User talk:DavidWBrooks/2008 archive

New Hampshire primary

Curious as to why you reverted my change to New Hampshire primary. - 156.34.80.165 (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It was an error; I mis-read (mis-saw?) what you had done. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Very telling statement on your user page

Let me first admit, I've never been a huge fan of how Wikipedia operates, although I find Wikipedia useful. Some might say I'm even hostile. I was wondering if you could expand on the statement you make on your user page: "I came to Wikipedia in January 2003, following a media storm when it hit 100,000 articles, but after all this time I'm still uncertain how useful it is as a knowledge tool." I'm especially curious since you say you are a reporter. --Fandyllic (talk) 11:22 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

"There Once was a man from Nantucket" additional reference.

On two separate occasions, I have attempted to add in a particular reference to this as follows:

John Valby, aka "Dr. Dirty," immortalized the popular obscene version in his limerick "Ya Ya."

Twice, you or some other person has deleted it. How come? Valby not only immortalized this particular limmerick, but has infused it into the pop culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.180.250 (talk) 17:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Pop culture references of obscure performers need some kind of reference. Does this guy have an article? the song? Otherwise it's just some sentence dropped in. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Valby created his version of the famous "drinking" song "Ya Ya" with the "...Nantucket..." line as well as many others. See the following site for relevant information: http://www.johnvalbynation.com/ as well as the Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Valby. I'm not sure what more of a reference you want - please advise.

Don't put the references here; include them in the statement. That's what keeps things from getting deleted. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I put the reference in the text, and still it was deleted; I can only assume by you. What is the problem here? Do you have nothing better to do than mess with other people's edits?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.180.250 (talk) 19:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a note right under your addition saying "don't add any more - this isn't a list of times it was referenced" or something like that. it's been there for a while - it seems to be the consensus that we don't need to add a comment in the article every time somebody somewhere references it in a song. So I removed it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

New York Times

Sir, I'm a great fan of your columns in the NY Times. Any idea when your next book will come out? I thought the book about "bobos" was interesting. EdRooney (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Paul is Dead

I'm curious - why did you undo my change to the "Paul is Dead" page? As it was (and now is again), it reads "Evidence for McCartney's death consists of "clues" found among the Beatles' many recordings" - which isn't accurate. The Abbey Road cover photo is probably the strongest single source of clues, and the best known. It isn't a recording - so I changed it to say recordings, lyrics and record covers. Why would you revert that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MegdalePlace (talk • contribs) 20:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

It struck me as unnecessarily wordy - a good example of unnecessary specificity slowing down reading. "Recordings" includes the covers and accompanying hoohah, and besides, there are examples almost immediately talking about the cover art. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The word "recording" does not encompass the record sleeve, just the audio track - no-one uses "recording" to refer to photographs! The Abbey Road cover shot fired up the whole phenomenon and surely you don't really think the cover could honestly be described as a recording? ("records" would be better than "recordings", but it's still vague.) As for wordiness, I added just four, which corrected a lazy but significant error in the original text. It might be a fraction quicker to read without "lyrics and record covers", but it's very misleading without them and I would have thought accuracy is the opposite of "unnecessary", as you say it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.96.164.105 (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

But why stop with lyrics and covers? What about statements made in interviews and elsewhere; those are cited as clues. And movie clips! And the cartoons!! If we're going to be specific, we should drag them into the sentence, too! (This is why legal documents are so hard to read: the need to be comprehensive and specific leads to a jumble.)

Adding an unnecessary phrase is poor writing, no matter how short the phrase is. It's a judgement call, of course, but I think "recording" in this sentence does, indeed, encompass everything around the actual audio sessions, including the way they were sold and packaged (in films too) and including people's responses to them, so I would say those four words are unnecessary.

By the way, sign your posts, will you? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Blind?

How did I miss the fact that you have been an admin since before I became a registered user?!? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

During all of our work last year to keep the various seven wonders articles clear of cruft and vandalism, I kept thinking you would make a great admin. Little did I know ...  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I even watchlist'ed your future RfA page so I could lend my support, but it appears that you predate the RfA system. Old fart indeed ... --Kralizec! (talk) 15:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

That is very interesting since my recent experience is almost the exact opposite. As I am slated for "downsizing" after my employer was acquired by a competitor, I am currently job hunting and have had three interviews in the past month. While the interviews were surprisingly easy, I did not get the job ... contrasted with my easy-as-pie unopposed RfA. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Imagine my surprise today when Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/DavidWBrooks was actually edited by someone! Looks like we both had un-opposed RfAs! --Kralizec! (talk) 23:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

If I had to guess, I would say that Majorly (talk · contribs) transcribed the old info into the "new" standard location in order to help provide transparency. Since I have a personal 0RR policy for admin actions, figuring out if someone is an admin can be challenging when they do not have an RfA page archived out there. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Temple of Artemis

how was the Temple of Artemis built by persians and lydians? also,how was the Mausoleum of Maussollos built by persians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Supergr33k (talk • contribs) 19:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Charlie on the MTA music reference

Why did you remove my contribution dealing with another song about Charlie on the MTA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragon224 (talk • contribs) 14:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

“curly quotes”

[A modification of yours to the Newspaper article] changed two distinct regions of text; the first of which merely changed “curly quotation marks” to "undirected ASCII quotation marks". Was this change deliberate — or, perhaps more to the point, do you think that it is better for Wikipedia articles to use the latter ? If so, why? I often change Wikipedia text from ASCII punctuation to the more specific punctuation mark available outside of ASCII, so you may like to educate me if you do think ASCII punctuation better. Arguments I'm aware of:

• ASCII is easier to type when writing/editing articles; though this isn't an argument against me changing the text so long as I can justify my own time.
• ASCII is easier to search for.
• There could be issues of fonts not including the relevant glyph, though I'm not aware of any cases (for a font that someone uses to display Wikipedia text). It displays fine in the X11 font commonly used in xterms, for example. The character does exist in both the default roman Windows and MacOS charsets, so I'd guess that most fonts would include it.
• For aural web browsers, it's possible that some old software only recognizes ASCII characters, but into the future I suppose that they're better off with more specific characters (e.g. distinct from double-prime or inch sign).

The reason I use “these” rather than "these" is that “these” certainly look better when printed out (and generally on high-resolution devices), and I tend to think they look better on screen as well — though no doubt that will depend on font and font-substitution to some extent. In the case of some punctuation or contexts, the meaning can be clearer too; though that isn't usually the case for double-quote marks. Pjrm (talk) 03:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

David has replied on my talk page. David, feel free to remove this section, I leave it here only because I'm guessing that you want your archive pages to include all historical content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjrm (talk • contribs) 10:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Speak Low

I added so many stubs as to attract editors, yet I agree, it is a bit scary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gareth E Kegg (talk • contribs) 21:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Mount Monadnock

David, the only reason the article says "New Hampshire" is because you changed "New England" to "New Hampshire" in your edit! I'll let it stand for the moment, and give us a chance to work this out on the talk pages. Please indicate why you have decided to change New England to New Hampshire & we'll go from there. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 05:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S., Note as well that "New Hampshire" is already used in the beginning of the sentence as a geographic reference at the state level; "New England" showed the mountain's importance in the broader region in the second part of the sentence. Is there some pressing reason you object to this? As it currently reads, you mention "New Hampshire" as the location of the mountain twice in the same sentence. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 05:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:tags

