User talk:SomeHuman

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[edit] Your edit to Rumold

Your recent edit to Rumold was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to recognize and repair vandalism to Wikipedia articles. If the bot reverted a legitimate edit, please accept my humble creator's apologies – if you bring it to the attention of the bot's owner, we may be able to improve its behavior. Click here for frequently asked questions about the bot and this warning. // AntiVandalBot 17:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC) -- Proper update brought under the attention of the bot's humble creator -- SomeHuman 2006-06-15 20:15 (UTC)

Please note: Polylerus, the initiator and only author (besides my edits) of the 'Rumold' article thanked me for its move to 'Saint Rumbold' on the latter's talk page. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-15 21:24 (UTC)

[edit] Flemish #1

I hope that the sources I added can help in this situation get the intro summarized better - Trödel 19:41, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

see also #Flemish as of December 2006 — SomeHuman 31 Dec 2006 15:00 (UTC)

[edit] Moved

• A word from Budgiekiller 19:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC) moved to Campanology talk page on 2006-06-26 23:10 (UTC).

[edit] Constructive debates

Thanks for the info. I had already noticed it. (Is this my first step in becoming a BW ? - bekend wikipedian :-] ) --LucVerhelst 17:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Secular ethics

Hallo, I voted for the article, since I believe the topic is quite interesting. As for participating in the content of the article : I believe the subject is a bit over my head, sorry...

(As for the rattled chains: I'm well aware. I've already acted to prevent future abuse, though these may have been futile.) --LucVerhelst 07:08, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Heya, I just wanted to say that I appreciate your comments for this article's Weekly Improvement Drive nomination. Cheers! Star Ghost 23:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the edits on the Secular Ethics article, we are trying to undertake a major rewrite and try and get it up to GA status. Any further input is greatly appreciated. Thanks again! --Chrisrivers 19:38, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Good point on the criticisms, although I do beleive that having an outline of the general criticisms of secular ethics is important to have in the article. And since secular ethics main criticisms come from religious ethicists it makes sense to have it on these terms. Although it would be good to have each individual religions objections to secular ethics I imagine the anti-secular ethicist arguments would be very similar (in all theistic religions). Would you suggest that we remove the criticisms section entirely or simply expand it? --Chrisrivers 20:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Like I said on Chris's page, I think a good compromise would be to link to an article which contains the related criticism, what say you? Star Ghost 23:27, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On a lighter note

User:Rex Germanus started a (somewhat lighter) section on my talk page that you might find interesting. It concerns Dutch dialects. --LucVerhelst 17:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, it's at Talk:Dutch language where he intends to compile his list. And he has one category for "Brabantic" (with only Antwerps as specific case). I thought he was going to look for other city's dialects, too. --LucVerhelst 19:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

I guess I need to be more careful in reverting articles. ;) — Exteray who had forgotten to sign here 2006-07-28 18:19 (UTC)

Thanks for removing the Propose to Merge flags on Cognitivism and Non-cognitivism. Each article is indeed significant on its own.--Sam 03:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Van Themsche

Hi,

You reverted some of my changes to Hans Van Themsche.

I made this remark on the talk page:

I would like change the sentence "Fortunately a Turkish courier could quickly extinguish the fire, as the apartment above the office was inhabited" to "A Turkish courier could quickly extinguish the fire". I feel that the way it is now, the message conveyed in the sentence is that the fire bombing wouldn't have mattered if the building wouldn't have been inhabited. Like it is now, I feel it's POV against the far right youth organisation involved.

Additionally, I would like to discuss the "Vlaams Belang" subtitle. I shortened it to "Vlaams Belang", you reverted it back to "Murderer's background and alleged responsibility of the Vlaams Belang party and of its voters". I shortened it, because in general, titles and subtitles aren't used to summarise the following paragraphs, but to guide readers through a text. Therefore, they should be short and easily understandable. The way it is now, it feels awkward.

On the other hand, I can understand the sensitivity of the words "Vlaams Belang". Maybe we could change it into "Responsibilities" ? --LucVerhelst 20:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• The title 'Killer's background ...' (only recently changed to 'Murderer's background ...) had been the result of a near edit war some time ago and had satisfied parties involved. That is generally a good reason not to touch it.
  Three different aspects, though all related to alleged resposibilities of far or extreme right, are specifically noteworthy: 1. family background which also involves pre-'Vlaams Belang' issues; 2. Vlaams belang party; 3. a rare and to my knowledge new issue of a major politician straightforwardly putting responsibility also with the voters for that party. Your edit of the title de facto reconciliated the usual politically correct attitude of blaming the Vlaams Belang for all evil but certainly not the voters who are always right in a democracy. Contrasting with that point of view, De Gucht's accusation has been discussed quite prominently in the media, and deserves a title. I think my reverting to the long version draws attention to each element and to the mutual aspect of the three issues, and it should stay: Putting the subject under a short title hides the major elements, putting the elements in three titled (sub)sections hides their common aspect.
  We had some discussions defending same or opposing aspects before and I know and appreciate your edits to be valuable and sincere, forgive me for having stated my arguments a bit harshly here: I do feel quite sure about the importance of them. Good initiative to insert long overdue translations of references, Luc. — SomeHuman 2006-08-01 22:20 and 2006-08-02 01:01 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I don't fully agree, but I see the merits of the longer title. Thanks for your input. --LucVerhelst 07:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re Thank you

No problem, it could happen to anyone. Keep up the good work. Regards -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 12:49, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confermation of translation ... to avoid more fuss with anynymous IP

An anonymous contributor has been on my back on the Glorious Revolution article, eventhough I'm correct from a dictionary and reference point he keeps coming up with new request ... in his latest removing of my reference, he ask for a 3rd party translation, you speak Dutch and English on a near native level so could you please check my translation (and confirm its (in)accuracy on the talk page) and if correct restore my version so I avoid breaking the 3RR.

Thanks in advance. Rex 16:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

(Reinserted reference with new translation, that is not significantly different from Rex's; dropped a note on his talk page — SomeHuman 19 Aug 2006)

[edit] Ik weer ...

If you've got some time ... could you check out Ten days campaign, I just wrote it and although I tried to stay objective (honestly) I'm afraid I'm quite biased here so if you could "refine" it by adding Belgian view points as well thereby evening out the article a bit? Rex 21:08, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

(Dropped a few notes on the Rex's talk page — SomeHuman 20 Aug 2006)

[edit] WP:3RR

I am sorry that you are not appreciating my argument, but please do not edit-war. Beware of Wikipedia:Three-revert rule. Tewfik^Talk 03:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

In that case, I suggest you review the definition of vandalism - this is a content dispute, and you are not presenting the "proper" sourcing necessary. I'm not sure how else to put forth the case on Talk, but those two nonmainstream sources are not the same as the multiple wire-service stories, quotes from world leaders, or two UN SC resolutions. Please engage me there, and I will attempt again to convey my points, but please do not engage in more reversions. Tewfik^Talk 03:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blocked

You have been blocked for violation of WP:3RR for a period of 12 hours. To contest this block, please reply here on your talk page by adding the text {{unblock}} along with the reason you believe the block is unjustified, or email the blocking administrator or any administrator from this list. alphaChimp ^laudare 04:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confirmation (sacrament)

The discussion hereunder was started on user Lima's talk page, see there also for my replies. — SomeHuman

The sources quoted indicate that the rites in question were intended precisely to take the place of the religious confirmation. The ages of 10 and 14 given as that for communion and confirmation may mean that it was the Protestant rite (Konfirmation, not Firmung) that gave the chief inspiration. And it was doubtless to fit in with National Socialist policy that the Protestant Reich Church dropped its own rite of Confirmation. If the article Confirmation (sacrament) is to include also non-religious ceremonies modelled on the religious ones - and it was you who inserted this matter, and I don't say your initiative was wrong - I think all this information highly relevant. Am I wrong? Oh, I must add that I am unaware that scouts hold Confirmation-like rites, such as the Hitler-Jugend held. Lima 19:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

No, I do not compare Humanism with Nazi doctrine. I compare Nazi youth ceremonies with the religious Confirmation rites that they were meant to counterbalance or rather outweigh. Why should I not do so? Lima 20:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The National Socialists invented Confirmation-like ceremonies. That is a fact, one moreover that is worth mentioning in an article on Confirmation. If you think your kind of Confirmation-like ceremony is worth mentioning, you may, of course, if you like, mention it too. Perhaps there are also other imitations worth mentioning. Each is independent of the other, and can remain, even if the other(s) is/are removed. What's your problem? I am not asking you to remove the mention of your Confirmation-like ceremony. Lima 23:27, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

"The Nazi followed a spirit of the time," you say. Surely, all the more reason to mention their deliberate use of a Confirmation-like ceremony. Once more, what is wrong with mentioning in an article on Confirmation an important initiative that was admittedly intended to imitate and that was hoped would eventually entirely replace religious Confirmation? Another thing, "a sociological meaning and evolution" is not the intention of the article: the title of the article is "Confirmation (sacrament)", not "Confirmation (rite of passage etc.)" Lima 07:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry, I have several times reread your latest communication, but still do not understand on what grounds you claim that it is wrong to mention in the Confirmation article the German ceremony, which was not just a traditional coming-of-age rite, such as might be in use in Africa, but was instead explicitly linked with and opposed to the religious Confirmation rite. It therefore seems to be definitely relevant to an article on religious Confirmation. It also seems to be sufficiently noteworthy. Lima 16:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I forgot to add that I inserted the quotations only because I sensed reluctance to accept that there ever was a National Socialist deliberate counterpart to Confirmation. Initially I would jut have inserted a mention of the fact, and nothing more. Lima 17:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] De l'Ecluse

[copy] Thank you to you and Luc Verhelst for your interesting comments. It's a very complicated issue and I shall be happy to let others worry about it -- I'm certainly not going to revert what Luc has done -- but it remains a fact, in most Wikipedia category lists containing French names with de, that the name is alphabetised under the following word, not under the de. In other words, the de is not treated as part of the surname. There are a lot of examples. And the same holds good for nearly every other English reference source containing French names. This is why you find Balzac under B, not under D. I learned this as a library cataloguer, and it remains true.

However -- this is why I draw back from the abyss -- when French names are carried into other languages (e.g. because the family has migrated), the De is thereafter often treated as the beginning of the surname, by the people themselves and by reference sources. Well, of course, Carolus Clusius or Charles de l'Ecluse is not French but Flemish ...

Best wishes to both. Andrew Dalby 12:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the Dutch language link repair

Thanks for this I must have still had something else on my clipboard. Rex 14:07, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Insription

Not that this is a biggie, but per the OED,

[ad. L. inscriptin-em, n. of action from inscrbre to INSCRIBE. Cf. F. inscription (Rabelais, 16th c., in Hatz.-Darm.).]

1. The action of inscribing; the action of writing upon or in something. (In quots. fig.) rare.

OK, it's rare, but I wanted you to know I hadn't lost my marbles.:) >br> BTW, your emendation to the paragraph is rather interesting. If unbidat ghe is accurate, the claim of the sentence being OE becomes even more doubtful. My personal opinion is that it is not OE, but I'm just one linguist in thousands, so my opinion is best taken with grain of salt. Anyway, you've done really good work on that article. •Jim62sch• 22:34, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The "lost my marbles" thing was just a joke, I know you didn't imply it. I didn't know there was a Latin version, but you're right, if it's expectamus that would be 1PP.

And what's with the vandalism on the Dutch page -- seems like an odd page to vandalise (unless it was a short person who is really made that the Dutch have moved to the top position in the "world's tallest people" category). Anyway, that one attempt to cast Dutch as a dialect of German pissed me off, and, even though it wasn't really vandalism, seemed like nationalism running rampant (which is just as bad if not worse.) •Jim62sch• 18:19, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AN

Hi there. it´s ok. you have been cleaning up remanents of pre-MediaWiki software, where there was not a different namespace separated from the article one. There have been some attempts of normalizinf before, what may have yield some strange results. Thanks for the work. --AstroNomer 13:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Robotocracy

Looks like Robotocracy got the axe, but I asked the admin who did it for the info, as I'm very sure this article itself doesn't have a problem with OR or V as a whole. If you'd like to help, or have suggestions for a better name, let me know. FrozenPurpleCube 14:40, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your "ethnicity"

Moved comment in Dutch towards my user talk page on the Dutch-language Wikipedia. Answered there. — SomeHuman 23 Sep 2006 19:00 (UTC)

I see and understand.Rex 19:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Not entirely, I hope, because I'm not all too sure that I do ;-) — SomeHuman 23 Sep 2006 20:27 (UTC)

It's complicated, but I think I know what you mean. Rex 20:31, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Using -ise or -ize

Erased comment of 2006-09-24 21:15 (UTC) by ClairSamoht: a copy of that comment on Woodstone's talk page. Answered there as part of ongoing discussion. — SomeHuman 25 Sep 2006 02:04 (UTC)

[edit] Bloodless

I imagine the Columbia encyclopedia is where the statement originally was derived from. My issue was that if it ever was significant, it is not now. I reran the search and got 800 returns this time- but most seem to indicate that it was "a bloodless revolution", or makes reference that it is sometimes called "the bloodless revolution", or independently terms it "the bloodless revolution" (that would be from the book titles). There are a few uses of "the bloodless revolution of 1688", 97 to be exact, and some do actually use bloodless as a proper noun, rather than as an adjective. But isn't there some level below which the usage is insignificant? Gabrielthursday 22:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

(copy of reply on Gabrielthursday's talk page:)

You asked on my talk page: "Isn't there some level below which the usage is insignificant?". Yes: less than 1 good reference. The Columbia University Press published an encyclopedia that clearly states what I reinserted in the Glorious Revolution article. Google hit counts have nothing to do with quality and very little with significance. Please note that the article puts it, as it was before, as 'sometimes' – even less strong than the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. And for 'sometimes', the 980 or so 'hits' I got (and I did not check the relevance of each, thank you) will be sufficient. — SomeHuman 28 Sep 2006 22:34 (UTC)

Well, accuracy is one thing, significance is another. The Columbia Encyclopedia certainly establishes its accuracy, but I continue wonder about its significance. This little debate of ours is incredibly minor- I'm less concerned about the immediate case than I am to know if there's some formal or informal standard which determines significance. Best, Gabrielthursday 23:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The Columbia Encyclopedia states it is significant by mentioning it, if it's noteworthy for that encyclopaedia then it is sufficiently significant for 'ours'. For a guideline, see WP:Notability, and further considerations e.g. by Uncle G: On notability, by Stifle: Don't say non-notable.

