User talk:Poccil/archive2

You just said "thanks" without telling me to do anything. How snippy. Mike H 02:56, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

...I did. I don't know how to make my still capture thing save to .jpg. Mike H 03:01, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Rosario

Article: es:Rosario
Corresponding English-language article: Rosario
Worth doing because:
Originally Requested by: Poccil
Status: Done -- Jmabel 04:37, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
Other notes: Poccil made a request 9 Sept 2004 on the Rosario page, I'm just relaying it. -- Jmabel 23:34, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Tithe

See if that doesn't describe the controversy. KeyStroke 22:39, 2004 Sep 24 (UTC)

Accountancy

Hi Peter, I saw your post on Wikipedia:Village pump (news) about the Accountancy issue. You did right to ask for outside input on the issue, but you posted it to the wrong place. The village pump is for news, policy discussions, and general comments about Wikipedia as a whole. Article content issues always go to Wikipedia:Requests for comment. I've moved your post to that page. This way it will be seen by more people who are interested in helping that page sort out that issue. Regards, • Benc • 05:41, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I understand that it wasn't an edit dispute, but a general question. Sorry for jumping the gun. It still doesn't belong at the village pump, though. I think that Wikipedia:Reference desk would be the best place to post your question. • Benc • 05:54, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

German spelling reform

Article: de:Reform der deutschen Rechtschreibung von 1996
Corresponding English-language article: German spelling reform
Worth doing because: Local knowledge. English article is a fraction of the length of the German one.
Originally Requested by: Poccil put the request in the article itself (via template), I'm just relaying it. -- Jmabel 07:31, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)
Status: Done by User:Mpolo
Other notes:

Amarillo Slim

Please do not move Amarillo Slim to his real name. The convention is to use the most common name. Only 18 links from google use his name as "Thomas Preston", and over 7500 use "Amarillo Slim". On top of this, it messes up all the links. CryptoDerk 17:45, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

Nitrosamine translated

Article: de:Nitrosamine
Corresponding English-language article: Nitrosamine
Worth doing because: English article is nonexistent
Originally Requested by: [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 01:32, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)
Status: Mpolo 20:43, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know what to do with "nitrosyl" which the article says is NO⁺. Mpolo 20:43, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

UNESCO Nomenclature

In reference to your question, the data came from several sources, some of them foreign-language, some looking like they had been (sometimes poorly) been translated into English, all of them on line. The main one was our own Spanish language wikipedia (to which the article links, and which I acknowledged in my comments. I intend to add explicit references, but I'm still trying to find the most "authoritative" one to reference.

I do get several hits on Googling "UNESCO Nomenclature" and some of them refer to this, although that isn't where I found the useful content. My main search strategy came from combining the obvious English-language name of a category with the appropriate numeric code. There may be a better name for this in English; I was translating back the Spanish. As I'm sure you know, the wiki is a mess tonight, so I've been struggling just to save files. (I still haven't been able to link from the Spanish-language article to my English-language one.) Anyway, I promise I will eventually leave a trail by which this can be confirmed, but I'm about to log off, because it's midnight here and working with an unstable wiki is no fun. -- Jmabel 06:59, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Juan Arango

I notice you "notenglished" this. It's also a copyvio from [1] -- might just want to leave it at that. jpgordon 22:05, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

countering systemic bias

We seem to be almost ready to go live with Wikipedia:WikiProject countering systemic bias. I'd love to have you aboard. Please, sign up as a participant and also, please weigh soon in on anything you'd like to see changed before we really announce this. -- Jmabel 23:36, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

wikifun

hey thanks for the help there if you have any ideas on improvement or other tyoes of activities/contests i'd really like to hear from you--Larsie 19:33, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

oh and how did you change the article to a project page??--Larsie 21:22, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I moved "Wikifun" out of the main namespace since that's the namespace for articles. Project pages that have to do with Wikipedia, as you now know, have the "Wikipedia:" namespace. To rename any page click the "move" tab at the top of the page. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 21:55, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

MENALIB on VfD or not?