Well, removing tags is good, but only if the the reason, why it was tagged, is solved. So it will be good to remove tags after making the necesssary changes. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 22:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

"Wealth" of NH Legislators

It's generally assumed that NH state legislators are wealthy, retired and have more time to spend in hours of committee meetings and sessions of the House/Senate than younger, working folks do, but I haven't seen any studies or news reports on it, so it was wise of you to spike that. It is certainly the common wisdom, though. - Nhprman —Preceding comment was added at 15:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: apostrophes for plurals

My own view follows MLA style (my copy of the MLA guide is not handy at the moment, but I can get you a reference later if you'd like) in that an apostrophe is an indication of either a contraction or a possessive and should not be used for a plural or a decade. It may be a result of doing so many word puzzles (crosswords are my current vice), or it may be the school system where I was educated, but I personally dislike seeing an apostrophe used for a plural, especially after an acronym; it's one little bit of copyediting that normally do when I see it. Slambo (Speak) 21:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Good point

Good point here: [1]. WP:WHEN is a useful essay for using inline citations that meet featured article criteria. Regards. dissolve^talk 03:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

---

Apologies for only including links to my photo site. I was not aware of the guidelines but have now read them and will not add any more links. (I do want to point out that when I first included the links I did get a message from a moderator that they were OK but I can understand that this has now changed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgostby (talk • contribs) 14:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Wonders of the World

Did I over-revert the Wonders of the World article? While new editor Wordsmithsonian (talk · contribs) was rather exuberant in updating the article, I found the final version quite unpalatable [2]. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You may want to offer a few words, as the next version was -IMO- even worse. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

These forks are going to make my head explode ... --Kralizec! (talk) 21:50, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you think we should do about the newly created Wonders of the Middle Ages and Seven Natural Wonders of the World articles? Except for the extra photos, they appear to exclusively be content split from the main article. I hate to keep harping on this editor (a la BITE), but this is starting to get ridiculous. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, just ignore them. They don't do any harm. As long as he doesn't trash up the Wonders of the World article any more. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

NELSAP Wording

That works too! Prepositions are such tricky things late at night :) Thank you! Jrclark (talk) 14:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Paul is dead

Hey there,

Thanks for your comment. I agree that the carnation from Magical Mystery Tour is better described as a 'clue'. But in the case of the lyric from Glass Onion, John Lennon has confirmed that the lyric was a direct reference to the 'Paul Is Dead' hoax: See the 'Glass Onion' wikipedia entry for confirmation of this. So, I think it qualifies as a 'reference by the Beatles'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.167.86.32 (talk) 17:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Art Tatum Talk page

Sorry about that - I should have tested what it looked like first. It was the first time I had interweaved and I was nonplussed with the results. Nevertheless, the user who his now responding to my responses - I think he wrote some of that article - seems more intent on winning childish arguments rather than improving the article. Since I don't want to get sucked in, I will no longer contribute to that page anyway. But I will remember the advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Batonpower (talk • contribs) 04:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

John Williams Gunnison

I will leave the fate of John Williams Gunnison in your hands, then. Go in peace! Jobjörn (talk) 12:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Mount Monadnock

Hi David, I hope you are well. Could I trouble you for feedback on the suggestion I left at the bottom of Talk:Mount Monadnock? thanks--Pgagnon999 (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Vernors

If you read the first paragraph of the history section of the Vernors article, you will see that there is already a passage regarding why Vernors lost its apostrophe in the late 1950s with a supporting citation. As your revision was thus rendered redundant, I reverted it. Steelbeard1 (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

richness

Obviously Mr. Nash cared. Very much. You have succeeded in making Mr. Nash's work even more "pithy" yet very much less interesting. You manage to emasculate the richness and complexity of the man.

Nash's genius lies in his expression of his love of life in exquisitely simple terms and pursuits. Somehow, even his biographical details have been destroyed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.81.194.165 (talk) 11:24, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

(note to future self - apparently this is reference to an edit to Ogden Nash removing an incomprehensible paragraph about the Baltimore Colts. I think)

Sanders

Yes, you're right. All good points. Mark83 (talk) 21:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Neville archaeological site

Heya, I was just going to say that while I did get the information in that article from other sources, I cited them all at the end in the references section. The article I posted is a paper I wrote for my north american prehistory class, you could look through the articles i cited and find everything I used. I just joined, so I'm not sure how to send messages, but if there's anything in particular that you think was copy/pasted without being cited let me know and I'm sure I can show you that it wasn't or that I've cited it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Torval (talk • contribs) 23:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nashua Airport

Hi David --- Until this morning, I had no idea what ATIS was. But after seeing the back and forth between you and some new users on the Nashua Municipal Airport page, I decided to Google "ATIS Nashua", and found this, which puts the frequency at 125.1. While the page I found is some company's re-formatting of the original FAA data (which I don't have), do you think that it is correct? See you, --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It happens to the best of us. Nice recovery on the edit summary! --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Pre-columbian Turkeys

Hey there, I saw a few of your edits and thought I'd drop you a line to ask you what you think about my problem concerning OR. If you have some time on your hands, why not drop in on the following notice and give us your opinion: Turkey mountain. Trigaranus (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

No prob, seems to have sorted itself out! Cheers, Trigaranus (talk) 13:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Peruvian Amazon

Hi David, I'm Edwin Villacorta, autor of article Peruvian Amazon and Amazonía Peruana in Spanish Wikipedia. I wanna a little favor, I wanna you correct the article in english, I know it have many wrong words. I will getting improve the article.

Thank you very much.

Leslie Durrell

I'm curious as to why you deleted the page on Leslie Durrell, which you claim is "unsourced gossip about the brother of famous people".

In fact, the material is indeed sourced - from official biographies of Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell. Perhaps this wasn't made clear enough - but still, surely it would have been more appropriate to simply request that the source or sources for the material were cited on the page, rather than deleting the text in its entirety. It seems to me that this is an extremely unilateral, heavy-handed approach and also one that is not in keeping with the general way things are done on Wikipedia.

I would prefer to reinstate the material and include citations of the appropriate sources, rather than to leave the page as it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adochka (talk • contribs) 10:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The unsourcing isn't the major problem - it's the non-notable, gossipy nature of the article. It did not give any reason why Leslie is worthy of an article. He never did anything of public note except have famous brothers, which is not reason to be in an encyclopedia - and worse, the material in the article was nothing but personal tidbits, nothing of any interest or notabiliy to anybody else. I said in the Talk page that I thought the article was invalid and nobody reponsded to defend it, so two months later I removed the gossip. I wwould have reduced it to a mere Redirect page, except it's not clear which brother it should redirect to.- DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. In your original comment when you deleted the page you did state that the material was unsourced, hence my objection - because the material is taken from two sources - biographies of Gerald and Lawrence. The issue you now raise is different and concerns whether Leslie deserves his own page. The question of whether Leslie's life is interesting to anyone else is a valid one, and I originally added the page because I found that on other Durrell sites or groups offered either incorrect information or a total lack of information and many people were asking for it. It seems to me that your objection is not that the page wouldn't be of interest per se, but that Leslie was not "famous" in his own right and therefore ought not to be interesting. Both Gerald and Lawrence's biographers included the information presumably not for the dubious pleasures of gossip but because it had an affect on the lives of their more famous subjects. Perhaps the context, though, made this more readily apparent.Adochka (talk) 07:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Skelton's longest word

