User talk:Andrewa/archive6

How do i talk here? i m completely new, but i am the blardy guy. my roommate was the first to explain to me what it means, and i ve heard it in conversation. However, i never have seen it written... so i thought i'd add it here.

G'day User:Esprungo and welcome again. You just edit the page, as you have done. Andrewa 19:57, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Return of the Time Cube

Moved to User talk:andrewa/Return of the Time Cube. Andrewa 10:13, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Delayed deletion

Peter Wayner has set up a project at Dartmouth College in a course for non-computing majors that has led some of them to create articles that are clearly unencyclopedic by Wikipedia's current standards, and others that are borderline. I suspect he was unaware of Wikipedia:School and university projects, and that he's given his students what I would consider inadequate instruction on the need to lurk and to respect existing standards when entering a new cybercommunity.

But, whatever the reason for some of these articles appearing on VfD, I think there may be a case for delaying their deletion until the course concludes. These are not computing majors and it's unlikely to be their fault, and it may not be anybody's. The policies aren't all that easy to find!

I have already asked Peter to supply the course conclusion date. Comments? Andrewa 22:10, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:46, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I have also left a note on Peter's talk page linking to several articles and lists that have plenty of red links, suggesting he direct his students to those, rather than documenting every custom and group related to Dartmouth. Niteowlneils 02:38, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Peter has now replied to me by email. Assessment will be completed by next Wednesday, which is 25 August, I assume that's Dartmouth time, so I suggest that any deletions agreed (which looks likely to be all those listed) be deferred until 26 August.

I'm sending him some suggestions as to how his next course can be improved. Depending how we handle this, it is an excellent way of creating new contributors, or new enemies. Andrewa 17:27, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For the record: this is yet another interesting example of partial misunderstandings on both sides. On the Pcw side, it looked to him as if there were people who had something against Dartmouth and were trying to marginalize it out of animus. On the Wikipedia side, it looked to many of us as if there were a systematic effort to unbalance Wikipedia with a glut of promotional puff pieces about Dartmouth.

If you look at his actual class assignment, he does not specifically tell his students to write articles about Dartmouth, and he does say:

Read about the Wikipedia. Read about contributing to the Wikipedia. Choose two topics that are appropriate. Make sure they fit inside the definition and are not in the Wikipedia already. Think about how to write about these topics from a neutral point of view. Now write two entries for the Wikipedia. Use information from the Manual of Style. Make sure they're at least 200 words. Include at least two external links and two internal links to other Wikipedia topics. Add these entries to the Wikipedia. Add links so these new entries will be found. Celebrate your contribution to the largest encyclopedia on the planet.

That seems very good to me. Any student that had actually read all the suggested links would probably have been OK. He needed to give his students some specific pointers on things not to do and needed to explain (and understand!) the "ruthless editing" mechanism and the VfD process. It seems interesting to me that a professor, able to write such a well-designed assignment, would, in VfD show so much typical counterproductive defensive behavior including, I really believe, creating a sock puppet. I strongly suspect that we are actually inducing such behavior in people who might not show it under ordinary circumstances. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that things will be resolved in a positive manner.

BTW, as I write this it looks to me as if the course that events in VfD are following is not be to delete the articles, but to strip them of promotional language, boil them down in size, and merge them into Dartmouth College. If he has the right attitude and is willing to show his next class the articles on Dartmouth College "before" and "after," it may actually be a good example of Wikiprocess at work. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:18, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See also (and feel free to add links to other VfD discussions):

5000 odd words of removed discussion from the Village Pump
User talk:Pcw#Your class project
User_talk:Lucky_6.9#Dartmouth
Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Dartmouth dodecaphonics
Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Dartmouth Cords (two articles)
Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/5 Die
Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Lob pong
Alpha Chi Alpha is not on VfD but is on cleanup and may eventually be listed I guess

RfC

Michael Snow is a better person to ask about this since he's been co-ordinating it for a long time and I've generally tried to stay away looking after that page. Angela . 17:32, Aug 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ta. Will do. Andrewa 17:42, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I've tried to bring it closer to the desired format. While I don't consider myself the only person who is allowed to monitor and clean up the page, I do check up on it periodically to try and keep things under control. I don't own RfC and am perfectly happy when people help out; I'm just doing the work because most other people don't. --Michael Snow 17:58, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Right, I appreciate that you were proceeding with caution on a page with the potential to be a minefield. I don't mind being a resource, I just want to avoid cultivating the impression that everything on RfC has to go through me. --Michael Snow 18:08, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Simple English Wikipedia

Hello Andrewa, I've also only just got interested in Simple W so can't exactly give you any tips! Why don't you just "translate" some of the articles you've been working on? I'm sure many Simple English readers are also travellers and would like to know about portable stoves, for example. Saintswithin 08:28, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Illegal blocking

Hello there,

I would like to inform you that Guanaco blocked me for 24 hours for allegedly violating the three revert rule which states, "Don't revert any page more than three times within a period of 24 hours."

