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User talk:Maveric149 archive 8 (January 2003)

[edit]

One year. Congratulations! And you are you still sane? Or is that a silly question? :) Tannin


Thanks - I'm not sure about my sanity, but I'm certainly a happier and smarter person than I was a year ago. --mav

Mav, I think there is weirdness afoot. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Talk:Main_Page gives about 5 cchanges for today, 1 for the 31st, 2 for the 30th. I wonder if Phase III is having its very own New Year Bug. I haven't access to my email here -- could you contact the list please? -- Tarquin 11:42 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)

Sure thing. --mav

Oh dear. Panic over. I'd clicked on "watch links", I think. I'm an idiot. cancel that email -- Tarquin 11:46 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)

OK - LOL. ;-) --mav

mav, why did you undisambiguate Skid Row? -- Zoe

Look at the talk page. This is the same as red dwarf(stellar object)/Red Dwarf(scifi sitcom) and quantum leap(physics term)/Quantum Leap(scifi drama). --mav

Thanks for the tip on blanking pages. I wasn't aware you sysops did that routinely. -- Zoe

Yep. That should save you some time. :) --mav

Hi, Mav, I was wondering about the date of January 1 for Queen Victoria assuming the title Empress of India. My impression was that Parliament passed the Royal Titles Act in 1876 permitting the change in her title, and that the change was made by Royal Proclamation on April 28, 1876. -- Someone else 05:27 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

I dunno - I'm just copying the events that are already listed in January 1 and checking facts whenever something doesn't seem right. --mav
Thanks, I'll check to see if I can track it down. -- Someone else 05:47 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

Would you please tell me how to address the file Shearin_newspic.JPG in esmrnews.htm to make the picture show up in the newspaper clipping? (It's in the 10th line, counting the blank one, and I'm playing with it at the bottom of the sandbox.) -- isis 23:40 Jan 2, 2003 (UTC)

I wish I could help but I'm as lost as you are. I only know how to hand code HTML forms and tables. Have you tried <img src={URL of image}> within the HTML document?-mav
OK - I think I know what the problem is. In <IMG SRC="Shearin_newspic.JPG"> the exact URL of the image is not there - just the image name. Where is this image on the Internet? You can also upload it to Wikipedia and point the img tag to it. --mav

I did upload it; it's in the upload log. -- isis 00:13 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

Change the IMG tag that Mav mentioned to <IMG SRC="http://www.wikipedia.org/upload/a/a7/Shearin_newspic.JPG"> and it should work. --Mrwojo 00:17 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, that did it, thanks very much. I had actually tried almost that, but I was misled by my HTML how-to book into leaving off the "http://" because it was "on the same computer." -- isis 00:30 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

Not a problem - it was a team effort. --mav

Mav:

In my defense, I?d like to send you an explanation of this phenomenon, of me getting into several edit wars, from Tannin. You?ve probably read it, but I?m not sure. In any sense, he articulated a better explanation than I.

?172, let's not get into a misunderstanding here. I would be the last person to call you a communist. Prior to your arrival, a good many of the history pages were rather shallow things, and showed little understanding of the interrelationship between history (in the traditional "kings and queens of England" sense) and the broad flow of economic change that underpins and (in general) controls the actions of statesmen, generals and inventors. You certainly do not fall into that trap! Your contributions have made significant inroads into the task of describing history as an interacting whole. Several others here have objected to what they see as a "communist bias" in your writing. In large part, these objections stem from two things:

1. Many people here have spent a lifetime steeped in a rather one-sided view of history - I'm talking about the sort of history that describes the Battle of the Bulge or Second Alamain in loving detail, but relegates Stalingrad to a footnote and doesn't even bother to mention Kursk; the sort of history that thinks Jethro Tull invented the seed drill and therefore we had an Industrial Revolution - and on reading the sort of thing that you write, they (very naturally) tend to say oh, this isn't what I'm used to seeing, therefore it must be wrong.

2. You tend to write large slabs of text which is perfectly comprehensible if one concentrates but far from easy reading, particularly as it is liberally laced with the jargon of political economy. Many people see key words or phrases like "bourgeoise", "hegemony", or "accumulation of surplus" and (a) don't really understand them, and (b) assume that because the two or three Marxist or Leninist tracts they happen to have glanced at are filled with these same words, that the present work is more of the same. "

---

Often, these edit-wars begin when a handful of people who?ve begun to question my motives because of these understandings raise some questions. Zoe, in particular, is even trying to get me banned because she suspects me of trying to inject a Marxist point of view in all these articles.

From her line of questioning, I get the impression that she is utterly unqualified to comment of neutrality of some of my contributions. For instance, she wanted to rename an article on New Imperialism, the era of imperialism between 1871 and 1914, ?imperialism in the nineteenth century?.

She has also regularly accused me of being a Stalinist, and I think that these comments are causing people to jump on the bandwagon that is my lynch-mob. Her accusations and those of others are beginning to crop up in the vandalism page. So what began as a misconception got publicized on several pages, resulting in my pariah reputation. Of course a disproportionate number of people are willing to question someone?s contributions when he has such a undeserved reputation.


Thus, I make no apologies.

All right. You've irritated me. And that takes work. I can't stand you, and I've only known of you for three hours. Given what I've seen of your "personality", I don't think that you're Communist. I think you're a fascist-minded, overweening tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood, but you're certainly not a Communist. Despite what you think, my opinion has nothing to do with what Zoe thinks/says. It has a lot more to do with the fact that you come across on these boards as a complete stiff. In fact, you might already be dead, and not know it. Could you check your pulse for us? If you want people to like/tolerate you, learn to be reasonable. Or give me your IP address so I can take your computer off the face of the Earth. (Sort of like the technology Darwin Awards.)

In conclusion, please blast yourself into outer space.

Annie

Waooooooh Annie !

Ericd



  • Takes a bow* Thank you, thank you. Are the Russians still accepting non-astronaut passengers? I think we could raise the money... Annie
I think the going rate is 17 million US. As each day passes that figure seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper. --mav
Hmmmm. How much would that be from every user (excluding 172) on Wikipedia? Do you think we could get a discount for allowing them to strap him to the OUTSIDE of the rocket? Annie
OK - that's enough. We are speaking in public here. :) --mav

Thou hast a point, mav. We retreat into silence and Pokemon now.

Mav: No need to be that terse. If anyone else made such contributions, he?d be praised, not mocked.

172

I'm the first to admit that I'm terse while irritated. Also a good part of what we do here is work together. No user, no matter how good their contributions are, has the right to constantly cause trouble by being uncooperative. If you are not working with us, then you are working against us. --mav
Taking negotiating lessions from our illustrious President, are we? ;) --Brion 05:46 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
You caught me. :) --mav

---

mav i would appreciate your opinion on my version of New Imperialism. also, how can i communicate to people? why isn't their a chatroom and why will nobody even consider my idea? How am I supposed to go over a text with somebody if I can't communicate with them, peer-to-peer, if you will.

Also, I am being attacked for referring to my version of New Imperialism, as if I am claiming ownership or some nonsense, quite frankly, there are two versions of New Imperialism, one made by 172, and one which I edited and he keeps reverting. I don't know how else to refer to it and I don't understand how I am supposed to communicate with anybody.

Also, I am being told not to make so many minor edits, how am I supposed to know what is minor or major by anothers perceptions, it asks me to decide if an edit is minor or not, and I usually feel that, yes, it is. This is concerning because people are accusing me of some kind of underhadned attempt to "hide" my work on the Military History of the Philippines, although, nobody is actually saying what it is Im hiding, I guess, cuz I hid it so well...

Anyways, I donno, communication here needs to be upgraded. Also, is it just me or is 172s version of New Imperialism, to say the least, incredibly dry. Zoe used to be arguing with him there but now she wont even talk about the article because 172 wrote it. Meanwhile, Ortolan refuses to discuss my version simply because I made too many changes to follow Is there some kind of only 5 edits per day policy?