Did you delete the Skelton joke because you consider it "feeble," or because it has "no real connection to the article"? I don't know that feebleness is grounds for removal, especially when such an assessment is the opinion of a single editor. The joke is one of the best known from Skelton, a legendary American comic, and it was sourced and cited. . . . Also, I am unclear as to how a joke that starts with "The longest word in the English language. . ." has "no real connection" to the "Humour" section of an article entitled "Longest word in English." Emoll (talk) 19:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of New Hampshire Union Leader Institutional Pedigree Section

DavidWBrooks, you deleted the product of a good ten hours' worth of work on my part, marked that revert as "minor", and did not bother to explain in the edit comment or the article talk page why you reverted it. Please give me some idea of what you were trying to accomplish by deleting that thoroughly-researched historical chart. Reverting such a large amount of cited material and marking the reversion "minor" looks intentionally provocative. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

And come to think of it, in that same "minor" action you also deleted the engraving of the 1877 Manchester Union Democrat building that I spent an additional substantial amount of time restoring and digitizing. What the heck? I look forward to some sort of explanation of this. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:57, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry; no offense intended. I thought it was random vandalism from somebody without an account - all I saw was a screen of grey color and unreadable gobbledygook. Were you adding something legitimate? What was it? I just hit the revert button. (Also, we should take this to the Talk page of the article, so others can join in; perhaps they share your dismay.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate you restoring it in good faith and I can see your original edit was in good faith. But you really didn't notice any of the cited text amongst the grey stuff?

Anyways, the content I added is a chart of the various different newspapers that have existed as previous incarnations of the Union Leader. I doubt anyone else will be concerned as I only added it yesterday.

It probably looks confusing because it's very wide and so I gave it a scrollbar. I wanted to avoid busting the Wikipedia web layout. Oh, and sorry if the size of the image was intrusive; I have a rather high-resolution monitor, which makes images look smaller to me.

Hmmm... it just occurred to me that if I created the chart as a separate page I could do a thumbnail image instead of having the chart inline. But I'd be concerned that the chart by itself might not qualify for inclusion as its own page. Would you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think? Do you think we could get away with giving that its own page? Thanks.

And also, thanks for establishing a good core Union Leader article for me to add on to!  ;^) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I misunderstood what you meant by "I just hit the revert button." Yes, to the talk page. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Clues that Paul is dead

That was my assessment of the consensus from the discussion. If you wish to discuss this decision further, please list it at Wikipedia:Deletion review. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Removing cleanup tags

Hi David,

This edit not only removed the article from the cleanup category it was assigned, but is in itself also of no help in resolving the issue. I rather think that if an article is already marred by unprofessional copyediting that readers aren't going to think less of it for having been tagged.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't summarily remove such templates in future where they've been placed there for a good reason. The project as a whole condones the use of cleanup tags to flag article issues, "distracting" or "nagging" as they may be to some editors. If you don't like the look of cleanup tags then they can easily be hidden by adding the following CSS to your monobook.css file:

.ambox { display: none; }

This lets users who rely on tags to direct their cleanup work keep their existing workflow while also not offending the aesthetic sensibilities of users who feel that tags mar the look of articles. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

---

Replying here: The problem is that {{tone}} is an {{ambox}}, and is thus designed to be used on articlespace. With > 4500 transclusions on articlespace, I reckon that's a pretty good indication that this is the consensus for where the template belongs. And I've not seen anything in the MoS which says "cleanup templates are only for talk pages / cleanup templates are only for major issues". So given that (a) there's very wide use of {{tone}} in articlespace already, (b) it's designed to be used in articlespace, (c) tag-and-fix is the accepted workflow of a good deal of editors, me included, and (d) it's disrupted by people removing tags for aesthetic reasons because it takes the page off the pertinent cleanup cat, I really can't see that your position on this is justified.

For the sake of being constructive though, I see that you're an admin, so if you'd like to make a start at getting {{tone}} shifted onto talkspace then you could edit the template so that it's a {{mbox}} (which adapts to fit the namespace it's transcluded onto) rather than an {{ambox}} (which is hard-coded to articlespace styling). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:33, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

No article needed

Re: this, have it your way, but understand that to say someone "is professor of such-and-such" or "is professor emeritus at...." does not mean, or even suggest, that he's the only one. Really. Himatsu Bushi (talk) 18:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

---

Sorry bud. I wasnt aware you were the one changing the article, as I had received several very snide and hateful little messages from people who ARE on the game and who were apparently the first ones to edit the page. I just thought they were being immature brats and repeatedly removing the information. I'll find another way to get the small article up. I wonder, could I put a link in the culture reference, that would lead to a page I could make specifically about the clan on the game? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.236.48.51 (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Sartilianash

No doubt you'll be at least as curious as i, about how your edit happened to also restore "Sartilianash"!
--Jerzy•t 20:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

New England College

Hi David, Would you mind taking a look at the New England College article? I've gotten into a slow-moving revert war (I did two today, but I'm trying to keep it to one per day) with 2 anonymous accounts (probably the same person). I've sent messages to each account but have not been able to engage the editor(s) in any discussion. Do you think the user's edit has any merit, is there anything else I should be doing, or is it time for an administrator to step in? Thanks for your help, --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The Walls of Babylon

are the Ishtar Gate. Peacekeep (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Jobs

Do you know what that's about? I've seen it before, but do you know what it means? Calebrw (talk) 15:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Infinite Energy (magazine)

I have nominated Infinite Energy (magazine), an article you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infinite Energy (magazine). Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wilderness Diarrhea Getting Killed

Dave:

Based on your recent visit to peakbagging it seems remotely possible you'd be interested in this. Wilderness Diarrhea is getting merged into Travelers Diarrhea by a couple of zealots who seem to have no concept of outdoor interests.

I get around a lot in the outdoors and rarely treat water, but WD article had some good stuff.

After a couple of weeks of calm discussion, I went ballistic and no longer want to participate. Rational voices might help.

These guys have irrationally convinced themselves that WD isn't a legitimate topic for a Wikipedia article.

I've pointed out several bomb-proof arguements to no avail. I'd say the strongest is the vast number of published articles that discuss WD as a separate concern from TD. They are both environmental health topics, and obviously the context of each are far different.

Calamitybrook (talk) 15:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Leslie Durrell

An article that you have been involved in editing, Leslie Durrell, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leslie Durrell. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Michael Johnson (talk) 03:00, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Speedy delete this: fuck you!

Where exactly does it get you when you spoil other peoples work? No mather how punctiliously you put it, it's still incredibly childish and ignorant. Wikipedia is about sharing true information that people want to read. You might not find it interesting, but there are people who will. Why the hell even bother to read it? Let it go, and read stuff that you're into, like feces for instants. Maybe you should open an article about killjoy. At least mind your own business, or people like me will mind it for you for beeing a fucking piece of lumpy vaginal belch.

note to confused future self: this is regarding an article about bottlecap shooting that I suggested should be speedily deleted - it went to AFD

---

note to confused future self: this is about Mount Jefferson.