Reverts to page "Clitoris" by User:Cantus:

	H(4)	Revision as of 01:39, Sep 1, 2004
		http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Clitoris&diff=5581620&oldid=5580088
D(4)	G(3)	Revision as of 20:44, Aug 31, 2004
		http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Clitoris&diff=5580088&oldid=5553795
C(3)	F(2)	Revision as of 20:14, Aug 30, 2004
		http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Clitoris&diff=5553795&oldid=5552239
B(2)	E(1)	Revision as of 16:44, Aug 30, 2004
		http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Clitoris&diff=5552239&oldid=5548095
A(1)		Revision as of 15:10, Aug 30, 2004
		http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Clitoris&diff=5548095&oldid=5537404

The fourth revert "D" falls outside the 24-hour limit started by revert "A"
The fourth revert "H" falls outside the 24-hour limit started by revert "E"

The fact is that there are no four consecutive reverts within a 24-hour period. I did not violate 3RR.

I ask you to please undo this block as soon as possible, and de-sysop User:Guanaco for flagrant abuse of admin powers.

Thank you.

Cantus.

User:Guanaco reverted this edit, which is not good form IMO, and I see he also seems to have admitted elsewhere that you might have a case. I'm watching. Feel free to comment further here. Andrewa 14:03, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sock-puppet exposures

Phase 1 - J>A

Please note my response on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Clan of the Dead Goat Gunshop. --Jerzy (t) 03:56, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

Ph2 - A>J

Copied from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Clan of the Dead Goat Gunshop:

Keep: The Gunshop has grown out to be a full-size community supporting the weapon model replacement scene. It stands out in quality and its emphasis on realism. It deserves to be kept in here GrefTek 15:50, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Comment: This vote by another new IP. Andrewa 17:19, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  - Citing only contribs bypasses verifiability. This edit shows that that IP forged Jorri's sig, not GrefTek's, which this edit shows was forged by 80.126.231.152. In order not to undercut our trust in editors' tagging of SPs, please cite edit-diffs (which also provide a link that verifies the number of contribs), rather than citing contribs pages. And when you view the preview, that gives you a chance to double-check your compiling of your research. --Jerzy (t) 03:37, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

- end of copied material. Andrewa 09:29, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps there's something I'm missing here, but I don't see your point or points at all. Easiest first:

I share your concern that trust in tags is important, but I don't see how your proposal helps. I did point out that the posts were both from IPs, rather than from the users as claimed. Obviously then the signatures should be disregarded, but perhaps you think this should be explicit?

(Incidentally, what do you mean by SP? Acronym finder returns 177 meanings but none seem to fit too well.)

I don't see how what I've done bypasses verifiability.

And I don't see how the link you provided and suggested as a model is in any way superior to the one I provided. I think that both of the pages they link to need to be examined to see what is going on. Now, each of the pages linked to provides a direct link to the other. It's not obvious to me why one should be preferred over the other.

I almost always use the preview when providing links, and did in this case. Again, I don't see that the link you suggest provides any advantage there.

Or, as I said above, am I missing something? Andrewa 09:29, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ph3 - J>A ; Ph4 A>J; Ph5 J>A

The Core

Implicit in my phrase "gives you a chance to double-check your compiling of your research" (in Ph0 & quoted in Ph1) is what you've at least missed letting me know whether you're now aware of. Moving twd the point, i mean that which

i think i made explicit at least in a draft, but
either
- i accidentally self-refactored out, or
- you elided or truncated without ellipsis, in quoting above,
and is all but explicit in my phrase "forged Jorri's sig, not GrefTek's" that you quote above.

Namely, your clerical error in Ph0, attributing two forgeries to the same IP.

Wow, I finally understand what you're talking about! Thank you. Fixed.

Can we start w/ yr clarifying whether you are now aware of that error (and yr either IDing any obviated questions, or restating from scratch if you think that's more efficient) before i explicate more thoroly than the following?

I'm now aware of the error. I find your style of writing very hard to understand. Andrewa 01:08, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I confess you are not the first to say so. But i haven't really figured out what to do abt, except thank people for their patience. Thanks. --Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

SP

I know how you feel abt SP (=Sock Puppet); i had to ask abt IASPO, even tho it should have been obvious when it appeared 3 times separating 4 IDs, in a SP discussion.

Thank you! Yes, I should have guessed that. Haven't a clue what IASPO means, perhaps it's worth adding?

Sorry, thot it was just me: Is A Sock Puppet Of. Someone on WP picked it up somewhere else; don't remember who or where. --Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

"Verifiability"

I should have instead said "fails to minimize verifiability effort".

I think this means that you now realise that what you did say isn't true.

