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user:maveric149 Talk archive 3: Wednesday July 24, 2002 through Friday September 7, 2002

I generally respond to inquiries placed on this page by placing my comments on the talk page belonging to the submitter. Therefore many of the comments that follow appear to have gone unanswered - this is not the case. (Well, at least not necessarily the case.)

Other messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and User talk:maveric149

Mav, somebody has removed all the one-line comments from the List of novelists without any comment or discussion whatsoever and moved it to Authors. I don't mind the latter, but to me it is barbaric vandalism to remove valuable interesting information from the wikipedia. He isn't logged in but he shows up as 209.105.200.36. I am royally ripped. I'll put it all back by hand if I have to, but I'm sure there is a way to revert.Ortolan88 19:44 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Yes -- any attempt to make lists less useful than they already are is a sin in my book. I think I fixed everything for you but this was made difficult due to a weird bug in the wikiware that amended my revert of List of novelists to authors. Please check to make sure I didn't miss anything or reverted the wrong version. --mav


I'm glad you agree, but the version control work doesn't seem to have brought them back. Here is where the crime occurred

Revision as of 01:59 Jul 23, 2002

The versions in the history used to have numbers to make it easier to refrerence them, but I assume you can find this.

I didn't complain about the redirect because I knew that some of the people on the novelist list weren't novelists, but on reflection list of authors is way worse than list of novelist, so I now complain about that too.

This is a very unpleasant experience. Not everyone digs the list-annotation, some of the opera lovers, for instance, but they discussed it civilly. I never expected this. Ortolan88 21:13 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

From this morning's edit of my talk page: "I am coming to the conclusion that it is the lists themselves that are at fault and that no list that stretches on past three screensful is worth the effort to maintain it. Someday the software can make lists if we need them, but it seems the impulse to make long lists is genetic and cannot be ameliorated by annotation, re-organization, or any other tool of information science." Ortolan88 09:37 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)
Latest 209 vicious actions on List of novelists fixed. See Revision as of 17:14 Jul 27, 2002
Ortolan88 20:29 Jul 27, 2002 (PDT)

Maveric149, Thank you for your words of welcome on my 'home page'.

You say, "thanks for moving the Australian city articles to the standard format for Australia". Actually, I tried not to touch anything on that node (page? wiki?) other than adding my question.

I hope you don't mind some more questions. I would like to post (wiki?) these to everyone, but yours is the only page I could find that seems to be for questions.

  • How is it that this massive site is free of pornography and foul language? This seems very odd for a site that can be edited by anyone. I happen to think it is wonderful, better than everything2 (a very tiny and not very easy to edit encyclopedia of sorts), which has lots of foul language.
  • I've read a number of articles and I wonder why they are so professionally written. I think it is amazing and wonderful (brilliant, if you're British).
  • I'm curious about the fact that anyone can edit almost any page. Suppose I work for hours creating a good article about an interesting or important topic, then someone deletes it or highly modifies it and no one else restores it? Does this mean that my work might go to waste? I would like to contribute, but I want my contribution to stick around :o) .


David 7/25/02

Not to worry, there's a History link on every page. You can retrieve a previous version, in case of vandalism. Also, constructive wikipedians outnumber vandals by at least 10 to 1 at all times; and that's usually 50 to 1. Ed Poor
Lots of us are professional writers and lots more write well. It may be that no one would pay us to write about some of the things we want to write about. Ortolan88 12:51 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)
Also, if you've invested a lot in an article and wish to watch it, you can simply click "Watch this page" once you're logged in; the article is added to your watchlist, which you can access in the sidebar. That list will keep track of the most recent changes to the pages you are watching, and you can drop in and see if they are to your liking or not. Cheers, and welcome.  :-) --KQ
And, of course, if you don't like the changes, you can change them back, start a discussion on the Talk page that is associated with every article (like this one), or come back here and inform the sometimes brusque, but devoted and energetic Mr. Maveric and the others who watch this page (which once was his and is now the village pump) of what is going on. Ortolan88 13:03 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)
Wow! My talk page is being put to great use while I'm at work! I think you guys answered David's questions very well. Thanx! --mav

Maveric, is it true that there's an easy tool for moving pages available to administrators? If so, I'll probably apply for "admin-ship" - fear of me abusing the power to delete pages has kept me from it, but this would change my opinion. Regards, Jeronimo

Hey mav, there's discussion on Wikipedia talk:Status of the porting of U.S. Dept of State info about how to desubpage the country entries, or whether to do so; if you're still interested in getting WikiProject Countries off the ground you should go vote about what to do. :-) --KQ

Hmm, well I don't know why you're being blocked, but that's definitely an error due to a typo in the function that spurts out a message warning you that your IP is blocked. I've submitted a fix for that part; send in a bug report about the rest... --Brion VIBBER

Whipping you with a wet noodle for moving Institutional Mode of Representation without first checking to see if it's not always capitalized (1 entry out of 3 pages of google results has it without caps) and for then also not changing the links. But you make it easy enough to move it back without breaking anything.  ;-) --KQ

Re the IMR: No, not lowercased 1/3 of the time; it's lowercased 1/40 the time, according to the Google results. And since Burch seems to have coined the phrase, I suppose he determines whether it's capitalized or not. Anyway.... What are you doing on wikipedia at this hour on a weekend? --KQ

OK -- I admit I made a mistake (when was the last time you heard that from me?). Since the term is a very minor one, used in a narrow context, I guess capitalization is fine and probably superior to the uncapitalized version (This is same reason I did not change Reciprocal System of Theory). BTW, I'm doing the same thing you are doing -- feeding my wiki internet addiction. ;) --mav
I prefer it lowercased, actually, not that it matters.  :-) And yes, I've got an addiction. I took some more pictures today; one of them for an article that could use it, another for one that couldn't (illustrated already), and a third for an article I guess I'll have to write. Odd the little gaps in the 'pedia you stumble on periodically. Amazing growth, though--and we're quite far along for only a year or so of volunteer work. --KQ

Re the deletion queue - I wasn't disagreeing with you this time - I deleted the pages you suggested! :) Re the country pages, I saw the debate - I thought it was ancient news though. There isn't really any way to tell! Demographics of sounds like such a dishwater-dry title... 'people of' is much more intuitive, but hey, whatever people have decided. I spend enough time disagreeing with you :P. BTW, perhaps you can answer another question for me mav? What is the 'signature' option in the user preferences for and how do I use it? Is it a way to avoid writing user: etc every time I leave a comment? I've been wondering whether to make a user page for KJ and redirect it to mine because I'm so damned sick of the extra typing ~ KJ

