User talk:Andrewa/archive1

Moved here by Andrewa 21:18, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC) from my main talk page:

Wikichess

Good lord, I had no idea a simple playing-around "beta-test" would cause such a furor! My opponent seems to feel otherwise. Keep in mind, at the time we started the game, essentially no one at wikipedia had really posted anything anywhere using Arvin's stuff, let alone play a game, so I thought I was justing testing around something new. I certainly didn't consider would actually think this was some kind of encouragement for people to pick up games everywhere.

Revolver 01:43, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Badly behaved websites

You mention this on your user page. Perhaps you want Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content and Wikipedia:Copies of Wikipedia content (low degree of compliance)? If so, do you think a redirect on the above would be appropriate? -- Fennec 15:04, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What I was thinking of was external links to sites that should carry some warning. Thess sites include ones that:

exploit security exposures in particular browsers
work on some browsers but not others
make it difficult for the user to exit or to swap pages
have excessive initial download times

and there are other problems too, and sure to be some I don't even know about. I think we should have a page on these potential problems and do some all-care-and-no-responsibility checking on the external links we use.

Agree that the matters you raise are already well dealt with. Andrewa 18:18, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Time Cube

This discussion was copied by an anonymous user at IP 211.28.76.110 to Talk:Time Cube, so I see no reason to keep it here as well. Andrewa 05:44, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And it's now moved again, by me this time, to Talk:Time Cube/User talk archive. Andrewa 05:55, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"Human languages equate to the gift like Trojan Horse and like the Trojan Horse, is filled with deadly deceit. Words are invented counterfeit and fictitious representations of real values with no inherent measure within them. Languages are corrupted with word viruses which equate to a poison which is self destructive for Cubic humanity. Humans can exist without word, but but poisonous word language will destroy humanity as it has destroyed all prior civilizations. Either purge the language of its poisonous word or cast out all languages entirely and start over." -- Dr. Gene Ray, the Greatest Thinker and Wisest Human to ever set foot upon this Cubic planet Earth.

That may be one writer's opinion, and it's typical of the discussion. If it's your thing, have a look at Time cube and Talk:Time Cube/User talk archive as well. As that last page says, I'm now personally satisfied that it's either a hoax or a delusion. And it may well be both, different things to different promoters. Andrewa 21:37, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Andrew

I see we share some common interests in mathematics, music and philosophy. If you ever feel inspired to delve more deeply into tuning math, visit us at tuning-math@groups.yahoo.com. I had the chutzpah to edit the Jesus Christ page, by the way, so maybe I'll take a peek at Mother Teresa. :) Gene Ward Smith 08:02, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

David Rohl

Hi Andrew, could you take a look at my rewrite of the article on David Rohl & offer your opinion about it? Obviously, I'm not a big fan of him, but I thought I did present him & his ideas fairly. (Most of it was drawn from his web page, my reading of his book Pharoahs and Kings, & an attempt to find mainstream scholarly opinion concerning him.) -- llywrch 18:40, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. I think you've let Kitchen off a bit lightly. Has he answered, for example, Rohl's argument that the conventional chronology places the building of Solomon's Temple in a period in which Israel was impoverished, while Rohl's new one places it in a period of prosperity? IMO that's Rohl's best single argument.

There's no doubt that mainstram scholarship is against him, and on many issues I expect they are right. Rohl is after all still a professional entertainer, with an incomplete and unsubmitted PhD his best qualification. But I also think there's a case to answer, and I'm suspicious that Kitchen and the like don't answer it. I would have hoped that they'd be delighted at the interest others are showing in their subject. Instead they seem threatened. Methink he doth protest too much. And, he has an obvious vested interest in the established chronology. Andrewa 13:15, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

From what I've been able to find, the policy of the establishment scholars is to simply ignore Rohl. The few who don't point out the presence of many errors or omissions in his works (& I'm not an expert in the field, but I found enough of these to question the quality of his research). But you are right in saying that there is a case that needs answering: Rohl is an articulate & persuasive writer, & most of the arguments and evidence that explain or justify the conventional dating he is criticising are buried in the specialist literature, which is not easily available. As a result, Rohl's interpretation is the first the serious amateur interested in Egypt or the ancient Near East reads, & afterwards colors her/his point of view.

