User talk:PStrait

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[edit] Straw person/man

Because Wikipedia is founded on verifiability, not Truth, it often lags behind changes in the field until someone thinks to document such changes. Thus, in the case of the straw man/person article, a change would require a reliable source that talks about this new usage (note that an example of this new usage doesn't suffice—it has to discuss the new usage). (See Wikipedia:Verifiability.)

Beyond this, our article naming policy says that an article about something with multiple names must be titled with the most common variant. In this way too, Wikipedia often lags the cutting edge as new usages spread outward and overcome the old usage. In this case, I would think that the new usage has not yet gotten beyond academic circles. The term "straw man" has a lot of currency beyond academic rhetoric still, and even though this is the field that spawned the term, it doesn't "belong" to rhetoric exclusively. So, the common usage is just as relevant as the academic usage. (See Wikipedia:Naming conventions.)

Quite apart from that, be mindful of our vandalism policy in case you misquote it. Content disputes are explicitly discluded from Wikipedia's working definition of "vandalism". Rather, such things are considered content disputes and it is the responsibility of the editors involved to settle the dispute civilly. Sometimes, this will require soliciting the input of the wider community, or an investigation of the applicable policies or editorial guidelines. Confrontational stances tend to inhibit the smooth working of the consensus-building proces. (See Wikipedia:Vandalism and Wikipedia:Resolving disputes.) — Saxifrage ✎ 08:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally prefers accuracy. Since the goal of the project is to document existing knowledge and usage rather than act as a force for change, gender issues aren't pro-actively addressed from within. A distinction is that, as editors, our own gender bias should actively be countered. But, this doesn't extend to actively countering the gender bias of the "real" world or sources.

In this case, what I think would be the best for the article is to add a significantly-sized section about the trend in universities and academia in general to use the gender-neutral "straw person" instead. Since Wikipedia isn't static, at some point in the future when "straw man" is obviously outmoded usage, the article can be changed again to have the new term as its title and change the section on the "straw person" trend to a section about the historical "straw man" term. How does that sound?

Re: mediation cabal, my apologies for jumping to conclusions. I thought you were misrepresenting the case, and I'm very sorry for not assuming good faith and looking for alternative explanations for what I saw as a discrepancy. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: edit

No problem. Being able to have one person rough out the content and have another person polish it up is part of why Wikipedia is collaborative. — Saxifrage ✎ 16:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what should I do with a bad english?

Hey mister the "recent changes patroller" I have a really bad english cause i'm french. Even if I try hard, it's always bad. Son what can I do if I want to add informations in an article with my bad English??? Instead of reverting things, (on the Bremen (manga)'s page) why not backing me, when I'm writting, by correcting my sentences? In french, I did good things on Wiki fr. On this english wiki's page, I wrote links where I found my informations and points that I wanted to tell on the discutions page...But I think that it's frustating to see someone deleting what you did instead of correcting... why users like you never communicate, in the discussions pages, before doing it? So what should I do? only writting in discussion's page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.203.236.67 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Greetings

Well, since no one has done it for you yet,...
Welcome!

Hello, PStrait, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• 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:Questions, 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! 


I am willing to adopt you if you would like. I am also willing to assist you with your userpage. :-) Leave me a message on my talk page. Note that on Wikipedia, each article has a talk page; similarly, each user has one. This page is your talk page. I don't mean to sound patronising, but it took me three months to figure it out :-) The Duke of Copyeditting, Bow before me! ^{You can't control me!} _{I'm a P. I.!} 11:18, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userboxes

Howdy ... I happened to notice that your userpage was listed under Category:Intelligence user templates, where it doesn't belong. That's when I discovered that you were using template code directly on your page!

Instead of all that code, use "{{User Mensa member}}" or "{{User:UBX/vigil}}" ... see Category:Vigil Brother Wikipedians or Category:Wikipedians by IQ for examples of how to use templates.

Using "{{User TNS}}" instead of trying to copy&paste the template code avoids mistakes like getting listed in a Template Category, and getting correctly (alphabetically) listed in Category:Wikipedians in the Triple Nine Society.

By having your own copy, you also miss out on changes like how "{{User:UBX/vigil}}" now adds your userpage to Category:Arrowman Wikipedians and Category:Wikipedians in the Boy Scouts of America in addition to Category:Vigil Brother Wikipedians. (Your userpage is not listed in any of them, but it is listed in Category:Scouting user templates, where it does not belong.) —141.156.240.102 (talk|contribs) 14:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the advice RE: userboxes. I really appreciate it. PStrait 21:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

No sweat ... BTW, you might want to check out the discussion pages at {{User:UBX/RC}} and Category:Roman Catholic Wikipedians. (Someone should probably copy the examples in the former article to the latter.) I've been cleaning up Boy Scout/OA related templates/userboxes/categories lately (see Category talk:Wikipedians who survived Philmont), so I don't have the time/inclination to deal with it myself. :-) —141.156.240.102 (talk|contribs) 03:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adoption

Consider yourself adopted! Damn, now I'll have to go to Centrelink and pick up my Sole Parent's pension. Heh heh. At the moment (for the next fortnight) I'm on Wikibreak (holiday from Wikipedia) as I have my exams. Feel free to leave me any questions on my talk page. The Duke of Copyeditting, Bow before me! ^{You can't control me!} _{I'm a P. I.!} 06:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your answers

Today I just had my first exam for the last year of High School. I'm 17, turning 18 on December 21st. You? For more of my personal details, see this subpage of my userpage.

