User talk:Neil Leslie

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[edit] Welcome & cut-elimination

It looks like I get to introduce you to Wikipedia: an easy job, since you obviously have figured out your way around. The Wikipedia:Policy trifecta is probably the pithiest summary of WP policy. Probably the most valuable thing to bring in editing is not just type up what you know, but also try to track down references: I was pleased to see your correction on logical harmony.

On Cut-elimination theorem: precisely because there is little consistency, there is little harm that can be done by another viewpoint. Making the article read better is a matter of imposing structure on it: once a good structure is in place, future contributors are likely to respect it.

Dive right in --- Charles Stewart 18:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rangers F.C.

You were probably right in reverting to an earlier version. I was trying to tidy up after a string a of dubious edits. --GraemeL (talk) 12:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately the RFC page gets vandalised too much. And some of the non-vandal additions are just the injection of anti-Rangers POV. Trying to correct these then just leads to weasel or peacock terms. Much better to just delete these. For what it is worth my favourite example of such piffle comes from the Celtic page: Celtic Park "is widely regarded as one of the most famous stadia in Europe." Surely "widely reagrded as famous" is just the same as "famous"? Did Gallup do a poll to compare the recognition of Celtic Park with that of the San Siro, de Kuip, Roker Park, Stark's Park....? Celtic Park currently has the highest capacity of any soccer stadium in Scotland, and this is about as much as can be stated about it. Doesn't sound as good though.

01:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC) You should refrain from removing facts. GreameL also agrees on this point. You are right about the piffle e.g on the Rangers page this appears- "As well as being a football club, they are as much a Scottish institution and an integral part of Scottish culture. Equally, they are a world famous football club." "...As much..."Did some boffin come up with method of mesuring how institutionalised and cultural you can be as compared to how much of a football team you can be. And 'Equally' compared to what? Don't you agree this piffle is just fanzine talk and should be removed?


--User:84.217.5.191

Hi 84.217.5.191, It's a fact and its verifiable, but is it important? I'd say it is exactly as important as the record win in Europe, and thats not been included. Of course you are correct that there is piffle on the Rangers page. Feel free to improve it.

I've been without a computer for several days, so sorry about taking so long to reply. My personal opinion is that the information on Rangers record European defeat does merit inclusion. It's verifiable and if record wins are recorded, NPOV says that record defeats should have a place too. --GraemeL (talk) 18:42, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National Certificate of Educational Achievement

Hi, thanks for your edits to the NCEA article — it's been a long time since someone took interest in this article. As you can see, it was written by several laypeople and has a long way to go. As I've learnt more about assessment systems, I've even noticed inaccuracies written by myself and others! Thanks very much for your contributions to the article.

If you want, you can add yourself to Category:Wikipedians in New Zealand by adding the {{User NZ res}} template to your user page. (You can also do this with the templates on Wikipedia:Babel.)

Welcome along! And Happy New Year.  :-) Neonumbers 09:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Category:Wikipedians in New Zealand

Hi, You might want to consider adding {{User NZ res}} to the top of your user page, which will add you to this category automatically and also add a nice graphic. Onco_p53 00:45, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes on secondary school pages

I like it, but a few tweaks that I have been thinking about: - The mottoes are one line, it doesn't look very tidy "Per Angusta ad Augusta Through rough ravines to hallowed heights" - Principal => Current Principal? - Roll => 200X Roll?

What do you think? Also, is there anyway to easily find the pages with these infoboxes?

Hi. You forgot to add the four tildes to sign. No matter. You should be able to format the individual mottoes on more than one line, as the box currently stands. Have a look at Otago Girls' High School. (I confess that I was more interested in gettng all the data in than formatting it properly. I had hoped that someone else would tidy it up later. I'm also pretty sure I left lots of typos behind as well.)

I don't thnk that you need to say current principal, as principal is assumed to be current, unless you are specifically trying to distinguish the current principal for some other one. Also current principal takes up more room!

I agree that there should be some way to indicate the year of the roll, but if this is changed in the infobox, then I think that you need to be careful to make this a parameter, as the data may not be available for every school for the current year. On the whole, I'd prefer to leave it as it is, I think.

BTW if you can think of anything which should go in the infobox and which is not there you can add it to the template. Pages which use the box, and don't have a particular entry simply don't produce anything for that entry. But of course for template you would need to have some thing which is worth rcording for most schools. One other thing which possibly could do with a tweak is the way that the school type is recorded. It might be worth separating the way the school is funded (State/State integrated/Private), the age range, and the gender(s) of the students. Special schools would remain special and some way is needed to record whether a school has boarding facilities (assuim that this is important). Any thoughts?

You should be able to find all the pages that use this box by going to Template:Infobox NZ school, and clicking on 'What links here' in the toolbox on the Wikipedia panel on the left of the page. However, when I just did this I didn't get all of them listed. Alternatively just got to Schools in New Zealand category. All the schools which had a page as of a couple of days ago have been done, and hopefully anyone adding a new page will use the infobox.