Feel free to elaborate on Rohl's arguments. Frankly, I felt it was time to share my research & move on to other topics. -- llywrch 19:09, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The problem of increasingly erudite articles

A few days ago, you asked for examples of articles that I've watched evolve from layman-readable to very complex and readable only by a specialist in the field. Here are a few that come to mind. I have not looked at all of these recently so some of them may have been fixed in the meantime. Rossami 22:47, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Compare the opening paragraph ofrifle to rifle]
Honeybee to honeybee
Irreducible complexity
Acoustics
Vector (spatial) and many other math and science-related articles
I could also argue that sunk cost has drifted into that category.

Thanks, I'll have a look. Andrewa 13:15, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Swag

I found that meaning in the OED. I'll see if I can find evidence of it being used like that online. I may not have been precise enough since it was first British I think, and now chiefly AU/NZ, but the "especially alcohol" bit seems to be dialect or to have fallen out of use. They have 8 quotations to support it, one from the 1960s and one from the 1970s are from Australian newspapers. :) fabiform | talk 02:37, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I just did a google search for "a swag of" (including quote marks) and in my opinion, the majority of the first ten hits are this usage. fabiform | talk 02:51, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Macquarie Dictionary confirms this usage, too. I "outsourced" the enquiry to one of their staff I know well, and he came back with the quote "a swag of medals", which someone applied to a recent Olympics, as the example (from the Oxford which I don't have either) which works best for him as a native speaker. This certainly works for me (as a native speaker too) but I think it may be a live metaphor. But should we list those? Perhaps we should. He hasn't yet commented either way on this. The original OED didn't seek to distinguish live metaphors from established usage, so I guess that's the tradition for a dictionary. Andrewa 18:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Archiving vs History

Hello, I read you comment on Alexandros' page about linking to old versions of pages being a good way of retaining histories. I just thought I'd mention an advantage I can see in doing things the subpages way, then the discussion remains searchable as the pages will be indexed by Google, whereas older versions of pages are not. Obviously it's not massively important, just thought I'd mention it. -- Ams80 00:23, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, good point. I guess there's some sort of robot control file that tells Google (and other well-behaved robots) not to follow the links to the history files. Andrewa 18:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've deleted a lot of stuff as this page was getting a bit long. I may archive it sometime, meantime it's just in the history, and as pointed out above, no longer Google-searchable. Andrewa 19:02, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Unifying conjecture on VfD

Hi. If you get a chance, could you take a look at Unifying conjecture and vote on VfD? We're looking for some informed opinions, and most of the math people don't really frequent VfD. Thanks, Isomorphic 22:10, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Have done, thank you. Hope it helps. Andrewa 12:01, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thumbnails

You made some complaints about the way thumbnails look with the new image syntax, so I'm just letting you know a design competition has been launched to replace the gray border and icon. You can add your suggestions till March 15, or just vote on other people's suggestions after that date: meta:Image Box. :) fabiform | talk 15:26, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

images

You mentioned image team on the VP, but my browser takes too long to load VP, so is there a page to discuss images on wikipedia? For example:

How to specify Image search by date and name? A choice/button appears to be missing.
Will interwiki links ever handle images?
Where/when are the plans for deleting images without proper PD? (mine have them)

Apologies if this is the wrong place, but VP is nigh impossible to load/search/post to. Wikibob 00:09, 2004 Mar 8 (UTC)

Patent nonsense

"Patent nonsense" means text that literally makes no sense. If something is written in comprehensible English prose then it is not patent nonsense, however silly the prose may appear to be. I would recommend reading Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion and Wikipedia:Patent nonsense again. Hope that helps... -- Oliver P. 01:48, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm. I've done that. Food for though, certainly. Thanks for the comments. But it seems to me that this is subjective.

I'm guessing that there's an article that I've claimed to be patent nonsense, and you don't agree. I think there have been three articles which I've claimed were patent nonsense recently: Mizan, which I listed for speedy deletion; Adam Jacob Muller which I didn't (and gave reasons), and James S. Baker which again I didn't. IMO these three all fit the second category of patent nonsense listed on the relevant page: Stuff that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irremediably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to try to make head or tail of it. I'd say the same about Jabberwocky (the poem, not the Wikipedia article) and Time Cube (the theory, not the Wikipedia article).

So, while I'm happy (even keen) to have articles about Jabberwocky and about the Time Cube theory, if the poem itself were to be posted, or the theory were to be posted as fact rather than reported, I'd consider these both unsuitable as text for articles. Neither would be candidates for speedy deletion, but that's only because the poem and the theory are both famous enough to be notable (and deservedly famous IMO but that's irrelevant really), so the articles are not even candidates for deletion IMO, let alone speedy. But if similar non-famous poems or theories were to be posted as articles, IMO these would be candidates for speedy deletion under current policy. Which I think is good. VfD is under some strain, and part of the solution is not to have articles there unnecessarily.

