From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you leave a message here, I'll reply on this page rather than your Talk page.

Contents 1 Random Comments, Thoughts, And Other Stuff 2 Discussion 2.1 Thanks 2.2 Current events 2.3 Dick Cheney revert 2.4 Image:AliOthmanTaha.jpg 2.5 Hello Mr. Billion 2.6 Second Person Plural 2.7 Fix link 2.8 Bridge (Instrument) 2.9 Talk:9/11_domestic_conspiracy_theory#Title vote (various_options) 2.10 Daytime Emmys 2.11 Alexander the Great 2.12 Re: Edit/delete conflict 2.13 Sudanese localities with massacres 2.14 Saddam 2.15 9/11 rumors 2.16 Thanks 2.17 NexusTK article 2.18 The dispute 2.19 About Ariel Sharon 2.19.1 Thanks 2.20 Thank you 2.21 Featured picture - comments requested 2.22 New Information about Kola Boof 2.23 Synergetics 2.24 Saddam and AQ 2.25 Strange redirect 2.26 Military history of Sudan 2.27 zombies: 'medically indistinguishable from death'.. 2.28 what was so ""poorly done" about the edit? 2.29 Userpage 2.30 SFF Link 2.31 Houri 2.32 Wikipedia Watch 2.33 Thanks - the puppy has spelling issues sometimes 2.34 hey 2.35 Casu marzu 2.36 The Herhsey Company 2.37 Arts 2.38 bzzz 2.39 Talk:GWB 2.40 Ex. Links 2.41 Democracy edit against "spam"??? 2.42 Bush talk page 2.43 Thanks 2.44 thanks 2.45 Aixelsyd 2.46 "Unnecessary sources" 2.47 Invasion of Iraq article 2.48 Image copyright problem with Image:Mag19.jpg 2.49 What is wrong? 2.50 Suggestion re: Yahoo is a not a news source 2.51 Not vandalism... 2.52 Image Tagging Image:DennisRader.jpg 2.53 Thirst Fist 2.54 Correct 2.55 wiki stalking random AOL users? 2.56 Qiyamah 2.57 Edits do have sources, sorry 2.58 Moving disambiguation pages 2.59 Re: Whoops 2.60 Sorry 2.61 dont erase peoples disscussion comments 2.62 Reply from jtdirl 2.63 Reminders + Suggestion 2.64 1959 assassination attempt on Qasim 2.65 reverts 2.66 dorodango 2.67 User conduct RfC against Commodore Sloat 2.68 Thanks for reverting 2.69 Discover 2.70 User:Tchadienne 2.71 al Qaeda 2.72 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DAS Games 2.73 "Revert Vandalism" edit summary 2.74 Talk:Boston Tea Party 2.75 Question on the Book of Swords series? 2.76 I moved your Comment on GWB 2.77 Your refactoring of Talk:Osama bin Laden 2.78 fbi 2.79 Right you are! (wink) 2.80 OBL worldwide perception article AFD 2.81 Glad to see you back 2.82 Worldwide perceptions of Osama bin Laden, Worldwide perception of Osama Bin Laden 2.83 Message from pedracer400 2.84 Help needed 2.85 Monica Lewinski 2.86 Sudan

[edit] Random Comments, Thoughts, And Other Stuff

Here's some things I've been thinking about. Leave a reply or comment on these ramblings if you feel so inclined.

• Trends in the characteristics and systemic biases of English Wikipedia are partially reflected in its userboxes. On some issues, only one side is promoted using userboxes. For instance, there's currently a (little-used) template for supporters of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia political party, but none for opposing parties. Austria's Die Grünen party is represented in userboxes, but no opposing party is.

The boxes can also show to some degree the popularity of a particular idea, opinion, or characteristic. There are currently more United States users who employ userboxes to identify themselves as supporters of the US Democratic party than there are users who do the same for the Republican party.

Of course, userboxes don't really reveal how many Wikipedians hold which opinions or characteristics, they only show approximately how many Wikipedians bother to post a userbox proclaiming such. (How many people go out of their way to point out that they have no opinion on serial commas?) Still, userboxes can provide a somewhat revealing, though distorted, picture of trends among Wikipedians.

There are other sources for information of this type. Currently there's a category up for deletion called "Category:Wikipedians by politics". There, Jimbo Wales has posted:

"I would like to discourage the use of these and similar templates on user pages, instead encourage people to adopt an attitude of 'Here we are Wikipedians, out there we are advocates'. The point is, we don't act in Wikipedia as a Democrat, a Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.--Jimbo Wales 19:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)"

I think that's a good point. Stratifying according to political positions is not well in keeping with neutrality. On the other hand, the political categories' and userboxes' popularity is probably due largely to the small reinforcement of sense of identity they can give. The issue is currently being hashed out on Wikipedia:Proposed policy on userboxes. Interestingly, quite a few users use userboxes to express their opinions on users using userboxes to express their opinions!

Another source for information on Wikipedians' political trends is Karmafist's project called User:Karmafist/Wikipedians' Political Perspectives.

Userboxes can also provide a quick overview of a region's politics. Most of Canada's and Britain's major political parties are represented in userboxes.

They also give a good quick overview of the various different types of academic degrees (currently five Wikipedians use boxes to say they have a PhD) and religious or sexual orientations. (first posted 08:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC))

• This is awesome. Nature asked 50 different experts to fact-check 50 different articles from Wikipedia and the corresponding articles on the Encyclopedia Britannica. There were 42 usable responses. They found 162 errors in Wikipedia's articles and 123 in Britannica. Only four "serious" errors were found in Wikipedia, the same number as in Britannica. Wikipedia averaged about 4 errors per article; Britannica, about 3. It wouldn't be wise to get too worked up over this, as it was a fairly small study, but it is still very interesting. It would also be interesting to know who all the experts were. What I really want to know is: what were the errors that the experts uncovered? Has Britannica asked, or will it ask, what they were? Did Nature reveal the errors to Britannica? Will they be fixed in the next edition? Is there any way we can find out what the errors were?

This is interesting: I sent an email to asking if it was possible for Nature's readers to find out what the errors were. The reply was:

Hello. We have received many requests for this information and are currently working to put it into a publishable format. It will be posted somewhere on our website as soon as possible. Please check back next week.

Sweet.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned in any analyses of the numbers is that Wikipedia had two fewer articles with errors (38) than did Britannica. That's a fairly minor statistic, but it's still pleasing.

I hadn't seen that mentioned anywhere else until I found the project page "Wikipedia:External peer review/Nature December 2005". There's some very good discussion going on there. I'm hoping that the specific dates and times of the article versions used for Nature's analysis will be made available.

The 'Challenges of being a Wikipedian' section mentions two trained scientists who work on Wikipedia: Vaughan Bell on schizophrenia, and William Connolley on global warming. Neat.

The section got me thinking. I wonder if in the future as Wikipedia becomes a larger and larger phenomenon, Wikipedia will become a target for organizations wishing to slant the encyclopedia's coverage of topics relevant to them. Currently it's mostly individuals pushing their points of view. Will there soon be a case of, say, the Church of Scientology (or groups of members thereof) systematically tilting Wikipedia? Or maybe some oil company will dispatch editors to Wikipedia as part of an online PR campaign about global warming or their company. Has there ever been such a case anywhere on Wikipedia? How would Wikipedia deal with such a case?

Wikipedia is overall a very poor choice as a marketing tool, but its accessibility might make it an attractive target for some interest groups.

• Observations on the 7 July London bombings article: A pattern emerged in the way the article developed. A few hours after the article began, it had reached about two thousand edits. Now, less than 24 hours later, the number is much, much higher. This is similar to the way the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake article grew. The influx of editors brought a lot of vandalism, so much so that the article had to be locked a few times. The page's information was duplicated in the article so many times that it almost froze your browser just looking at the page. Later, on the Talk page, a multi-kilobyte argument broke out over a quibble about a single word. One editor decided to quit Wikipedia entirely because of it. Rather childish. (He came back. They always come back.) Within the space of a few hours, the uncontrollable vandalism and the argument had both subsided, and in less than a day the article had grown to a point where it's comparable to the already-noted 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake article. I guess this is the beginning of the life cycle of a Wikipedia article on a stunning disaster.

The other thing that struck me is the way that certain disasters are given different priorities and levels of attention in different media forums or outlets. Systemic bias shifts a society's overall focus of attention and valuation of different events.

The 9/11 attacks, for instance, received a vastly disproportionate amount of media coverage as compared to similar or worse disasters outside of the United States and its immediate sphere of societal consciousness. Although they were obviously very dramatic, what really made them an event so prominent in people's minds that it is often said that they "changed everything" is their location. Because the quadruple hijackings of September 11, 2001 happened in the United States, they are important to the United States media, the most influential media in the world. This series of hijackings will go down in history, whereas the quadruple hijackings of the "Black September in Jordan" during September 6-12, 1970 ([1]) are almost entirely forgotten. American media magnified the 2001 event's importance. The attack certainly was a tragedy, but compare its coverage to that of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Whereas the quake and its tsunami killed upwards of 240,000 people, the hijackings killed a little less than 3,000 people. Both are positively horrible, but one is objectively worse than the other. One event took 1.25% the number of lives of the other. Yet for the 9/11 attacks, many television stations' usual programming was canceled for days in favor of news coverage on the attacks and related topics. I recall people outside of the United States complaining about their television programming having been overridden in this way. The coverage was intense and prolonged for the attacks, whereas the tsunami was just another news item (albeit a significant one).