At the same time, they refuse to go over the article line by line, how are we even supposed to discuss an article if nobody wants to discuss it?

very much having a headache,

Vera Cruz

See Wikipedia:IRC channel or simply use the talk page of the article. Anything which is more than a few added or changed sentences is non-minor. I've seen you add entire paragraphs to relatively short articles and mark that as minor - well it ain't. This is a tactic that might be employed by somebody trying to hide inserted POV but I haven't seen you do that. It is still very annoying. For example, inserting your above message was marked as minor and I missed it on Recent Changes. IMO the shorter version of the article in question is inferior to the longer version. But as you state the longer version isn't perfect and does need NPOVing and condensing. --mav

note where he calls Wilhelm II pigheaded...is that not POV? I don't see how I can address this except by editing, and yet I don't see how I can get anybody to except my edits when I can't communicate with them.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=New_Imperialism&oldid=553404

Vera Cruz

But deleting nearly all the text isn't the answer either. See Wikipedia:Most common Wikipedia faux pas #4. --mav

172 keeps talking about how I deleted all his text the only stuff I deleted was POV stuff like "The American revolution made it clear that mercantilism had failed" and "Wilhelm was pigheaded" and "The victorian age was [enter flowry descriptive word here]" Along with some obscure talk about formal empire and returns to the taxpayer-which after reading several times I felt made no sense at all-if anybody would bring it up I would like to discuss it-but so far nobody has mentioned anything at all.

I didn't delete stuff, I did move some stuff to theories of imperialism. What is wrong with the version I have produced? Vera Cruz

Scroll down and see all the headers...are those not useful? Can u easily find the Panic of 1893 on 172s version? How about the Franco-Prussian alliance or the Zollverein? Vera Cruz

The statement "The American revolution made it clear that mercantilism had failed" is a valid POV that should be in the article. But it does need to be qualified stating "Some historians contend that the success of the American revolution was an indication that mercantilism failed." (in fact "some" may need to replaced by "many" but I'll have to re-read the mercantilism article to confirm this). "Wilhelm was pigheaded" of course should be replaced by a description of his actions. --mav



Vera Cruz doesn?t realize that the older version has been edited substantially by other users and myself.

This is the sentence regarding mercantilism:

The collapse of the British and Spanish empires in the New World following the American Revolution and revolutions in the viceroyalties of New Spain (to become Mexico) and Peru (to become Gran Colombia) signaled the failure of mercantilism and contributed to the appeal of the classical liberalism of Adam Smith?

Note the phrase ?signaled?.

The word ?pigheaded? has been removed as well. I understand the bad connotation, but the word merely means ?stubborn?. His headstrongness, after all, was infamous. Nevertheless, it?s gone.

Even if these changes weren?t made, it would still be little recourse to arbitrarily remove the vast majority of the article. That?s why I keep restoring the more descriptive version edited by Ortolan88 and Slrubenstein and proofread by yourself.

Thanks, by the way, for looking at the article.

172

Those other sentences are much better (a copyedit for readability is in order though). --mav

The article can be salvaged without breaking it up. I?ll add some more headings for quick reference. Maybe a brief outline in the beginning would be a good idea too. Britannica does that.

172

Let's keep talk about specific articles on those article's talk page shall we? My talk page gets too big too fast as it is. --mav

Mav:

I don?t see why you feel the need to summarize the article on New Imperialism. It?s only superficially long. It?s now pretty succinct and well-edited. Any more editing and shortening would a string of historical reductionisms. I noticed some in vera Cruz's shorter version.

Minor editing will do. Select deletions will do. I?ll edit and shorten it little by little. I also recommend Tannin as a good contributor.


172

I've already stated why it must be shortened. Please stop acting obtuse. --mav


look, ive been editing on the thing, not deleting stuff. if something is missing its because i transferred some stuff to theories of imperialism because people were complaining about it being confusing. im just working on the page, not saying its not done, not asking you not to edit it, simply asking what it is that everyone finds so "poisonous" about it Vera Cruz

Please take the longer version one section at at time. Summarize it and place the detailed stuff in anther article that is linked from that page. --mav

This is what Im trying to explain that Ive done. I started this 4 days ago. I went through one section at a time-check out all the last to see what exactly I did. I took stuff out. Then Ive added various stuff from theories of imperialism onto the page-this page is linked to from new imperialism. Im simply trying to get someone to go through my version because certainly I made some mistakes. Vera Cruz

This needs to worked out on the talk page of the article - not here. --mav

Trying to catch up with the rambot?  ;-) Nice to see you around; I hope your holidays went well. --KQ

You caught me. Welcome back! --mav
Haha. Well, there's no end of work in sight, at least. I think about it too; I know I slipped in standing some for taking a 2-week vacation from wikipedia and then a 3-week vacation from everything. It was very relaxing, though.  :-) --KQ
It is a good idea to recharge your batteries once in a while. This spring break I'm going to go to Death Valley again for a week on a geology field study. I can't wait. --mav

---

plz examine parts 1, 2, and 3 of New Imperialism Vera Cruz

Hi Mav, A query. We've a page called Irish Gaelic language which I've added some historical background and analysis to, to compliment what was there about the linguistics. But I'm troubled about the name. People call the language 'Irish', 'Irish language' or 'gaelic' but all three together may not be easy to find, leading to others opening links under one or other name. What is the best solution to ensure that all three or any variation thereof will go to the page on the Irish language, or is the method to do a series of renames to set up re-directs? I'm sure the answer is somewhere but I couldn't find it, dawn is breaking outside, my phone bill is massive, my cold is getting worse and I'm out of cigarettes, so I'm retiring to 'mo leaba' (gaelic/Irish language/Irish for 'my bed'!)

Slan (gaelic etc for goodnight) agus Oiche Mhaith duit (and good night to you!) JTD 06:20 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC)

Good question. Normally a user would just choose which page title is best and then [[redirect alternate forms of the name to that page title. But in this case the move function could not be used since there were two edits in the redirect titled "Irish language" (which I'm assuming is the place where you want the article). So an Admin is needed to delete the redirect page. I've done this and have also done the move. Please tell me if the result is what you wanted. --mav

I don't see how removing the lines is so useful. But whatever... Vera Cruz

It's the other way around. The lines are not useful to begin with beacuase they are a hack and non-standard in articles. --mav

A hack? The lines are pretty useful seeing as how there was something between them that they were trying to indicate u should look at. Vera Cruz

You do that by using headings and writing well and using an economy of words. --mav

You are forgetting the edit war. Vera Cruz

Another question, O Great One of Wiki Knowledge! I've added in a three word quote from an Irish history textbook from a long dead author (d.1970s, though his book has been re-issued in the last decade again). I've footnoted the quote with a reference to the book and page number. Is that adequate re-copyright cover, or should I liquidate my addition? JTD 01:24 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

IANAL: That is all covered by fair use in the US, so Wikipedia is fine (the server is in California). This may, but probably doesn't, break some copyright rule from the country you are writing from (thus exposing you to possible legal messiness). But even three paragraphs of properly attributed, annotated and quoted text is OK as far as US and international copyright agreements (again the nation you are writing from may have some weird copyright law). --mav

Thanx, Mav. Should be ok here in Ireland too. JTD 02:06 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

I'm glad I was able to help. :-) --mav

Well, in the general sense, nobodys edits are a 'hack' are they. In the personal sense, they might be 'felt' as hacks, though admittedly, your edits were mostly counterhacks. Not to be taken too seriously, that was. :] --Sv

True enough. --mav

cool. --Sv

how does a piece of dust start sensing light tho? Vera Cruz

A piece of dust isn't alive so it can't sense anything. --mav

So if nothing is alive, how can anything be alive? Vera Cruz

? You are talking in circles. --mav

Its a circular topic. Vera Cruz

If you go all the way back to the start of life yes. There is no currently acceptable theory for how the non-living became the living. But there are good theories for how many organs developed. --mav

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Southern_Expeditionary_Army_Group

how is it plagarism?

