User talk:TantalumTelluride/Archive2

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This is an archive page. Please do not edit this page.
Leave new messages on my current talk page.
My archives: October 2005 | November 2005 | December 2005 | January 2006 | February 2006 | March 2006 | April 2006 | May 2006 | June 2006 | July 2006 | August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 | November 2006 | December 2006 | January 2007 | February 2007 (current)

Contents


It's probably too much work to try to register a hundred or more doppelganger accounts, unless there's a known impostor problem for your username. Impostor accounts will often get blocked because they're nearly always used for mischief, and there's not really any way to tell what's a doppelganger and what's an impostor. As far as I know there isn't a way to prevent the underlying IP from getting temporarily blocked when a username is blocked. -- Curps 20:03, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll follow up on this so that other legitimate users aren't blocked. --TantalumTelluride 04:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

--were you trying to contact me??? --j --i'm guessing you edited my entries to the wendell berry page--do look at the barry lopez page as well? --j

With regard to your first question on my talk page, yes, I sent you the message above to encourage you to register a free account with Wikipedia. I reviewed all of the edits on your user contributions page, and since they were all legitimate edits, I thought you might be interested in creating an account. The template that I posted at the top of this page outlines the various benefits of creating an account, but your are by no means required to do so. --TantalumTelluride 20:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)
With regard to your second question, yes, I copy edited the Wendell Berry article, but some other users (including Goethean) also edited it. Again, thanks for your contributions. --TantalumTelluride 20:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)
how does one become copy editor of an entry 68.149.93.180 20:47, 3 November 2005 (UTC) -j
Anyone who knows the details of the English language and has experience with Wikipedia's policies can be a copy-editor for Wikipeida. Volunteers are always welcome. Just go for it! Some Wikipedians devote nearly all of their time and effort to copy-editing, while some just copy-edit between their major contributions. Still others just contribute raw material and leave it for others to copy-edit. There is no official list or signup page for copy-editors, because almost every user does it to some extent. If you want to help in this area, please read Wikipedia:How to copy-edit and be familiar with Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Don't be afraid to overwrite someone else's contribution in order to make it better, and don't be surprised if you see your own contributions quickly overwritten. That's the beauty of Wikipedia! The callaborative effort of thousands of editors has created and is still improving all of the wonderful articles in this encyclopedia. For an alphabetical list of articles that are in need of extensive copy-editing, you can go to Category:Wikipedia articles needing copy edit. Alternatively, you can find an article that contains a lot of grammatical errors, and then just click the "edit this page" tab at the top of the screen. By the way, please note that the English-language Wikipeida accepts all national varieties of the English language, as long as it remains consistent throughout an article. (See American and British English differences and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling) for more information.) Thanks for your interest. --TantalumTelluride 21:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)

[edit] Thanks for the 'Welcome' and the kind words

It is nice to hear that the work is appreciated, though I think User:Victoria will make me look like a 'hack' !! I'll gladly continue to work with her on Victor Hugo and see many offshoot articles on the individual novels etc. that can make this a great retirement hobby. JerseyBob 00:32, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Also thanks for the nice welcome... very polite

I'm sitting here with another professor of statistics (Both at U of Penn) and we were going though the list. We basically knew all the names but the two we deleted. If you look, dugas's page is close to being a vanity page. (Having read it, I would tend to agree.) More importantly, he does not in any way fit the title of the page of those who have made major contributions to statistics. (This contrasts with the math page which has lots of very minor people on it.) So he definitely should be removed.

The sport guy, sagarin, we aren't as adamant about. He really doesn't fit. He would never be mentioned in any class we teach. Nor would he be know to any of our colegues. (Ok, we do know a few sports nuts.  :-) So we vote not to have him. But havn't been following the page so don't know what the "rules" really are.

Thanks again for the gentle introduction. Are you watching lots of newbees ? Or are you my personal guardian angel!?!

