User talk:Dpbsmith/Archive04

"Earliest" text formatter

Hi, please see the real message on Talk:RUNOFF - if we discuss this there, a record will be left for other Wikipedians. Noel (talk) 17:11, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast reply! Most of it will go there, but this one note for here - there's a useful lesson here for all of us in how your memory played you false! I'll be even more careful about checking my memory against documents in the future.... Noel (talk) 21:51, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll see about the Bravo manual - there's a copyright issue (see Talk:Bravo (software)). Speaking of Xerox stuff, though, I have a spare copy of the Xerox Alto hardware manual. You interested? I'd love to see it go to someone who would value it. (I think this copy was even printed on a Dover laser print, to double the historical value!) Noel (talk) 03:43, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I dunno if you got my email, but I finally sent off the Alto manual a few days back; sorry it took a while (the post office is a long way away, and there was also Thanksgiving in there). It should be there any day now. Enjoy! Noel (talk) 02:17, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nah, don't worry about it - no big deal. Really! I mean, when you've got two of them, the second one's not really useful! (Especially since it's for a now-completely-defunct computer...) Noel (talk) 03:46, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cosigning

I've reverted my changes to the co-signing article, until we can work more towards consensus. Let's continue the conversation there, and if need be, conduct a poll on the general issue. --Improv 14:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thursday October Christian

Thank you for your kind comments. I always Google subjects prior to making VfD votes, and I thought that this individual, although not a major player on history's stage, was at least quirky and interesting. The challenge then was to convey this to readers of the article. I'm glad that I've been able to do so. By the way, it's nice to know that I'm not the only "VfD rescuer." GeorgeStepanek 21:38, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Drofnats article

On second thought, I should have just contacted an admin directly; that wouldn't have cluttered VfD. Still, policy and all... Thanks anyway. JRM 23:00, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Oxford colleges

Thought this was off-topic enought that I shouldn't clutter up the Memorial Quadrangle VfD page, but re the Oxbridge model as compared the the HYP and Five Colleges model: as I understand it, the Oxbridge system is really unlike anything we have here. The colleges were independently founded and have their own money and faculty ("fellows") but are still part of the larger university. That is, they're signinficantly more independent than the Harvard and Yale colleges/houses, but less so than Amherst, Smith, et al. For instance, at the undergrad level, each Oxbridge college admits its own students, but for grad school ("postgrad," in British usage) the university-wide department admits. Also, fellows in a college are not necessarily dons (ie professors) in the university, but I'm not sure how that system works. I think perhaps a closer model is the way Harvard has its schools (ie the College, the Law School, the Graduate School of Education, etc.)--each school has its own faculty, its own library, its own endowment, and its own students, but under the control of the central university, which also provides some library services (but very little), some money (I think) building and grounds, and whatnot.

Anyway, this is surely more than you wanted to know, but here it is... -- Remes 00:26, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Gerovital

I had a brief look on PubMed. This study (PMID 6362368) says all sorts of fantastic things about Gerovital, but all "serious" research on the stuff was done in the 1980s. It has completely sizzled out.

Safety: any preparation containing a cocaine-like local anaesthetic would be under FDA restrictions. In people with a decreased arrhythmia threshold, lower doses of procaine would be arrhythmogenic. The best person to ask is User:Ksheka, who has written most antiarrhytmic pages on Wikipedia and is very much in to cardiovascular pharmacology.

Efficacy: if it was truly helpful every elderly person would be taking procaine/haematoporphyrin right now. As I said above, the evidence base is quite thin. JFW | T@lk 09:50, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 19:33, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Notable and not

Jeez! If you think "1450 Google hits" makes someone "borderline notable", then surely my 21,800 hits qualifies me for a page! :-) (And no, you'd better not write one now!) Noel (talk) 22:23, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

RFC pages on VfD

Should RFC pages be placed on VfD to be deleted? I'm considering removing Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Slrubenstein, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jwrosenzweig and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/John Kenney from WP:VFD. Each of them was listed by CheeseDreams. Your comments on whether I should do this would be appreciated. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:37, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, does this mean you want me to put them back again? Should I also remove from /old? - Ta bu shi da yu 13:44, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cool. The amount of controversy I've managed to generate over issues relating to these VfDs is quite astounding. Maybe I need another Wikivacation... nah :P Ta bu shi da yu 13:58, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I'm going to shift your comments to the new admin noticeboard... if you have any specific objections to this please let me know. - Ta bu shi da yu 22:28, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A more wiki way of deleting

Heya, seeing as you're one of the editors who works with our deletions system a lot, I wonder if you could have a look at my proposal. It still needs some fleshing out, so I'm not quite moving it into Wikipedia: or announcing it officially yet (it's hard enough to get people to eyeball these proposals once, I'd rather they do so when it's done), but I would like to get some comments from other people working with the current deletion system. Feel free to edit to your hearts content, as long as you leave the general idea behind it intact. Thanks in advance! --fvw * 20:16, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

Merged reply follows, see indent levels for who said what. I haven't quoted everything, and some things were reordered. I hope I haven't changed the meaning of what you said, if so please correct.