Similarly, the 7 July attacks in London have been given somewhat disproportionate attention. Whereas the London attacks may have killed about 50 people, the Madrid attacks killed nearly 200. If I've counted right, the article on the Madrid bombings of March 2004 garnered about 577 edits in its first 24 hours (and one minute). The London bombings article isn't even 24 hours old yet. As I write this about 23 hours in, it has 2,810 edits (4.87 times more).

Of course, another factor to take into account regarding the difference in Wikipedia activity for the two disasters is that Wikipedia has grown noticeably in the amount of traffic it gets and its number of users since March 2004. In March 2004 English Wikipedia had about 220,000 articles; today it has about 625,750 (2.84 times larger). Active users on English Wikipedia in March 2004 numbered 2736; in May 2005, 8777 (3.2 times larger). Even taking the growth into account, the London activity is disproportionately larger. (The traffic growth is certainly also a factor to take into account, but I don't have specific figures on that.) The English-speaking media will likely cover the London bombings as extensively as the Madrid bombings, if not more so. This attack, being closer to the world's largest media nexus (English-speaking, often Internet-savvy people; the attack hit the country that is home to the BBC, and so on) will naturally seem large. Other instances of disproportionality: the Department of Homeland Security did not change the terror alert color in response to the Madrid bombings. Slashdot's discussion on the London event has more than 3,100 comments, while as near as I can tell, the Madrid bombings didn't even warrant a post. Also largely overlooked by Western media and governments: the September 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis. About 330 people died, half of them children, when Chechen separatists siezed the school and held the people inside hostage for 52 hours. This was a clear instance of terrorism, but it garnered relatively little attention in part because the Chechnya conflict is seen as a regional concern unrelated to America's "war on terror" (although lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta al Sayed originally meant to wage his jihad there, indicating that this conflict is at least related). It's also because, again, Chechnya is outside the heavy concentration of people with blogs and cameraphones and the like. American media's portrayals of the London attacks was far more dramatized. FOX News was asking the following day, "what ramifications does this have for the war on terrorism?" Some good video clips of the dramatic style adopted by major news programs to report on the attacks can be found on this clip of the the parody news program The Daily Show. CNN took a poll asking viewers if they were worried about a similar attack in the U.S. (62 percent worried, 32 percent not). MSNBC: "Who's at risk, and how prepared are we? ...Are we next in America? ...Can we prevent a subway or bus attack in the US?" CNN: "How safe are we in America? ...You have to wonder, will we ever truly feel safe again?"

What can I say? Systemic bias exists in every system. Maybe if Sudan had its own Hollywood or internationally-recognized news network like CNN, the slaughter in Darfur wouldn't be so easily forgotten. Interestingly, we may see a media influence slightly altering the Western sphere of awareness in the future if Al-Jazeera enters the English-language market as they apparently intend to do next year.

• • Other notes on the attacks: British Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said that although a national UK ID card wouldn't have done anything to stop the attacks, he still thinks they're a darn good idea. Britain is already the most heavily-surveilled nation on Earth ("The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day" by Britain's nearly 3 million surveillance cameras [2]) and may well become even more so as a result of reactions (or overreactions) to terrorism. It has also been proposed that, since "devastating attacks can make it very difficult to identify bodies," RFID chips being implanted into individuals would be worth it to make it easier to identify somebody who is killed and mangled by terrorists or some other accident. What a spectacularly bad idea.

• The article on thou, and the related discussion, is awesome. English really could use an accepted second-person plural. Like Y'all, except that nobody accepts that as being "correct English." And maybe a few other alterations, like a non-gender-specific pronoun. "I didn't realize that e was being serious."

• What projects have been undertaken, or might be undertaken, to create a flawless version of Wikipedia? Of course, Wikipedia always strives for perfection, but what I mean is a "professional" (or at least vandalism-free) stable version.

It would only be feasible to tackle this article-by-article. Maybe a feature could be added so that a limited (but large) number of selected, trusted users (like admins, or a new and less exclusive group of 'sub-admins') could go through and choose to mark one particular version of an article as "safe." On the front page, rather than just offering the one option of the single most recent version, there could also be the option to download only those articles marked as "good," so that rather than necessarily downloading the most recent version, which could very well contain a very long history of blanked articles and such, it would be possible to get a much smaller file with just a single, good version of each article. Just the information you want without all the article history and vandalized versions and so on.

Or there might be a default always-there boilerplate on every page (Like the Disclaimer; or maybe this would be added to the disclaimer. Either way, it would need to be more prominent) that would allow you to choose to see the "safe" version, containing a disclaimer that announces that by the very nature of Wikipedia, the latest version might be vandalized, so users might compare the latest edit to the "safe" version. The main problem is marking all those versions safe in a trustworthy way. Maybe it would be a community effort as previously described, or maybe some eccentric and philanthropic millionaire might splurge a little on hiring professionals in a variety of languages and topics to do "professional" editing, with the stipulation that their work is under the GFDL. Or, as Larry Sanger suggests, it might be done in collaboration with volunteer college professors. If it were a community effort, a scoring system similar to Slashdot's might be used. There might be a karma system for users and a quality control voting/scoring system for selected article versions.

We could be sure to keep the safe versions up-to-date by creating an automated voting system to allow registered users to change which version is called the "safe" one. It would take maybe five or ten or so votes to update it. Non-registered users would be unable to vote. That's not much of a restriction, though, so maybe (like a similar suggestion from before) there could be some classification for trusted users whose votes would carry more weight than ordinary registered users, also to be chosen through voting by trusted users. The original trusted users would be chosen by admins.

Another idea: Suppose some recognized publication, say, Wired Magazine, for whatever reason, were to reprint a Wikipedia article. They would very certainly fact-check the article and screen for other errors. In this way, the edition of the article they published could be known to be "safe." Although this isn't likely to be a widespread practice.

Just some thoughts.

Actually, come to think of it: The "stable version" possibility is already fulfilled, at least for a very small fraction of articles, with Spoken articles. Since it takes a lot of effort to create and upload a spoken version of an article, those who do will generally put a lot of effort into ironing out the article's flaws before reading the article out loud and then uploading it. Also because of the effort required, vandalism is so far either extremely rare or nonexistent in spoken articles.

Note from later: Looks like ol' Jimmy's taking steps in this direction.

• To those who voted for Bush: God damn it, you idiots.

• Interesting firsts in television: The first electronically-transmitted TV picture was an image of a dollar sign, transmitted by 21-year-old Philo Farnsworth in 1927 (according to this textbook, Media & Culture 2005 Update). That's rather telling. According to the same source, the first music video on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star. Also telling. I wish I could see either of these. I wonder if Farnsworth's $ image was preserved.

• Idea: Wikipedia entries on languages should have some standard recorded statement in those languages, so that readers can hear what a statement in a particular language sounds like. Something simple, like "Hello, this is the [English, French, Arabic, whatever] language," along with a textual translation that explains exactly what the phrase is saying. Maybe Arabic grammar is structured so that a straight translation of the phrase "this is the Arabic language" makes no sense. Maybe to get across the same idea you say "I am speaking Arabic" or something else instead. The textual explanation would describe what grammatical differences there are between English (or whatever language the Wikipedia entry is in) and the language that is the subject of the article. Just to help get a feel for the language and note some of their features. The articles on Middle English and other English versions all have quotes from the same passage in the New Testament to show how the language changed over time. This idea would be sort of like that.

• Wikipedia's co-founder, Larry Sanger, has written some very salient criticisms of Wikipedia, and I cannot fathom why they're not linked in Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great. I'm adding them now. [EDIT: Actually, it's mentioned there and in the more formal Criticism of Wikipedia. Still, these criticisms should be more prominently noted, considering their source.]

• "The Most Trusted Name in X", "The X You Can Trust" ... You don't have to actually be trustworthy. Just claim that people trust you, and if you repeat it enough, some people will believe you. Since advertising is a method for changing people's minds without rational argument, advertisers advertising trust for a client is disturbing.

• On a related note, the most depressingly obtuse advertising slogan I've ever heard is "inspiration comes standard." Its vapidity brings Brave New World to mind.

• "Wikipedia publishes 500,000th English article". Excellent. I've wondered, though: How many of those "articles" are nothing but redirects or other non-informational pages? Answer: None. What's considered an article is anything in the Article namespace (not user pages and not non-editable pages like the Front one) that (I presume) lacks the text "#REDIRECT [[article]]" and contains at least one wikilink. So this is an admirable accomplishment. I wonder how long it will take for the German or Japanese Wikipedia to reach this mark. Due to the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of English-speaking Wikipedians (Wikkans?), the English Wikipedia is fast outstripping the others. This leads into the following topic:

• The future of Wikipedia. I've talked a little about this on Wikipedia talk:Pushing to 1.0. As time goes on, the number of editors to wikipedia will expand exponentially. For the forseeable next few years, anyway. We can expect that next year there will be more users and editors than there have been this year, and 2007 will likely have even more than that. But what about ten years from now? I anticipate that Wikipedia will have expanded and altered itself dramatically by that point. It will likely have been featured prominently in a major American news publication, possibly hitting the front page of Time or Wired magazines (If it hasn't already... Wired did a detailed story on Wikipedia in March '05, but I don't know if that mentioned on the cover). I know it's already been covered several times by several different news organizations, but the coverage will likely grow with time. There will also likely be major changes to the software and shifts in Wikimedia's organizational structure. All this is fairly obvious.

