration of the kinds of "deformations" made to avoid conflicts between similar-sounding words. The book's in Esperanto, but not too difficult for the linguistics enthusiast; the structure of the book is a help for the newbie (as I was when I read it), as the various sections are self-contained and on various topics; if you get bored or fed up you can freely skip around. :) As far as I know it's not available to read online, but you should be able to order it from any libroservo. (It's hardcover; UEA's list price is EUR12.30) --Brion 19:52 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Maps

On maps; thanks for your kind comments! Most of the ones I've done have been based on public domain maps I've grabbed off the web somewhere, traced over at boundaries, and colored in and labeled, then shrunk to screen-friendly size. I use a small Wacom tablet (gives that "drawing on a napkin" feel ;) and either Photoshop or The Gimp; I'm hoping though that if I get time to do more maps I'll use a vector format and output them as scalable SVGs instead of bitmapped images... the full-resolution versions are okay for printing at letter-paper sizes, but will be all pixelly and nasty if you try to print something poster-sized. --Brion 19:59 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Esperanto Special Characters

Jen la ĉapelitaj literoj:

Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŭ ŭ
Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ
Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ Ŭ ŭ

With some browsers (Mozilla 1.0+, IE 5.5+) it should be sufficient also to simply type them in, and your browser will make the conversion to numeric references when submitting the text. An excellent and easy Esperanto keyboard utility for Windows is available here; for Unix see here. On a Macintosh, the "roman extended" keyboard layout should give Esperanto letters if you can figure out the right sequence of keys. (On the Esperanto Wikipedia, we have a built-in X->accent conversion for convenience, but that's not really suitable for general use on the other language sections as it can lead to some 'surprises'.) --Brion

[edit] Article-count Vote

Hello. In case you are not aware but would be interested, there is an meta:article_count_reform going on at meta. I am not sure if any Chenese wikipedians has been aware of it, but I believe they are facing the same situation as the Japanese ones. Tomos 05:30 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. Checked it out. -- Menchi

I notice you're going around changing "Asiatic" to "Asian". You'd better be careful - they are not synonyms, and what is more some instances are historical and so should not be altered any more than a quotation should. For instance, Stalin has been described as "Asiatic", precisely in order to bring out what I suspect you're trying to eliminate in pursuit of neutrality, and at a time when he was well and truly in European Russia. The thing is, it was his cultural connections people were trying to bring out, and the term "Asian" is far more a geographical thing than a cultural one; that is the way in which they don't manage to be synonyms. PML.


[edit] Image Displacement

HI Menchi, re Pope John Paul II. I so have come to hate I Explorer. For some unknown reason, it (and netscape) throw picture commands into chaos. Just about every other browser works perfectly but unfortunately those two goddamned browsers seem to misread line commands, or even more bizarrely, relocate pictures (Mav and I had a blazing row over the layout of a page until we discovered that our two browsers for no obvious reason were misreading the page commands and showing each of us a different version of the page.) It isn't even as though one command has a flaw. The same command will work perfectly on one page, and will work disastrously on another. IE recently has begun to place some pictures in the dead centre of pages, on the basis of commands that used identically elsewhere don't do that. I have recently started using safari browser and it is a joy in the way IE and netscape were a pain in the backside. The actual picture was placed in location using IE, which makes it all the more bizarre that it then decided to mess up its location with text. And this stage I have despaired of IE and avoid using it because it does my head in. ÉÍREman 10:40 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

Your frustration is understandable. Many despise IE. Too bad I can't enjoy the joy of Safari like you, since I don't use Apple. However, I'm concurrently using Mozilla for Chinese 'pedia edits, and it has its ups and downs too. --Menchi 10:55 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Hwanghae-do

Does Hwanghae-do really mean Yellow Sea Province? I think it derives from two major cities in it: Hwangju (黃州) and Haeju (海州). --Nanshu 04:28 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

All I found is that the province is next to Yellow Sea, and Haeju Bay (海州灣) is a part of the Yellow Sea. I have removed reference to it for now. Thank you for pointing this out. --Menchi 05:28 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] "Sophomore" vs. "Second"