If I understand... you say "the current deletion system doesn't scale and works very differently from the anyone-can-play system most of Wikipedia uses." Your proposal is basically to replace deletion with page-blanking, with some kind of cosmetic change to MediaWiki so that a blanked page looks more "deleted" than it does today.

Yes, that would be pretty much the idea.

I am not a Wiki absolutist. Wikipedia is not a wide-open system; there are levels of authority and there are, in particular, differences between what sysops and non-sysops can do. I acknowledge that the extreme openness of Wikipedia works much better than I might have imagined, and that the "Wiki way" got Wikipedia where it is today.

Your proposal tips things slightly in the anarchic direction. (Or if that's POV language, the egalitarian; or democratic; or open; or meritocratic direction).

I would disagree, there aren't different levels of authority, there are levels of power. I doubt my proposal would make things more democratic, however if it did I'd be very happy. I don't think admins should have more say in things than regular editors, if that's what you're suggesting. Also, anarchic and the other terms you gave are entirely different things, not NPOV versions of one another. Wikipedia should not be anarchic, as the article you cited mentions. It should however be democratic, open and meritocratic.

Deletion is contentious because of some fairly fundamental disagreements between Wikipedian on what an "encyclopedia" is, and what should be included in it. There is no easy way to make that go away.

True, and I don't intend to. I'm merely trying to reorganise things so the discussion is less hassle.

But I think that as Wikipedia matures, if our purpose is truly to build an encyclopedia—as I understand the meaning of the word—we may need to tip things in the authoritarian direction. The higher the quality and more complete Wikipedia becomes, the harder it is for a casual contributor to improve the quality and coverage, and the less likely it is that the average random edit will be an improvement.

By the time an article is at a "version 1.0" level, the most likely reason that a casual outsider would suddenly come in and edit it is that they are a POV-warrior.

Yes, however I think that's a burden we'll have to bear, not something to be prevented.

So in brief, yeah, I think it's good that we have sysops and that they are privileged characters. (Whether that has anything to do with my being a sysop I will leave for you to judge).

I think to say the least you and the majority of the community disagree on that one, however as I haven't seen any major complaints about your use of sysadmin powers I don't suppose it's creating trouble.

As for the comment that VfD doesn't scale, I don't really agree with that either. A lot of the complaints about VfD are simply complaints by extreme inclusionists who bring up every possible argument against deletion of anything.

Very true, which is exactly why it needs to be changed. We can't get rid of those inclusionists without turning into a closed system (which though you might want it is not going to happen I think I can safely say). And currently a lot of crud that should get deleted isn't getting deleted because very few 'regular editors' read VfD because it's overloaded, which leaves just those with strong opinions on deletionism/inclusionism.

The political issues are not so easily solved. A lot of the problems with VfD are created by inclusionists who simply object to deletion. And a lot are created by people with POV about whether or not certain kinds of articles should be included. Your proposal isn't going to solve either of these problems.

No, it isn't. I don't intend it to. This is a technical solution to a technical problem. I don't intend it to solve the inclusionism/deletionism thing, merely to optimise the way discussion takes place.

One argument in favor of the current process is that whereas revert wars and edit wars are interminable, most VfD discussions are relatively contained. They result in a decision. The decision, once made, usually sticks pretty well. Relatively few deleted articles go to Votes for Undeletion. And relatively few kept articles get nominated again. When they do it's mostly the innocent action of new observers unfamiliar with the previous debate. As nearly as I can tell, the charge that people nominate articles for deletion over and over again until they get the desired result is a straw man. It doesn't happen. There is widespread opposition to relisting and relisted articles get an overwhelming number of "keep" votes.

The same thing goes for reverts. Have a look at talk:Clitoris for instance, there was a lot of warring over what picture to include, a straw poll was held and a decision was made, which is pretty much accepted as consensus now.

Another is that VfD is that it, and "featured article" nomination, are only things we presently have that resemble a real review process on an article-by-article basis. In both cases, we review after the fact. But I think the fact that both involve group process and cannot be performed by a single individual is important.

Hmm? I'm not claiming they should be done by individuals.

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:03, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

--fvw * 22:46, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

You say sysops have "power, not authority." The definition I once heard that has stuck with me is "authority is anything you have that you can use to get people to do things." Power (in the form of additional technical capabilities) is one form of authority. Actually I'm surprised by your comment because the misunderstanding is usually the other way; many people thing that the only kind of authority is formally defined power, without seeing that there are other forms (e.g. peer acknowledgement of competence).

I have little interest in getting into a philosophical discussion about the definition of power here, suffice to say I think (and judging by the documents on the matter in Wikipedia: it seems I'm not alone in this) admins should merely be there to enforce the will of the masses.

Second, when you say "Hmm? I'm not claiming they should be done by individuals," I'm puzzled. As I understand your proposal, it would make it possible for any individual to delete any article at any time. If you would continue to have a human, socially-implemented rule in place that says nobody should blank an article without a VfD discussion, then I don't see how this affects the VfD process at all.