But fifty or a hundred years from now, almost nothing can be taken for granted. Will Wikipedia or the various Wikimedia projects still be around? Will they dwindle to obscurity, or will they merge and become a sound basis for education for entire societies? Or will it simply remain a relatively minor novelty? Somebody on the Pushing to 1.0 talk page wondered aloud whether Wikipedia's information could still be around after a major catastrophe or a very long stretch of time, and if any efforts had been made toward ensuring that it could. A few people told him it was a silly idea and seemed to imply that it's not worth thinking about, but I think it is. Wikipedia is a splendid project, and longevity for the works of its thousands of contributors is a natural wish. KEO is a project that I think could be emulated. Apparently the KEO team has data disks that can hold enormous quantities of information and can last for thousands of years. If that's true, then backing up Wikimedia on some of these would be ideal. (see meta:Contingency planning)

• Right now (July 3, 2005 circa 12:30 PM Central) we've got 618,925 articles. Unless I added it up wrong (365+365+366+365+16+28+31+30+31+30+3 = 1630), Wikipedia is 1,630 days old. So that's about 380 articles a day. With 381,075 articles to go, at this rate we'll hit a million articles in another 1,002.8 days.

Wikipedia shot up to 618,968 articles since I started writing this.

Note from later:

13 July 2005, 4:04 PM: 634,188

14 July 2005, 4:04 PM: 635,670

The average rate of addition through the encyclopedia's history is 380 articles per day, but that's misleading because the number of new articles per day is increasing steadily. You shouldn't use the overall rate of growth throughout its history, you should use the current rate of growth. The current rate is a whopping 1,482 new articles over the most recent 24-hour period as of time of writing. At this rate, English Wikipedia will gain the 364,330 new articles it needs to hit the one million mark in 245.8 days (On the evening of Friday, March 17, 2006). But even this isn't accurate, because the rate of growth is itself growing (from a few articles a day a few years ago to almost a thousand and a half today.) I'm not sure where to get numbers for that, though.

The English Wikipedia will hit one million articles in either February or March of next year. Maybe earlier. As you read this, English Wikipedia has 2,409,631 articles.

At around 2:02 AM Central (GMT -06:00) on Thursday, August 4, 2005, Wikipedia had 666,666 articles.

At 6:00 PM (GMT -6) on 1-8-06, English Wikipedia was at 907,846 articles.

At 6:00 PM (GMT -6) on 1-10-06, English Wikipedia was at 911,282 articles.

That's 3,436 articles over 48 hours, averaging 1,718 articles per day. 71.583 articles per hour, or 1.193 articles per minute. We need 88,718 more articles to hit a million. At this rate, we'll hit one million articles in 51.64 days, or right around March 2. Maybe. (posted 00:22, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

(Posted: 12:02 AM 2/8/2006) Right now, we're at 960,193 articles. There's 39,807 articles to go. Guessing a low 1,500 articles a day, that'll be 26 and a half days, or March 6. Going by the previous estimate of 1,718 per day, it'll take a little more than 23 days, or March 3.

• This is a very cool method for seeing the progression of a Wikipedia article over time and keeping track of its individual editors.

• Things Wikipedia could use:
  • A better way of viewing Article Histories. Something modeled on this would be cool for understanding trends and differences, but aside from that we need at least a way of moving through an article's history other than 500 at a time. Many articles have thousands of revisions and so it takes a while to move through them 500 at a time. Particularly if one has a slow connection. A count of the number of versions the article has, and the ability to just jump straight to Version 1 or 676 or 2151 or whatever would be excellent. Here is an interesting tool to that effect.
  • A way to search article histories to find the first appearance of a piece of text in an article. This would be especially useful for finding out who added something on, say, a Talk page. Talk pages can get almost irreparably cluttered if they're not watched closely.
  • A method of automatically sorting information on pages of lists according to different criteria. I'm not sure how it would be implemented, but it could be useful.
  • Automatic cross-project unification. Instead of needing to have the text {{Wikiquote}} added to a page to see Wikiquote's article on the same subject, the software would be changed to automatically check for other articles of the same name in other Wikimedia projects, and then provide links either in a sidebar (like the "what links here" link in the Toolbox) or in a single box for all the projects. For Cat, there would automatically be a link to the Wikispecies entry, Wikimedia Commons' Felis silvestris catus (redirected from "Cat"), Wikiquote's Cats, and any other project's page on cats. This, I think, would be a great benefit to Wikipedia and its sister projects. Actually, especially its sister projects, since Wikipedia gets a lot more traffic than, say, Wiktionary. "Cat" already has links for Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote, but as of this writing has nothing for Wikispecies.
  • More rigid Talk pages. The unlimited editability of Talk pages is nice, but with an influx of new users who don't know how to keep their messages identifiably separate from others', or with malicious vandals, or even with simple mistakes, Talk pages can become cluttered very easily. People not signing their posts, or intentionally signing as somebody else just to confuse everybody, duplications, putting words in other people's mouths by inserting new text into their messages--all these are problems I've seen with Talk pages. It works fine when everybody is good-natured and familiar with Wiki styles, but that is only the case some of the time. I don't have any really specific ideas for exactly how rigidity would work, I'm just noting that automatic structuring of some sort would be nice. Maybe to prevent putting words in other editors' mouths, for instance, only the editor who put up his message would be able to edit his message. (That'd be a radical change). Of course, structure would place limitations on the things that conversers could do on Talk pages, so a good balance of structure and freedom would have to be found in this, as in everything else. The example just given would be too restrictive, since then anybody could post garbage and it would be unremoveable.

The current method works fine most of the time, but popularity in a talk page can bring so many editors and so many changes of uneven quality that bad edits slip through. If certain kinds of flaws don't get reverted or fixed quickly, they can become almost permanent fixtures.

• • Change the code so that the quote format you get when you precede a line of text with a space doesn't break the margins so easily.
  • Wikipedia could use a brief message on all Talk pages that urges users to sign their messages, and shows them how. There's currently such a message every time you edit a page, but it's hidden in a lot of other text that at most people probably don't bother to read.

• Wikimedia editors can and should be encouraged through recognition. If I have the chance to do so publicly and at all meaningfully, I'll recognize and praise people who have begun and significantly written Wikibooks or added original photography or other work to Wikimedia Commons. One such person is User:Geocachernemesis, who deserves accolades for his excellent photography.

Mr. Billion, thanks for fixing my user box. I wouldn't people wrongly accusing me of being a facist :-) El Cubano 17:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Welcome!

Hello, Mr. Billion/Archive 1, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! 

Thanks for writing the article on Carlos Mayans. Check back there to see the changes I made to see how the formatting should be. Look at the help pages if you need help. Welcome to Wikipedia! - Mattingly23 02:34, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

---

Thanks for correcting the grammar mistakes in the articles you visited. Stargoat 03:43, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi Mr Billion, thanks for making that fix on the bio of Hassan al Turabi -- the chronology of how the various parties in Sudan morph is complex. Also, I wonder if you might be interested in a Wikiproject on Sudan I have started up. There is a lot of interesting stuff which is missing.

Regards, --babbage 23:21, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for the fixes on my "User Page". Now for the serious stuff. Can you spare a million? (smile). User:Marine 69-71

Sure thing. :) Mr. Billion 05:31, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Seems like I just added myself in the "thanks for correcting my page" part of your site! :) Poli 06:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Heh, cool. You're welcome. Mr. Billion 06:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Current events

It is unacceptable to change a statistic when the article that is referenced doesn't match that statistic. If the User wants to change the external reference to one which matches that statistic, then I won't change it. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? RickK 05:17, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

And checking the statistic would take about as much effort as changing it back, which is why I checked it and then provided a new link and new statistic. [Message edited later to sound less irritable.] Mr. Billion 04:41, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dick Cheney revert

Hi Mr. Billion,

Regarding your revert of 66.36.147.147's edit on the Dick Cheney page, I performed a quick fact check, and it appears that this event is true. Please refer to the following articles:

• Washington Post
• CNN

I will revert back to 66.36.147.147's version, but I thought I'd drop you this message to explain my revert.

Thanks, and please keep up with keeping an eye of possible vandalism! --Deathphoenix 05:04, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, it appears as if you are aware of the facts, but choose to leave it out anyways. I agree with your assessment, unless this event becomes more notable. --Deathphoenix 05:06, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image:AliOthmanTaha.jpg

Thank you for uploading Image:AliOthmanTaha.jpg. Please leave a note on that page about the source of the image because of copyright law. Thank you. --Ellmist 06:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done. Mr. Billion 21:36, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hello Mr. Billion

I've posted the following on WP:HD and am giving you a heads-up because of your interest in this article.

==Mohammed Atta==

The first two lines in this article seem to be edited properly but don't render correctly. I've given a go at fixing it (using "Show preview") but can't get it to come out right. hydnjo talk 20:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It seems that the problem is only there when a user has date format as seen on my sig. The problem goes away when the format is MM DD YYYY. I just thought I was going nuts because I could't find anything wrong with the markup. Sorry for the bother. hydnjo talk 21:04, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks. Mr. Billion 21:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Second Person Plural

BTW, I thought that the definitive plural was "All y'all" ; ) hydnjo talk 22:03, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My reasoning is that I've sometimes been addressed in the singular "Y'all come back now Y'hear" (when alone) and sometimes in the plural "See Y'all later" (when in a group). So it seems that "Y'all" may be just as ambiguous as "You". However, I've never heard "All y'all" used in a singular context. ; ) hydnjo talk 23:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Huh, true. Good point. Mr. Billion 04:37, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix on my front page - I hope we run into each other again. hydnjo talk 01:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fix link

No Problem, I saw the red link and didn't think that was what you intended. hydnjo talk 03:25, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bridge (Instrument)

Hey, thanks for the edits to the above article (they're good!) and for the random hi on my user page!! Selphie 09:26, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) **

[edit] Talk:9/11_domestic_conspiracy_theory#Title vote (various_options)

There's a discussion and vote going on about the use of the term "conspiracy theory" in the title of this (and other) articles. I thought you might want to put in your 2 cents worth and/or vote. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Daytime Emmys

