User talk:Tannin/030516

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Archived at User_talk:Tannin/030301, User_talk:Tannin/030407, and User_talk:Tannin/030430

I might be excessively conspiratorial, but I'm under the suspicion that Zog is Lir/Vera out for revenge. Is anyone else? 172

You put me to shame! I took yesterday off from Wiki to make an early start to a full day's birding at Minsmere RSPB reserve on the east coast, and I find my watchlist overflowing with your edits. Best birds were a couple of overshoots from southern Europe, an Alpine Swift and a White Stork, together with a locally-breeding Hobby, surely the most elegant of Falcons. jimfbleak

As you probably realise, the Swift/Common Swift is one of several, like raven and Kingfisher which started in that mould. I doesn't help that in the UK where there is only one common member of each of these groups they are invariably referred to by just the one-word name. jimfbleak

PS. I'll do Swift -it's time I did something.

This capitalisation thing is doing my head in. In particular Michael Harty's actions. I'm sure he thinks he is doing the right thing, but I am so fed up working on something only to find him deciding to lowercase things I put in capitals for specific grammatical reasons or because they are always put so for specific reasons in history books. I am working on one big article right now and some things are capitalised for a reason. If he so much as lays a finger on any of them, he will get a bollocking from hell and complete reversion. This really is getting so frustrating. ÉÍREman 00:04 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

You are of course 100% right, and I do like a lot of his work. But as you well know it is frustrating to work on something and strictly follow standard capitalisation rules and then turn around and find someone sweep through and change them unilaterally. I think I was just letting off steam above; I had just gone into a couple of pages I had worked some times ago on to find capitalisation changes that are in my view wrong. I was livid, to put it mildly. Given the amount of factual errors on wiki, grammatical errors on wiki, spelling errors, etc capitalisation is a minor problem, particularly in professionally written articles like yours on bird, mine on history. Being second guessed in areas where you know what you are talking about and the people who edit the text don't have anything like the same knowledge can be extremely irritating. It would be in a professional work you were being paid to produce. It is doubly so something like wiki where your expertise it being given to wiki for free. But yes, I agree, Michael is reasonable, and on balance he does a damn good job. And no, I wouldn't give him the bollocking from hell. I'll just try to point out to him where he is wrong. Good editors are hard to come by (especially with Zoe's retirement (please let it be a Frank Sinatra temporary retirement)) and Michael is a damn good editor. And having put so much work into the royal naming conventions, I know all about the importance of coherent widely applied rules. I think the problem isn't so much with Michael as with our capitalisation rules on wiki, which (how do I say it without sounding anti-American?) embody the worst elements of the American lowest common denominator style of english. British english and certainly hiberno-english regard capitals as a requirement in a lot of places where American english tends to see them as an unnecessary bit of decoration that could, and on wiki, should, be removed. And our overly American-orientated rules with their own unique views on everything from capitalisation to royal name use is something that does annoy me, hence my work with Deb to completely change the royal naming rules from seeing titles as point unnecessary pompous decoration to something that had to be followed, given that surnames in that context are worthless.

OK. I've made my long ramble. I'll go back and do something on wiki, maybe proofread that page I have just finished on the Irish Houses of Parliament. ÉÍREman 00:55 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

So we got the okay to capitalize the second word in bird names? Kingturtle 04:22 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

I won't get much time on Wiki today, but just to bring you up to speed, I'm trying to sort out the Turdidae, where we had a lot of species accounts, but not much structure, I've sorted out the wheatears with a genus account and some tweaks, and I'm trying to make Turdidae more rational, although there is some major work needed there. Old World thrush will probably disappear somewhere along the way. jimfbleak

I think I've got as far as I can go on the Turdidae now-this large group is very much a work in progress. Old World thrush is now a redirect, and Turdidae lists the genera covered so far. Thrush will need to be split at some stage, but its not a problem yet.

Wow, I know a bit about New World vultures, but I never realized that they were essentially unrelated to the Old World vultures. You learn something new every day, that's what keeps me coming back to Wikipedia (in case I ever find myself able to leave ;). -- John Owens