The point is the SD criteria can be expanded as deletion is much less of an issue. If dispute arises, a VfD-like procedure can happen.

By the way... how is your proposal different from simply making the present MediaWiki deletion and undeletion capabilities available to all users? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Just cosmetically different. It's also just cosmeticallly different from the current system where anybody can blank a page but blanked pages look slightly different from non-existant ones. Technically there really isn't much in all of this, it's a matter of how we as a community handle them.

--fvw * 00:56, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)

Re enforcing the will of the masses: I don't think I disagree. I would phrase it that sysops implement policy and that the policy is created by the community as a whole. A sysop is not somebody who can be trusted to "know best" whether an article is worthwhile. But a sysop is someone who is trusted to have a reasonable understanding of policy, reasonable judgement on interpreting it, and willingness to be bound by it. Two sysops may have violent disagreements about politics (say), but ought to agree most of the time on whether particular articles do, or do not fall within the criteria of candidates for speedy deletion. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:09, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Academic boosterism

Thanks for the note on my Talk page agreeing about academic boosterism. Yes, I well recall the discussion about Alice Lloyd College vs. Princeton University -- I think it is still there at Talk:List of famous universities and colleges in the United States. I think the academic peacocking in Wikipedia articles has been getting steadily worse for the last year at least. Perhaps it's time to think about ways to deal with this. The major problem, of course, is that articles on individual colleges/universities are mostly, and most persistently, edited by alumni and others who favor the individual insitution in question. I'm thinking about making a subpage of Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms devoted to this problem, and at least proposing some ways editors can voluntarily confine themselves to factual information. -- Rbellin 20:13, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've created a draft guideline page at User:Rbellin/Avoid academic boosterism and would welcome edits and/or feedback. Will it be useful? I'm not sure, but writing it made me feel better. -- Rbellin 19:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Kents Hill School

Hello, while you are mulling over whether or not the longest continuously operating co-ed school in the nation is noteworthy to you or not, please change your vote to abstain. There are plenty of others who would find this information of interest on Wikipedia. Thank you for your time. -- [[User:GRider|GRider\^talk]] 22:55, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WP:VFU

Sorry - I thought Ummo had been decided. My bad. I've reinstated it. I think the other three were done though (George Elliot Clarke, Curious (perfume), and Lil Jon). -- ALoan (Talk) 16:20, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Spam

Yeah, I think something strange was going on with that earlier. I couldn't even edit the Hilary Duff article because it told me her official site link was spam, so I had to use rollback on a bad edit when I would've preferred to explain myself in an edit summary. Hopefully that's fixed now. Everyking 17:55, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

replied

Hi Dpbsmith, I replied at my talk page --Dbenbenn 19:35, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

911 very good Sollog warning

Yes Yes 911 warning good example of Sollog warnings.

Why are your friends erasing your posts?

Can you format the 113 Prophecy, it is too hard to read, you need to use format like original if you can

Thank you for bringing important Sollog warnings to Wikipedia

You are fair

Sollog error

Very fair wiki man you make small error, Sollog fans claim the date of Shuttle terrible incident was in 113 Prophecy since it happened 8 hours after 31/1 a date given in Prophecy. Also you fail to mention main hit, March 11th was given in 113 Prophecy and very bad terrorism happened on that date in Madrid. Please kind wiki man correct your error. Thank you for being a fair wiki man. I give you links to articles claiming this okay.

Columbia article read PSSS in article http://www.247news.net/2003/20030201-columbia.shtml

Madrid article http://www.247news.net/2004/20040317-113.shtml

Thank you again very fair wiki man, more wiki people need to be like you. NLTOH

Image licensing

Hi. I am currently reviewing license/copyright tags for art images. I came across Millet's sower that you uploaded. (Image:Milletsower.jpg) You identify it coming from Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I checked their site, and much to my disappointment, they, too, claim that all images are their properties and protected by copyrights. [1]

What should we do? I was thinking either to call them or ignore the warning and just tag the image with Template:PD-art, but thought I would ask you first. Thank you for your attention, Tomos 13:43, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your quick and thoughtful answer. I see the same problem, and your strategy of clarifying the source is very good I think. (And I can tell you that after reviewing so many art images, that one is particularly well-documented.) Well I will contact the museum people and see what they have to say. Thank you very much for your attention. Tomos 14:09, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have read the D'Arcy Smith's stuff. I am very certain that you can apply {PD-US} tag. The work is in the public domain in the US, and still protected in many other countries. But of course, I am not a lawyer, and my opinion is just my personal belief. Tomos 14:25, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image tag

Thanks for uploading Image:BerlinerDisc2.jpg. I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you release it under the GFDL, or {{fairuse}} if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much, Aqua 19:48, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Also Image:Edmund001a.jpg

HG Wells

See Wikipedia:Requested moves. -- Cyrius|✎ 21:17, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A Deism plinth