Dean P Foster 02:10, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right; I didn't realize that Dugas was hardly notable in politics as well as statistics. Apparently, his article barely survived an AfD nomination back in July. As for Sagarin, I'm not sure how notable he is; but since you're a professor of statistics and you don't think he belongs on the list, then he should probably be left off.
You're first edit was a red flag at Special:Recent changes because you were a new user without a user page and you're first edit was a deletion. I welcomed you because I think it's important for new users to be welcomed and then I gently reprimanded you because I thought you were being too bold with your deletions. However, now that I know you're a professor and I can see that you've made some real contributions to Wikipedia, I can trust your opinion about the deletions. By the way, if you plan to continue contributing to Wikipedia, you might want to put a brief autobiography or profile on your user page so that other Wikipedians won't have to make the same assumptions that I did. Your user page is at User:Dean P Foster. --TantalumTelluride 03:50, 4 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:Dean P Foster.)
I (or more accurately we) am glad that there is quality control since we use the wikipedia daily, or maybe hourly, no, maybe every minute! Although I felt pretty confident about the statisticians, if I start deleting famous names in american literature, STOP ME!
Thanks
Dean P Foster 12:51, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Speling

One Plenary Indulgence awarded by Essjay in recognition of your great work!
One Plenary Indulgence awarded by Essjay in recognition of your great work!

Thanks for catching the spelling mistake on my page! -- Essjay · Talk 04:47, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome, Father Essjay. Thanks for the recognition. --TantalumTelluride 20:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Dear TaTe, what exactly are you thinking of for the WikiProject Chemistry ? I am a chemist but please excuse me if I would rather not reveal my 'real life name' I have been a "busy boy" and I have a large number of papers to my name. I look forward to hearing from you,

yours sincerely Cadmium 23:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I personally haven't participated much in WikiProject Chemistry yet. I'm just an undergraduate student now, but I might contribute more to chemistry-related articles in the future as I learn more about the subject. You may continue to contribute to chemistry articles or any other articles without joining any wikiprojects, but the members of WikiProject Chemistry seek to improve the quality of chemistry articles by implementing standards and guidlines such as the infoboxes that appear at the top of many articles on specific chemical compounds. You can learn more about the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry, and you can join it by adding a bullet and your signature (*~~~~) to the list of participants there.
You are by no means required to reveal any personal information on your user page. In fact, you don't even have to use the page at all. A number of established Wikipedians just leave their user page blank, and even more of them do not reveal their real names. There are many other uses for user pages, too; you'll probably find a use for it before long. --TantalumTelluride 05:22, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Baldghoti

Hiyo, thanks for the kind words. Did I do anything wrong, or were you just being genuinely nice?Rob 13:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

No, you haven't done anything wrong at all. Most of that message I left on your talk page was just the welcome template. I inserted the part about your user page since you hadn't edited yours yet, and I tacked on the part about vandalism because most of your contributions at that time were related to fixing vandalism or mistakes.
Wikipedia needs copy-editors and counter-vandalism "troops" desperately. Fixing vandalism manually is perfectly fine, and sometimes it is preferable to a revert. I just wanted to make sure you knew that the revert feature was available, so I gave you links to Wikipedia:Revert and Wikipedia:Counter Vandalism Unit, where you could find much more information about reverting vandalism and dealing with suspected vandals. Once again, welcome to Wikipedia. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me. --TantalumTelluride 22:52, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Not a problem. Thanks for the welcome.  :) Rob 12:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for name of article input

Pls help at Talk:List_of_high_value_detainees - thanks! KillerChihuahua 14:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] thanks for the welcome

much appreciated, especially by a newbie like me. Moonstone 14:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Film Out (NTSC)

Hi there. I am skeptical that you tried to verify the article before choosing to mark it for decltion. Film Out is a real term and a real process. In filmmaking, is it the actual term used to describe the process of turning a video program into a film print. lease take that into consideration. Wikipedia is, afterall, an encylopedia. It is not hard to "research"; for instance, one can check in with one of the many "film out" companies linked in the article. You should also look up independent filmmakers on IMDB and elsewhere on the internet -- especially documentary filmmakers. Thousands of filmmakers each year film out their projects. Talk to them, they will tell you about it too -- "verify" for you, if you will. I am sure that as this article matures that there will be added related discussion to the many known documentaris -- such as Dog Town and Z Boys, Farenheit 911, many many others -- that have been filmed out. Look before you leap :)