Re the name of the deletion log; presumably LDC is the one who changed it to "Article deletion log", though I could be wrong. So, what is the difference between a wikipedia page and an article? As far as the software is concerned, "page" and "article" are synonymous. It's not smart enough to tell what's an "article" and what's just a "page full of text". Note also that we have a "Save article" button rather than "Save page", and the search results show "Article title matches" and "Article text matches". Internally, the class that implements various page functions is called "Article" rather than "Page". Maybe that's the wrong terminology, I dunno... it can't be much worse than calling ogg vorbis files "image"s. (cough cough) --Brion VIBBER
I agree on the weirdness of the image:namespace terminology and also really think most uses of the word "article" be replaced by "page". As Larry often said, every page in wikipedia is a page but not every page is an article. We needn't add un-needed confusion by loosely using the word "article" for evey page. This also effects the proposed new wording of the front page which will read "anyone can edit any article" -- which is a completely true statement if we stick with Larry's definition (anything in the wikipedia:namespace would also not be considered articles -- this is how the statistics work, no? --mav
Sounds good to me; put in a feature request and mention it on wikipedia-l. --Brion VIBBER

In this software, I've generally used "article" to refer to the collection of data (title, text, history, etc.) that represents an entry in our encyclopedia. In one case I narrowed that even further: on the special pages dropdown I use "article" to refer to those only in the primary namespace. That was just a matter of convenience--I wanted to know which of those special pages restricted their results that way (as many do). In general, though, I don't use the term "page" for anything except the entities served by the web server. What the "delete" function deletes are articles--it deletes all of the title, text, and history a particular encyclopedia entry, which might also be an image and its associated text. I suppose I could have a separate log for images if that would be useful.


If you think a different set of terminology would be better for presenting to users, I'm open to suggestions. --LDC

Hum -- I see now why "article" was used internally. Since there is already a long history of the use the word "article" to mean "encyclopedia article" I think we should stick to that for general discussion. As for what is presented to users I would suggest we replace "article" with "page" for the deletion log, the save button and in most other cases (What was wrong with simply "save" and "preview" anyway?). I know this causes a conflict with the internal names used by developers but the developers of all people won't be nearly as confused as non-developers (perhaps the developers can think of different terminology for their own use). --mav
We've already got "Edit this page", "Main Page", "Random page", "Watch page" (actually changed *from* the "Watch this article" of phase II), "List recently updated pages", "Talk page", "Subject page"... --Brion VIBBER

Yeah, I was pretty sloppy about such things. Every piece of text that actually gets shown to users, though, should be isolated in Language.php, so it should be an easy matter to make these consistent. --LDC

Thanks for the greetings, I've a couple of questions you or one of the other keepers of the wikifaith might be able to help me with. First, what constitutes a "minor edit" and does anybody really care? Second, is there a standard way of transliterating names, places etc from Cyrillic or other alphabets? There's been a discussionette about this over at Talk:Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - I can't decide myself if it's best to use the most common English language spelling (which is this case would turn Pyotr into Peter), or the spelling most often used by scholars and other reference works (which I suspect would keep things as they are). Thanks -- Camembert

Minor edits are sort of unadvertised changes. They don't show up on the list of articles you've contributed to, and people have the option of turning off display of minor edits in the Recent Changes page. Ortolan88
Actually, they do now show up on the contributions list. I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intended change on someone's part. --Brion VIBBER

Yes, that's the intent; a "minor change" is one that you are certifying doesn't deserve greater attention. If you never mark the box, nothing will really be affected; you might consider marking it a courtesy for those who follow recent changes looking for content changes and don't want to be bothered with things like spelling, grammar, and punctuation fixes. It is conversely matter of personal integrity not to check the box if you made a real substantive change to the article's content: if you make a significant change to the content of an article, especially a controversial one, and "hide" your change by marking it as minor, that is an overt act of deception meriting an IP block.

As for the contributions list, I agree that excludiing minor changes by default is probably a good idea--it was simply an oversight on my part not to do that, and it's an easy fix. --LDC

Is there a way for the software to automatically check to make sure if minor edits are in fact minor? Then if somebody tried to hide a non-minor edit they would be greeted with an error message or something. --mav
It could internally run a diff and count the number of different bytes or something, I suppose. How would you decide a cut-off point? I'd prefer to just silently drop the minor mark or include a tiny note after 'page successfully saved' rather than an error message; I tend to mark my edits minor by default except on talk pages, and sometimes I forget to uncheck it when I get into a larger typing frenzy than I intended. --Brion VIBBER

Lee says:

if you make a significant change to the content of an article, especially a controversial one, and "hide" your change by marking it as minor, that is an overt act of deception meriting an IP block.

KQ says: no, usually it's a matter of deception, but I'd lay money that all of us have at one time or another checked it intending to change punctuation or spelling etc. and then shuffled sentences; and some of us in a copyediting phase check things by habit and then decide to add to articles and forget to uncheck it. But no, I'll agree that it's not honest to try to 'hide' edits that way. --KQ

Not the I mind the attention, but since my talk page is becoming a kind of wikipedia chat forum for newbie questions and answers I think I will change my standard newbie greeting to say "If you need any questions answered about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or post a message on Wikipedia:Help desk". Does this sound like a good idea to everybody? Of course then we would all have to watch that page for questions. --mav

They should be pointed to the mailing list. It's probably OK for them to know about "Help" and such as well, but a Wiki really isn't the right technology for interactive Q & A. -- LDC

Hmm... That would require the newbie to expose their email address to a bunch of people they don't know just to ask a question. I personally would be terrified to ask what might be seen as a stupid question to a group of people -- but then posting a message on a wiki help desk is technically the same... I will think about this some more. Anyway, thanks for making the article -> page switch so soon. I apologize in advance for sending a post to the mailing list on this. --mav

You mean you don't WANT your talk page to be the Complete Newbie Guide to the Wikipedia? We could always start a new page "Ask Mav" and you could answer their questions there :) (resists the temptation to link it)
Re the minor/major edit thing a few stops above this, I always forget to mark my changes as 'minor'. I usually only remember when I save an article and then see that I made one or more mistakes in it - oops! My second and/or third passes in succession get marked minor. I think that an automatic byte counter would be a good thing - it could see if you've changed more than say 40 or 50 characters (or however many characters are in your typical sentence) and automatically mark it accordingly KJ

LOL -- Anyway... I submitted a feature request for the software to automatically determine the "minornise" of edits. You can see it here --mav
I think it would be good to have a Wikipedia:Village pump (quote Ortolan88) page, where (new) users can just write down their questions. I would separate the more "sophisticated" issues from beginners' questions on your page. And more people may be tempted to go and help these people. Jeronimo

Mav,

I don't have permission to use the text from the British Dragonfly Society. I will rewrite in my own words. I am still getting the hang of what qualifies as an acceptable size fragment under copyright fair use rules.

