User talk:Lambiam/Archive 1

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Richard Grenville

The chewing the wine-glass story relates to Grenville - I was editing Humphrey Gilbert at the time as well, probably just got mixed up. It's a common story about him, but I don't know of a book that specifies the original source, so I just put it in the trivia section.--shtove 14:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re rv on Wkipedia:Introduction

Apologies for that Lambiam. I am a new RC Patroller and also new to the Counter Vandalism Unit - I guess I am just being a little over-eager. Methinks I need a little more reading before I carry on working... :) Thor Malmjursson 07:22, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: 'i' in Turkish

Your comments are noted, and yes of course you're correct, the possessive use is from Persian not Arabic (my bad and corrected on the Istanbul:Talk page). I don't know whether or not you're fluent in Turkish, however Devlet-i Osmaniye is actually (in terms of Modern Turkish) 'just' a historical and/or formal way of expressing Osmaniye Devleti, the Osmania State (actually 'Republic' would probably be a better example than 'State' in terms of general English usage!) The many concatenative uses of an 'i' (or ı, u or ü) after a word including the consonant change are somewhat too numerous to discuss (particularly in connection with 'Istanbul') and the clearly written separate suffix (as "-i") can only mean the possessive, as you describe. Her neyse, bunlar asıl konudan uzak - ben ilgi ve alakınıza teşekkür ederim. StuartJames 00:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Jew Watch feedback/criticism

No problem. I myself thought the section wasn't very informative. It's just that people complain about lack of criticism. But you're right, the article needs serious citations, not an editor's overview. --Chodorkovskiy 11:18, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Gandhi

Hi - The "semi-protect" tag was placed by an administrator, user:Gurubrahma and was removed (somehow...) by a vandal. I reinstated the tag - and since it was originally made by an administrator, I will have reinstate it now. The article is undergoing a peer review to make reforms to protect its FA status, and we can't allow vandals to jeopardize the process. Thanks for your concern. Rama's Arrow 19:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is an intrinsic problem with the tag - but that's the admins problem. As far as we are concerned, we should keep it on. Rama's Arrow 19:47, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Corvettes

It's not the usefulness of these forums that I disagree with, it's the fact that they're shameless plugs, and aren't really reference material. If me removing a link results in a childish edit war, then it doesn't need to be there, IMHO. -Mulder416

I listed this page on requests for cabal mediation, hopefully this will help us reach a consensus. -Mulder416 01:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism warning

Stupid that they call this vandalism. However, I have been adviced by an admin to give you this for censoring out parts from the Jew Watch article. Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. ems 18:05, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This warning is completely uncalled for. The removed content lacked a source. --Chodorkovskiy 15:37, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biruni

I didnt provide a word for word translation, because it will lead to more confusion. Biruni actually uses the word "of Persia" (highlighted in the text). Many people are unaware that Persia was the official name of Iran pre-1930s. It is nowadays (incorrectly) used in a racial context. In other words, the people of Khwarazm were not from Fars Province, as the unfamiliar user would understand it.

I suggest you ask one of the Arabic speaking admins to provide a proper translation that would convey the meaning in entirety. Otherwise, word for word it would be:

اهل
people of, inhabitants of
خوارزم
Khwarazm
کانوا
were
من دوحه الفرس
of Persia

There is a word there I really can't identify there. But then again, I went by the translation of the translation. An impartial Arab admin is your best bet. Thanks.--Zereshk 21:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biruni is obviously using the past tense. That's all I can gather from the sentence. So it can be any time before his time (which would be pre-Turkic anyway). But then again, to answer your question, we'd have to read the entire passage of the Biruni quote to investigate the full chronological context. It will take me a while (after May the soonest) before I can go to Austin (where they have a copy of the Athar-al Baqiyah) to shoot a picture of the page and post it on the talk page for all to view. I'm currently stuck with commitments to attend to.--Zereshk 22:04, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No prob.Stoa 00:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ABC and Simula

HI Lambiam,

re simula and python, here is a link which states that ABC was descended from Simula [1], although the statement could be wrong. ABC was procedural, Simula was an early Class based language, and there was a 20 year gap between them. Also ABC was a descendant of B.

