User talk:Robma

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[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia!

Season's Greetings Robma, welcome to Wikipedia!

I noticed nobody had said hi yet... Hi!

If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone (yourself included) can edit any article by following the Edit this page link. Wikipedia convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills.

You might like some of these links and tips:

If, for some reason, you are unable to fix a problem yourself, feel free to ask someone else to do it. Wikipedia has a vibrant community of contributors who have a wide range of skills and specialties, and many of them would be glad to help. As well as the wiki community pages there are IRC Channels, where you are more than welcome to ask for assistance.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page. Thanks and happy editing, -- Alf melmac 11:04, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Precision tests of QED

Line 1:

Adding the word "among" to the phrase is wrong IMHO. If you disagree I suggest request a ref or clarify, will revert for 14 days and put on my watch list while I try to find a ref in my spare time. Omeganumber (talk) 11:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Image removal from William Empson site

OrphanBot took out a chunk of the intro from this site when it removed the image, losing a fair bit of basic info. Might be worth having a look at OrphanBot's approach, as this may be due to some systematic problem which could seriously affect other intros. Also, if you could restore the intro info, that would be great.Thanks. Robma 22:12, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

OrphanBot does occasionally remove too much when it's taking out a captioned image (maybe one edit in a thousand has this problem), but when it does so, you can find the missing piece inside the HTML comment with the removed image, and whenever OrphanBot thinks it might have removed too much, it logs a message on its talk page. What happened here was that OrphanBot removed the image, then almost two months later, an anon vandalized the intro --Carnildo 02:14, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thanks for Ehrman change

Good call on Bart D. Ehrman, even though it's a subtle change... I wish I could notice little things like that more often. --Allen 16:49, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Legoland

Heh - yes, it was very imaginative - almost tempted to leave it. Maybe articles need a "utter nonsense" section? ;)

[edit] Your question

My best advice on that would be to use a sandbox in your own space like User:Robma/Sandbox, you'd be able to make more saves before c/p into the right namespace. --Alf melmac 10:04, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dumfries and Galloway

Unfortunately I've never been to the place myself, nor Scotland, nor the UK. I live on almost the exact opposite side of the world (New Zealand). I found an enhanced version of this image on wikicommons which has been recently voted as a featured picture. I wanted to see more info about this place and went to wikipedia where I discovered the page had no photos! So I put a non-enhanced version of the featured picture in. (The enhanced version looked too artistic and not realistic enough I thought, but if you're intererested it is: Image:Dalveen Pass from Comb Head-HDR.jpg; also this photographer has a lot of very nice photos of Scotland on Flickr.com) Cheers--Konstable 01:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Digital Universe

Hi, Rob, you mentioned Digital Universe. This is probably not a viable alternative, unfortunately. I was interested in this too when I first heard of it, but was immediately appalled when I learned that the principals are Joe Firmage and Bernard Haisch, whose judgement in terms of what constitutes reliable knowledge appear to be questionable. Their wikibios can be unreliable, depending on when you read them (at least one of these has been extensively edited by the subject of his own WP bio, in ways which I believe are misleading and intended to slant the article in his own favor), but for an independent and reliable source, see the extensive information obtained from an interview with Firmage in Joe Firmage, A Master of the Universe at 28, Wants to Defy Gravity and Visit the Far Corners Of His Realm, Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, March 31, 1999. (As you can see, I found this story archived at a controversial anti-cult website run by Rick Ross, but AFAIK, Achenbach's Washington Post article has been accurately transcribed at the Rick Ross website).

"Autohagiography": this brings up another irony: I caught Haisch adding links to his own book to many existing articles and also editing articles about this fringe theories as an anon (from the dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net domain in the Bay Area, where he resides), and he wasn't very happy with me for "outing" him. In a message which he left on my user talk page (after he created a user account, Haisch (talk · contribs), apparently in response to my urging him to do that), he wrote

Make no mistake about it. Wikipedia has tremendous influence, and that is precisely why must be both accurate and fair. The Wikipedia is perceived as no mere gossip sheet. Your words could deprive my organization of a million dollar grant because of your implicit judgment of my scientific career.