Frank Warmerdam

What is 64.126.80.159 doing? Check out his edits at Talk:Characters (The Simpsons):

  • software => "chicken" (the meaning is a bit abstruse...) --Ed
Looks like a drive-by vandal. Those were the only two edits that were made by that IP. --mav


Hi Maveric,

I tried updating the Erysimum 'Chelsea Jacket' page to incorporate the standard format for the tree of life, and found that renamed links like [[image...|image:...] don't work. Any idea how we could include a link to a full-size image? image:ErysimumChelseaJacket.jpg|

The easiest way is just to include the full-size image in the description page for the small image. (Which I've just done for this one.) Thus, you click the small image and are presented with the large image. --Brion VIBBER

Hi again, I've started adding credits for the photos, which are taken by my wife and I. I'm fully versed in GPL and GFDL, so I know what these mean and love them dearly. But what's the point of having a check box for uploads when there's no sign of whether the image was submitted under GFDL?

Mav--I see you're working on the Wikiproject Tree of Life. What kind of advice would you give someone who's not knowledgeable about biology? I'm taking pictures of flowers, veggies, and fruit periodically, and wanted to contribute them, but I don't want to make things more difficult for others. For instance, I just wrote a brief article on canna lily so the picture had a home, but it's an orphan and I'd love it not to be. --KQ

Ok, well nevermind the bits above, answer me this: are the tables always green? If not, why not, and when? (I see to remember one that had cells filled in pink.) Also, is it the intention to put the taxoboxes in all plant articles, including edibles? I notice many fruits and veggies don't have it, though many inedible plants do. --KQ
Thanks for the answers. We should put the info on colors in the tables on the wikiproject page; in fact, I think I'll paste your explanation in now. I'd like to help when I can, but I am not a biologist; however I can google search for the info and plod along methodically much the way I did with the countries awhile back.... Oh yeh, and there's that other wikiproject, too. So much work, so little pay.  ;-) --KQ
No problem. --mav

When you upload a picture there's a checkbox in the HTML form that says "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." By ticking this I assumed that it would be recorded that the images I upload are under GFDL. So it seems a bit redundant saying in the image details that the file is released under GFDL. The image pages already list who uploaded the picture and when it was uploaded. Would it be possible to also display whether the license box was ticked when the upload occurred? --Ramin

If you don't tick the box, your upload is denied. Therefore every uploaded file is assumed to be under GFDL (as it must be to be included in this work, which is under GFDL as a whole), because the person who uploaded it necessesarily explicitly checked a box to that effect. (This is more than we do for article edits, where there's a little note but you don't have to acknowledge it...) --Brion VIBBER

Darn, you beat me to it. I was just about to change it back. Danny

LOL. She really is bugging me. --mav

Mav, do you have a URL for that Washington portrait from the LBJ library? I can't find it there, and I'd like to make a better quality reduction of it from as high-quality source as they have--and from the looks of that site they probably do have a high quality source. --LDC

Sorry, I wasn't the one who uploaded it -- all I did was put the thumb in the table and the larger version in the thumb's image page. Is there a copy of the old upload log around? --mav

Hey, Mav. Please take a look at the Marina Tsetaeva delete that I did. Although there were some cosmetic changes, I found that for the most part the text was a straight copy of the source I gave in Talk. I can restore it if you or anyone else thinks it is okay, but I think there may be serious copyright issues there. Danny

  1. Mav, I recovered Taliban article from vandalism as requested.
  2. The talk page for Palestine is too long for my browser to handle. Can we refactor or archive some old talk? --Ed Poor

Hey, thanks for the welcome words! I definitely like this place, though I can already envision it eating all my time :( Anyway, see you around. Ppetru

Mav, I see you changed the non-wiki headings in the element articles. You think that should be done elsewhere as well - e.g. the formatted country article? Jeronimo

Mav, a thought, if you like the idea of Village Pump maybe you could mention it in your friendly greetings to new registered users, something like

"questions to Wikipedia:Village pump, serious problems and suggestions to User_talk:Maveric149".

Then, if we all watch the Village Pump, it might build up into something worthwhile. for that vital period between signing up and world-weary wisdom.Ortolan88

I will do that -- It is about time I go through the new user list. Thanx! --mav

You've been wiki-quiet lately; I hope my previous grumpiness didn't run you off. I do very much appreciate your work. I apologize for being rude; I was in the wrong. --KQ

Thanks to you and Heron for setting me straight about the convention on linking dates. I've tried to peruse all the FAQ and help but I've not yet come across anything which enumerates conventions like this...the use of formatting characters, conventions about using italics or quotes for titles, how to handle external links, section headings the like. Are there any pages - or even just examples of good practise - that you can point me at? Apologies for posting here, I'll take myself off the the Village Pump next time... Mazzy

Well, thanks again; you've been quite the gentlemen about it.  :-) --KQ

Thanks for pointing out the problem of spellings on historical terms. I've never thought it this way. Ok for Battle of Inchon, if it's like this in History books, then it's probably better to keep it this way. But what about: This battle took place at Inchon, South Korea? I would say, this is wrong, since the city name is definitely Incheon.

More information about the new Korean romanization. They mention that one of the reasons of this revision was the internet, because the new spelling can be written more easily on international keyboards.