Hi! Back on July 1st you edited this page and started the process of putting it on VfD, but apparently didn't finish. So the article has been sitting there for the last 3 months with boilerplate "has been listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion " but has never actually been voted on so far as I can see. Do you still want to propose this for article for deletion? I don't have strong views either way on the article but either we should go through the VfD process should or we should just mark it as a stub. Thanks! --Cje 19:57, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am now relisting the page. That was back in the day when I was unaware of how to correctly list a page on VfD. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 21:51, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! --Cje 06:05, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Language lists

Again, the lists are meant to list and not describe. Also, I know that there is an orphaning problem; I've begun to link to (as opposed to from) the lists. I am also planning a further improvement to be able to see the whole tree for the first list, as soon as I finish a spot I've missed. --ℛyan! | Talk 21:51, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

wikify template

Does anybody bother to look at the entries in that? Rick K 06:39, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Manna vs. mana

I changed the spelling of the short story in Manna From Heaven back to "mana." Yes, the book title has the double-n, but the short story title really does have the single one. \One reference Go figure. Joyous 20:48, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Roman Sziarnewski

Peter

You flagged this for POV check. Although my primary goal was wikification I attempted to address your PoV concern. Could you check? Really I have a general question - if I feel I've addressed a POV concern can I just remove a "pov check" tag. POV pages don't seem to answer that question - or maybe they do and I missed it - its time for me to go to bed!

Thanks --Cje 21:53, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Something broke on Wikipedia:Community Portal

Hello there, sorry for the possibly confusing summary, but did you take a look at your edit and the how the portal looked before? Your edit did something major to the layout, so I reverted it. Maybe if you can find the cause in the diff we can re-revert it ;) -- Solitude 15:02, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Ah right, I didn't look back far enough in the history, I see you created a new layout on purpose. But I don't see any discussion on this new layout on the talk page, did you propose it somewhere that I missed? Personally I would prefer the old layout, but of course the new lay is fine if consensus was reached. -- Solitude 16:50, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Movie list

Sorry, my bad. As you might have guessed, that's where I meant to put it. Thanks for fixing it for me. Niteowlneils 01:26, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Systemic bias project

I've responded on my Talk: page. Jayjg 18:37, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

List of stopper knots

Hello, continuing to work my way through deadend articles. This is similar to MENALIB - see above - back in July you left VfD boilerplate plus a comment was "Merge with Knots". I removed your copy of the VfD boiler plate since article was not in VfD. But if you want to put into VfD process?

However, can I flag one thing? The knots article lists a series of "families" of knots with a 1 sentence description of each "knot family". Then for each family there is [[knot_family]] and [[list_of_knot_family]]. So deletion of one article would imply deletion of others. Certainly there is a big knot here, if you' will pardon the pun! --Cje 08:12, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Article that may be biased

I noticed that my article on Mass decontamination says "article may be biased". I'd like to try to improve on the article; can you give me any specific constructive criticism on how to make sure the article stays with neutral POV? Glogger 01:29, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Polish heraldry

Thanks for your help with various Polish coats of arms. We're preparing the whole series, but the Western blazoning system is significantly different from the Polish one and there's still a lot we have to learn. [[User:Halibutt|Halibu tt]] 07:11, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

Blockages

(Copied reply from my talk page):

You know, there were two reasons for "no" votes. Neither can be addressed, IMO. One was "Admin-only means power grab." Well, there is a way to go around that, but it's a nasty one. That method would be to have another class of user: regular users who self-nominate for the deletion review board. They serve for, oh, 2-3 weeks at a time, approval is assumed unless there is a reason to object (rather than having to have a reason to approve), and then they serve on it, along with the admins, for some time. That's one way. The problem is kind of obvious: big assed administrative beaurocracy. Anyway, the other reason for the "no" votes was that it "adds beaurocracy." Yeah, well, it does. That, I thought, was a contingent that would vote "no" anyway, and it was a small group. What surprised me was how livid the "no" voters got. Honestly, it was such a mild proposal that their fury is just bizarre.