(PS: The above handle especially what makes it worth having a whole article on a topic; having just a mere mention of some fact in an article will not need to qualify by such high standards, but it gives a hint what to pay attention to.) — SomeHuman 28 Sep 2006 23:39 (UTC)

I was about to make that very point before you posted your postscript. I agree about the reduced standards, but I'm afraid that still does leave us with very little guidance. That the Columbia Encyclopedia includes it is a significant point, but not determinative in my view- other encyclopedias can include insignificant facts as well as ourselves. Perhaps the most significant thing about its inclusion is the statement that "bloodless revolution" reflects the whig interpretation. Gabrielthursday 23:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

...which is not even specified by the Columbia Encyclopedia's article – but 'ours' is more comprehensive. Then surely it should not leave out this alternative 'Bloodless Revolution' name. The 6th edition of a work that involves the reputation of the Columbia University, should not contain too many needless statements anyway. — SomeHuman 29 Sep 2006 00:07 (UTC)

Sure. I wish there was some indication of wider use of "Bloodless Revolution", but one can't have everything. I remain a little skeptical, but I'm not going to revert the thing. Gabrielthursday 00:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

An afterword: I had lunch with a colleague this week, who, when I mentioned the overthrow of James II, said "Oh, the Bloodless Revolution, right?" I stand corrected. A tip of my hat. Gabrielthursday 04:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. Gabrielthursday 00:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

Een zekere Antman, die op zijn eigen gebruikerspagina open en bloot toegeeft een Duits nationalist te zijn (terwijl hij toch Amerikaans is) heeft nu al een paar keer en betwist stuk tekst in gevoegd (Nederlands zou tot een paar honderd jaar geleden maar een Duits dialectje zijn geweest). Ik wil je vragen om met het overleg mee te doen en als het kan het stuk tekst te verwijderen want ik zit al aan de 3 denk ik. Rex 15:37, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Four Reverts

First off, please use English syntax when speaking to me, not German/Dutch, otherwise I have difficulty reading it. It was not 4 reverts:
18:23, September 29, 2006 Antman (Talk | contribs) -- I did NOT revert his edit, I made my own edit, my paragraph was entirely different than the original.
10:07, September 30, 2006 Antman (Talk | contribs) (Stop being unreasonable.) -- A revert, yes.
10:26, September 30, 2006 Antman (Talk | contribs) ({{fact}} belongs at the end of sentences, not at the end of clauses.) -- Not a revert, an edit, I only removed some of the {{fact}} as he was {{fact}} spamming.
14:42, September 30, 2006 Antman (Talk | contribs) (I disagree with POV edit, see talk page.) -- A revert, yes.
That is two reverts, Rex reverted three times but I don't see you warning him. Ameise -- chat 21:08, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

For whom it may concern, I refuted this on the talk page of Luc Verhelst with whom Antman aka Ameise had continued edit warring after Rex (see above) had gone to bed. — SomeHuman 1 Oct 2006 08:23 (UTC)

No, you didn't refute it, you simply continued your protection of Rex but your attack on me. Ameise -- chat 08:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

As all of us, Rex may welcome some assistance, but he is not likely to be a person who would need my protection. Your assumption that he needs such while you are the only person who seems to be bothering him, seems to imply that you are committing personal attacks. Your (recent) contributions list indicates people's talk page cluttering by repeating yourself without introducing useful material, and no addition to the content of an article besides reverts and tagging or replacing Polish names by German ones (while I do not contest that at least in some cases the German name may also be the one most commonly used in English). The loss of Wikitime you cause to me and other contributors cannot be made up for by the few acceptable minor changes you seem to bring on the encyclopaedia. This and my other actions do not constitute an attack on you, though express obvious observations from which you should draw sensible conclusions. — SomeHuman 1 Oct 2006 10:23 (UTC)

I have not personally attacked anyone, no more that Rex has called me a Nazi. You lose your own Wikitime by supporting Rex in his silly crusade against me. Ameise -- chat 16:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Show me where I called you a nazi and I'll leave wikipedia right away. — Rex 17:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't feel like wallowing thru pages of both of our idiocies. Can we just get this over with and start being civil again, I don't like being on the constant defensive. Ameise -- chat 17:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Zie je Somehuman ... geen ruggegraat ;-) Rex 18:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Or common sense. Wait and see whether any future contributions will be properly sourced from start. — SomeHuman 1 Oct 2006 18:40 (UTC)

In that case, contributions, like the old paragraph which said that there is NO mutual intelligibility, needs to be properly sourced as well. Ameise -- chat 18:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Somehuman, stel dat jij echt een hekel aan iemand hebt en je weet zeker dat hij/zij je een nazi heeft genoemd, maar hij/zij ontkent dit en biedt aan wikipedia te verlaten als jij het kan bewijzen. Wat zou jij doen? (als je liever hebt dat ik in het Engels tik moet je het gewoon zeggen hoor) Rex 18:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't want you to leave, you're a good editor. I just want you to think before removing my edits for lack of citation, and putting your own edits in without citation as well. Ameise -- chat 19:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

So according to you I'm a good editor ánd a nasty neo-nationalistic (whaterever that is) Dutchman ... how does one combine the two?Rex 19:11, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

As long as you edit only Dutch stuff you are fine, but once you start going outside of the Hollandosphere... Ameise -- chat 19:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

So you once again contradict yourself.Rex 19:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you always have to act as such an ass? And that is not a personal insult, that is an observation as to your behavior; it is immature and nonconstructive. Ameise -- chat 19:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Let it be clear that it is you who is immature and unconstructive. You continually evade requests for referenced and lie about what you support continuously, and constantly make personal insult with lame excuses like "that is not a personal insult, that is an observation".Rex 19:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

-Sigh-, this is pointless. I am arguing with a person who hardly has a 3rd grader's knowledge of the English language, who obviously has never read the Wikipedia regulations such as WP:POINT, WP:POV, or Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks. No matter what I say or do, he constantly reverts my edits, with lame and bogus excuses such as stating that I need citations, when he then hypocritically makes edits stating the opposite of what I do without citing anything at all. It is hopeless to work with Rex, because he is arrogant and a fool. He refuses to work with me on anything, and even compromise. It is his way or else, and I am frankly sick and tired of it. From now on, I will do the same thing Rex does -- I will follow his every edit, and anything I find that is even slightly off I will immediately RVV, as I now consider Rex no better than a vandal for his poor Wikipediamanship. Ameise -- chat 19:30, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

May I remind you two that this is my talk page, neither of you gives me a chance of putting anything in and I hate my mouth being plastered tight }-#
I like Rex to stay on the English language Wikipedia and as a good editor to keep throwing out unsourced material whenever he disputes its correctness, and expect it not to become reinserted unless it's accompanied by a proper reference. If he only doubts it, he might look for a proper source if he would like to do that effort, or else put a {{fact}}-tag in.
Antman's earlier request as how Rex was to disprove "mutually comprehensible" went a lot further than what he stated here above: If he'd had asked for sources for "not mutually intelligible" as was found in the article (version of 2006-09-29 17:24 by Cakeandicecream) instead of starting to reinsert an incorrect paragraph that had to my knowledge originally been inserted by BlueMars, there would not even have been a dispute or the speedy outcome would have been quite different.
If any one of you likes to continue arguing the topic, please do so on the German language page; for throwing insults, find another chatbox with moderator-on-sick-leave. — SomeHuman 1 Oct 2006 19:42 (UTC)

This will be my last post here, but for the record, I -did- ask for sources, and Rex just repeated the same old "you have no validation to demand sources because you are ignorant" skit. Ameise -- chat 20:29, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting Hans Van Themsche

Hi, this is the way Hans Van Themsche looks on my screen after your last change. My changes to the formatting of Hans Van Themsche were aimed at correcting this.

I'm using Firefox on W2000. -- ➌  LucVerhelst  07:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Temporarily shown here: Sample using slightly modified parameters, to be verified for Firefox/Win2000 (expecting a still very thin space between horizontal line at the bottom and the following text, but readable, and also quite acceptable for more common MSIE browsers - unlike an earlier attempted modification with <br> by Luc):

The Antwerp public prosecutors said "on first investigation of his environment and family [Hans] seems not to be brought up in a racialist or violent setting".

---

Limited by horizontal lines, next paragraph does not cite sources or references that appear in a credible publication. The sources provided are primary sources, such as websites and publications affiliated with the subject of the article. You can help Wikipedia by including appropriate citations.

Allegations against Vlaams Belang must be understood (...) parliamentarians:

"The predators have teeth and claws. (...) They have switchblades and butchers knives and they know how to use them."

Although this is not an official statement of Vlaams Belang, and Beliën has no official ties to the party, it offers some sense of the type of rhetoric which has led to its widespread inculpation.

---

The family of Luna denounced a letter of sympathy from Vlaams Belang, and asked to be left in peace until after the funeral.

So Luc, does this look acceptable? (The real article got proper sources thus it's gone there anyway, but I might use a box with horizontal line delimiters elsewhere in the future). — SomeHuman 7 Oct 2006 00:59 (UTC)

It's not perfect, but certainly acceptable. Thanks.

My first attempt (with the <br /> was a bit to hastily. I didn't think it was a IE vs Mozilla thin. (It's about time IE7 becomes a bit more widespread - hoping it renders html + css better than IE6) -- ➌  LucVerhelst  11:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I see that in the mean time, you addressed the real problem, i.e. the lack of sources. Thanks ! -- ➌  LucVerhelst  11:09, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Your welcome, I just thought such attempt to stand a better chance than MS creating a proper W3C-compliant browser. ;-) — SomeHuman 7 Oct 2006 18:15 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Belgium

Hallo,

ik heb je bijdragen opgemerkt, misschien ben je geïnteresseerd in WikiProject Belgium? Neem eens een kijkje en aarzel niet om je aan te sluiten, kost niets! :-D

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Provinces of regions in Belgium

I notice that you haven't been warned of a proposed move of this page back to its original name. The discussion happens at the bottom of the talk page. While I disagree with you about the move, I suppose it's only fair that you at least are aware of this discussion as well. Fram 04:51, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Fram is right, I should have notified you. Sorry. My misbehavior. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:BELGIUM

Hallo,

sommige discussies zijn verplaatst van onze discussiepagina:

• "waving flags": op de discussiepagina staat waarom.
• "communities and regions" naar de talk page van dat artikel.

Ik besef terdege dat je het beste voor hebt en nauwkeurigheid nastreeft, maar ik hoop ook dat je je bewust bent van de gevolgen die je communicatiestijl hebben. Ik hoop ook dat je je bij deze beslissingen kan neerleggen en alsnog overweegt om je toch aan te sluiten bij ons project, zodat we in de toekomst hopelijk kunnen samenwerken.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 10:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey,

Kan je een link geven naar "see talk 'AID – Bilingual Prime Ministers'"? Mercikes

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Never mind I found it... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table formatting

Hi,

I'm glad to see that you're improving the legend to the map of regions in Belgium. Please transfer your changes to the subdivisions of Belgium article too.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] two carillons, one tower

Bedankt voor uw vraag en voor uw beiaard artikelen.

1. The "Keyboard 2000" is one of several recently proposed standards for the design of carillon keyboards (consoles). American carillon engineer Richard Strauss presented it in 2000 at the World Carillon Federation Congress. An article is available at the WCF website.

2. There is at least one other tower containing two functional concert carillons, the Onze Lieve Vrouwetoren in Amersfoort. Incidentally, as in Mechelen, students of the Nederlandse Beiaardschooloften perform in this tower. As a recent graduate of the Koninklijke Beiaardschool "Jef Denyn", I am inclined to describe the old carillon of Sint-Romboutstoren as unusable. During the 2005-2006 academic year, no performance or practice session was held on it, and many notes barely sound. I hope that one day it can be restored. I have added information about the carillons of Amersfoort to the List of carillons and apologize for not doing this sooner to clarify the edit.

Carillonista 06:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

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[edit] Cut and paste move

Your cut and paste move with Bourdon (disambiguation) was not properly done. Gene Nygaard 00:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

What would not have been correct then? The move of 'Bourdon' towards 'Bourdon (organ pipe)' ensured its history to be moved with it; then technically moving 'Bourdon (disambiguation)' towards 'Bourdon' is impossible because that page still exists as a redirect. Thus one could follow the procedure for asking an administrator to either delete 'Bourdon' and wait for that to happen before executing the second move, or to have him do that second move; in this case, you had only just created the 'Bourdon (disambiguation)' page and there was thus hardly any need for its history to follow. Thus cut and paste allowed an immediate solution without any adverse effects. There is no harm in the now still existing 'Bourdon (disambiguation)' as this redirects to the disambiguation page 'Bourdon'. — SomeHuman 13 Dec 2006 00:30 (UTC)

Since I'd just created it, there probably wasn't much harm done. Might have messed up my watchlist, But I had edited the bell article too to change the disambiguation line. But there wasn't any rush to do it either; after your first move, you could have changed the redirect at "Bourdon" to go to "Bourdon (disambiguation)", then maybe the move would have worked, or if not, it would be a simple switch. In any case, it's done and it is okay with me to leave it as it is. Gene Nygaard 00:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

There was some rush: in case other editor(s) started improving the disambiguation page, my solution would no longer be proper because of the history; and also because I had already moved 'Bourdon' to the organ pipe... (think of the need to change For other use links at top of several pages, pages linking to 'Bourdon' still needed to have their links updated, in this case not even in a straightforward way, and thus I did not want to lose time). I don't think the move would have worked after changing the redirect; the effect now is that of the simple switch, I guess. — SomeHuman 13 Dec 2006 01:01-01:15 (UTC)

[edit] Dabpages

For Peter Isotalo's 14 Dec 2006 22:13 (UTC) remark and my reply, please go to the Flemish article's talk page. — SomeHuman 15 Dec 2006 02:48 (UTC)

[edit] Wanna see Totally Rubbish and third class stuff?

Take a look @ this. It is a 98.7% copy of wikipedia. Totally rubbish articles are there. Thanks Sushant gupta 08:15, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flemish

see also #Flemish #1 of June 2006 ; Mets501 moved my next comment here 31 Dec 2006 from his talk page — SomeHuman 31 Dec 2006 15:04 (UTC)

Sorry Mets501, I do not see where your statement "determined by Peter Isotalo to be move" comes from. He put the latest comment in the discussion section and his position has been clear (1. undiscussed unilateral modification followed with edit-war, 2. unilateral move when the move was obviously most controversial, 3. multiple tagging unduly discrediting the article and repeated WP:PA against named and unnamed but known opposition, 4. WP:RfC, 5. another WP:RfC, 6. immediate support vote on a proper proposal by Anþony to move) but I do not see where PeterIsotalo determined the outcome of 6. This proposal had 3 supports (including the proposer's) against 3 opposes and then one more support. At 4 against 3, I would assume the proposal for a change would be denied as being undecided [in fact, it seems logical to assume that LucVerhelst, the initiator of modifying the much earlier disambiguation page to an article style, would probably oppose if he would decide to end his Wikibreak]. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding, as I see that the move (which you performed yourself for other requests) has not (yet) been executed though the request has been put into the backlog. May I suggest going over the whole (lengthy) Talk:Flemish before actually committing? Kind regards. — SomeHuman 31 Dec 2006 14:16 (UTC)

I'm really sorry SomeHuman; in my ignorance I missed the edit history and the other stuff, and was acting quickly because there was a huge backlog at WP:RM and really made a wrong ruling. I had just reviewed my decision and changed it to no consensus when I got the "you have new messages" banner from your message. Once again, I'm truly sorry about my mistake. —Mets501 (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Those who do nothing, rarely do anything wrong but are not always more right ;-) — SomeHuman 31 Dec 2006 15:10 (UTC)

[edit] Municipality or Commune / Wallonia and Walloon Region.