By user 210.180.96.xx

First of all, I am sorry about going ballistic -- we have had several revisionist historians lurking around lately and your changes looked like a type of revisionism. I don't have any major issues with using the newer Romanizations per se (so long as they are valid and widely used) but when a certain spelling or city name is used for an event for long enough that spelling gets set --- at least in the context of the event. And it would be perfectly OK and in fact desirable to stick to the Romanization that was when the event occurred and maybe mention in parenthesis something like (in modern day Incheon) or (modern spelling Incheon). But the two are so similar that I would simply make Inchon a redirect to Incheon and only have such a note on that page. There are similar issues here with Saigon -- it would be silly to say that the North Vietnamese attacked Ho Chi Minh City during the Tet Offensive. --mav
Ok, agreed. I know on a big project like this, decisions have to be taken and the redirection seems to be a good compromise.
And sorry if I make any glitches, I just discovered wikipedia since the sherlock plugin was created for Mozilla (a few days ago -- was it yesterday?) so I'm still fairly new at it. And thanks for your support, the recent changed pages are really worth reading and it helps me get used to the "what can be done" and the "no-no"s. --Anon
I hope you like it here and decide to stay. :) --mav

Thanks for the greeting, hi to you too :-) I tried to find the page where your comment was but I couldn't find it. --BL

Ah yes, the old Wikipedia:Naming conventions. How could I forget? Jimbo should come ban me for life.  ;-) --KQ

Please no! I can't do all these movies by myself.  :-) -- Zoe
Oh, that's hilarious.  :-D Thanks. --KQ
LOL - I have no idea how that particular convention got in there - may have been before my time since I don't ever remember a discussion on the matter. --mav
I don't remember a discussion on it either. I've been here since about 2 months after it started. --KQ

From your latest description page:

This image was created by me using the GIMP. I release this image into the public domain. Why the hell I have to say this twice is idiotic (already stated on the upload log). --mav

Simple, Mav: because the log is just a log, and old stuff will be rotated out of it. The description page is permanent. If you think there's a way to make the interface easier or more obvious, let me know.

How about this: on a successful upload, if the image description page is empty, but the comment field had something in it, the page is automatically created with the contents of the comment? The comment is meant to be about the act of uploading, not the image, but I imagine that everybody uses it for image description anyway. --LDC

That sounds like a good idea to me. Would the text from the upload summary be next to the first entry in the image's history or simply be text added to the editable image page? I would prefer the former but either would stop me from being cranky. Sorry about that BTW. Of all people I shouldn't be pissing you off. Well, maybe Jimbo is more important not to piss-off. ;) --mav

Oh, I'm never pissed off by complaints from people who work harder than I do. Anyway, I was about to say that the comment field is already displayed in the first entry of the history list...but then I went to check, and it wasn't. That was my intent, and you just uncovered a bug (fixed now). I was thinking that maybe I should start the description text with it as well, but maybe that's not needed if it's there where it should be. On the other hand, the original version might be deleted, and we'd lose that comment, so I'm inclined to take my suggestion anyway. --LDC

Cool thanks. Not that it is too important but will it also be possible/practical to amend all previous uploaded images with this info? Granted there are far more important things to do so this should be a low priority; very low if it would be alot of work.
I have to disagree with you on your "hard-working" comment -- without your efforts to improve performance in the wikiware, Wikipedia would have ceased to be for practical purposes. --mav

The bug was that the comments were recorded in the log but not the database; there might be a way to read the log automatically, but since it's only a month's worth it would probably be easier for me to just do it manually (and it would avaoid complications like deleted images, etc.). That's kind of what I've been doing the last few days anyway--clearing my head of code by editing all the images.

Luckymama58 says: Hey, thanks for the welcome. Currently I am only working on Chico and the Man and Freddie Prinze here but I hope to contribute to other articles as I have time, especially in the areas of astronomy and geology. I have a BA in Secondary Ed in the fields of Math and General Science. Let me know if you need my help on any specific project! --Luckymama58

Mariposa says: Maveric, thanx for welcoming me. This is a wonderful resource and--most importantly to me--another wide open chance to do some writing, particularly about my favorite topic, the late great Freddie Prinze! Just hope I don't get lost in all the technical stuff, being an artist rather than a scientist LOL! BTW--I too have a BS in BS, having gotten my second Bachelor's (after a BA in English) in Education at an institution which was in the process of restructuring its College of Education at the time--leading to my learning nothing but BS on the subject! --Mariposa

mega-LOL :) -mav

2002-08-08: Mav, once again I've responded. Please look and comment, if you get the chance, at User talk:Dwheeler. -- Dwheeler.


Thanks for correcting the Animal Echolocation (sic) page. However, you forgot to change the pages pointing to the original page. I've done that. David 10:55 Aug 9, 2002 (PDT)

Opps, thanks. --mav

Thanks for your statement at Talk:China! What you said is an exact reflection of my opinion (and summary of my talk above ;-) ) Jeronimo

No problemo -- I call them as I see them. --mav

I moved the page Zaire to Zaïre (and redirected zaire) to that becuase Zaïre has an accent. and you moved it back again. is there a good reason why? (i am quite a pedantic person at times) - fonzy - PS i read taht you moved it because its nto teh english spelling. BUT IT IS! any decent ATLAS will put the accent on the i! You dotn spell Café with out the accent.

Simple. Hardly any English speakers use the Zaïre form. Look at a Google language search for the two terms while only searching in English language websites. Please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions, esp. common names, and use English term. --


-- but if they searched for it in "the english form" it would redirect tehm to the correct one. I do get quite serious about accents on words.

Then place accents on the words within the text of the article -- page names have to be linkable by people who do not know how to make accents with their keyboards. Also make the accented form redirect to the non-accented form when the non-accented form is the one in dominent use. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (anglicization) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Simple as that. --mav

Mav, what's the point in moving Cape Town to a city, nation format? AFAIK there is only one Cape Town. It really is disambiguation gone mad. -- Tarquin

--consistency. --mav


yes, but a) the rule will break on cases like Madrid, places like St Marie (probably loads in France, need to be seperated by departement), states which aren't quite states (case of Cornwall...). There's just too much variety in the names humans devise for cities and places for such a simple rule to work. Anyway, why not make it "Cape Town" for the good old K.I.S.S rule? -- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KeepItSimple -- Tarq
Where it brakes, additional disambiguation will be there to fix it. There is no need to have articles on each and every city just because they exist. Predictable linking is a good thing (TM). --mav
it's funny that for cities you want consistency & I disagree, whereas for reorganizing policy I want consistency, and you disagree... ;-) -- Tarquin 13:35 Aug 10, 2002 (PDT)
Funny indeed. Although other issues are driving our particular views on these separate matters. --mav

Mav and Talk:mav watchers, please take a look at Talk:Britannica Public Domain for two sets of thoughts on the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Ortolan88 09:48 Aug 11, 2002 (PDT)

IIRC, some of the IP addresses used by the vandal of User:Rlee0001, including the one that I blocked but also at least one of those that you blocked, were dynamic. Should we unblock these? As the primary IP blocker, do you have a system for checking and unblocking dynamic IPs? — Toby 19:10 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)

