User talk:Wragge/ArchiveToMay2005

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User talk:Wragge/ArchiveToMay2005 is the record of contributions made to User:Wragge's talk talk page until the end of May 2005. I don't think there is anything to stop conversation continuing here.

Purpose of archiving: I need to download the smallest-sized files possible, so my talk page should only contain new comments. The reason I need to see short articles is that I've beome such a Wikipedia addict that I make changes on the move, using low bandwith GPRS.


Contents

[edit] Welcome

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! --Henrygb 22:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Signing comments

  • ~~~ produces your name: Henrygb
  • ~~~~ produces your name and date: Henrygb 23:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • ~~~~~ produces the date: 23:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • the penultimate icon above the edit box makes --~~~~ which may make signing comments quicker
  • Remeber to sign comments on talk pages, but not contributions to articles

[edit] Thanks for the work on article

Thanks for your work on Balassa-Samuelson effect--Pavel Vozenilek 20:19, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Great job on the John Titor article! Easier to read and understand now, and those pesky typos all fixed. Thank you, Wragge! OwenX 15:26, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was a pleasure; I appreciate the thanks though.
Cheers & thanks for reading, Wragge 15:35, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

[edit] Agathe Uwilingiyimana

Fine job on the cleanup of this page. Wizzy…☎ 08:18, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

It was no problem, although I'm worried by the conflict between the sources. The details of her death are a bit confused. By the way, I like you're telephone. Wragge 09:36, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

[edit] Heckscher-Ohlin graphs

I'm trying to hone my graphics skills and refresh my memory about HO and its relatives at the same time. I'd like to do something along the lines of what I did in free trade (the set of graphs of PPFs is mine), but I might make some mistakes in translating the theory into graphs. Would you be able to spot check the articles from time to time? Feco 18:41, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I'd be interested to see what you do. I make a lot of mistakes on Wikipedia and never worry about it. I think that anything is better than nothing, and that errors draw in corrections.
If I spot anything that I think is an error, I'll pass judgement (however ill informed). I had a look at the free trade diagrams and they seemed to make a lot of sense, but the figures don't line up with the text describing it. The text apears a lot shorter than the column of pictures with my browser page width so I've added more spaces and text to give a better alignment betweeen each picture and its description. If you are going to add Heckscher-Ohlin model pictures I think that each diagram should be next to its description, although I'm not sure how to achieve this with the Wikipedia markup language. Wragge 01:10, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)
per my comment below, I decided to start at the "bottom" with the plain old Ricardo. It might be a while before I get to graphing/expanding H-O. Feco 18:44, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Graph spacing, text wrapping, browser issues...

I haven't found an easy way to make pages look pretty where there are many graphs. Especially in cases where there are multi-step graphs, it's sometimes not possible to fill the vertical space with text. In those cases, I just leave the space blank. (This only occurs when there is a another picture immediately below the current one... this second picture prevents upward crushing by the following grafs.

In cases where there's the problem of text "crushing" up to fill the gap beside a graph, I made a little tool... feel free to use it: stick {{subst:User:Feco/break}} immediately below the image tag in the code. This will prevent upward crushing by the following graf. Note that using the subst tag is VERY IMPORTANT... otherwise all kinds of bad things happen to my userspace. Feco 18:55, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your graph request