I think that deleting photos I added to an article is rude. These places I edited are little known places that most people have never seen. Extra photos would be helpful to visitors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aebarschall (talk • contribs) 01:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The Gambia

In response to the edit summary of your last edit:

I took up your challenge, and integrated the other facts section into the text. You're right, we do disagree, but I don't think you have a case here: it's a matter of Wikipedia policy that we don't have miscellaneous lists of facts in articles. Adding the {{trivia}} tag wasn't a matter of personal preference on my part - Wikipedia relies on maintenance and cleanup tags to keep track of articles that are in need of work. I was hoping that someone would find this article from Category:Articles with trivia sections, but if I hadn't have spotted your edit, no-one would have found it. Please don't remove any more {{trivia}} tags from articles with miscellaneous lists. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 21:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Well done on your edits; they were very nice. I must, however, disagree with your comment on my Talk page ... there's no wikipedia law against lists of miscellany - it's a preference, not an enforceable policy, and a preference which many don't agree with. We are free to ignore it as we see fit.

While granting that such lists acquire more cruft than is desirable I often like them, as a way to add interesting and/or amusing material that enlightens readers. They are not a blanket bad thing that must be eradicated; they must be dealt with individually.

I generally remove trivia tags that I encounter, doing whatever editing that I think is necessary, which usually isn't much. Yours is the rare case of an editor who has placed a tag noticing its removal, and responding intelligently. Most people just slap down tags and wander on, leaving wikipedia an uglier and no more useful place. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to find a middle path between the two. On the one hand, yes, some editors do a lot of tagging and not a lot of re-writing; and yes, that sort of hit-and-run tagging isn't pretty. On the other hand, though, sometimes it's necessary.

Miscellaneous lists are a problem - they're ugly, not the best way of presenting information, and they make Wikipedia look bad. That Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information is policy. A lot of the time there's a good information in those sections - they can't just be junked, they have to be carefully weeded and then worked into the article - that's why the backlog still has more than 8000 articles in it. The sort of careful editing I did to The Gambia takes time, and sometimes I need to be able to slap the tag on, and then go and attack the backlog at at another time. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 22:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the list has 8000+ articles (sheesh!) shows that the tags don't work. Their visual clutter outdoes their utility as an editing prod ... IMHO, of course! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how that follows. The fact that there's a backlog shows only that there's a backlog. The wikification backlog is twice as big, but I don't imagine anyone making an argument against the wikification tag. Template:Wikification_progress_history, sadly no longer updated, shows how the tagging process works - as articles are tagged at one end of the queue, they're worked on and un-tagged at the other. I've been using a script to update Template:Trivia progress for the last week or so, and the script notes the number remaining in the edit summary. A look at the edit history shows a steady decrease over the last week: assuming that's representative, the process works.

You take the view that the clutter of the tags outweighs their benefit, and that there's nothing wrong with miscellaneous lists. You're entitled to your view, but the current consensus is firmly against you: WP:TRIVIA is a guideline, and part of the manual of style, and WP:Cleanup resources and WP:Template messages/Cleanup both seem to be well accepted norms. If you disagree with the current consensus, either on tagging or on miscellaneous lists, then you need to make your case on the relevant talk pages - and in the meantime, leave valid {{trivia}} tags alone.

To sum up: This is a problem - don't stop us fixing it. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 20:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your well-thought-out and polite response. You've almost convinced me ... if only 95 percent of tags weren't placed in lieu of editing, rather than as a step toward editing, they would be reasonable. Alas, in my years on wikipedia I have seen them proliferate without end, and without leading to marked improvement. If everybody on the trivia-tag crew (or any other similar group) spent their time editing instead of tagging, wikipedia would be better off. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean - undoubtedly, Wikipedia would really benefit from a whole bunch more people attacking the various backlogs. It would also be a lot easier if working through the backlog didn't involve conversations like this and this.

Every tag is a step towards editing, just not necessarily immediately and by the same person. But I'll get to them all eventually, even if it takes me forever :) --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 22:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Out of interest, are you keeping a running total of the number of editors who take them time to respond to your POINTy removal of cleanup tags, or is the ratio of productive : unproductive taggers fixed at "too low to ever convince me to stop doing it"? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

(Hope you're checking here for my response ... I'm never sure whether to answer in the other person's talk page.) No, I'm not keeping tabs; that would be a good idea to bolster my whiny-sounding argument, but it's more effort than I'm likely to adopt. Wikipedia is supposed to be fun!

I have tempered my stand over the years, by the way. For example, I have reluctantly bowed to consense that the many variations of "this article needs more citations" is a useful tag, even though it still strikes me as too obvious to be necessary. Actually, I think the situation has improved a bit in the last year or so, in that I encounter fewer really stupid, subjective-opinion tags like "the lead should be longer" or "this list should be in prose form" ... either they're dying out, or I just don't wander far afield enough. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:51, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

NH high schools

Yes, I got tired of going to a high school article and finding all the pranks and cheers all through them. It's actually not a big deal: "undo" and popups speed things up a lot, and we're not really talking about that many edits in a particular week. The kids do come up with some clever jabs now and then, don't they! --Ken Gallager (talk) 17:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Old Man of the Mountain

Re this revert [3] - if "that statement is too obvious to need citation", is it even necessary? How about just deleting it? 66.152.166.101 (talk) 21:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Appalachian Trail infobox

Yeah, both <ref> and {{cref}} were messing things up; I checked out the documentation and it looks like it was a problem with the parameter we were using (ElevChange_ft instead of ElevChange). I changed that and it seems to be working again. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Haha...I should have been on a break, but you know how it goes...I just put that message up when I'm visiting people and therefore might be online less than 24 hours a day. In a perfect world (one in which I had more self-control) I would actually be able to stay off Wikipedia during my wikibreaks... —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

lonely planet bias

i'm right; you're wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.1.49.145 (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank You, You Seem to Be a Good Egg

Thanks for reverting the deletion of my comments on the Erdos-Bacon number talk page, even though you don't necessarily agree with them. Shows impartiality and character. I know the article was just kept in a nomination for speedy deletion discussion (which calls into question the value of those) but I thought it's value should continue to be questioned until enough consensus changes. I didn't like the censorship aspect of my comments being deleted but wasn't going to get into a revert war. It's nice to know there is at least one Admin in Wikipedia who hasn't drunk the koolaid and has a healthy dose of skepticism about the value of this site.Mmyers1976 (talk) 19:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

"Performing flea" - I had to look that one up. I'm not sure where I picked up "good egg" though I have been watching DVDs of Jeeves and Wooster lately.Mmyers1976 (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Cheese sandwich

That was not vandalism! Would you please be patient for a second and read through what you're about to delete? I was on the verge of redirecting the Grilled cheese page to the Cheese sandwich page--how incredibly irritating.

(Edit: I think I overreacted--you seem to have deleted "Cheese sandwich" a while ago, and I thought that you'd deleted "Cheese Sandwich" just after I put up a lot of new content. Sorry about that.)

Sugarbush, etc.

David, there's no prohibition against two tags, but I don't have an objection to the cleanup tag alone if you want to settle on that. The tag fits and it seems to be having a beneficial effect; if you disagree let's discuss it. I placed the tag; this is the second time you've removed it.--Pgagnon999 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Provodín

Why did you add {{stub}} when it already had a sorted stub tag of {{Liberec-geo-stub}}? PamD (talk) 17:18, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

New Hampshire primary

Curious as to why you reverted my change to New Hampshire primary. - 156.34.80.165 (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It was an error; I mis-read (mis-saw?) what you had done. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Very telling statement on your user page

Let me first admit, I've never been a huge fan of how Wikipedia operates, although I find Wikipedia useful. Some might say I'm even hostile. I was wondering if you could expand on the statement you make on your user page: "I came to Wikipedia in January 2003, following a media storm when it hit 100,000 articles, but after all this time I'm still uncertain how useful it is as a knowledge tool." I'm especially curious since you say you are a reporter. --Fandyllic (talk) 11:22 AM PST 6 Jan 2008

"There Once was a man from Nantucket" additional reference.

