User talk:Nealmcb

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[edit] Useful places for me and fellow Wikipedians

[edit] WikiProject Cryptography

Hi there, welcome to WikiProject Cryptography! (An introduction: I'm Matt, I've been editing at Wikipedia for a couple of months, and my most detailed knowledge is about block ciphers, though I like to read/edit other stuff too.) If you have any thoughts on how we can improve cryptography articles, I'd be keen to hear them (we can put them in the "List of open tasks" section). — Matt 12:00, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Matt, for organizing the project and getting people involved. I've been following crypto on and off since reading the RSA Technical Memo in 1977. I analyzed the PGP web of trust in 1996, and have helped organize the PKI R&D Workshop the last three years. NealMcB 18:38, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

[edit] spelling

Neal, We now have a formal discussion page for the TT issue, cypher v cipher. It's at the WikiProject Cryptography under discussions. I've taken the liberty of summarizing folks views on the question insofar as I know them under current standings. You might want to chime (or chyme) in there. ww 17:54, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Finnegan "breakthrough"

Neal, Thanks for reverting the 'news'. I spent 20 minutes searching and couldn't turn up even a hint. Looks like sneaky vandalism, and some extended editing effort to do it, too. So thanks again.

And thanks for the line at treecat. It made the warning much more apparent. ww 17:39, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Cryptography mailshot

Hi, quick note to let you know about what's happening with the WikiReader in Cryptography. There's now a provisional Table of Contents to work with, and for the next 68 days or so there'll be an "Article of the Day" scheme: each day there'll be a particular article highlighted for reviewing and fixing. There's two templates for this purpose: Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD and Template:WikiReaderCryptographyAOTD-Verbose. The smaller one looks like this:

WikiReader Cryptography — article of the day edit
 MRR
Sunday, 24 July Playfair cipher (Talk) (History)
                   
Monday, 25 July Message authentication code (Talk) (History)
                   
Tuesday, 26 July Digital signature (Talk) (History)
                   
Wednesday, 27 July Block cipher modes of operation (Talk) (History)
                   
Thursday, 28 July Export of cryptography (Talk) (History)
                   
Notes: If you find problems that you can't fix (or it's too much effort), it would be very helpful if you could place a note on the Talk: page. Articles need to be checked for 1) Accuracy (Factchecking: Are there any mistakes? Is the writing precise? Are sources cited?), 2) Completeness (Any obvious omissions? Does it need illustration?) 3) Quality of writing (Copyedits: Grammar and spelling, phrasing, structure) 4) Neutrality (Is it written from the NPOV? Do we document all relevant points of view?) — Thanks!
Image:Evolution-tasks-old.png — To-do list for Digital signature [1]
  • Describe cryptanalysis of digital signatures -- what are the various notions of security for a signature scheme?
  • Mention the common association of message encryption with digital signatures.
(See all to-do lists for this WikiReader)

These articles are likely to be some of the earliest English Wikipedia content to get turned into a print version, and any help in making them as good as possible would be much appreciated. Thanks! — Matt 01:51, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Something to read

Please consider reading this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snowspinner/Avala_Evidence

and then voting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#User:Snowspinner_.2854.2F6.2F2.29_Ends_17:06.2C_31_July_2004

-- orthogonal 18:23, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Getting Psychotherapy into This Week's Improvement Drive

Hi there! I noticed that at one time or another you helped contribute to the article on Psychotherapy. As it stands this article could use a lot of help, and thus I've taken the liberty of trying to get it to be the focus of a week's improvement drive. All we need to get it for a week's worth of focus and improvement is enough votes, so go to Psychotherapy's vote page and help out this very needing article! JoeSmack (talk) 18:16, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phaeno Science Center

Please note two things from Wikipedia:Manual of Style: (1) The title phrase should be bolded at its first appearance, and (2) Don't use too many capital initial letters in section headings---in particular, it should say External links with a lower-case initial "L", not a capital. I fixed these problems in Phaeno Science Center and also in the section heading you added to The Wisdom of Crowds. Michael Hardy 00:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