I'll give the articles you requested a shot (and feel free to add more reqs to my TALK page... I"ll leave you a section). I'm enjoying the practice with Adobe Illustrator. Of course, there's a string attached. If you could, take a look at User:Feco/Temp/Ricardo. I'm building out a full analysis of the diff. free trade framworks. I'm starting simple with Ricardo, plan to move up to H-O, Stolper-Sam, Ribz, etc. (apologies for spelling... don't have time to look them up). Since the full analysis gets into how wages and prices are set, the assumptions, etc, I figure it's too massive to append to the main Ricardo or Comparative Advantage article. Let me know what you think... I have to stop for a while today, so it's def. a work in progress. Feco 18:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I will have a look at the graph tool you mentioned, and have checked out your [[User:Feco/Temp/Ricardo]] page: I think you have taken the right approach by building up in model complexity. Unfortunately, the hot topic in this field is a complex model: Generating comparative advantage with mobile capital. Anyone going to Wikipedia from the New York Times is going to want to know about the latest developments. Ideally, it would be possible to start from the predictions of the latest model, and go back (for interest) to the simpler. However, that is an organisation issue, which can be addressed after everything is finished. Wragge 19:36, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
Also, a thought I have about graphs: Are they to show something new or illustrate what is already understood? Looking at the PPF graph on your User Ricardo page I don't think I could understand what it was trying to say unless I already knew what it should be saying. I think its very difficult in economics to actually explain simple concepts with graphs - but more complicated things probably need graphical explanations.

[edit] wealth effect

My definition was based on this [1], I was trying to explain it in laymans terms, because as it stands it isnt clear enough for a non-economics student/grad. - thanks Bluemoose 08:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I agree - you have highlighted an important ambiguity.

In fact, my definition was originally based on The Economist's glossary definition, as well ([2]) - but reading it again, the problem is clear: They say "As people get wealthier, they consume more." which is subjectively true (by definition of feeling wealthier), but not helpful in terms of defining what being wealthier is.
  • The first "Wealth effect" is based on future asset yield and is therefore based on INCOME elasticity.
  • The second sentence describes the "Wealth effect" I was talking about (the WEALTH elasticity of consumption).
It's disapointing that the Economist's glossary defines the same phrase to mean both of these things, because they are easy enough to confuse as it is. In my opinion (based on a brief review of academic papers entitled "Wealth effect") the first definition is a mistake. Unfortunately, we have to include both, which will further confuse the layman as to what is meant by the term.

[edit] PROPOSAL: split "Wealth Effect", and "WEALTH elasticity of demand" articles

Unless you have a better idea, this could cover the two separate topics better: Wealth effect would be the layman's article, effectively saying that economists think people spend more when they feel "richer", and that this has macroeconomic implications. It should also say that "richer" has two technical senses, described in other articles:

The technical details of Income effect are already in place, so I'll move the economics stub about the income effects of rising capital to the new article this evening, if you don't get back with an objection to this proposal.

Thanks for reading,Wragge 02:26, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

No objections, good idea - thanks - Bluemoose 08:01, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by "mental wealth" in the Pigou effect ? net or perceived wealth i would guess. Good job on the wealth effect, but why you move it out of economic effects category? thanks Bluemoose 09:32, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

You're not wrong, Bluemoose, "mental wealth" was a pretty imprecise thing to write - I was tired at the time. I'll have another look at this. As for WEoD; I moved it out of the "effects" category simply because it doesn't have "effect" in its name anymore. Maybe I'm taking the name of the category too literally, but I don't know how else "economic effects" would be defined. Wragge 12:18, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

[edit] Did you know?

Did you know has been updated
and a fact from the article Jean Kambanda, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you have another interesting fact to submit, then please suggest it at the section's talk page.

Cheers, What I have done here it to use Wikipedia's systematic bias as a route to the front page. This raises the following questions:

  1. Is the cynical use of 800,000 deaths to write interesting copy something that I should have done, or that should be rewarded?
  2. How good is the vetting system on the "Did you know..." section? I only wrote this article yesterday as a lightly-researched stub.
  3. Was the item highlighted to counter systematic bias or because I included an eye-catching detail in the first paragraph? Was this the right tone to use to discuss a monster?

