User talk:Psychonaut/Archive 1

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

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Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 18:15, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Commas as thousands separators

Read Comma (punctuation)#Numbers. The use of commas as a thousands separator is very common in nealy all English speaking nations. This is also the English Wikipedia so we follow English usage. --mav 09:46, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vanity

Thanks. I've been meaning to do it for a while. Bmills 09:50, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Another Arthur T. Murray page

Just noticed your troubles over in Artificial intelligence, and found this article which appears to be an undisturbed promotion of Murray's book and program: Modularity of Mind. Any value to this? Bryan 09:54, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I've proposed all Murray-penned articles for deletion. —Psychonaut
'Kay. 132.205.154.117 added a link to Modularity of Mind and also to Jerry Fodor and Language of Thought to Cognitive science, is that related crackpottery? Sorry to pester with minutiae, but I've never payed attention to Mentifex when it showed up on newsgroups before so I don't know any of the details. :) Bryan 16:23, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Given that the Modularity of Mind article appears to have been written by Arthur T. Murray, it's possible he added the links. However, there doesn't seem to be anything kooky about the links; Jerry Fodor is inteed a professor at Rutgers. Thanks for being vigilant, though… If you want to fight in the never-ending battle against Murray's kookery, please help me monitor the Artificial Intelligence page, which Murray is currently vandalizing once or twice a day. You can also cast your votes for deleting Murray's vanity articles on the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page. Note that Murray has access to a number of ISP accounts (most of them free services); most of them are located in the Vancouver and Seattle areas, though lately he's been making changes to Wikipedia from AOL IPs. —Psychonaut 16:50, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Votes away, and watchlisting Artificial Intelligence. Glad to do my small part. :) Bryan 03:00, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is that message on my talk page typical of Murray's behavior? I'm not quite sure why he singled me out for that treatment. . . --No-One Jones (talk) 10:01, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Speaking in Latin? Yes, very typical. Trying to endear himself to total strangers based on the most tenuous of links? Yes, also very typical. Messages full of self-promotion which do not actually address the matter at hand? Yep, sounds like Arthur T. Murray to me. —Psychonaut 12:25, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Colin Thatcher

I just followed a link off the main page to Colin Thatcher (in the new articles section) and I wanted to let you know I though it was great. I was a bit surprised at first as I expected it to be about a relation of Margaret Thatcher's, but it's well-written and informative. If you could find a picture of him to upload it'd be pretty much perfect! fabiform | talk 21:46, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! There are a few pictures of Thatcher floating around the web, most of them stills from CBC news footage. I don't know if it would be permissible to use them on Wikipedia, though, due to copyright considerations. If there's a precedent for this, though, point me to it, and I'll grab one of the existing images. —Psychonaut 21:57, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Well, there's the fair use law, which I think most pictures of a politician in an encyclopedia would come under. If I were you'd I'd find a good one online and then type {{msg:fairuse}} on the image description page. By the way, I followed the link in the article, and I think it said that his ex-wife was remarried, I don't think you mentioned that, never having heard of them before I don't know who's correct.  :) fabiform | talk 20:28, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'm still skeptical about the "Fair use" bit with regards to lifting press photos... anyway, with respect to JoAnn, yes, she was born JoAnn Geiger, became JoAnn Thatcher upon her marriage to Colin, and was subsequently known as JoAnn Wilson after she divorced Colin and remarried. The remarriage bit I didn't consider too relevant to the basic story, but I'm planning to write a stubbish article on JoAnn where I will mention it. Psychonaut 14:25, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's just you've called her his estranged wife - doesn't that imply they were still married, but separated? I'll see if I can find a picture of him, I'm curious to know what he looks like!  :) fabiform | talk 14:31, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Not necessarily. According to Merriam–Webster, "ESTRANGE implies the development of indifference or hostility with consequent separation or divorcement <his estranged wife>." I guess "ex-wife" works too, though it's not nearly so eloquent. :) —Psychonaut 15:17, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Something you might be interested in...

Just thought you'd be interested in the Psychonaut article I created, for obvious reasons. As it's your username, you most likely have some more information on the subject than I (even though I know nothing about the process of drying grain) and I welcome you to take a peek and make some edits as you see fit. DryGrain 08:46, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Fascinating! You even listed the relatively obscure and now quite reclusive William White. Too bad I'm not famous enough to be listed. :( Psychonaut 12:18, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Malicious Deletion Attempt

Hello. Sorry for the imposition, but I thought you might be interested to note that an article you supported in the past on vfd has been listed again under malicious circumstances - the 3rd such attempt in 7 months. Please feel free to review the discussion and cast your vote as you feel appropriate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Atlantium --Gene_poole 10:58, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thesis topic...