I don't know how to check whether an IP is dynamic - how do you do that? As for the system; Yes I did have a system for this with the Phase II software: After some time had passed I would move the block from the old blocked IP page (which was editable) to a page I titled Wikipedia:IP probation watchlist. But now when you unblock an IP there doesn't appear to be any history of the block and there is no easy way to transfer the needed info and links to a manually edited watchlist. Lee is working on a "watch IP/User" feature so that unblocking an IP/User could automatically put them on a watchlist (if I can convince Lee to do this). Until that feature exists I really don't want to take the chance that the vandal still is using those IPs. --mav

Somebody on the mailing list checked using some network utility. I remember that this person said that some of them were at Road Runner, at that these are generally dynamic. If you use nslookup on the 66.xxx.xxx.xxx ones, then they come out at rr.com, which I guess is Road Runner. (They were using a utility that gave much more information, however.) I plan to unblock mine, moving the information to the probation watchlist with the help of some HTML cutting and pasting. We'll see if they act up, and they'll be on probation anyway. I agree that the ideal solution is your proposal. — Toby 23:31 Aug 12, 2002 (PDT)

OK, I've finally actually done this; so see the new addition to Wikipedia:IP probation watchlist. — Toby 10:27 Aug 27, 2002 (PDT)

Re Francis Bacon: I've been slowly ploughing through this lengthy article and revising it. Then some unregistered individual made his many changes throughout, and you moved part of the article to the talk page. I have no problem with the unedited 1911 material out of the main page, but the offect of the combined efforts made everything more difficult to follow than it already was. As things stand I restored the version from the last time that I worked on it, then moved the unedited portion to the talk page replacing the version that you had there.

I can easily agree to dividing this article. A possible division might be Francis Bacon - Biography and Francis Bacon - Works. Is the hyphen the right punctuation for subdivided articles? I'd prefer to avoid the old sub-pages debate if possible.

"Dashes are as bad as slashes." I suggest Francis Bacon (articles on people are generally biographies) and Works of Francis Bacon (linked to prominently on the biography page) — Toby 23:47 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

As I was writing the above I began to think that things like 1911 EB material or the wisdom from the Eusless Bible Dictionary might be in the form Francis Bacon/unedited material. It's not really talk page material, but the argument to keep it off the main page is also strong. The sub page format would present a series of articles that could be easily deleted once the editing is done. People looking for something to do could then find plenty by putting the word "unedited" in the search box. There have been suggestions for separate pages for a lot of downloaded material, but there is some value to having that material maintain affinity with what it purports to encyclop about. (To encyclop - new word = to look at with a single, not very NPOV, eye.)

Now for something completely different. I've noticed your habit of greeting newbies, and I've read some of your comments about old-hands. As an extension of the first perhaps the newcomer could have a fancy-looking certificate e-mailed to him congratulating him for having become a "Level 0 Wikipediac". If he shows that he understands the most basic instructions for writing an article he can receive a whole new "Level 1 Wikipediac" certificate. Further certificates could come with small increments or progress. An "old hand" might then be somebody who has reached level 10. Perhaps going through the different levels could even be automated! Eclecticology 01:10 Aug 13, 2002 (PDT)

"Wikipedia is not a Masonic Lodge." Toby 23:47 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

Hello Mav,

You mentioned in the previous talk archive that you are gay. Would you like to join the Wikipedians/Queer list? - montréalais
I didn't knwo such a list existed. Sure why not -- latter though. --mav

You asked me why I deleted the EBD dictionary entries. My answer is that I do not feel they serve any use. This is not something against the EBD in particular - I have the intention of removing anything that is both orphaned and without actual content. I really don't see what use it has to have the EBD definition of 'adversary' in Wikipedia. Maybe I've been a bit too rash in immediately deleting it, but if you have any argument why these ARE useful, I would like to hear them. It is not specific against the EBD entries, by the way - they just came up first in the alphabet. -- Andre Engels

" I do not feel they serve any use" sounds fairly subjective to me. Therefore it behooves you to list these things in the vote for deletion page first and then wait for a few days. However poor, the EBD entries do (now some did) have content on them. Please also read our policy on this issue at Wikipedia:Wikipedia policy on permanent deletion of pages. It is now not possible to say if the particular entries were at all useful, because they are now deleted. --mav

---

Hi. I've emailed [email protected] about the unblocking of IP 62.64.253.65, but as yet not received any reply. For the record I apologise for the copyright violations, I made those entries in a fit of enthusiasm soon after discovering Wikipedia. I promise not to make such copyright violations in future. If you wish I will rewrite the lightbulb article in my own words. --Anon

No hard feelings and apology accepted -- I haven't seen the email to the list yet but I have already unblocked the other IP. I'm sorry it had to come to that but there really isn't any other way to get the attention of non-logged-in users on serious matters. And yes any help with rewriting/rewording the copied text will be much needed and appreciated (BTW, so long as you mention the source and word everything in your own words/organization there is nothing wrong with using a single source -- All that I ever expect is that new material passes the Google test -- public domain material is, of course, fine to copy and paste).
I think another Admin has deleted the Swan article and maybe another near complete copy and paste job that I placed on the deletion queue -- it was not my intent to have these articles deleted so quickly (the whole reason to have a deletion queue is so that these things can be reviewed over several days to a week at minimum).
BTW, it is not at all required in any sense of the word, but if you plan on contributing a lot it might be a good idea to create and use a user account. Doing so makes it easier for other users to contact you if need be and would also make it easier for you to track your own edits and play with your user settings so that they fit your editing needs. But again, it is your right to be anonymous if you want to. --mav 11:34 Aug 15, 2002 (PDT)

Hi Mav, what's the point in deleting the headings of several county articles? I think these headings are part of the WikiProject U.S. States. I agree that it looks bad if they're not filled in, but it may give some editing hints to visitors. Jeronimo

Long tradition here on not liking empty and/or spurious headings. That's all. On top of that I also personally hate them -- esp. the oh so informative "Introduction" heading. --mav

Yeah, the "Introduction" heading really stinks, and I don't really care if the empty headings are there. Just thought you could better spent your time on writing new element articles or so :-) Jeronimo

Yeah I would prefer cranking out another element article too but I have missed a couple of days of Recent Changes that I had to go over. I wish there were a way to not display any edits by users and IPs I know and trust -- then it wouldn't take me 3 hours to search for vandalism, copyright violations and to greet new users. I started so late today I am not going to get a chance to do anything other than housecleaning. Such is life. 'nite. --mav

Maybe you could make that a feature request: recent changes by new users and IPs (you can either include the IPs with "new" or not), probably only to be seen by sysops. Jeronimo

