User talk:Wellspring

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Welcome to my page. Let me know how I can help. Wellspring 15:38, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Wellspring, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Jayjg (talk) 21:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] security through obs.

Sorry for the bad revert of Security through obscurity; glad you caught the missing stuff. -- Joebeone (Talk) 02:10, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for catching the vandalism. The article is definitely improving. I'm personally opposed to reliance on security through obscurity, but it does have tactical value that should be discussed. I see that you're a credentialled expert in CS-- I'm definitely an amateur, so let me know how we can improve it.
Wellspring 13:27, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's a really neat discussion from a law professor about the trade off between "Security through obscurity" and the military's "loose lips sink ships" [1]... very neat discussion about when disclosure can increase security. This might be helpful in framing the article as it develops. -- Joebeone (Talk) 17:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


Thank you for marking that page for editing. I don't know how to edit, but I am learning fast. Samuel Johnson would be heart broken folks, let's get these kids literate. (Unsigned comment)

[edit] re: Vortex (Atlanta)

Hi Wellspring. The article as deleted was a two-sentence stub that said that Vortex was a restaurant in Little Five Point. That's insufficient for an article mainly because it made no attempt to indicate why such a thing should appear in an encyclopedia. I think probably the most applicable of the 'notability' policies would be WP:CORP. However, I suspect that Vortex is going fail the tests described there, and probably notability tests described elsewhere, too. I would suggest the best thing to do is add a few sentences to Little Five Points talking about it - I note that an image of the place is already there. That way, the information will be in its proper context and not have to pass the same kind of scrutiny that an individual article is likely to be subjected to. I hope that helps. Splash - tk 12:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah after looking it over I agree. While the Vortex is an atlanta tradition, their coverage is mostly restaurant reviews. So the lack of secondary sources that meet the requirement is a killer. Oh well, thanks for the advice. :)
Wellspring 12:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thrint edit

Admittedly, I haven't read all of the stories that involve the Thrint; I was just trying to create an edit in which 'both sides can be right'. Kzanol had been in stasis roughly two bilion years and Suicide Night was roughly 1.5 billion years ago, which leave a roughly half-billion year period. So, I thought to myself: '500 million years is a long time; what if they evolved since? Then they could be small and large!' I was seeing if I could come up with an edit to explain the inconsistancy concerning size. HalfShadow 23:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Suicide night was actually about 100-200 years at most after Kzanol went into stasis. Otherwise, Kzanol would have been released from stasis when he hit Earth. Where did you see the 1.5 billion number? If the slaver empire had lasted that long afterwards you'd be right.
Wellspring 13:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
May just as easily be an error on my part. Bandersnatch (Known Space) states the Thrintun Empire was around 1.5 billion years ago and as previously stated Kzanol had been in stasis about two billion years. I'm just going by the numbers I see. Any errors are mine. HalfShadow (talk) 23:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
heh... it's cool. Just because I'm sure doesn't mean I'm right. :) Wellspring (talk) 02:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Found it. In the book 'Three Books of Known Space', there is a short story called 'There Is a Tide'. On the fourth page: [2] HalfShadow (talk) 04:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
OK I have to own up, I was reading that same story the other day and noticed it, too. But I'm not at all sure that this represents a gap between when Kzanol was trapped and Suicide Night. To me, the hard gap is the three hundred years it was going to take for Kzanol to impact on Earth-- if Thrint society still existed he would have been revived. I read this as another known space inconsistency, but you certainly have the reference to make a very strong case. Niven printed a Known Space timeline somewhere for the roleplaying game which I think is canon-- might that be definitive?
Wellspring (talk) 14:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't have said anything at all if I hadn't just found something; at the time I was only going by what the Bandersnatch article said. Is this the timeline you were referring to? If it is, it looks like Kzanol may have crashed 1.5 billion years ago as well instead of two, but accouding to this there is some discreprency in how long the Trintun empire lasted, but both seem pretty certain it was 1.5 billion years ago that Kzanol's ship crashed instead of two. In fact it appears The World of Ptavvs states this as well, so I suppose it's not really a point anyway, we're trying to account for 500 million years that haven't happened. HalfShadow (talk) 16:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I think you're right. Thanks for catching that. :)
Wellspring (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Too bad. All that time would have easily explained the huge difference in species size. I don't like seeing the answer being 'the author was sloppy', especially considering how all the stories tend to tie together; it just rubs me the wrong way. HalfShadow (talk) 00:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah... it's inevitable though. After forty years, inconsistencies have to creep in. In science fiction especially, since you discover things, like Mercury's rotation, in the interim. I like the oversized, carnivorous mickey mouse-suited Thrint more anyway. The idea that the smaller, untelepathic tnuctipun were far, far more dangerous is really cool. Wellspring (talk) 13:11, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I've always assumed that thrintun and humans had years of different enough lengths to allow some slack. --Incidentally, I saw a reference to the tnuctip creation of the Pak being introduced prior to Man-Kzin Wars XI, but I can't find it in the books. What story was it in? 4.246.0.152 (talk) 00:15, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
If the subject came up prior to MKWXI then that's news to me. That's not to say it didn't happen. Keep in mind, Niven's approach to MKW is that any individual story is non-canon until Niven himself says otherwise in a published known space story of his own. I have to admit that personally I'm hoping that Niven doesn't admit this one: Tying up disparate elements of his story that way makes his universe smaller and less interesting. A universe, especially over a 2 billion year timeline, should be big, weird and have lots of unresolved loose ends. Tidy = bad in that context. Wellspring (talk) 11:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I dunno, that sounds a lot like the reason I left the Catholic Church. :) 4.246.0.225 (talk) 18:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nice point