[shrug] Nothing we say is true; we deal in approximations. But yes, i often have trouble judging the balance between over-approximation and over-explication. (And the longer the turn-around time of the communication channel, the more troublesome the balance is.) --Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

I think you'll find that effort required, per SP verified as forged and single-contrib, is

Your method: linking 3 times and searching the history for an IP-quad
Mine: 2 linkings w/o any search

I think they both have exactly the same number of linkings and searches. The only difference is which page is displayed first. But there's something strange here. How do you display the user contributions without doing this search? Or do you think it's not useful to do this?

I expect the author's effort is pretty close between the two. The difference i see is in the effort of the hopefully many readers. The research indeed can't be done without going to the history page and searching it. But repeating that is unnecessary for verifying the accuracy of the result:

The identity of the editor is proven by the appropriate edit-diffs page (which is what i suggest providing the link to).
The short contribs list is proven by following the contribs link at the top of the upper right-hand column.
There is no additional information of interest on the history page, or produced by the search, so with my method, the reader is done without doing anything further. But your method doesn't get the reader to the edit diffs w/o linking to the history page and searching it for an entry with the same IP. That is the difference of which i spoke.--Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

IMO your clerical error got published (as you suggest, despite previewing) bcz you faced an even greater difference of effort in an easier, slightly different, related task.

And IMO your method doesn't help. But thanks for the suggestion.

IMO you've spoken after some thought that involved a judgement: you judged that your thought experiments were as valuable as actual experiments. (I'm not suggesting you're stupid: that is a normal mode of human behavior, in the absence of specific contrary influences, and the inertia of that pattern should be obvious: Aristotle explained how obvious it is that the heavier something is the faster it falls, and it took nearly 2 millenia before Galileo's experiments (which are symbolized by the leaning-tower story) showed otherwise. For many people the corrective is their first permanent job.)--Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

Mechanics

Tnx for the helpful notification of resp, but plz skip add'l not'ns until we've finished with this topic: i'll watch for your responses till then.

Tnx for yr attn. --Jerzy (t) 17:03, 2004 Sep 2 (UTC)

I'm about to do that. Andrewa 01:31, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ph 6

I just hppened to run across this today, in grossly overdue talk-page clean-up:

Hi Jerzy, someone recently used IASO as an abbreviation for "is a sockpuppet of". I wouldn't be surprised if it means something else too. 8^) Hope that helps, Wile E. Heresiarch 19:08, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I note that i unconsciously evolved it from IASO to IASPO, which might explain the lack of an acro hit. --Jerzy (t) 19:22, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

Boiling Points of Wikipedians

It seems that some folks, for whatever reason, are thinking that "the deletionists" are a problem best solved by unilateral action. You saw the Village Pump discussion, and you and I are on the same general side of the discussion. I hope you note also, though, what Netoholic has begun doing on VfD, beginning with Zhu Yu. I agree with most that some new scheme might be desirable, but we have discussions taking place three different places, and folks are starting to announce the thing settled. This will not do. Geogre 02:02, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agree it won't do. Tim has just jumped on me for trying to hold the vote I announced two weeks ago for Wikipedia:Deletion of user subpages, and cancelled the vote, which involved him editing all the relevant pages to remove my freeze requests too. I suspect that even he has now just lost track of which proposal is which. We will see. Until we get this sorted out, I'm not feeling inclined to get involved in other policy proposals myself. Andrewa 04:07, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Voting on proposed policy

See comments at my talk page. zoney ▓ ▒ talk 10:54, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There's a disclaimer at the top of the village pump that says "Please note: this page is not a place to make lasting comments. Discussions are removed daily to make room for new ones." If you have a better plan for archiving which does not "leave a lot to be desired", I suggest you propose this on the talk page. Otherwise, please do not attack the people who do remove the old sections. The page is currently 153kb, largely as a result of people not being bold enough to clear out the old sections because they fear people will complain about it in exactly the way you have done on Wikipedia talk:Deletion of user subpages. Angela . 12:03, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Point taken, and I have inserted a clarification into my comments.

But I think you are being a bit unkind here. It wasn't intended as criticism of these people, or attack on anyone. Yes, it is criticism of the current system, and I may have a look at that once the dust settles on this vote which is my current priority on policy and procedural matters, and even then it's unlikely to be my top priority.

I have been critical of Tim certainly. I still think he simply didn't do his homework. The discussion period was plainly described in the process section, which was deliberately the second section of the page, directly below the vote section that he deleted. As a result he has wasted my time and confused at least one supporter who now demands clarification, and probably others. He has enormous prestige here and his opposition is something I could have done without. But even this is not attack. We are all human.

I will be compiling a lessons learned as soon as the dust settles and the proposal is either accepted and working, rejected or (worst) accepted but not working. I have really tried to do the right thing on this one, and some may now ask, what's the point? The time for Tim to comment was in the two weeks in which the proposal (including the process section) was open for discussion. One lesson is that the relevant talk page and the Pump were not sufficient publicity for this proposal.

