User talk:MacGyverMagic/Archive 3

Sea Anemone

Thanks! If you find out the species, that'll be doubly good. (I knew I was earning some good kharma by voting for a good sysop-candidate!) – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 20:13, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Mel Lewis

Kool, thanks. Duk 20:58, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Paraglider diagram

If you provide me with the info, I'll be happy to take a stab at it. I know next to nothing about the subject though. --Fastfission 21:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sure, you can send things to cityofquartz@yahoo.com. -Fastfission 21:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Received the diagram, but won't get a chance to really work on it until the end of the week. I will be in touch. --Fastfission 03:44, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

COTW

No, actually it is supposed to show the articles that the project has been able to promote to COTW status, the overall WP collaboration project. I'm in doubt whether it should be a seperate participant, which I noted in the description. What do you think? -- Solitude\^talk 11:07, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

WikiReader Crypto AOTD

I was wondering, is the yellow bar for the current article coded variable, or do you have to change the bar on a daily basis? The code of the table isn't really helping me. Mgm|^(talk) 15:51, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Oops...thanks for spotting that the dates are wonky. The table is generated by a Python language script (and I have to manually paste it in), but I ran the script after midnight rather than before, so the dates were off-by-one. I've gone and tweaked it; presumably it's OK now? — Matt 16:13, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...although, now I think I was confused earlier, sorry, I think it was correct before! Sorry for the confusion. But now I'm not sure I understand your original question properly; could you explain it again? — Matt 20:27, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Python is one of the easiest programming languages around, and I'd be happy to send you my script (I'm going to have to clean it up first, though, because it's really horribly written!). — Matt 21:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, it's still very ugly, but you can find the script here: User:Matt_Crypto/aotd-update.py. It needs, as input, a file containing a list of article names surrounded by [[ ]]'s, but in between there can be anything. — Matt 21:48, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ah, no, I'm afraid it's slightly more involved, and it all happens on your home machine ;-) While you don't really need to know how to program, you need to know how to find files on your system and things like that:

You have to download and install the Python language from, say, here: [1].
You have to copy and paste the script into a file and call it, say, "aotd-update.py"
You need to create a list of articles in some file (say, "articles.dat") with each article surrounded by square brackets "Article1, Article2" etc
You need to edit the "OPTIONS" section of the script to tell it where it can find the list of articles ("articles.dat")
You need to run the script, and then copy and paste the contents of "table.txt" into Wikipedia.

Let me know if you need any help (and there's some tips for Python beginners here: [2]). — Matt 22:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks (on LD50)

Hey MgM, thanks much for the welcome and the comment on LD50... I was aware that the section on canabis allready had data about LD50 information, however I aimed to do a exelent job on it before duplicating it over... the orriginal is good in many ways, just not complete. suffice it to say it was hitting the end of a long night and I was beat.

I am, however, rather proud of my recent re-write /revision on civil disorder. the changes dont have my name attatched to them, however the recent major workover on it was all me. I just really felt as if the orriginal could have come directly from a law inforcement manual and was very condescending towards the citezenry in general. My aim was neutrality, but who knows where that really got me. ;)

~D

Thank you

Thank you for that barnstar, I will put it in a public safe and cherish it like a puppy :P Cheers! -- Solitude\^talk 11:08, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Did you know?

Thanks for the headsup on my Wheaton Industries article. I'm amazing flattered that anyone finds my contributions interesting. :) -- Decumanus 18:56, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

On User talk:Dino, you note:

== Requests for adminship ==

Could you please answer the questions at requests for adminship? It'll help others in their decision whether or not to support your request. Mgm|^(talk) 08:03, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

I added stuff. Let me know if you have questions.

dino 01:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

About the Gerri Whittington article, no problem. I'm delighted that there are enough interesting new articles that it's difficult to get them all up in time! – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 20:35, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification, too. Hmm. Guess I don't really have anything interesting to say about it :) 68.81.231.127 22:11, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Banqiao Dam

Sure, no problem. I just thought we were supposed to add it ourselves. Unless, as the template talk page says, "...too skeered to post it yourself? List it here, ...". Wasn't aware this was a waiting list. Duk 10:54, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kool, I wasn't even aware of the talk page list until after posting, but it is a good idea. Duk 11:22, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