Your advice to "repeat your plea and post it to Wikipedia-L or Intlwiki-L" seems to have backfired. By doing so I exposed myself for attacks on my physical person instead of only online. // Liftarn 09:58 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Physical person? Which post was that? --mav
It's in several post over at the Swedish Wikipedia. Anyway, there's nothing I can do about it now so I'm going away for a while to think over what should be done. // Liftarn 10:21 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)
Sounds serious. You should report the who, what, when, and where this was said. Also provide a link to the threat. If true this is grounds for immediate banning and perhaps a call to the person's ISP and even the police. --mav
Indeed. Jimbo takes this sort of thing very seriously -- that's why "24" was banned. He's put Brion in charge in his absence -- Tarquin 10:32 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Obviously I'm often too brief for my own good so excuse me if this is somewhat lenghty instead. The whole thing starts back in the late 1980s or possibly early 1990s. I'm still not connected to internet but uses Fidonet and participate in several conferences (newsgroups) there. One of them is on the subject of racism and during the time I participate there I manage to both get put on a deathlist, getting a few murder threats as well as compiling information about almost every nazi and racist group in Sweden from post-WW2 to the (then) present, about 1995 I think. At that time, being young and foolish, I didn't bother with the murder threats, but as I grew older and started a family it didn't seem that fun any more so I became very carefull with personal information about myself (something which btw always is a good idea). Now fast forward to 2002 when I came in contact with susning.nu, a swedish wiki quite simmilar to Wikipedia. I quickly became hooked (you probably know the feeling) and after a while I decided (perhaps foolishly) to use the old information that had just been lying on my hard disk for some articles. Then somebody, we can call him L, started deleting in my articles. Since susning.nu had (and still don't have) any mechanisms to stop abuse I put the information back, it was removed again, I restored it and so on. Very tedious work, but it was the only thing to do. During the process it was discovered that L was a member of a extreme right party with links to nazism. Anyway, another user, let's call him D, discovered the Swedish Wikipedia and started moving over there. Being tired of fighting with L I also moved over and took my articles with me. It was all very nice for a while, then L followed over and the edit war was started again. This time it was ended when D deleted all the articles. I had no problem with that since they were more trouble than it was worth anyway. This caused L to leave (at least he stopped editing). Things went back to normal, but after a while D started showering me with insults (well you know the story). When I wrote about it on the Intlwiki-L mailing list I foolishly exposed my name. D knew about the threats I had received so he tracked down my fysical location and started posting my full name and address on several pages at the Swedish Wikipedia. As you can understand I'm not very happy about it. // Liftarn 12:18 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

You still around? KQ

What's LDC been up to (other than moving into his new house, ha, a breeze right?). I know he's very hardworking. KQ
I don't know really. I just haven't seen him in Recent Changes since November but he did state in a email to the mailing list that he was very busy with work. Brion is the wikiware King now. --mav
Steward, perhaps. Wikiware has no king; wikiware needs no king. --Brion

Hey Maveric! Thanks for the welcome and also for the pointers on conventions and style. Unbridaled enthusiasm might be a good thing, but on the other hand a Wiki order is probably superior to a Wikid anarchy. Some kind of presentation and mission statement should be in the pipeline. (Curiously I'm a borderline INTJ/INTP) -- Mic

You are welcome! I also have INTP leanings. Small world. --mav

Hi Mav, I've noticed when one enters a talk page, sometimes it shows text at the bottom of the page in its saved form which when you hit the edit button then 'disappears'. The trouble is, if you save the page, or if you archive it (in fact if do anything at all but cancel) you lose the bottom 'missing' text. I've already been 'accused' of editing one page to 'hide' someone's opinions, because their opinions appeared at the bottom of the page that 'disappeared' when you hit the 'edit' button to access the page. (Going to a previous version to restore the stuff doesn't work either; when I did, the same phenomenon occured. One I went to 'edit' the paragraphs at the bottom of the page 'disappeared'. The exact same thing is happening right now on the abortion:talk page. I was going to add in a note about a minor change I'd made in the main page, but when I edited the page, a whole chunk of text disappeared.

Is this a common problem or a new bug that has hit? Thanks in anticipation for the info. JTD 19:19 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Some browsers have a limit to the amount of text you can edit in a textarea and cut off anything further; this seems to crop up particularly often on MacOS. See Wikipedia:Browser notes. --Brion 19:34 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm on mac OSX. Is there any way around this problem, Brion?
Try a couple of different browsers... I haven't heard whether Mozilla is susceptible. It tends to use custom widgets, so may get around the limited Mac text edit widget. --Brion 21:07 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
If you're feeling adventurous, try the new public Beta of Apple's own Open-Source based Safari browser -- Someone else 21:14 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
I've had no trouble with Chimera for OS X. Safari is Jaguar-only (10.2) :-( and not tabbed, I think from the screenies. -- Tarquin 21:18 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)
Yes I've noticed that your browser chops some pages short. I never thought it was on purpose. Other than getting another browser or asking other people to make talk archives I don't know what to tell you. --mav

Hi Mav, finished a bit of a re-write on the Irish potato famine. I'm interested to get your views on it, whenever you've got a chance. Cheers, JTD 22:25 Jan 11, 2003 (UTC)

I've only been able to read a part of it, but so far it is looking really good. --mav

Hi Mav (jeez, that's two messages from me. This one hasn't the words 'irish' 'potato' and 'famine', honest!) i've just noticed that changes I made in texts some hours ago seem to have . . . em . . . well . . . disappeared. And it isn't as if the pages have been touched by anyone else. for example, I made two distinct changes on my own page - colouring a bit of font and correcting a reference. I saved the changes, and they were saved perfectly and shown up on screen. I logged off wiki, went back a while later, went into my page to find those last two changes GONE. Something similar happened with something else I was writing; changes made and saved then didn't appear in the pages later. So do we (a) have spooks haunting Wiki, or (b) have something going wrong with our system? (Jeez, 'our' system!!! I'm a real Wikiholic, now. Do we have a WA (Wikiholics Anonymous) or should someone set one up??? ) JTD 12:41 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)

Hm. That sounds strange. I have no idea what's up but I'll look into it. --mav

Dear Mav; Hi! How are you? Im sorry to both8er you with this again, but Ive been put on lock again, this time by Isis, because of supposed vandalism. The lock hasnt taken effect all over the site, but on some subjects I try to writesomething about , its in effect. Two times this has happened to me already, when I think Im a writer that has respect for this site...If I talk to Isis, God knows what argument she might come up with...maybe you can tak to her ad find out..

well, thats all for now..thanksfor everything, and God bless you!!

Sincerely yuors AntonioMartin.

We know you are not a vandal. You just have the misfortune to share an IP address with somebody that is a vandal. I've unblocked the IP. --mav

Dear Mav: Thanks, bro! God bless you!

Sincerely yours,

142.177.97.215. was working in tandam with 24.42.43.3. talk pages,articles, false edit war alerts,diliberate and sophisticated manipulation to incite edit wars. 24.42.43.3 wrote through my user page.

I am reading every post .142 made a fantastic point in talk:Thomas Jefferson. Some of the stuff I deleted was very poor form. I am more tolerant of their posts on talk pages but any thing that cannot quickly be redeeemed in an article goes. Advocacy,pov,satire,slurs,personal attacks on canadain politicians,utter nonsense,and some other stuff that made me LoL. Did the same with 24.

See the vandalism at Two16 jhistory. See the games most clearly shown at Political party sysem: Canada. 24starts enty I leave my comments 142 berates the article as a duplicate I explain procedures about deletion. 24 posts my unedited comments from talk to article I explain not for article remove them back to talk 24 writes through my user page. 142 gets banned 24 disappears In any case 142 targeting of axelbohlt(?) in at least 2 edit wars in progress is unfounded, May be you could look in to that one.