Two other possible places that I considered were the Deletion Policy talk page and the mailing lists. I didn't do these because I wasn't prepared to keep track of the discussion that might have followed in either place, and they didn't seem the best places for this discussion anyway. In hindsight, I should have notified on the Deletion Policy talk page, and belatedly will. I'm now of two minds about the mailing lists. Comments welcome. Andrewa 20:26, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Deletion of user subpages

Hi Andrew, thanks for the heads up on the vote. I for one am bewildered at the opposition to the policy being frozen while voting takes place—I have no idea how a policy vote can possibly work if the policy is changed mid-vote to something different to what the earlier voters supported or opposed?! That's crazy talk! —Stormie 23:19, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

It was a nasty surprise for me. My guess is that for once, Tim didn't do his homework, and that this is a knee-jerk reaction on his part based on the misapprehension that there had been no invitation to discussion previously. We're all human. Andrewa 00:48, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

TV Nova

I've replied to you on my talk page rather than split a discussion between two pages.-gadfium 01:34, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Before present

Hi, monitoring recent changes I noticed a alteration to a page that you seem to know about that looked suspicious to me. Year numbering was changed regarding "before present" and a new page was added, Before Present. Just in case you don't watch that page I thought i'd tell you so you could hopefully fact-check that. :D thanks rhyax 09:11, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Experiment"

I dislike the "experiment" of moving comments from VFD to talk pages (where they will never be read). Despite the name, the purpose of VfD is discussion, not votes. - Nunh-huh 22:58, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough, and thanks for the comment. See Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Counter-proposal. Andrewa 01:39, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I did. I think if the problem is the length of the page, it could easily be segmented into 7 "daily" pages... M,T,W,Th,F,S,S.... BTW, you say "only lengthy discussions have been moved", yet you moved my comment that was not lengthy. Perhaps it was just lost in the shuffle. - Nunh-huh 01:47, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Personally I think it's logical to segment VfD into daily pages and have said so several times, see Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Another Proposal. Agree your comment could have remained, it was a line call, and if there hadn't been lengthier discussion to deal with I'd never have moved it. Feel free to move or copy it back. Andrewa 07:06, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Not a big deal, I think the info has been communicated. Good luck fixing VfD, though I'm not sure it's broken <g> - Nunh-huh 23:35, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your suggestions and thoughts welcome

I know that I'm going to regret this, but I've been tinkering with a policy page. It's in the "so preliminary it's scary" phase right now, but your consideration is welcome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Managed_Deletion Geogre 17:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Jeeee, just realised I forgot to answer you :-( Perhaps I have misunderstood :-( How embarassing. Feel free to remove my vote from there if that makes a difference then Andrewa. That will be okay by me. SweetLittleFluffyThing

Occupation of Palestine

Please see my question at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Occupation_of_Palestine#Tally: Rephrasing the question -- Jmabel 01:21, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Anon

Hi, Andrew. It's the ex-Lucky 6.9 here. I guess I still have enough of the Wikipedia fever to want to pop in anonymously every so often and try to clean up the joint. Sorry about the speedy tag on that huge, rambling "article," but I didn't want to VfD it as an anon. This IP is here at work, so please feel free to drop me a line at production@dc.rr.com during business hours at UTC minus 7. Have a great weekend! - 67.52.108.20 23:55, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

RC4 move

Thanks for moving RC4 (cipher)! And, sorry, I should have mentioned the discussion with User:Kevyn in my request ... I had assumed there was a consensus to move it (or, at least, a consensus that it was Wikipedia policy), but this isn't immediately obvious from the discussion. — Matt 21:48, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Flying fox tails

I just wanted to drop you a quick thank-you for the work you've done on flying fox, etc. Sorting out all those differences among Australian, American, and British English was a confusing — but ultimately fruitful — discussion. This is one of the reasons I like wiki so much: the authors themselves can broaden their own horizons (however clumsily), simulateously hacking a path through the jungle for future readers. Thank you! • Benc • 05:54, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

beta Systemic Bias section

Hi, if you wish to help contribute to a beta version of a Wikipedia page section designed to counter-act Wikipedia's systematic bias, please sign the bottom of this section on the Village pump - Wikipedia:Village_pump#Systemic_bias_in_Wikipedia. If not, no worries.--Xed 03:33, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Back for now

Hi, Andrew. Got your message on my anon page and I wanted you to know that I'm back. I'm still limiting my exposure somewhat as I don't wish to burn out. So, I've added a couple of new articles and I'm working on the older ones I've done. Thanks for geting back to me. - Lucky 6.9 16:55, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Sydney

Want to join? I'm still formulating policy. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:02, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tabs at top behaving strangely