On two separate occasions, I have attempted to add in a particular reference to this as follows:

John Valby, aka "Dr. Dirty," immortalized the popular obscene version in his limerick "Ya Ya."

Twice, you or some other person has deleted it. How come? Valby not only immortalized this particular limmerick, but has infused it into the pop culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.180.250 (talk) 17:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Pop culture references of obscure performers need some kind of reference. Does this guy have an article? the song? Otherwise it's just some sentence dropped in. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Valby created his version of the famous "drinking" song "Ya Ya" with the "...Nantucket..." line as well as many others. See the following site for relevant information: http://www.johnvalbynation.com/ as well as the Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Valby. I'm not sure what more of a reference you want - please advise.

Don't put the references here; include them in the statement. That's what keeps things from getting deleted. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I put the reference in the text, and still it was deleted; I can only assume by you. What is the problem here? Do you have nothing better to do than mess with other people's edits?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.180.250 (talk) 19:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

There's a note right under your addition saying "don't add any more - this isn't a list of times it was referenced" or something like that. it's been there for a while - it seems to be the consensus that we don't need to add a comment in the article every time somebody somewhere references it in a song. So I removed it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

New York Times

Sir, I'm a great fan of your columns in the NY Times. Any idea when your next book will come out? I thought the book about "bobos" was interesting. EdRooney (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Paul is Dead

I'm curious - why did you undo my change to the "Paul is Dead" page? As it was (and now is again), it reads "Evidence for McCartney's death consists of "clues" found among the Beatles' many recordings" - which isn't accurate. The Abbey Road cover photo is probably the strongest single source of clues, and the best known. It isn't a recording - so I changed it to say recordings, lyrics and record covers. Why would you revert that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by MegdalePlace (talk • contribs) 20:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

It struck me as unnecessarily wordy - a good example of unnecessary specificity slowing down reading. "Recordings" includes the covers and accompanying hoohah, and besides, there are examples almost immediately talking about the cover art. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The word "recording" does not encompass the record sleeve, just the audio track - no-one uses "recording" to refer to photographs! The Abbey Road cover shot fired up the whole phenomenon and surely you don't really think the cover could honestly be described as a recording? ("records" would be better than "recordings", but it's still vague.) As for wordiness, I added just four, which corrected a lazy but significant error in the original text. It might be a fraction quicker to read without "lyrics and record covers", but it's very misleading without them and I would have thought accuracy is the opposite of "unnecessary", as you say it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.96.164.105 (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

But why stop with lyrics and covers? What about statements made in interviews and elsewhere; those are cited as clues. And movie clips! And the cartoons!! If we're going to be specific, we should drag them into the sentence, too! (This is why legal documents are so hard to read: the need to be comprehensive and specific leads to a jumble.)

Adding an unnecessary phrase is poor writing, no matter how short the phrase is. It's a judgement call, of course, but I think "recording" in this sentence does, indeed, encompass everything around the actual audio sessions, including the way they were sold and packaged (in films too) and including people's responses to them, so I would say those four words are unnecessary.

By the way, sign your posts, will you? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Blind?

How did I miss the fact that you have been an admin since before I became a registered user?!? --Kralizec! (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

During all of our work last year to keep the various seven wonders articles clear of cruft and vandalism, I kept thinking you would make a great admin. Little did I know ...  :-) --Kralizec! (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I even watchlist'ed your future RfA page so I could lend my support, but it appears that you predate the RfA system. Old fart indeed ... --Kralizec! (talk) 15:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

That is very interesting since my recent experience is almost the exact opposite. As I am slated for "downsizing" after my employer was acquired by a competitor, I am currently job hunting and have had three interviews in the past month. While the interviews were surprisingly easy, I did not get the job ... contrasted with my easy-as-pie unopposed RfA. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Imagine my surprise today when Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/DavidWBrooks was actually edited by someone! Looks like we both had un-opposed RfAs! --Kralizec! (talk) 23:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

If I had to guess, I would say that Majorly (talk · contribs) transcribed the old info into the "new" standard location in order to help provide transparency. Since I have a personal 0RR policy for admin actions, figuring out if someone is an admin can be challenging when they do not have an RfA page archived out there. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Temple of Artemis

how was the Temple of Artemis built by persians and lydians? also,how was the Mausoleum of Maussollos built by persians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Supergr33k (talk • contribs) 19:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Charlie on the MTA music reference

Why did you remove my contribution dealing with another song about Charlie on the MTA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragon224 (talk • contribs) 14:05, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

“curly quotes”

[A modification of yours to the Newspaper article] changed two distinct regions of text; the first of which merely changed “curly quotation marks” to "undirected ASCII quotation marks". Was this change deliberate — or, perhaps more to the point, do you think that it is better for Wikipedia articles to use the latter ? If so, why? I often change Wikipedia text from ASCII punctuation to the more specific punctuation mark available outside of ASCII, so you may like to educate me if you do think ASCII punctuation better. Arguments I'm aware of:

• ASCII is easier to type when writing/editing articles; though this isn't an argument against me changing the text so long as I can justify my own time.
• ASCII is easier to search for.
• There could be issues of fonts not including the relevant glyph, though I'm not aware of any cases (for a font that someone uses to display Wikipedia text). It displays fine in the X11 font commonly used in xterms, for example. The character does exist in both the default roman Windows and MacOS charsets, so I'd guess that most fonts would include it.
• For aural web browsers, it's possible that some old software only recognizes ASCII characters, but into the future I suppose that they're better off with more specific characters (e.g. distinct from double-prime or inch sign).

The reason I use “these” rather than "these" is that “these” certainly look better when printed out (and generally on high-resolution devices), and I tend to think they look better on screen as well — though no doubt that will depend on font and font-substitution to some extent. In the case of some punctuation or contexts, the meaning can be clearer too; though that isn't usually the case for double-quote marks. Pjrm (talk) 03:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

David has replied on my talk page. David, feel free to remove this section, I leave it here only because I'm guessing that you want your archive pages to include all historical content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pjrm (talk • contribs) 10:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Speak Low

I added so many stubs as to attract editors, yet I agree, it is a bit scary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gareth E Kegg (talk • contribs) 21:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Mount Monadnock

David, the only reason the article says "New Hampshire" is because you changed "New England" to "New Hampshire" in your edit! I'll let it stand for the moment, and give us a chance to work this out on the talk pages. Please indicate why you have decided to change New England to New Hampshire & we'll go from there. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 05:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

P.S., Note as well that "New Hampshire" is already used in the beginning of the sentence as a geographic reference at the state level; "New England" showed the mountain's importance in the broader region in the second part of the sentence. Is there some pressing reason you object to this? As it currently reads, you mention "New Hampshire" as the location of the mountain twice in the same sentence. --Pgagnon999 (talk) 05:40, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Re:tags