Mav, you asked about 142.177.97.215. I have lately seen several IP's whose edits look very much like 24's, with the same idiosyncratic ideas and terminology:

AxelBoldt 21:25 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, it definitely looks like 24. The jargon and local interests are remakably similar. Lookups of the IP addresses above show:
ARIN lookups

142.227.121.39  Canadian Department of Education
142.177.104.168 Stentor National Integrated Communications Network
142.177.97.215  Stentor National Integrated Communications Network
24.42.43.3      Rogers Cable Inc. 
                (more specifically, Rogers Cable Inc. Lndn ON-ROG-14-LNDN-1)

Reverse DNS lookups 

142.227.121.39  pc-39.bws.Library.NS.CA. (Nova Scotia provincial library)
142.177.104.168 hlfx54-1-168.ns.sympatico.ca. (?Nova Scotia? ?dial-up?)
142.177.97.215  hlfx47-215.ns.sympatico.ca.   (?Nova Scotia? ?dial-up?)
24.42.43.3      CPE014440006755.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com. 
                as of 10:10 UTC 2003-01-14 (but may be dynamic?)
Here's a tracker for 24.42.43.3.
The Anome


Yep. We will have to keep an eye on this person. --mav

Also similar activity from 142.177.12.44, presumably another dial-up. 22:53 UTC, so it's afternoon in Nova Scotia.

Ditto 142.177.71.57. The Anome

Accidental classic - from RecentChanges: "also provide for the dismantling of the nuclear arse)". I fear this may not be so funny in US English but in UK English it's got me rolling on the floor sobbing! I think that ALL nuclear arses should be dismantled! :) Nevilley 08:53 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

Mega LOL!! That was a typo - honest! ;) --mav

Hi Mav. You seem to be the main man for the front page, so I thought I'd let you know that I've un-stubbed the entry on General Galtieri of Falklands War fame. He died on Sunday and should appear in the "recent deaths" listing. (I am assuming that the reason he isn't there already - and a very minor singer is - is because there was only a stub to link to till just now.) Cheers - Tannin 09:06 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

Done. Yep stubness was the main reason. I'm not so sure it is important to have the minor singer though.... --mav

Just wanted to say that you are doing a lot of good here and that's good. Vera Cruz

Thank you! In spite of our differences I think the same about you. :) --mav

Mav, I wanted to say a word of thanks for your part in putting together the new main page. It's a real improvement and a lot of it is a result of your hard work - thanks! Enchanter

Thank you! Although this really was a group effort. If it had only been me then the product would not have been nearly as good. --mav


Hi mav. you mentioned on Main page talk that "Come to think of it we might want to eventually consider moving all day pages to the [day month] format." eeeek! that's going to be even more work than the orders of magnitude stuff. but count me in for the grunt work if we eventually decide to go ahead with this. -- Tarquin 11:34 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

Will do. But I'm doubtful that moving these pages will be a popular idea. We may have to settle with making 366 redirects. --mav

Hi, I've tweaked the Recent Changes at the test wiki yet again ([1]), using the ± for diff, and Ø for history (lacing a nicer symbol and the time to draw an icon;-) Should I better work on that table? I vaguely remember some proposal of an advanced table, from someone... --Magnus Manske 22:45 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)


Having the cur and hist in front is a big help. But please do use "cur" and "hist" instead of the special characters - I was lost at first. I seem to be one of the few people who actually used the table in Phase II so I don't think making a table would be a priority. But it would be nice nonetheless. --mav
They're now diff and hist (currently in the Godfather version ;-) --Magnus Manske 16:22 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

Those condemations were mostly from Ericd and Zoe. If you look at the articles to which I have contributed and the related talk pages, you?d see that the vast majority of these crticicisms have been discounted by other users who were more informed about the topics of those articles. You?d also see that the vast majority of all my contributins have survived dozens of revisions by some highly intelligent, expert contributors.

If those charges were anyting but baseless slander, why would the vast majority of my contributions remain intact, in spite of the fact that I stopped paying attention to most of those ?controversial articles? weeks ago?

172

Those attacks, by the way inadvertenly attack higly valued contributors who have edited and embraced the bulk of these contributions.

172

This isn't about the "vast majority" of your edits. It is about the few that cause edit war after edit war and your seemingly arrogant attitude in general. I have not yet expressed an opinion on whether you should be banned because I have seen you improve greatly in the NPOV department since your first edits. But now I am beginning to think that you can not improve any more. You really should try to talk about this on the mailing list - otherwise the only people Jimbo will be hearing from is the group of people (yes there are more than two) who either are calling for you to be banned or at least think you are a disruptive influence. --mav

Edit wars regardless. I can?t think of a single instance when expert contributors did not jump in and save the bulk (not all, of course) of my contributions in a single edit war. Many of these wars involved several users in particular (I won?t name names) just arbitrarily deleting any contribution that I made. It?s also strongly evident on talk pages (New Imperialism in particular) that I?m the first to embrace changes to my text when it is taken seriously and not dismissed off-hand. In academia I never encountered such cannibalistic, off-hand dismissal. I was just thrown-off by that at first, explaining the issue of arrogance. My instinctive response has been to reciprocate these uninformed dismissals with arrogance. Now, I?m a bit more used to that.

As for that page that you?re recommending, I?m not sure how to use it.

172

Trying to prove yourself right to me won't help you on the mailing list (as a matter of fact the arrogance you continue to show is making me begin to favor your banning). I've already stated this is not about the majority of your edits -- it is about the small, but constant steam of edits that are disruptive. --mav

But I?m trying to suggest that those ?disruptive edits? were usually eventually embraced.

I?m not exactly sure what this mailing list is either.

I?d appreciate it if you could paste these notes on it, whatever it is.

172

Follow the link I provided on your talk page to sign-up. For background on the list see Wikipedia:Mailing lists. It is up to you to show that you can be a productive and non-disruptive member of the community. --mav

Tens of thousands of words of text embraced after dozens of edits by dozens of contributors already demonstrate this. You yourself admitted that I balanced many articles. That?s what I?ll continue to do to prove that I can be a productive contributor. If that doesn?t work, then ban a historian from working on the history articles. I get paid for other "contributions" anyway.

172

Again, arrogance and overstating both your support and the quality of your contributions. I have better things to do than argue with you - I hear there is an encyclopedia to write here. --mav

I will try to articulate why I make each revision better in the talk pages. That I?ll do from now on. I?ll better explain why older versions need to be balanced, understanding that some users are not familiar with some perspectives better.

Keep in mind that I?m a relatively new user who wasn?t familiar with the cooperative nature at first. For that I?ll apologize.

But bias is another story. I have not been ?biasing? articles, just failing to articulate flaws in earlier versions well enough.

As for overstating quality, it can be empirically verified that dozens of well-informed contributors have accepted the bulk of my text in dozens of edits.

172


Just because much of your edits stand does not make them brilliant prose. But I do detect a willingness on your part to change so for now at least I will mildly support not banning you and will point others to your talk page and mine. --mav

IMHO you're also overstating the vigilance of many contributors about NPOV. Ericd

There are also those of us who have given up in disgust at doing anything with any of 172's "brilliant prose". -- Zoe

Like you and me ? Ericd

Do you see what I mean? Knee-jerk, sarcastic personal criticisms from the same people, Zoe and Ericd. But they?re inadvertently attacking the users who have welcomed my contributions. Again, why have mostly they survived dozens of rounds of editing if they?re all as questionable as Zoe and Ericd feel?

172


Speaking of quality, can you write in complete sentences and perhaps tell me what page you are talking about? --mav

What are you so testy about? Been spreading your stamp of approval too thinly?

I was trying to be descrit: Turn every comma into a period capitalize as usually. Full sentences. Authority falls to Quality.