If you're looking for anagrams, I highly recommend this anagram server. For sigs, you might consider "Dan Smith - Damn this"; "Daniel Smith: hints I'm Leda"; "Daniel P. Smith: I'd spin Hamlet, Lipid Anthems, or Sit, Ample Hind". - Nunh-huh 00:27, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, yes, I did intentionally omit the ruder ones<g>. I wish I could say I was foresighted enough to choose a pseudonym based on its unanagramability, but it was more a case of onomatopoeia

rambot

Please see my comment at User talk:Rambot. -- RM 17:20, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

sockpuppetry, and ballot-box stuffing

Hi Dpbsmith. I too have been annoyed for a long time by Old Right and Crevaner getting away with double-voting. But now it's worse: also check out Judson, who is voting in perfect tandem with the other two now; note the user pages, edit histories, and typographical style. What is the right way to handle this in Wikipedia policy? I haven't yet found something specific for exposing sockpuppet voting. Antandrus 01:56, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the response. Btw, here's a good "smoking gun" pair of edits. Compare [2] with this [3] --"they" made the same change to "their" user pages within one minute of each other.

Maybe the best way is just to point it out to everyone every time they show up. Peace, Antandrus 03:06, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Judson too. -- oh, got that I see. I left a message on all 3 user pages asking for an explanation (see User_talk:Judson#Question). we might ask a developer to check if the ip's are the same. and if they are, post an RFC. Michael Ward 07:47, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully the issue is now resolved, per Judson's note on my talk page. Michael Ward 20:03, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Building 20

...in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology article. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:09, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You bet! ---Rednblu | Talk 05:49, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Would like to add a note to the Yopu VFD discussion

You'll recall that (former) User:Tteexx, defending the Yopu article, cited a paper by "Lewinski and Manes." Despite the fact that the URL he supplied was broken, he insisted that it was a real article that had appeared in the "Fall 2004" issue of an online journal. I emailed the listed address for the editor of that journal and he has responded, confirming that the journal has yet to publish its first issue and that no such article as that described by User:TTeexx has been submitted, much less appeared.

I think this is very germane to the discussion and would like to add a suitable note to the discussion page, even though discussion has been closed and the page says it should not be edited. May I have your permission to do so? Dpbsmith (talk) 17:07, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Sorry for butting in here, but I tend to keep an eye out for interesting discussions. Thanks for trying to verify the claim by the way!) I don't think the VfD discussion is the correct place (nor do I think permission for adding it there is Ta bu shi da yu's to give). How about the VfD's talk page? Those aren't "closed" as such I think. If your goal is just to inform those participating in the discussion (as opposed to putting it on record for any further discussions) you could also put it on the main VfD talk page. --fvw * 17:46, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

To be honest, I killed that article stone dead early. Feel free to append a note to the bottom of the VfD page. That will help for future reference. - Ta bu shi da yu 22:47, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That looks like a good compromise to me. Thanks again for the legwork. --fvw * 23:50, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Light Switch to Toggle Switch, too

You did a really great job on the material at light switch on how a toggle switch works. Would you be willing to copy it over to toggle switch? Toggle switch is a stub and could use the material on how past center design assures positive contact. RJFJR 03:05, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

British Library . . .

Hello there.

Just to say Sorry for causing you unnecessary bother. I never wanted your article deleted, but couldn’t think of a better way to say that the title seemed a little strange, and that I couldn’t confirm the existence of the document in question. I still can’t find it in the BL online catalogue, even now that I know it is there!

Cheers Jeff Knaggs|Talk 16:28, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Oops - sent apology to the wrong person - will now send it where it was meant to go) Jeff Knaggs|Talk 16:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi, you recently commented on the VfD for British Library, Add. MS 5111. 7th century Gospel Book fragment, which, as you may recall, was listed for having an "ugly" name. That listing has prompted me to write a proposal for a naming convention for articles about manuscripts without names. The proposal can be found here. Any comments you would like to make would be appreciated. Thank you. Dsmdgold 10:53, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

from Village pump

Regarding your comments on the village pump. I just want to make sure that you are aware that there is a perceivable difference between the copperstone girl ad and the lollicon picture. You might want to take a close look at the bear and the blue object. I have to say that on first glance I didn't see it myself. Jooler 20:15, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Your comment about Smith N. Jones High School in VFD amused me. :-) Axl 13:17, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Culture and student life

Hi. Please note in Wikipedia:Manual of Style that the convention is to use lower-case initials in something like the heading above after the first word. Michael Hardy 21:00, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Iasson

The first letter of the user's name is actually a capital "i" rather than a lower-case "L", so it's "iasson" not "Lasson." It's hard to read, and I didn't notice it until I was using my computer's "find" function to look for his name on a page, and it didn't work, even though the name was RIGHT THERE. Joyous 21:04, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know why closing out VfD's is so fun. I enjoy tedious, repetitive little tasks like that. And for my own "by the way," I wasn't correcting your spelling in a schoolmarm-ish way; it's just that Iasson can be so odd in his responses that I figure he'll grab on to any little thing and go off on a big "peculiar" tangent with it. Joyous 00:03, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Average rule