Andrewa, unfortunately your workaround didn't work for me. However, your suggestion gave me the idea that it was basically a stylesheet problem, so then I delved into the monobook stylesheet. The odd thing about this bug is that it looks like there's plenty of blank space in an 800x600 res to fit in all the tabs, but nevertheless the display screws up by "wrapping" the tabs for some inexplicable reason. After studying the code for a while, I was able to locate the source of the problem:

#p-cactions {
...
    width: 76%;
...
}

The above line applies only to the tabs at the top of the page, and to no other elements on the page. The problem the width statement creates problems is that 76% of the width of a 800x600 screen is not enough to hold all the tabs. Therefore, I then changed my stylesheet by adding this line to my personal monobook.css page:

#p-cactions { width: 100%; }

Now the tabs display properly in an 800x600 resolution! (Even better: this change does not create problems—or even change the display at all—in larger resolutions. In fact, I don't understand why the stylesheet developers even chose to make the width 76% in the first place; unless I'm missing something, it should always have been 100%. 100% doesn't screw up the column to the left, either.)

Anyway, thanks for the comments. You helped me find a solution.

--Lowellian 05:26, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Argg, okay, I spoke too soon. There is a slight problem with what I posted above, and now I see why the stylesheet developers chose to post a value less than 100%. It creates blank space to the right of the page, so that in an 800x600 res a horizontal scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the window. However, though 100% does not work, the following does (without being so wide as to create a horizontal scroll bar), and it fixes the stacking tabs problem.

#p-cactions { width: 80%; }

Now it works! (I think.)

--Lowellian 05:35, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thayer Vfd efforts

Thanks Andrew. I don't get ruffled easily — and stay miles away from stuff where I might! Too much good stuff to do, if something gets zoofy, I just run. Best, Bill

Why Vfd

I finally put why I put Sweetheart on Vfd in more detail. Also see Talk:Boyfriend for a complete description of how it is to be done. Any way that does not involve deletion?? 66.245.64.202 20:36, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Specifically, how is it to be merged?? Here are the steps:

Delete Sweetheart
Move girlfriend to sweetheart using the "move this page" option
Re-word the new sweetheart article so that it talks about the two sexes equally.
Simply make boyfriend a re-direct. (Note that girlfriend will automatically be a re-direct after finishing option 2.)
Add a link to Sweetheart (company) (which will remain as it is,) at the top of the new page.

Any other way to do this?? 66.245.64.202 20:48, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you!

Thank you for correcting the position of your message from simply User:ID to User_talk:ID. But, have you yet read what I wrote above this?? 66.245.64.202 20:43, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Andrewa 21:10, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And what comments do you have?? Any alternate way to do it besides the above way?? Please break it down into several steps just as I did with the technic I wrote above that begins with deleting Sweetheart. 66.245.64.202 21:12, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Slow down. I'm getting sick of the edit conflicts. And sorry about the wrong button on your user page, I hope that's all fixed now.

What you have proposed doesn't preserve the history. If you rewrite it so it does, I think you'll find that the necessary delete then becomes a speedy delete (and if not it should be).

But what exactly are you trying to achieve anyway? The results won't be neat in any case. Why not leave the histories where they are? Andrewa 21:26, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The answer is that boyfriend and girlfriend are articles I think should be merged and I want to know what the best way to do it without deleting a page is. 66.245.64.202 21:29, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I also wrote what I don't like about the 2 other choices at Talk:Boyfriend just a while ago. 66.245.64.202 21:31, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Continued at talk:boyfriend. Andrewa 00:49, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Ancient Egypt Update

Hi Andrew, I remember that once upon a time you were interested in matters concerning Ancient Egypt. A group of us have been discussing the standardization the names & dates of rulers in this subject, & as a result of this discussion, I've put together a list of rulers & dates as a talking point for our proposed standard. Please take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Temp, & join the discussion on the talk page. -- llywrch 00:08, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Your recent problems with mozilla & the monobook skin

If mozilla (seamonkey suite) and firefox have such a drastically different behaviour on a website, I'm sure the mozilla developers would be interested to know about it and "fix" seamonkey (even in the case that our CSS is broken and not mozilla, if firefox is able to grok it, seamonkey should too). Have you considered reporting this at their bugzilla? In case you've already done so, sorry for the spam. Thanks! -- Paddu 05:42, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, they're certainly not spam.

Yeah, just found that you're very tolerant, from the size of your talk page & its subpages.

I'm not sure I'm in the position to document the problems sufficiently to give a helpful bug report. It's a very complex configuration management problem IMO, and one that we're going to meet again as other features are added to the software. There have been other reports of strange behaviour that basically come down to poorly-tested modifications to the skin IMO, and for every one person who reports such problems there are probably ten to a hundred who experience them and say nothing.