I tried to explain here why Municipality is a wrong term for Belgian communes. Municipality is used in France, not in Belgium (except in the darkest times of our country), and only means the legislative power of a commune. Commune is used in France, Luxembourg, Italy, ... and from Middle Ages, why not in Belgium?

For Wallonia/Walloon Region, the reason is simple : Wallonia is a non-historic concept that is not shared by a lot of people in the Walloon Region, almost all german-speaking people say as their President-Minister "We live in Walloon Region but we are not walloon", same for Doornikzanen who speak Picard and don't consider Tournai as a part of the so-called Wallonia. You can add people from Gaume, Pays Champenois, Edingenaars, ... Wallonia is for walloon people or crazy wallingen. If Limburgers or Brabantines feel Flemish, good for them, but that is not the same in the Southern Belgium. David Descamps 13:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

1) I just explained an important misconception there (and now see that you already responded).

2) Your reason appears as I had indicated by the 'Walloon dialectal area' on Talk:List of Walloon communes. But the Wallonia article starts like "Wallonia (...), officially, the Walloon Region (...), is the predominantly French-speaking region that constitutes one of the three federal regions of Belgium, with its capital at Namur. Its official languages are French and German." Now that is purely the region and belongs in the Walloon Region article. While the content still clearly needs to be developed, it should better be done in a personal sandbox instead of disrupting article space where it confuses others.

— SomeHuman 1 Jan 2007 17:55nbsp;(UTC)

[edit] Antwerp Districts

The districts do have legislative power. What do you mean with "administrative"? People can directly elect the district councils, which is a legislative body. The districts vote on local sports, culture, urbanisation and other issues. It is a "legislative" body, not "administrative". Berchemboy 16:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding earlier. Doing so now on your talk page. — SomeHuman 3 Feb 2007 02:22 (UTC)

[edit] Universal Life/Universelles Leben: article for deletion???

• A word from Xandiar 02:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC) as reply on my comment on the Universal Life talk page: moved there, and replied there as well. 20 January 2007 03:00 (UTC)

[edit] Spiritual Humanism

• A word from Dhartung 04:24, 21 January 2007 (UTC) as reply on my comment on the Universal Life talk page: moved there, and replied there as well. 21 January 2007 04:51 (UTC)

[edit] Antwerpian

Thanks for your message. I see your point and don't object to this stub's deletion. Sietse 17:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AMA (2ct)

A dispute between you and 2ct7 Please leave your comment here. Cocoaguy 従って _contribs^talk 17:23, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

you may make one your self. Cocoaguy 従って _contribs^talk 18:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Please place your response here Cocoaguy 従って _contribs^talk 19:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you leave a short summary of what is going on, on my talk page. Geo. 18:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, let me elaborate. 2ct7 requested an Advocate, or as you called it, a Lawyer. For some reason the case has been referred for investigation of the advocate's conduct. In order for my investigation to be fair, I need to get a summary from you on what is going on, and any evidence you may be able to provide. Geo. 20:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Minor mistake, the case has been referred for help. Geo. 07:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to have bothered you, at the time i thought this was a conduct investigation, not a request for help. Geo. 17:56, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Cocoaguy said that. Would you prefer Medcab, informal mediation, to Medcom? Geo. 19:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

Your mediation hearing is on Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2ct7 v. SomeHuman. Cocoaguy 従って _contribs^talk Get Lost 03:26, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Location Maps

I've replied to your post on my talk. Groeten, Niels|en talk-nl talk (faster response)| 22:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello, SomeHuman. Regarding the new Europe maps, if I wanted to vote for new maps other than those by David Liuzzo, such as those by Rei-artur, which category would I place my vote under? Thanks for your help. I'm kinda new to this whole Wikipedia thing. The Holy Roman Emperor 01:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I did notice that this was an invitation, however, I'm not too keen on any of the new maps. I, for one, would prefer those: they are SVG, and they are multi-licensed with GFDL and Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.5 and older versions (2.0 and 1.0). And they look better than those currently under discussion. Jobjörn (Talk ° contribs) 21:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation (2ct7 v. SomeHuman)

Please leave your name in the correct area Here. Cocoaguy ここがいい _contribs^talk 04:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Mediation

A Request for Mediation to which you are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the mediation subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/2ct7 v. SomeHuman. For the Mediation Committee, Essjay (Talk) This message delivered by MediationBot, an automated bot account operated by the Mediation Committee to perform case management. If you have questions about this bot, please contact the Mediation Committee directly.

[edit] Location maps debate

Hi SomeHuman

I followed the link but it is somewhat difficult finding the poll in the middle of 20 posts to the talk page. Have you considered moving the entire "location maps" section to the bottom of the page, also swapping section 9.10 (Liuzzo's comments) and 9.9 (the poll). This would make it easier to spot. Cheers. Valentinian ^{T / C} 00:39, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] maps invite

i know it's an invite, but that's a long issue, and I'm waiting till I have time to read it over. will it be open through the weekend, or should i do it during CSI tonight? (my two best times coming up ) ThuranX 00:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Just that you know

I realise we have seriously collided on the maps issues, but please know that I think that in general you ar not a nasty editor; I think it was a very nice and honourable thing you put on User talk:Roberth Edberg. While I think his Crown of Immortality is symbolist well.. nonsense.. to be fair, and I was put onto this by the reference to EU-flag myself, which IMHO is not acceptable. Nevertheless, I think he should have the right to develop it. (for information I did not nominate his aricle, User:Paul111 did, I only warned him as Paul111 did not, and as you may gather from the crown of immortality talk page tried to coach him towars an acceptable article). Arnoutf 01:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "borders on"/"borders to" useage

Your comment: You appear to make a lot of edits with edit comment "ce", changing e.g. 'to the (direction)' into 'on the (direction)'. Stop that. Did it not strike you as rather odd that almost every article uses "to" and almost none uses "on"? Do you think all Wikipedia contributors to be unaware of the English language? Just to give you an idea of how wrong you are: try "Scotland on the north" (740 Google hits), "Scotland to the north" (20600 Google hits). Please revert your edits of this nature. — SomeHuman 28 Feb 2007 05:31-05:42 (UTC)

Thanks for your invitation for a discussion about "borders on" vs. "borders to" usage. I did try a number of other Google searches (following your suggestion).

The phrase "borders Pennsylvania on" gets 272 hits; the phrase "borders Pennsylvania to" gets 24 hits. You may be interested in the following search results as well:

• Virginia ("borders Virginia on" = 49 hits; "borders Virginia to" = 14 hits)
• Mexico ("borders Mexico on" = 353 hits; "borders Mexico to" = 140 hits)
• China ("borders China on" = 532 hits; "borders China to" = 348 hits)
• Ontario ("borders Ontario on" = 45 hits; "borders Ontario to" = 0 (in this context))

Finally I entered the following search phrases in Google (which limit the search to the English language Wikipedia pages), and got the following results:

• site:en.wikipedia.org "borders on" = 1,610 hits
• site:en.wikipedia.org "borders to" = 623 hits

This is not an exhaustive search, and I expect that you can find many examples of the ratio being different (but please do filter out non-geographical useages).

I think that "borders on" is the more grammatical phrase. The useage "That borders on treason!" or "That borders on libel!" are certainly familiar; I assume "That borders to treason!" is not a useage you are familiar with.

I'm not sure if this is a British/USA difference. While I do see a closer "to/on" ratio when I enter in British Isles placenames, also both useages appear (try comparing "borders London on" with "borders London to," and filter out references to Borders books or the group "No Borders" for an interesting comparison).

After thoughtful consideration, my view is: It appears that the phrase "borders to" is used in British English along with "borders on," and that both "borders on" and "borders to" are commonly used outside the UK.

Under these circumstances of both useages being widely used, I'll resist making similar changes in other articles to the phrase that is more commonly used within Wikipedia ("borders on") but I won't be reverting any that I've already made.

Again, thanks for the opportunity to discuss this quite interesting topic. Tidying_Up _t 02:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, it appears that you've missed the point. Going through a large number of these variations, and disregarding uses of the phrase which are not in this context, it appears that both useages are used and accepted. Indeed it appears that within Wikipedia "borders on" is the more common variation (disregarding non-geographical uses). Since it appears that both uses are acceptable, I will not be reverting any of changes I've already made. Tidying_Up _t 17:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Map caption

Hi SomeHuman,

(fix ";")

(too many edit conflicts on a row) Leave doublespaces in; also ampersand (here correct and easier readable, else too long till edge); Check letter-spacing again (perhaps apply FF font-family))

(save phase6 improvement (so far only David Liuzzo style maps expected to use this template, non-default 'location_color' serves for red circle indicator best at normal letter-spacing))

Thanks for taking up the baton on this template. If nothing else, however, please remove the reduced letter-spacing, as I can assure you it renders the text unreadable (given the small font-size) on Firefox v2 and IE6 – at least as appearing here. The ampersand is also rendered as more of a squiggle than a character, so I'd recommend returning to "and". (No formatting problems experienced here when using it.)

You may also see that handling "[[Europe]]" within the template should soon become redundant.

Please complete the parameter descriptions and add one or two further examples that demonstrate their use. Thanks!  David Kernow (talk) 06:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[[Europe]] not to become redundant: the long phrase is required for Europe only (e.g. "[[Africa]]" or "the [[Middle East]]" would even without modification of the template be OK with simple "in" in front, but Europe is ambiguous and I don't want people to have to write a 'non-standard' and errorprone parameter "on the [[Europe|European continent]]": let the template tackle it.

I've just gone to the trouble of replacing "[[Europe]]" with "on the European continent" in the European country articles... Personally, I reckon "[[Europe]]" should be okay, but appreciate the possibility of confusion, so was trying to streamline your change...

The ampersand is necessary: "and" puts the end of the line even with letter-spacing:-1px at the ultimate end ")" much further to the right than the map border...

When using "and" previously, there were no such complications/problems. Why bother with letter-spacing:-1px anyhow; it's a caption in a small font-size...?

If the ampersand does not look OK for you, you have a bad font: it's a character like any other. Put <span style="font-family:<font name>,sans-serif;">&</span> instead of the ampersand, with a font-family available to FireFox users that renders the ampersand nicely.

The ampersand does not look OK here primarily because the letter-spacing is too small, not due to any "bad" font. The serif and proportional font is Times New Roman; the sans-serif is Arial; and the monospace is Courier New. I imagine these are Firefox defaults, as I have never changed them – or needed to change them...

Only with some character combinations should letter-spacing:-1px create a problem;...

Unfortunately, at the small font-size used by the caption, I can assure you the letters become crushed together. Recommend the formatting is kept simple – especially at the small font-size used by the caption – and this letter-spacing avoided.

...that is why "dark orange" was replaced with "deep orange"...

Asked to choose between the description "deep orange" and "dark orange" for any vaguely darkish orange hue, I'd say most English-speaking folk would opt for the latter...

When a parameter for e.g. "circled in inset" is given, my 'phase6 improvement' ensures it not to become handled by letter-spacing, only the default colour "deep orange" is. For both other color parameters, I leave the letter-spacing for now (no such parameter is expected at the moment and it is likely that e.g. a parameter 'Liuzzo' of 'Rei-artur' or... would be given to set all default colours (and possibly other requirements according to the map style); in that case the letter-spacing can be applied accoring to that parameter, it's not our concern for now.......

I have the feeling that the enthusiasm in developing the template – something that usually I enjoy seeing and encouraging – may, in this case, have gone a little too far... let's keep it simple – i.e. remove the formatting complications – yes...?  I've passed by many other templates and the like in far greater need of work such as yours... Yours, David (talk) 07:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
PS Have just seen that you've already attended to the documentation; thanks!  Will need to go soon, but happy to respond later.

Have a lot to say but no time for perhaps rest of the day; please leave things...

Agreed; it's "too many cooks spoiling the broth template" otherwise. All I'd ask is that the reduced letter-spacing is removed. If the template can be kept as simple as necessary, that'd be a bonus. Yours, David (talk) 22:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I didn't get around to do a proper logical cleanup of the template, but like to do this myself (I'm not used to Wiki templates, but it's perfectly within my line of interest and experience, so I should get the hang of it; I'd appreciate if you would let me have some more time to figure out a few things for a template that I already know and of which I know where it's being used as well as where it should be used.)

Sure; I hadn't looked further than the articles on European countries.

Main thing: the letter-spacing is no longer used; the ampersand is still in to allow as much room as possible for other regions that would have a shaded subregion, and without diminished letter-spacing, it should appear OK in your browser and it's more clear as a separator between the two colours. The colours are now in a (theoretically) smaller font: that might not reduce character size (not in my browser), but instead contracts the letter-spacing slightly but differently from controlling letter-spacing. There are no problems with some character combinations as there had been (on my browser with "rk" and slightly with "wh"). Even if there would be an extremely small character on your browser, it only affects the colour legend and a proper legend is available: the inline colour legend is more a reminder for what the reader already knows to be one of the actual colours he/she sees, it does not require to be read very carefully. The attention should go to the placenames. The latter is ensured by proper positioning on standard places (which is why I hate any wrapping of running text for this purpose).
I also ensured the 'Legend' positioning to fit really nice in the corner for the 26 (not Spain) maps of EU countries, but to stay closer to text for any other subregion (allowing a longer name for a subregion) or in absence of a subregion (then the line is centred instead of left-aligned). I still have a few things in the back of my head but will come to that tomorrow or so.

Fontwise, the Czech Republic's caption (for example) looks fine at present, although the parentheses in others' (e.g. Austria, Belgium) still appear crushed here. I realize, though, your work is in progress.

Meanwhile have a look into some articles using the map and template, as well as Cyprus that once more was given a proper text (see my edit comment there); please do not "simplify" it, regardless your urge to keep it simple, the world is not simple and it should not be presented as if it were.

Well, how about: "Cyprus (circled beside inset) is a member of the European Union (orange). The European continent consists of the orange and white areas; the areas in grey at the bottom and right are, respectively, parts of Africa and Asia."...?