I'm thinking of nominating Average rule for deletion on the grounds that it is a neologism and original research. This article has existed since August 2004 without anyone questioning it or proposing it for deletion. Do you think it's legitimate? Do you know of any reasons I shouldn't nominate it for deletion? Dpbsmith (talk) 15:35, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't seem very well written. I don't know much about politicial philosophy, but my gut reaction is to suspect you're right. Michael Hardy 20:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Iasson has now confirmed that you are indeed right, in fact he claims to have posted 11 theories in all in the article namespace. (I imagine you saw his comment to this effect on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Average rule, if not check it out.) I'd take the figure with a grain of salt, he has no reason to give us an accurate one, and obvious reasons to make it either high or low. Andrewa 10:16, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slightly inappropriate picture?

Oh ye whose opinions I've come to respect, would you visit Infantilism, and check out the new picture there? Any thoughts? Joyous 02:20, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Song

What's your opinion on the controversy surrounding the articles? Do you think they should have comprehensive coverage, or do you agree with those who say I've been writing too much? Personally, I think it's a dark day for Wikipedia when a user is told to stop writing even when the writing is reasonably neutral (I have a bias, maybe it shows from time to time, but I've always tried to keep things objective), entirely verifiable, and about a notable subject. Articles have, in most cases, been reduced in size by about 50 to 80% through all the chopping. One subarticle that survived VfD was redirected and merged (in severely condensed form) despite the community's decision. Everyking 16:45, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, thanks for your thoughts. I don't really agree with you about the length issue, not because I think you're wrong in principle, but because in practice most attempts to condense the wording inevitably condense the information as well, much to the detriment of the articles. But there have been some helpful improvements by others in this respect, that I will concede.

I appealed to precedent in the VfD debate because I feel the articles are being unfairly treated. My perception is that there are several people who basically think the topic is silly and not worth much coverage in a serious encyclopedia. I think that's not only anti-wiki in spirit, it's inconsistent. It's hard to deny that if several people were working on the articles (by which I mean adding content), as they do on Pokemon or a variety of other cultural topics, the information would be left alone. On the other hand, the prospect that other topics could get treated the same way as these Ashlee articles is terrifying. Everyking 20:31, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

I just wanted to thank you for clearing things up in regards to how votes are counted on Vfd pages, now that i am aware of the policy i have no problem with it what so ever, and in fact i agree with it. bakuzjw (aka 578) 02:20, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fanmail, after a fashion

I've come across your thoughts and opinions around the wiki and on the mailing list, and am continually delighted by your reason, intelligence, and wit—whenever I am of a mind to say something I often find you've said it first and better! (And half the rest of the time you say it second and better.) I always look forward to your comments; finally decided I didn't need any better reason to leave a note. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:02, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

VfD Microstub

Did you forget to sign your vote, or was there a database glitch? Anyway, I see no signature, which is most undpbsmithlike. Andrewa 01:52, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Toning down the MIT boosterism

Thanks for helping bring the MIT article's peacock-strutting down to size. It still needs work, of course, but it's better than it was a few months ago.

I recently put The Hidden Curriculum up for peer review. So far, the only edit has been a spelling fix, which the editor just reverted. I can't believe anything I wrote is that good, particularly given the relative paucity of research material I had to work with. (A secondary cause of academic boosterism might be that solidly prepared negative material is just hard to find, whereas positive garbledygook gets generated at every admissions office. Digging through obscure surveys for low rankings and other "damaging material" just isn't always rewarding.) Anyway, you might like browsing through it.

A bit of trivia I didn't put into "MIT in popular culture": the Doonesbury character Kim Rosenthal dropped out of the computer science Ph.D. program in the early 1990s, because it was "too easy".

Anville 19:07, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Langmuir

Yeah i am about to get started on his article, the notes are mine (they were given to me by my grandmother) so how would i go about putting them under the GFDL. Thanks for all of your help. 00:44, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sugar addiction

I am in the process of completely rewriting this page. Could I ask you to remove your {{npov}} notice? While you're right that "sugar addiction" is not a recognised medical term, the term appears to be widely used in popular contexts. Thanks! GeorgeStepanek\^talk 03:00, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppetry

Hi Dpbsmith,

I loved the sockpuppetry at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ashlee Simpson on SNL!

Instead of Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping, I think dollar voting would have been interesting.

You wrote "if the content is merged, then the article should be deleted". In fact, if the content is merged, then the article can't be deleted. See Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion#Merge and Delete.