DYK

Hey Mac, I'm pretty sure I always archive DYK facts to the recent additions section, can you point me where that went wrong, it must have been a glitch, as I'm very aware of the procedure. -- Solitude\^talk 21:05, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Just checked back up till 15 Nov, all the DYK facts I removed from Main in the last two weeks were archived by me on Wikipedia:Recent additions, I may have missed one but that was weeks/months ago and was corrected by someone who also notified me of the sli=up. -- Solitude\^talk 21:15, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

I'm actually investigating it now, it's difficult though, I'm at home right now on a dialup laptop, for sure I didn't mess the recent additions archive up, that much is clear. It seems to me that a lot of people have replaced facts in the DYK section without archiving them, which is annoying but not really my wrongdoing :) I'm off to bed, ciao. -- Solitude\^talk 21:30, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Featured article nomination

Hello McGyver, I wonder if you could take another look at the Bernard Williams article to see whether your objection still stands. I've changed quite a bit of the wording to make it less POV and have dealt with the other objections on the page at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. If you still feel it's POV, could you give me a few examples so I can change them? Many thanks, Slim 02:04, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Adminship

Congratulations! You are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the new administrators' how-to guide helpful.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, not out of line at all. I was just asleep, strange as it seems. :) UC did the honors, but I can still say Congratulations! -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 16:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Blocking

Hi, MGM,

You can go to [[3]]. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:37, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Your comments

Your comments re my removing Bob Charles (golfer) from cleanup are noted. As you are quick to give advice, can I refer you to what User:Adam Carr said recently when announcing he was pulling out of general editing. Here's a refresher

"Wikipedia must cease privileging process over product The objective of Wikpedia must be to produce an encyclopaedia, not to provide an adventure playground for every crank, cultist and nutcase on the planet."

Here we have an example allied to what Adam was on about. So please follow what happened

Dec 1 14:58. User:Poccil removed the title Sir from the Bob Charles article, without giving a reason

Dec 1 15:02. I replaced the word Sir and asked in the summary Why deny his title?

Dec 1 15:03 . Poccil removed the word Sir again, without comment, and without answering my question.

Dec 1 15:37. I replaced the word Sir, said in the summary it was per predominant wikistyle, and said "see talk page" where I clearly have the rationale for keeping the title.

Dec 1 17:23. Poccil put a cleanup tag on the page commenting only, "check for neutrality", a spiteful edit if ever I saw one

Dec 1 19:59. I removed the tag saying it was absolute silliness.

Dec 1 22:32. You replaced the tag and gave me a lecture.

Dec 2 08:14. Poccil again edited the page, removing the word Sir from the bolded intro

Dec 2 08:16. Poccil edited the page again, amending a comma.

Your note to me was a cop out, a fine example of what Adam Carr was on about. You said, in part

"I'd like to inform you that removing cleanup tags is considered bad conduct. Feel free to head over to the talk page of the user who added it, and discuss it (ask for clarification what isn't neutral). But don't just remove it. ".

Removing tags IS NOT bad conduct when they need to be removed. You urge ME to ask a user who tagged the article to seek clarification. How about you ask HIM to clarify what isn't neutral, on the cleanup or talk pages? Are you unaware one of the guidelines for the cleanup page is Be specific. Saying "needs work" is not enough ?

When you relisted the article on cleanup, you said "needs NPOVing". Where does it need NPOVing? Why have you not said why it needs NPOVing? You are using, in fact abusing, the process, not working in the best interests of Wikipedia. I have revisted the article and cannot see anything that needs NPOVing, so consequently I am removing it from cleanup, and the tag. It's possible of course that new admins have much more superior powers to detect POV than the thousands of run of the mill editors like me, in which case I guess that without stating exactly what is wrong with it you will relist it again, without fixing it like a good little wikipedian should.