I'm sorry. I didn't notice the external links. I should do more research before nominating for AfD. Please see my comments on the AfD entry. --TantalumTelluride 22:16, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Likewise I'm hugely sorry for being grim on your talk page. It's all in the Wiki of wikipedia!... of which I'm a novice. Thanks TantalumTelluride. Anyway, it served to correct me, as I think the more common spelling of term is "film-out" though it seems "film out" and "filmout" are also used. This is where wiki, I suppose, will ultimately reveal the truth. Cheers. -MT
Thank you for understanding. I'm sorry to disturb your legitimate editing with this AfD nomination, but Wikipedia has to delete dozens of inappropriate articles everyday. (Just look at some of the nonsense up for deletion today.) I thought your article was one of them, and now I see that it is merely in need of wikification. I can help you wikify the article; but, as you can tell, I don't know much about filmmaking. It's too bad we have to work around that ugly template until the article clears AfD. --TantalumTelluride 23:13, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for voting

Hi, I'm also from the Numismatics WikiProject and I guess I missed giving you an invation to vote on the deletion of the United States commerative coins category. However, I'd like to thank you anyways for taking notice of this and voting!

--Kurt 10:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hugo Award

Thanks for the heads-up. You already got rid of the name change; I just restored the navigation template. —wwoods 03:49, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiwoohoo...slightly confused!

A user at 212.85.6.26 (contribs, talk), an IP address known for vandalism, added your user name to the list of Welcoming Committee members. You are welcome to leave your name there if you would like to join. But if you don't want to be a member, you should probably remove it. Thanks. --TantalumTelluride 15:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)

Upon further review, I realized that the message posted directly above this one is also from that IP address, and it seems he has added you to the Kindness Campaign as well as the New User's log. I've just listed the IP address at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. --TantalumTelluride 15:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)
Thanks for noticing that. It's all very strange. That was the same user than added a message to my nomination to join the Mediation Committee as well. Maybe I have an admirer? Anyway, cutting a long story short, I'll be willing to join both the Welcoming Committee and the Kindness Campaign. Thanks for your help though. Wikiwoohoo 16:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Is it possible to block this IP address again temporarily since they have already reached Test 4. Wikiwoohoo 20:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if the address can be blocked again already, but I think his rampage for today is over. A couple of users have put messages on the IP's talk page explaining that the address belongs to a computer in a public library. This is a strange case because the user is committing very unusual types of vandalism. You might want to keep an eye on its contributions to make sure it doesn't sign anything else with your user name. --TantalumTelluride 22:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC) (The preceding comment is copied from User talk:68.149.93.180.)

[edit] C.S.A. currency

Hey, I was just looking around for some things to do, and I can't seem to find any pages on Confederate coins or currency. I found Economy of the Confederate States of America, that has a blurb on it alittle, but nothing else. If you know of any please let me know. If not, I'll try to start one up today. thnx Joe I 22:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

That's one of the many things on my to-do list. (Economy of the Confederate States of America is the closest thing I've been able to find.) We probably need an article about Confederate currency (or Confederate States currency to be less ambiguous) in the style of United States currency and Pound sterling, etc. I don't think we would need an article about Confederate coinage because I don't think the Confederacy ever minted any coins. Metal was too scarce to be used where paper currency was perfectly functional. Feel free to go ahead and start the article. I'll probably be able to help out next week, but I've got a couple of really important term papers to do first. --TantalumTelluride 23:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I was just about to add this; I did find Confederate States Dollar. I'll do somthing... Joe I 23:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
You might as well start from scratch. The article has three sentences. The first one is POV and should definitely not be the first sentence of the article. The second is possibly a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms. And the third is not neccessarily true becuase Confederate currency is considerably valuable today due to its cultural significance, even though it has no legal face value. --TantalumTelluride 00:00, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I got this now. I won't leave it like that, but I gotta work inbetween :). I'm gonna put Confederate States Dollar up for deletion. Joe I 01:54, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your message

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:128.39.201.4

I have not deleted major portions of anything. You may be referring to what I did to the article on Pink, but if you look carefully, you'll notice that I merely rearranged the material with a new header. Pink is, after all, a very "genderized" colour. —preceding unsigned comment by Svein Olav Nyberg (talk • contribs) 14:15, 17 November 2005

I've restored the edit. Sorry about the confusion. --TantalumTelluride 20:27, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright Info