Hi Menchi. I see you asked User:MyRedDice about changing "sophomore year" to "second year" in Thomas Pynchon. While not speaking for Martin, I'd just comment that to someone in the UK "sophomore" is an incomprehensible term, we simply don't know or use the word - I was well into my 40s before I found out what it means! -- Arwel 10:35 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Interesting linguistic barrier. Thanks to the all-seeing TV series of our neighbour south of the border, most Canadians understand "sophomore", but we still call it "second year." One of the many legacies dear old UK left us. --Menchi 10:55 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. I've not had much time for photography in the last few months, but I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Koyaanis Qatsi

[edit] Apple Propagation Image

Your line drawings of apple propagation are cool. Do you mind if I crop off the instructional caption and type it up? --Menchi 19:11 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

No problem, be my guest!! quercus robur 19:16 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Yuanfen and Predestination

I agree with your comments. I've made changes to predestination accordingly. Please look at the shortened quote to make sure that it is not overly repetitious of yuanfen, and that the pruning I did does not distort the sense. Mkmcconn

Replies on poster's Talk

[edit] Native American history

Menchi,

I'm not sure the early Native American stuff you're posting on the Timeline of United States History really belongs there. It's not a Timeline of North American History or a Timeline of Native American History -- it's a history of the political entity called the United States. Contact and conflict with Native Americans obviously is a part of that history, but the fact, for example, that longhouses were built in the 1100's, etc., doesn't seem directly germane to the history of that political entity. I feel that sort of thing should be put under a separate entry.

What do you think?

tim

Hi Tim,
Native American history is probably not included in most non-secondary history textbooks. I know that First Nations history is usually only mentioned very briefly, if at all, in the Canadian textbooks. And the Taiwanese history textbooks 5 years ago made no mention of Taiwanese aborigines whatsoever. But that doesn't mean it's right. It's just an arbitrary consensus made by the leaders and majority population who care little for their predecessors.
  • "...not a Timeline of North American History": I have specifically avoided mentioning anything about Native Americans' activities in Canada.
  • "...a history of the political entity called the United States": I've considered this before and when I was adding the Native American history, but almost 200 years of history is included in the timeline before "the political entity called the United States" came into existence in the world in 1776. I understand that their inclusion is due to the events' consequential significance to the establishment of the USA, but that is only the political aspect. But don't the major events of the Native Americans also have cultural or political values? They sometimes interact with the whites', but they don't have to. Incidents like the Salem witch trials are merely cultural, if at all. They're mostly a part of the popular stories in the whites' society.
  • The Longhouse is an important cultural and ceremonial part of Native American life, it's the symbol of a settlement, like the settlement of Jamestown or Plymouth. But I agree, this incident is up for discussion.
The Native Americans seems "unimportant", to put to cruelly and crudely, simply because for centuries, they were not allowed to participate in the social life of the mainstream American culture. And even now, their lives are still entangled in the chains and shadows of the past repression and abuse. But, they are no less American and any other is. Their history -- their identity -- should not be segregated. --Menchi 19:27 May 10, 2003 (UTC)
Menchi,
Don't get me wrong -- I am all for examining, sensitively and carefully, Native American culture. I am part Native American myself. I propose merely that such material be moved out of the timeline, perhaps into entries devoted to the specific tribes.
Here's why. The historical events listed prior to the Declaration of Independence are all directly related to the formation of the United States. For example, you were confused about why I added the founding of Quebec. I did so because its founding was a powerful symbol of France's competing claims in North America. And specifically, that city figured in the French and Indian Wars, in which the English colonists (who would soon become the founding citizens of the United States) were embroiled. There is a solid, if slightly veiled, link to the United States. However, I do not see such a link between longhouses and the United States.
Consider this analogy: No timeline of the development of the Roman Empire would mention specific cultural factoids about the many tribes and kingdoms that were crushed in the course of the expansion, consolidation, and maintenance of the Empire. They are interesting -- in this particular context -- only insofar as they relate to the activities of the Empire. This is not a case of conquerors writing the history, it is simply a matter of focus: in a history of the conquerors, the focus is on the conquerors. The entity we call "The United States" was a White European colonization and domination of the North American continent. This timeline is an outline of their story. It is not a timeline of North American cultures in general.
From this reasoning, I propose that most aspects of Native American culture, interesting though they are in and of themselves, do not have a place in a timeline of US history, unless they are directly related to the activities of the European settlers and their descendants, i.e., those who conquered the land.