Compared to: "Location of Cyprus (circled beside inset) - at the southwestern tip of mainland Asia (grey), near Africa (grey, bottom) and Europe (light orange & white) - in the European Union (light orange) [Legend]", which is precise, correct, NPOV, first locates towards continent(s) [as in template the region parameter] and then to EU [as subregion parameter]... and which is even with '[Legend]' still shorter?  ;-) (In the same sentence as Asia and Africa, 'Europe' must be the continent: no need to specify this disambiguation as in the template text where it occurs without previous context while being followed by 'European Union' which is sometimes referred to as 'Europe'.) [inserted answer by — SomeHuman 4 Mar 2007 16:53 (UTC) ]

I guess I was still in prose mode!

Its formatting technique follows the current 'phase7' template. A few interesting country articles, about using the template of course, are the Republic of Macedonia (longest name including "the", and it is a non-member of the EU that has the 'Legend' parameter), the Netherlands ("the", EU, someone inserted the 'Legend' though I had removed it because of strong complaints against the German in the bilingual legend, awaiting possible creation of a strictly English image [besides the bilingual one that is used by other Wikipedias as well] - I assume it best stays in, another contributor placing it back while other articles do not seem to have a problem, may convince the Dutch opposition), (the) Vatican City (might better obtain "the", circle inside enlarged inset), Liechtenstein (circled inside enlarged inset, and I put the 'Legend' parameter in it), France ("Metropolitan France" and second map - both have a good right to be there like that, templates should offer standardized data but that does not mean that a non-standard situation for a standardized issue should be presented in a "simplified" way), Bosnia-Herzegovina (long, no "the"), Serbia (short), and have a glimse at a candidate for a caption text: Armenia (transcontinental, map of other region, what name for the caption parameter 'region', 'Caucasian Eurasia' perhaps? But it's a lot larger than Caucasia).

Note: An strictly English version of the legend just became available. I asked for a modification, see [User talk:Noira#Image Legend for location maps]. You're used to do replacements (semi?-)automatically, could you replace the "legend=EU location legend.png" with "legend=EU location legend en.png" for EU countries (I did it on the few non-EU countries that already use the legend and on Cyprus that does not use the template).

Will do so next.

...Done (hopefully). David (talk) 02:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I still kept 'deep orange', as my edit comment had shown having 38% versus 62% 'dark orange' usage; and this particular shade of orange appears really deep to my subjective meaning. With the "rk"-contraction out of the way, it does not matter to me quite as much. Drop me a note in case the current fonts, layout, etc of the template would be unacceptable for FireFox users. Till soon. — SomeHuman 4 Mar 2007 04:49-05:38 (UTC)

Apart from the crushed parentheses mentioned above, all seems fine here. Yours, David (talk) 13:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I can take care of the crushed parentheses (with a little overhead, but it's worth it). I inserted 2 comments [signed in smaller character at 16:63 and at 20:40] here above. Continuing at the template [tried something, checked the influence on the caption of the UK article, it looked terrible; quickly reverted my template modification; checked, found that someone had hacked the parameters at the UK article and I repaired it there; will have to test once more...].

Have just looked at France and see there now appears to be three/four font sizes or spacings in action: "Location of Metropolitan France" is fine; "(deep orange)" still crushed; and the remaining phrases' font-size is too large. Meanwhile, Austria's caption is fine as regards "Location of Austria", but the parentheses still crushed. "on the European continent" and "in the European Union" relatively large – so I have the feeling that a single font size/spacing for all is probably best. I could edit one country's caption to indicate what I have in mind; yes...?

Yours, David (talk) 01:24, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Please check again. I had a clue and did a very quick fix. Still any problem now?

No apparent change to France or Austria here, unfortunately... David (talk) 01:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

PS Yes, for once I remembered to reload the pages! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by David Kernow (talk • contribs) 01:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC).

Glad that much too fast Hagermanidiot catches others as well. For the map caption, all seems fine again. The improvement on phase7 (changing the font-size now for a passed 'location_color' as well as used to be for the default value, while still not changing the font-size for a 'location' e.g. "circled in inset") appears to interfere with the Infobox for Countries template: I did a few tests and have a vague idea, will check later. Anyway, the best thing to do was setting a fixed font-size as well for the "Location of..." line that shows that modified part, as a fixed font-size on the <p style="...">-tag that controls the 2nd and optional 3rd lines. The one opening parenthese that stood too close to the leading character for the subregion colour, was now also adapted as I had done for the others. Though of course in "(light..." the "(" will always appear closer than in "(deep...", that's not a template problem. I assume everything will now remain OK for you, please check. Logical cleanup of template still in the pipeline, one of these days. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 5 Mar 2007 02:49 (UTC)

[resetting indentation]
So far as I can see (i.e. looking at a few European country articles), all looks okay. The "[Legend]" link, however, seldom reaches the righthand corner (your intention...?); perhaps it could sit centered on the next line... Yours, David (talk) 03:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

David, I noticed that the Template:Infobox Countries is now shown a lot wider than it used to be, and on the Template:Map caption, I spot two } that were not there before; you edited the first-mentioned template - is there a mistake? ...

Re {{Infobox Country}}, I think these are the edits involved; re {{Map caption}}, perhaps one or more of the edits by Pethr produced the brackets you now see...? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by David Kernow (talk • contribs) 05:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

...I'd appreciate it if you could replace each link to an older Legend to the new one [see my above comment]. And, to put the legend parameter now also in all the non-EU countries...

Sorry to overlook previously; I hope I found and updated them all. Yours, David (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

...By the way, ...{{Template:Infobox Country}}) does appear responsible for the "}" I had mentioned before...

Thanks for the reminder; I'm now looking into it and also note that something else seems amiss: the largest_city no longer appears when it's not the same as the capital (see the Cameroon example on the /doc page). I wonder why this has arisen, as well as the rogue "}"... David (talk) 04:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

...I've analyzed the "Capital / Largest city" code and have corrected the omission of largest_city when not the capital (although it seemed to be working before) but, even having stripped this section of code to a bare minimum, I haven't yet been able to locate the cause of the rogue bracket. As part of the process, however, I converted the "Capital / Largest city" code to use HTML rather than wikicode to specify cells and rows, which makes the code easier to see; in a moment, I'll start converting the whole template to use HTML table code rather than wikicode or "templated-wikicode" ({{!}} {{!-}} {{!!}} etc) so that the table code is of one type throughout (and easier to annotate). In doing so, I hope finally to spot and eliminate this rogue bracket gremlin. What do you think...?  David (talk) 05:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Map caption (more)

Hi SomeHuman, I appreciate all the work you've done on Template:Map caption but I really don't understand why you can't stand others (me) editing it. Especially since you've later done the same as I did - removed spaces where they didn't belong, removed formatting that wasn't justified, etc. (may be you will remove double spaces once too:) I find your approach quite uncivil (also don't know why I should go to talk page - when I see errors I correct them, that's why we are here) but still respect all the work... The legend is still on separate line which I'm sure wasn't your intention. That's simply what happens if you put too many spaces there and expect that it will look the same on every system with every browser just like on your setup. Putting spaces there isn't proper way to align it to the right if there isn't proper way to align it to the right, it shouldn't be. Regards.--Pethr 16:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re automated mistake (Cyprus)

Hi again,

You seem to have done a peculiar search and replace...

Thanks for spotting; I've just checked the settings I'm using and confirmed that "<br />"s are meant to be replaced by (non-wraparound) "<br/>"s, while " km²"s should be replaced with (non-wraparound) "&nbsp;km²"s. Maybe there was a glitch just before, during, or just as I submitted the edit...
I have a few country articles on my watchlist that underwent the same formatting but to which I also made some manual amendments; so far as I can see, these don't appear to've been affected in the same way, so I'm hoping Cyprus was a one-time glitch. I'm about to pass by a few more, so will look to see if anything similar happens again; if so, I'll take a look at the other country articles edited at the same time as Cyprus. Yours, David (talk) 03:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re Centuries

...And hi again!

...e.g. "18th century" is just as correct for Wikipedia as "eighteenth century" ... I personally [] prefer to maintain such short notation...

I too accept that either style is fine, so have been using the prose forms ("seventh", "eighteenth", etc) within prose – especially paragraphs summarizing history – while maintaining the numeral form elsewhere (e.g. in infoxboxes). Yours, David (talk) 07:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Belgian Tervuren

Hi! For some time I've found the current name of the article Belgian Shepherd Dog (Tervuren) rather cumbersome, and certainly not the most common name for the breed. I would like to move all of the Belgian Shepherds to similar named. Belgian Malinois and Belgian Laekenois are also what I'd say to be the most common name for their respective breeds. The Groenendael presents a bit more of a problem in my mind, but Belgian Groenendael would certainly be understood.

The German Shepherd Dog, Dutch Shepherd Dog, and various nonstandardized French shepherd dogs are all of the same ancestral stock, and quite closely related (in fact, according to my source they were all once considered to be the same breed: the "Continental Shepherd Dog"). [1] The divide seems to be entirely related to country, rather than any large differences in general type, temperment or abilities. --Pharaoh Hound (talk) (The Game) 22:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brussels pop

Thanks for the mods you made to my contribution to the Brussels-Capital article. In fact, the 85-90/15-10 does leave room for the population of foreigners, since the 85-90/15-10 refers to the languages in which identity cards are issued. This is explained in a footnote. With foreigners, the logic of using this figure to determine their mother tongue falls apart, since having a French-language ID card does not mean they necessarily speak French. Unfortunately, we have no better way of estimating the linguistic composition of the region, so I suppose we'll have to let it be.

However, you are quite right in believing readers would be confused by the seeming overlap, and your edit was really excellent. --Deregnaucourt 09:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dang!

Sorry I killed your kitten over at Template talk:Intricate. Definitely wasn't the intent. New reply there covers everything, I think. Don't agree on every single point, but I think our points of disagreement are markedly fewer than they seemed. Again, sorry if I whacked you in the nose by accident. Wasn't my purpose at all. I think the changes (including the move and more) you've introduced are for the better. I didn't address this sooner because I forgot to WL the page, and simply thought nothing had changed. I didn't realize anything had until I actually saw the template in action somewhere and it was different. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 11:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Argh. I actually feel pretty bad about this. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 11:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Updating links

Please note Wikipedia:Redirects#Don't_fix_links_to_redirects_that_aren't_broken . -- User:Docu

Don't worry, the redirects are not what is mentioned in the section you referred to. In some cases it does not matter anyway, in others it does (when they are actually displayed or when they are used in a template that is likely to be used as sample by others, or in a few double redirects [to which nothing links for the moment, the others are already fixed]). It's not an occasional thing but rather cleanup after generally modifying "1 E? m" to "1 E+? m" (also for m² and m³) and updating these Orders of magnitude 'articles'. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 1 Apr 2007 10:59 (UTC)

It is, you shouldn't do changes such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Lauerz&curid=6055636&diff=119462859&oldid=118317220 .. besides, did you discuss the addition of "+" anywhere? -- User:Docu

[edit] Re WP:POP, TeX

Hi again SomeHuman,

...do you know anyone who might

• either be an expert on the rendering of WP:POP when enabled by monobook.js,
• or be accustomed to TeX...

My first thoughts were to look here and here, otherwise here and see if you recognize any names. Hope this helps!  Yours, David (talk) 14:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Map caption

Template:Map caption seems broken (transclusions show "3px") and I have no idea how to fix it (I don't know enough about the coding). Since you were the last editor on it, can you look into that? Thanks. Kelvinc 05:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem is not in "my" template:map_caption that presents parameter map_caption to template:Infobox_Countries, but in the latter. David Kernow introduced another template:lower and its 1st parameter was shown instead of its second. Rather than trying to find out what went wrong there (the template:lower is protected anyway), I replaced David's template call with a much simpeler direct adjustment. In fact, even if the template:lower would not have caused this peculiar problem, it would have worked badly: template:map_caption includes a <p>-tag which is not handled by a <span>-tag in template:lower for lowering the text 3px, in other words: template:lower would only have lowered the top line of a multi-line map caption. I now hardcoded the lowering in template:Infobox_Country within a <div> and it works as expected (I also did this for the map_caption2 parameter).

Of course, this lowered the text twice: once in template:map_caption (which adjusted for this right from its creation) and now also in the infobox. The latter being the most appropriate place (works as well when its map_caption parameter is not passed by template:map_caption), I removed the "margin-top:3px;margin-bottom:-3px;" from template:map_caption. All seems now to be working with proper vertical adjustment, as well for map_caption from classic country calls e.g. United Kingdom as for map_caption2 as in Abkhazia and am going to adjust Cyprus (that was not handled by the template:map_caption but does the adjustment from within the article - correction: either someone already handled Cyprus or perhaps I had not done the vertical adjustment in the first place. All's well   ;-))

Kind regards. — SomeHuman 9 Apr 2007 11:34-11:46 (UTC)

[edit] Re Template:Infobox Country or territory

Hi again SomeHuman,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_Country&diff=121397063&oldid=121357911

Thanks for the above; I forgot that {{map caption}} might be affected adversely. For more general use, though, is there any straightforward way {{lower}} (and {{raise}}) might be more effectively coded...?  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 19:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

User talk:David Kernow#Templates lower and raise

These templates' behaviors have obviously intrigued you! – or, perhaps more accurately, #if:'s behavior (as you suggest). Bearing the latter in mind, I suspect it might be best to leave {{lower}} and {{raise}} as they are, i.e. as simple shortcuts for moving single elements; I think their main use is to align simple [[Image: ]] elements (e.g. flag icons) or automated footnote numbers (cf some {{Infobox Ethnic group}} examples) with straightforward text on either side. If/when something more sophisticated is needed, however – I'm taking their possible use with {{map caption}} as an exception – you've already completed some of the work necessary. Thanks!  Yours, David (talk) 01:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

PS Hope you were able to find some help re WP:POP/TeX. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by David Kernow (talk • contribs) 01:49, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Your signature

Due to the current format of your signature you cause problems on talk pages. you have the timestamp formated in a non-standard way which causes disruptions. One specific example is with User:Shadowbot3 the talkpage archiver bot. Shadowbot3 and other bots read the default timestamp method of ~~~~~ or 15:25, 13 April 2007 (UTC) . you need to change your sig as it disrupts pages that it is used on. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 15:25, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Replied on Betacommand's talk page. — SomeHuman 13 Apr 2007 21:33 (UTC)

Hello. You can also use {{subst:#time:[[d F]] [[Y]] H:i}}, which outputs "14 April 2007 03:43". {{#time:}} provides a number of options, as explained at m:ParserFunctions. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:43:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Waa

It appears that waa (วา) is actually a unit of length, and that dtaaraangwaa (ตารางวา) is the unit of area, since dtaaraang means square. --Bkkbrad 03:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that out. I added the interwiki links in the Thai articles to link back to English. Cheers, Bkkbrad 14:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:European location legend en.png

Image:European location legend en.svg :-) — Alex^(T|C|E) 10:42, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The LEAD on Belgium

Re "Stop by utterly false 'tweaking for NPOV' pushing POV..." I have no POV. I have absolutely no prior opinion on this subject at all. The fact that you're calling a third party's editing motives into question should lead you to question your own POV. If the purpose of this insertion is in fact "innocent", why do you care so much? I've spent a few hours on this page solely to keep its FA status for the sake of other editors. That requires stopping the edit war. "The officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region has 10% of the population." Nothing to argue about, no POV, fine short sentence for the lead.