I just want to note that many of those soap operas are not just aired in America, but around the world (see The Bold and the Beautiful). I won't fight you on your deletion of the notice, but I think you're making a very big mistake. IMO, we're covering more trivial things on Current events, but you don't see me deleting them. Mike H 19:37, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, it's back in. Mr. Billion 20:28, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander the Great

Thanks for helping out on Alexander the Great. It's a never-ending battle against Greek, Macedonian, Albanian and Persian nationalists, and pro- and anti-gay partisans. Lectiodifficilior 21:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure thing, no prob. Mr. Billion 21:10, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Edit/delete conflict

Oh, that's okay; happens all the time. I do wish there were an edit/delete conflict warning, something along the lines of "The article you are editing has been deleted. Are you sure you want to re-submit it?" But in the grand scheme of wiki things, it's a minor annoyance. Thanks for your note; I've deleted it again. -- Hadal 03:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[3] --logixoul 15:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sudanese localities with massacres

Mr. Billion,

How should articles on minor localities with human rights violations in the recent past be structured effectively? Sarcelles 21:28, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Could you clarify? Exactly which localities, which articles, and so on? Mr. Billion 01:58, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Billion,

What I am talking about are localities important for the Darfur conflict. Kind regards Sarcelles 10:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Saddam

One change you made to the article on Saddam Hussein was incorrect. Saddam is his family name, not Hussein. So it is correct to write "Saddam's government" and incorrect to write "Hussein's government". The latter is the equivalent of writing "George's administration" when you mean "Bush's administration". For some reason (and which made it an international laughing stock, ridiculed in the media the world over) the US media insisted on using Hussein as a family in the Second Gulf War, whereas in the First Gulf War they correctly used Saddam. One theory was that research suggested that American viewers were confused as to why the second name, the surname in the West, wasn't being used. Rather than tell the readers that in Iraq the personal name comes last, they preferred to get it wrong rather than take the time to explain that Iraqi names are constructed differently to western names.

Whatever about their reasons for dumbing down on accuracy, as an encyclopaedia Wikipedia cannot do that and has to get it right. It was discussed at length here. Hence Saddam, not Hussein is used, correctly, as the family name. FearÉIREANN\^(talk) 01:59, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK. Mr. Billion 02:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 9/11 rumors

Of course there's discussion - we shouldn't delete an article without that. Please see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks. Also you might be interested in the guide to the deletion process. Yours, Radiant_>|< 20:54, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Ah. Right, then. Mr. Billion 21:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for minor spelling correction ("pastime") on my user page. --Anonymous editor 22:25, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Mr. Billion 23:19, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I thought I'd piggyback on Anonymous editor's thank you for correcting a couple spelling mistakes on my page! And while I'm at it another thank you for reminding me about those wonderful games, I hadn't visited them in a long time! Rx StrangeLove 7 July 2005 02:05 (UTC)

Cheers! Mr. Billion 7 July 2005 02:15 (UTC)

[edit] NexusTK article

I see you're embroiled in an edit war with User:24.167.132.98 in the article Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds. You keep inserting text about your problems with "Marama" and some other players. That's not encyclopedic and it doesn't belong here. Also, falsely accusing another editor of vandalism is a serious offense. Please stop. Please work out your problems within the game, on a related message board, or with the help of game operators. Thanks, --Mr. Billion 07:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Read the talk page contained on the article. Teram9 07:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC

I have done so, and it is clear that your long complaint about one particular player is relevant mainly to you. As such, it does not belong on Wikipedia. Mr. Billion 08:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You might want to go further back in the history record and see who originally deleted what I had added back based on what was on the history page. That was my first attempt to restore what the user deleted. Teram9 08:13, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The dispute

It's not the dispute I mind. It's the way it was carried out. I don't care that others disagree with me. I do care that Wikipedians regularly and without protest go about settling disputes in the exact opposite of the way they are supposed to. Maybe I was wrong. That's not what this is about. Thanks for the message though, I appreciate it. — Phil Welch 8 July 2005 03:05 (UTC)

[edit] About Ariel Sharon

THere are people who calls Saddam "the butcher of Baghdad". I think you can search it in google. I think itws very Anti NPOV and being fair, that Ariel Sharon who was balmed, even not in a court, for indirect responsibility for only one of bigger slaughterings in Lebanon (There were also American and European forces who saw slaughterings in Lebanon and other places in the world and did nothing), in which there were hundreds of victims, would be called a "war criminal" and "butcher"- while Saddam who has a direct responsibility for Murdering millions of people wouldnwt be presented in openness as a "butcher" and "war criminal". If you don't delete the terrible words about Sharon, you are a Muslem-Arabic-leftist encyclopedia and not NOPV one.Amirpedia 07:48, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Saw your note about deleting some fresh troll posts on this subject. Thank you. Have been putting up with these guys for twenty years and they never seem to tire, LOL They keep us busy deleting them from our own Board as well. Like I told Fire Star. I would really like to close this topic and just put up a simple, protected, first page that doesn't call me a fake. Have gone through all this weeek battling these guys in the hopes of demonstrating I am the injured party and how the trolls operate to to character assassinate me. I appreciate your help and ask if we can move on to that next step of a fair and balanced entry in Wikipedia. Have a good day. --Ashida Kim

I just noticed somebody altering the text of a message that you wrote on your Talk page, and maliciously or confrontationally changing another editor's message is a no-no. The IP was the same as one that had been vandalizing other articles, and its Contributions page led me to your Talk page. I don't know anything about this other issue, but if you are the "injured party," then good luck to you. Regards, Mr. Billion 16:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

I didn't notice that Scientology stuff. Thank you for removing it. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Mr. Billion 03:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured picture - comments requested

[4] I'm nominating one of my photos for 'featured picture'. Voting isn't for two days, but I'd appreciate your comments if you feel to add them. -- RyanFreisling @ 16:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New Information about Kola Boof

Dear Mr. Billion,

There are quite a few NEW facts about Kola Boof, sir--and following them, I have a request for you.

(1) At the Funeral of Sudan's John Garang, Ms. Boof's poem "Choll APieth" was used to memorialize him---which attests to her importance as one of Sudan's top writers.

Link: http://newsblaze.com/story/20050805222214nnnn.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Story.html

2nd Link: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/449408

For obvious reasons, the Arab government in Sudan is never going to Back or Support Ms. Boof.

(2) Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli, the owner of "La Maison Arabe" (his estate in Medina, Morocco where Bin Laden kept Ms. Boof) told the U.S. State Department in 2003 that Kola Boof lived at his estate for 6 months with Osama Bin laden. He confirmed this for FOX NEWS, whose fact-checkers then allowed FOX NEWS to interview and confirm Ms. Boof's relationship with Bin laden on national Television. Video Footage of that interview is available online by watching the Documentary that was made about Kola Boof earlier this year.

LINK: http://doorofkush.50megs.com/about.html

(3) As Kola Boof points out in the documentary----she was FORCED to reveal her connection to Mr. Bin Laden, because it was feared that she herself was a "terrorist" and the U.S. GOVERNMENT was threatening to revoke her citizenship if she didn't tell everything.

She says emphatically that she was ashamed of her ties and tried to deny it--but once the story got out, the PRESS was unkind to her, mainly because they had never heard of the Sudanese writer before and because---she was Black and Non Muslim, totally OPPOSITE what you would expect his mistress to look like. Ms. Boof's connection to Mr. Bin Laden has since been proven by not only Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli but by the Foreign Affairs Office of LIBYAN LEADER Moamar Khadafi (where Kola Boof worked as "Naima Kitar" in the 1990's) and by the Staff workers at "La Maison Arabe".

It is now 2005, and the only dispute to Ms. Boof's disclosure, comes from Arab Muslims who detest her "OTHER" politics which mainly have to do with Darfur and Women's Rights in Muslim countries.

Lastly---because of the negative connotation in which you entered Ms. Boof's name, I am requesting that you REMOVE her name from any mention with Osama Bin Laden's. The way you presented her is very offensive and unfair. If you have a problem with my request, then please email me at DOOR OF KUSH BOOKS AND MUSIC.

Thank you

NAFISA GOMA staff@doorofkushbooks.com

I didn't add her name, I just edited somebody else's addition to make it sound less credulous. The person who added it was User:24.156.76.251. But this is a wiki, which means you don't have to ask other people to edit things; you can do it yourself quite easily. If you see something incorrect, go ahead and fix it. Just maintain a neutral point of view. --Mr. Billion 20:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Synergetics

May I draw your attention to this article, now in AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synergetics, thanks. Alf ^melmac 20:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Saddam and AQ

Hi - there's a vote going on at Talk:Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that you may be interested in.--csloat 06:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strange redirect

Cumbey no longer works here. You could leave a message at her blog, SqueakBox 19:33, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Strange redirect, SqueakBox 19:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Military history of Sudan

Since the Collaboration of the Week folks are known for preferring Military Histories of countries, I nominated Military history of Sudan. It has been six days since then, and I have only received one more vote. Unless I get one more vote supporting this nomination, it will be closed tomorrow. Please add your support at WP:COTW/Military history of Sudan. Also see WP:COTW/Languages of Sudan. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-7 14:55

[edit] zombies: 'medically indistinguishable from death'..

Indeed! I got that from the wikipedia article on Fugu.

I understand that the Ethnobotanist Wade suspected this was the case when he was contracted to discover the zombification formula (I understand the hope was that it would be of use on long spacefligths).

If you look into the literature on organism death, the only full proof of medical death is putrefaction.

All other techniques, ranging from a mirror fogging when placed at the mouth, to EEG or ECG activity, can be fooled by unusually low metabolic states.