Yeah. But I'm sick of the forum itself. If I wanted to argue with anarcho-caps all the time there are half a dozen pages here that I could I go edit... Sorry for putting that first comment on your user page rather than talk. Newbie error. Mattley 23:21, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Prominent marxists

I'm trying to expand and save Prominent marxists, which is on votes for deletion. Thought you might like to take a look. It could do with a better title, and I suppose it could grow too large in time, but I think it adds something. Mattley 21:16, 28 Nov 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 2000 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:

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:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

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:
{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

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)

Too speedy speedy deletion :)

Sorry, guess I jumped my gun. The main reason was that the title - if one hasn't heard about the Hungarian group, sounds very much like a personal vanity page (Houshuang rulez!) etc... Hou Shuang 02:31, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

thanks for keep vote

on the finnugor page. As you can see, the uralic and finnougric page are completely monopolized by hippo and mustafa. They think, they keep the stone of the wises in their hand, and all others are idiots, and therefore they can be as vandalistic, as they like. You can check that, try to write something onto that page, that does not support their dogma. That's the problem, and thats why critique cannot go there. Antifinnugor 08:42, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

81.157

I don't agree with his contributions to the Chick article either, but we should probably let 81.157 blank his talk page if he wants to. He's an anon, but it's still his page, sort of. Rhobite 20:33, Jan 14, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee case opening

You have been named as a disputant in the recently opened Charles Darwin/Lincoln dispute case brought before the Arbitration Committee. You may wish to add evidence to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Charles Darwin/Lincoln dispute/Evidence to support your case. -- Grunt   ҈  03:33, 2005 Jan 25 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee case opening

The case against JarlaxleArtemis has been accepted by the Arbitration Committee. Please bring evidence to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/JarlaxleArtemis/Evidence. Thank you. -- Grunt   ҈  16:25, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)

Record label merger

If you want any help in merging the two lists, or want to divy it up, let me know.siafu 03:17, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee ruling

The case against JarlaxleArtemis has closed. Please read the final decision for details. -- Grunt   ҈  23:06, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

Banned films

Must be an edit attribution bug. All I did was add Category:Films. This is the 4th time it's happened to me now... Xezbeth 18:14, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Voting Warschau/Warsaw

Hi. Since you have edited on pages with disputes about the names of German/polish locations, I would invite you to vote on Warsaw/Vote to settle the multi-year dozends-of-pages dispute about the naming of Warschau/Warsaw and other locations.--Schlesier 08:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vote on Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg

As you may or may not be aware, Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg is up for deletion. I'm never one to electioneer, and I deplore the necessity of contacting you, but Achilles has contacted all the "delete" voters from the previous autofellatio image debate; and since that has already been done, I didn't think fairness would be served if the "keep" voters were not also contacted. I have attempted to contact only those people who have not voted in the current debate, but the information was hard to sift through by hand and I may have made a mistake. If I have, I apologize. Cheers to you! Demi T/C 19:37, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)


Musk Oxen

Hi Psychonaut,

I am well aware that English is not German! The capitalisation of species names is a well-established convention, particularly so in the higher taxa, and is not done without good reason. We capitalise the formal common name of a particular exact species. We do not capitalise the names of groups of species, nor do we capitalise descriptive terms. When you think it through, this makes good sense and is essential to avoid ambiguity.

For example, if I write I saw a black rat today it tells you that I saw a dark-coloured creature of the genus Rattus and of unspecified species. But if I write I saw a Black Rat today, this tells you something entirely different: it means I saw a creature of unspecfied colour, but that it was Rattus rattus, the Black Rat. Similarly, a laughing kookaburra could be any of the four species of kookaburra giving its usual territorial call, but a Laughing Kookaburra is always Dacelo novaeguineae and never Dacelo gaudichaud, Dacelo leachii, or Dacelo tyro.

Now if we were talking about a group of species — hopping mice, for example, then you are entirely correct to insist on lower case (except, of course, where there is a proper noun contained within the group name: Australo-Papuan babblers, for example). But individual species names within that group are identified as such. For scientific names, we italicise and capitalise the genus, not the species: e.g., Malurus cyaneus. For common names, we capitalise all words except those immediately after hyphens: e.g., Superb Fairy-wren.