Go to the Languages section. All of the info you want is there. Marskell 06:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

"Marskell, you claim not to be POV but you fanatically support most radical POV censorship of your own copyedited phrase." Well, fuck you too.

I edited this page to keep it FA. Again, I had no POV when I started (none). I'm taking it off my watchlist now. You can turn it back into an incomprehensible, POV mess to your heart's content. Marskell 20:35, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• I did not notice a lot of POV when you started, though please remember my reservation on the talk page of Belgium:

The FAR reviewer Marskell called the 2nd paragraph 'a monster', without saying why: (...) (towards Vb:) ...once again demonstrates your incorrect assertion that WP:NPOV is POV in case it just might deflect from pure French-speakers' POV. — SomeHuman 2007-06-15 10:50 (UTC)

It's monstrous because:

a) The ref formatting makes editing incredibly laborious; I see this is an issue for most of the copy.

b) It's POV. Bizarrely, it properly introduces Flanders but does not properly introduce Wallonia. The second sentence should read something like the following "The two principal regions of Belgium are Dutch-speaking Flanders, with 55% of the Belgian population, and French-speaking Wallonia, which accomodates 33% of the people."

c) The phraseology is strange (see note below). Marskell 17:07, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, d) "...of which approximately 85% often as a secondary language mainly uses French in public" is indecipherable and probably over-specific for a lead, whatever it means. --Marskell 17:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think it's better. The 85% ought to be removed entirely, IMO, and placed in demographics. Using four or five references for facts should be avoided, unless there's some pressing need for them. Marskell 18:07, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I do not quite agree but... We'd better come to POV much later, when you appear to have finished copediting as an outsider. You should at least for now remain in that position. (...) Kind regards. — SomeHuman 2007-06-16 00:35–04:25 (UTC)

And, not only already better, but even as you suggested, the 85% did go out. That left the most proper sentence that I still defend.

Your b) stating "It's POV" was highly undeserved: at the time the paragraph did not mention the percentage of the population for Wallonia, because the figure for Flanders and the 10% for Brussels were given thus it did not require a genius to figure out the Walloon population, and because unlike for Flanders, for Brussels and for Wallonia there was more information, for the latter namely the German-speaking Community being in it. Funny, that already in your very first comment on the talk page you made an undue 'observation' of POV.

• And with that same remark of properly introducing one region but not another in mind, it is the more remarkable of your current behaviour of insisted elimination from your own good copyedit result, the location of only one region — against all NPOV references, all my arguments and Dionysos' statement "What on earth can be so POV pushing about this:" (followed by the paragraph as I defend it:)
  
  Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium's two largest regions are Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, with 58% of the population, and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia, inhabited by 32%. The Brussels-Capital Region is an officially bilingual enclave within the Flemish and near the Walloon Region, and has 10% of the population.[α] A small German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia.[•] Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political and cultural conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.
  
• You should have read my earlier edit comments and talk page arguments more carefully, and thought about them, and have realized you were far out of line by submitting to and even enforcing a very one-sided POV. You forgot that Wikipedia does not stick to neutrality towards relevant and well-sourced facts, most certainly not to censorship of what might upset someone, only in taking a neutral point of view when balancing the weight of sources' authority and notability and their relevance for the topic. Occasionally both viewpoints are then mentioned or balanced, but even when I introduced 'nearby' (meanwhile 'and near the Walloon Region') so as to indicate the Walloon view on Brussels' location, you could not accept it being called an 'enclave' although several NPOV sources mention only that while others express the French-speaking view by very inaccurately placing Brussels in the 'centre' of Belgium, only true in an east-westerly but not in the POV-relevant north-southern direction.
• Also your further recent edits follow exactly the unreasonable wishes of Vb including today's falsification of the survey report paragraph, which you reworded in a most clearly POV manner, away from the in French quoted reference (in which alors que ... seulement requires 'on the other hand, only' or else 'although ... only'; it may allow changing 'merely' to 'only', but that's all, and the latter is not as good a rendering of à peine quoted from further in the report), even taking away the survey's conclusion by the authors: they did not merely confirm the general knowledge about a noticeably more multilingual Flanders than Wallonia, but in their introduction of the report most clearly expressed what the survey had shown: "but the difference is considerable". In other words, the previously generally known significantly better knowledge of languages in Flanders than in Wallonia as had also been recognized by the authors, was by the survey found to be even more significant than expected. And that part you obliterated. You eliminated the economical significance towards the future, though I had not only shown that the report itself spends a chapter on it, but I even provided an extra source criticising that report by a Professor of Economics with great credentials. And you rephrased the end of the paragraph in such a terrible way that even you could no longer make out which three languages and, instead of properly copyediting or simply leaving the original ("any of this survey's forementioned ones"), inserted a html-comment as if it had been unclear before your edit. By the way, for other readers here, this is the quote of the introduction as published by the Walloon university in its report: "Les enquêtes montrent que la Flandre est bien plus multilingue, ce qui est sans doute un fait bien connu, mais la différence est considérable : alors que 59 % et 53 % des Flamands connaissent le français ou l'anglais respectivement, seulement 19 % et 17 % des Wallons connaissent le néerlandais ou l'anglais. ... 95 pour cent des Bruxellois déclarent parler le français, alors que ce pourcentage tombe à 59 pour cent pour le néerlandais. Quant à l’anglais, il est connu par une proportion importante de la population à Bruxelles (41 pour cent)." And elsewhere in the report: "Le syndrome d’H (...) frappe la Wallonie, où à peine 19 et 17 pour cent de la population parlent respectivement le néerlandais et l’anglais."
• Also today, you changed The Federal State retains a considerable "common heritage". This includes justice, defence, (etc) into The Federal State retains considerable prerogatives. These includes justice, defence, (etc). Wow! The federal state having prerogatives... that is the wishful thinking of unitary Belgians, almost exclusively found amongst some French-speakers. Each level of federal, regional, community government has matters for which it has powers, but calling only those of the federal level prerogatives... that is definitely not NPOV. The original and long-standing phrase is far more correct: a "common heritage", for some matters for good logical reasons (common sense can be inherited, I presume), for others it is a heritage only because the things happened to exist (e.g. Belgian railroads while transport is normally a matter for the regions). And of course, as everything used to be federal, all its powers are inherited; more importantly, these matters are still "common", mutual, for the entire population: yes, Belgians do exist regardless their language, just not for all things that concern them. This article is to be about Belgium, not about what some people wish to accept, neither only about what all wish to accept, nor what anyone would like to make of it.
• Several other of your recent edits were not English: It Federal Government is responsible ('Its'); Extensions to personal matters less directly attributed to the language became Extensions to personal matters less directly associated language (and the first was perhaps more correct: one of the samples, health, is in fact often 'associated' with the language used in the Brussels hospitals - no need to invoke edits about that subject here); or you incorrectly changed the intended meaning: Regions have authority in fields connected with their territory in the widest meaning of the term, thus relating to ... became Regions have broad authority in fields connected with their territory. These include .... I hoped you would have found a way to get around this, I looked up a few times while reading it as well. But it meant even remotely connected to the territory, in the widest sense of 'territory', a sometimes very far-fetched association with territory, not a widest or broad authority. Regions simply have authority or they don't, like the other levels of government. There was no link under Post Office before you created it, did you intend to create an article 'Belgian Post Office'? For now it is still red and it would not be a correct title either.
• And then there was also this edit at which not only you but also Vb would scream POV! if it were not playing even more than already before in his favorite direction: Belgium derives its name from the Latin name of the northernmost part of Gaul, Gallia Belgica, named after a group of mostly Celtic tribes, Belgae. did not need to become 'Belgium' is derived from the Latin name for the northernmost part of Gaul, Gallia Belgica, named after a group of mostly Celtic tribes, the Belgae. — in short: 'Belgium' is derived from Gallia Belgica of mostly Celtic people, as if Belgium is the inheritance of the Walloons (Celts) and not of the Flemish (Germanic people). I already rephrased it just to avoid 'its name from the name'. The name of Belgium is derived from a Latin one for very roughly that area, which is rather obvious as there was no local written language while Julius Ceasar hung around. Unlike the Celtic Belgae that populated parts of south-west Britain and possibly of Ireland, in Gallia Belgica this people was formed as a de facto union of very different tribes, some most likely Celtic, others most likely Germanic, and probably mixed tribes; whether they were 'mostly Celtic' is a POV, and in particular popular amongst French-speaking Belgians. Your today's phrasing emphasised that POV. Though some internet sources offer good information, few are of the unquestionable standard I try to present before I change article content, as there are sources corroborating the 'mostly Celtic' statement; Some time ago, I only put a footnote in with a link to one of the few decent sources in English.

— SomeHuman 22 Jun 2007 01:57 (UTC)

• The "improvement" by Marskell with edit comment "tweak mangled sentence" not only introduced terrible English ("Belgium has a policy 'recognized religions';") but once again changed the meaning towards the opposite of what sources so clearly point out: Belgium's proprietary concept of a 'recognized religion' and its practical application had not as much allowed (which suggests making it easy) but had for a long time made it hard for Islam to be treated in an equal manner.

— SomeHuman 24 Jun 2007 08:52 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

A while ago, there was a discussion on WP:PM as follows: "Merge Anglo-Saxon mission into Hiberno-Scottish mission; there is already a request for Schottenklöster into the same. — SomeHuman 2006-08-12 00:14 (UTC) Update - Schottenklöster has been merged. Merge tags put up on other two. xCentaur | ☎ 20:15, 22 February 2007 (UTC)" I noted on User:xCentaur's talk page that I voted to oppose the merger, noted that the tags were gone missing (not my doing), and asking if a consensus had formed one way or the other. I could not figure out how to notify both of you at the same time, so here it is. Bearian 15:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC) Ooops, bad link; see User talk:Xcentaur. Bearian 15:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sic

Wikifalcon's comment of 2007-07-21 13:20 (UTC) moved to the relevant article's talk page; answered there. — SomeHuman 22 Jul 2007 10:46 (UTC)

[edit] Automated Reviews

I didn't design the tool AndyZ did. I'm just doing the automated peer like reviews to help people improve the articles that are on the verge of being delisted from FA status. Thanks anyway. Davnel03 11:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edits to Galileo Galilei Article

One of the things I have been working on an off to do in this article is put the methods of footnoting and citation into some sort of consistent format. At present it contains a hotch-potch of different formats, any one of which might be ok if used consistently, but, as they are at the moment, seem to me to run counter to the goal of achieving a reasonably consistent style. The method now most commonly used to cite sources in the article seems to be via a footnote with a Harvard-style reference to a source in the Reference list, and so this is what I have chosen to try to work towards. Since your recent addition of a reference to Sobel's Galileo's Daughter didn't follow this style, I have taken the liberty of amending it. Please take a look to see whether or not you find the change acceptable. David Wilson 08:30, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Further discussed on User talk:David J Wilson#Galileo Galilei (and Talk:Galileo Galilei#Einstein and Hawking quotations)

[edit] Notability of Shlomo Weber

A tag has been placed on Shlomo Weber requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article appears to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Murderbike 03:52, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The above assumption became posted here, obviously after a most thorough reading of the article, within 2 minutes after the first creation of this article. Within a minute someone else apparently saw it differently and there appears no speedy or other kind of deletion pending. Anyway, the article will be further developed and in the meanwhile, apart from the statements and sources already present, these few lines may also by themselves suffice to justify the creation of the Shlomo Weber article. Might this experience justify banning contributors based solely on their choice of a log-in name? — SomeHuman 02 Sep 2007 12:54 (UTC)

[edit] ANSI

Please DISCUSS this issue, rather than engaging in edit wars. This is why there is a discussion page for each article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.127.65.218 (talk) 10:34, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not take lessons from anonymus IP contributors that first revert three times and then start to "talk" without signing their comment. It would also have been appropriate to state what you are talking about (not about the ANSI article but about an external link called NSSN provided by ANSI in the ISO article, dear other readers of my talk page) in the page where you had introduced this section, this is not a chat box. And above IP's 4th revert without giving a chance to discuss, allows blocking. For now putting appropriate tag on 75.127.65.218's talk page and then undoing this unadmissable destruction of useful content.
The accusation of spam in edit comments was inappropriate, the [ NSSN search site] is provided by ANSI and merely gives a short explanation (which is free) of what a specific ISO, ANSI, DIN international standards are available. As ANSI is the U.S. National Comittee of the IEC (USNC/IEC - notice that this links to a page at www.ansi.org) that is part of ISO (ISO/IEC), it is thus appropriate in particular on the ISO article, and the only other appropriate places would be in the ANSI article and the IEC article; there is not even a specific WP page about the U.S. National Committee, and probably not about the National Comittees of 156 other countries. ANSI sets ANSI-standards and propagates ISO, ISO/IEC (and thought those, DIN, Deutsches Institut für Normung) standards that are internationally followed like no other standards, and provides these links comprehensively like no other NGO does anywhere, certainly not in English language as the NSSN does, which is the preferred language on this English language Wikipedia. The NSSN is not a black-listed spammer and ANSI as NGO not a commercial organisation. Hence "NSSN: A National Resource for Global Standards, search engine by ANSI" is a proper External link that allows readers to look up an international standard (at least what it is about, or the other way around to find the specification's code). Of course, as one looks up a specific standard, there is a link where as to buy the comprehensively detailed standard specifications, which 'products' are not available from any competitors from the institutions that have set and guard the standards in the first place. Readers of WP are not likely to "buy" the detailed specifications simply because that possibility is there, there is no publicity whatsoever. — SomeHuman 07 Sep 2007 12:13 (UTC) This section will be copied into the article's talk page.

P.S. It may be even more appropriate to put the advanced search page of the NSSN in the article instead. It facilitates searching only ISO/IEC specifications. — SomeHuman 07 Sep 2007 12:30 (UTC)

[edit] Common Era

Rather than risk edit warring, I'd like to write to you direct to ask you why you have reverted me here [2] with the words "rv unsourced POV: '2005 of the Common Era' occurs much more often than '2005 of the Christian Era' as well as '2005 of the Current Era'. CE/BCE often link here & more used, must be in 1st par". I'm particularly concerned as your edit summary does not reflect what my amendments were actually doing.

Although I have noted on the talk page that I think the evidence suggests Christian Era to be a more common term than Common Era, I have deliberately not made that statement in the Common Era article as I do not have a reliable source to prove it. My amendments to the paragraph did not make any assertions in this regard, and I'm confused as to how you think I am adding a POV here. Since I am not adding a POV, the first part of your commentary is wrong.