If I were a medical researcher in Japan, I would be quite interested in taking EEG readings from any apparent Fugu fatalities.

There would be ample scope for such activity, as Fugu fatalites are left waiting by thier (pyres?) for 3 days before immolation, as a safeguard against misdiagnosis of death.

Fascinating.

And central to understanding the zombification process.

cheers

jmullee@yahoo.com

I still seriously doubt it. A good heart monitor can detect even a weakly beating heart.

I think it's very unlikely that low metabolism can fool an electroencephalogram. If there has been a reliably documented case of this happening, I'd like to see it. I'm skeptical that there is any such thing as a "zombification" process. --Mr. Billion 01:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] what was so ""poorly done" about the edit?

You didn't improve it, you reverted to the inferior edit. The way it is now, people don't know there was a 1996 Fatwa. The way it reads now, it seems as if the U.S. declared war on Osama befor he decalred war on us! Switch it back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.77.59 (talk • contribs) 23:08, 11 November 2005

[edit] Userpage

Hi, I just noticed that your userpage looks like it's formatted to show black text on a black background. Did you do that on purpose? --Mr. Billion 05:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it was not done on purpose. It seems as if there was some drainage caused by the poor fromatting ect. Anyway, Its all worked now...I hope. Journalist (talk · contribs)

[edit] SFF Link

I deleted the SFF foundation link from the Science_fiction article not because it looked like an advertisement, but because the SFF page looked like nothing more than an opportunity to donate money. The fact that it is a .org domain shouldn't be an all-access pass.

I have revisited the site, and I see they have some minimal amount of news and events of local interest. It still looks like a facade for fund-raising rather than a real organization.

What is your connection with SFF? Please explain why this link would be of interest to users reading the Science_fiction article. I'm fairly open-minded. KennyLucius 19:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm the SFF co-founder and current manager of Public Relations and fundraising on the web.

Why do you assume I have a connection to SFF? My connection is the same as yours: I saw their site.

The link doesn't look to me like it qualifies as spam, since they don't get any money from advertising impressions when you click it, and the Donations button is only one of several. (I clicked around a bit and found that there are ads on the site, but they're in the Search page and not the front page.)

Now that you've gotten me to look at it again a bit more closely, though, the site doesn't look like it has much content and the organization doesn't look like it's particularly influential or noteworthy. The link doesn't meet the requirements to be called spam. But I won't object if you remove the link again since, as you've suggested, there's not much of interest there. --Mr. Billion 07:05, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I assumed you were connected because you restored the link. It's difficult to assume altruism or a love of justice in today's world, if you know what I mean.

Money isn't the only goal of spam--a link in Wikipedia is picked up by Google from Wikipedia and dozens of sites that mirror Wiki content, increasing the PageRank of the linked page. I don't think that Max rspct, who added the link, is spreading that link all over Wikipedia, so perhaps I was inaccurate to call it spam. I was hoping that Max rspct would comment on its deletion and defend it.

Would you give me your opinion of another link? The Science_fiction article gets more than it's share of external links, and the last link on the list goes to a Chassidic religious site. The page has what appears to be some Jewish spiritual stories that are technically fantasy, but are being called Sci-Fi. What do you think of that link being on the Sci-Fi article? KennyLucius 15:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Houri

Why did you delete the following facts I added to the article on houris:

It should be pointed out that the above quote regarding the promise of '72 wives' in paradise is hearsay thrice removed and does not exist in the Qur'an. Nor is it accepted as an authentic hadith by the foremost scholar and compiler of hadiths, Imam Bukhari.

Contained therein are no opinions, only facts. AymanG 12:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.133.55 (talk • contribs) 10:38, 5 December 2005

[edit] Wikipedia Watch

Is this sockpuppet the only account by Daniel Brandt?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.22.124.156 (talk • contribs) 23:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I know nothing about it. --Mr. Billion 23:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks - the puppy has spelling issues sometimes

I try to remember to use SpellCheck, but sometimes I forget - thanks much for your kindly correction! KillerChihuahua^?!? 02:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. By the way, I think your point about religious perspectives is a good one. The breakdown of the world's religions is also neat. Cheers! --Mr. Billion 03:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] hey

i think that u should get at me on mah yahoo it mah user name here but here ill give it to u ok n8ive_babygirl05@yahoo.com if u dont have it just get one ok and we can talk bizzness about new thing to talk about on this site ok lata...

[edit] Casu marzu

Bleargh? Come on, I'm sure it's just delicious. Mmmmm. ;-) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I stand by my Bleargh. Blech, too!  :) --Mr. Billion 05:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Herhsey Company

Hi there. Yes I did request a photo for the Hershey Company. I was fairly suprised that at least a logo of the company or a bar of their chocolate hadn't been uploaded yet. I mean, for the world's largest chocolate manufacturer, it doesn't have a single image on the page. Excellent image! Thanks --Kilo-Lima 12:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. I also was surprised it didn't already have an image. Getting a logo from their site would probably be fair use, too. --Mr. Billion 19:24, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arts

Hello, What is reason in deleteing info on important Art news? I mean NeoPopReal. Thank you, Lolalol

[edit] bzzz

yeah i'm not so good at grammar or syntax or the english language really, i blame it on california's public school system! thanks for helping me out :) --kizzle 08:55, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. Thanks for making me chortle with that "bitter bee" bit. Happy Hanukkah/Boxing-Day/after-Christmas-discount-day! --Mr. Billion 09:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:GWB

Sorry about the duplication. WAvegetarian ^(talk) (email) ^(contribs) 08:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

No big deal, it happens. --Mr. Billion 10:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ex. Links

Hi. I don't know what you are mening about advertising? I have placed a few links to non-profit organizations with more than 1.000 members. (And yes; I'm a member and so what?)

Best Regards,

Jens

This is called spam. Don't do it.

You added this same comment on User talk:GraemeL because he removed your link to your other spam page soliciting donations for a fictional organization that "supports castles," just as your fictional democracy organization "supports democracy." Both sites have no real content but a prominently displayed Paypal button. Please keep your spam to yourself or your IP will be banned. --Mr. Billion 05:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Democracy edit against "spam"???

take a second look at your edit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy&diff=prev&oldid=34205913 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.206.74.26 (talk • contribs) 08:11, 7 January 2006

Whoops, that was a mistake. Thanks for catching that. --Mr. Billion 08:21, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bush talk page

Apologies are necessary to Deskana IF Deskana took offence, but I'm afraid not being aware of Bush's battle with the bottle is "ignorance" of that information. If I'd called him an eejit, or something equally inflammatory, I'd perhaps understand your haste in pointing me to wikipedia guidelines. And perhaps if you have any further comments to make about my conduct here, you'd put them on my talk page. I'm pretty certain that's the correct way of going about it. 195.153.219.170 10:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean to irk you, but calling someone ignorant is understandably likely to cause offense. Deskana hasn't registered any offense, though, so it's no big deal. I just want good relations among Wikipedia users. Cheers! --Mr. Billion 20:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

for changing my link in my user page to bypass a redirect! --ViolinGirl^♪ 13:13, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome! --Mr. Billion 17:52, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

i agree on the kkk link, get rid of it!

Ah, always good to know I'm not the only one! --Mr. Billion 18:43, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aixelsyd

Why did you create this redirect? --logixoul 15:52, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't recall exactly. Likely it was in a moment of playfulness. It's a popular myth that Dyslexia means "reading things backwards," and this was a riff on that in case anybody else were to ever sportively search for "Aixelsyd" as I did. If you think it's disruptive to have such a redirect page, I'll VfD it. --Mr. Billion 19:31, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

If I think about it the way a kid (which I, in fact, am) does, I'd say, keep it. But if I really try to look at it rationally, having Aixelsyd means that we should also have, say Redundant redundancy or Thomath Jefferthon. Having such... umm... jokes over the 'pedia doesn't exactly tune people's opinion of Wikipedia up, I think. So let the majority decide on the VfD. I hope I didn't break your mood ;) . Anyway, if it survives, I guess we should have aixelsyD, too. *chuckles* --logixoul 20:18, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --logixoul 17:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

== Avian influenza correction == igorsr - 15 January 2006.

Dear Mr. Billion (Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite comic!),

I was the one to correct avian influenza article, but I wasn't registered user at the time. Luckily my IP didn't change and I was able to see your message. It was very strange to see that avian influenza originated from Serbia and Montenegro (me being a resident of Serbia), because I have never heard such thing. I did a little research, and it turnes out that it really originated from my neighborhood - Italy. I checked some old revisions of the article and there it was - Italy was the correct origin. Anyway, thank you for noticing the change I made - I thought that no one will ever see it.

Best regards, Igor Srdanovic, Serbia

[edit] "Unnecessary sources"

Regarding these edits: What does it hurt to have more than one source linked for a story? Reading about events from more than one source can provide useful information or perspective. --Mr. Billion 05:33, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Do we really need three sources documenting a volcano erupting? I don't think so. The main point of the source is to verify that the occurence of the event occured. If there is so much information that we have several perspectives on an issue, we should just create a new article on Wikipedia. joturner 06:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree we don't need so many articles for the volcano thing (although some news sources did conflict on that), but the main point of news sources on Current Events is not simply to verify the entry that's on Current Events, but rather to make additional information available to users. Again, what harm comes from more than one source? --Mr. Billion 06:42, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Invasion of Iraq article

Mr. Billion, another editor is undertaking to sustantially shorten and consolidate this article. You reverted all his/her work. Let's let him/her finish before we start re-editing. New articles are being created with the material that has been removed to get this article down to size.Dawgknot 05:15, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Billion, please stop reverting the cleanup, consolidation, and shortening of the article. nothing is being deleted, just moved to sub-pages to get the article down to an appropriate size. Swatjester 16:18, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand your meaning. I've only edited that article once in the past two weeks. --Mr. Billion 23:14, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi there, when trying to go over the discussion at 2003 invasion of Iraq I saw it has become a big mess. If I see it correctly there was a conflict between an anon and others and now the page has been blocked. I think the anon had a point that an encyclopedia article about any military conflict should not be written exclusively by three members of one the conflicting parties, in this case Pookster11, Swatjester, and Dawgknot who according to this comment all belong to the US military. I therefore suggest to get more people into the boat, that should take the wind out of the sails of bias allegations. As I saw you also edited on that page, would you be willing to help out? Get-back-world-respect 22:08, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:Mag19.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Mag19.jpg. However, the image may soon be deleted unless we can determine the copyright holder and copyright status. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law (see Wikipedia's Copyright policy).