My defence:

  1. Jean Kambanda was crying out for an article. The bias omitting him, but including a 'transformer' robot or John Titor is pretty scandalous, and probably so critical to correct that appealing to the vanity of Wikipedian's is a small price to pay to tip the scales in favour of "serious" articles.
  2. I don't know how carefully this was checked, but I didn't expect the article to be picked up immediately; some details are better than none, caveat lector.
  3. Kambanda is part of history, and history should be woven into a narrative that is as readable as it can be. Catching people's attentions is critical in articles which would otherwise be ignored by Wikipedias hitting Special:randomPage.

Wragge 18:08, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

No defence is needed. Template:Did you know features articles that are (1) created in the last 3 days; (2) of good quality; (3) original to Wikipedia; and (4) contain a brief but interesting fact. There aren't all that many articles meeting all these criteria, and I think the majority of them get featured. So no bias (or attempt to counter bias) was involved in its selection. Vetting is minimal: suggestions live on Template talk:Did you know for periods from a few hours to a day or two before appearing on the Main Page. I also checked against Google. Gdr 20:00, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
Ok, I'm glad to hear there is some checking though.
Thanks again for reading, Wragge 20:05, 2005 May 16 (UTC)

[edit] solow etc.

Hi, I just realised i was posting discussions on your user page - whoops - i guess its because it is formatted in a similar manner to a talk page, sorry. I agree about your conclusions on solow and neoclassical models, I was thinking about calling the new page Solow's neo-classical growth model, but Exogenous growth model is neater.

This page (2/3 down under heading "Traditional (Old) Neoclassical Growth Theory:") seems to suggest there are variations of the neoclassical models, based upon the Harrod-Domar model (another page that obviously needs a lot of work). But i think it would make most sense to put it all on one page.

I'll make a start, but it may still be quite crude.

Bluemoose 08:17, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I hearby invite anyone to contribute to my user page

Don't worry about adding to the Wragge user page, you can.do this if you don't mind sharing space with some unorthodox ideas.

Anyway, the lecture you referenced gave a good perspective of developments in development from the practioners perspective since classical times & I think this is an excellent place to star because maths can be so unreadable. It uses the name "traditional" growth theory which contrasts well with "new" GT - but is not very descriptive of the differences, so I still prefer endogenous/exogenous as names. You are probably aware that there is a lot of detail already available on growth accounting within Wikipedia - emphasising the Austrian school perspective - we should think about incorporating this. I look forward to seeing GT graphs on Wikiedia, Cheers, Wragge 08:39, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

http://econ.ucsc.edu/~oteng/econ120_lecture3.ppt has some good info - i am making graphs right now Bluemoose 10:03, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes - infact these lectures present the Cobb-Douglas growth equations with exactly the same formalism as I've added to the Solow residual page. Good luck with making informative graphs, Wragge 10:09, 2005 May 20 (UTC)
OK - made 1 graph on Exogenous growth model, obviously needs explaining, if you agree (as i dont want to make all the graphs then realise they arent as good as they could be) then i'll clone the other graphs from that powerpoint lecture and then make a start at explaining them. Bluemoose 11:03, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is this a copyright issue?

The graph looks good, but is it legal to make such close copies?

Wragge 12:51, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

yes - i probably could have just cut and paste their graphs and used them as 'fair use' - i have seen it done on other pages (gini coefficient, until i made a new graph) . plus the academic who drew them didnt exactly make them up out of thin air! Bluemoose 13:18, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


I'm sure you're right - it just seems a bit too easy, somehow.
Nice colours on the graph, again.
Cheers, Wragge 13:20, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

[edit] Baekje

The copy-editing is fine, except that you've started changing the text from British to U.S. English; why? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:49, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

If I've done this it was entirely accidental, I can assure you. Although I live in the UK I find U.S. English more logical on the whole, and my spell-checker is set to U.S. English standards.
Sorry, Wragge 10:05, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