I should also add that my edit included the following sentence in the first paragraph: "The terms are abbreviated CE, with earlier years being designated BCE, described alternatively as "Before the Common Era" or "Before the Christian Era"." Now I do disagree with you about putting the abbreviations in the first paragraph (which I think should be about the Common Era rather than how to abbreviate it), and will argue the point on the talk page, but I deliberately chose not to engage in that argument by edit warring on the article, and so did keep the abbreviations in the first paragraph. Your commentary is therefore wrong in this regard too.

My main motivation for my edits was to downplay the reference to "Current Era". I have noted on the talk page of the article that I remain concerned about the lack of a dictionary reference for the term "Current Era". At least until one is provided, I do think we should downplay the term. You will note that I did keep a reference to the term, but placing it at the end of the first paragraph. Foula 17:30, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

As I edited with an edit comment that explained the main reason for the edit, though tere where other aspects that I wanted to explain on the talk page, if Foula would have given me a few minutes (and there would not have been an edit conflict on that talk page's relevant section that required me to addres further concerns, the more complete set of arguments for the edit might have been more clear.
I did not see any evidence on the talk page that suggest anything relevant, I only noticed a bunch of opinions. I did a simple and in edit comment shortly described check about the statistical occurrence of the three terms, and the outcome was more than clear. Other aspects, see the article talk page. — SomeHuman 09 Sep 2007 18:13 (UTC)

[edit] Common Era + WP:3RR

SomeHuman, I think you are in danger of transgressing the three-revert rule, if you have not done so already. I suggest you take a rest from editing the Common Era article for a while. It's not that important. Regards, WLD^talk|edits 21:37, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the three revert warning on my talk page, but I do not think it applies because:

• I had clearly declared on the talk page that I intended to restore JimWae's edits gradually, but that such could not be done starting from his version because of the numerous broken paragraphs having made comparing versions from the article history impossible. Hence my first 'revert' was only a temporary situation. Thereafter I had started to make some improvements, and as I wanted to save the already modified lead, I found JimWae's version had appeared for the third time, causing an edit conflict. Given the choice of throwing away my proper edits or copying my version in the 'top' window that appears upon an edit conflict, the choice was simple (one can always revert to something that was saved, can't one; whereas I try to improve articles by looking for sources before reinstating some statement or by adding something new thus I do not like to risk losing it and it deserves to become saved so that others can see it). That still makes 0 reverts at that time.
• JimWae's version handles the fanatic Christians' many viewpoints comprehensively and inappropriately from the first part of the lead onwards, while pro-BCE viewpoints are largely destroyed. That violates the WP NPOV policy that should outweigh the 3-revert rule. But usually admins are not paying enough attention to a well-camouflaged POV turning of an article and only count 'reverts', I know. On his talk page, JimwWae had declared to rather prefer the BCE-CE notation, but his edits show he does much more than editing from the devil's advocate's viewpoint.
• It can be proven that Jimwae very intendedly used a technical process of eliminating proper and very notable sources and the statements these had corroborated in a well camouflaged manner, as I partially demonstrated on the article's talk page. That intend makes those edits vandalism, regardless his idea of what belongs in the article or not. Whether such intend would by the average admin-at-the-job be recognized as blatant vandalism, allowing more than three reverts, might be another matter.

Kind regards,

— SomeHuman 13 Sep 2007 23:28 (UTC)

From WP:3RR: "Since the rule is intended to prevent edit warring, reverts which are clearly not such will not breach the rule. Since edit warring is considered harmful, exceptions to the rule will be construed narrowly." In my opinion, your assertions above are probably not sufficient to be regarded as exceptions to the rule. Note that I haven't actually reported you for violations of 3RR - I think there is enough 'wriggle-room' (just) - but I wanted to give you a friendly 'heads-up' that your actions could be construed by some as edit-warring and that you might like to reflect upon your approach. WLD^talk|edits 06:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't thought you would have reported me, as there has not been a violation regardless how one counts; I most certainly did take your warning as friendly. — SomeHuman 18 Sep 2007 22:21 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalisation of waterways features

Hi. Can you please point me to the WP:MOS page that says all individual bridges, tunnels, locks, etc must be described in lower case? As far as I am concerned, Basingstoke Canal and Foxton Locks are proper nouns and should be capitalised as such. It is correct to talk about "the locks at Foxton", and "the canal in Basingstoke", but using mixed capitalisation is misleading: Foxton locks suggests a type of lock known as 'Foxton'. You could not correctly say a Bath deep lock, unless there was more than one of them: one would write 'the Bath Deep Lock. There is only one "Bath Deep Lock" so "Bath deep lock" is not an appropriate nomenclature, however Bath chair and Bath bun describe generic items and should not be capitalised.

Could you please double-check your reference for this format and apply the necessary corrections? Thank you.

EdJogg 09:08, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Whether to capitalize designations for locks or bridges, is a rather difficult topic. On this Wikipedia I had found, for instance Rothensee boat lift, Strépy-Thieu boat lift and numerous other article titles for unique waterway constructions. It is then not logical to use the term 'lock' as a proper name by capitalizing it. Neither Wikipedia:Manual of Style nor Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters) handles the specific topic of such engineering works. It is however clear that these are not institutions (e.g. "Harvard University", "New York-Presbyterian Hospital") or addresses with officially assigned names (like "Elm Street"). In many cases, the location of a such construction may have lend its name to a placename. If one describes the small village that may have grown around, say, the lock at the (assumedly much wider area of) Foxton, then the place would be named Foxton Lock. If one only describes the lock as a construction, with the year it was built, its length, mentioning the next downstream and upstream locks, one describes the Foxton lock, like one might describe the Elm Street sewer or the Leicester Square central lamp post. Similar to the latter example, in a number of cases there are several locks in one municipality and one refers to it as the place's 'top lock', 'bottom lock', 'lower lock', 'deep lock' etc. Such descriptive naming has in many cases become a coined term and as by then it had often become the name of the place, it will often be capitalized; but it is still not more correct to describe the lock itself as Foxton Lock any more than to describe the sewer in Elm Street as Elm Street Sewer. None of the article titles in which I replaced capitals with lower case characters described the location as a place name but only described the actual locks, immobile objects that take room at a place. Notice that in similar occasions of usage, waterways are always capitalized, as these are the aquatic equivalents of e.g. Elm Steet, Compton Crescent, etc. In fact, I'm not quite sure what to think about harbours as these have much in common with both waterways and locks, though in practice one usually refers to the commercial/industrial place with a specific local harbour authority that makes the harbour an institution, either way capitalized.
You may notice that 'Manual of Style (capital letters)' mentions British writers and editors to be more inclined to capitalize (in general) than Americans, and advizes to rather follow this while using either style for other cultures. It would however not have been a nice sight to see only British boat lifts appear with "Boat Lift" capitalized in an article such as List of boat lifts, and boat lifts are rather more unique than locks. One of the aforementioned WP style guide pages links for cases of doubt to the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ, which does not handle the 'locks' problem either. Closest appeared to be [3] of which I'm following the consistency advice of the bottom line.
One of your samples would thus have to be "the Bath deep lock", in which the definite article makes clear that it does not designate a particular type of design and that there will only be one lock near Bath that may be referred to as the deep lock. If there would happen to be a specific type of construction at that site, and one would already refer to the type by the original construction as a coined term, one would have "a Bath deep lock" in another location and would refer to the lock at that location, say in Greater Whatplace, as "the Greater Whatplace lock" and when intending to mention also its design type as "the Bath deep lock at Greater Whatplace" or "the Greater Whatplace lock of the Bath deep lock type". Fortunately, such designations are rare, I did not encounter one in the many articles on locks. Kind Regards. — SomeHuman 15 Sep 2007 12:17 (UTC)

P.S.: Consistency within one article is very clearly prescribed by every style guide. If different capitalization is being used in article titles, not merely articles like 'List of ...' make the required consistency hard to attain, it is utterly impossible to be consistent for example in the article 'Lock (water transport)' that has to mention examples worldwide in fluent text while not logically allowing to create sections by region. Hence, following the consistency rule does not allow another approach than consistency across regions in article naming. Unless one would systematically (and rather immediately upon the creation of new articles) create redirect pages like 'Foxton lock' to article 'Foxton Lock' but contrarily redirect 'Soo Lock' to an article 'Soo lock', and that would be most hard to apply in a consistent way for locks outside the UK and the US as there is no clear standard for each country and would cause contradictory namings for locks within a such country: would the article have to be at 'Berendrecht Lock' or at 'Berendrecht lock'? Hardly anyone would go and check what articles and redirects exist for locks in that particular country only and if one does, one would already find contradictions to be abundant. Thus it appears best to keep it simple by overall consistency in naming articles. — SomeHuman 15 Sep 2007 15:06–15:44 (UTC)

Rather than appear to be beginning an edit war, as you seem to be doing at the moment, I gently suggest you do what is advised is done in these cases, and discuss such radical edits to the article on a suitable discussion page. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways‎ is where the discussion is taking place, and where I am discussing it with others. You would be advised to go there and discuss any changes prior to making these changes.  DDStretch  (talk) 22:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I did reply to the Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject UK Waterways discussion page before your comment here above, and your revert and phrasing on that discussion page as well as here above makes clear who seems to be rather quick at edit-warring, that accusation is undeserved. — SomeHuman 15 Sep 2007 22:54 (UTC)

I am sorry if I have offended you in any way. It is not my intention to do so. The time difference between the messages was all of 2 minutes, and, I was already typing in this message as you were typing yours. So the fact is we were effectively typing in messages simultaneously. The fact remains that such radical changes to a lot of articles would have been better done if they were discussed first. I'm glad you are now doing so.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:25, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I had the same time problem with your revert till now (with numerous edits including for you and for me the edit conflicts on trying to save while already the other had saved something). Let's keep the discussion at the mentioned talk page, though for now, I'll probably give it a bit of rest to allow you to think things over. I understand your having been surprised and having had to react before getting the time to let the full weight of arguments sink in properly. You certainly did not do too badly given the short notice. ;-) — SomeHuman 15 Sep 2007 23:42–23:46 (UTC)

Hardly surprising given that people were surprised and had to react before the weight of the argument had sunk in, given that you didn'y actually make any argument before you started moving articles wholesale. Looking up your talkpage, you do seem to have something of a history of edit warring, and asserting that it's OK, because your view is correct. I trust that you will indeed give it a bit of a rest, and that you will respect the fact that given that your interpretation of the MoS seems at odds with everybody else, your interpretation could well be wrong. Mayalld 10:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you should mention that the articles I started moving wholesale, were stubs of which the content of all of them would easily fit one table in one article linking to a page with photos, and that they had obviously been created wholesale without ever getting article content. — SomeHuman 17 Sep 2007 16:04 (UTC)

I don't think it is appropriate for you to attempt to explain away your contentious edits and page moves, made without any discussion, in this way. It only further compounds the problem. In actual fact, in more than a few cases, this new claim of yours is simply false (take Foxton Locks and others, for example.)  DDStretch  (talk) 16:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Your attitude is below my level. You continuously do not only forget to assume good faith, but you also make false accusations at multiple places. I never even moved or edited the Foxton Locks article, for example. — SomeHuman 17 Sep 2007 16:17 (UTC)

My apologies for this momentary slip-up: in the midst of trying to revert your contentious and undiscussed page moves and edits, I made a mistake. Please replace the example of Foxton Locks with, for example, Anderton Boat Lift, and Hay Inclined Plane. Your attempt to divert any gaze from the problems of what you have done together with your actions, as commented on by others today, argue cogently that you must have realised that your actions were contentious. And still you continued. In these circumstances, assumption of good faith is difficult to maintain, and wikipedia allows it to not be always maintained.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Those were not wholesale moves that handled locks. I should refer to your badmouthing entirely behind my back (while I had been watching the relevant talk page at which the dispute was solely on locks, not boat lifts or inclined planes though these had been mentioned), on User Talk:Pyrotec:

Hi, I noticed you reverted some changes to Locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal made by User:SomeHuman. The issues surrounding the naming scheme used for locks are presently being discussed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways#Lock, tunnel names, etc, and you may like to discuss the matter there.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. The user is continuing to change the names of articles, despite the issue being under active discussion. I think the user is also an admin, and so I wonder what is to be done about it.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Further info: what the user has now done is to move Hay Inclined Plane to Hay inclined plane on the grounds that no other inclined plane is capitalised in the way it was. However, in Foxton Locks, also found by following Foxton Inclined Plane, one can see that it is so capitalised. The problem is that on doing the page move, the user then immediately created a redirect page meaning any reversion could not be carried out. Given that the user is attempting to solve a problem about the choice of name of an article about a lock in Belgium by unilaterally and without discussion attempting to forge a new and specific naming policy for UK locks, I find the actions extremely reprehensible. Additionally, he writes in a condescending and patronising way at times, and makes use of idiosyncratic meanings of words ("fluent") in order to appear to score points. I find the whole thing exasperating and I'm sure that any slip up on my part would be seized upon. We now have a situation where, by fait accompli, a set of contentious page moves, and attempts to forge a new naming convention without discussion and which go against common usage have been carried out in order to make it easier for an editor to write about one lock! Sheesh!  DDStretch  (talk) 15:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok he's not an admin. My mistake. I've also reverted his name change to Anderton Boat Lift and directed people to WP:RM if they want to change it back.  DDStretch  (talk) 17:33, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I had finally spotted this and had prepared a reaction last night, but thought it might be wiser to give it a rest. Now I come to WikiPedia and can't catch my breath as I'm being slaundered by the small group of 'contributors' who listen to each other instead of verifying facts and thinking about argumentations, so here's that reaction:

DDStretch is making a series of utterly false accusations and ridiculous assumptions, what he appears to be extremely good at. There has not been resistance against moving 'X Boat Lift' to 'X boat lift' or 'Y Inclined Plane' to 'Y inclined plane', only against 'Z Lock' to 'Z lock'. Inside the article Foxton Locks, there is a section titled 'Foxton Inclined Plane'; there is no article by that name but only a redirect page that links to that section of Foxton Locks, I cannot know the content of all WP articles. (But now I found out about it I of course created Foxton inclined plane‎). I think the Hay inclined plane to have been the only one of these contraptions with an article that still needed moving. Apart for an article titled "The Boat Lift of Saint-Louis-Arzviller" that was blatantly unacceptable for a WikiPedia title, apparently there was not a single boat lift outside the UK that had an article with 'boat lift' capitalized, and only few of such exist in the UK (as the 'Falkirk Wheel' has a proper name without addition of 'boat lift'). The accusation of "continuing to move articles", pluriel, "despite the issue being under active discussion" was a downright lie. The Hay one is the only one and moving an article on a boat lift had not been contested. And, long after DDStretches false accusation and thus not having caused confusion, because the aforementioned original title had been incorrect in its terminology as well, I "moved Saint-Louis-Arzviller boat lift to Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane: boat lift usually means a vertical movement, on a slope it is an 'inclined plane' (e.g. Ronquières, Strépy-Thieu, etc)", as the move comment shows. Thereafter I also "moved Fonserannes Locks to Fonserannes locks: No reason to capitalize 'locks'; Wikify title)" as this place is in France of which the (few) locks that I had encountered, all had 'lock' in small characters. There is no dispute about that, at the contrary. And DDStretch should have known better than bluntly accusing me of continuing to move articles, as for instance Foxton Locks that he knows me to be aware of (though then not yet of its here above mentioned section) from the WikiProject talk page, was never moved. Neither did I move any other article on a British lock once the discussion had become apparent.
But though there is not as yet a consensus apart from an extremely small group of editors tending to agree with each other, I found for instance the Anderton boat lift articles already reverted by DDStretch, and such not only by a move but also blindly for the content edit which had several improvements that had nothing to do with capitalization (as I usually take care of other shortcomings that are apparent). Furthermore at his revert move DDStretch has the audacity to call my good faith moving of Anderton Boat Lift long before any discussion, "contentious" in the revert move comment; who the hell does this guy think he is? I had mentioned (of course only) one example of what problems are generally caused for editors when articles are inconsistently named, to which he did not respond on the relevant talk page but after which he comes here crying "... in order to make it easier for an editor to write about one lock! Sheesh!". Nonsense, in the context of the discussion on the talk page it is ludicrous to assume such. He claims I am "writing in a condescending and patronising way at times" (assumedly as anyone else who does not fall backwards after DDStretch's "... when one is trying to describe things in an encyclopaedia, which I have done both on here and in my own professional writing life" and his "...with reputable website sources already listed by myself, written in English, which is my first language in which I have professional-level use"), and accuses me here twice of "attempting to forge" something, calls my "actions extremely reprehensible", also numerous times my edits to be "contentious". Meanwhile, Pyrotec who never took part at the discussion had not only reverted my edits to article on a canal, but also the Hay inclined plane and also calls my move having been "contentious" in the move comment. I had spend a lot of time at discussing the problem, assuming a minimum of WP:CIVILry.