...same two things at James Stoll; again I fixed them. Michael Hardy 00:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

...same thing with the See also heading; the a in also should be lower-case. I've fixed this in about a half-dozen article where you added "see also" sections. Michael Hardy 00:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, thanks, thanks, Michael. I often get to the point where after researching all the content, I'm tired and/or forget some of the details of editorial style. So I appreciate it when someone who is more up-to-date on such things helps out like this. --NealMcB 23:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Initial capitals for standard protocol names

JA: With regard to your message:

You changed the name of Border Gateway Protocol to Border gateway protocol. But the article is about a specific, named, standardized protocol which is always written with initial capitals. In accordance with the Wikipedia:Naming conventions It should be changed back, along with other similar articles. --NealMcB 05:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: The way I read "most common usage" (MCU), it does not apply to orthography, and does not override local standards of orthography, as all sorts of people think that it's MCU to capitalize all of the major words in article headings, and then again we would have every condition in DSM being capitalized, for example, "Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder", but we don't do the likes of that here in a host of similar cases. Jon Awbrey 05:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I (and others) disagree, as discussed in the Requested move discussions at Talk:Border gateway protocol. --NealMcB 18:23, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] admin?

Hi Neal - You're pretty clearly not a Wikipedia addict, but I was wondering if you might have any interest in becoming an administrator. If so, I'd be happy to nominate you (I've been one for nearly a year). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Howdy, Rick! Thanks for your hard work here, and the offer! From looking at RFA, it seems that many folks want more edits than I have. For now I'll stick to content. --NealMcB 18:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
OK. I won't really push it, but I think edit history dating from 2002-09-28 (!) provides ample evidence that you're not a troll. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:10, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Capitalization for Titles

Sorry my position was unclear. I say all of this in the full awareness that language is malleable and the product of group consensus. I'd just as soon not get bogged down in a debate about the sociology of linguistics. If you open any grammar book (Chicago, Harbrace, whatever) it tells you that titles for articles, books, whatever are capitalized in a particular way (barring exceptions for things like eBay or e.e. cummings). Ordinarily, you capitalize the first and last word of the title (regardless of whether they're direct articles or verbs) and any words in the body of the title that are important (typically the verbs and the nouns). I moved Criticism of Atheism to Critique of Atheism. Shortly thereafter, someone changed it to Critique of atheism and directed me to the naming conventions for Wikipedia, which state that only the first word of a title and Proper nouns are capitalized. Being someone who writes, is published, and works in a library, I found that convention to be amateurish. MerricMaker 19:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:NASA Budget fraction of US budget, population effects

In response to your comments posted on the NASA Budget discussion page in March 2006, please visit the page at your first convenience once again and provide any additional comments or suggestions for improvement. Regards, ~JS~ WSpaceport 17:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - the changes are helpful! Some lines in the graph would be even nicer, of course. --NealMcB 23:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hope you don't mind

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ANealmcb&diff=145954038&oldid=56210144 -Wafulz 17:10, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! I think I figured that interwiki syntax out later on, but forgot that I wanted to use it here. --NealMcB 17:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polo Shirt

Mea Culpa, I thought I had moved the talkpage as well. Thanks for the note, I have fixed. (Preserving both edit histories) Brian | (Talk) 04:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Election Markup Language

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Election Markup Language, and it appears to include a substantial copy of http://xml.coverpages.org/eml.html. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 21:59, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the well-presented tips. The text in question (one phrase) was marked as a quote, and the page I got it from was listed in the external links section. But now I've moved the citation to be a proper reference directly after the quote. --NealMcB (talk) 22:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure

I just wanted to let you know about the formation of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure. We hope to cover all the major motions and parliamentary procedure terms. You are welcome to join. Thanks, Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)