Also, saying something is silly may well be "considered uncivil by some", as you say. And it may well be not considered uncivil by others -- something to do with freedom of speech and thought and opinion. Kind regards.Moriori 02:33, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Image:Map of Ukraine political.png

Better now? Otherwise I did not understand your comment. It was not me who copied the map to commons, but it's not usefull to have identic images here an there. --Steschke 06:01, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Thanks --Steschke 09:04, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Max

Dachhh... Sorry.. I was going through multiple vandalism by the anon and said delete too quickly. Don't know why.. Thanks for spotting it. Mozzerati 09:25, 2004 Dec 4 (UTC)

User:Pinnecco

User:Pinnecco has an offensive comment on his user page. He also removed a polite request of mine to discuss his views on Niterói before deleting text and exporting it to another article (while both articles are relatively small). (see diff is repeatedly removing comments here) Mgm|^(talk) 23:02, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Hi MacGyver. First of all I'd like to thank you for taking an interest on the issue and dropping a message in my talk page. In all fairness, I will say that Pinnecco did post a message in the Niterói talk page once I confronted him on his edits. As I said in the village pump, he did state his reasons, although they didn't hold water (in my view). But then again, he re-reverted to his edits before exhausting the discussion. Apparently, your attempt to reason with him did produce some sort of result, although not what we'd expect. He just posted a note on the article's talk page in which, in an ironic tone, he claimed "I" (??) should "keep the text as inaccurate as it is". He may not be a vandal, but users with that sort of attitude have provoked quite a few controversies, I hope Pinnecco proves me wrong. Regards, Redux 00:27, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC) P.S.: Please see my latest entry in the Village Pump. The trouble continues.

Apparently, Pinecco's offensive coment was added by the anon 152.163.101.8. It may have been Pinecco, but if so, he wasn't logged in. Bart133 21:19, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Odinic rites

Yes, of course! the comment was not aimed at you at all, sorry. You reacted very properly by moving it from speedy to VfD. Sorry if you felt I was attacking you. dab (T) 15:34, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

COW Page

Yeah, I know didn't put a reason there. It was late at night and I was lazy! lol. They should be deleted because I uploaded better versions and linked to the COW page. So these old versions can just be deleted. I hope this helps. Reflecks 18:44, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Olivia Olson

Well, I think the stub is pretty good (problems: it's a stub). At least it's a LOT better than the version in computerish. --Bart133 23:13, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC) P.S. By the way, you should archive this page, it says.

Wfgh444

Thanks for the posting on his talk page. olivier 12:05, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

WP:VIP

I hope it doesn't take away too much time from content contributions; you don't have to be an admin 24-7, you know :-) Keep up the good work in any case. Here's a nice WikiThanks for your dedication: JRM 12:27, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

I'm just adminning a lot because my powers are new. Don't worry, son. You'll grow into them. Just remember that with great power comes great responsibility. :-D Sorry, couldn't help it. JRM 12:37, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Reverts

Moved to: Talk:Libertarian League.

Quan

Done. And VfD really is getting way too big to comfortably edit (or in some cases at all), but that's nothing new. *sigh* JRM 13:38, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

Aircraft(s)

"Aircraft" is both the singular and plural form of the word in English, which is why I changed it. —User:Mulad (talk) 19:01, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any difference between British/Commonweath and American English on this one. I figure Wikipedia might have a list somewhere of words that have this behavior, but I haven't found it yet. It's fairly rare, but can bite people from time to time. —User:Mulad (talk) 19:35, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

3RR

I can't speak to the best way in general, but in this case, you may find User:Radicalsubversiv/Chuck F helpful, as well as these quotes from the block log:

08:00, 5 Dec 2004 Mirv blocked 172.202.186.5 (talk) (contributions) with an expiry time of 24 hours (violation of Wikipedia:Three revert rule on libertarian theory, Libertarian party, and who knows what else)

07:13, 5 Dec 2004 Jpgordon blocked 172.191.37.130 (talk) (contributions) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Multiple revert wars in Libertarian topics)

06:20, 5 Dec 2004 Mirv blocked 172.184.115.81 (talk) (contributions) with an expiry time of 24 hours (violation of Wikipedia:Three revert rule on libertarian theory)

04:15, 5 Dec 2004 Neutrality blocked Chuck F (talk) (contributions) with an expiry time of 24 hours (Three-revert violation on libertarian theory.)

