User talk:DavidOaks/Archive 2

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Fair use rationale for Image:Admiral ad.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Admiral ad.jpg. You've indicated that the image meets Wikipedia's criteria for non-free content, but there is no explanation of why it meets those criteria. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. If you have any questions, please post them at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

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Wikicookie

I am awarding you this WikiCookie for your constructive edits on Wikipedia--LAAFan 16:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Missouri deletions

I moved all of the links that were under Missouri#See also to the List of Missouri-related topics. This will provide a single location to index Missouri related articles. Please check the List of Missouri-related topics for any obvious ommissions. Thanks, Buaidh (talk) 21:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and restored the revision. Grey Wanderer | Talk 22:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Outhouse

I had solicited one of our bot operators to fix up the references and their form. They did it, and it looks great. Keep up the good work! 7&6=thirteen (talk) 12:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC) Stan

License tagging for Image:Norwegian pram.jpg

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"Crazy as a pet raccoon"

A proverb is "a saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity." "Crazy as a pet raccoon" gets all of 32 google hits, almost entirely from sources such as blogs, forums, etc. And what is the "practical experience of humanity" encoded in the saying? Compare the roughly 100,000 hits for "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" or "a stitch in time saves nine." And given that this is an encyclopedia, why is that phrase preferable to simply saying that raccoons, like other wild animals, don't generally make good pets, as suggested by the laws against ownership in many states? -- Mwanner | Talk 22:45, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


Hi Mwanner. Yes, you'd expect the majority of hits to come from informal sites -- after all, the point is to demonstrate that the phrase is proverbial. You get a lot more hits if you use "as a pet coon;" as is regularly seen in proverbs, there's structural substitution at the phrase-level, so that the attribute is usually "crazy" but also "lazy;" I have heard "mean," but it doesn't appear on the web. "pet coon" may be substituted for other animals with either metrical similarity or at least isochrony in pronunciation (e.g., "shit-house rat") -- still preserving the basic trope of something wild in a domestic environment. Now, this is just a talk-page explanation, and doesn't belong on the main article (where it would be original research; I'm a folklorist, but I haven't published anything on this particular phrase, nor am I aware that anyone else has). The phrase is part of the lore of the raccoon, which seems to me is proper to an ancyclopedia article. Is the identification of snakes with the Judaeo-Christian devil proper? Regards DavidOaks (talk) 14:33, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
My apologies for lecturing to you on the meaning of "proverb"! By all means, restore it to the article. I would, however, suggest that it might be better as it's own section, under something like "Expressions using 'Raccoon'", and trotting out your original research-- I think the prohibition on OR has more to do with extreme and/or controversial issues than with smallish, non-controversial points within an article. (I could be wrong, of course, and someone could come along and delete it, but I doubt it. Doing a whole article on it without sources probably would not work out, though.) In any case, I think the whole lazy/crazy/mean spectrum is interesting in itself, whereas its less interesting used to suggest that keeping pet raccoons is unwise. Cheers! -- Mwanner | Talk 17:02, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Vietnam

Thank you for your contributions on the Vietnam War page, but it is the U.S. having a hard time dealing with defeat. The sources provided does not state "strategic withdrawal". It says American defeat. We must remove the latter part "strategic withdrawal" and put American defeat as per the sources and "strategic withdrawal" is only pov. It's either win, lose, or draw. In the case of the United States it clearly lose, even with all the post war propoganda trying to deny the fact. Also I see you've made unwarranted edits without going to the talk page, or atleast acknowledge the talk page, this has been discussed before.Webster121 (talk) 09:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you have not been reading the discussions on the talk page. All my edits have reliable undeniable sources. Also that picture that you put up on the page is disturbing, as it truly shows your uneducated judgment.Webster121 (talk) 15:20, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems that you have been indifferent to the discussions on the talk page. The discussion page does not reflect the view that your sources are comprehensive as well as authoritative and reliable. Your view has not achieved consensus. Now, as to the personal stuff, wikipolicy asks that you keep focussed on the article instead of the person. I do not believe that "disturbing" is a disqualifier for any photo, especially to illustrate a war, and especially a featured picture. DavidOaks (talk) 15:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
It seems that you don't understand that the sources do not support your revert. Yet you still decide to put it up. Those sources state "first American defeat", not withdrawal. Please take the time to atleast read the sources before making pov reverts.Webster121 (talk) 03:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
(DavidOaks notes: this editor was finally blocked for abusive and dishonest posting as well as chronic edit-warring.DavidOaks (talk) 21:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:Adolphus busch2.jpg

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Image Copyright problem
Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading Image:JBA group.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the image. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

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Amish‎ GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I have reviewed Amish‎ and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left this message on your talk page since you have significantly edited the article (based on using this article history tool). Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix with the assistance of multiple editors. I have also left messages on the talk pages of a few other editors and several related WikiProjects to spread the workload around some. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 08:29, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Legman references in Limerick (poetry)

On 22-Aug-2007, you inserted references to Legman in the Limericks article. Your contribution has persisted since. Your edit included citation references that were unclear.