First of all, thanks for your welcome. The links you put on my talk page were very helpful. I'd like to get my feet wet working on an article. I was hoping to find a reference on copyright rules. I was looking around the internet for information about coins of Kazakhstan (I have no special interest in that country, but since I already used it as an example, I thought I'd see what I could find). Anyway, the national bank of Kazakhstan has a website with images and detailed information about their coins. Can I use that? Do you know, or know how I can find out? Also, since my interest is circulating world coins, the catalog number is an important identifier, and there's one main catalog (The Standard Catalog of World Coins) which includes their own KM numbers, and Y numbers which they got from some other catalog. So, it seems there would not be a copyright issue with those, but I'm just not sure. I understand if you're not the person to ask, but wasn't sure how to find out on my own. Thanks, Mom2jandk 19:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

As I understand it, most images of coins and currency are in the public domain. All works of the U.S. and British government are. Although a few coins and banknotes are copyrighted, we can use them, provided that our use is for information purposes only. For example, see the template at Image:1pound2000front.jpg.
Information from U.S. government websites is in the public domain, but I don't know about the government of Kazakhstan. I don't even know if the national bank is a subsidary of the government. Anyway, we should probably just use the national bank website as a source for the text of the article. I wouldn't copy it directly. We wouldn't want to be extradited to Kazakhstan for copyright infringement!
As far as catalogue numbers are concerned, we can use them as long as we don't copy the exact style and context of the source.
Before you start, you should probably ask your question again either at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics, at Wikipedia:Village Pump, or on Johann Wolfgang's talk page (He is very involved in WikiProject Numismatics) for more information. --TantalumTelluride 20:57, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Hate to butt in on your talk page :)... I started to got thru all the copyright and image use policies, but it was a nightmare for me. These Might help :)
Joe I 21:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the links. There is so much information on Wikipedia's copyright policy spread throughout so many articles and guidelines and policies and WikiProjects and talk pages and special pages and templates and other Wikipedia-namespace pages and user subpages and Meta-Wiki pages and image pages and all of their respective discussion pages! It probably wouldn't hurt to merge some of them, but that would be a massive project for someone who knows more about copyright laws and the GFDL than any of us ever even wanted to know. Oh, yeah. If you get too confused, just ignore the rules. --TantalumTelluride 21:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] MeanDean "Illiterate" and "Auburn University" Flaming

Hi TantalumTelluride, Regarding this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:210.211.83.61

I do not feel that my last edit of the Wikipedia was innapropriate nor is it warranted that I be banned from editing. I have made a couple silly entries in the past, a pain I'm sure, but hardly harmful.

My last edit was in fact quite serious. It is ridiculous to read the 5 pillars of the Wikipedia, that you left for me, when my edit was in fact in response to someone else breaking those rules. I see that you attend Auburn University, perhaps someone was playing a joke on you by linking the article to the Wiki on "Illiterate" and perhaps you even did it yourself, but it offended me. I have not attended Auburn, I used to live fairly close to it and take a offence to someone spitting on the university because it is southern, because they are a university rival, or for whatever reason. Although I live in Australia now, making the article for "Illiterate" open up the same page as the article upon which "Auburn University" was built is a direct insult to me, to many people I know, and has no place under the rules upon which you decided to enlighten me on.

On this particular issue, given that I did not know the appropriate way to handle the "Illiterate" article until you left a message, and since my response was in fact motivated by wanting to fix someone else's insulting text, presumably someone who did know the 5 pillars (perhaps someone who even knew that anyone else (like me) editing the "Illiterate" article would directly change the Auburn one until it was fixed, when I did not know that), deciding to do something inappropriate. Made more aware, I find it discouraging to receive a warning of the nature that was given. Although I have created a ridiculous article in the past as well as editing useless information into another I have since put serious thought into supporting the Wikipedia as I do use it and even have an extention for Firefox set up to open articles of things I highlight and right click. It is true that I have not acted on that, I have not started anything useful, I have not edited an article... unless I was being silly, granted BUT these were not the final reasons for your warning, just contributors and I think that if you look at this reasonably that you will see that I find it a hard coincidence to take that you give me this warning and I then see the school you attend was involved with the reason I got sucked in. It's a fair thing for me to wonder about.