04:03, 5 Dec 2004 Mirv blocked Chuck F (talk) (contributions) with an expiry time of 24 hours (violation of Wikipedia:Three revert rule on Libertarian theory)

RadicalSubversiv E 19:22, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

DYK: Miliaria

Thanks for noticing the new miliaria article! I'll try to put up suggestions on the talk page, when I gather enough courage! Hfwd 00:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Faulty CSD

Yes. It sometimes happens that a valid article is vandalized and someone comes along and tags the vandalized version for Speedy Deletion. This reason alone is enough to make me always check an article's history when it has been tagged for Speedy. So, yes, I do know who tagged most of those borderline cases. Several of those could have technically qualified as CSD #4 (equivalent to "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great.") Actually, the opera substubs had less context than that. I don't blame anyone for tagging those, as I emphatically agree with Geogre's comments. According to one interpretation, they were valid CSD nominations. According to another, they were not. I believe Preliminary Deletion is very much needed, and this is a good example why it is needed. SWAdair | Talk 03:58, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note

Just saw the note you left on Gabriel Webber's talk page. Thanks! I would never have thought of myself as being gifted in Wikipedia coding, I just steal templates from other places :-). Anyway, cheers. JOHN COLLISON [ L u d r a m an] 09:28, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

clean up questions

Thanks for the note. I'm trying to clean up my first submission which you have marked for cleanup. I have looked at the style guides and several help pages, but mostly I have cleaned things up after seeing how they are done on other entries. I figured that since I created the entry and did not add the clean up flag myself, I should not be the one to remove it. I have not really described this musician's music/style/genre much, for a few reasons - it can be difficult to be objective, his music spans a large number of genres so it is hard to describe in a few sentences, and I'm not sure that it is appropriate - I have seen several musician entries on wiki that do not discuss the style or genre of music at all. --Paraphelion 10:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Odinic Rite

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for noting that this topic I created was flagged incorrectly in your eyes. As can be seen from the voting, everyone is saying to keep that article so this is great news. Do you know when it will be decided. And, if it is kept which I hope it is and deserdidely so, can the comments for "keeping" it be kept as this also says allot about the organisation. Also, how you will you contact me about this?

Yours,

Fjorn.

Barnstar

For all your hard work keeping vandalism at bay, working on magic articles, working on the MCOTW and LCOTW, for being so nice, and for other stuff that I have forgotton to put down here, I award you this barnstar in the hope you will somehow manage to fit it on your user page :-) Ludraman 14:40, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Seriously, keep up the good work! JOHN COLLISON [ L u d r a m an] 14:43, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Album articles

I just haven't uploaded them all yet, because when I tried last night Wikipedia told me some of them were corrupt (even though I can view them just fine on my hard drive). I'm looking for other copies of the images to upload, and will do so shortly. Bearcat 19:06, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Niagara Falls

I added the references you suggested, including them in the extant "entertainment" section, rather than adding another "cultural" section to an article mainly about a natural wonder.Sfahey 20:07, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hamid Karzai protection request

Hi MacGuyverMagic. Thanks for the help regarding my protection-request earlier. This is the first time I've encountered a vandalised page, so your guidance is greatly appreciated. Many many thanks. Gypsum Fantastic 19:07, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Our Gang

There are four references listed; the first is a comprehensive history/study/filmography on the series, the second two are primary sources from two of the kids in the series, and the last one dedicates a number of pages to the African-American children in the series. The two websites belong to former Our Gang kids, a point which was more apparent when the cast list was on the main page. That has now been fixed, and the references have been reformated. --b. Touch 19:35, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ripper-related templates

Hi, the name of the fourth victim is spelled Catherine Eddowes, not Catharine. The new poster is using nonstandard spelling that conflicts with the vast majority of scholars (most who have heard of the theory that it should be Catharine but dismiss it) as well as how the individual herself spelled her own name. Wikipedia policy is to use the most common version of a person's name, so it should clearly be Catherine. I explained this on the talk page of that article, the Jack the Ripper article and the new user's talk page but it has been ignored without comment. I'd appreciate it if you could change the template (since I can't see how to) and help out correcting it back in other places if you get the chance. DreamGuy 21:52, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

OK, that change is good. The ew Ripper letter template is a good idea too, although the title that shows up in the box says "Messages from Jack the Ripper" which is kind of misleading as they aren't really thought of that way by most scholars (well, the From Hell letter being the most likely). I'm not sure would be a better label though. "Jack the Ripper letters" at least gets rid of the questionable "from" meaning. DreamGuy 23:37, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

taking stuff out of your talk page

Do people take things out of their talk pages? Can I take stuff you left in mine? Is it considered better to leave them in?