Well, removing tags is good, but only if the the reason, why it was tagged, is solved. So it will be good to remove tags after making the necesssary changes. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 22:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

"Wealth" of NH Legislators

It's generally assumed that NH state legislators are wealthy, retired and have more time to spend in hours of committee meetings and sessions of the House/Senate than younger, working folks do, but I haven't seen any studies or news reports on it, so it was wise of you to spike that. It is certainly the common wisdom, though. - Nhprman —Preceding comment was added at 15:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: apostrophes for plurals

My own view follows MLA style (my copy of the MLA guide is not handy at the moment, but I can get you a reference later if you'd like) in that an apostrophe is an indication of either a contraction or a possessive and should not be used for a plural or a decade. It may be a result of doing so many word puzzles (crosswords are my current vice), or it may be the school system where I was educated, but I personally dislike seeing an apostrophe used for a plural, especially after an acronym; it's one little bit of copyediting that normally do when I see it. Slambo (Speak) 21:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Good point

Good point here: [4]. WP:WHEN is a useful essay for using inline citations that meet featured article criteria. Regards. dissolve^talk 03:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

---

Apologies for only including links to my photo site. I was not aware of the guidelines but have now read them and will not add any more links. (I do want to point out that when I first included the links I did get a message from a moderator that they were OK but I can understand that this has now changed) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pgostby (talk • contribs) 14:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Wonders of the World

Did I over-revert the Wonders of the World article? While new editor Wordsmithsonian (talk · contribs) was rather exuberant in updating the article, I found the final version quite unpalatable [5]. --Kralizec! (talk) 19:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You may want to offer a few words, as the next version was -IMO- even worse. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

These forks are going to make my head explode ... --Kralizec! (talk) 21:50, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you think we should do about the newly created Wonders of the Middle Ages and Seven Natural Wonders of the World articles? Except for the extra photos, they appear to exclusively be content split from the main article. I hate to keep harping on this editor (a la BITE), but this is starting to get ridiculous. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, just ignore them. They don't do any harm. As long as he doesn't trash up the Wonders of the World article any more. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

NELSAP Wording

That works too! Prepositions are such tricky things late at night :) Thank you! Jrclark (talk) 14:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Paul is dead

Hey there,

Thanks for your comment. I agree that the carnation from Magical Mystery Tour is better described as a 'clue'. But in the case of the lyric from Glass Onion, John Lennon has confirmed that the lyric was a direct reference to the 'Paul Is Dead' hoax: See the 'Glass Onion' wikipedia entry for confirmation of this. So, I think it qualifies as a 'reference by the Beatles'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.167.86.32 (talk) 17:39, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Art Tatum Talk page

Sorry about that - I should have tested what it looked like first. It was the first time I had interweaved and I was nonplussed with the results. Nevertheless, the user who his now responding to my responses - I think he wrote some of that article - seems more intent on winning childish arguments rather than improving the article. Since I don't want to get sucked in, I will no longer contribute to that page anyway. But I will remember the advice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Batonpower (talk • contribs) 04:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

John Williams Gunnison

I will leave the fate of John Williams Gunnison in your hands, then. Go in peace! Jobjörn (talk) 12:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Mount Monadnock

Hi David, I hope you are well. Could I trouble you for feedback on the suggestion I left at the bottom of Talk:Mount Monadnock? thanks--Pgagnon999 (talk) 16:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Vernors

If you read the first paragraph of the history section of the Vernors article, you will see that there is already a passage regarding why Vernors lost its apostrophe in the late 1950s with a supporting citation. As your revision was thus rendered redundant, I reverted it. Steelbeard1 (talk) 17:11, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

richness

Obviously Mr. Nash cared. Very much. You have succeeded in making Mr. Nash's work even more "pithy" yet very much less interesting. You manage to emasculate the richness and complexity of the man.

Nash's genius lies in his expression of his love of life in exquisitely simple terms and pursuits. Somehow, even his biographical details have been destroyed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.81.194.165 (talk) 11:24, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

(note to future self - apparently this is reference to an edit to Ogden Nash removing an incomprehensible paragraph about the Baltimore Colts. I think)

Sanders

Yes, you're right. All good points. Mark83 (talk) 21:41, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Neville archaeological site

Heya, I was just going to say that while I did get the information in that article from other sources, I cited them all at the end in the references section. The article I posted is a paper I wrote for my north american prehistory class, you could look through the articles i cited and find everything I used. I just joined, so I'm not sure how to send messages, but if there's anything in particular that you think was copy/pasted without being cited let me know and I'm sure I can show you that it wasn't or that I've cited it.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Torval (talk • contribs) 23:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Nashua Airport

Hi David --- Until this morning, I had no idea what ATIS was. But after seeing the back and forth between you and some new users on the Nashua Municipal Airport page, I decided to Google "ATIS Nashua", and found this, which puts the frequency at 125.1. While the page I found is some company's re-formatting of the original FAA data (which I don't have), do you think that it is correct? See you, --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

It happens to the best of us. Nice recovery on the edit summary! --Ken Gallager (talk) 12:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Pre-columbian Turkeys

Hey there, I saw a few of your edits and thought I'd drop you a line to ask you what you think about my problem concerning OR. If you have some time on your hands, why not drop in on the following notice and give us your opinion: Turkey mountain. Trigaranus (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

No prob, seems to have sorted itself out! Cheers, Trigaranus (talk) 13:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Peruvian Amazon

Hi David, I'm Edwin Villacorta, autor of article Peruvian Amazon and Amazonía Peruana in Spanish Wikipedia. I wanna a little favor, I wanna you correct the article in english, I know it have many wrong words. I will getting improve the article.

Thank you very much.

Leslie Durrell

I'm curious as to why you deleted the page on Leslie Durrell, which you claim is "unsourced gossip about the brother of famous people".

In fact, the material is indeed sourced - from official biographies of Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell. Perhaps this wasn't made clear enough - but still, surely it would have been more appropriate to simply request that the source or sources for the material were cited on the page, rather than deleting the text in its entirety. It seems to me that this is an extremely unilateral, heavy-handed approach and also one that is not in keeping with the general way things are done on Wikipedia.

I would prefer to reinstate the material and include citations of the appropriate sources, rather than to leave the page as it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adochka (talk • contribs) 10:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The unsourcing isn't the major problem - it's the non-notable, gossipy nature of the article. It did not give any reason why Leslie is worthy of an article. He never did anything of public note except have famous brothers, which is not reason to be in an encyclopedia - and worse, the material in the article was nothing but personal tidbits, nothing of any interest or notabiliy to anybody else. I said in the Talk page that I thought the article was invalid and nobody reponsded to defend it, so two months later I removed the gossip. I wwould have reduced it to a mere Redirect page, except it's not clear which brother it should redirect to.- DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:40, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. In your original comment when you deleted the page you did state that the material was unsourced, hence my objection - because the material is taken from two sources - biographies of Gerald and Lawrence. The issue you now raise is different and concerns whether Leslie deserves his own page. The question of whether Leslie's life is interesting to anyone else is a valid one, and I originally added the page because I found that on other Durrell sites or groups offered either incorrect information or a total lack of information and many people were asking for it. It seems to me that your objection is not that the page wouldn't be of interest per se, but that Leslie was not "famous" in his own right and therefore ought not to be interesting. Both Gerald and Lawrence's biographers included the information presumably not for the dubious pleasures of gossip but because it had an affect on the lives of their more famous subjects. Perhaps the context, though, made this more readily apparent.Adochka (talk) 07:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Skelton's longest word