P.S. (dang, I'm PSing too much lately): Isn't that California Condor in Image:California-condor.jpg a juvenile, if I recall correctly? Would it be more appropriate to have an adult, or is it just a matter of what pictures are available? -- John Owens
You've got to quit putting slashes at the end of all your links. ;) This time, I knew a fair amount (rather dusty though) about the European Robin Redbreast, and of course I'm quite familiar with the American Robin, but had no idea there was an Australian one as well. I don't think I ever got to see a Robin in my time in Europe, sadly.
In general, my knowledge of birds isn't terribly scientific, more the bird-watcher kind of knowledge, which rubbed off on me from my mother. So it's mostly what they look like, what they sound like, and a bit about their habits, and the first two are rather difficult to represent in a Wikipedia page without equipment I don't have (can you imagine "[[Media:Great_Horned_Owl.ogg|Click here to hear User:JohnOwens trying to sound like a Great Horned Owl]]"? ;). That's why I haven't contributed much in the bird area, and the fact that I think they should be lowercase has absolutely nothing to do with it. ;) -- John Owens
Slashes after a domain-only URL, like http://www.wikipedia.org/ or http://www.wikipedia.org , are optional. I much prefer that they get the slash myself, but it's not mandatory. They're usually similarly optional, depending on the server, when the target is a directory, like (hypothetical example) http://www.wikipedia.org/help/ or http://www.wikipedia.org/help . But when the target is a file or similarly specific (there's probably a name for the type of entity, but I don't know it offhand), like almost anything with a file-type suffix, it should never get the slash, e.g. http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/3/3d/California-condor-thumbnail.jpg but not http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/3/3d/California-condor-thumbnail.jpg/ . -- John Owens
P.S. again: DK??
OK, DW, then I know who you're talking about, certainly. -- John Owens

My only query with Buzzard is the duplication of the Buteo species. Why not make it "other species with buzzard in the name" ?(that's snappy)

Helpfully, some books hyphenate honey-buzzard, some don't. My preference would be to keep the Honey Buzzard and hyphenate the rest.

The honey buzzards superficially resemble buteo buzzards, hence the name, but are specialist feeders on wasp nests and larvae. That could either go in the Buzzard article or as a generic honey buzzard entry. The first would be my preference, since it can always be duplicated when the Pernis articles are written jimfbleak 09:52 May 2, 2003 (UTC)

ignore para 1 above. jimfbleak
just seen your message, we seem to have arrived at the same conclusion.
Although widening the debate is obviously desirable, whilst there are so many edits going through my watchlist, messages can drop off the end overnight unless they are highlighted as new messages, so I'd rather leave it for the time being. JIM

I have to go back to work, I can't continue the fight. Can somebody else take it on? -- Zoe

I highlighted some articles in need of work on my talk page. Would you be interested in taking a look? 172

Since you have been working on the Australian animals, maybe you would know what the last line of the article possum is supposed to refer to? Thanks, Rmhermen 12:53 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

Good addition to the Stalin article. 172

Please see the comments on the Stalin talk page. And thanks for the very nice words on my talk page! 172

I've seen Marsh Harrier comment, but I'm off to mow the lawn, so I'll give it some thought whilst I do that jimfbleak 09:50 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Wrt. Women's suffrage: Yes, I did do my research. If you really want to go into the details of Austalias treatment of its native population, that's fine. Please see Talk:Women's suffrage. -- Egil 14:51 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Tannin, I hope you're better, mate.

Going back to two previous issues, I tend to take the view that if scientific and English names are effectively synonyms, eg Certhidae=Certhia=Treecreeper, then the scientific entry should only be a redirect to the English article. Bird and Aves are synonyms, so my preference would be to make the latter a redirect, cut Bird back to a basic core, and follow Mav's suggestion of running taxonomy, evolution etc as linked articles from that. If you aren't happy with that, I'm sure I can live with whatever you decide.

On the Marsh Harrier bit, I'll follow your suggestion jimfbleak 06:08 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

Regarding ISO 3166-2: Thanks. Protect the homeland! Tlaxcala can wait. :) -- Tim Starling 07:40 May 6, 2003 (UTC)

G-man is very confused about the nature of your edits to the Stalin article. Maybe you'd like to take a look.

BTW, where's ÉÍREman? I hope that he hasn't left the site in disgust. 172

I'd really appreciate some help on the mailing list. Fred, a master of demagoguery, is arguing that I shouldn't become an admin because I've been long attempting to slip in "pro-Communist biases" in articles, pointing out my role in the edit war pertaining to Communist state. Fred is misleading to the point of being a liar. I actually added valid NPOV contributions on the same issues that he attempted (he brought up no concrete examples) to raise, like the Great Purges, the social consequences of collectivization under Stalin, the stagnation of the centrally planned Soviet economy since the 1970s, the destabilizing effects of the Cultural Revolution, and the aftermath of the Great Leap forward in many other articles. But his charges are so absurd that I'm actually embarrassed to dignify those charges with a response.