So, I don't know. Perhaps the article should say something like 'Python was developed to include features of Simula and ABC, both of which had been worked with by GVR...' It certainly used indented code like ABC, and classes like Simula.

TonyClarke 23:41, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question about the ID poll

That is a good point. The problem is I'm worried it might bias people's answers. Maybe you could let me know your opinion? The answers are intended to find out what readers would expect from an article entitled "intelligent design," whether or not they would expect the article to be about intelligent design that is opposed to evolution, or intelligent design that is not opposed to evolution, or both of these and how to weight them in the article. Do you think revealing this would bias people and they'd answer differently? Do you think you'd change your mind? Here's the link Talk:Intelligent_design/Poll1 --Ben 20:53, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hamming distance

Hi. You recently added "the metric on each axis of the hypercube is the discrete metric" as a "necessary condition for claim". Actually I think that the Manhattan distance uses this metric by definition, so it is not necessary to mention it twice, is it? Of course it is not wrong either. Just have another look at it, please. Shir Khan 21:55, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added my answer to your comment to my own talkpage. Shir Khan 22:15, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I updated the page on hamming distance again. Please have another look at it. Greets, Shir Khan 19:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Protein

Thanks for letting me know. Zargulon 07:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WP:POINT

Considering that you brought that up in one of the afds I put up, I just want to say that I challenge that. All of those articles that I put up for afd do qualify the criteria for deletion and I would like to know why you think they didn't (did random family trees with no sourced to meet WP:V deserve to be on Wikipedia?). I would also like to know if you think the following qualifies as WP:POINT (or is Striver above Wikipedia policy?), and if it does not I would like to know why in my talk page.

wtf, why not including this as well:

Lets vote on all of them, why only the Muslim lists? --Striver 04:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC) (For quote see AFD for Muslim Athletes)[reply]

And he went through with it as well by putting up Afds for all those articles out of revenge for them putting an afd on his article and without even putting afd on the page history.

When the contibutors to this pages saw what he was doing they went to take off the afd tags that he put up to make a point and he reverted it and again put Rv Vandalism on the edit history.

Ok, the merits of the articles themselves. Let us look at the merits of the articles themselves. You wrote this in many of the articles for deletion. [2] Please tell me why you think the following merit an article, if this really is about the merits of the articles themselves:

I'd be interested to know the actual arguments for keeping these articles. Had any other poster created these there would be no argument for keeping them.--Jersey Devil 21:55, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

homosexual rights in chad

I explained my reasons very clearly when I voted. Jcuk 01:21, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RFC

Hi, would you be intreseted in taking a look at this: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jersey Devil?--Striver 12:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peace and blessing be upon you to, brother in humanity! Thanks for the message, i think i can also subscribe to Isotope23 views. I didnt know that i could sign it myself, thanks for informing me of that. Have a good day/night! --Striver 03:06, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikibreak

I'll have a Wikibreak until April due to lack of Internet connectivity. Also e-mail may not be responded to. There may be an occasional login from an Internet cafe, but don't count on it. LambiamTalk 14:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re Leonardo Da Vinci

Hi Lambam. I've replied to youe note on my talk page there. Regards Paul August ☎ 17:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the message. Let me try to fix the damage to the page. As for "Salaino", I just did a quick search and came up with quite a few hits, most of them in Italian. The form is a diminutive of the nickname, thus if "Salai" is "devil" then "Salaino" is "little devil," which is exactly what he seems to have been when he was young, perhaps even more so than the rest of us. Haiduc 00:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I edited that section, take a look and let me know if it works. Haiduc 00:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Photo

Thank you so much for the friendly message on my userpage. Best Bertilvidet 20:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cajun {{cleanup-tone}}