DYK

Anytime you think DYK needs an edit, just page me. :) I'd be happy to. :) jengod 20:28, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

DYK instructions

Thanks very much for getting right on it, I really appreciate it! The Guide is looking good, but, speaking for the army of bemused lamers out there, a confusing thing is the way it's called a template. I mean, I use templates, or I thought I did—I put {{PD-old}} on images and {{delete}} on articles and such. They, like, expand. Is this a template in a different sense? I'm just not getting what "the template" and "the previous template" refer to. Sorry. Is it the whole project page, Template:Did you know, that is "the template"... ? (And why, if I go to the project page and experimentally click Edit, do I get an edit field with a whole crapload of stuff that wasn't there when I viewed the page?)
Maybe it'll all come to me in a flash soon. Hope so. Anyway, thanks for your patience.--Bishonen (talk) 17:14, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(I hope it was clear I meant "crapload" in the nicest possible sense! :-)--Bishonen (talk) 17:30, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC))

Dawn - 72 hours

I don't really understand why this rule must be enforced so strictly. I understand its purpose (so that peoplу are exposed to new articles, not those that many have already read), and I understand why an arbitrary limit was set (so that people have a speficiс guideline), but I don't understand why the article being 85 hours old (at the time it was suggested) as opposed to 72 hours means that it can't be featured. I certainly cannot judge objectively whether it's any good (so I would easily understand and accept criticism on that ground that it sucks), but I wrote it, I like it and I think it would look nice on the frontpage. I don't think the fact that it's slightly older than preferred is a sufficient reason to say "No, it can't be featured in Did you know section". Paranoid 13:53, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

DYK

Christian flag was longer and more interesting. Neutrality/^talk 00:30, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchy League

MGM, I thank you for helping me get this protection business right. I answered an RFC on this weeks (months?) ago and it has taken until now for all the parties involved (there is sockpuppetry alleged and a group is abusing the Wikipedia as a vanity press for their political message and legitimacy) to convince me to take action to protect pages and block users (in accordance with an arb com ban on VCML related edits). Tom - Talk

My question for you is how do I use the protected notice in such a way that editors will know the reason for protection. Thanks again for your help and guidance. Tom - Talk 14:38, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Goldberg

Thanks for your reply regarding Goldberg. I'm afraid that any dispute resolution with Goldberg will be a complete waste of time. Goldberg is a sockpuppet used to fight revert wars and make personal attacks. In order for dispute resolution to work, both sides need to be interested in resolving the problem. Sadly, Goldberg is only interested in being disruptive, so I'm looking at alternative solutions. --Viriditas | Talk 01:10, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

As far as RFC or arbitration goes, I suspect that Goldberg has already been through RFC and is currently in arbitration under another user name. --Viriditas | Talk 12:09, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your attempt and for your offer. I am happy that PMelvilleAustin blocked Goldberg for 60 hours. --Viriditas | Talk 12:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

disamb suggestions

Hi MacGyverMagic, I don't think there's an easy way to remove just the pluralised disambigs from the current run, as people have started to edit these pages (so if these pages are recreated without plurals, then they'll overwrite what people have already done). I'm wondering about pulling disambigs from this run for a different reason already (see User_talk:Tagishsimon#Missing_Redirects) - what do you reckon? Pull them (and try and clean them up for the next run), or leave them in for this run? All the best, -- Nickj 03:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quotes about Bill

Thanks for pointing it out about Wikiquote. I don't know how I feel about it, I'm not familiar with how the template works, though of course I've seen it on literary pages before now. These quotes of mine were selected to be illustrative of the Shakespeare's reputation article, so moving them to Wikiquote might not answer the purpose. I've never visited Wikiquote, but wouldn't this "timeline" of quotes get merged with a preexisting unchronological ragbag of "someone mentioned Shakespeare" (everybody did, that's the trouble)? Also I really would like to have a summary of the quotes page in Shakespeare's reputation, right where the link to it is, the way I have now, to point readers to their relevance to the narrative of Shakespeare's reputation. (A well-selected quotes timeline from the 17th to the 20th century speaks more clearly, really, of the development of Shakespeare's reputation, is more telling, than the article text itself.) Also I'd like to have the possibility of writing comments on the quotes page itself, the way I do about Thomas Rhymer now.
Yikes, testing the template now—these quotes would get merged with a crapload of quotes by Shakey, as well? In that case I don't see any point in transwikiying them—heck, they're probably already there, in some form and some mix. Maybe I'll just merge them back into Shakespeare's reputation or forget the whole thing. Please feel free to delete my DYK suggestion. Also to speedy or VFD Quotations about Shakespeare, if it's an inappropriate page. Sorry to have made trouble.--Bishonen (talk) 13:19, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Vote Early, Vote Often