tim
Have Iroquois League and Mahican Confederacy no significant consequence whatsoever in the USA history? As far as I've read, they have economic interaction with the European colonists. Wasn't trading with the natives essential for the survival of the initial colonists? --Menchi 22:08 May 10, 2003 (UTC)
You're right, there was interaction. That's why I left them. Longhouses however do not figure in, so I took that out when I refactored the pages. That's all... we're just talking about that one entry. You're completely right that Native American history needs to be included. Hopefully someone who knows that stuff better than you & I will come along...
tim

Menchi, thanks for the input on the Wikipedia:risk disclaimer. I made it much more glaring than the Wikipedia:legal advice and it seems to function well as a warning with all that boldface, small caps, etc. — Alex756

You're welcome. --Menchi 07:26 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Non-existent interlanguage link

re: Dharma, there's no Sanskrit wikipedia either, but sa interlanguage links work. Why shouldn't Pali (pi)? I think it's good practise to add interlanguage links where a single, undisputed translation exists (or the title of the article is in the source language!) .. -- prat

I removed it because it looked, well, very horrid. I've noted that on Wikipedia talk:Interlanguage links. --Menchi 23:30 May 12, 2003 (UTC)

You should know that the principal reason Lir was banned, as stated by Jimbo Wales, was that Lir insinuated that some wikipolicies might be racist. The issue in question at the time regarded Vietnamese culture. Think about it. 172.134.228.13

Anon, that is not the point, see Village Pump. --Menchi 22:27 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

My point is that, hypothetically, the racist policies of the wiki are partially why they have no desire to remove the name which u find offensive and that, perhaps, if you continue arguing that the wikipolicy is unacceptable they will "encourage" you to go somewhere else as well. Then people will say, "Oh that Menchi! What a troll!" 172.134.228.13

Hi. I've changed all Han'geul into Hangeul. The apostrophe of the former korean romanization wasn't to distinguish between the syllables, but to distinguish between p(in current system b) and p'(in current p). I doubted why you used it so extensively, I thought it was another romanization system that died out long ago.

If you find any former edit using ' for syllable parting, please change it to - or remove it. soax

Yes, I replied you on the dictionary a few days ago on this exact topic. You're right that the 2000 uses hyphen. It is McCune-Reischauer that uses the apostrophe. Without the hyphen, it is very ambiguous. --Menchi 02:20 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
You are right that MR uses apostrophe. But it's NOT inserted between the syllables, at least I've never seen such. So Han'gul or Han'geul is incorrect. It should be Han-gul or Han-geul. See this. The apostrophes are used but to differenciate between ㅂ and ㅍ, or ㄷ and ㅌ.
soax
Yes, Han'geul is incorrect, because it is the 2000 SK, which does not use apostrophe of any kind. But Han'gŭl is M-R, and I have seen it in books in English. And the specific documents saying that apostrophe is used to separate n and g can be found:
  • Monash University [1]
  • University of Souther California [2] [3]
And the uses include pages by:
  • Havard University [4]
  • University of California at Berkeley [5]
  • Indiana University [6]
  • University of Hawaii [7]
  • San Francisco State University [8]
  • Utah State University [9]
  • University of Victoria [10]
Yes, there are webpages out there that use "Han-gul", but they are mostly personal homepages. I did not encounter any North American university academics (professors and librarians) using hyphen in M-R for their course websites or library guides.
According to one page, the apostrophes used after the aspirated consonants are ayn (`) and those in between n and g are alif ('), but I never noticed the difference. The typographers probably don't distinguish between them anymore. --Menchi 20:14 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
OK. I see. Sorry for my ignorance. And let's move this discussion into Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Korean). soax 14:39 16 May 2003 (UTC)
When I was still in Taiwan, I had very little clue of the Romanizations Taiwan used. And many of the Koreans, in Korea or overseas, I know do not have knowledge in M-R, or even the 2000 Romanization, as nearly completely as you do. After all, for CJK, Romanizations are only secondary, or even tertiary. --Menchi 00:57 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Hi Menchi. You're right - a two-note chord can be called a dyad or diad. The term is analogous to triad for a three note chord (triads are already discussed in chord). Interval isn't exactly wrong when talking about two-note chords, although one could say that strictly speaking interval means the gap between two notes, rather than the notes themselves. I'll edit the chord article to briefly mention dyad - the whole introduction could do with a rewrite really, but I'm too scared to take it on (at least at the minute)! Thanks for pointing this out. --Camembert