The copyright holder is usually the creator, the creator's employer, or the last person who was transferred ownership rights. Copyright information on images is signified using copyright templates. The three basic license types on Wikipedia are open content, public domain, and fair use. Find the appropriate template in Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and place it on the image page like this: {{TemplateName}}.

Please signify the copyright information on any other images you have uploaded or will upload. Remember that images without this important information can be deleted by an administrator. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Thank you. Matt 05:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. (A while ago.) --Mr. Billion 01:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is wrong?

Oh, I'm sorry. What the hell happens to be quote "wrong" un-quote with what I added? Oh please Mr.Billion, yes, yes, o please tell what I did wrong you bastard! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.12.116.204 (talk • contribs) 01:54, 18 February 2006

I don't know who you are or what you're talking about. --Mr. Billion 01:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion re: Yahoo is a not a news source

Instead of that in edit summaries, perhaps having something like what's in the commented out part of Current Events: AVOID YAHOO NEWS LINKS, as those URLs are transitory and die quickly!

It might help some people who didn't catch the commented out part but read your summary to understand why Yahoo news links are discouraged. Just a thought. TransUtopian 22:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I didn't really have any thought-out intentions while posting those edit summaries. The first was just because I felt like shouting, and the second was just an extension of the first. But I'll follow your suggestion next time I do that. Thanks! (I'm the one who first added that message you suggest (or rather, a similar one before you edited it) to the <!--comments--> part of Current events, by the way) --Mr. Billion 23:48, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Cool! And thanks for the information. While I'm aware that Yahoo primarily redistributes content of other news providers, I wasn't aware before seeing the Current Events comment that their links were so transitory. Before Wikipedia, my primary online news source was Yahoo, and I still glance at it when I read my email. TransUtopian 02:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not vandalism...

[from User Talk:KI]:

Your edit here contained the edit summary "rvv," which I understand to mean "Revert Vandalism." User:MPS's edit may not have been necessary or the best wording, but I think it clearly lacks the malicious intent that defines vandalism. We should avoid calling things vandalism when they're not. --Mr. Billion 22:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

You have very lax standards for what is not vandalism. KI 22:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

This is my standard:

Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia.

MPS's edit doesn't seem to be a deliberate attempt to reduce the quality of the encyclopedia. I'm just saying that it's important to avoid tossing the "vandal" label around when an edit has no apparent negative intent. --Mr. Billion 22:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Check out "Sable-sur-Sarthe hostage crisis" on Talk:Current Events at the very bottom. He makes his distain for the incident quite clear. KI 03:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. Him not thinking the event is particularly significant is not an indication that he's a vandal. --Mr. Billion 04:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging Image:DennisRader.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:DennisRader.jpg. I notice the 'image' page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{GFDL-self}} to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media qualifies as fair use, please read fair use, and then use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair_use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other media, please check that you have specified their source and copyright tagged them, too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any unsourced and untagged images will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam ^(T/C) 16:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That was his driver's license photo, but I never got around to re-tagging it. Oh well, the same image was uploaded by someone else. --Mr. Billion 18:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thirst Fist

I am Benito!

[edit] Correct

I did revert your additions, and upon checking back, I mistakenly thought it was vandalism. My sincere apologies, Corax 06:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wiki stalking random AOL users?

Do you actually make any edits of your own, or do you blindly seek out any and all edits made my AOL proxy users and revert, without making any contributions of your own?--64.12.116.204 22:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I revert any vandalism I find. --Mr. Billion 23:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Qiyamah

I agree, your phrasing was much better. KI 04:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits do have sources, sorry

I edited the Wichita, KS page recently (this edit and the one right before - I wasn't a user yet), and it was not vandalism (nor are they questionable numbers). Check here or here for the Wichita River Festival attendance numbers. Read this for # of buses. Simply Google either one of these and you can find proof easily. I just thought I would make some updates that are relevant. -- Vcn3wb05 01:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right, sorry about that. I'll put it back. Thanks for the note. --Mr. Billion 02:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for noticing the details; that page has been cleaned up quite a bit. Here's a better article than the one I gave you (it simply states attendance and profit) and this one could be used instead of the one currently used on the Wichita, KS profile (this one gives a better overall summary of the festival). Honestly, you could just provide a link to river festival's main page. --Vcn3wb05 03:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving disambiguation pages

According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/Malplaced disambiguation pages you shouldn't have moved[5] Paco to Paco (disambiguation). It's a little wierd, but you get used to it after a while. Ewlyahoocom 05:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Whoops

Careful with that popups tool. You restored some vandalism with it. Just a note; happy editing! --Mr. Billion 04:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed it after the reversion had gone through - I forgot that you can't use popups (properly) from the contribs page, only from the watchlist or recent changes pages, it works differently for whatever reason. The anon had already fixed my botch fix by the time the history had reloaded for me to check it. Thanks for warning me, though, -- stillnotelf is invisible 04:47, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry

Sorry about the troll label; however, Merecat simply dismisses publications that are contrary to his opinions. I thought I was quite diplomatic with my lengthy post saying we should all straddle both sides of the aisle when evaluating published data. He then posts "I don't know quite what you meant, but thanks." I found this insulting (the online equivalent of a six year old sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming LA LA LA LA). Since he was being purposely obtuse, I simply responded bluntly (I felt that someone of his obvious intelligence saying he didn't understand, when I was quite clear in my post, to be an attempt to "get my goat," as it were).

And regarding others calling me a troll, it's water off a duck's back. If I can make a cogent argument and present it in a direct, non-confrontational fashion, then it's not trolling. I am, however, not perfect, and may make comments occasionally that are intended to inflame. Mostly, though, I act grown up...:)

And regarding a flame war, have no fear. I don't intend to get into a shouting match with Merecat. I've made my point, and any flaming he does will not illicit a response from me (unless he insults my dead mother or something). If Merecat can not accept my argument to treat notable periodicals equally regardless of bias (excluding those of extreme bias), then that's Merecat's problem.

Personally, I agree with Rolling Stone's assessment of Bush. Not only is he the worst president of all time, I think he rivals the worst of all LEADERS of all time (well, perhaps not as bad as Caligula, but that's it).

TheKurgan 23:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] dont erase peoples disscussion comments

its a discussion page where anybody can expres there view, it not like a fact-only based article —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swainstonation (talk • contribs) 00:07, 26 April 2006

Be careful to follow your own advice. But I'm sorry, I didn't realize that your comments were made in all seriousness. My mistake. You should know, though, that if you want to say something to Jimmy Wales, you should post on User talk:Jimbo Wales, and not on the Talk Page for the article about him. And yes, it really is a fact-only based article. That's what Wikipedia is about. --Mr. Billion 03:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply from jtdirl

Sorry. My system froze. I couldn't go forward or backward. The only button I could get to work and let me leave the page was rollback. As soon as I had my system rebooted I went back to undo it but it had already been done. That is the third time tonight something dodgy happened on WP. Sorry for giving you the wrong impression. I have no idea what happened, and rollback doesn't allow for edit summaries. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 20:36, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

It's okay, no big deal :) --Mr. Billion 21:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reminders + Suggestion

As a courtesy for other editors on Wikipedia, please sign your talk page and user talk page posts. By adding four tildes (~) at the end of your comments, your user name or IP address and the date will be automatically added.

Important: This talk page is becoming very long. Please consider archiving.

— Ian Manka Talk to me‼ 03:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1959 assassination attempt on Qasim

Hmm, I may have jumped a little too quickly - it's the 1963 attempt which is widely believed to have had CIA involvement [6], possibly because that one worked... However, given the time, a US-backed attempt to assassinate an increasingly pro-Soviet leader who was threatening US interests isn't a surprise. But I don't believe the US govenment has publically stated their involvement, unlike in the overthrow of Allende [7] or the restoration of the Shah [8]. Average Earthman 16:52, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I was about to say never mind, as I'd already found and used a United Press International cite saying that "his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim." They were involved in both, apparently. Thanks for the reply! --Mr. Billion 22:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

• Ah, well found. Wish I'd thought to narrow the search to the newswires. Average Earthman 08:11, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reverts

You might be able to verify it yourself quite easily instead of reverting. NP though, I've done it for you. -- Goldie (tell me) 16:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd just read further down in the article where it calls the "OIL" thing a "persistent rumor." If the original name being "Operation Iraqi Liberation" isn't just a rumor after all, then there's no problem with adding that note. I've removed the "rumor" comment further down. Thanks for clarifying. Cheers! --Mr. Billion 17:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] dorodango

I thought of just deleting the section, but the copyright violation said not to edit that page anymore. I wasn't sure what the rule was on that... Gaijin42 20:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That's okay, no big deal. I found that part of the note sort of confusing too. --Mr. Billion 22:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User conduct RfC against Commodore Sloat

Hi, I'm contacting you to ask that you take a look at the conduct RfC brought against me by TDC (talk · contribs). I'm contacting you because the RfC involves some pages that you have edited on in the past. I value whatever contribution you may make to the RfC page, if you are so inclined. Thanks.--csloat 07:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for reverting

Thanks for reverting vandalism on my user page. ... discospinster _talk 14:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing. --Mr. Billion 23:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discover

Hey 1G,

They contacted me. I wrote them a long e-mail response about my involvement and about the Evolution article more generally. Not sure how much of that got into the article itself. Looking forward to seeing it - not published online yet, unfortunately. Graft 23:11, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Not much, sadly. It's a one-page piece with a graph of the evolution article created using this tool covering December 3, 2001-October 2005. Under that is a short chronology marking six interesting points in [[Evolution]]'s evolution. Each point gets a paragraph.