The second idea is good. I'd certainly support it, although I think it's a compromise with the grim reaper. Seems to me there are two serious signs of morbidity in Wikipedia's excretory system (I think of the project like an organism: it must gain food (articles), but it also must reject and filter out poison and empty stuff (delete)). One is that Clean Up is overwhelmed. The other is that VfD is overwhelmed. We can add in the fact that CSD is abused, but I think that's an effect rather than a cause. People have been listing things on VfD because they want the things cleaned. That's a very bad thing. They're doing it less as VfD has fallen all to pieces, but for a year people would list and vote on VfD items on the basis of "this can be a good article," and then someone would desperately bulk it up. Clean Up is dead because of the overwhelming numbers of articles there, and not just because too few editors work there or that they're too timid. They're too timid because the numbers are too high. The numbers are too high because we're getting articles at an incredible rate, and we're getting junk articles at a phenomenal rate. Your proposal is good, but it acknowledges and sort of bargains with this disease process. I agree with it. I just think that we're not really facing up yet, and I'm not sure we can as long as people who never vote on VfD or work on Clean Up vote on these proposals.

Finally, though, there are a number of people who have been toying with a "Version" plan. Angela had a great idea that nothing has been done with. Each article would have a rating. Anyone reading an article has a chance to give it a score, 1-5. Those things that have an average score of 4-5 get put into the sort of Wikipedia 1.0 version. Those things that had an average score of 1-2 might well go to VfD. To me, that's a good idea, with reservations.

Another version of the version idea is that all new pages carry a rating. They carry the rating for some period of time (2 weeks? 2 months?), and anything with an average score of 0-1 would be a speedy, 1-2 would be a VfD, 3-4 would be Featured or Collaboration.

All of these are possible ideas, but the Version systems all require technical folks and major implementation work, and open voting will, I think, doom any attempts at widening speedy or changing VfD in either direction. If you get near making a proposal or would like my collaboration in the drafting of one, simply drop me a note, and I'll be happy to help. Geogre 13:38, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Pleonasam spelling

Good catch on that spelling, but I'll have to restore it. So far as I can tell (from the secondary sources) South spelled it pleonasam. I've been unable to find a primary source to verify this, but will use the spelling until someone does. Too, I didn't know how to nowiki to include sic in brackets, but now I do.--NathanHawking 22:39, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)

My list could use a careful edit

Hi P:

I could use another pair of eyes on List of redundant expressions, if you're in the mood. I'm nearly done with the example sentences, and tired of looking at the page.

In my rereads so far, I've corrected errors with smalling the wrong word, and have discarded a few examples which were actually oxymoronic and not pleonastic, or were not really common enough. If you do have a go at the editorial gruntwork, a note on my talk page would be appreciated--then I can relax a bit. Thanks. --NathanHawking 22:57, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)

Rearrangement of pleonasm

You seem to have reorganized pleonasm. However, everything now seems jumbled up. In particular, the intro sentence is buried in the middle now. Can you fix it? Nohat 02:07, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I didn't rearrange anything; sections were accidentally duplicated while I was editing. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 02:12, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Whatever the cause, I see you have fixed it. Thanks.

Template:WMD

Why did you change this template from a sidebar to a bar across the top of the page. It makes it very hard to read the articles it is placed in. See The United States and weapons of mass destruction Rmhermen 03:57, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

I responded to a cleanup request to convert it to a footer; I had forgotten to move the template in all pages in which it appeared. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 04:01, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

NT derivation

Good catch, but the article you cite is only correct insofar as current "official" meaning, and historically inaccurate or misleading. I corrected it. I followed computer history closely during that period, and was certain Gates specifically used "New Technology." A quick check of Microsoft's own documents shows he did. [2]

Question:

What does the word NT (in "Windows NT") stand for? Is it just a name that Microsoft conjured up from thin air or does it actually have a full name like "Networked Terminal"? Souvik Das, Ithaca, NY (souvik@oracorp.com)

Gates:

When we first released Windows NT in 1993, Sun said it stood for "Not There" and IBM said it stood for "Nice Try."

Actually, the letters stood for "New Technology."

But the letters have long since lost any specific meaning. Today, "NT" is just a designation for our high-end version of Windows.

Whether it's in the list or not is unimportant to me. Whether it's actually redundant is a matter of which perspective one chooses, I suppose, historical or official. I'll leave that choice to you.

Question: In my fix of the Windows NT article, I used the outside link as a reference just as I did in this note. Do you know the Wikipedia guideline on this? I'd think dead links might eventually be a problem. ---NathanHawking 00:35, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

On minor edits

I note you often remove spaces I deliberately put in around the TOC. Unless there is some hard-and-fast policy, or compelling reason, it's probably best to allow each contributor his or her own preferences and spend one's time on more substantive edit issues. The use of Adams' and Adams's, for example, is optional in the guideline, and I leave such things as the original author used them unless I'm doing a wholesale rewrite.