Cheers, dbenbenn | talk 00:15, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Shawn Mikula

Why did you provide Anthony with the history of this article? He's now gone and recreated it in his own userspace, allowing Mikula's trolling to live on, and the listing was a lie in the first place, as it was not a history undelete. The article is completely deleted, and protected blank because it was continaully vandal-recreated. As there's an active consensus against giving users access to deleted content, this was out of line. Please do not bend to Anthony's trolling in the future. Snowspinner 15:26, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

The template exists and, as far as I'm concerned, ought to be used. Shawn Mikula is a special case, however, as was explained to Anthony twice (And he was blocked once for recreating the request... and I've blocked him a second time now). The issue was that the page was deleted and then Shawn Mikula himself kept recreating it. Eventually we protected the page blank to prevent it from being recreatable. Snowspinner 15:35, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Quailes, Quayles, Kwayles on VfD

How am I supposed to read Wikipedia discreetly at work if you are going to make me laugh and snort out loud in a most unladylike fashion? Joyous 22:24, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Another "gotem" question

I have a quick question about the gotem(speech) article (and i will take you not responding as a no as to not waste your time). But would it be wrong if I put a redirect on the gotem(speech) page to my homepage, or if i left a note that the entry on gotem(speech) can be found on my homepage. I am just curios to see if this could be done. again if you don’t answer this question i will just assume that the answer is no and move on. I just thought I would ask before i did anything and perhaps get in trouble. bakuzjw (aka 578) 01:52, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your help. (by the way i have started work on revamping the Irving Langmuir article, thanks for all of your advice there to). Thank you again for taking the time to explain all of this stuff to me (some of it was still confusing even after i read the rules, there is quite a bit of red tape), and in my belief you are a model wikipedian. Thanks. bakuzjw (aka 578) 21:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Proxies

I know I've seen something somewhere about blocking proxies, but I don't remember where. I just came across this and wondered if it should be blocked or not. Can you point me in the right direction? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 11:42, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

LOL! Thanks, anyway. SWAdair | Talk 11:50, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

St John's Great Books program

Regarding the List of Great Books, Santa Fe, I actually have nothing to do with the school or the program at all. I think I just found it as a random page and saw it as a chance to clean up and read tons of articles about Western philosophers. --Ricky81682 (talk) 05:21, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

classical one hit wonders

The One-hit wonders in classical music page seems to have stagnated since the VfD. There was no real consensus on what was to be done, other than the fact that it was universally agreed that the page needed work, at least. Nothing seems to have happened. Since you seemed one of the people with the most interest in the page, what do you think of the idea of a trim and merge to a new section in one hit wonder, as suggested? That could be at least a temporary solution, and I think it's better than having a page that nearly everyone thinks has serious problems. If it grows too big then discussions can be made about breaking it out again, possibly under a different title. -R. fiend 07:40, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about citations and references not being necessary in all cases. I believe it was you who mentioned the Beethoven page, and certainly "Beethoven was a German composer" is not the sort of thing that needs citation; without getting out of my chair I can probably reach 10 books right now that will confirm that. However, I do think referring to "one hit wonders" (a decidedly 20th century term) needs a bit of explanation and discussion, if nothing else, before a list can be offered. And also, though you say you were happy with the article as it was, I believe you stated that some of the composers really needed to be removed, and last I checked they were still there. I'll mention to DG album, but don't want to give it too much creedence, as it is basically a sales gimmick, used to make it stand out from 1000 other classical compilations; imagine if Sony put out a "Symphonies that Totally Rock!" CD and someone decided to use that a a basis for an article on Rockin' Symphonies. Anyway, I'll work on a merge soon. I'm not too worried about what people watching the page think because if they're watching the aren't responding to the talk page. Besides it had been discussed on the VfD vote so I have something backing me up. Anyway, thanks, and I'll let you knwo when I've got underway with it so you can contribute however you like. -R. fiend 16:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Prem Rawat

Sorry to say but the article on Criticism of Prem Rawat was split on size, not on view. Please read the articles. You have no right to vote unless you have read the articles including the archives. Andries 05:32, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

DpbSmith, articles do not have to be neutral but they have to follow NPOV guidelines. The critical points in the Criticism of Prem Rawat article all follow the NPOV guidelines. If you think otherwise then please tell me where. If you cannot then I request you to retract this allegation. The points of criticism are well documented and in some case voiced by objective, unbiased academic sources such as Haan, Schnabel and van der Lans. Andries 19:48, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

DpSmith, no you do not give a fair description of the article. A fair description is: Criticism followed by rebuttal and that ten times or more repeated. Please show me one criticism without a rebuttal. If you cannot then please retract your allegation about the structure of Criticism or Prem Rawat that there is criticism, criticism, criticism followed by a brief rebuttal. Andries 01:47, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Why are we suddenly getting so many of them?

On POV forks. My theory is, the fragmentation of the Wikipedia community in combination with a lack of explicit policy statements.

Fragmentation: There is natural fragmentation by growth. If you now join Wikipedia and don't edit the notoriously visible areas in article space (Israel/Palestine, global warming, creationism, also to some some extent all science articles), you may for quite a long time not meet any experienced editor and profit from his experience and knowledge of precedents (if you don't actually seek for it).
Additionally, there are issue warriors, who only ever edit articles on one specific issue. By the very nature of this behaviour, they tend to not meet experienced editors.
OTOH Wikipedia policy is not that clear in its written down form. Some essential details are set by precedendt only and spread by discussions on many places.