You don't even like me and I am trying to save you boat loads of embarrasment? You know where to find it

Two16

If you are going to continue being obstinate then please stop trying to "warn" me. I am involved with mediating half a dozen article disputes at the moment and I don't care to play guessing games. It also wouldn't be the end of the world if I were wrong about something - it wouldn't be the first time. --mav

Mav, per the NPOV policy please do not state opinions as facts. Your latest contribution to the Joseph Smith article looks like an anti-Mormon plug-cut&paste. In accordance with NPOV policy, pertinent opposing views related to the LDS Church or Mormonism should be included. However if you are going to add these yourself and you can't find a good attribution to the opinion at least put something like, "dectractors of the LDS Chuch claim...." Frankly some things you added were just plain lies. E.g., while the KSS may have been indebted to its patrons, Joseph was not personally indebted himself. Further, the material you presented made it sound like Joseph skipped town to avoid trial as well. In fact, Joseph was still in town when the case was decided and later appealed the ruling as illegal. Mav, what I'd like to suggest to you, is that when you find something interesting about the LDS religion is to please research further and look at all sides of these issues. Many of these so-called controversies have been addressed and the amateurish anti-Mormons completely ignore the research and rehash or cut&paste the same lousy and slanderous claims. Catch-you-around. B



I was updating nearly every article on the January 12 page and this was a piece of information I came across. The information in the Jan 12 article differed from that in the Jo Smith page so I did a little Googling to find some additional information. Several sites I visited had the information that I put into the article. Yes, I should have qualified the statement given who Mr. Smith was - I understand that the Morman church may not be particularly proud of that point (if true). But I don't have any issue with the text you replaced it with and don't care to look through court papers to see the exact date of the trial and whether Mr. Smith was there so I will leave it alone. --mav

Mav how did you track down those recipes, my googling couldn't pin them down. Mintguy

Er, uh, I Googled. [2] --mav


Why is there a horde of people calling me a troll? Vera Cruz Why is this Isis person saying these things and refusing to even hint at what I did to make her upset? And likewise Tarquin!

Because you are causing petty edit wars and causing a great deal of work and frustration for other users. I know you can do better - please lay low for a while or you will be banned again Adam. --mav

My name is not Adam. Vera Cruz

Oh? Brion did some checking and found out that the email address you have specified for your user account is registered to a Adam Rinkleff. --mav

I changed my email. It is now cddvdlenscleaner@yahoo.com The only edit war Im involved in is at New Imperialism with 172. That isn't really "petty edit wars". Thats one edit war on a article that needs editing. Vera Cruz

Again - it would be best if you dropped that one. You also seem to now be in the minority as to what is best for that article. --mav
Nice dodging answering why you're here since you're Lir, though. Koyaanis Qatsi

Well if I was Lir and I said I wasn't, you wouldn't believe me. And if I was Lir and I didn't respond you'd keep thinking the same, so really all answers are the same so why bother answering?

As for being in the minority regarding the article, first off there isn't really any discussion there so there isn't a minority or majority. Second, there isn't any discussion there so there...yah...

If you are interested...should an article on the period 1870-1914 with emphasis on international politics take time out for a two paragraph reminder that america and russia are both empires, although different from each other, and a reminder that rome was an empire, and a discussion of when the word imperialism was coined and by whom and what they meant and then how it came to mean what it means today by the time that the period in question began...or should it be moved to imperialism where the text is talking about that subject...

I think wikipedia should add some chatrooms, would solve a lot of problems. Vera Cruz

The reason there currently isn't much discussion is because your actions have driven-off the other participants - who were getting through to and working with 172. Please stop trying to justify yourself - I am one of the few people who think you can be a productive member of the community due to the improvements in character you have made since you changed your user name. There still are some rough edges though. --mav

Hi, Mav! I saw your note to Arthur. That would not explain why I am also blocked from certain pages, TTF-Bucksfan for one. Especially since I also have sysop status. Danny

See what I mean? If I say too little then Im criticized for that and If I say too much thats no good either. I mean jeez. All Im saying is why is it necessary to discuss the complete evolution of the word imperialism on a page besides imperialism. Vera Cruz

mav lockdown Sv rule has been inaugerated. User:Two16

  • Talk:Irish Potato Famine and follow the links.

Learn how to play a role:

That's all for now. You were on the wrong side of the histories for a very long time, Militiaman.

That's funny - Only you and Sv seem to tink so. In addition, everybody else who has looked into the matter agrees. --mav

mav I have credibility that you have lost fratranizing with the enemy you don't have to go down in with the tyrant. You do not understand the geometry of the situation. [two16]]. mav you must follow the trail. Didn't you read the brand new article about how to read a poem. Number three in the search engine poem. talk archive 7 mav you signed off on the article as npov Find out where the ridicule leads. Something is happening and you don't know what it is. You have had significant lapses of judgement and it shows. I have work to do, figure it out mav. mav lockdown Sv rule has been inaugerated. User:Two16

"lockdown Sv rule"? What the hell are you talking about? You have 0 credibility around here BTW. And I'm not the only one to think so. Have you even read all my posts to the famine talk page? The last one was against deleting all of Sv's genocide section. You really need some serious help - you tend to see tyrants were there are none. --mav
Your silence speaks volumes. --mav


It speaks to other priorities. You must slow down. Take cognitive control of your temperment:

You were on the wrong side of the histories for a very long time, Militiaman. (original posting is directly above your 1st comments)


mav there is an end game still being played, it was won long ago. I don't need to have credibility because its all in black & beige. All I need is a hearing. You will not be able to stop me. The Ethos will not let you. When You and Jtl tried to lockdown Sv, he turned the words against Jtl and YOU. How much credibility do you have? You and he are both hystercally on record as saying that the article was npov and a bunch of other thing too. I'm Canadain: We stand on Guard. And that's exactly what I am doing in IPF. I read the article till I came to a paragraph that I could not accept in any encyclopedia. When I left a comment I was treated as a stereotype for no reason whatsoever. My objection was not met let alone understood. When follow-up produced more logical fallacy and repetition. I knew that I was in for the long haul. An historian had become the dictator on IPF, aided and abbetted by a sysop. When response must be given, you will have to give account and you will not be able to give a good one. I am not trying to be mean and hurtful.

Did you not notice that I was not in the edit war? What the Heal was I doing? All that time, all those ignored words, what purpose would they serve? With a sysop overseeing it, there couldn't possibly be a more futile thing.

Well I was there to see that went further wrong. I used the talk pages as I should. I went into the article to pull quotation marks from around genocide in a subtitle. "Irony Quotes" Say it and make the finger motions like Seinfeld. Some historians need sensitivity. The text is littered with that punctuation. And you had the hubris to call it npov. So lockdown --- like a prison 

                               Sv ------------ wikipededian

Even after Sv, who was locked out of discourse, capitalized a sample of egreious words, you mav didn't get it. Jtl who uses the convention of internet shouting didn't get it. He even posted it on talk:Ipf. He actually read them, selected them, chose which page to post. I thought that Sv had made his point: the text was pov and that authority abusing npov. There is no other possible explanation. Why did it take you so long to get it?


I didn't get involved with the edit war: you did. You did. You however made it worse. You increased its ferocity and its length. And then you dictated. I think that you are less credible than you think. mav's Boo Balloon burst.

mav I know that edit war: I was studying it. It was war and it was abuse of power. I wrote for posterity. You failed on so many levels and I save it in real time. Even if you had used your sway, to have proper archieving, you would have earned my respect. You were so blind to Wikipedian Ethos that you did get the opposing sides to frame each others arguements. You imposed you will over reason. You didn't critique faulty arguements. You didn't get summaries done. Were you so blinded by authority that you lost sight of of our ethos. mav a little graciousness would help now. 216

No balloon to burst - esp by you. If you think Sv's very POV charged edits that were marked as minor and summarized as being formatting-related were at all justified (even to make a point) then there really is no reason trying to reason with you (see [3] that was marked as minor with the summary of "typo - overwhelming to overwhelmingly" -- and I am the one with the problem? Look at your own Martyr). And nobody was "locked out" of anything - the page was not protected and that is the only way to lock-down anything around here (other than an IP ban). And if you think I was the only one on Jt's side then you are either blind or insane. --mav

Where did this come from?

(1944) The first jazz concert is held at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, [[Roy Eldri

Does it meant the first jazz concert at the Metropolitan Opera House? That, I'd believe but jazz had been around for some forty years before that -- I'm sure there was a "concert" before then. Tokerboy

I'm updating the year pages from January 18. The former is true - there were other concerts before that one - I will fix. --mav

Mav, I am requesting your intervention as a sysop. Please look at New Imperialism. On 1/18/03, the article went through (by my count) twelve rounds of revert. The reversions seem to go back and forth between two sides: a user called User:Vera Cruz on one side, and User:Tannin, User:172, User:Ortolan88, and myself on the other. If you start about halfway down on the talk page (I know it is tedious but it is worth reading to the end to get a complete picture) you will get a very good idea of what has been going on. Personally, I think the article should be frozen at the most recent pre--Vera Cruz point for a week or two, or people should consider a temporary ban on Vera Cruz. Honestly, I do not make such suggestions lightly -- just please review the case and reach your own conclusion (or if you feel uncomfrotable please forward this request to Danny or another sysop).