Could you spare the time to put an example or two of the problem you see on the talk page? The article is rather longish, and for most of it the tone seems fine. Is the issue specific to some section? Thanks. LambiamTalk 08:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. Sorry about my lack of specificity; I remember reading through the article rather quickly, and not having much time to fix it. You are exactly right, and I have listed some examples on Talk:Cajun. Thank you for your interest in improving the article! -- Beland 17:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Salaino or Salai

It would appear that Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno was also called Andrea Salai, Salaino being probably a diminutive, a quite common thing in Italian. As for its meaning "the devil", my vocabulary, which is quite detailed and full of archaic terms, didn't give anything. Returning to the meaning, this link [3] claims that "Salai" (not Salaino) meant "little devil" it the jargon of the age. And this in confirmed in Leonardo of Enrico Crispino, more correctly says Salai means devil. Probably Salai is "devil", Salaino "little devil". In my opinion you should simply call him Andrea Salai, the name by which he seems to be most famous, removing "Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno" and mentioning once (or never) Salaino. I hope this helps. Bye! --Aldux 22:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I did a quick search, and "Andrea Salai" seems to be the name he painted under: "Andrea Salai (1480 - 1524) / Artist / Variants: * Caprotti, Gian Giacomo * Salaij * Salaino". As a result of your inquiry I added some new material to the article. Thank you. Haiduc 00:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Evil Eye stuff

Thanks for citing and adding a ref section for the Alan Dundes book on the Evil eye page -- you saved me a bunch of work. The Frederick Elworthy book needs to go there too... but i don't have time tonight. If you find it first, take the credit, otherwise i will try to remember. Elworthy's book is so important that Dundes did not extract from it at all for the "Evil Eye Casebook" but rather assembled his "Casebook" as a specific supplement to Elworthy. Thanks again. Catherineyronwode 06:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice! You are greatly appreciated. I owe you one. Catherineyronwode 03:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Music of the Netherlands

Hi,

Unfortunatly, I know almost nothing about Dutch music, so I can't help you, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, the article on the Dutch wikipedia is not good, or else I would have translated that. Maybe you can leave a message on Wikipedia:Notice board for topics related to the Netherlands. It's not a very busy noticeboard, but there are several people from the NEtherlands that have it on their watchlist. -- Eugene van der Pijll 11:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Neo-baroque

Hi, I saw your edits at Neo-baroque, don't you think the Paris Opera is more Neo-Renaissance than Neo-baroque. While it is accepted that the Neo-Renaissance incorporated some Baroque elements, and the exterior of the Opera certainly does, the interior image at "Neo-baroque" draws more heavily on the Renaissance than the Baroque, especially when one considers the curve of the stairs, and the narrow segmented arches. This whole particular area of 19th century architecture is a minefield of opinion. I'm not seeking an argument or revert wars - just interested in you view. Regards Giano | talk 13:28, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Luv Ya, Lambiam! (Henri Gamache)