Menchi,

You were 100% correct on the offensive Chinese username thing. I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner. Probably since that person hadn't edited since January, we will hear no more from them, thank goodness. Jimbo Wales 12:40 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for the response, Jimbo. --Menchi 00:21 24 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] The Jerseys

Hi Menchi!
On the West Jersey and other pages, I had meant "formally" rather than "formerly" because I wanted to distinguish the separation as more than just vague regional identity, which is what North Jersey and South Jersey are today. There are no formal entities with those names, and no official line separating N&S. But there were in the case of West and East Jersey. But maybe it is not necessary to specify that since I use the term provinces which could convey the meaning of a formal separation. "Formerly" may not be necessary either, since I give the date range. Anyway, I wanted to explain in case you wanted to reconsider your change - it wasn't a typo. Yours,ArloBee 15:43 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Bob. You're right, saying that they're "provinces" instead of "regions" should indicate that the separation was formal. Also, since "West" and "East" are capitalized, they must mean proper nouns. I have have reworded it to "officially" to avoid confusion. --Menchi 00:21 24 May 2003 (UTC)

Good deal. Thanks! ArloBee 04:22 24 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Species #

I notice you're adding numbers of species to several groups. I just wonder if a bit of rounding might be judicious? For many groups there are taxonomic arguments about what is and isn't a full species, and, say, "about 80" whales, might be better than "78". See Bryde's Whale. jimfbleak 16:00 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Good point. I've changed it. --Menchi 16:06 25 May 2003 (UTC)

Menchi, where are these species numbers coming from? Annelid already mentioned a number of species, from what source I do not know, and you have added a different number right next to it. -- User:Josh Grosse

They are from post-secondary lecture notes in various biology courses. On a University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology page and a microscope company, they give an even more conservative estimate of 9000 species. --Menchi 05:16 26 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Anna

Hi, Menchi Thanks for liking the article on Anna Leonowens -- other people have not been so complimentary. However, I wrote it a long time ago (literally years) and will have to delve into some old notes to try and get to the bottom of the mystery of why she left. Since I haven't said what it was, I suspect she may have had a fixed-term contract and simply came to the end of it. Or it may have had something to do with not wanting to bring up her children there -- maybe she was worried about their health. I will try and find out.

I would like to know whereabouts in Canada you live. I have a sister in Ottawa. Deb 17:34 26 May 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Chine se

''#REDIRECT [[China]] (used for [[Chine]]se)''


Wow, that is just so cunning it's unbelievable! Is that sort of thing allowed, though? If someone hovers their mouse over the "Chinese" link, and sees where the link is pointing, they might think that either (a) this is some meaning of the word "Chinese" that they hadn't encountered before ("of or pertaining to Chine"?), or (b) it's a mistake, and then they'll feel obliged to edit the page, and change it, and it might make them cross that someone was so careless as to do the link wrongly... But it might be okay, though. :) -- Oliver P. 19:02 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Desperate necessity leads to desperate invention. After typing dozens and dozens of [[China|Chinese]], I'm just so tired and so very jealous of the Koreans for their [[Korea]]n, and the Japanese oof their [[Japan]]ese.
I figured it'd be ok, since WP says that common typos are to be made as redirects. Just think of this: the French or the Quebeckers or some Belgians might just have their Francophone urge overtake them and search for Chine, then Chine will always be there for them! :-) --Menchi 19:09 26 May 2003 (UTC)
Okay, cool. :) But if you think [[China|Chinese]] is bad, you should try writing [[United Kingdom|British]] or [[United States|American]] all the time - each 9 characters longer! I wonder if we could use a similar trick for those... :) -- Oliver P. 19:27 26 May 2003 (UTC)
[[UK|British]] and [[US|American]] are ok. But, there is always [[Briti]]sh and [[Americ]]an or [[Ameri]]can .... The thing is that Americ and Ameri are both brand names. --Menchi 19:36 26 May 2003 (UTC)
guys, take a look of my resolution at Chine. User:kt2
Cool, didn't think that [[X|y]] thing works in redirect too! --Menchi 19:51 26 May 2003 (UTC)