Salve, MacGyverMagic!
Just wanted to drop you a line to say I'd appreciate your vote on my WP:RFA candidacy. Haven't crossed paths with you lately and hope all is well with you and your corner of Wikipedia. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 20:02, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the Welcome

I certainly didn't expect a personal welcome message from anyone here, so thank you! You suggested that I focus on the telescope page more than on eyepiece lens. I certainly intend to work on the telescope article—it could use some help. I'm starting with eyepieces because it's a less daunting task! The telescope page does need at least a paragraph on eyepieces, so I will stick that in somewhere if someone else doesn't get to it first. This is fun! Beetlenaut 08:56, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

DYK notification template

I know, but the bold link at top goes directly to the template, with no instructions. Not a big deal one way or the other. And my pleasure... though I've only been notifying people who don't have a previous notification notice. 68.81.231.127 10:26, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I agree; that openness is the heart of the Wikipedia. I just thought it might cause some confusion... but on second though, the kind of people who actually see the template can probably figure it out. 68.81.231.127 11:20, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Let me ask another question: Do you want the suggested entries sorted by date of creation, or date of submission? It's not stated either way. I've resorted a couple of times by date of creation (so nothing slides past the 72 hr limit accidentally), but right now only my museum and the rocket were actually created on the 20th. 68.81.231.127 11:26, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Done. Hopefully, it's clearer. :) 68.81.231.127 11:45, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Still's disease...

... is a copyvio. I just hope you see this message before you put too much effort into reformatting it! Lupo 11:48, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

...and please bear in mind what the copyvio notice says: "(Please do not copy a copyright violation to the subpage and edit it; if it is not a copyright violation the original will be restored, and if it is the temp page will just be deleted too.)" --rbrwr ^± 12:15, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm still worried that it might be seen as a "derivative work" of the medicinenet.com page, but it is much improved. The history of the /Temp page shows its development from the old version (this is why the copyvio notice advises you to not to copy the infriging material across and rework it; it is better to rewrite it offline and paste the result into the /Temp page). Is a total rewrite still a "derivative work"? I don't know. --rbrwr ^± 12:54, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sure, most things are based on copyright sources, but "if you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." (Wilson Mizner). I'm not saying the current version is in great danger of being deleted or of casuing legal problems for wikipedia, just that it troubles me somewhat. Does that make sense?

Well, we now have a copyvio in the history of the temp page. The current version could still profit from some more rephrasing (and from including reformulated stuff from the second page from Medicinenet - click on the small "2" at the bottom, it'll show you some info on treatments). It's not ideal, but since we usually tolerate copyvios in the history, I think we might be fine. Alternatively, you could just copy your temp version offline, delete the temp page, and recreate it anew with the saved content. After all, you're an admin, and I don't think anybody would object to your temporarily deleting a temp page to get rid of copyvio in ther history. Lupo 22:42, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Chocolateboy

Sorry, my mistake. He actually reverted Elton John four times, not three. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 10:36, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cantos list

This is why I started this article, I'd prefer it to be a category myself, but the majority are against it. Filiocht 11:07, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

No problem with the prompt reply, and thanks for your willingness to let it stand. I'm out of here soon for a week or two, so have a cool yule, as they say. Filiocht 12:31, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

Images

No problem, it's one of the benefits of having broadband and some time spare: looking at multiple images at once. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 13:43, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hello?

Do I leave my comment here?

I heard the term Scilebrity on the 'late review' or whatever which is a part of news night on channel 4. It was that female presenter. --Dan 13:57, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Howd I get that talk bubble after my sig?

Sure does (I hope) thanks for the info.... --[User:Dmb000006|Dmb|^(talk)]] 00:16, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Try again...... --Dmb|^(talk) 00:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully you get that my copying you is the sincerest form of respect:) Cheers!