The Musk Ox is a particular exact species, and as such, it is always capitalised. Note also that we often say (for example) "the Musk Ox is ..." If we were not talking about a particular exact species, that would be quite wrong. We would never say "the dabbling ducks is ..." But in the case of a single species, it is quite correct to speak of the members of that species in the singular. Thus we have:

The Wedge-tailed Eagle is ...

but,

Eagles of the genus Aquilla are ...

BTW, while I was typing this, I see that you have messaged me. Thanks for listening.

Best regards,

Tannin 09:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Trot

Hi, when moving pages, please do not forget to fix redirects. Mikkalai 06:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Galloway

Point taken about Brent Galloway. I checked the Sto:lo website and agree that it is fair to have him included as a link in the article. It would be best to work this into the text in some way. Sunray 07:07, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

However, as I reflect further, I think that the article should say a whole lot more about the Sto:lo before it talks about some non-Sto:lo linguist. Sunray 20:53, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

Ferrets

So, you have a ferret! I have been wanting one, and I would just like some ferret-keeping tips. You don't have to write back. It's not that important, or Wikipedia-related. Steveo2

Re: Request for Arbitration against User:JarlaxleArtemis

This message is to inform you that a Request for Arbitration has been initiated against the user JarlaxleArtemis. Since you have been affected by this user's behaviour [1], you are invited to join yourself to the proceedings and/or present evidence at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/JarlaxleArtemis_2/Evidence. —Psychonaut 29 June 2005 15:46 (UTC)

I've added my evidence to the evidence section. Note that my evidence is relatively limited and is not sufficient on its own to support the case. Kelly Martin June 29, 2005 15:49 (UTC)
I added something recently as well. Thanks for informing me. I was busy with college assignments at the time, so I was forced to ignore it. But I hope I wasn't too late. And I found that you had done most of the work for me anyway, as you had provided the diffs in your own report - thanks! Ann Heneghan (talk) 11:48, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Copy prevention

Hi Psychonaut - I wanted to give you a heads up; I am planning to move Copy prevention back to copy protection; I have put the issue up at Wikipedia:Requested moves with my rationale (as well of course on the article's Talk page). I wanted to give you a chance to see my comments, since you were the one who moved it where it's currently at. Regards - Tempshill 22:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

oops=

Oh, sorry, I thought I was on you talk page o_0

Jarlaxle

Hey, Psychonaut!

Would you be able to jump on IRC? I'd like to talk to you concerning my recent discovery of Jarlaxle's harrassment of me. I'm on irc.freenode.net #wikipedia as Linuxbeak.

Cheers, Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 21:55, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

My harrassment of you? How ironic… ‡ Jarlaxle 05:12, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for revent vandalism

Thanks, I just wanted delete vandalism from IP 207.190.183.35 in Entomology and Cattle, but you did it 3 minutes before me :) Thanks a lot. Goliathus 17:35, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Impersonation

Hi, Psychonaut. I know you're an established user, and I have seen some of your contributions, so when I discovered this morning that "you" had vandalized my user page, I knew immediately that it wasn't you. The account seems to be User:Psych%CE%BFnaut, but it appears on the screen as User:Psychonaut. You can see in the history of the vandal's user page that he stole the contents of your user page too. Just thought you should know. Regards. Ann Heneghan (talk) 10:49, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

EXIT_SUCCESS

Good job! – Hokanomono 17:04, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Final decision reached

The arbitration committee has reached a final decision in the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/JarlaxleArtemis 2 case. →Raul654 17:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Block

Sorry, I blocked you momentarily by mistake - the huge volume of page moves turned up on Cool_Cat's IRC bot, but it appears to have been a false alarm. — Dan | Talk 22:05, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

En-dash police

Thanks for correcting the name of Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem. I recently added that usage to dash, but haven't seen it in the name of any other pages. Let's hear it for good typography. —BenFrantzDale 04:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

More on endash

I just wonder why you replace the ASCII dash with the ndash. Was there any discussion about that? Oleg Alexandrov 02:20, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