[edit] Ultimatum game

Hey thanks for your recent edits to the Ultimatum and Dictator game entries. They are really great. Since the two of us seem to be the only people working on these two, I have a question. Do you understand anything that is going on in the "Sociological applications" section of the Ultimatum game entry? This bit was copied from an old entry "Split dollar game" and to be honest I never understood how it fits in. It seems to contradict the general results of the article (i.e. that people don't tolerate inequity). Any thoughts? --Kzollman 17:29, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Kzollman,
I'm glad you liked my additions from this morning, as we both know this is a fascinating subject, which should have a lot more contributors than it does. (I should have added much more myself, but - as always - I've been sidetracked.)
Anyway, the "Sociological applications" heading is certainly not my favourite part of the article, but in a way I think it is important, and keeping it may encourage other people to contribute, and see how this connects to other areas in the social sciences and life.
Although the section could be read as an ignorant misinterpretation of the result of the experiment, "accepting injustice" is another side of the coin of "rejecting unfair splits". Strictly speaking, the section isn't wrong because it doesn't say that people actually are willing to "accept injustice".
My intention in creating the Inequity aversion article was to add a place where contributors with a political ax to grind could contribute their opinions in a semi-scientific context. However, if people would rather add it into the Ultimatum game page, I still welcome the contributions.
I think the main thing it to increase the number of contributors, and that this is much more important that maintaining tight control over the contributions themselves.
Naturally, we should try and modify all the additions we get into the best format possible. I tried to make a few changes to this Sociological applications section to bring it into line with the rest of the text. As you say, it could use more work, although I am unsure about how to split the discussion among the various articles interfacing behavioural experiments at the microeconomic level with macro-scale sociological implications. Some of the relevant pages might be:
Among other things, I am a total amateur, with no background in psychiatry, psychology, or sociology, and think that we should connect with all the other Wikipedians writing on this area (who may have expertise in other areas), before we expand or purge the topic in Ultimatum Game.
Sorry for the long reply; but you did ask for "any thoughts", do you have any thoughts on this of your own?
Wragge 18:06, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)


Wragge -
Thanks for the thoughts. I really wish I knew what those edits were referencing. The thing that worries me is that they are just the ramblings of someone without any basis in actual scholarship, and I really want to avoid that in what is a well discussed area. When I get a chance, maybe I'll track down the original author of the Split dollar game entry and see if she has something she is refering to. I also don't know much about sociology, but my general impression is that game theory has not made much of an impact there. I'm fine to leave the section there and hope someone improves it.
I agree about the state of this little corner of wikipedia. When I get a chance I plan to write a whole group of important entries that are missing for game theory. I'm keeping a list on my user page, feel free to add to it or add one of those entries if you like. Perhaps we should start a wikiproject? -Kzollman 23:28, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

I know exactly what you mean - its hard to sustain a scholarly tone when ill-thought out contributions are added in the middle of the text. This is something that the Wikipedia:reference group is grappling with; I predict that contributors will be forced to add mandatory citations for all claims in future. I am of the opinion that this is not entirely to be welcomed: although frustrating, it can be proven that each new voice adds something - however ill informed. If a project will boost contributions I'm for it.

Wragge 23:59, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

[edit] More creative solution

Proposals for increasing work on Experimental economics without using a project.

There must be a way to use Wikipedia itself for the purposes of experimental economics, in such a way as to increase the standard of these articles.

For instance:

The ultimatum scribe game: I volunteer to contribute 100 lines to an article of choice (this is the endowment). You are the responder, and a randomly chosen Wikipedian is the proposer. After explaining the rules to them they choose how many lines I add to an article of their choice, and how many to an article of yours: You then decline or accept.

(All pre-supposed on the idea that anyone would want me to add to an article, but labour is all we have to bargain with here).

Main article: Wikipedia:WikiMoney

The Wikipedia page-proximity game: I contrive a way to deep link the Dictator game into hundreds of controversial articles, with high traffic. At the same time you ensure that the Ultimatum game links are obscured. This experiment will gauge how much the development of an article is dependent on how adjacent it is to heavily-read articles. I think that after two months the Dictator game will be twice the length of the Ultimatum game page, despite the fact that the latter is more famous. (I can easily link the Dictator game into many highly controversial and active Dictator articles - at least temporarily.)