So far what I had prepared last night or nearly this morning. Perhaps one more thing, the remark "on doing the page move, the user then immediately created a redirect page meaning any reversion could not be carried out" does not indicate your understanding of page moves: WP automatically creates a redirect for the old name to the new,and it can be reversed easily. — SomeHuman 17 Sep 2007 17:18–17:22 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. So you only move stub articles. Caen Hill Locks is a b-class article and Peterborough Lift Lock is now rated start-class. You are highly contentious.Pyrotec 17:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Peterborough Lift Lock is once again a boat lift and not in the UK; I did not state that not a single true article had been moved, I argued about the accusation of "moving articles wholesale": those were mere stubs. You blame a contributor for contributing. You are the one who started reverting without attempting to discuss either on the relevant article talk page, on my talk page, or on the talk page where a discussion was going on. — SomeHuman 17 Sep 2007 17:42 (UTC)

I am not sure whether you look at WikiProject talk pages. This type of monologue, as you call it, also happened over the naming of UK railway stations. I post below one of my comments from the UK Waterways WikiProject talk page, which mentions the problems with railway station names and renamings. I do not blame a contributor for contributing; I just beleive that renaming articles without getting agreement first is not the best way of contributing.

The naming of Uk railway station articles, whether for example they should be called Glasgow Central station, Glasgow Central Railway Station, Glasgow Central railway station, Central Station Glasgow, etc, etc, (just to take only one station) is another highly contentious area (see Talk:Glasgow Central station) and has led to edit wars; and much heated discussion on both article talk pages and WikiProject trains talk pages (such as Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK stations)). It provides a perfect example of why these contentous article renaming edits should mave been subject to discussion and consensus obtained before they were started.Pyrotec 10:50, 17 September 2007

Pyrotec 18:55, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

As you have an interest in waterways are are welcome to join, if you choose, the WikiProject Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Waterways and you can contribute the same as anyone else. However, at the moment renaming of waterways articles is contentious; and it is not recommended. That also applies to me as you have mentioned above.Pyrotec 19:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment re-instated after User:SomeHuman removed it on the reather spurious grounds that I added it above the bottom - I was just trying to keep the comment attached to the poit I was responding to, but it seems that keeping the discussion readable and on-track isn't a desirable idea Indeed, in that case, you simply created a redirect after the furore had started. I'm afraid that try as I might to assume good faith here, my belief took a knock when it became apparent that you had undertaken a large number of controversial moves without discussion, although in the interests of harmony I was prepared to suspend disbelief and assume good faith at this point. You subsequent post-hoc justification, ad-hominem attacks, and now frankly ludicrous reasoning that as stub articles it was OK to rename them, regardless of the fact that this would leave us with no consistent naming further dented the credibility of your claim to good faith. Some of the articles that you moved are clearly more than a stub (Bath Locks or Caen Hill Locks for example). Surely you can see that there simply isn't a consensus for your approach Mayalld 16:38, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You assert that nobody has a problem with all the other moves. That just isn't the case! You assert that "Boat Lift" isn't part of the name of Anderton Boat Lift because it isn't in the name of Falkirk Wheel, actually that rather proves the point the other way. The boat lift at Falkirk is called the Falkirk Wheel, what then do you imagine that the boat lift at Anderton is called? You complain that your edits were reverted without discussion, yet you feel free to make controversial changes without discussion. You harp on about Foxton Locks, because DDStretch happened to pick the wrong example to complain about. It seems easier to attack everbody who has disagreed with you (which is just about everybody who has posted), rather than allow the discussion to move onto acceptance that even if you acted in good faith, your edits were unwise Mayalld 20:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

To Pyrotec: I had been moving articles for consistency in naming for good reasons as explained here on my talk page to EdJogg and later on at the WikiProject UK Waterways, and not as the original reason but as an additional demonstration of the correctness given the sample of the way railway stations were named. I did not realize the latter namings to have been controversial, and in any way the citation you inserted in your above comment of your personal comment (where from?), dates from after my moves of designations for locks and thus appears to be rather an attempt to try and support your preferred style of titles for articles about locks, it does certainly not take away the relevance of my argumetn that predates your self-citation. One does not need to join a bunch of people gathered in a WikiPorject before one is allowed to contribute at articles, and I have no special interest at waterways in general, let alone those of the UK. A WikiProject does not WP:OWN whatever it claims to be its subject. And the project's talk page is where I continued the discussion that was started by EdJogg - just like the comments by DDStretch on User Talk:Pyrotec - because of my contributions but without notifying me of the discussion having started. — SomeHuman 18 Sep 2007 05:12 (UTC)

To Mayalld: It is not proper to put comments on talk pages anywhere except at the very bottom of a section. I don't want to take the time to try and move an inappropriately placed comment down and add some note etc just because someone was too insensitive to proper Wikipedia talk page behaviour. Such comments are simply deleted, especially if it is part of a simultaneous attack by one group on my talk page of which the member can't wait to jump ahaed of other members of the attacker's group. I'll answer your newly added comment's arguments when I'll have the time. — SomeHuman 18 Sep 2007 05:12 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to move Forward

OK, clearly throwing accusations back and forth isn't actually going to get us anywhere, so let us try and see where we are going with this.

• You have stated that you didn't think that the edits would be controversial, whilst most others have expressed incredulity on this point. From a UK viewpoint, where the majority of people who know about the waterways know that the name, including the work "lock" is a proper name, your edits simply appear wrong, so I'm prepared to accept that your edits were carried out in good faith, either due to a lack of knowledge about the conventions regarding capitalisation of proper nouns in UK English, or due to a lack of knowledge about the fact that names of waterways structures are proper nouns rather than descriptive labels.
• You have mentioned the MoS, which is actually unclear on the issue, but does mention that capitalisation conventions are different in different languages, and in different national varieties, and suggests that for a UK subject, UK conventions are adopted.
• You state that the WikiProject doesn't WP:OWN the pages. Very true, and many constructive edits to the pages come from non-members (DDStretch isn't a member for example) {oops, sorry about that, don't know how I missed you! Mayalld}, however, when presented with an apparent breach of WP:MOS which affects a large number of pages covered by a WikiProject, and which are on a subject that you admit to not knowing a great deal about, would it not be more sensible to ask on the project page whether there is some particular reason for this apparent breach of MoS, rather than jumping to a conclusion.
• Various people, me included, have stated that they find it difficult to assume good faith here, due in part to the way the changes were sprung onto all the pages in a mammoth edit session, and in part due to your attitude when sent messages protesting your actions. For my part, I would like to withdraw any present accusation of bad faith. I'm prepared to accept that you genuinely believed that the articles were in some way wrong. It would probably aid an amicable resolution if you would accept that making mass style edits on articles that you don't know much about without prior discussion wasn't the best way to proceeed, and was an error of judgement.
• You have complained that your edits have been reverted without discussion, and that the reverts have gone further than just reverting the naming, in that some content changes that you made were also reverted. In actual fact the reverts started after a number of editors had discussed what was happening, and agreed that it was wrong. In reverting to the status quo (which is the proper place to be, pending any consensus that the staus quo is wrong), it is unfortunate that a small number of other useful edits were also lost. Clearly, given the number of articles that you moved, reverting them takes up the time of other editors. Not all editors have an unlimited amount of time available, and they may regrettably revert constructive edits in the process. I'm sure that they have done this accidentally, and in good faith.
• You have continued to insist that your edits were correct, yet on this point you are a lone voice. A clear consensus is emerging amongst people that know about waterways that the names of waterways structures are proper nouns, and should be capitalised. Whilst I can quite understand that you strongly believe that you are right, and others are wrong, I would hope that you can see that where you are the lone voice in the wilderness, it is possible that you are incorrect, and that others who are more experienced in UK canal matters probably know better about the names of structures.

In summary, I would like to invite you to step back from further confrontation on the issue. I don't think that it is necessary for you to accept that your POV on the naming issue is wrong, just that it is a view that isn't shared, and that in such a case, the U-1 view should be allowed to prevail. I don't see that everybody spending time taking this to formal dispute resolution is going to be a good use of time, and would rather spend the time improving the coverage than arguing this point further, which is in any case likely only to generate heat rather than light. I hope that you will continue to contribute to UK Waterways articles, whilst respecting the consensus on article naming.

Mayalld 07:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I am also prepared to withdraw my statements which might have attributed lack of good faith to your actions, and would hope that, as a way of moving forward, you would also withdraw the personal statements you have made about me and others. We are supposed to be jointly engaged in a collaborative venture here, so let us get collaborating!  DDStretch  (talk) 08:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Though unfortunately still appearing to doubt my good faith and though I can't subscribe all of his points of view and I'm not the only one who did not consider my article naming an apparent breach of WP:MoS, I appreciate Mayalld's practical attitude. DDStretch's request to withdraw "personal statements" is not quite as acceptable as I did not started to make such, and only referred to the attacks against my person DDStretch committed with too many unpleasant terms as shown above this subsection, in particular on a talk page of which I could not even have realized it to exist. The to me appauling "consensus" amongst a few members of a group has been that while I had been offering proper arguments on a discussion page at which without quite agreeing with me some editors had admitted my having a point, my edits or moves were found to be and were called "contentious", not only on that talk page but by some also in several revert edit comments that one must realize to be permanent on a most public place, where one cannot modify or withdraw such direct personal attacks.
One can call edits or article moves "arguable" or "disputable", but calling these "contentious" is always derogatory and implying their editor to have the intend of or eagerness towards causing a dispute for the sake of the dispute, or him to be too stupid to realize what is an apparent likelyhood to anyone else, and thus the term invariably constitues a WP:PA. (In the above section Pyrotec makes it very personally "You are highly contentious".) From Merriam-Webster OnLine:

contentious
One entry found for contentious.
Main Entry: con·ten·tious
Pronunciation: k&n-'ten(t)-sh&s
Function: adjective
1 : likely to cause contention <a contentious argument>
2 : exhibiting an often perverse and wearisome tendency to quarrels and disputes <a man of a most contentious nature>
synonym see BELLIGERENT

and at the linked belligerent one reads amongst the various synonyms, specifically for contentious:

CONTENTIOUS implies perverse and irritating fondness for arguing and quarreling <wearied by his contentious disposition>.

As DDStretch claims to be a professional writer and a native speaker of English, the choice of that term should not have been a light one, especially while claiming to be a Doctor in Psychology on his talk page. On the other hand, I also spot this series of edit comments (uninterrupted sequence from earlier to later, my bold-face here):

2007-09-14 18:28 SomeHuman: "(moved Anderton Boat Lift to Anderton boat lift: No reason for capitalization, wikify title)"
2007-09-14 21:58 SomeHuman: "(update links, location Strépy-Thieu)"
2007-09-16 17:29 DDStretch: "(Reverted good faith edits by SomeHuman; Reverting contentious article name-change (see official website for evidence of correct capitalization. using TW)"
2007-09-16 17:31 DDStretch: "(moved Anderton boat lift to Anderton Boat Lift over redirect: Refer to WP:RM if this move is still wanted. The original move is contentious, has not been discussed with other editors, and it also contravenes the verified capitalization as used)"
2007-09-17 01:56 SomeHuman: "(The Alderton Boat Lift is a boat lift that happens to be a boat lift to lift boats. Partially undo contentious blind revert without considering/notification Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways)"
2007-09-17 07:31 DDStretch: "(Reverted good faith edits by SomeHuman. using TW)"
2007-09-17 07:34 DDStretch: "(Reverted good faith edits by Ddstretch; Ok - something went wrong there. using TW)"

Something went wrong, so for something good to come out of all this, let's have "contentious" scratched from the vocabulary fit to use on WP, shall we.

— SomeHuman 18 Sep 2007 22:09 (UTC)

If one wishes to play a dictionary game, then try following what contend means. Or, you can follow contention, for example, in the extract you posted The first two senses are the ones I intended to mean. In my dictionary (Chambers Dictionary) contend primarily means in its verb form to dispute and debate. Which is how I used it in its adjectival form. The hint that this is what I meant was that I also used the term "good faith" in those edit summaries. I have been very careful in my use of terms, and this corresponds to the use of the term in my professional life. Also note that I said the edits were contentious, not that you were a contentious person in the evidence you have supplied. The Chambers online dictionary has this as the definition of contentious, and the Oxford Online Resources have this. Both give my intended meaning of contentious the primary meaning (as do following the early links in the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary.) And so, I'm afraid that it isn't always the case that calling something contentious "is always derogatory and implying their editor to have the intend of or eagerness towards causing a dispute for the sake of the dispute, or him to be too stupid to realize what is an apparent likelyhood to anyone else, and thus the term invariably constitues a WP:PA." as you stated it was. I'm sorry to dispute with you once again, but what you think always is the case here just isn't always the case.