That did cross my mind. However I don't know of anybody else that still does this type of thing for all Recent Changes (thus this could be a feature request to serve one user). Would you look at such a Recent Changes if it existed? --mav
I might. I don't use Recentchanges because it's so huge, but a considerably smaller list for specialised purposes would make me give it a second look. I might even do housecleaning! — Toby 02:05 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

Well, I don't do house-cleaning EVERY day (should do it in my real house ;-), but yes, I would really use it. I often scan for the IP contributions with no remarks, or very silly ones. This feature would make it a lot easier. I can also think of a RC with only discussion pages on them, so you can see which discussions are going on. But probably that's going too far... Jeronimo

Coolness. I will draft a feature request for it then tomorrow, er, later today. --mav 00:41 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

I'm very new here and so trying to learn. Would you please tell me why you cropped the image of the "Lion in Winter" videotape cover, so I can do it right the next time? I thought one of the main ideas was to use space efficiently and, if I'm reading the info right, you made it bigger by cropping it. Anyhow, I plan to put some more covers in -- would you please tell me what is the best size for these images? Since the covers are a standard about 4-1/8" x 7-1/2", I need only two parameters, and I can convert if you give them to me in other units, but what I need to know are resolution (as dots per inch) and scaling (as percent of original). (I scan them in and fiddle with them as bitmaps and then dump them on a floppy as JPG files to get them from my graphics computer to my internet computer.) -- isis

Mav, just in case you're doing a lot of house cleaning: I've created 2000 Summer Olympics and 1996 Summer Olympics, which still have some empty headers. However, I plan to fill these gaps over the weekend (or soon anyway), so I'd appreciate it if you'd just broom this dust under the carpet until then ;-) Jeronimo

Sure. Although that is exactly why I usually make a /Temp page for articles I am working on -- it is a way to state very clearly that the article is unfinished and being worked on (thus normal rules for editing really don't apply -- that is, our tendency to make articles look complete as possible even when they really aren't). And when I'm done, I just delete the /Temp page. --mav

Hey mav,

would you mind terribly if I removed my grumpy comments from above?

--KQ 00:40 Aug 18, 2002 (PDT)

They are your words so yes you can remove them if you wish (they weren't that grumpy). However, if you could please strike-out the passages you want to be removed like this. That way I can see what you want to have removed and then remove that plus whatever my response was. --mav

something like above. The whole exchange, basically, because I'd prefer not to leave it up there with the implication that I think we should be grumpy to each other.  :-)
I just got back from L.A., btw, a few hours ago. Dare I say it--some good interviews and shots, though I missed what is undoubtedly the best shot I've had a chance at: ascending out of Dallas, cumulus clouds a few hundred feet away, the sunset visible above the clouds, a thin mist below those clouds, the city spread out below that--all in one shot. I won't have a chance like that again for a decade or two--shame on my slowness in opening the camera bag. For penance I will shoot more pix for wikipedia.  ;-) --KQ

Mav, saw you were busy with many distance pages. I see that both metre and centimetre have the British spelling, but millimeter has the US spelling, possibly others as well. Should we make this consistent, or not? Jeronimo

The re spelling was used for the original metre article so yes we should aim for consistency in these cases (of course providing redirects for the yank spelling). I have made several of the "meter" spelling articles before and I will switch these as I find time. --mav

Hi. I noticed one more inconsistency. SOme pages it says SHorter/Longer Distances while others say Shorter/Longer Lengths. There were some switches between the links for shorter and longer and I fixed them. HTH. BTW, thanks for the welcome -- pasokan

Hm -- noted. Although my plan all along was to simply move the entries to better titles. I will go through and do some more consistency checks at a later date. --mav

Is it better to merely say Shorter/Longer (and Lighter/Heavier)? pasokan

The current wording seems to be a bit more clear -- although that clarity really isn't needed. At this point I say we just stick with what is there since there is so much of it already in place. I'm also not the one who created these pages so I don't want to change too much too quickly. --mav

Mav-- Help!!!! I guess this is all a part of being a newbie, but I created something that already existed as an article with a slightly different name. I would like to add the new info from the article I started to the existing article, but don't want to completely redirect the page, since some of the info would be duplicated. After I do this, the new page should be deleted. The older article is cumulonimbus and the newer article is cumulonimbus cloud I promise I will be more careful in the future to look up all variations so as not to create this problem again! (I sometimes let my enthusiam for this project get the better of me! LOL) Please advise, gracias! --luckymama58


Thanks for your help.... I am not sure about the redirecting part, if I didn't do it right, please fix for me or instruct. I am still unclear, but I tried my best. Thanks for your suggestions.--luckymama58

I've noticed that you have just put a link to a converter on your user page. You also have a lot of other useful links and information on that page. May I suggest a page that could be called Tools for Wikipedians that could include all these. I thought of copying some of what you have to such a page, but since it's on your user page I regard it as "your baby". Also I wasn't sure that my suggestion was the best title. Eclecticology 11:39 Aug 18, 2002 (PDT)

You can copy anything you want from my user page without having to ask. I like the title you suggested but since this would be a wikipedia-specific page it should be wikipedia:Tools for Wikipedians or something similar. I can't say much more because I'm at work right now and my home computer is not booting. --mav

On the orders of magnitude I have a different idea; in the spirit of open source ('Let us see some code') I have put up a temporary page here Magnitude Comparison. Please take a look and tell me what you think. pasokan

This is User:Juuitchan writing.

I am not new to Wikipedia. I have been posting for several months, usually anonymously. I logged in to upload an image. I found that, while I still had a user page, my account had apparently disappeared! (Maybe it "timed out".) I started a new account under my old name, and had no trouble doing so. Weird.

I wrote a few articles before, such as one on pinball. I was surprised that I was the first to write about pinball here!

Yeah wikipedia is weird that way -- we have many oddball things but then lack basic stuff like pinball. I'm glad you filled that hole. --mav

Thanks for changing Demography to Demographics -- as you know, I fully support this change. But this has implications for other similar articles, and consensus would help. What happens next? Slrubenstein

Somebody needs to point out the error on the WikiProject Countries talk page and put it to a real quick vote (no need for anything fancy). Then the template can be changed. --mav

Mav, please see my note on Talk:Orders of magnitude. --Brion 21:51 Aug 20, 2002 (PDT)

Wow, have you really gone ten minutes without checking RecentChanges? You're slipping, mav. :) --Brion 22:02 Aug 20, 2002 (PDT)
Hey Mav, nothing new, I just didn't want this to fall off RecentChanges, what with all the renaming you've been doing. (See above.) --Brion 22:16 Aug 20, 2002 (PDT)

Opps! I've been majorly pressed for time lately (as my status states) which requires some tunnel vision on my part to keep my many Wikipedia projects moving along. --mav

Mav, I'm still waiting to make a full and "official" naming convention for cities. As expressed earlier, I myself am not entirely clear on three minor points. Although my solution for them seems pretty straightforward, I don't want to make the mistake of making this policy when it is not agreed upon. However, I do want to make this policy, so I can start working on moving all the city article to their definite locations. (see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)). Jeronimo

Mav, could you help me test the new user-talk link feature?