Since this is all for science, and in the purpose of helping Wikipedia, it probably isn't too subversive, but we must be careful not to add our original research itself into any articles.

What to you say?

Wragge 00:40, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

The article improvement game: Is more of a game than an experiment but it could work like this:

  • The object of this two player game is to amass the highest number of points during a one month period.
  • Points are scored by edits made to the selected page by other editors (not the two players).
  • For any non-minor edit contributed by a non-player editor the player with the most recent (earlier) edit scores five points.
  • If the addition adds a completely new heading a bonus five points are scored.
  • For any minor edit made by non-player editor the player having made the last edit loses a point.

After one month the player having amasses the fewest points will have the task of getting the article past the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates editors.

Wragge 11:40, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

[edit] prisoner's dilemma and arms race

Hello, I have read your note about failure to prove classic PD behavior in the case of arms race on prisoner's dilemma, and I wonder, shouldn't the arms race example rather belong to iterated prisoner's dilemma section? Also, you might find interesting that Steve Keen in his recent papers argues that iterated, not classic, prisoner dilemma is in fact behind the behavior of competitive firms, which follows that in equilibrium, even with competition, the price remains monopolistic. Samohyl Jan 06:38, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I do think its interesting, and please move the comment into whichever section you feel is appropriate.
I was worried about adding a couple of slightly contoversial items to the article without citations, but it seems as though the Wikipedia:Footnote3 style references are broken at the moment. When they are fixed I will try to add more references to this page.
Thanks for reading, Wragge 11:00, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)


[edit] From the Bank of Wikipedia. Your account is opened

I opened your account. Our bank applied Rule 3, and now you have 142.86 initial coins. By accepting these initial coins, you accept rule 3 and you are also willing to give an appropriate amount of coins to newbies. Please express any possible disagreement in the rules page. You can use these coins as a medium of exchange here in wikipedia. For example, you can ask another wikipedian to make specific contributions, deletions, or cast votes for a subject, or pay him with your money for whatever reason. Its not bank's job to punish you in case your transactions are against wikipedia policy. But have in mind that if you are doing illegal transactions, you may be punished by admins. The bank is going to pay you 2 coins for each person you are going to introduce to the Bank.

Whatever transactions you are doing with other wikipedians, please do them in User_talk:Bank_of_Wikipedia. The trusted employees of the bank are going to confirm the validity of your transactions, and they are going to copy them (after a short delay) to your official account that resides in User:Bank_of_Wikipedia userpage.

You are welcome! Bank of Wikipedia 06:30, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much Bank of Wikipedia, I now have more than 14% of the world supply of BoW coins - I shall dedicate my great wealth to philanthropy. Should my account be terminated for any reason, I hearby will these coins into a trust fund established for a named chair in linguistics at the Wikipedia:University, should it ever exist.
Yours, with very sincere regards,
Wragge 07:40, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

[edit] You gave 17.86 coins to newbie account User:Y0u

This is because of Rule 3.1. In case you dont like this rule, please vote disagree in the rules page. Yours truly. Bank of Wikipedia 08:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm happy to help those less fortunate than myself, but I think my vote against rules redistributing coins can be assumed by now.
Support your local bank, Wragge 09:35, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

[edit] Distraction (sic!) of the Pathological Pedant

To err is human; to expose mistakes on one's own User Page--Wraggenous. OwenX 19:17, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I always wondered why Wikipedians spent less effort on their home page than on all of their article contributions, but now I realize it's quite hard to subedit an article about yourself.
I've only encountered about 0.2% of active Wikipedians, but I suspect I'm very far from taking the pedantry crown; for instance, several users have names based on the word. Anyway, that's good. My doctor says that I should become less pedantic as I learn more.
Cheers, Wragge 03:31, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)