Just to let you know, this redirect no longer works because Chine is now an article -- Kjlewis 11:24, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Han'geul phonetics and history

I've put your question on the biggest korean wiki site, there are some answer already. Refer to http://no-smok.net/nsmk/_be_fb_b8_c1 (My page on the site). And when you have more questions about korea, you may place a question on that site. User:Xaos

[edit] Kangaroo photo

Thankyou Menchi! Yes, I liked that shot. There is a fauna park about 10 minutes walk from my house - to my shame, I've lived here 20 years and never been there before even though I drive past it every week. Last week I drove 800 k to visit a much bigger one on the other side of the state and take 'pedia pictures. Today I thought why not take a look at the little local one? I see Eastern Grey Kangaroos in the wild reasonably frequently, but the Western Grey is not found in this state - further north and west. But at this particular park they brought in ones from Kangaroo Island off South Australia, where there have never been any natural predators and they are so placid and friendly. There are maybe 50 or 100 of them and they are allowed to just wander around anywhere they like, so you can walk up to them, touch them, let them feed out of your hand. But unlike most animals that will eat out of your hand (swans in particular), they don't seem to get aggro or push and shove, they just quietly wander up to you and maybe gently put their paws on your chest, looking a little wistful. I don't have a telephoto lens: for that particular shot I set the manual focus to 1 metre. I'll go back and reshoot it one day and get rid of that damn fence and parked car, do it a little closer to midday too, as the afternoon shadows are a little heavy.

BTW, the joeys don't always poke their heads out like that. Quite often they dissappear inside completely, and they don't seem to care in the slightest which way up they are. I have some more shots which I'll probably post in a day or two where instead of the cute little hed poking out there are feet! Tommorow I'm going back to the big place (another 400k!) and taking my friend who has a much better camera than mine. Wish us luck! Cheers -- Tannin

[edit] Sun Yat-sen portrait deletion

I think you accidently removed the image of Sun_Yat-sen on your last edit. or was it on purpose ? user_talk:hfastedge

Ah, oops! He is one of my nations' Father. I wouldn't do that to him. The image is in a one-line code, which is right above the name section that I was reorganizing. Thanks for letting me know. --Menchi 16:13 30 May 2003 (UTC)

Great work on Wikipedia:Plant photo collection I; I hope more will follow. It may be useful to add links to the original requests for permission. --Eloquence 17:34 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --Menchi 17:43 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Contributions of a to-be-banned user

I am not sure if that will enlighten anyone, but check my and the pages of Mintguy for backround for what is going on at the village pump (at least as it refers to me). -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 16:42 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just re-read this message today and had no idea what Cimon is talking about at all, until I revisted the history of the Pump.

Cimon was supporting the banning of a user, so he listed Wikilinks to several vandalized pages. I suggested him to link directly to the diff, so the other Wikipedians can decide for themselves if those addition of the to-be-banned user are good or not. --Menchi 11:21 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] English translations in Japanese translations

Menchi;
There is a message to you (as well as others in general) at Japanese Wikipedia [11]. I don't know if you are comfortable with reading Japanese. If not and you still care, just let me know. I don't mind translating it into English. Any case, thank you for your contributions :)

regards,

Tomos 18:44 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sure, a translation would help. I can only read the Kanji: English, United Nations, the North Korean delegates, the Chinese. It doesn't really convey what the author is trying to say. Naturally, I assume it's something about my removal of the English translations. --Menchi 18:51 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Well, you guessed it right. Not perfectly loyal to the wording of the original text, but his message is like this:
Hello, Mr./Ms. Menchi.
I am wondering if it is only me who feels that deleting English is like having less information, though the name written in English is not official in any sense.
I think English name should stay somewhere in the article so that people can learn from Wikipedia how is the name of this country is written around the world, and understand things like where the ambassador from this country is sitting in the televised UN conference.
Explanation of the pronounciation by alphabet is also very helpful, like pinyin table for Chinese, for those of us who are not familiar with Hangul.
Re: how the name is written, how about annotating like "in a global occasion like at UN, and international news, it is translated as Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea."?
- Gombe 10:07 2003年6月3日 (UTC)
I personally think his suggestions are directed to all of us as well, not only to you. (And I personally don't know if I like his suggestions or not..) So, I hope you don't take it personally.
Also hope you go on to be be_bold_in_updating_pages! ;) Tomos 18:05 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Marginal sea