Pjacobi 22:32, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chipped beef on toast

Your arguments have convinced me, and I have withdrawn the VfD. (I was wondering what an inclusionist like myself was doing nominating articles for deletion.) But please read my comments regarding how-tos and original source material: I have moved the recipe but left the other material. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 05:11, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Merge votes

I don't know about others' merge votes, but mine (on Cathie Jung) should be understood as "may be worth mentioning somewhere but not in an article of its own". There should probably be some more explicit way to tell different merge votes from one another. / up+land 23:45, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Size issues

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason for th 32KB message was because of the browser issues. I have clarified it: there are numerous people who use the 32KB size limit as a reason to block FAC nominations, etc, even though this is not the reason for the 32KB limit. If people want to dispute the size limitations, they should not be using the 32KB limit, they should be trying to formulate policy that restricts article sizes. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:24, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Correcting teachers, etc.

It sounds as though your teacher was less... demonstrative than mine. I was at a convent school (he was the only male teacher, but he did his best to keep up with the nuns on the caning front). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 00:10, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Lists of English words of international origin

Help! Uncle G 18:52, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)

Talk:Calcutta

I notice that you edited Talk:Calcutta earlier today. It looks like you inadvertently duplicated a section of text. This is the diff to which I refer: [4]. It may have been an edit conflict, judging from the time stamps. I subsequently tried to reverse this duplication, but it looks like some users had already edited the duplicated text. I request your help in merging the two versions together and to check my edits re merging. Thanks. -- Brhaspati (^talk_contribs) 18:39, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

VfD boxes

The author of this pastel-colored box asserts that he agrees with your vote and alleged use of irony and/or sarcasm in voting against the very existence of pastel-colored boxes on VfD. Radiant! 21:27, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

(hm, wasn't there a template for 'this page contains too many pastel-colored boxen' on BJAODN? We should stick that on VfD :) )

List of schools in the United States

I updated VfU summary on this article with these new points:

The main concern about the article was its title, but it was originally at the proper title and moved in November, 2004.
There are many redirects to that page and there is no way to trace them unless the page is undeleted.

Please review your vote, or at least provide a constructive way to adress these concerns, especially the last one. This is a stock message, but I replied to each voter individually on the VfU page. Thanks in advance. Grue 05:27, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Removing sections from WP:VP

Hi. I notice you removed a discussion from the above page, from the proposals section. There is an agreed format for deleting discussions – the discussion remains on the main pump page until seven days after the last contribution, whereupon it is moved to the archive. There it spends another week, before being removed again. If you just leave conversations on the page, even if complete, it creates far less confusion and allows a consistent resource to find old Pump conversations, rather than the sporadic digging necessitated by ad hoc deletion. Cheers, and thanks for the thought! Smoddy (t) (e) 20:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Calcutta/Kolkata

I'm not from India and don't reside there, if that's what you're asking, so I can't claim firsthand knowledge. I don't know think there's a controversy per se, in the sense of an opposition party vowing to change the name back if they come to power, but some English speakers in India and the city itself do seem to use the old name, whether out of habit, personal preference, or just choosing to ignore the name change.

Note that Saigon was changed to Ho Chi Minh City 36 years ago, and that is Wikipedia's title for it, yet we can read on the Wikipedia page that most Vietnamese continue to use the name Saigon. Yet Ho Chi Minh City is still used fairly often enough that most people would agree that should be the title we use for its page, unlike some official titles which are truly rare or very long and unwieldy. The usage of Kolkata vs. Calcutta seems to fall anywhere from 33% to 50%, and that's probably enough of a threshold to give it the preference by "Ho Chi Minh City" reasoning. -- Curps 21:57, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: make the change in January, 2011

Once again you are confusing between the city of kolkata and the buildings etc that are named calcutta. The timesofindia city suppliment is calcutta times as this was started when the city was still called calcutta when it was started. If you look up their website the mumbai city suppliment is also still bombay times and not mumbai times. Also the high court names have not been changed. They are seperate from city names. Bombay and madras high courts are still called that on their offcial webpages. So please dont start mixing up the name of the city with all these. they are seperate things. Kolkata is accepted in india like both mumbai and chennai as the city name. I hope this convinces you. kaal 22:05, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Jack London

I see the controversy regarding circumstances of his death are noted in the article...I have no particular opinion on the matter; Pearle was simply implementing the decision to change the category name based on the WP:CFD decision. Though the discussions there have come across several categories which have borderline cases like this one, especially with regard to people. In fact, the page Wikipedia:Categorization of people was created to discuss this problem. One popular solution is to add a disclaimer to the category, such as the boilerplate at Category:Suicides or something more specific that says, "this category is for people who did or who may have committed suicide". This allows people interested in finding the borderline cases along with the clear-cut ones to do so, while being somewhat more accurate. -- Beland 04:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Pastelbox.gif

Hope you don't mind, but I added the proper image copyright tags - {{GFDL}}, {{cc-by-sa}}, and {{cc-by-sa-2.0}}. Alphax ^τεχ 10:31, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Nevil Shute