So, there are five examples. Are any of them patent nonsense in your opinion? They all are in mine. And, if not, can you give some idea of what would qualify?

I think it needs to be born in mind that anything in the article namespace is being presented as fact. So while obviously there's some sense that can be given to all five of these by imagining them in another context, in the context of the article namespace, there is none at all IMO. Which I think is what the patent nonsense page is trying to say in paragraph 2 as quoted above.

Perhaps I have this wrong, and/or perhaps it needs clarifying. But it seems clear enough to me. Andrewa 05:49, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

English is global language and I feel, that anybody can spell any word as he likes. I am not worse the "The Beatles" Cautious 23:32, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think you mean that I corrected a spelling mistake and this has offended you. Current English Wikipedia policy is to use both standard English and American spellings, but maintaining consistency to one or the other within any specific article. Making spelling corrections is a part of editing under this policy. Sorry! Andrewa 21:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why??

Why did you delete all the text on the Votes for deletion page?? User 66.32.89.122

I certainly didn't mean to. Who are you, and when was this? It seems fine now, and my last few edits seem OK. Andrewa 02:19, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello ? [1] FirmLittleFluffyThing 05:41, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

RBMK problem

There are two articles, Wikipedia:RBMK and RBMK. Why separate articles? It has been put on VFD. Kd4ttc

Thanks for the notice. I can't imagine what has happened here. Despite what the history says, AFAIK I have never worked on the article in the Wikipedia namespace, and I can't think of any reason why I would have. It makes no sense to me at all. I will vote to delete. Andrewa 08:22, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nomination

I placed your name in nomination for adminship. Hope you don't mind. Yours, Meelar 02:54, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. I've been thinking of applying, so it's very welcome. Andrewa 01:43, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

BCKW

Your polite note, make me answer. Now I'm happy you get the idea. Remenber this. I'm not so polite. And I'm an expert in Frege original notation, too!!

"Your polite note" was NOT ironic, so you need not "modalize" your comment. You write quite well, I was just thinking to welcome non experts, but not. And I have a lot of pages waiting, here and in es:. Bye. DefLog 20:28, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Reasons to support experts. But thanks.

And now thank you, all. I can't fu#@!#^ believe it

search and find, (say 7th line) B, C, W, K 15 January 1929!! Small version is useless!

DefLog 23:21, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Someone, don't know who (it's probably on the talk page decided to merge Personal subpages for deletion with Speedy deletions a few weeks or months ago, I think since the method of deletion is essentially the same for both. - Hephaestos|§ 17:29, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was me who merged Wikipedia:Personal subpages to be deleted with Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. Wikipedia:Personal subpages to be deleted was only to be used for listing your own subpages, so if you are listing someone else's subpages, these need to go via the normal VfD procedure. Sorry for any confusion caused. I've readded them to VfD. Hope this was ok. Angela . 17:37, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks. Andrewa 17:45, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, taken in the spirit intended. I wrote a brief answer on my talk page. I am being bold - look at what I'm doing over on L. Frank Baum, I'm dying for someone to notice. Thanks. --Woggly 10:48, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hi, in case you hadn't noticed, your query request has been fulfilled. I've listed the additional pages uncovered by the query at Template:VfD-User Information-Habitat subpages. Angela . 22:27, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

Hi Andrewa. Thanx for the advice. I guess I was getting a bit carried away. It seems to me that people take this project very seriously, which is fine. Cheers --Dunk 18:48, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

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. Good luck. Angela . 03:45, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

9/11 victims

Sorry for subjecting you to all that.

I think the reason Everyking has responded, and Mr. DiPierro has not, is that Everyking is just an enthusiastic inclusionist, while anthony is considered by many to be a troll.

While I disagree with Everyking, and dislike having to argue against him on a regular basis, I don't think he's doing it for the purpose of causing problems. anthony (this comment is a work in progress and boy howdy is my sig long) on the other hand, needs a boot to the head. -- Cyrius | Talk 06:02, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

I rather like both of them! Everking has made an incredible number of contributions, and the few I've checked have been excellent. Anthony has a great sense of humour. They both can be very hard to get on with. Hey, there's one sysop I seem unable to get along with, but people I do respect highly recommend him as a 'model Wikipedian', and he supported my sysop nomination, so maybe I'm the one who needs to make more effort. If people matter, then all people matter. And I think they do, however much some seem to deserve not to at times.