Lambiam, you are wonderful. Thanks for spell- and link-checking my Henri Gamache article. I have low vision and cannot see either the keyboard or the monitor well, so typos creep into my stuff on a regular basis. I write on the fly and like to work online rather than in a text editor, so your proofreading help is greatly appreciated. (There ought to be a robot just following me around checking my spelling.) If you have a moment, could you also check out the Black Herman Benjamin Rucker article? Also, i don;t know yet how to make a redirect -- i needs a redirect from Benjamin Rucker (his real name). I had to create that in order to make the Henri Gamache article make sense. Then i had to go work on the list of occult authors. Thanks also for the clarification on the problems with the list o authors mess. I don't think i have time to take that on yet. Maybe later. It never stops, of course, until one gets too hungry or sleepy to work. Catherineyronwode 00:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you deeply for the speedy spell-checking and editing of my rather rough-and-ready Black Herman article and for creating the redirect from Benjamin Rucker. Okay, now i owe you TWO. Catherineyronwode 03:04, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And thanks for the information on how to make a redirect page (with categories, no less). I will use that next time i need it. Yes, i kinda liked the typo of root for robot, especially given my other writings on rootwork (hoodoo/conjure), but i figured that it would not be understood, so i fixed it. The problem typos for me are the ones with missing letters, and worst of all are missing thin letters like i and l -- i can't see those thin vertical lines, especially in Helvetica / Arial type. Catherineyronwode 03:26, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for following me around, my root! And thanks for the refinement of the pipe trick you've taught me. My problem with that long Magic page was that i am using IE5 and it could not handle the entirety of the text. I could see it entire as browsed, but in the edit function version, it cut off after "Islam". I will now take seriously the warning that some pages are overlong and on such pages i will access the editing version (with wiki markup) via my husband's Mac OS X browser (Firefox), then transfer them to my 'puter and work on thim in my own text editor and dump them back, as you suggested. I am currently trying to eliminate a lot of anti-religious and anti-magical bias from articles that deal with folklore. I also am working to wipe out racial bias in folklore, religion, and paranormal articls, especially with respect to Jews, African Americans, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Muslims. It is indeed a "struggle," as you call it, to see that articles maintain a neutral POV. Sometimes the biases are very subtle, as when "skepticism" becomes a see-also in a paranormal article, or a lengthy side-trip about "psychology" is inserted into an article on indigenous sorcery, or when "superstition" is added to the cats for an article on religion or folklore. So i'll be working around those areas for quite a while, i guess... Catherineyronwode 00:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re-Romanization

Dear Lambiam:

Your work on the Re-Romanization article here, together with the comments of some other people prompted me to try draft some better introduction to the subject. You might be interested to see the result in my relevant website, the entry Introduction to the Basic Roman Spelling of English. I would like to include there some credit to your contribution; if you consider this appropriate, please let me know via the email given in my site. Best, Apcbg 18:34, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help wanted

I appreciate your comments at Talk:Pi/Unrolled but I hope you'll allow me to talk about my bias. It's not terribly important to me how the text here is worded; I'm not convinced of any need for the page at all. I suspect it will all get merged into the caption for the graphic. I'm extremely interested in getting feedback on the graphic itself, which is the substance. As I've tried to note, this is not a good place for incremental improvement. I need to get some good solid comments right away so I can turn out one more good revision and move on. Do you think you can eyeball the demo frames and tell me if you think I'm doing alright? Thank you. John Reid 21:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re: What happened to Armenian Genocide and position of Turkey?

You closed the debate on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armenian Genocide and position of Turkey with speedy keep. Now the article is gone. Could you find out how (and if possible why) that happened? Thanks. LambiamTalk 14:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the slow reply. It seems that El C deleted the article because it was a duplicate of content already at Armenian Genocide: deletion log. I think that El C thought that it could very likely turn into a POV fork. Do you know whether the content in Armenian Genocide was copied from the deleted article, or copied to the deleted article? --bainer (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't know if any content was copied in any direction between the articles. At the time of the AfD debate I thought the article was a fair start for factoring-out of material into a proper sub-article. This is called an article spinout in Wikipedia:Content forking. One can disagree on the amount of detail in reporting about the Turkish position in the Armenian Genocide debate. But what the official position of the Republic of Turkey is, is essentially a matter of record, and is relatively easy to treat from a neutral position. I think having such spinouts is a good way to reduce the battle in the main article, where people keep insisting on adding or removing material related to the points of view of the sides in the debate, whether by POV pushing or in a neutral way (in which case they will nevertheless be accused of being POV pushers). So I am somewhat disappointed that the article has been disappeared without proper debate. Is this within the range of normal things for admins to do? Now we have a much worse article: Armenian allegations, which will most likely get deleted after an acrimonious debate. LambiamTalk 08:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Historical revisionism (negationism)

Here are some bullet points to you posting to my page. (I have had to rewrite this because my web browser went bang just before I saved it into Wikipedia. Sigh!)