• You can make subpages of ANY page by typing /(name) after the page's name; for example, User:Hunterd/About.

1. Using this same method, you can make an archive for your talk page. Most people do it when the page becomes long, but I am weird and do it at the change of the financial year... once the subpage is created, you can simply cut and paste the stuff on your talk page into the subpage, and then provide a link to the subpage from the main talk page.
2. There isn't really any software one can use to interface with MediaWiki code (what Wikipedia runs on), unfortunately it's a matter of either using the buttons at the top of the edit page or remember a lot of code.

• To use this bullet point, use an asterisk.

1. To use numbers, use a hash.
2. Pictures can be uploaded by clicking the "Upload file" link to the left of every page, under the Search box. Alternatively, you could simply click here... anything that you upload must provide usage licences. This, this, this and this may help.

• To make links with a different name, use [[article name|desired display name]] rather than [[article name]] for simple links. You can also use [[article name]]s to add the s to a link, for example: apples (note that this doesn't link to "apples" but "apple").
• People tend to get angry about spelling, but I have been brought up unlike the majority of my generation; that is, I (hopefully) have reasonable spelling. A spell checker within a word processor (i.e. Microsoft Word) should be able to assist if this is a problem.

1. To check your contribtuons, see Special:Contributions/PStrait. There are various ways of having a counter display the number, but I am unaware of the specifics at the moment. I'll do some digging around and find something :-)

• To look at an article's edit history, click the History tab at the top of any page. You can check the code itself for each revision by click the date for that revision in the history log. Alternatively, to find the difference(s) betwen two revisions, select the two versions (by clicking on the radio buttons - the circle ones between "(last)" and the date) and clicking the Compare selected versions button at the top and/or bottom of the page.

To leave a line between text, use <br> .

To indent a line (as I have done here), use a colon (or as many as you like to further indent).

• Finally for tonight's lesson, to make the page ignore MediaWiki code, use <nowiki> MediaWiki Code, such as [[article page]] </nowiki>.

I hope I haven't confused you too much.
Happy editing.

The Duke of Copyeditting, Bow before me! ^{You can't control me!} _{I'm a P. I.!} 12:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some other things...

1. This is a subheading of Your answers. It will show up in the table of contents as a section of Your answers. This is done by adding an extra equal sign on either side of the heading, so for this I used ===Some other things...=== , and to get that to display, I used the nowiki tags that I discussed above: <nowiki> ===Some other things...=== </nowiki>.
2. _Subscript can be made by using _text ; ^superscript by using ^text> .
3. There was something else I intended to say here, but my memory has failed me... it was soething important, too... oh well. I'll remember it once I go to sleep. I'll remember IN my dream. :-)

The Duke of Copyeditting, Bow before me! ^{You can't control me!} _{I'm a P. I.!} 12:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RFA

I just wanted to let you know that I've accepted. Thank you again for the kind words! — Saxifrage ✎ 06:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

I just wanted to say thank you for your nod of support during my recent RfA. While I cannot keep John Kerry from saying something that makes us all slap our foreheads, I can now help you out with any administrative tasks on Wikipedia. If you need any help, just drop me a line and I'll be right there. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 13:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA was a success, thank you

Thank you for nominating me for adminship! It succeeded with 59 in support, 2 opposed, and 1 amusingly-surreal neutral comment. I could not have asked for a better nomination than the one you wrote. I hope how I wield the mop makes you proud. Thanks!

— Saxifrage

[edit] PStrait, I am your father!

Yeah... just letting you know that I am back from WikiBreak. Call upon me at any time. Stuart says: Heweyeweyeweyeweyeweyewey... The Duke of Copyeditting, Bow before me! ^{You can't control me!} _{I'm a P. I.!} 15:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arian Catholicism

Hi, I thought you'd be interested to know I have nominated Arian Catholicism for deletion. I wonder what you think? Slackbuie 20:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moonsea article

I just saw your comments about the Moonsea article. I had a look at it and couldn't see if it got sorted out to your satisfaction.

I've just created a new area on the Forgotten Realms Wikiproject called Requests. I copied this section from the Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject. It should help peopel to flag up current requests that can then be removed after they are resolved.