One of the most rewarding things I've been involved in over the years has been Kairos Prison Ministry. We become vulnerable to the guys inside, and lives are changed. It's expensive love. What other sort is there?

Anthony does seem to be on thin ice right now, and as he hasn't made any great effort to contribute I'm of two minds myself as to whether he's worth the effort in terms of the goals of Wikipedia. I'm glad not to be part of the decision. Andrewa 12:55, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

thanks

for your comments on White Australia policy. I do think it's better now, but even with Adam's self-editing, it could use a bit more. I wish I could fix it or at least discuss it besides pointing and whining ("that's NPOV! i'm telling!"), but I'm pretty ignorant on Australia history. Anyway, thanks for your very helpful and reasoned comments. Ensiform 02:01, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

deleting stuff

When you delete articles please also delete the corresponding talk page and any redirects. --Jia ng 10:44, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

also archive the record of the debate so that it is lost forever.--Jia ng 10:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

my reply copied from Jiang's page:

Jiang

thanks for your comments... in each case the answer is I thought I had! This was my first try at deleting anything, and I would have liked it to be something less controversial, but this was not to be.

I see my mistake re talk pages, I expected delete to work like move, but it doesn't, and the documentation clearly says it doesn't, in several places. I'd read that, but somehow it didn't register. Sorry! Thanks for cleaning that up.

But I'm not quite sure what you mean about archiving... I thought that this was all that was needed. I'm not too clear on the logic of the archiving system I admit, which is why I'm putting copies of relevant discussions into Wikipedia:9/11 victims. I've found it easier to find things in VfD history than in the archives, and I haven't seen anything that guarantees that the old discussions will be kept, in fact many of the MediaWiki pages have already been deleted... which means that, as these discussions don't appear in the history of VfD, they are as you say lost, or at least will be next time the database is reorged.

You might be able to answer another question... there are another two 9/11 victim articles coming up for transwiki-ing. How does this work? Do you know what the latest is? Just a reference to the appropriate page might be enough.

Thanks again for the help, I'm on a steep learning curve... I hope...! Andrewa 13:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the transwiki system. I've never used it. Maybe User:Angela can help.

Before we started using the transwiki system, we just blanked out the discussion on the vfd page after the article was deleted, and anyone interested in it would just go dig up the page history. Archived delete debates was for lengthy and controversial votes that had to be moved to the article's talk page. Now that most discussion take place on a mediawiki page, it looks like we have to archive everything (like how you added the mediawiki link to that page). There seems not to be any guidelines yet on what to do and I've deleted the mediawiki pages for some unanimous votes and speedy delete candidates. I had to undelete Template:VfD-Med because someone was interested in it. I guess the MediaWiki discussion should be kept as long as it's linked somewhere (eg deletion archives) and not just orphaned.--Jia ng 20:47, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I noticed you were asking about transwiki. User talk:Jwrosenzweig#Transwiki and m:transwiki might help. Let me know if you need any more information about it. Angela . 20:56, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

policies and guidelines

Now, how do we get it adopted? Can we label it as a draft, and quote it right now as the draft policy?

Wikipedia policies become more "official" as people agree with them, link to them and call them policy, and less official as people disagree with them, and edit them to insert "not policy" qualifiers. There's no hard-and-fast seperation. Martin 13:04, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm copying this comment to Wikipedia talk:9/11 victims, to which it seeems relevant. Andrewa 22:00, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Desiccation

I was running through List of common misspellings, and I find that you've changed correct spellings [2] [3] of this word to "dessication". Given that I can't deal with moving Dessication back to the correct spelling due to the redirect's history, would you mind fixing it? -- Cyrius|&#9998 04:45, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

OOPS! I thought that was all sorted out. Yes, I'll get to it... thank you! Andrewa 05:40, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Done. I hope to everyone's satisfaction, I didn't try the irreversible history merge as the only author losing credit is me, and I think that's OK. Also notice that desiccator was on Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics (20), so we've patched a small but significant hole in the coverage along the way. Andrewa 18:21, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lowang

The thing you missed was our tongues planted firmly in our cheeks. At least mine was, and given that RickK actually said "Eek", I think his was as well. -- Cyrius|&#9998 02:02, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

OK. I understood that from RickK. Your comment puzzled me a little, but no complaints, if I wanted everything boring and predictable I'd go back to programming... not that it ever worked that way, but at least it was supposed to... Andrewa 02:10, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)