Some question on your marginal sea article. First why are there letters that I can't read and wy are they important in an English language article on marginal seas? Second what is "fault of vein"? Third in " heavily explored by maritime nations, for trade, and even piracy", do you mean heavily exploited? I don't see what exploration has to do with piracy. I don't know anything about this so I can't really make any helpful contributions. Rmhermen 17:15 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

  1. I always translate words from East Asian languages when I use them, so they are just to tell you what the original or parallel terminology are.
  2. Deleted the "vein".
  3. Paraphrased.
Thanks for bring this to my attention. --Menchi 17:52 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Thanks. Rmhermen 18:09 5 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] The Pump answer

Thanks! I'm obviously new at this. lol! Mkrose

Welcome (in both senses). :-) --Menchi 06:43 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Signature

Hey, thanks for the additional info. If I change my nickname to "Mick," do I still sign things as: [ [ User:Mkrose | Mkrose ] ]  ?

Answered on User talk:Mkrose.

Excellent! I remember coming across that 4 tilde bit but it was before I knew how things worked here. Thanks! Mick 07:23 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] China

Yay! China/Temp is starting to look real nice. --mav

Thanks. :-) --Menchi 02:43 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No prob., Menchi. Michael is my name, so either way.  :o) Mick 05:49 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Menchi, you online? Mick 00:48 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
How do I remove the .gif picture to upload a .jpg one instead? (See Theresa's message on my talk page) Mick 00:59 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Answered on User talk:Mkrose.
Thanks! Once I get the image changed into .jpg format, I'll put in the deltion request. Mick 01:10 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Welcome.

[edit] Attribution and scrutiny

Menchi, I am honored & flattered that you felt my answer about Roman Citizenship in Talk:Roman Britain was good enough to put in the article itself, but I was forced to make several changes to that material, & move it to the article Romano-British where I feel it better belongs.

What I wrote was what I could recall in about 15 minutes at work (when I should not have been contributing to Wikipedia ;) on a subject that one could spend years studying. There is a fair amount of uncertainty in the subject, a point I tried to convey to you in my response. Unfortunately, you incorporated what I wrote, errors & all. (For example, it appears I made several typos, & got the year when universal sufferage was extended to all Roman inhabitants wrong. These could have been easily fact-checked.)

I don't want you to take this criticims wrong: please continue to contribute to Wiki -- especially the Roman Britain article. However, please take the time to verify any facts you read. As I have found, sometimes books will present different conclusions drawn from facts, & not the facts themselves. -- llywrch 03:01 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is really no need to feel "forced" when making changes in Wiki-world, especially those articles damaged by me. :-)
The physical appearance could've been further aestheticized, but due to the lack of access to resources on such specific materials, printed or online, I could not have easily "fast-checked" the content accuracy, which did not look misleading and caused no concern in any case. Nope, Googling shows nada.
--Menchi 11:21 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Odd. Were you looking under "roman citizenship"? I just had a look under Google with those 2 words, & the second & third entries were very useful. (The first entry was to an SCA group.) -- llywrch

I tried "suffrage Rome", "suffrage Roman", "Roman Britain suffrage", "British Roman suffrage". I'm not very creative with computer science.
The point is that, the year, off by 7, did not flash red-and-blue in front of me at all. --Menchi 21:36 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)


[edit] Transliterations

I noticed your recent new redirects. Don't you just LOVE the issues that arise in translating (or transliterating, as the case may be) between alphabetic and character-based writing systems? ;) --Dante Alighieri 10:05 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 :-D Wade-Giles is annoying in this aspect. Just inaccurate Wade-Giles Romanizations -- spacing and apostrophe and umlaut misuse (usually absence) -- could cause at a maximum of a dozen redirects or so. Fortunately Pinyin usually has 2 only.
Thanks to redirects, I just need to list the correct 2 (one for pinyin, one for W-G) on the actual article. Much cleaner. --Menchi 10:34 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)