But setting that to one side, I am a little sorry that you cannot yet appear just to accept the offer to settle matters as both of us have offered you and reciprocate the apologies. I once more state that I withdraw the statements you attribute to an attributed lack of good faith. Can you at least not find it in yourself to do the same?  DDStretch  (talk) 22:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Concerning "contentious" once more: Since it is a word that clearly bothers you, how about this as an even more useful way forward? You've already suggested that we stop using contentious. Ok, I will. Instead I will use words like "disputed", or "controversial", or some such, but not "contentious". In return, how about admitting that your mass of edits were a little unwise, since, in terms of the meaning I intended the now-banned word to have, they certainly proved to be a cause of great dispute, and these kinds of actions do run counter to what wikipedia advises? Tit-for-tat admision and withdrawal? Mutual withdrawal? etc etc?  DDStretch  (talk) 23:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting used to your reactions being quicker and sharper than your reading. You read in my response here above, that your professional level of English and your academic title in psychology should have made you aware of the connotations of the adjective "contentious", it never means "unfortunately having been contended", I did not need Merriam-Webster to immediately recognize the adjective's implications that are not part of "to contend", whilst I'm not even a native speaker of the language. Apparently, as you seem to think I needed a hint, you did not notice that I wrote behind it: "On the other hand" followed in bold by the relative contradictions between your mentioning my "good faith edit"s and my "contentious move"s. As became apparent by two edit conflicts while answering now, it took you a while to find my closing sentence. I do not contend my edits to have caused a dispute, but such is the case for any edit and a choice of character case that can be defended is not the summum of being WP:BOLD. I have known worse disputes to go on for months for minor things, and large essential changes to be well accepted. Seeking advice before changing usually triggers just as difficult a discussion that much later ends up in a senseless vote in which the strenght of arguments rarely determines the result, which I have known then to be contested with even more vigour and causing a full edit-war with 3RR blocks etc. It is not my style to withdraw whatever reality took place, neither is it in my character to persist in hard feelings or to make a future reality unpleasant. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 18 Sep 2007 23:55 (UTC)

I was attending a sick child and then got diverted by other matters. That was why my response seemed split and then delayed. My apologies for not having a healthy son at the moment. Best wishes.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to hear about your child being sick, such is not a requirement for editing in intervals as I do all the time - which is why you and I had numerous and assumedly also for you at moments quite annoying edit conflicts during our lively discussion at the project's talk page the other night. It's nothing to make one upset, even though it often makes part of a prepared reply worthless and in need of rephrasing, which by the time that's done... etc. Good luck, and best wishes for your child. — SomeHuman 19 Sep 2007 00:41 (UTC)

I certainly didn't read "contentious" as an attack on you, and as a native speaker of UK English, regardless of what any (US) dictionary might say on the subject I don't believe that the word has any negative connotation in normal UK usage. However, this discussion has reminded me that those who are not native speakers tend to be more precise in their use of language, and understand words in a sense closer to their dictionary definition, rather than their vernacular usage. A contentious seems capable of an unintended reading, I'll try to avoid it for the future. I think that it is interesting to note that this disagreement over the word contentious mirrors the original misunderstanding as to whether the names of locks etc. are proper names, or merely descriptive labels. Your did have a point, which you clearly believed, and which you made well, however that point (no matter how well made) was incorrect, and to UK natives who were not originally aware that you aren't British yourself (because your written English doesn't betray that) it would have seemed perplexing that you could think that the names of locks were not proper names. I repeat that I am withdrawing any suggestion or implication of a lack of good faith on your part, and anything in the stuff above that implies otherwise was not intended that way. Can we draw a line under this? Mayalld 06:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I would like to echo (some of) Mayalld's sentiments. Your grasp of the English language is almost too good! I am very impressed (I am hopeless at anything other than English). Usually there is some aspect of usage that 'gives the game away' that the editor's first language is not English. I suspect that, in this case, had the contributors to this discussion (including myself) picked up on this earlier, some of the heat might have been taken out of the exchanges. I'm not really sure what I'm suggesting you (or I) could do to avoid similar in future, but I would certainly have placed a different emphasis on my initial responses had I known (and, right or not, I don't usually look at a user's user page before responding on their talk page). -- EdJogg 08:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

First of all, my thanks for the best wishes for my son's recovery, SomeHuman—he is going to require some time in hospital in the future, and an operation to cure his current problem. Now onto the other matter: I would also like to state my complete agreement with what Mayalid and EdJogg have written, and withdraw any statements I made that you feel attacked you. On the matter of language problems, I would just like to note that a similar word I used and which you mentioned, "forge", was not intended to be meant in one of its sense as "to fake" or "to produce a false imitation", but was meant in its sense of "to make" or "to construct", with elements of heavy work being involved (as in a steel forge - hammering out metal). Rudolph Guiliani used the word in the sense I intended on the steps of 10 Downing Street today after a meeting with Gordon Brown, in fact. I will be more careful in future and try to take into account any potential language issues. One of the problems of discussing matters in a manner which is not face-to-face is that all the non-verbal cues (intonations, facial expressions, etc) that normally moderate meanings of words when they are spoken face-to-face as opposed to written and read are absent. That means that things can get out of hand a little at times. I'm sorry this happened here. We jokingly speak about USA and UK differences in the languages we each use as being a case of two nations divided by a common language. So, it can be hard to communicate at times even between people from the USA and UK, and the problems are (I know from personal experience of talking with my wife and child) greater when English is not one's first language. So, sorry. Thank you.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm convinced of your good intentions. It once again demonstrates the English-language Wikipedia to be a more multi-cultural project than its counterparts in other languages, which makes it all the more attractive to me. DDStretch notices the problem of texts missing the information that normally prevents or quickly corrects false assumptions, which in fact makes me hate even phone calls though one can still hear intonations etc but one misses non-verbal clues. It is why I tend to be overly precise in my wording while writing and sometimes feel I have to forge a specific phrase at the right place whilst others might prefer to use a more simple everyday wording. The differences amongst English-speaking cultures and those with often even less connected ones, require more attention here than while writing a text addressing a relatively homogenous group. Also social and educational backgrounds here show very broad variations.
I have no intention to write an article on the world's largest lock at Berendrecht or its near-twin immediately beside it, the seaport lock at the Zandvliet side in Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo, or Baudouin Lock/Baudouin lock/Boudewijn Lock/Boudewijn lock or Kallo Lock/Kallo lock, each of which I know to exist, and that's about it. I don't think we have gongooglers here in Belgium, and they would not have access to these Port of Antwerp "sea" locks either (quite far from the North Sea though). For an encyclopaedia it is not acceptable to have separate "articles" on minor locks about which hardly any information is available, just because they happen to be in the UK, while technically far more interesting and economically much more important locks that are being used by ships from all over the world remain unknown to this Wikipedia. Their articles on the Dutch-language Wikipedia are not very impressive; at least each nl:zeesluis has an article (nl:Berendrechtsluis, nl:Zandvlietsluis, nl:Boudewijnsluis, nl:Kallosluis) and would I be biased for not blaming it having missed the nl:Foxtonsluizen? I may be barking at the wrong tree as you appear to be members of a UK project, but you are most likely to be the only group who might have a slight interest and the expertise and I can imagine it to be quite a change and a challenge...
By the way, I only discovered those seaport lock articles to be missing, long after the discussion had started. My initial interest had originated from a family member's eyewitness description of Strépy-Thieu whereas I had been aware only of the nearby in Belgium (in)famous inclined plane at Ronquières that came to exist in the old unitary Belgian days by what is called (literally translated from Dutch) waffle iron politics: an in the economical competition with Rotterdam highly needed investment in Flanders at the Port of Antwerp, which serves the entire country, had to be compensated in Wallonia with an equal investment of little economical and very local use that mainly created a typical school trip destination. Starting from their articles, it soon became apparent that nearly all inclined planes and boat lifts were named without capitalizing these terms, by now apparently because few are in the UK... Only the constructions other than ordinary locks were to be renamed consistently and as completely as I could find them, and linked (some obvious articles were missing from 'See also' while several articles had links to a few of the least relevant samples, a problem that arose precisely because some articles were not named in a consistent manner or style of capitalization).
After having looked into the capitalization problem from different angles (and having found more than locks and railway stations with little consistency), my intention had been to complete the 'ordinary' locks along the canal from Newbury to Bristol as a test-case, precisely because ordinary locks are the more traditional ones (including their naming) and for the location along a sufficiently central part of the UK, because of the very traditional naming of small villages in that part of the country that is most traditional in capitalizing, and because nearly every lock had a mere stub article with few links (nearly always the same ones from the article on the canal and one about only that canal's locks except for a link from a nearby village's article). I visited the area a couple of times and I must have seen a few of the locks though I can't remember which ones. The one canal's stretch of locks would have been improved upon, for instance the downstream/upstream problem EdJogg had also encountered, and the annoying opening phrases of the type "The Alderton Lock is a lock...". After that I would have waited for a couple of weeks or longer, to see what reactions came, if any. It appears unlikely to you that my edits and moves might have passed without stirring up matters, but you might be surprised at which articles much more substantial changes go by unnoticed. There is little predictability about the kind of articles and about the kind of changes that effortlessly find a consensus or cause a major controversy. Had it passed, it would have helped to bring Wikipedia in a more consistent shape, and in line with the Wikipedia manual of style on capitalization of article titles that rather tends to follow a modern trend of not capitalizing what does not absolutely needs to be capitalized. So I have to admit that I had chosen the area because it was the least unlikely for my renaming to be opposed, but not expecting it to actually become opposed. It would make little sense to start at an area where for instance many articles already are named as "lock" and work all along countries and canals until one gets opposition. Unlike your opinion, it would not have been wise to consult other editors: with stub articles one is very likely to find one or two contributors that at first will try and defend 'their' articles and the 'outsider' stands little chance of being able to ever get a change agreed upon regardless an argumentation for such, while two or three people are not a good indication of the Wikipedia community. Conversely, if more people would get envolved, one has a genuine break unless a true consensus of opposition gets soon apparent. So be it. If matters would have been dealt with in a more civil manner without false assumptions, demonstrations of assuming bad faith, and quick reverts without participating in the ongoing discussion, most of the articles might have remained unaltered for a few days until one had had the time to think things over and to make comparisons with the naming of other topics. The nature and class of the locks articles (with perhaps very few exceptions) can stand a short while of being named in a manner that is not an error against the language or the Wikipedia MoS, but merely not the preferred capitalization in naming. Upon finding a consensus against my point of view on the renaming, I would have been best placed to revert the moves (which maintains the in any case needed redirect from "Z lock" and in fact a move/revert move is a surprisingly efficient way of creating redirect pages without the risk of pasting an utterly wrong title of an earlier created redirect - those redirects are still needed for all locks etc that had not been moved, as also DDStretch had suggested) and change controversial names and links while preserving obvious improvements, you would not have had to bother other than in participating at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Waterways. That page now appears to be tackling the naming problem, but I'm sorry that one appears to think of changing other series of articles into the "Lock" style rather than attempting to research which relevant problems occur and how one might find a practical way of solving them, for instance after proper international English language usage research including a larger number of topics in a WP:MoS subpage. WP:MoS' current referring to external manuals of style that may not handle the capitalization in a same way and are not widely available for the average contributor, is indeed of little help. One might consider 'local usage' to be impractical for non-English speaking areas as causing Franglais names without appropriate capitalization and names of German origin with each substantive invariably capitalized or conversely thinking it should not be in English where it rather has to be. One might for instance propose to use the American or the English style (for topics showing a difference) according to the version in which the article gets written, though that of course has all the disadvantages that I had explained to exist if one is not consistent. So where does one go from here? That does remain my criticism of a British point of view at a very international encyclopaedia on topics where the language offers no clear rules or publicized general consensus. The only efficient result might come to be by investigating per topic which usage prevails in the English language in general and rather coerce it (which any MoS does) also for countries with another prevalence in as far as it does not become an error, though as I had tried to explain and had not quickly been understood by several editors, there is a difference between e.g. a university (for which the WP:MoS is clear: an institution has to be capitalized) and a lock, or between a settlement around a lock and the technical construction and function of the lock itself. If the latter does not appear to make a difference in the UK according to currently established consensus here, it might in other English-speaking countries (I'm not claiming this to be the case, but it needs to be looked into in the way I had described on the project talk page with a misinterpreted usage of fluent text) and in the UK there might be similar differentiations about other topics. As at least one contributor, DDStretch, is a professional writer, perhaps he has access to an external MoS that is sufficiently internationally oriented and offers more samples than the current WP:MoS?
— SomeHuman 19 Sep 2007 22:46 (UTC)

Sorry, I have not had time to read all the above comments, so I might be duplicating some of the discussions. I admit to having reverted some changes using the word Contentious. The Concise Oxford dictionary defines the word as:

adj causing or likely to cause disagreement or controversy. law of, relating to, or involving differences between contending parties.

Looking at the textual discussions above, I think my use of the word was accurate; however that depends whether the above is regarded as disagreement or just discussion.Pyrotec 20:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Your use of the word 'contentious' may have been accurate, but not wise. Because the context allowed for either a perfectly neutral or a highly pejorative meaning. When reverting someone without participating at a discussion, which interpretation appears most likely to be made? — SomeHuman 26 Sep 2007 18:10 (UTC)

[edit] Lake article from last year

You might want to get involved in this discussion. Based on your move last year (from "Lac de la Gruyère" to "Lake of Gruyère"), I moved the page again (after User:Docu reverted your move without merit or explanation). You had solid guidelines for the move, and I have since supported the move with evidence of English usage for the name. User Docu is now continually attempting to get the name changed back. Rarelibra (talk) 20:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CSDs

That long list of g6 deletions you submitted to CSD has been taken care of. Trusilver 03:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do you remember Peter?

I've spent the last few hours reading and re-reading your conversations on Talk:Flemish and your own talk page re: a Flemish article. The reason I found you was a comment by C mon on another talk somewhere..."Flemish do not belong to the Dutch etnic group." So, if we don't belong with the Dutch, and Peter Isotalo won't allow us to have our own article, then where do I go? I know there are many reasons for this ethno-stratification. Expressions of prejudice can be very subtle. Meanings and purposes can remain hidden behind a veil of righteousness. I've been down this street before. I don't like it here any more than I like it in "real" life. I've done a little editing and have encountered a resistence to my admitted pro-Flemish/Belgian POV. I have no doubt that I will encounter much more as time goes on.

I would imagine that, somewhere, there is the beginning of an article...maybe a series of articles...about Flanders/Flemish/Belgium. I am also very sure that you have confronted this "pro everything netherlands" stance many times. I should point out that I am coming into this "coversation" with, what I feel, is a unique perspective. Ive lived in America for the last 55 years. For me, this lack of good will is new. I hope it doesn't last.--Buster7 (talk) 04:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)