I hope that eventually we will restrict modifications to the default skin and a few others to developers only, and have an approval process by which all functional changes to these (even by developers) go through a public approval process. Andrewa 06:11, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'd thought what you said was that at 800x600 resolution, mozilla seamonkey takes 30 minutes to load any page with the monobook skin. So you could just point them to http://en.wikipedia.org/ (anon. -> monobook skin) and tell that seamonkey takes ages to load at 800x600 resolution, specifying your OS (& probably video card, etc.?) but firefox opens it fine. -- Paddu 08:36, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean, but the problem is that this is not guaranteed to reproduce the problem, owing to the frequent changes to the monobook skin. The advantage of the classic skin is not any superior design IMO, it's simply the fact that people are leaving it alone, so bugs and other glitches have mostly been been fixed. There's a dichotomy here. People tend to fiddle with the default skin rather than one that is relatively little used, both because they use it themselves and also because it's the most important one. On the other hand, it's also the one we most want to be stable. Andrewa 23:51, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Church

Hi, Andrew. Thanks for your encouraging remarks about [[occupation of Palestine]. And did you know your church has a name similar to mine? --Uncle Ed (El Dunce) 17:53, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wiki Junior Project

We are currently in the process of deciding what the first topics will be. We have already decided that the first humanities topic will be Countries of the World:South America. We need to decide what our first science topic will be. We already have plenty of pictures available for Big Cats, The Solar System and Human Flight. We're having a little vote to decide which one we should work on first. Please come to Meta:Wikijunior project first topics. Cheers! Theresa Knott (Not the skater) 07:44, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

a

(for anchor)

>>>>

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the note. I don't know what to say about the whole deletion thread that brewed up last night, except that it seems quite a bit more exhausting to defend an article than it is to write one.

I apologize if I was over-ardent. The article really was the least of it: I write professionally, and there's a bit of ego that goes along with that, in terms of process and working on things until they're done -- an impulse to chase people away from one's workspace when one's in the middle of something.

Do these discussions happen often, or is the decision whether to delete an article usually pretty clear-cut? Auto movil 21:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd have to say that they happen far too often IMO! There has always been something of a problem. When I was fairly new here, I was following a trail I must resume someday, starting with a significant little booklet How to Lie with Satistics by Darrell Huff. Anyway, in writing one of those stubs I ran across a collaboration with another author, Henry Felsen, who had sold over eight million children's books of a style we'd now consider politically incorrect I guess, so I wrote a stub on him too. He wasn't anyone I was particularly interested in, but he's clearly encyclopedic IMO, eight million book sales back in the 1940s and 1950s really meant something.

Six minutes after I started writing the stub it was vandalised by a sysop and listed for deletion. When I reverted the vandalism, he just put it back. He also removed the wikilink from a list I'd added it to, with the explanation remove unknown academic or similar. When challenged he pointed out (correctly) that I'd mispelled the guy's name (a typo), and (also correctly) that a substub is a candidate for speedy deletion. The typo seems to be the only evidence he'd considered; The substub consisted of an external link to an archive of the guy's work (where the name was spelled correctly of course) and was not an orphan. He made no attempt to contact me.

The explanation that I'd made this typo was the closest I ever got to an apology, and I was criticised (rightly I guess but...!) for commenting revert utter stupidity when removing the vandalism of the substub I'd created and was in the middle of expanding (and having edit conflicts with the other guy of course). The sysop who comitted the vandalism was described as a model Wikipedian.

So we've always had these problems and always will, but lately I see a few worrying trends. There are a couple of newer, rather aggressive sysops who are modelling behaviour that completely ignores the principle of wikilove in their VfD work, and maybe it's my imagination but I think their attitude is spreading. These guys are also a bit trigger-happy, their output and enthusiasm is great but their research tends to be on the shallow side IMO - not that mine is always perfect.

Anyway, I hope you hang in here. The better writers tend to be the more polite in my experience, but probably also the more sensitive about their own work. I think that people who are careful of the truth tend to be careful of people too, and vice versa. And I think it's a great project, obviously, and despite various reasons why wikipedia is not so great. Andrewa 19:25, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lucas Heights Accelerator

Hi Andrew. I was just wondering where you got the figure for a 3GeV accelerator at Lucas Heights in your Australian Atomic Energy Commission article? I haven't heard of this accelerator but have heard of accelerators that they have there in the 3MeV range. Martyman 11:42, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

G'day Martyman.

I'm going from memory, so I may have the energy wrong. When I worked there, there were two vandergraafs in service. The big one was a proton accelerator in the same building that housed MOATA reactor, and that's the one I'm describing as 3GeV.

The little one was an electron accelerator in a lab across the road, and was far less powerful in terms of particle energy.

The fascinating thing about the two was that although you could safely stand next to the big machine while it was operating (for short periods with a film badge), the little machine gave off such powerful hard X-rays that it needed four inches of lead!