If you're curious, your entry is:

October 1, 2002: "Graft," show in yellowish green, makes his debut. He will create 79 edits over three years and spend hours hashing out the content on discussion pages with pro-and antievolution editors. A biology grad student at Harvard University, Graft has edited more than 250 Wikipedia entries.

Pretty cool, although it's too bad the editors didn't decide to do something more in-depth. Discover seems to have been trending towards shorter and shorter articles and blurbs over the years, probably along with most other magazines. Oh well.

Anyway, congratulations on appearing in Discover--and more importantly, congratulations on four years of quality edits. :) --Mr. Billion 23:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Tchadienne

Thanks for fixing my grammar on my userpage. Regards, (freestylefrappe - KI Tchadienne 17:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC))

[edit] al Qaeda

hi can you drop in to the al Qaeda page at least to notify "that guy from that show" that he does not in fact have consensus to change the arabic translation of the name to "database". I assume he's just bluffing since I am not a ragular user. 64.163.4.225 20:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do to figure out what it really means. No need to get worked up about it. --Mr. Billion 04:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

ah well I tend to get frustrated a too easily. And bullies especially get to me. I used to have a regular account for about a year, and that's one reason I quit (made my password a random jumble so I can't log in). Mainly though it just eats too much time and I have grad school and a job that I actually get credit/rewards for. 64.163.4.225 21:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, okay. I can understand that. What was the old name, out of curiosity? --Mr. Billion 00:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

my username is my name and this ip is my work, so... I tried to email you but you don't appear to have email set up. 64.163.4.225 01:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh well. No big deal, I guess. --Mr. Billion 03:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I updated the al Qaeda talk page and hope this clears things up a bit.

Sincerest Regards, -- That Guy, From That Show! 03:11, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --Mr. Billion 03:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DAS Games

Regarding fuddlemark's comments at the DAS Games deletion page, please don't take them to heart; I've generally found him to be quite frank in situations such as that, but it's rarely in bad faith.

In case nobody's explained the problem to you, I thought I should take a moment to do it now. {{prod}} tags are best placed on articles that can be deleted without contention - it's a good idea to place them first on an article, before any other deletion tag. Note that the prod tag itself invites anybody to remove it if they disagree; the reason being, that the article should then go through the AfD process, using the instructions at WP:AFD. This gives a chance to discuss the deletion among the community, as is currently happening with that article.

I'm sorry you were bitten for such a silly mistake - I, myself, did just the same thing when I first got into the AfD process less than a month ago. The difference here, though, is that I actually went so far as to place a series of warning tags on the "offending" user's talk page, because I hadn't carefully read the tag I'd been placing. We all screw up from time to time, some more spectactularly than others. ;)

Hope you keep yourself involved in the AfD process, and don't take this incident to heart. :) RandyWang (^raves/_{review me!}) 08:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Thanks a lot for explaining. I appreciate it. --Mr. Billion 18:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem. If you have any problems in future, don't hesitate to ask. :) RandyWang (^raves/_{review me!}) 23:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Revert Vandalism" edit summary

It was an honest mistake as noted here.

Regards, and thank you for your contributions, -- That Guy, From That Show! 05:31, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Makes sense. Thanks for the note. --Mr. Billion 06:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Boston Tea Party

Howdy, I noticed that you and I seem to post in one or two articles dealing with progressive issues in political science/sociology. There's currently a debate beginning in Boston Tea Party as to whether the article should include the category [9]. It meets definitions set in the articles Terrorism and Definition of terrorism, however, there are several self-proclaimed patriots who watch BTP who refuse to recognise the fact. The simple criteria for terrorism generally seem to be intimidation or destruction of property in order to change public policy or public opinion while a state of war has not yet been declared. Some users would rather use recent acts of terrorism as a yardstick, rather than using a firm definition, and hence lose their ability to discuss matters calmly. Would you be able to pop in to the Talk page and join in the discussion? Thanks much, samwaltz 05:15, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question on the Book of Swords series?

I saw you on the talk page and I'm curious how the series actually ends with Vilkata, Amintor and the other swords? How do they die, if they do, etc? Thanks a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.170.31.160 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 1 September 2006

Hmmm, good question. It was years ago that I read the series, and I honestly don't remember how it all ends. I'll take a look and find out. --Mr. Billion 02:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Billion...Mainly I was wondering what happens to the final villains-Wood, Vilkata, Amintor- and th heroes/swords. If you would check, thanks tons—Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.170.31.160 (talk • contribs)

Sorry for the wait.

Spoilers! Highlight or copy/paste text to see it. Vilkata, after temporarily enslaving some of the gods using the Mindsword and nearly seizing the city of Tashigang, is undone by the Silver Queen's Sword, Soulcutter, whose effect trumps even the Mindsword. Vilkata believes that the god Vulcan is still under his power, but is proven wrong when Vulcan appears, mocks him, shows that he has obtained Shieldbreaker and is immune to all other Swords and weapons. While Vilkata is facing the Silver Queen, Vulcan enters the city that Vilkata was about to invade. Vulcan wreaks havok in the city, seeking the Swords Townsaver and Doombringer, both of which he knows are in the city. Both Swords are used against him, though, and are shattered by Shieldbreaker's power. Jord, the blacksmith who helped Vulcan create the Swords when he was younger, knows Shieldbreaker's weakness. He attacks Vulcan barehanded. Shieldbreaker makes the holder impervious to all weapons, but helpless against an unarmed foe. Jord chokes the giant god nearly to death. Vulcan escapes, but is severely weakened and diminished. The gods gather and return to the mountaintop where Vulcan originally forged the Swords. Possibly still feeling some of the Mindsword's influence, possibly merely needing some human connection, Vulcan saves Vilkata and carries him up the mountain. Vilkata, though he's lost his demonic host, his kingdom, and his Sword, still believes that the gods are under his control. "You are gods, and goddesses. Therefore all the Earth is mine." But Apollo says, "You cannot feel it, little man? That the humans whose dreams created us, and gave us power, are now dreaming differently? That our power, and our lives as well, have been draining from us, ever since we gave you Swords to use?" The world is changing. As they climb the mountain, the gods disappear one by one. Vulcan, last of the gods, casts the mad and useless Vilkata from a snowy cliff.

The stories of Amintor, the Blue Temple, the Emperor, Mark, Ben, and the remaining Swords are told in the Books of Lost Swords. (End spoilers). --Mr. Billion 02:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Billion! How'd the Book of Lost Swords end? I think Vilkata returned in them?

[edit] I moved your Comment on GWB

Hi, I was introducing some new sub-sections when you added your comment. I'm not sure why I didn't get an edit clash, but I didn't. I've moved your comment (with which I strongly agree) into the subsection I think it belongs in. Trust you don't mind. Regards, Ben Aveling 03:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Mr. Billion, are you saying that deleting another user's comments on an article talk page is not vandalism. I'd like to know where you got that from, as I found (on Wikipedia's vandalism page) a section that specifically says that it is vandalism. In this case the user deleted more than one of my comments, then lied (in his edit summary) about deleting any of my posts. "Duke53 | Talk" 05:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It depends on if it was done in good faith. If it was, it was a mistake. If not, it was vandalism. Neither you nor I nor Mr Billion knows if it was good faith or not. The person you are talking about has admitted he made a mistake. So long as he doesn't make a habit of it, it doesn't matter. Let's all put it behind us and move on and do something that improves wikipedia. Thanks, Ben Aveling 05:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I will respond on your talk page. No sense doing this on Mr. Billion's talk page. Sorry, sir."Duke53 | Talk" 05:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your refactoring of Talk:Osama bin Laden

In this edit, you removed my signed comment "You may also wish to note subsequent videos." (in which Osama claims responsibility for September 11). Did you mean to remove it? Thanks, Andjam 01:05, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow. No, I sure didn't. I'm sorry, that was a mistake. I've put it back. Thanks for pointing it out. --Mr. Billion 01:30, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of Osama bin Laden about your Elvis comment, do you actually have a valid arguement? Ohyeahmormons 20:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Why, yes. I was pointing out that simply because there are rumors that OBL is dead and rumors that Elvis is alive does not mean we should categorize their articles according to the rumors. --Mr. Billion 02:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not a rumor like so and so is gay. There were actual theories proving that Osama could be dead. Ohyeahmormons 20:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

From what I've seen, it's a rumor like "the U.S. government conspired to commit 9/11" or "Saddam Hussein moved his WMD arsenal to Syria for some reason". The only people so far I've seen arguing that Osama is already dead are people who also argue for 9/11 conspiracy theories. There is an actual theory definitively proving that Osama bin Laden could be dead: 1) All men are mortal; 2) Osama is a man; 3) Osama is mortal. However, I have seen no credible evidence that he is currently dead. There was an article printed in 2001 in a Pakistani rag quoting somebody from the Taliban saying that Osama had died in October and his body could never ever be found. I don't think that's particularly credible, particularly in light of the 2002, 2003, and 2004 videos of Osama bin Laden being alive and commenting on current events. --Mr. Billion 02:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fbi

Hi, I've continued the discussion on: Talk:September_11,_2001_attacks/FBI_poster_controversy#Continued_discussion_from_talk_page. Would you please take a look? — Xiutwel (talk) 10:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Right you are! (wink)

"self-rv: I guess "see below" refers to the edit count way down at the bottom" Casey Abell 11:56, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] OBL worldwide perception article AFD

You might be interested in this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden

Regards, -- That Guy, From That Show! 07:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glad to see you back

No email address listed, so here it is.