If you are still having problems with the Moonsea article I suggest you go back to the FR WikiProject page and make sure people know this is still current. You might also want to put something in the Moonsea article to let people know that they can talk about this in the WikiProject page. Good luck. Big Mac 00:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi.

Long time, no Wiki! Would like to help, but have no idea about creating a disambig page. You might want to go to the Community Portal, going to the help area and asking somewhere there. The only idea I have is to create all the links manually.

• You can use an asterisk (*) to create dot points, if you need. Good luck. The Duke of PStrait 03:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as you're so smart, you may be interested in Citizendium instead of Wikipedia. Everyone who writes articles there has to have their articles approved by experts in the field before it is published. There are very strict rules, which keep vandals away. I think it could be better than Wikipedia if there were as many contributors as Wikipedia. The Duke of PStrait 03:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Toolbox

Sure, you can use it! I actually "stole" the idea from here and expanded it to fit my needs. There's nothing unethical about not asking, by the way; all contributions are licensed under GFDL. Sr13 04:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 22:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I need help!

{{helpme}} I can't fix my userpage, all the boxes keep going on top of eachother-- I know I am missing some key syntax or something. I just want the page to be functional. PStrait 22:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any boxes overlapping. There is alot there, but it's all legible from my perspective. Maybe it is your browser or screen resolution. The best suggestion I can make is to simplify, or perhaps try Firefox is you are currently using Internet Explorer. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Striking your vote

Hello PStrait,

Thank you for your interest in the Wikimedia Board Election. The Election Committee regretfully informs you that your previous vote was received in error and will be struck according to the election rules, described below.

The Election Committee regretfully announces today that we will have to remove approximately 220 votes submitted. These votes were cast by people not entitled to vote. The election rules state that users must have at least 400 edits by June 1 to be eligible to vote.

The voter lists we sent to Software in the Public Interest (our third party election partner) initially were wrong, and one of your account was eventually included to our initial list. There was a bug in the edit counting program and the sent list contained every account with 201 or more edits, instead of 400 or more edits. So large numbers of people were qualified according to the software who shouldn't be. The bug has been fixed and an amended list was sent to SPI already.

Our first (and wrong) list contains 80,458 accounts as qualified. The proper number of qualified voters in the SPI list is now 52,750. As of the morning of July 4 (UTC), there are 2,773 unique voters and 220 people, including you, have voted who are not qualified based upon this identified error.

In accordance with voting regulations the Election Committee will strike those approximately 220 votes due to lack of voting eligibility. The list of struck votes is available at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/List_of_struck_votes.

We are aware of the possibility that some of the people affected may have other accounts with more than 400 edits, and hence may still be eligible to vote. We encourage you to consider voting again from another account, if you have one. If you have no other account eligible to vote, we hope you reach the criteria in the next Election, and expect to see your participation to the future Elections.

Your comments, questions or messages to the Committee would be appreciated, you can make them at m:Talk:Board elections/2007/en. Other language versions are available at m:Translation requests/Eleccom mail, 07-05.

Again, we would like to deeply apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Kizu Naoko
Philippe
Jon Harald Søby
Newyorkbrad
Tim Starling

For Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee

[edit] Anglican collaboration of the month

The current Anglicanism Collaboration of the Month is Essays and Reviews The next collaboration will be selected on 30 April 2008. (Vote here)

Wassupwestcoast 02:17, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Melvos Hammerstars

Another editor has added the "{{prod}}" template to the article Melvos Hammerstars, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at its talk page. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. BJBot (talk) 16:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Real G-Unit BarnStar!

		The Fraternity/Sorority Barnstar
		For being apart of WikiProject Freemasonry! InvisibleDiplomat666 05:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request For Rollback

Y Done Time has passed since the block. Remember to only use it for vandalism reversion. Also note it will be removed as quickly as it has been granted if you use it for any other reason. Pedro :  Chat  11:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Your cut + paste move of Lew Rockwell

Greetings, please do not cut and paste move articles to new titles, it erases the history of the article so that reader's cannot tell who wrote it, violating the GDFL copyright license. If you want to move pages, use the move tab, but only after there is a consensus in favour of the move on the article's talkpage. See WP:MOVE for more details. Thanks, скоморохъ 11:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Skomorokh's sentiment above. The "move" tab should be used to move an article, and "Lew Rockwell" is the common name most used to refer to the article subject, not his full name, which according to custom should be redirected to the common name article. DickClarkMises (talk) 17:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Christianity

You are cordially invited to participate in WikiProject Christianity The goal of WikiProject Christianity is to improve the quality and quantity of information about Christianity available on Wikipedia. WP:X as a group does not prefer any particular tradition or denominination of Christianity, but prefers that all Christian traditions are fairly and accurately represented.

- Tinucherian (talk) 13:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MfD nomination of Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms

Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms, a page you created, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:WikiProject Forgotten Realms during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Gavin Collins (talk) 08:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)