But my area of expertise was computing, not particle physics. I'll see if I can find an old annual report to verify. Andrewa 17:50, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

More info... the little vandergraaf was called the betatron, and the big one has now been replaced or extended to some sort of tandem configuration. This subsequent development belongs in the ANSTO article, not the AAEC one I guess. MOATA was still there in the other end of the building but decommissioned and defuelled last I heard. Andrewa 20:29, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I work at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the ANU. If it is a single ended vandergraf accelerator you are talking about then I am sure that the number is something like 3MeV. GeV would either require some method I haven't heard of or a large collider type accelerator sever kilometres accross. We had an old 1960s 2MeV vandergraf at work that was probably pretty similar to the one you are describing. The lack of electron supression made it an incredable producer of high energy X-Rays, much worse than the newer higher energy machine that have replaced it. I have a photo of our old 2Mev machine opened for servicing, here [1].

I attended a workshop with the ansto accelerator technitions recently. If I can recall correctly they currently have three accelerators. An old single ended vandergraf that is at the end of it's life, a new solid state tandem ("tandetron") commissioned this year to replace it and a large 3 or 4MV?? tandem vandergraph that was bought second hand from England and installed in around 1992. Interestingly our school used to have a very similar large tandem but it was shipped to new zealand.

I didn't realise that they used to have a second reactor. It must have been on a lot smaller scale to the HIFAR reactor? Martyman 21:52, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just opened up the powerpoint file from the lab overview talk I attended. The old Vandergraf that is close to being de-commissioned is a 3 MeV machine, the new machine is a 2 Million Volt tandem ("tandetron") called "STAR" and the big vandergraph machine is a 10 Million Volt tandem called "ANTARES". Martyman 23:05, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes. I've been going through AAEC Annual reports and what I most want is not very clearly set out, but it appears that the big vandergraf was a 3MeV proton accelerator, and was commissioned in 1964. So I was several orders of magnitude out! Thanks for the correction.

MOATA was 10 watts thermal, and directly air cooled. Andrewa 23:57, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like the same old 3MeV accelerator that is still in use today. I believe they have been experimenting with running plastic charging belts on it as they can no longer source the OEM rubber ones. I have some photos in the powerpoint presentations I have, but they are not mine to release onto wikipedia. Martyman 00:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm much the same. The photos I have are almost all Australian Government copyright. Cameras were banned on site when I worked there (the same as most heavy industry sites), so it was use the official photographer's stuff or nothing.

We need an article on ANSTO, which should cover or link to subsequent accelerator developments, including the cyclotron at RPA, and the new reactor project... although I notice reading old annual reports that the replacement reactor was first recommended back in the 1960s! The design recommended then is almost exactly what they are now building. I'll do an article on MOATA sometime. Andrewa 03:05, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Damper comments

Andrew, Thanks for your comments on the Damper article on my talk page. It was greatly appreciated.

Capitalistroadster 06:13, 4 Dec 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 1000 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)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:17, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IMO and FWIW, I think the best think to do with these nominations is just to vote keep, and let them percolate through the normal process with a minimum of comment. Andrewa 16:26, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikibooks

Thanks for your kind words. I'm not quite satisfied with it, but I think it captures some of the VfD flavor nicely. JRM 17:20, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

Lazslo Kavacs (cinematographer) VFD

I fully respect you for stubifying the article, and your personal opinions. However, I feel criticising me for initially listing the article was a little over the top (although I can understand that people might not agree that the original article should have been speedy deleted). The initial article as it stood contravened Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not as it was solely a link, and being posted by an anoymous user I assumed it was spam/advertising (which, incidentally, it probably was).

Anyway, as my nomination drew attention to the article, and resulted in the page being improved it is for the better. Happy editing. Rje 21:11, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tee

Hi andrewa, please have a look at Talk:Tee - I think you are mistaken about a point that you reinserted in tee. Best, Kosebamse 05:40, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Haus Panorama

Hi Andrew, I've just had a look at the article. This dormitory ([2] engl.) does not seem to be a particularly remarkable one of the (many) student homes in Vienna. Only one (rather unusual) dorm is mentionend in de:Gasometer (Wien), I don't understand why the "Haus Panorama" deserves its own article. --Markus 20:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Echidnae

Hey, I'm just responding to your comment you left me in my Talk:Echidnae page. I see that the Ceciliantas page has been deleted, and looking back now, I think that was a good move. I'll remember what you have said to me, as I'm still learning how to use Wikipedia in the best way. I've been away on vacation for some time now, so it's been hard to get any amount of work done online in Wikipedia. I just thought I should let you know why my input on Wikipedia has been minimal for now. I do plan to get more involved when I get back home, as long as I have time I can devote towards it. Thanks for all your comments and replies to mine. Being new here, I like all of the feedback I can get. --Echidnae 05:07, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That's user talk:Echidnae. See reply there. Andrewa 05:23, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removed text