He's also arguing that you, JTD, and I share the same 'revisionist pro-Communist bias' (not that I'd ever mind being lumped with such great minds as you and JTD!). Aside from getting into his thick head that his little personal theories didn't belong in that particular article, could someone explain that Fred has no fundamental understanding of the academic discipline of history or any social science? 172

Hi Tannin. I've got a lot of work on at the moment, so my contributions are likely to drop off for a few days, although I'd like to get family entries for Oldworld flycatchers, [[gannet]s and titmice done. I don't know if you get any Paridae in Oz, but I can't decide whether the main entry should be "Tit (bird)", which is standard in the UK, "Titmouse" (US) or "Titmice". Perhaps US chickadee might be easier. I notice you've had the occasional foray into mammals too.

I had to go to London yesterday for work, but took a major diversion on way back to see an Audouin's Gull, a first for Britain, and presumably the same bird seen recently on the Dutch coast. Very pleased with this, since I'd missed this species on holidays in the Med.

Are there any introduced birds that aren't pests in Oz? I noticed Common Myna join the gang. A bit misnamed this, we saw far more Jungle Mynas in India. jimfbleak 06:09 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

I know that you work with computers now, but I believe that I read that you used to teach sociology. Sorry for what you felt was an inaccuracy. I'll be more careful. BTW, thanks for your help on the talk page! 172

You'll love this :-( The Cunctator is now trying to insert Fred's stuff into Communist state. Oh God. Here we go again. ÉÍREman 04:45 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

My God but Communist state is quiet. There hasn't be a reversion in 14 minutes. (That, BTW Stan if you are reading this, is sarcasm and irony rolled into one!) Maybe creating a separate Communist government did the trick. I still think what is there is absolute rubbish, but who knows, maybe Fred can produce something NPOV, though if he thinks Yugoslavia under Tito was a USSR satellite he knows even less about the topic than I presumed up to now. I have made clear to him that I will be keeping far away from that page. 172 knows more about the minutæ of communism than I do so he can have the 'pleasure' of dealing with that page.

  • That thought will give me nightmares tonight. 172

Maybe if Fred is happy with his own page (and he appears to be), he will oppose any more attempts by The Cunctator to merge the page and we might actually have a real peace on Communist state, though I won't hold my breath! ÉÍREman 02:22 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Tannin, could you please take a look at petrel, and the relevant section of list of birds, and see if what I've put makes any sense. I'm not sure whether Gadfly petrels are only Pterodroma or all the Procellaridae petrels, but they have to be grouped together for this anyway. Also should Adamastor cinereus be a shearwater or a petrel ? jimfbleak 05:27 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

Tannin, could you come up with a coherent explanation how the Wikipedia entries Communist state and Communist government usefully refer to different things? I can't conceive of one. Creating different permutations of the same content just to allow people with different points of view or styles to avoid each other is not in Wikipedia's best interest (contentwise). --The Cunctator

Agreed. It came about because of Fred's edit war; and IMO it's just playing into Fred's "M"POV ideas. we're NPOV, not MPOV -- Tarquin 09:23 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I was wondering, why haven't you a more harsh selection to let people log in. I mean, first, you could check their email and delay (2 days for instance) the login process in order to allow only motivated people. What do you think about that? User:Thomas 05/10/03

Thanks for help. I think the petrel bit at least makes sense now, but it's not pretty. I've found a few articles I didn't know about, like canary, goldfinch, moved to American Goldfinch, and Kestrel. One problem is that there is no obvious way of picking up existing articles in the areas we are interested in - you can't search for every species. jimfbleak

Tannin, is there any reason you put a "." or some other text on non-existent user pages? You do not need to do this to get to the talk page anymore -- the "Discuss this page" link always appears. --Eloquence 04:54 May 11, 2003 (UTC)

I like the species article-you have put a lot of work into into it. Is is worth hiving off the detailed discussions of each concept as a separate article? Two thoughts, neither of which I know the answer to, and one of which is probably not relevant. Is there an agreed DNA difference to help decide if allopatric forms are different species? I also heard somewhere that life on earth might have arisen on three separate occasions (useless pseudofact)

The hybrid zone is interesting. Until recently Carrion Crow and Hooded Crow were considered to be subspecies because they hybridise readily (in the UK , the boundary is diagonally across Scotland). But they have now been split because the zone does not expand, which suggests that the hybrid crows, though fertile, are marginally disadvantaged compared to both of the parent species. The zone is however slowly moving north, presumably as global warming changes the relevant balance.