How does this look... --Dan|^(talk) 15:21, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC) :)

Cleanup question

I notice that you have marked my recent article Legong: Dance of the Virgins for cleanup. You commented on it needing to be wikified (which I'm planning to do), and also the formating of the production credits. I've been looking through style guides for guidance on how it should be formatted, and I have not as yet found anything. Is this a matter of custom or policy? If the latter, can you point me in the right direction? If the former, can you cite a good example? Thanks. --Samuel Wantman 08:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the nice suggestion!

But I'll prefer to stay anonymous for a while. Also, English is not my first language, so I'll just do some of the more "easy" work around here.. Anyway I am happy that you liked my recent edits!

user: 62.243.243.231

Text replacement bot

Could you let your bot run to replace the coding of signatures messed up because of the MediaWiki update. New signatures can be changed, but a lot of signatures before the signature coding fix are now changed and fixing it all manually would be a major pain in the you-know-what.

If you can, I'll give you the exact request for my signature and ask some other people for theirs. Mgm|^{(talk) 09:50, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)}

Anyway, per your question, I think this can be technically done. It is simple to do for one person's signature, since its a predictable pattern. Coding this to fix all the variations people use may be harder (see regular expressions). I will look into it, though. Is there a page where people can report this, and sign up for getting theirs fixed? -- Netoholic @ 15:57, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

OK, I have something that looks like it works. After I looked at why the signatures broke, I realized that everyone must have setup their signature in the same way. This is good because it means an easy fix, which can fix all the bad signatures on any particular page. I did a test and it seems to work well. If you want to give me a short (20 or so) list of important pages where your signature is used multiple times, I will do an extended test. Eventually, we can probably do more, but I don't think we need to do this for all your signatures, particularly for "dead" pages like old VfD's, etc. Let me know -- Netoholic @ 18:13, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

I've run it on the pages you mentioned, plus your talk page here. Some were recently archived and your name wasn't there, so no changes. I've also run it on some high-traffic pages. -- Netoholic @ 21:39, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

List of pages on which the "sig replacement bot" has run:

VfD

heya, I took the liberty of signing your vote on VfD on the autism community for you using your customised signature, hope you don't mind. --fvw * 14:18, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Oops, there were already several watchlist items above it, I didn't bother to check the time. I guess my watchlist is getting too big. Sorry about that. --fvw * 14:22, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Justin Berfield

I got the "youngest person to appear in over 100 episodes of 2 different television shows" from his IMDB page, which the link is in the external links. --AlexTheMartian 09:44, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

on the IMDB page, it is in the Trivia section of the bio (where you click to read more) --AlexTheMartian 09:55, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

ok, i was afraid of that.. ill do some more editing --AlexTheMartian 09:55, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

ok, i modified the article, but that is the most tweaking i can do.. unless you can help think of how to reword something --AlexTheMartian 10:03, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

ahh, yes, that was pretty pointless to list in a paragraph, then in an actual list.. that was good. is the article ok now? --AlexTheMartian 10:27, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

ok, can you let me know when it will be on main page? --AlexTheMartian 11:26, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

hey, I see it on main page, cool. hey, is he famous enough to include in the List of teen idols?? he was in two different over-5-season tv shows, movies, been in many parades and stuff, and have a fan club. --AlexTheMartian 21:49, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

GrazingshipIV

They claimed to be too busy, though one of them expressed amusement at the GNAA article being vandalised. --SPUI 12:54, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

RHaworth - page deletion

Thank you for telling me about {{db|reason}}. I have marked a couple more pages thus. I did look in the help files to find out how to delete mistake pages. I was going to complain somewhere that I could not find the info. Then I realised what the Wiki supervisor's response would be: 'constructive changes to the help files are always welcomed', ie. 'do it yerself'. RHaworth 18:31, 2005 Jan 6 (UTC)

Wai Wai

Hi. You informed me that Wai Wai was put up on the DYK section. However I didn't see it there, but on checking the history, the snippet had a very short shelf life. Is this supposed to happen? Nichalp 19:25, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

The Signpost

I'm glad you liked it. About the Administrators' noticeboard, I don't plan to write an article about it specifically, since it was created several weeks ago and that falls rather outside the time period of news I was trying to cover. I agree, though, that it's an important development and getting more so as news of its existence trickles through to more people. Instead of writing an article directly about it, I expect that I'll end up writing articles about what happens there (certainly there's some activity there right now that will need to be covered in the next issue), which will have roughly the same effect. --Michael Snow 17:53, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rhobite's abuse of blocking power

I was definitely inappropriate in the summaries, mind you I was provoked. Shouldn't have done it anyway.