The following are things others have added to my user page, I assume in error. They go back a while, and I have no idea now what some of them are about. Andrewa 10:05, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi...I welcome your feedback about User:Brettz9/videoscript not being on Requests for comment. My reason for including it here was not simply that it was a pet project that I wanted help with, but that it was really a project which belonged to the Wikipedia community. Perhaps such requests should be on a separate page, but I didn't know whether such a page existed. The name "requests for comment" seemed to fit. If you can think of a better alternative, please let me know. Thanks. [[User:Brettz9|Brettz9 (talk)]] 03:36, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

About fwice, thanks for letting me know. Christopher Mahan 19:35, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

re Engrish, thanks for the moral support. Just so you know, the person who got the vote in before I commented was really, really fast :) and I'd never nominated a page for deletion before. Vincent 23:14, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ha. Beats me. Feel free to delete that poor lonely brown bear subspecies. :) jengod 22:24, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hey Andrew... I removed it because it made what was previously part of the intro into the beginning of the main body of the text - I dunno if you did that on purpose, but I think it would be better simply as part of the intro, or else lower down in the main body if you think it needs to be expanded into its own section. Graft 06:07, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Returning to English name

Hi, I hope you can visit [|my proposal] to change an article back to its common english name, and can see your way to voice support for the move. I just thought if a couple of people voice agreement before hand it hopefully will less the chance of social problems. All Best :)Daeron 12:38, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By the way: what about Average Rule?

I don't particularly want to pile on Iasson, and I'm not really sure who created the article, but why wasn't it ever proposed for VfD? I don't want to step into a s--tstorm by proposing it, but my current hypothesis regarding Iasson's behavior is that he is in fact the creator of the Average Rule and is hoping to get Wikipedia to be the first organization in the universe actually to adopt it. It seems to me to be a neologism that's in no real use. I have this page temporarily on my watchlist if you want to reply here. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:31, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think you mean average rule (no capital r). Interesting theory, I'd encourage you to pursue it, as will I. As for s--tstorms, sometimes they're inevitable. Andrewa 18:43, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, on reading the article and its talk page, it seems a definite VfD candidate on the grounds of original research. Some of the content is also disputable IMO, much of the material submitted by anons uses similar phrasing to Iasson, and it seems to cover most (perhaps all) of the points he has been making in commenting in the RfC. That's consistent with your theory.

Why not VfD it? And, what's the alternative? Andrewa 19:03, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, I see someone beat me to it. I wanted to wait to see what other editors to that page had said. As for the "eleven other articles" I suspect they will not be too hard to find—many of them will probably prove to be linked from his other articles—and his style is easily recognizable. It may even be able to find some of them by global text search. I don't think there will be many of them because—at least so far—I don't perceive that he created these articles out of hostility toward Wikipedia. I think he is just a little monomaniacal about his proposed voting systems. The most antisocial thing about him is his apparent unwillingness, no matter how clearly expressed, to accept group decisions, however obvious, when arrived at by any means other than his own. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:10, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

West Papua

Hi, I'm sorry I only just found out about your response Request for peer review a few hours ago; unfortunately you'd posted your thoughts just one day after I left Wikipedia; the mindless reverting of Wik's & John's had made it impossible to contribute to any subjects on Wikipedia. - so I left for several months in hopes they'd be delt with or find something else to amuse them.

You comments were just the kind of feedback I was hoping to get before they started their edit & revert attacks last year. I've done a quick edit of the Map & Intro of the West Papua article; I would really appreciate your feedback if possible.

And if possible? Any comments on West Papuan genocide - though John's version is much funnier, he's removed the name of the document which the article is written around. Gota love them ;-)--Daeron 19:33, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just Separated non-province info to West Papua.

Moved Papua (Indonesian province) to Papua Province, Indonesia

Moved West Irian Jaya to West Irian Jaya Province, Indonesia

In accord with Wikipedia naming conventions, and what was proposed last week on discussion page. To confirm established world usage outside Wikipedia: Google "Papua Province" provides 737 English all non-Wikipedia pages; Google "Papua (Indonesian province)" provides 236 English only copies of Wikipedia pages. I submit John or Wik/Gzornenplatz actions are only motivated by personality difference.--Daeron 21:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Having just been told of the Wikipedia:Requested_moves page I have just submiited the first of possibly a few pages for moving. Could you and any other people have a look? --Daeron 21:46, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Getalis' Height Project

Greetings, and many thank yous for your support and advice regarding my series of Height pages. I hadn't the slightest clue this was going to be so controversial! I'm still having trouble getting into the minds of my attackers. Why does this upset them so? Thanks for the format suggestion for the six-foot-three page. I've adopted it as the future standard. Now, if I could only re-format the ones created beforehand... Anyway, I hope to win a few more comrades before the axe comes down on Thursday. Perhaps extending the upper range would help? 6'6", 6'7", etc.