By the way, things are looking nasty again on the talk page for Irish potato famine. I noticed you tried to have a calming effect. From User:two16's latest entry, I am not so sure it has worked. But I have had my own troubles with two16 and also with JTD, and I do not think my involvement would be constructive. Slrubenstein

Well VC (aka Lir), in spite of my aksing him to play nice and lay low, has been re-banned to reflect the consensus of the mailing list. I did not express an opinion either way in the matter because I was hoping VC would further improve over his Lir days (as much as a pain in the ass as VC was, it was a marked improvement compared with Lir). 172 also now seems to be getting things under control on the IPF page. I'm probably damaged goods as far as that dispute goes; both Sv and Two16 think I am blindly bowing to whatever the "Tyrant PhD" (Two16's words) wants. This of course isn't the case but perceptions are often very strong. --mav

mav, just to let you know (because you're much more active in interpersonal things here than I am, I think): there is an intermittent problem some AOL users have where it will appear that they have been blocked from editing one specific article. THis is not possible in the wikipedia software, and is a result of AOL's use of proxies combined with a caching problem. The cause of the problem is an older ban on a different AOL IP. Anyway, I'm just letting you know because it's happened to a few users so far, including Danny, and people have questioned Isis as to why she banned them (when she did not ban them, but someone else, weeks ago). Best, Koyaanis Qatsi


Thanks for the information - I will pass it along whenever somebody complains about it again. --mav

Your input is needed on the potential IPF compromise.

172

Hi Mav, (you still alive after the Two16 attacks?) 172 is doing good work. I've one worry though. The article is already very long. With 172's addition and PML offering to add stuff, it could get enormous, too enormous for browsers to deal with. I was planning to break some pieces off to other pages to make it more managable. Before we start adding in more, we really need to work a method of deciding on a reshape. (Maybe put the genocide claim section as a separate page with a short summary on the main one). Otherwise hundreds of thousands of potential readers in the future simply will not be able to read the page as it will exceed their browser capacities. With 172's extra bit, it is already causing my browser trouble. If I go in to do a move (apart from driving Two16 ballistic!), my browser may lose a lot of the end when I try to save. Maybe you might suggest temporarily holding off on additions, or even removing the genocide bit to a new page. If I suggest it, I'll be accused of censorship and trying to stifle debate and being a tyrant (yawn!) and I don't want to give Two16 a chance to write more bad poetry!!! We need to cry halt for a moment immediately before anything is added to or else we will have an encyclopedia article the size of an encyclopedia that will be garbled every time someone tries to edit it, they (or their browser) inadvertently chopping off chunks of the end. JTD 05:26 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

JTD has a good idea.

172

Mav, who is Paul A? He's been making a few contributions bit he does not seem to have a webpage.

Arno

I don't know - just a new user helping to improve Wikipedia. User pages are red links just like anything else here until somebody opens it up, adds some text and hits save. --mav


The funny thing is, I think I know who he is - but I could be wrong.. Arno
Why, who do you think I am?
(There's stuff on my user page now, if you want to look - but probably nothing you couldn't already have worked out from my contribution history.) --Paul A
I thought tyhat you were another Paul A who I had gone to school with. I figured that you had to be a local from Kalgoorlie if you could name one of Paddy Hannan's partners. You aso contributed to Perth, which is where the other Paul A lives. You seemed to be following me around the wikipedia eg the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge articles.
Anyway, we;ve now spoken by e-mail. All is now cleared up here. Arno
Yup, all cleared up. (For the record, I wasn't following anybody - I was just looking at the RC and going "Aha, Australian entries, I'll have a look at those...") --Paul A
Yes, sorry, I used some bad wording above. I meant to say that you seemed to be following me around, in a manner reminiscent of someone who knew me. It was a wrong impression.(blush, blush)

Arno

Hi Mav,

Thanks for the feedback on VC. Now, when you have some time, could you look at Gene? There isn't quite a revert war yet, but there is some conflict and here is a matter on which you are knowledgable enough to make what I am sure would be a very substantial and positive contribution. After considerable editing of the article -- motivated entirely by concerns for style and not content -- two people advocated reverting. The version in question is dated 22:23 1/19. I made considerable changes, again solely with an eye towards readability; my version is dated 00:09 1/20. If you look on the talk page you will see a pretty scathing attack on my changes. I fully admit I might have screwed up the content, but if I did it was unwitting, as the previous version was so convoluted that it was hard to make out what the intended content was. My only intention has been to make the article clearer. I would appreciate it if you would check it for factual errors and make any changes you consider appropriate, and I would very much like your opinion on the relative merits of the two versions in question. Sorry to be such a pain.

I'll look into it. --mav

Py the way, my sympathies concerning your own run-in with two16. I am sure you know that no one here shares his opinions concerning you, Slrubenstein

Thanks. :) --mav

Hi Mav, a question. You mentioned the creation of 'daughter' articles linking to the main Famine page. Would these be ordinary pages accessible with ordinary links, or only accessible through the Famine page? It is just that, if the former, they would need some sort of contexualisation at the start to explain their link to the Famine page. If the latter, they could be taken simply en bloc from the famine page text without any explanatory opening contextualising the page. JTD 20:18 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Hm. Good question. The first versions can and for expediency's sake probably should be rough cuts (leaving the introduction/summary of the section on the main Famine page and have a "Section Continued at" statement and link at the bottom. This is similar to the daughter articles for the country pages such as History of the United States. Note there is no introduction/summary at the start of that article since the introduction/summary is already in the History section at United States. Some daughter articles may be able to stand alone so they will evolve toward that direction eventually. --mav

Thanks. I've two other queries. There is confusion over how Wiki should refer to holders of royal titles other than monarch. I've made a suggestion for a solution on the talk page for 'Anne Windsor'. Maybe you could give it a look and see what you think. Secondly, Sv constructively has moved a draft of the IPF page to a draft spot. The problem is it still is too big for browsers to enter without risking chopping bits of the end. Could you perhaps break it in two, so that it can be reviewed without bits unintentionally being lost. And finally, the talk page of the IPF faces the same problem. It is too big to be entered without the ends being lost. I've had messages from people with comments which they cannot put onto the page because of its size. I'm in the same boat, and even archiving it won't work, as that too will involve hitting edit, which will cut off the end. As you seem not to have the same browser problem as a lot of people, maybe you could come to all our rescue and archive the page, so that people can enter safety again.

Sorry for always calling on you in these difficulties you seem the best person to turn to. Thanks in anticipation. JTD 23:39 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

RE: The size issue > Sure thing. RE: The naming issue > Wikipedia:History standards and its talk page may help. I'll also take a look at your suggestion. --mav

Queen (band) quesiton moved to Talk:Queen (band)

Now you're trying to pass the rambot and ram-man.  ;-) Koyaanis Qatsi

That's the plan! :) --mav

Mav, can you delete the unverifiable Star Wars pages of which I just cleared the content (see RC if you're reading this now)? Each one of them fails the Google test and the author didn't reply. I doubt that they even exist, and if so, hardly anywhere else than in some mailing list game. --Eloquence 08:56 Jan 21, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks!Eloquence
No problemo. --mav

re: whether there were 2 past slashdottings: not really. There was a mention in late March which I followed to wikipedia; at that time there were about 2000 articles. (I misremembered this being an article, but really it was just a few comments in response to e2's achievement. Anyway, take a look at this, 3rd comment for a kick). In March 2001, even most of the countries were not covered (at all, in any way). Jimbo was working on importing the CIA World Factbook entries and said anyone was welcome to help; I took over the project and finished in a few months. There were a few other slashdot people who visited but I don't know of anyone else who came at that time and stayed. A mention, yes, and a few visitors, but not a slashdotting.