Thanks - but the page still needs some work. It's a crime for us to be loose and sloppy concerning a writer so neat and terse! - DavidWBrooks 21:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VfD

I don't know what your stance is on VfD nominations in general, but your votes on some of GRider's recent VfDs managed to make me chuckle. Thanks for some support on this. Maybe some of these will be preserved in BJAODN as the most indecisive VfDs ever 8) Chris 02:20, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

GRider

Regarding GRider's 'Socratic' VfD nominations and the ensuing reactions by voters, please read and comment on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/GRider2. Thanks. Radiant _* 10:26, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reaction. I hope we can get him to listen. Radiant _* 15:17, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

IB school VFD

I was reading over one of the VFDs involving an IB school and I saw this comment from you: It is not a college degree or even advanced placement.. Now the latter statement isn't true. If anything, it is just as equal as advanced placement, if not higher. I attended an IB school and went through the curriculum; I should know. Mike H 21:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

That is indeed the case. I think it depends on your home state, but Florida gives IB graduates who have satisfactorily completed the diploma 30 credit hours, which essentially makes one a sophomore in the first year. It doesn't get you out of all the general education requirements but it does help a significant deal. I got out of at least half, if not more, of my Gen-Eds. I'd read the international baccalaureate article we have on Wiki. :) Mike H 21:46, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Hi!

Hello, I'm a relatively a new user of Wikipedia. I like the idea of a free encyclopedia, but I can't seem to find an article about my school. I thought my school would have an article in here since it's really famous. Could you ask other users to research on it and create the article? My school is Smith N. Jones High School in Springfield. - 68.72.125.15 16:21, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not the right person to ask. I don't usually work on high school articles, and I think very, very few high schools are notable enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia. You might try User:GRider, User:Anthony DiPierro, or members of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, many of whom do have an interest in high schools. Or you can create the article yourself. Be aware that high schools are controversial and sometimes get voted for deletion. If you are certain that most Wikipedians will agree that your high school is notable, go ahead and try creating the article, but try not to be upset if it gets deleted. Be sure all the information in your article is verifiable; cite the sources for your information. This is especially important if the name of the school is odd, as people might be inclined to suspect a prank. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:13, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bye!

If you're not going to work on the article, could then please expand on the article Stevenson family? - 68.72.125.15 20:13, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cheesesteak

Why did you unilatterally merge Pat's / Geno's and Jim's with cheesesteak without first discussing it? Pat's and Geno's are notable on their own and are good strong stubs. Both of which could be turned into 5-10 pages should someone feel like spending the time (as for Jim's its not notable on its own and should be deleted). ALKIVAR™ 03:29, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well I can't fault your reasonings. I just wish you'd stated your reasonings beforehand :) ALKIVAR™ 12:49, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Local frolicking

There are some Boston meetups planned for the coming weeks: tomorrow (Sunday) at Asmara, and two weeks later in (place tbd)... and then Jimbo will be in town in the weeks after that. Hope to see you. Spring cheer, +sj + 20:43, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

copy right vs copy wrong

A bright young wikipedian spark pointed out to me some pictures in the Edward Weston article and was wondering about the copy right issue. I noticed that you were there 15 months ago wondering the same thing. I can not belive that these pictures, one by Tina Modotti and two by Weston are PD. It makes no sense. The version of the shot of Weston by Modotti that I am looking at right now [in a book about Modotti] is owned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. So I'm looking to you for an opinion, before I start to slash and burn. Carptrash 08:02, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

St. Augustine High School

Could you do me a favor and drop a note to Randomgbear on his talk page to explain the speedy redirect on St. Augustine High School? I saw what you'd done and factored it down to the bare essentials but then RB, original author, didn't realize what had happened, deleted the info, and has re-linked to the (now) re-direct. You can probably explain to him better than I could about high school articles on Wikipedia. Cheers, -Willmcw 08:11, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Even better. Thanks, -Willmcw 11:31, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

BEEFSTEW

Hi there! Given that a lot of people (myself included) agree with your BEEFSTEW criteria, how about moving it into Wikipedia namespace and putting it into Category:Wikipedia Semi-policy? That cat has a lot of similar guidelines, and there is enough support for yours to add it in. Yours, Radiant _* 14:47, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. You're probably right that the situation is bad enough as it is. I actually fully agree with your view, if we could just merge high schools there would not be a problem. The only alternative I can think of is creating a wikischools project. Radiant _* 18:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Rance

Please remember that VfD is not a vote. There were five users who voted delete, but none, including the nominator, gave much explanation or reasoning. The one voter who argued it should be kept made a clear argument that was never rebutted. Add to that the dubious nature of the nomination and I decided the page should be kept. If you strongly feel it should be deleted there is no rule against relisting it on VfD. - SimonP 13:56, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

I did think a long time about this one, but the rule is "when in doubt keep." Grue seems to feel stronger about this than you and he has relisted Rance on VfD. This new vote can be found here. - SimonP 14:28, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

General Slocum

Please respond to my various comments at Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion/List of General Slocum victims. Thanks. --brian0918 ™ 20:08, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)