On my talk page you will find the apology that I owe you. (GrahamN shuffles his feet and looks at the floor)

Just curious--why was "Escherichia coli" moved? We don't generally abbreviate genus/species names here; why do it in this case? --LDC

Answer at the talk for E. coli. --mav

I'm impressed, you are not only a wikipediholic in English, but in German too. AstroNomer

LOL -- I'm just trying to hold myselft over until Enciclopedia Libre gets the new software and we patch things up with them. --mav
Actually, I still have hope for es.wikipedia. I made the traslation for us, but I gave it to them too. I plan to see if with the new software es.wikipedia can get more users.AstroNomer

Mav, I made a page (as agreed earlier this week) to look at the god/planet naming problem, it's at User:Jheijmans/Gods. However, I've gotten a little more doubt about the idea, since there really were some differences between the Greek and Roman version. However, most of the article now also refer to the Greek version, so that shouldn't really be a problem. As for the moon, it looks like many of these are named for the Greek mythological figures rather than the Roman ones, so it will not solve all disambiguation problems there. However, there is clearly a need to have a consistent disambiguation, as far as I can see, so there at least is some work to do. Later, Jeronimo

Hi maverick- quercus robur here- still getting the hang of this wiki stuff- yes I'm Graham Burnett- I've removed the copyright notes at the bottom of my apple propagation article- I pasted the info straight in from the original document without editing it first... mainly I was experimenting (still am... I've just placed a few links in now as well)- the whole concept seems a great idea, my only concern is that spammers could hijack the whole thing and turnit into a massive porn ad, but with watchdogs like yourself paying attention I'm sure that won't happen! Cheers for now, graham

Hi mav- as Gianfranco pointed out, I've submitted basically the same article twice on propagating fruit trees- this was because I first of all added a link from the 'apples' page to 'propagating apples'- then realised it was about more fruit than just apples, so changed the link name, then of course the article was no longer at the end of the link so I reposted it! I'm quite happy for the pages to be merged if this can be done, although the text on each page is now slightly different....

Hi mav- guess I've been told off/wrist slapped!!! Judging by the large amount of links that have been added to some of my articles once wikified there is some way of auto-highlighting commonly occuring links- or are they all picked up manually? I'll try & do better anyway, I'm not that familiar with html language I must admit... Going to bed soon so I won't be doing much more editing tonight, but will try to wikify some of my articles tommorrow if I get time... Cheers & thanks again for the pointers quercus robur 16:28 Aug 31, 2002 (PDT)

Response at user's talk page. --mav

Hey mav; I notice you wrote the following on User talk:Quercusrobur:

Side note: Our copyright licence, the GNU FDL, only appies to text -- so since we are not for profit and are providing an educational use, you can pretty much upload images and use them in articles without fear of violating copyrights (see fair use guidelines). --mav

This sounds rather dubious to me; so far as I can tell, the license applies equally to the entire contents of the wiki. Fair use can apply to images taken from another source, just as it can apply to text taken from another source, within limits; there's really nothing special about images there. Furthermore, our upload page explicitly requires the uploader to affirm that the file is being licensed by the copyright owner in terms of our license (which is the GNU FDL). --Brion

That's is just what I thought -- but it seems that Lee and Isis are trying to change to rules in order to allow more images and such. Otherwise many of the more recent uploads are copyright infringing -- we can't force the GNU FDL onto any third party without their consent. But we can use many of this stuff under the umbrella of fair use (see my above statement and Lee's at user talk:Lee Daniel Crocker). --mav 17:12 Aug 31, 2002 (PDT)

You're one of the hardest-working people I know. Except, uh, I don't know you.  :-P --KQ 21:00 Aug 31, 2002 (PDT)

You're no slacker yourself -- thanks for the compliment. Although in a way we do know each other (Albeit in a very confined manor). --mav
Yes, it's weird 'knowing' people online. I met a few of the people I know through livejournal last week and that was cool--to see the people behind the words (they never look or act exactly how you expect). --KQ

Hey, take a look at Spanish moss if you would, and tell me what you think about the picture situation (there are three): should they all be on one page, or two of them, or is it fine the way it is? --KQ

Looks good as-is. If and when the article gets long enough I'm sure somebody will include the images in it. --mav
Ok, thanks. That was the approach I was leaning towards for now. --KQ

Be lenient on Topory aka Piotr Parda. He is an honest guy. These images are intended for the Polish Wikipedia. I guess.
--Kpjas

It's completely fine if they are for the Polish Wikipedia -- there is just no easy way to find this out unless people state this in their uploads. Simply saying "Polska Wikipedia" would be clear enough for me to take at face value. --mav

I notice you also list articles you've contributed significantly too. Have you considered searching for them on Google? I just ask because I did (bored, and not working on wikipedia for once) and found a few that were on the first page of results--and promptly decided that they were ok but needed more work than I thought (suddenly all the flaws, glosses, and vague wordings seemed magnified). Not that you've ever written anything less than brilliant prose, of course.  ;-) (and why am I mentioning this to you when you're obviously a workaholic?) ... Cheers, --KQ

First page you say? PageRank really must be badly broken to include some of my earlier "masterpieces" ;-). Do you recall which ones were listed on Google's top 10? I will work on those to improve them as I find time (which is scarce these days). --mav
Oh, no, I meant pages on my user page that came up on page 1 of Google. I was wondering if you had done the same bored/narcissistic search.... Let's put it this way, I just dug through my five boxes of books looking for resources to use to add to the canna lily article. (because people deserve better, IMO)  :-/ --KQ 20:49 Sep 1, 2002 (PDT)
Opps! I'll do that to some of my entries too. Great suggestion. --mav
If you're still online, do me a favor and do not look them up now. I know I said I was going to sleep but I'm still up, and taxing Google's server farm looking all this up (about 2/3 done with your page, and you've got quite a lot of them). --KQ 22:35 Sep 1, 2002 (PDT)
Coolness! --mav

Well, first let me express my surprise that there are only 1.8 million pages on oral sex.  ;-)

Here's your list of "greatest hits." You've got quite a few that are #1 or #2.