You wrote at Talk:Rush_Limbaugh#Salon.com_article_about_Rush_Limbaugh.27s_refined_tastes_-_Is_it_too_trivial_.3F:
"Too trivial, the article appears to be an opinion column"
- Nice point. One of those things that's obvious when people mention it, but very few people do mention it. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. On controversial articles like this one, there's a need for periodic housekeeping and clearing away the chaff. Wellspring (talk) 12:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oreskes: clarification

Please see [3] William M. Connolley (talk) 19:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, man. :)
I think actually our views about global warming itself are probably pretty close, though unlike you I'm not an expert. Wellspring (talk) 11:15, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Naomi Oreskes

I have changed to this version now: [4], I hope that is ok? If we could agree on the talkpage to something like that then we can refer new editors to continue discussion there before making any major changes. Apis (talk) 10:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Made some minor changes: [5] --Apis (talk) 11:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Wellspring (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok :) hopefully that will do it, thanks. --Apis (talk) 14:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BLP and Naomi Oreskes

Regarding this[6]. I will ask you quietly if you yourself consider those comments civil. If you have specific gripes about my comments, then i suggest that you raise them on my talk page - or at an RfC. Address the article not the editors please. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I was rather surprised to read the last para in the diff. KDP is normally very civil. I'm curious as to what you're referring to William M. Connolley (talk) 19:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
My comment seemed pretty straightforward. You've been repeatedly asked not to edit other peoples' talk page entries. I'm not sure how you operate in other conversations, but since you seem familiar with how things work around here you should know better. The goal is to come to a consensus and incivility gets us further, not closer, to that goal.
I didn't see the need to escalate the issue; actually I assumed that reminding you that it was wrong would be enough. Wellspring (talk) 13:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I suggest that you find the instances where i've "been repeatedly asked not to edit other peoples' talk page entries" - since that is a rather large accusation. I can remember a couple of instances in fact in my entire time on Wikipedia - where i've removed extremely uncivil talk from within comments (with appropriate insertion of notice that it's been cut). But i have never edited other peoples comments to change or in other ways remove the meaning. I'll repeat that again: never. What you are accusing me of is pretty serious. Since it amounts to vandalism. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I didn't speak to your motivation or characterize you personally, I described what you did. ThePointBlank warned you about it on April 17, when you removed offensive comments by Grazen. Then you added cite tags to FellGleaming's comments on Talk:Naomi Oreskes on April 25, adding "I've littered your comment with some requests for documentation." Behaving this way does nothing to build consensus in an already controversial topic. Once again, please try to operate respectfully, even with people you consider to be crazy/wrong/etc.
Wellspring (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Could you find a diff of the offensive behaviour? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I documented it above but like I said, I really don't consider this an admin issue-- it was intended as a friendly reminder. Wellspring (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)