Example 1: Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick, as a folk form, is always obscene, and cites (x-xi) similar opinions...

Example 2: Within the genre, ordinary speech stress is often distorted in the first line, and may be regarded as a feature of the form: "There WAS a young MAN from the COAST;" "There ONCE was a GIRL from DeTROIT..." Legman (xliv) takes this as a convention whereby...

I have no idea to what your lowercase Latin citations point. It would be nice to create a standard Wiki citation in lieu of what you have. Can you help me here? On a humerous note, these unclear citations have been replicated all over the Internet since so many blindly copy and paste what they find in Wikipedia.

--Wags1959 (talk) 22:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification you gave me in my talk area. The uncertainty that remains is to which Legman book you are referring. There are two listed with the article: The Limerick and The Horn. I assume you must be referring to the preface to The Limerick. If this is the case I can footnote the article accordingly and put the page reference in the footnote which would clean up the article.

--Wags1959 (talk) 20:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The references in question are to "The Limerick" Yes, it would be good to make that unequivocal. DavidOaks (talk) 14:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Done. -- Wags1959 (talk) 18:01, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit War

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on EWTN. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24 hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. If you continue, you may be blocked from editing. Please do not repeatedly revert edits, but use the talk page to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. If necessary, pursue dispute resolution. Eternal Word Television Network DavidOaks (talk) 21:11, 15 December 200864.9.76.165 (talk) 21:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

David Oaks notes: this inaccurate message is merely copied from its posting on the userpage of the anonymous user, a serial abuser, blocked many times for edit-warring.

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Edits to the raccoon article

I’m beginning to get annoyed by your unsubstantial edits to the raccoon article. I therefore propose that you don’t make changes to the article (based on this revision), not including copyedits, any longer without establishing a consensus about the proposed changes beforehand on the discussion page and the mental approval of the fact that the article got overwhelming support as Featured Article candidate recently and is therefore not in need of an extensive revision. I myself will adhere to the same procedure. --Novil Ariandis (talk) 23:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Lawdy, lawdy, the kid's got chutzpah, gotta give 'im that. A real case study in territorialism. Response on your talk page, and more mannerly than you deserve, but I'm hoping that a good example will eventually rub off. DavidOaks (talk) 03:11, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Edits_to_raccoon_by_User:DavidOaks --Novil Ariandis (talk) 11:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: Amish

DavidOaks, I am not yet very familiar with how one communicates with others on Wikipedia (or much else concerning Wikipedia, for that matter!). I just wanted to say that I appreciated your response. I have not been quite sure at times as to whether or not I have been working within Wikipedia protocol. I had never been involved with Wikipedia before, but for the last few years, I had lamented how contradictory and inaccurate so much of the information relating to the Amish, Pennsylvania Germans, etc., has been. Finally, I decided to try to contribute a little. I sympathize very much with your concern over replacing one statement with no cited sources with another. I intend to go through and put 'citation needed' markers in a number of places throughout the article, and over the coming weeks, I hope to add the sources one by one. PLEASE feel free (this is Wikipedia, of course) to question what I have done/am doing!

By the way, I was very happy to sees on your TODO list that you intend to work on an entry for Linda Dégh! I have known her personally, and had classes with her years ago. I have off and on thought about making an attempt to go see her (presuming she is still living). Take Care! P.S. There should really be an entry for Warren Roberts, as well! JMCooper (talk) 18:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Pseudo-acronym

Hey, I saw your revert, then self-revert on Pseudo-acronym. Thank you for catching your own mistake! ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 01:44, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hapily! It's mostly a simple matter of punctuation, spelling, usage, style...in some cases the refs need work, but that should wait until a stylistic makeover's complete. DavidOaks (talk) 02:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Gladiator

Hi! Yes, in dire need of a clean-up. Where to begin?? Happy to do what I can, but as a recent wiki arrival (and not at all clever with computers) this will take me quite some time. Of course, there are plenty of examples here (plus the sandbox) but I may well need some mentoring. Can I contact you if really, truly and absolutely stuck? Haploidavey (talk) 01:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Chupacabra

Hello, I noticed that you deleted the main twice. When this myth was first created, variations of this image became widely circulated in Puerto Rico, it is the "original" version. Altough the image used isn't perfect, it is close enough to the early conception (note that it varied from case to case) and free as opposed to the drawing in that link. - Caribbean~H.Q. 00:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

We'd need documentation that this version has been affirmed by eyewitnesses, and from wp:RS. Because of the squishiness of documentation, cryptid articles are areas where we have to be especially careful of the standards of the encyclopedia. DavidOaks (talk) 03:27, 13 February 2009 (UTC)