Best Neil Leslie 08:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Cool, will take a deeper look at it, then see what will be best (slowly remembering to sign!) --BakugekiNZ 22:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] State school enrolment schemes

I can understand why you say that you do not want POV on this page. What I do not understand why you use a Ministry of Education quote that claims the system is fairer. I can accept the enrolment scheme system is objectively more transparent, but calling it fairer is pretty POV. All I ask is that it is prefixed with the statement that is a claimed benefit. 210.86.65.107 09:01, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Mostly because it is an MOE statement -- by putting it in quotes I had hoped that this was clear. My intention of adding this note to the Education in NZ page was that enrolment schemes were described, with varying degrees of accuracy, in several NZ School pages. Some gave the impression that the schools chose to have or, perhaps more importantly, chose how to administer the schemes. There was also the impression tat only a few schools had such schemes. I wanted to make clear that this was a nationwide policy, and does not only affect a few selected schools. Perhaps it might be better to cut the quote a bt shorter:

  • For state shools, the Education Amendment Act 2000 put in place a new "system for determining enrolment of students in circumstances where a school has reached its roll capacity and needs to avoid overcrowding."

I also added a 'new' to indicate that there were previous schemes. The rest of this para simply describes how the system currently works, as explained in the Act.

cheers. Neil Leslie 09:33, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Auckland meetup

Just to let you know that a meetup is planned in Auckland for the 25th of June (see Wikipedia:Meetup/Auckland for more details), and that you are cordially invited. GeorgeStepanek\talk 00:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Helen Clark

I noticed that you did place a POV tag on the article. I agree that the article was, and still is biased, in fact some of it looks like it has been written by neds from Pilton. Wallie 05:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pakuranga College

Its a school, i cannot see how it can be considered a copyrightable source. i will change it back, and any such correspondence about this matter please address it in the talk page, not by defacing the main page with copyright crap. as an ex student i feel offended. --Subwaynz 03:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I have re written the history aspect of the wiki, i hope you are satisfied with it now.--Subwaynz 12:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

The article's been pruned and re-written, it should be allright now. Mr Bluefin 00:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Neil for the message, perhaps I was a bit too harsh with the pruning, however I've got to say that I'm not a fan of most of the school pages, and I agree with you that the genuinely interesting ones are being drowned due to the vanity. I'm not pushing for deletion of the school pages (there are pages for train stations), but the fact remains that the authors of the pages are almost always ex-students, which implicitly adds a bias (positive and negative)---with exceptions, of course. I believe articles on genuinely notable schools would already have been written by outsiders. I agree with you on the pruning encouraging stronger growth; that probably sums up what my aim is.
Thanks, Mr Bluefin 07:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Additional comment: Sorry for not finishing my original comment. Wrt Wgtn High, I'd have no issue with it as long as it was sourced... I just thought "*sigh* another page of meaningless boasting". Apologies, since now I know the comments were made in good faith. I originally got p-'d off with WP too because of the piffle, and look at the position I'm in now :D. At least we've established that we're both dissatisfied with some articles here. Mr Bluefin 08:16, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bernard Darnton

It appears I made two mistakes:

  • being a bit lazy and failing to extensively paraphrase text from a press release (text which I have permission to use, and which I cited in the relevant paragraph) and
  • assuming that just because text orginated in a press release it might not automatically be NPOV.

In future, I will paraphrase such source material more carefully. Ppe42 12:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mai Chen

If you wish to dispute the neutrality of an article or edits of an article, could you please use the talk page first, rather than simply removing all edits made. I certainly dispute the plagarism accusation, there was sufficient changes made to the text to avoid breaching copyright. --Lholden 07:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I'd flag that as plagiarism if I got it in a student essay. There already was a link to the Chen/Palmer home page. That page is hardly written from a neutral point of view (it is their advertising, after all). Why add it to WikiPedia? Neil Leslie 11:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I've only added relevant information on Mai's background. Your revert removed reference to the fact that Mai was Dux of her High School, for example. That is hardly POV, it's a verifiable fact that should be included in a biography. That is why the information was added. Again, if there are any parts of the text you felt were NPOV, then please point them out. --Lholden 11:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, most of this page was (and still is) just added material from Chen/Palmer's advertising. It is not lies but think a little about whether their advertising is written from a neutral point of view. Neil Leslie 12:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually, most of the material was derived from the New Zealand Herald article I referenced. In any case, I dispute that adding material (strictly speaking) from the Chen Palmer website is in itself biased. I accept that their website puts across a certain POV, however I don't think the material added could be considered "advertising". For example, I added the fact that Chen moved to NZ in 1970; that is hardly advertising in any sense, it's a important part of her biography. --Lholden 21:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


So, you copied from the Herald who probably got their material from ... I think I have to beg to differ from you in your opinion that Chen/Palmer's corporate website is not advertising.
...An interview with Mai Chen. If you read what I've said above, you'll see that I said I don't think the material added was advertising. I never said Chen Palmer's website wasn't advertising, infact I stated I accept that it puts across a certain POV. Anyway, this issue is now closed as there doesn't seem to be any dispute over the actual material itself. --Lholden 06:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


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[edit] WP:AUK

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[edit] Orphaned non-free media (Image:TW logo.png)

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