Rhobite thought my changes were POV and didn't like them. That's the bottom line.

In order to justify blocking me he (and has threatened to do this to others) to block them for posting "misinformation" which fits under "sneaky vandalism" and is designed cover stupidity like changing George W Bush's birthday or that sort of thing.

He is a very naughty boy and should be punished. Ollieplatt 09:50, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gonsalo Garcia

I have a huge backlog of articles that I am putting up and am currently tied down with Gangtok. I'll add more on the saint in two days time. PS I see it has already been featured. Nichalp 20:37, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

paragliding

sorry, very busy right now with physics articles cheers --Gerd Breitenbach 23:26, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Re: bossa nova

MGM,

I think sound samples are an (implicit) requirement for music-related articles. How else can you explain how the music sounds to somebody who's never heard it? This is my personal opinion though.

Anyway, you'll find plenty of samples in the hip hop music article (featured), but not in the Hip hop culture article (not featured, but not specifically about music). I think you'll also find them in several other featured music articles, including Duran Duran and several Beatles-related articles. Jeronimo 14:24, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Medialab arts

On the VFD discussion for Medialab arts, you suggested a "merge" with University of Plymouth. I'm trying to close out that discussion, but I don't see enough information in the article to merge, other than just adding a note that they offer that class. Is that what you meant? Joyous 18:31, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Featured pictures

There is no rule, but it is definitely a factor to consider when judging these photos. For a photograph, low-res images are for embedding in web pages or sending as email attachments. Specifically, a lot of important detail has been lost in the resizing of this image, like the textures on the mountain-sides (where the JPEG artifacts are the strongest). ed g2s • talk 20:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

700x400 is quite small for a digital photograph. Most cameras are at least 2MPx.ed g2s • talk 14:53, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cerro de la Silla

Hey MgM, I just wanted to let you know that I posted a cropped version of the Cerro de la Silla picture on FPC, and am wondering if you would still support it. Thanks alot! --Spangineer ∞ 00:10, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Szare Szeregi

Thanks for the comments on my talk page, it's always nice to see that someone is actually reading the articles you spend so much time on :) Halibu tt 12:06, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that unit of the Polish resistance in WWII is definitely one of the least-known aspects of WWII abroad, and I believe these lads and gals deserve mentioning. Also, there's some more info on them in the Polish wiki article, I'll translate that bit as soon as I have time. Among other things, there is a nice mention of the girls who fought in the ranks of the Szare Szeregi - which might be interesting to the non-WWII-grognard readers. Halibu tt 12:33, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Magic!

I only discovered the Wikipedia method of leaving messages to other members on this day, and let me take this belated opportunity to thank you for your warm welcome back in November. I've been involved in the "Armenian Genocide" page for the most part, but it's tough going there. Most people are married to their views with this controversial topic, and I'm in the minority.

I can see I'm not alone, skimming how others have responded to you here, in feeling you're a great person. Torque, Jan. 24, 2005

Design

Strange, the temp page (User:MacGyverMagic/NewDesign) seems to look perfectly fine on my machine (XP, Firefox), perhaps except for the barnstar table which looks out of the place, but it's a matter of taste rather than the code itself.

As to the page - I noticed that. Thanks a lot :) Halibu tt 14:37, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Suggested image for Rex Nemorensis

I later edited the Rex Nemorensis article with new images that I thought worked better. I have updated the Template talk:Did you know suggestions. -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:13, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wilkins

Thanks for the correction. Tony the Marine

Why just 12 hours?

If you use the maximum penalty of 24 hours all the time, there's no motivation for revert warriors of the sort that I just penalized with 12 hours from escalating into what happened on Iraqi parliamentary election, 2005. I use the discretion granted me by the wording of the 3RR to mete out minor penalties for minor violations and major penalties for major violations. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 22:35, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)