Did you delete the Skelton joke because you consider it "feeble," or because it has "no real connection to the article"? I don't know that feebleness is grounds for removal, especially when such an assessment is the opinion of a single editor. The joke is one of the best known from Skelton, a legendary American comic, and it was sourced and cited. . . . Also, I am unclear as to how a joke that starts with "The longest word in the English language. . ." has "no real connection" to the "Humour" section of an article entitled "Longest word in English." Emoll (talk) 19:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of New Hampshire Union Leader Institutional Pedigree Section

DavidWBrooks, you deleted the product of a good ten hours' worth of work on my part, marked that revert as "minor", and did not bother to explain in the edit comment or the article talk page why you reverted it. Please give me some idea of what you were trying to accomplish by deleting that thoroughly-researched historical chart. Reverting such a large amount of cited material and marking the reversion "minor" looks intentionally provocative. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

And come to think of it, in that same "minor" action you also deleted the engraving of the 1877 Manchester Union Democrat building that I spent an additional substantial amount of time restoring and digitizing. What the heck? I look forward to some sort of explanation of this. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:57, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry; no offense intended. I thought it was random vandalism from somebody without an account - all I saw was a screen of grey color and unreadable gobbledygook. Were you adding something legitimate? What was it? I just hit the revert button. (Also, we should take this to the Talk page of the article, so others can join in; perhaps they share your dismay.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate you restoring it in good faith and I can see your original edit was in good faith. But you really didn't notice any of the cited text amongst the grey stuff?

Anyways, the content I added is a chart of the various different newspapers that have existed as previous incarnations of the Union Leader. I doubt anyone else will be concerned as I only added it yesterday.

It probably looks confusing because it's very wide and so I gave it a scrollbar. I wanted to avoid busting the Wikipedia web layout. Oh, and sorry if the size of the image was intrusive; I have a rather high-resolution monitor, which makes images look smaller to me.

Hmmm... it just occurred to me that if I created the chart as a separate page I could do a thumbnail image instead of having the chart inline. But I'd be concerned that the chart by itself might not qualify for inclusion as its own page. Would you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think? Do you think we could get away with giving that its own page? Thanks.

And also, thanks for establishing a good core Union Leader article for me to add on to!  ;^) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I misunderstood what you meant by "I just hit the revert button." Yes, to the talk page. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Clues that Paul is dead

That was my assessment of the consensus from the discussion. If you wish to discuss this decision further, please list it at Wikipedia:Deletion review. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Removing cleanup tags

Hi David,

This edit not only removed the article from the cleanup category it was assigned, but is in itself also of no help in resolving the issue. I rather think that if an article is already marred by unprofessional copyediting that readers aren't going to think less of it for having been tagged.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't summarily remove such templates in future where they've been placed there for a good reason. The project as a whole condones the use of cleanup tags to flag article issues, "distracting" or "nagging" as they may be to some editors. If you don't like the look of cleanup tags then they can easily be hidden by adding the following CSS to your monobook.css file:

.ambox { display: none; }

This lets users who rely on tags to direct their cleanup work keep their existing workflow while also not offending the aesthetic sensibilities of users who feel that tags mar the look of articles. Thanks. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

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Replying here: The problem is that {{tone}} is an {{ambox}}, and is thus designed to be used on articlespace. With > 4500 transclusions on articlespace, I reckon that's a pretty good indication that this is the consensus for where the template belongs. And I've not seen anything in the MoS which says "cleanup templates are only for talk pages / cleanup templates are only for major issues". So given that (a) there's very wide use of {{tone}} in articlespace already, (b) it's designed to be used in articlespace, (c) tag-and-fix is the accepted workflow of a good deal of editors, me included, and (d) it's disrupted by people removing tags for aesthetic reasons because it takes the page off the pertinent cleanup cat, I really can't see that your position on this is justified.

For the sake of being constructive though, I see that you're an admin, so if you'd like to make a start at getting {{tone}} shifted onto talkspace then you could edit the template so that it's a {{mbox}} (which adapts to fit the namespace it's transcluded onto) rather than an {{ambox}} (which is hard-coded to articlespace styling). Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:33, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

No article needed

Re: this, have it your way, but understand that to say someone "is professor of such-and-such" or "is professor emeritus at...." does not mean, or even suggest, that he's the only one. Really. Himatsu Bushi (talk) 18:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

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Sorry bud. I wasnt aware you were the one changing the article, as I had received several very snide and hateful little messages from people who ARE on the game and who were apparently the first ones to edit the page. I just thought they were being immature brats and repeatedly removing the information. I'll find another way to get the small article up. I wonder, could I put a link in the culture reference, that would lead to a page I could make specifically about the clan on the game? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.236.48.51 (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Sartilianash

No doubt you'll be at least as curious as i, about how your edit happened to also restore "Sartilianash"!
--Jerzy•t 20:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

New England College

Hi David, Would you mind taking a look at the New England College article? I've gotten into a slow-moving revert war (I did two today, but I'm trying to keep it to one per day) with 2 anonymous accounts (probably the same person). I've sent messages to each account but have not been able to engage the editor(s) in any discussion. Do you think the user's edit has any merit, is there anything else I should be doing, or is it time for an administrator to step in? Thanks for your help, --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The Walls of Babylon

are the Ishtar Gate. Peacekeep (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Jobs

Do you know what that's about? I've seen it before, but do you know what it means? Calebrw (talk) 15:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Infinite Energy (magazine)

I have nominated Infinite Energy (magazine), an article you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infinite Energy (magazine). Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wilderness Diarrhea Getting Killed

Dave:

Based on your recent visit to peakbagging it seems remotely possible you'd be interested in this. Wilderness Diarrhea is getting merged into Travelers Diarrhea by a couple of zealots who seem to have no concept of outdoor interests.

I get around a lot in the outdoors and rarely treat water, but WD article had some good stuff.

After a couple of weeks of calm discussion, I went ballistic and no longer want to participate. Rational voices might help.

These guys have irrationally convinced themselves that WD isn't a legitimate topic for a Wikipedia article.

I've pointed out several bomb-proof arguements to no avail. I'd say the strongest is the vast number of published articles that discuss WD as a separate concern from TD. They are both environmental health topics, and obviously the context of each are far different.

Calamitybrook (talk) 15:04, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Leslie Durrell

An article that you have been involved in editing, Leslie Durrell, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leslie Durrell. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Michael Johnson (talk) 03:00, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Speedy delete this: fuck you!

Where exactly does it get you when you spoil other peoples work? No mather how punctiliously you put it, it's still incredibly childish and ignorant. Wikipedia is about sharing true information that people want to read. You might not find it interesting, but there are people who will. Why the hell even bother to read it? Let it go, and read stuff that you're into, like feces for instants. Maybe you should open an article about killjoy. At least mind your own business, or people like me will mind it for you for beeing a fucking piece of lumpy vaginal belch.

note to confused future self: this is regarding an article about bottlecap shooting that I suggested should be speedily deleted - it went to AFD

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note to confused future self: this is about Mount Jefferson.