  • The fact that the journalists were also charged with violating Article 288 has some (minor) importance, because by dint of Article 301 alone the maximum penalty would be two years. But the source did not refer to this Article, if you want to include it then please give a reliable and reputable source
  • What does it mean that "the trial is seen as'' Both sources in that paragraph state this in so many words. If you can not spot what I am referring to in the articles then let me know and I'll quote them.
  • Turkish penal code reform, is that really necessary? Yes because the sources in the section before this statement do not make this clear, infact they can be read as giving a contary position.
  • "Until now, it has not been tested in court whether Article 301 applies to calling the Ottoman Armenian casualties "genocide", a term that has not actually been used by any of the accused" If you can not find a source, I suggest that this sentence is removed because as you say without listing all the cases (and then drawing a conclusion) it is not provable and presumably there will be new cases along all the time. So instead I suggest we replace it with the citations and references I tacked onto the end of the Genocides in history "However the Turkish authorities do acknowledge that the issue should be left to the historians..." (the two sources for which I found while researching this reply to you)

Hope this helps, regards Philip Baird Shearer 01:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Persian Gulf

Dear Lambian, you have not enough info about Arabs and Persians and Persian Gulf issue, look : www.persiangulfonline.org and : http://persiangulfonline.org/maps.htm

no they don't learn it in schools, it's in their blood to name anything as they like, and they hate Persians as they hate Jews, and much more, this struggle dates back to 14 cen. ago when they attack Persia(since 1935, Iran), and the problem is Arabs are richer than Iranians... and and and ... I'm so busy, would you please help me removing that redirect page ?Sasanjan 18:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Turkism/Meimasism

How dare you even think about calling Turkism a joke. It is a religion like any other. I suggest you take it out of proposed deletion and apologise to us. Send your apology to triplem@goowy.com, fieldmarshalmiyagi@goowy.com, User Talk: Holy_triple_m, User Talk: Totalitarianregime.

We are warning you.

Ooh, I'm afraid. I'm very afraid. LambiamTalk 18:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Moya

I can see the reason for confusion. I was patrolling Special:Newpages and when I came upon the article Mark Moya there was already an existing article with the same content under Mark moya. This original article has now been deleted, leaving it impossible for you to see what this one was a duplicate of... Sorry. -- Llort 14:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Selectivity in Articles for Deletion

Selectively choosing articles to try and smear my name is in bad form. [4]--Jersey Devil 16:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, if you actually look at the articles that you chose for that, most of those kept were kept by no consensus. So implying that they were all "kept" and that my choosing them for deletion was incorrect, is also in bad form.--Jersey Devil 16:47, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For my reaction, see User talk:Lambiam/Jersey Devil's crusade against Striver#Selectivity and incorrect implication. --LambiamTalk 22:01, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moving over a redirect

You said: "I think anyone can do this move and swap the two ends of a redirect, but only if the target has a trivial page history" Yes, that's why I said, "actually, there's a little more to it — see m:Help:Moving a page for all the gory details". Peanuts (comic strip), in fact, doesn't have a trivial page history, so that's part of the reason why I didn't want to bring that issue into it. - dcljr (talk) 21:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

The Barnstar of Good Humor
This barnstar is awarded to Lambiam by Icarus3 for this funny comment in a AfD that's being conducted civilly, but is just touchy enough to really benefit from an injection of humor. --Icarus 19:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and Article 301

Please can we progress the conversation in the section Talk:Genocides in history#Disputed_section: Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and Article 301? --Philip Baird Shearer 01:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, my root! (Julius Evola)

Thanks, Lambiam, for fixing the spelling on the Julius Evola page. Most of those errors were not mine, but although i had re-read the page eight times or more during a co-operative rewriting session that occurred a few days ago, my eyesight is such that i did not catch them. Your work is much appreciatd. Catherineyronwode 19:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]