Thanks for your contributions, -- That Guy, From That Show! 07:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the return welcome! --Mr. Billion 14:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worldwide perceptions of Osama bin Laden, Worldwide perception of Osama Bin Laden

Please do not create redirects to deleted articles. This is considered vandalism. (aeropagitica) 23:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Pay attention to dates.

I have not created any redirects to any deleted articles. I created redirects to an existing article which was later deleted.

Please do not leave nonsensical messages on my Talk page. It is considered vandalism. Thank you. --Mr. Billion 20:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Message from pedracer400

It's pedracer400. I only included WTC7, because it was the only building to fall (besides ofcourse, the twin towers) on the 11th of September. Like you didn't know! It was the furthest away and the least damaged of all the buildings in the entire complex. But it fell! Watch the video's, and ask yourself, why did it have an undeniable (I believe it's called a) crimp (it fell in a v shape, collapsing from the middle, into its own 'footstep')? I know you think, well, the mainstream media cover this stuff. THEY DON'T!!!

Explain HOW it is that the supposed 'pancake' collapse destroyed the steel and concrete CORE. Explain how it is that jet fuel melted steel, check the temperatures of the two, is it SCIENTIFICALY POSSIBLE??? (not mentioning the fact that the twin towers used a higher grade of steel, built to survive EVEN HIGHER temperatures) Explain why 99.9% of architect's and scientist say's "fire from jet fuel could not have caused those buildings to collapse" (keeping in mind, wether it is scientificaly possible or not) The building's were designed to SURVIVE one or even MULTIPLE hits from a Boeing 707 (a LARGER and MORE DESTRUCTIVE plane). How did they collapse with just one smaller one??? Why are Squab's (small explosions coming out of the side of the building, blowing windows out) visible in the collapse? Why has one of the planes been FOUND still flying 2 years later? YEAH, STILL GOING, photographed too. Look at the pictures of what hits the pentagon. In later released pictures, they ACTUALLY RELEASED pictures of a MISSILE hitting the pentagon! Yes!! Why did they actually release that???? I have no idea.

Research the facts before blabbing that you know what happened. No, really, research it, I'm serious.

P.S. I'm sure that by now, you've branded me a conspiracy nut? I have only shown you fact's. I have not (even once) said who I think is responsible for it. So here's the twist, I'm going to say to you, I believe that it was carred out by Islamic extremists. And that since the mainstream media says it, it must be (no actually, it IS) true.

To be quite honest, I don't care if the Bush Administration's story has a few (ok then, a lot of) 'holes' in it. Who cares if they stood to gain hundreds of billions of dollars from it. I think it's just coincidence. If you actually think that maybe the reports (of the people in the towers a few days before it happened) were of people running wires through the building, and bomb sniffing dog's being pulled out a few days before it happened, mean that there was something going on, you must be unamerican. Afterall, the wires were for broadband (I don't CARE if the computer technicians stated that the technology was completely up to date. They must have been lying). I don't care that there were power cuts in the day's before it happened, and that not only were the camera's off at this time, but the door's were all left unlocked, open. Or that there were reports of suspicious people walking around while the security was down. Infact, I don't even care that the building's were in serious need of updating (due to the health hazards of asbestos, amongst other things) and that the work was going to cost hundreds of millions, and that it HAD TO be done due to health and safety law's. I don't care. None of it matters. Those Islamists are all very bad people and shouldn't have done what they did. All my research points towards them as the culpret. Afterall, Osama once said he did it. Who cares if he WORKED FOR THE US GOVERNMENT waaaaaaay back in the 80's. He doesn't know them anymore, he lost their number or something, so it was him, confessing, he didn't do it cause he was told to or anything! And that's that! --User:pedracer400

Most of your assertions are inaccurate and your logic is faulty. The first, second, and seventh world trade center buildings collapsed because they were tall, skinny buildings. The four shorter buildings were crushed or otherwise damaged beyond repair. For a steel-frame building to collapse, it is not necessary for the steel to become molten. It has to be heated enough to be weakened enough that it will collapse. The towers' windows exploded outward as the buildings collapsed because each floor had several tons of concrete and steel plummeting down on top of them, causing the air and dust to be blown outward just as a pile of salt held in your hand will scatter outward if you clap the other hand down on top of it.

I suggest you follow your own advice and research the facts before blabbing that you know what happened. No, really, research it, I'm serious. --Mr. Billion 19:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed

I recall you've been an active editor on Saddam Hussein. As you can imagine, the page is turning into an utter mess. If you can help monitor the recent changes, your help will be quite useful. Happy New Year, 172 | Talk 05:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure. --Mr. Billion 19:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monica Lewinski

Your edit is fine, doesn't really change anything, but I find fault with the reasoning in your edit summary. Impeachment and removal from office are two different processes, therefore how can you NOT call the impeachment successful. He was impeached. For example, Nixon's impeachment was unsuccessful, because he resigned before he was impeached. Clinton's impeachment was successful, because he was impeached, which is the job of the House of Representatives. That the Senate failed to remove is pretty much beside the point. - Crockspot 16:53, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

If you say that someone was "successfully charged with murder," it sounds like you're saying that the charges led to a conviction. Same with "successfully impeached."

Regardless of whether or not Bill Clinton would have been removed from office, the charges brought against him in the House failed in the Senate. Therefore they were unsuccessful. One could say that House Republicans "succeeded in impeaching Bill Clinton," but the phrase "successfully impeached" is still rather too ambiguous because the impeachment itself died halfway through.

Also, technically, Nixon was never impeached. Because he resigned, they never did get to charge him with anything as president, and so never did impeach him. --Mr. Billion 05:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sudan

HI there Mr Billion -you sound like one of my James Bond henchman!!! 1 billion dollars Mr Bond!!!. Anyway, pLease can a member of your project try to expand the articles on the states of Sudan. They are very poor indeed . You would expect some more detailed articles on major states of countries but often they are only two lines long and often cover an area of like 200,000 sq km!!! I have seen much improvement in a number of articles on Sudan though . Keep up the good work its just I feel this is very important -there must be some information available somewhere. Fort the Blue Nile for instance what about the economy? , local customs, government etc? THanks ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^{"Expecting you" Contribs} 10:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

--24.62.127.39 18:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC)1:27p.m.e.s.t. Hello my name is David George DeLancey on wikipedia i am D.G.DeL-Dorchester Mass I have studied alot of political history especialy the periods of the 1700's this is ofcourse the times before the Revolution i say times for they might of erupted a few or so, so i have read and since the conduct is affiliated with it i search more and truth usually shows a bit of something , my relatives during this period were the DeLancey Faction and or Party residing over the Albany Congress although perhaps this i do realize the effort with everyone else as well though most had a period of satisfaction about themselfs governing their colonies and such , also the dealing with indians and the fronteer it is interesting to note that some may have used this theory our fronteer or the fronteer is amongst us all good though through time this will inheret a social way of conduct i supose still the methods were of securing , again all good, when the isue of paper currencie was adopted the idea that is , as well this idea was formated also during the 1600's late period in Massachussetts a resemble of a state that is that tried it for a time , back to the albany congress period in order to have Law and Order one would have to know that they were going to experience it the issue was a Legal Tender Binding with no restrictions, for instence the Gold and Silver Copper as well as other Raw materials used for different things went to the protection of europe when William Pitt organized the securness of the crown and or King to point his securness towards the Americas and it's at Large Aquaintances so for the lack of one sure idem another perhaps would have to be udilized this formation did not accure and by 1760 when King George the second died and James DeLancey also died that same year of 1760 the issueing format was declined although when it was truely declined was during the periods of 1745 and 1754 this organizing of relations was a taskfull performance though the other colonies were in fight with themselfs for securness wich led to a statement of incrouchment towards the personality of individuals, when a format is the subject of performance towards the freedoms of society then the circulation is of granting if one can not get from point a to point b then this is a restriction , when it is established the remaining ventures are a conduct of dual wich is the representing of oneself and the conduct of what follows such as number one Law, an example if i wanted to get to the island i would need a bout if then when i arived the forfillment of the degree once set of me being there would then be a tallent or a tariff on what to do now perhaps the teriff exsisted before though here is what is forgotten the knowledge of doing it the opertunitof doing it wich just is the boat and the conduct there after wich is perhaps a steady thing for i shall decide if then it becomes a steady thing then perhaps the boat wiil be my evry usage of conducting my effort i may rent it lease it or just use it if on the other end is piecefull i may chosse to ok heres the word work maybe it's not the word although i am to do something perhaps productive maybe i'll do many things still though this performance i call a boat still is the same providing effort towards mine here is what i'm trying to say if the boat and a currency or money is related to the same ideal performance then money forsure comes before anything else without it nothing can happen and then makes nothing the most important thing in the world wich may be consider an advantage, and then we have At Large who is at Large about an erea to conduct with those last few words were perhaps a condradiction , i shall continue at another time,.24.62.127.39 18:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC)… David George DeLancey24.62.127.39 18:11, 27 June 2007 (UTC) you may put in my name and see what other catergories i have conducted thank you.1:57 p.m.Centervill Massachusetts Library…