There was an article which Larry Sanger wrote & which was published on July 26 2001; it resulted in a rush of contributors, and then a 2nd rush a short time later (I don't know why--the 26th was a Thursday so maybe it was another week's worth of workers finding the article?). The project took a few harsh comments on slashdot but the mention was beneficial anyway. I don't think there's been another slashdotting since July 2001. see Wikipedia:Wikipedians/History for some idea of the contributors we got from the July one. Koyaanis Qatsi

Wow - even the second one was kinda in passing. So I guess this is our first real Slashdotting where we are the main subject. Coolness. Back to firefighting. :) --mav
I'm off to bed now. I'll check up on things in a few hours. You know, if you weather the storm, you'll pass the rambot by noon.  ;-) --Koyaanis Qatsi
LOL - actually I'm mostly just reading the great new contributions. There seem to be very few vandals so far. Fingers-crossed. :) --mav
Yeh, I noticed the odd lack of vandals. Nice people so far, hoping it holds out. Koyaanis Qatsi

Mav, the bottom-of-page hit counter doesn't seem to be working (on any page). Has it been deliberately switched off? (something to do with the slashdotting?) Arvindn 16:45 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

Brion turned that off to lighten the load on the servers while we're slashdotted. Koyaanis Qatsi 18:03 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)
Yep. --mav

Do you want to look at the IPF page again? Sv seems placated. The controversy might have died down.

172

I'll look into it. --mav

Would you mind stimulating comment on Talk:aircraft. I'm afraid I'm banging on about American/British English usage again. Sorry. It's just that I was a little surprised to see a perfectly good (albeit short and in need of work) article at aeroplane become a redirect to aircraft, while I was on holiday, and I only just noticed. Mintguy

Already there. --mav
Thanks. I'm sorry this kind of thing is a bit of a bug-bear with me. I expected you to disagree BTW. I noticed that the redirecting of aeroplane happened, because a newbie decided to unilaterally move it to airplane. If I'd have been around, I would have moved it back. Mintguy

Mav, thanks for the work re the title of Flight 11's article. However, a similar renaming was done to Flight 175's and Flight 77's article. Is theer any chance that you could also reverse this?

Arno

Done. Actually, any logged-in user could have done that by using the move feature (which now overwrites redirect pages that have no edit history). --mav

Thanks, I'll look into that. Arno

You didn't want Shaggy under brilliant prose?  ;-) Koyaanis Qatsi

Not exactly ;-) --mav

Some interesting things have been happening on the Democracy page for a while now. Same guy, 2 IPs: 146.124.141.250 and 146.124.102.84. Writes junk/highly POV stuff about Hitler killing people etc. Wiped the whole article a couple of times. -- Arvindn

Thanks for the heads-up. I've been track the situation and have been helping with reverting - hopefully this person will get tired and just go away. I could ban the IPs but then that might spark an arms race. --mav

Dear Mav; Hi! I have a question. As you know, I write a lot about things that I like and/or have in some way made an impact in my life.

My question is if you think it would be good if I write an article about a porn website that I LOVE to visit. I have this question in my mind becase you know, if I write it, I dont want anyone to sue Wikipedia, being that people of all ages read us, because Wikipedia told my kid about an x rated site that they later visited or something....

With that off my chest Im leaving :)

Thanks and God Bless!!

Sincerely yours, AntonioMartin.

I really depends on how famous the website is. It has already been mentioned by many people here that we do not want to have articles on every website on the Internet - only the most famous ones. I would have to know just which one you are talking about. --mav

Thank you for the wellcome. Mac.

No problemo. --mav

I oftentimes give quick, seemingly unkind and terse comments on talk pages and especially in edit summaries. However meanness is not at all the intent, just efficiency. This is a quirk of my rare personality type: INTJ. I do try to moderate what I say and how I say it -- mainly because my terseness sometimes leads to inefficient chit chat to resolve misunderstandings on talk pages.

Hi, Mav! Thanks for your welcome on my talk page.

You corrected one of my entries, saying: "Write full sentences, please." While, of course, I understand that an encyclopedia should be all neat and refined, my first impression of wikipedia was - and this is really exciting - that it gives me more freedom because it is both (a) wiki and (b) self-healing.

(This is exciting because until yesterday I was convinced that it is just a law of nature that something that takes many people many years can be destroyed within a minute by one or a few weirdos. Now when I saw you reconvert penis to Iraq I thought: There exists a superman after all ;-) - Back to my question:

I thought that wiki authors and editors are a wide variety of people who miraculously complement each other. I, for one, am not a native speaker, so I sometimes just write incomplete sentences and try to keep the meaning unambiguous. Someone else, who is a good writer, could then pick it up and turn it into a nice article. Is this not more efficient? Please don't pop my bubble!

Sebastian 06:50 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

PS: Will I get e-mail if you reply or will I have to return periodically to this page?

You won't get e-mail, but to know when a page changes you can put it in your "watchlist". Check the "watch this article" box when editing it or click the "watch this page" link on the left of the page. The "My watchlist" link lets you monitor all the pages you are interested in from one location. -- Arvindn 07:08 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
For a non-native speaker your prose above is just fine - better than many native speakers as a matter of fact. We still ask that contributors write in full sentences since writing short articles in incomplete sentences looks like dictionary entries and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. So taking the extra time to write in complete sentences will be greatly appreciated. BTW, don't forget to have fun! --mav
Thanks for the compliment. <blush/> Actually, it is more fun for me to write sentence fragments.  :-p
Seriously, though. I think we need to make a decision here: It is different if someone writes a nascent article (which may fall somewhere between a stub and a full fledged article) or if someone intends to write a dictionary entry. I (grudgingly) respect the distinction between wikipedia and wictionary, so my intention is not to smuggle dictionary terms into wikipedia. But I want to provide as much information as I can in as little time as I have.
Another reason why I think we should encourage such nascent articles, however raw they may be, is in scenarios like the following: Sebastian admires 蘇東坡. He sees that he's not included in the List of famous Chinese people. He enters the wiki. Now (assume) Maveric150, who has no reason to trust Sebastian, wonders if he should delete it. Wouldn't it be helpful for Maveric150 if he could see some justification for why Sebastian entered 蘇東坡? It seems to me, a nascent article that just contains "11c famous Chinese poet and politician" is the most organic way to do it and encourage further growth.
How about if Sebastian added something to that effect into the article? Maybe a link to one common page, so that users then could find all nascent articles thru "What links here"?
BTW: Should we move this discussion to some other forum? It's getting so crowded here. :-{
Sebastian 17:33 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia has too many very short articles as it is. I will not, nor will most of the other long timers, encourage more by not being a tad bit rude to people who create them. We are trying to build a useful encyclopedia here - I for one do not find it fun to clean up sloppy work from others when I still have subjects that I want to cover. Please write in complete sentences and follow our style guide - otherwise you are sapping the energy of other people and are therefore not helping the project much, if at all. Especially now that we have over 100,000 articles, we need to concentrate on quality not quantity. You have already proven that you can write in complete sentences and can write well. --mav
Good point! Having reached 100,000 maybe its time to self-consciously start focussing more on quality? I have a few suggestions:
  1. Collecting and monitoring statistics. Is it possible to collect stats like: 1) distribution of number of articles as a function of length of the article 2) Average number of edits per page.
  2. Spell checking feature in the software
  3. Everyone should write in complete sentences and try to check their spelling, grammar and punctuation before saving.
  4. We should try to integrate short stubs into existing articles when it makes sense. For instance, I think operand, arity and unary operator should all be a part of the operator article rather than the stubs that they are. If at some point someone wants to write at length about one of them then they can be branched into a separate article.
  5. To use a cliche, wikipedia the product is becoming as important as wikipedia the process :) Any thoughts on this? -- Arvindn 06:27 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
  1. See Wikipedia:Statistics and Special:Statistics
  2. This has been discussed several times but this would be difficult to do in practice due the fact that we allow both American, British and other valid English spellings.
  3. Of course they should. :) But for ultra green newbies there should be some tolerance for this - otherwise we scare people away. But after say 10 edits our expectations of quality comming form a newbie should increase.
  4. This is a very good idea. It is usually best to start a more or less general article on a topic and then when that article gets long enough, then start to summarize sub-topics and move the more detailed material to daughter articles.
  5. I agree. The usefullness of this resource is increasing all the time and is starting to get some serious attention from academics. Before we were laughed at because all we had was an oddball process that, on the face of it, appeared to be destined to collect the worst of the Internet in terms of contributors and quality. But now we seem to be doing the exact opposite and we have a product that is already a good recourse, so the number and severity of attacks has decreased markably. As a matter of fact, I was shocked at how well the Slashdot crowd received Wikipedia during the last Slashdotting; there were only a relative handful of negative comments and each of those were thoroughly refuted by both Wikipedians and by other Slashdot folk. I was also surprised by the average quality of contributions that have happened as a result of the slashdotting; All but a literal few of the hundreds of new contributions I saw submitted by anons and new users were good to excellent. Before the Slashdotting we expected that up to half of these contributions would be either dross or vandalism (as was the case during the first Slashdotting). It seems that people are taking us serious now. --mav
Thanks for your replies, I see your point. Point 5 is certainly true when you look at how far Wikipedia has come. I wish I had been here when the way was the goal.  :-[
You may be right that it saps energy if articles are not well written. Maybe it even turns serious writers off. But I prefer to believe in the power of diversity. Do you have any evidence for your statement or can I keep dreaming?
BTW, you did not scare me away, I'm just swamped with other stuff right now. Well, actually, there is one thing that did take the wind out of my sails: That Wikipedia does not lend itself to support trustworthiness. (E.g. it contains hardly any sources, and it is hard to find out who wrote a particular statement. I think there was a discussion somewhere about this, but I forgot where.)
Sebastian 09:33 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Dear Mav: Hey! Thanks for anwering my question so fast. I have to admit, I like your style. Youre a good writer, a better writing teacher, and a fast answerer.