– Bernard Haisch

In other words, Haisch admits to having a sizable financial incentive to slant Wikipedia articles in his own favor, and he claimed the right to do just that. IOW, according to Haisch, his own personal agenda is more important than the needs of the readers of Wikipedia. This attitude suggests that Haisch is not to be trusted to run Digital Universe wisely, since he cannot be expected to act to serve the best interests of its readers whenever this conflicts with his personal agenda.

Check out Haisch's reputation for fringe publications in places like Journal of Scientific Exploration, a journal which he edited for some years. (The article JSE has also been "sanitized" at times by Haisch to make it appear mainstream, but a glance at the contents of any issue should quickly disabuse you of that impression! Typical issues contain articles allegeding to "scientifically prove the existence of the afterlife", or the Yeti, or ghosts, or UFOs... things like that.).

At this time, I know of no viable encyclopedia project which is comparable to the Wikipedia.---CH 21:26, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faithfull

Hi Robma, great work on the name issue. May I gently suggest that in the references, you add the name of the agent who confirmed this info? Thanks! NickBurns 14:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Oops! Just noticed her name was on the talk page. I just added it to the reference, too. Cheers! NickBurns 14:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kenneth Noye

As per accepted guidelines on List of Freemasons, names without Lodge citations are not accepted. If you have independent proof of his membership that does not appear on an anti-Masonic site (said sites fail WP:RS and WP:V), please post it on the Talk page for verification. However, given Mr. Noye's claim to fame, I highly doubt any Lodge would wish to be associated with him. MSJapan 02:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Noye was reported to have been a member of the London Hammersmith Lodge in evidence given to a House of Commons committee in December 1996 (The Independent 19 Dec 1996 p 2). Does this pass your stated test for inclusion ? Robma 18:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
ISTR that he'd actually been expelled although I can't remember the reason. However a newspaper report of a submission to the committee is unlikely to meet the requirements of WP:RS, you'd actually need a reference to the committee report if it's there.ALR 18:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
There are a few places here and there online that mention Noye was a Mason, and that "was" would seem to be the operative term here - even though no reputable site seems to have proof of his membership (Hammersmith Lodge does exist), but they certainly would have expelled him, as stated above. MSJapan 20:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] history of science

Hi! You might be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Science--ragesoss 20:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] speed of light article dispute

Hi,

Could you have a look at the Speed of light article and the discussion? An editor in Hungary has decided that a formula is wrong and resents my efforts to clarify matters. He may have been the one who recently blanked the article. At least he has promised to make trouble.

Thanks. P0M 23:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alligators

Thanks for your edit to alligator. The page has been subject to repeated moronic vandalism of late, and it was good to see something added that did not have to do with their genitalia. Where Anne hath a will, Anne Hathaway. 18:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please cite sources

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Sarah Sands, but we regretfully cannot accept original research. Please find and add a reliable citation to your recent edit so we can verify your work. Uncited information may be removed at any time. Thanks for your efforts, and happy editing! Can't sleep, clown will eat me 21:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dining clubs

There is a one man campaign being waged against dining clubs one the grounds that they don't deserve articles. I see you've previously edited one such article, and was wondering if you'd care to lend your support at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dining_club ? Many thanks Grunners 18:28, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] T.H. Huxley and common sense

Yes, I see what you're getting at, but consider this: long before the twentieth century there were clear signs that science could and did product counter-intuitive results.
Wasn't the idea of Earth going round the Sun a surprise in its time? Didn't people think it common-sense for the sun to go round the earth?
Even in THH's lifetime there are examples, for instance, Faraday and Tyndall's work on dia-magnetism is surely counter-intuitive? Or the induction of electric current by moving magnets?

So (in my opinion) he ought to have known he was wrong! Actually the comments on common-sense have the character of hand-waving, though their repetition suggests he really did believe it. There are other indications that Huxley's ideas on science were much less sophisticated than Darwin's; Darwin was quite attuned to hypothetico-deductive thinking.

Regards, Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)