I've done considerable layout art over the years, and choose double lines around a TOC which comes after a short intro because it feels less crowded and makes for easier reading. Unless you have a compelling reason for altering that, perhaps you can defer to my judgment on this. (On the other hand, there were blank lines later in the article which I DID remove.)

Thanks, BTW, for the links feedback. --NathanHawking 01:03, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

Prolixity article

Peter: I'm about halfway through the time I allowed myself to rewrite the article--time for mid-course correction. I think it's considerably improved. Please feel free to have a look and leave any major suggestions on my talk page--minor edits can wait until I un-InUse tomorrow.

Nathan --NathanHawking 02:49, 2004 Oct 29 (UTC)

The Matthew Effect

You added a warning about the fact that This article may need to be reworded to conform to a neutral point of view. Could you add some more details to Talk:The Matthew Effect ? In particular, you removed all the references to streptomycin; do you really think this example should go away entirely, or that it should just be rephrased ? Schutz 04:22, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

X-SAMPA Pronunciation guide is overkill

Please note that one of the aims of the List of heteronyms stated on the talk page was to make the list easy to contribute to--but it should be no less easy to read. The X-SAMPA is VERY LARGE and not at all easy to use. It may be comprehensive and accurate, but it is SO overkill. I'm nearly finished with a guide which is far simpler and easy to use.

Poccil, please consult with other contributors before you make changes this fundamental to projects just underway. It is entirely possible they have a sense of direction for the project. There are many, MANY long-established projects which require serious rewriting--there is simply no need to jump all over others' fledgling projects. This behavior only creates collision of purpose and wastes effort. Either that or start your own projects, but landing on others' within hours of their inception and hacking them is unacceptable. Please. --NathanHawking 07:14, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

On your edits at heteronyms

A bona fide attempt to change the pronunciation system, and all I get in return is shouting? Remember, assume good faith. This is the second time you've detested my edits. Peter O. (Talk) 07:26, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:NathanHawking"

Please assume good faith on my part and put yourself in my position. Yet again this week another article of mine is only hours old and major changes happen which is essentially walking over work I'm doing at the very moment. I'm not shouting but I'm very emphatic. The moral is consult, don't clobber. Had you consulted and read the talk page, you would have ascertained my desire to keep the page simple to make and simple to use. Not everything on Wikipedia should require a scholar to use. Besides, that SAMPA page is a pig to load. Your edits are valued, just mistimed and sometimes misdirected. --NathanHawking 07:41, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

Dedham, Massachusetts

Your particpation in the un-justified deletion (via non-discussed reverts) of a factually accurate, non-POV, historical fact from that page has contributed to causing that page to be "protected". Therefore, I am asking you to particpate in the dialog at Talk:Dedham, Massachusetts which the "protection" notice calls for. Either that, or please leave a message for Mirv and request that the page be unprotected. This message will be reposted here daily (approximately) until you acknowledge it on the Dedham, Massachusetts talk page. Thank you 216.153.214.94 03:46, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Red-link recovery

Howdy and many thanks for your work on that list of mis-punctuated links. The list's pretty much completed now - I'll be generating a new version of it in due course, taking all the lessons learned from the last one into account. In the meantime, if you enjoyed working through the list (or at least found it a worthwhile distraction), you may want to have a look at the similar list of plural discrepancies which highlights red-links that might be red because they (or the article they are aiming for) are improperly pluralised. Again, thanks for your efforts - award yourself a wikimedal for janitorial services if you haven't already got one! - TB 11:27, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Prostitution in Nevada

Hi, I just reinserted a couple of statements that you deleted from Prostitution in Nevada with the comment "Neutralizing". Why did you think they were not neutral? Thanks, AxelBoldt 00:01, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Automated nonfree image replacement possible bug?

Sleeping Beauty version [3] had broken square brackets and braces, I fixed this in [4]. Does the automated bot have a problem when there are pipes and brackets in the caption? There were similar errors in Hurricane Ivan and User:Friedrich.Kromberg. -Wikibob | Talk 23:20, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)