Thanks, Jim. DNA difference. Thankyou for reminding me. Next time I add to species I should discuss the idea of "non-judgemental" species, as in Sibley et al defining "subspecies" as x% DNA-DNA melting point difference, and "species" as y%, and so on. (Unless, of course, someone else does first.)
I'm not aware of any agreed difference numbers, apart from that, but would be interested to read further.
Yes, I think that it ought to be split, but not yet. Much easier to work with it in one cohesive lump, and then figure out where to put the different parts later. Also, I think it is very important with an entry on a fundamental concept like "species", that the main entry still contain all of the essential understadings - i,e., a split needs to be done carefully, and the hived-off content summarised effectively. I'll probably take a break from it for a while, though. I feel a little jaded.
Interestng that the C. corone - C. cornix zone is moving north! I didn't know that. I guess I was thinking (for some stupid reason) that these things are only happening in Australia. (OK, I hear about Polar Bears & the like, but I see things happening here: seeing is belieing, I guess.)

I meant to thank you for the sysop nomination on the mailing list. I'm not surprised it wasn't seconded, since I've only been active since 14th Feb (I think}, but I appreciated it anyway. jimfbleak

Thanks, mate. It was quite a surprise when I went on hotmail tonight to find I had been nominated for sysop. I really was overwhelmed by Abe's comments. And yeah, I can be rude (not in real life, ironically! There I am a complete pussycat). I tend to give 100% on wiki and expect very high standards, perhaps sometimes forgetting that not everyone on wiki is of lecturer standard. I need to make allowances more, I suppose but I do want to see the best article, not an article is mediocre, poorly focused or not of high encyclopædic standards. But Ade is right on one thing; if some people find me rude, they should meet other lecturers on here sometime. I'm like Mother Theresa compared to what most academics I know would say if they saw some wiki articles. (Though there are a hell of a lot of bloody good articles of encyclopædic standard, and you have contributed quite a few of them!) Anyway, thanks for your comments. lol ÉÍREman 01:18 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'd really appreciate it if you could post my endorsement on the mailing list or e-mail it to Jimbo Wales on my behalf. Once again, I'm computer illiterate (I hate to admit that to a computer expert like yourself) and can't figure out why I'm having troubles sending e-mails. If you do, sincere thanks in advance! 172

Thanks very much for the offer, but I'm probably to computer illiterate to communicate about computers online! I won't be working on this computer much longer, so I'm content just to wait for the problem to go away. However, I am very appreciative of the offer. Maybe that's for the better since I'm really too busy to be working on this site for the next week anyway. Within a week, however, I look forward to working on the Industrial Revoluion article.

BTW, I finally addressed this idiotic charge of "historical revisionism" on the Cunct's talk page since his latest charges on the mailing list have been more alarming than ever.


172

I completely agree with you, having always taken the approach that you did a great job of explaining. In fact, I've been charged with being too relativistic many times. I never shy away from that approach, however, always striving to understand underlying causes and the socio-cultural context rather than coming to a values-laden judgments. That's why I've gotten into so many conflicts with users like Fred Bauder and the Cunc who were under the misapprehension that this stemmed from some kind of partisan bias. The charges of partisan bias are offensive; they suggest that users are interested in distorting history so that it fits an ideological agenda, which is something that we have both gone to great effort to avoid.

Perhaps my comments on the Cunc's page threw you off. I merely wanted to point out that I've not only pointed out "good aspects" of Communist regimes but also done work on some of the "negative" consequences. I try to shy away from using such qualitative terms, but the nature of the criticism forced me to address the accusations of being deliberately unbalanced in my approach to controversial areas of history. While I almost gave myself a headache from nodding in agreement to your comments on my talk page, and while I would've like to have placed similar comments on the Cunc's page, I worried that this wouldn't negate his suspicions.

Having been misrepresented and misquoted by him too many times, I didn't what to state outright that there's a place for "historical revisionism." Like in all fields, new interpretations in the social sciences and history challenge scholars to strengthen old ones or make way for new paradigms. But the context in which the Cunc and Fred were throwing out charges of "revisionism" is a pejorative against those who seek to cover up unpleasant areas of history, such as the Holocaust. In fact, Fred called the removal of his text in Communist state comparable to denying the Holocaust. That's why I felt compelled to "prove" it to the Cunc (and hopefully Fred if he reads the statement) that I just don't focus on the "positive" (I hate these simplistic terms that I've been forced to adapt!) aspects of Communist regimes.

172

I have never accused 172 of historical revisionism. He really needs to get his facts straight. --The Cunctator