What do you think of starting a page specifically to point out articles that are on the first page of Google--not to pat ourselves on the back but to give a heads up that we'd best make a good first impression? Maybe put something at the top like

The folowing is a list of articles which, as of September 2, 2002, were in the top 10 results of a search on Google (searching for the title of the article without additional search terms). This list is here not as a means to pat ourselves on the back (though some of the entries warrant it), but as a means to call our attention to high-profile articles: Are they accurate? Are they neutral? Are they thorough?
Why not take a look at articles you're fond of and see if they should be on this list? Add to the list as you find additional articles which turn up on the first page of Google results.

Just a thought. --KQ 22:54 Sep 1, 2002 (PDT)

Wow! Thanks for doing all that. I like the idea of Google warning but I don't think it should be in the artilce itself -- although the top of talk would be a great place for it. --mav

No, I didn't mean to put it in each of the articles; I was thinking of something like wikipedia:Top 10 Google hits. I'm looking through LDC's now. He's got a few too. --KQ
That's even better. This could be a ToDo item listed at Wikipedia:Utilities. But before you kill yourself doing this you might want to present the idea to Enchanter -- He'll probably know of a way to do this in a far more automatic way. --mav
I've asked, thanks. Now I am going to bed. --KQ 23:36 Sep 1, 2002 (PDT)

Re your comments on my talk page--don't worry about it. I didnt' take offense....

I've never seen Law & Order though I've heard good things about it. My TV is currently hooked up for cable but I don't have cable. So aside from the (very) occasional public TV show, I haven't seen any TV since about 1999. I can't say I miss it.

... (later) That's not entirely true. I miss the X-Files and The Simpsons, and I would like to be able to watch Queer as Folk and The Sopranos. --KQ 06:52 Sep 2, 2002 (PDT)

Hi Mav, just a "stupid" question. I just noticed I could move pages here. I can't remember I could before. I remember you trying to push the idea of giving move option to people after they did quite a bit of editing, but I didnot notice it was decided. Why/what is that ? --anthere

It turned out to be too difficult to have a usre promotion scheme, so Lee just added the administrative move function to all logged-in users. Caution: your browser cut a large part of this page. --mav

mav, any way we can block 209.105.200.40 (Elliot)? He continues to denigrate JHK even after he succeeded in driving her away. I have yet to see a SINGLE article he's contributed -- just nasty comments on Talk pages. -- Zoe

That IP address resolves to blnd100-35.onlink.net. Onlink.net is an ISP in Ontario. Unless they're using static IP addresses (most don't, even for DSL and cable), this may not do any good, and might shut out innocent people. Of course, that risk exists with any IP address block, and this one is relatively small--it's not like trying to block an address at AOL. We might also try contacting [email protected] Vicki Rosenzweig
I see only two comments in the last 30 days; both of them are inane and unhelpful, but I hardly think two juvenile comments by an anonymous poster either "drove away" JHK or constitutes "continued" abuse. Is there any evidence that anyone is taking him seriously, or cares what he thinks? He doesn't seem to have even gotten into any edit wars. I'm sympathetic to the idea that perhaps one way to better attract and keep experts is to be less tolerant of kooks and nonsense, but Elliot here just seems like a harmless kid. If he shapes up, fine; if he degenerates into more than a minor nuisance, then we can take action. --LDC
Update: it appears that 209.105.200.40 is in fact formerly logged-in user Elliot, who has in fact made a few useful contributions. So even though he may be a bit annoying, I suggest a slight verbal slap in the chops would be better than a ban. --LDC
I tend to agree with Lee here - at least for now. Yes the actions of this person and a couple of others did directly lead to JHK's hasty departure but the real reason why Jules left is probably more to do with fatigue caused by having to constantly deal with these types of people (esp. the pig-headed ones who just will not learn and continue to be pig-headed month after month after month). But this particular group has only started to become a nuisance so a slap on the wrist along with a warning to play nice or leave (as I have already done) should do for now. If and only if they continue would I even consider even a temporary IP block. BTW 209.105.200.26 was responsible for a couple copyright violations that have since been deleted. I wonder if this is the same person....
I do think we need to be less tolerant of bad behavior in the future -- we've already have lost at least two PhD's because we are so damn permissive of abusive language. --mav

Maveric149: Would you mind, even if someone is just an IP, to try commenting on what they are doing on a Talk page, rather than just blocking them randomly. When you use public computers, one often forgets to log in. And whether or not the way I was redirecting them was good or not, I don't think it justifies blocking the IP. And by the way, I was going to fix the links. -- SJK

Very very sorry - I realized that right after I did what I did (thus the quick lifting). It's just that when such a massive change is being made to the database that that raises red flags. In this case disambiguation blocks would be the best method to use. --mav

Hi. you sent me greetings, i will just try to reply the gentility. Before everything, thanks for moving my List_of_Brazilian_presidents. I just followed France example.
I am an open source user activist. Wikipedia is what I've always looked for. Even so, I've never heard of Wikipedia before yesterday at [/ Infoanarchy], and, as I consider myself as a well informed internetist, I think Wikipedia needs more advertisement around the world, specially in the academic media. I'll try to spread Wikipedia around Brazilian universities through e-mails, trying to do my part...

Well, I want to ask something. Is it a big problem to contribute withouth being a perfect english writer? I mean, I'll try to check the spelling of what I write, but, you know, it won't be perfect.
I prefer to contribute to the main Wikipedia, not the Portuguese one, because it's obvious that this one get to more people. So, do Wikipedians dislike bad not perfect writing contributions?
If you reply to my personal Talk page, i'd thank.

Re the "UCT" thing; somebody configured the wrong acronym initially. It's been fixed, new sigs etc should correctly say "UTC". --Brion 04:09 Sep 7, 2002 (UTC)

Coolness. -- mav

Mav, *sorry* about the unintended deletion of your page. I'm mostly using Opera, and heard it was sometimes cutting long pages. But never observed it myself. Well...now I did ! I'll be careful (currently using Netscape to edit this page). Cross fingers
I (indirectly) thank you for what you said to Yves Marques Teixeira. I have a lot of trouble feeling convinced about that myself. -- user:anthere

No problemo and you are welcome. :) --mav
Talk continued at Talk archive 4

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