Like I said, the article was offensive to me and for good reason. Living in that area, you should be very familiar that it is also offensive to many, many other people as well but the coincidence of the matter looks like it was no more than a joke to whoever was involved. The Illiterate article spit on a huge amount of people quite frankly and as such, it is far worse that Illiterate was linked to Auburn University than it would be if someone came in and edited your personal profile as more people are directly insulted by it, and since that is a fair thing to say, I don't believe that there was any justification in telling me "If you continue to make inappropriate edits, you may be blocked from editing Wikipedia!" because being naive, in this particular instance by itself, I wasn't being inappropriate, I was in fact just being naive. More informed I would indeed be innapropriate. But where now is my motivation to contribute to an article when I may be banned because someone disagrees with me, takes me the wrong way, or I have a bad day? And where is my motivation to send off my old hardware for new servers after this? Where is my motivation to do anything but leech off of the hard work of others? I think your warning tip-toes on harshness that is not needed and I would like it removed. I would like to be a positive contributor in the future, if I so choose to contribute. What you have sent me does not make that possible as I could not feel freely confident to participate.

Love and Care, Dean MeanDean 04:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for registering an account. I am very sorry if you were offended by my message on your IP address talk page. However, all of the contributions assigned to that address are inappropriate. For example, you deleted the entire article at Auburn University and replaced it with a notice that Illiterate redirected there. I left you some standard links on your talk page so that you could read them and learn what to do in such situations. (The Wikipedia Welcoming Committee suggests that all new users be encouraged to read those pages.) For example, you should have directed your comment to Auburn University's talk page instead of the actual article. Better yet, you could have fixed the redirect at Illiterate yourself. I understand that you probably didn't know how to carry out either of those options since you were a new user. I gave you those links so that you could learn a little more about how Wikipedia works. If you had continued to edit incorrectly and to delete articles, a Wikipedia administrator probably would have blocked your IP address.
As for the real vandal (the one who redirected Illiterate in the first place), I was much less tolerant on his talk page because his edit was hateful and obviously deliberate vandalism.
Sometimes it's hard to distinguish real vandals from misunderstood newcomers. That's partly why Wikipedia has a policy of assuming good faith. If you were to look through my contributions, you would see that I am always friendly to vandals, although I must warn them that they might be blocked if they continue editing inappropriately.
It seems as though you're getting the hang of Wikipedia. Please don't feel discouraged by this misunderstanding. The Wikipedia community is very forgiving with respect to newbie mistakes. In fact, you will probably no longer be associated with your "anonymous" edits now that you have registered an account. In any case, anyone can see that your anonymous edits were not intentional vandalism.
Please also note that my warning to you was not fueled by anger regarding the redirect of Illiterate to Auburn University. I could see that you were not the one who had done that. I just happened to be the first experienced Wikipedian to notice your edits to Auburn University, because the article was on my watchlist. I'm sure you too will accumulate articles that interest you on your watchlist if you continue to contribute. (I hope you do decide to stay, by the way.) I'm confident that almost any Wikipedia administrator would agree that my warning was not too harsh, especially considering your edits at Appeal to Authority.
Once again, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I forgive you for your unconstructive edits edits in the past, and I hope you decide to contribute legitimately as a registered user. --TantalumTelluride 22:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for replying. To clear things up a little more, well two things, one to get it off my chest that apart from Appeal to Authority, the other previous abuse I was refering to on my behalf was a short nonsense article on MeanDean which I know is no longer there. The other thing is that I did not mean to edit Auburn University and it was a mistake that it happened. My recollecton is deleting all of the content out of Illiterate because I thought it was a copy and paste job. I didn't realise it was linked and that it would effect both articles. I do however remember becoming very confused and having multiple tabs open after the edit when I realised that both pages had their content changed and at that point becoming unsure as to wheather I had indeed edited Auburn. After looking it over, I left feeling sure that I had indeed edited "Illiterate" and not "Auburn." The last comment I left... well as I left the article as I didn't know how to leave a comment, was made under the assumtion that someone who worked on the project thought it was funny and that is why I, at the time, felt little remorse for just having accidently wiping out both articles when I only wanted to do the one. Clearly, I was wrong left and right in handling the matter.
Enough of this pettyness then. I suppose I'll soon find time to read more about the project and most likely at some point also find good time to work on something with it.
Apologies if I've not used the correct format while replying. MeanDean 11:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the welcome

Thanks very much for your welcoming comments. I will keep them in mind. As for the differences between British and American English, I have already taken that into account when editing a couple of pages, being very careful to keep consistent usage.

I would like to set up my user page in a similar manner to yours, with the "babel" icons, if you have any quick tips on that please advise; otherwise I will look for the templates.

Thanks again. Msr69er 21:56, 30 November 2005 (UTC)