The website I had in mind is ProjectVoyeur.com. I dont know how famous it is, thru.

Well thanks for answering, and God bless!!

Sincerely yours, AntonioMartin

Hm. I've never heard of it - but then I'm not into heterosexual porn either. It does get about 64,000 hits on Google with many other websites saying just how great the project is. But that may just be advertising related. I'll probably get yelled at for this, but I say go ahead and try to make a good article on the subject. The worst that would happen is that the article would be moved to meta. IMO another boxer biography or airport article would be better though. Thanks for the compliments BTW. :-) PS. What do you think about the table I added over at Los Angeles International Airport? --mav

As the expert on naming conventions, can you add your feedback on Talk:President of the United States of America? --Eloquence 13:56 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Been there. The "of America" isn't needed. --mav

mav, could you take a look at the years in KROQ pages (e.g. 1995 in KROQ and voice an opinion? Thanks, Koyaanis Qatsi

Been there. They need to go. --mav

---

Hi mav,

I just realized that you were the one who moved NSDAP to Nazi Party. I proposed to move it back on the talk page, and I had several replies, but so far no one objected. Could you pls take a look? Sebastian 07:35 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)~

This is a very bad idea. See the talk page. --mav

Thanks for your kind words about the Manual of Style and Guide to Layout on the DW biographical follies talk page. It makes me feel good to think I have expressed the rules (derived from the practice of many careful contributors) so well that people can follow them without even reading them. Seriously, I feel very complimented. Ortolan88

You're welcome! I just call things as I see them, and your style suggestions are the most natural. --mav

Exhausted, frustrated, stressed (both professionally and personally). I've got a rough cut of a film due in mid-February, but first I have an 11-day trip to L.A. and San Francisco to take to get more interviews & b-roll, and then I have 2 days to edit the rough cut, and after that I will have time for wikipedia. I feel like Sisyphus already, and repeatedly deleting 1998 in KROQ articles and hanging out with boors (not many, mind you, but one or two is but enough) isn't helping. I'll be back in three weeks or so, provided I'm not detained indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" for having a tan and a beard in an airport. I still very much believe in wikipedia. Thanks for your concern.  :-) Best, Koyaanis Qatsi 18:15 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that you are only going to be gone for a little while. I'll miss your comapany nonetheless. :-) --mav



Sorry for the mixup on main page mav. But WWIII dones't have a date on it till a page down, and then it's January 25. Jan 26 mentions arrival of US troops in europe in wwII... -- Tarquin 20:36 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

No biggie. --mav

I added my 2 cents to Talk:Kosovo_War as requested. --Uncle Ed

Thank you! --mav

something i want you to look at, not an orginal idea but what do you think about this periodic table: User:Fonzy/sandbox - fonzy

Hi mav, I know you do a lot of "fire fighting" around here. Have you noticed GrandVoivodOfErdely? Have a look at the public opinion article or civil society. I don't know how to even begin to work on these articles.

Also, what's the right thing for me to do if I notice something like this? Is there a page I should make a note on? Or should I shut-up and ignore it? (I've listed a couple of pages on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion when that has seemed appropriate.)

Thanks for any advice to a newbie :) - sannse 20:02 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

Other Admins and old hands seem to be aware. But if a user is annoying you list there user name and why they are annoying on Wikipedia:Annoying users. Of course if what they are doing is vandalism then go to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress. --mav

Thanks mav, I've noted those pages. It seems these things are noticed amazingly fast anyway. - sannse 20:29 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)


I think this is how I'm supposed to use the talk function, but not sure (the help page for how to use much of the system is quite useless).

U sent a message to me when i was IP: 172.182.93.235

Anyhow: Why i deleted that line from 22nd Jan: 2 reasons: 1) It was in the wrong place for the chronological listings, i was moving it. 2) The place it was supposed to go (73 if i recall correctly) already had it in. Therefore it went bye-bye... :)

Now a question of my own: What is the consensus as to capital letters for article titles? Big_bang points to Big_Bang, however the Nuclear Utilization Target Selection points to nuclear utilization target selection. Clearly it being an acronym the capitals one should be kept. I think i may create an account here... Artificial intelligence has a small i starting it... Shouldn't it be a Capital one?

Yikes! I'm so sorry for being such a dick about that! You were 100% right and I was 100% wrong. I'm sorry. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) for more info on the capitalization thing. In short, just because something was an acronym doesn't necessarily mean that it should be capitalized - only proper nouns should be capitalized. Big Bang is a tough one though.... --mav

Mav,

You're the only big dog I know here so I'll point this out to you. The golf page needs to get backed up to an earlier version, and I'm not sure of the proper way to do this. Jack

Somebody beat me to it. Check out Wikipedia:How to revert a page for more info. --mav

Year vs year in music thread moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music standards

I've noticed that 198.169.5.96 is right at this moment creating new articles with only one line in them, which seem to be just the title of the article. They started at 11:35 EST with a page called How to edit a page for experts, and are still going. You might want to check this out. -- Pandora

BTW, I don't know how to end this message with the current (UTC) date & time like some people have above. FWIW, it's 12:40 p.m. EST on Jan. 30. Thanks.

It looks like somebody else took care of it. Just type ~ four times to get the date stamp. --mav

Theres only 1 thing taht bugs me about the current periodic table, thats the fact that not all the collums are the same with. -fonzy

we need to update the image for the new layout i also thought i think we shoudl add 119 and 120(to the image) as we defenttly know where they will go :-).

I'm working on a brand new image right now. It is only a mock-up but it is half the height and uses the wide periodic table as the image base. Hopefully I will be able to have something worth uploading by the weekend. --mav

It has been a whole twenty-four hours since anyone has thrown an insult at me. Things could get mighty quiet without DW. I'm gonna miss him (only JOKING!). Thanks for the support. JTD 01:53 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome. :-) Now it is time to get back to business - without distractions this time. --mav

I haven't left yet, actually. I'm finishing up a paper and packing as I spea--er, type. I'm leaving early Sunday morning (too early) after a series of errands tomorrow (too many). I'll be back around Feb. 20. Thanks, though.  :-) Koyaanis Qatsi 21:09 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

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