I think that deleting photos I added to an article is rude. These places I edited are little known places that most people have never seen. Extra photos would be helpful to visitors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aebarschall (talk • contribs) 01:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The Gambia

In response to the edit summary of your last edit:

I took up your challenge, and integrated the other facts section into the text. You're right, we do disagree, but I don't think you have a case here: it's a matter of Wikipedia policy that we don't have miscellaneous lists of facts in articles. Adding the {{trivia}} tag wasn't a matter of personal preference on my part - Wikipedia relies on maintenance and cleanup tags to keep track of articles that are in need of work. I was hoping that someone would find this article from Category:Articles with trivia sections, but if I hadn't have spotted your edit, no-one would have found it. Please don't remove any more {{trivia}} tags from articles with miscellaneous lists. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 21:25, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Well done on your edits; they were very nice. I must, however, disagree with your comment on my Talk page ... there's no wikipedia law against lists of miscellany - it's a preference, not an enforceable policy, and a preference which many don't agree with. We are free to ignore it as we see fit.

While granting that such lists acquire more cruft than is desirable I often like them, as a way to add interesting and/or amusing material that enlightens readers. They are not a blanket bad thing that must be eradicated; they must be dealt with individually.

I generally remove trivia tags that I encounter, doing whatever editing that I think is necessary, which usually isn't much. Yours is the rare case of an editor who has placed a tag noticing its removal, and responding intelligently. Most people just slap down tags and wander on, leaving wikipedia an uglier and no more useful place. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to find a middle path between the two. On the one hand, yes, some editors do a lot of tagging and not a lot of re-writing; and yes, that sort of hit-and-run tagging isn't pretty. On the other hand, though, sometimes it's necessary.

Miscellaneous lists are a problem - they're ugly, not the best way of presenting information, and they make Wikipedia look bad. That Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information is policy. A lot of the time there's a good information in those sections - they can't just be junked, they have to be carefully weeded and then worked into the article - that's why the backlog still has more than 8000 articles in it. The sort of careful editing I did to The Gambia takes time, and sometimes I need to be able to slap the tag on, and then go and attack the backlog at at another time. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 22:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the list has 8000+ articles (sheesh!) shows that the tags don't work. Their visual clutter outdoes their utility as an editing prod ... IMHO, of course! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how that follows. The fact that there's a backlog shows only that there's a backlog. The wikification backlog is twice as big, but I don't imagine anyone making an argument against the wikification tag. Template:Wikification_progress_history, sadly no longer updated, shows how the tagging process works - as articles are tagged at one end of the queue, they're worked on and un-tagged at the other. I've been using a script to update Template:Trivia progress for the last week or so, and the script notes the number remaining in the edit summary. A look at the edit history shows a steady decrease over the last week: assuming that's representative, the process works.

You take the view that the clutter of the tags outweighs their benefit, and that there's nothing wrong with miscellaneous lists. You're entitled to your view, but the current consensus is firmly against you: WP:TRIVIA is a guideline, and part of the manual of style, and WP:Cleanup resources and WP:Template messages/Cleanup both seem to be well accepted norms. If you disagree with the current consensus, either on tagging or on miscellaneous lists, then you need to make your case on the relevant talk pages - and in the meantime, leave valid {{trivia}} tags alone.

To sum up: This is a problem - don't stop us fixing it. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 20:14, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your well-thought-out and polite response. You've almost convinced me ... if only 95 percent of tags weren't placed in lieu of editing, rather than as a step toward editing, they would be reasonable. Alas, in my years on wikipedia I have seen them proliferate without end, and without leading to marked improvement. If everybody on the trivia-tag crew (or any other similar group) spent their time editing instead of tagging, wikipedia would be better off. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean - undoubtedly, Wikipedia would really benefit from a whole bunch more people attacking the various backlogs. It would also be a lot easier if working through the backlog didn't involve conversations like this and this.

Every tag is a step towards editing, just not necessarily immediately and by the same person. But I'll get to them all eventually, even if it takes me forever :) --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 22:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Out of interest, are you keeping a running total of the number of editors who take them time to respond to your POINTy removal of cleanup tags, or is the ratio of productive : unproductive taggers fixed at "too low to ever convince me to stop doing it"? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

(Hope you're checking here for my response ... I'm never sure whether to answer in the other person's talk page.) No, I'm not keeping tabs; that would be a good idea to bolster my whiny-sounding argument, but it's more effort than I'm likely to adopt. Wikipedia is supposed to be fun!

I have tempered my stand over the years, by the way. For example, I have reluctantly bowed to consense that the many variations of "this article needs more citations" is a useful tag, even though it still strikes me as too obvious to be necessary. Actually, I think the situation has improved a bit in the last year or so, in that I encounter fewer really stupid, subjective-opinion tags like "the lead should be longer" or "this list should be in prose form" ... either they're dying out, or I just don't wander far afield enough. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:51, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

NH high schools

Yes, I got tired of going to a high school article and finding all the pranks and cheers all through them. It's actually not a big deal: "undo" and popups speed things up a lot, and we're not really talking about that many edits in a particular week. The kids do come up with some clever jabs now and then, don't they! --Ken Gallager (talk) 17:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Old Man of the Mountain

Re this revert [6] - if "that statement is too obvious to need citation", is it even necessary? How about just deleting it? 66.152.166.101 (talk) 21:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Re: Appalachian Trail infobox

Yeah, both <ref> and {{cref}} were messing things up; I checked out the documentation and it looks like it was a problem with the parameter we were using (ElevChange_ft instead of ElevChange). I changed that and it seems to be working again. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:34, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Haha...I should have been on a break, but you know how it goes...I just put that message up when I'm visiting people and therefore might be online less than 24 hours a day. In a perfect world (one in which I had more self-control) I would actually be able to stay off Wikipedia during my wikibreaks... —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

lonely planet bias

i'm right; you're wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.1.49.145 (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank You, You Seem to Be a Good Egg

Thanks for reverting the deletion of my comments on the Erdos-Bacon number talk page, even though you don't necessarily agree with them. Shows impartiality and character. I know the article was just kept in a nomination for speedy deletion discussion (which calls into question the value of those) but I thought it's value should continue to be questioned until enough consensus changes. I didn't like the censorship aspect of my comments being deleted but wasn't going to get into a revert war. It's nice to know there is at least one Admin in Wikipedia who hasn't drunk the koolaid and has a healthy dose of skepticism about the value of this site.Mmyers1976 (talk) 19:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

"Performing flea" - I had to look that one up. I'm not sure where I picked up "good egg" though I have been watching DVDs of Jeeves and Wooster lately.Mmyers1976 (talk) 20:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Cheese sandwich

That was not vandalism! Would you please be patient for a second and read through what you're about to delete? I was on the verge of redirecting the Grilled cheese page to the Cheese sandwich page--how incredibly irritating.

(Edit: I think I overreacted--you seem to have deleted "Cheese sandwich" a while ago, and I thought that you'd deleted "Cheese Sandwich" just after I put up a lot of new content. Sorry about that.)

Sugarbush, etc.

David, there's no prohibition against two tags, but I don't have an objection to the cleanup tag alone if you want to settle on that. The tag fits and it seems to be having a beneficial effect; if you disagree let's discuss it. I placed the tag; this is the second time you've removed it.--Pgagnon999 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Provodín

Why did you add {{stub}} when it already had a sorted stub tag of {{Liberec-geo-stub}}? PamD (talk) 17:18, 27 December 2008 (UTC)