ASCII has no dash; it has only the hyphen (-). In English, noun–noun compounds typically take an en dash. I'm not aware of any discussion about it on Wikipedia, but it's been standard practice in English for hundreds of years. —Psychonaut 02:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
The use of dashes and hyphens is discussed at length in the talk page of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes), which says:
In the interests of Wikipedia:Wikilove and pending a proposed update of the Wikimedia software that will automatically convert strings of hyphens into the appropriate correct en- and em dashes, editors are encouraged to be accepting of others' dash preferences and not to modify a chosen style arbitrarily in the same way as they would refrain from arbitrarily changing "artefact" to "artifact" (or vice versa).
Do you think that moving large numbers of articles to "ndash" titles is consistent with this policy ? Gandalf61 14:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I think you should rather stop. This is by the way that kind of very big changes which in the future you should not attempt to do without consultation, especially that your move is very hard to reverse (that is, imagine you are asked to move all those articles back). Oleg Alexandrov 14:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
That section refers only to semantic dashes—like this—not to other hyphen-like glyphs so Psychonaut's changes are consistant with that policy. —BenFrantzDale 16:13, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

We are not talking about "dash preferences" here; we are talking about replacing gramatically incorrect hyphens with dashes. A "dash preference", to my mind, would be something like the American predeliction for using em dashes to set off parenthetical comments versus the British preference for using an en dash with space on either side. For most noun–noun compounds and all number ranges (e.g., "1914–1918"), a hyphen is always incorrect. I (and numerous other editors) have been fixing the latter for years without complaint; I don't quite understand your objection to fixing the former as well. —Psychonaut 15:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree. When I read "Nyquest–Shanon", I see an adjective indicating that something was created by Nyquest and Shanon together. When I see "Nyquest-Shanon", I wonder "what's a Shanon and why is 'Nyquest' being used to modify it?" That said, I'm not sure of a style guide that says this explicitly. I do know that this is how any good science text hyphenates this sort of construction so I don't see why Wikipedia should settle for lower standards. —BenFrantzDale 15:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. Use of the en dash is particularly important when forming compounds with proper names which are themselves hyphenated. For example, if John Major and David Benson-Pope were to together develop some political theory, it would be known as the Major–Benson-Pope Theory. If it had been instead written as the Major-Benson-Pope Theory, people would be misled into thinking that it was developed by one person named Major-Benson-Pope, or perhaps three separate people named Major, Benson, and Pope. —Psychonaut 16:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Pyschonaut : you say "For most noun–noun compounds ... a hyphen is always incorrect". Can you cite a reference for this ? All the style guides that I can find define very specific circumstances in which an endash is used instead of a hyphen (date ranges and other numeric ranges; open compounds; compounds in which one or both terms are already hyphenated), not the wholesale replacement that you are advocating. Gandalf61 16:36, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I can, but I'm currently overseas attending a conference, so I don't have access to my books. I'll find some references for you after I get back on the 12th, and won't change any more page titles in the meantime. —Psychonaut 16:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Did a quick survey of maths books on my bookshelf. As a general rule, textbooks tend to use en dash in compounds of mathematicians names whereas popular books (e.g. Marcus du Sautoy's The Music of the Primes) use hyphens. One book uses en dash in sub-heads but hyphens in body text. All of the books use hyphens in noun-noun compounds where no names were involved (e.g. alpha-beta pruning). As far as web-sites are concerned, both MacTutor History of Mathematics and MathWorld use only hyphens, never en dash. So the use of en dash seems to be a question of publisher's style, rather than a general standard. On this basis, I think article names should be left alone.
Should we perhaps move this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics to involve a wider audience ? Gandalf61 09:21, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Replied on my talk page, thanks/wangi 16:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Steelpan

Can you explain why the claim is "patently false". Thanks. Guettarda 01:02, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Apart from the absurdity of no musical progress being made in the past hundred years, a few minutes of browsing Category:Musical instruments turned up several acoustic instruments invented in the 20th century. Among many others are the stroh violin, daxophone, vertical viola, heckelphone, Irish bouzouki, flumpet, superbone, xaphoon, tubax, and the keyed didgeridoo. —Psychonaut 01:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, but it is very widely reported as the only musical instrument invented in the 20th C. They appear to be modifications of existing instruments, not something completely new. Guettarda 03:13, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Lots of urban legends are widely reported; that doesn't make them true. And I assure you, the daxophone at least is quite unlike any other musical instrument, at least any that I can think of. Go visit the inventor's web page (there's a link from the article) and listen to the sound samples. :) —Psychonaut 15:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Commons:Village_pump#User:Psychonaut

You or someone impersonating you left a message on the Commons:Village pump. I'm sure that you have tried this, but just in case you didn't... I wonder if you could be commons:User:Psychonaut? You may have forgotten creating the account. If so, you might try logging in as Psychonaut and selecting the Mail me a new password button, in case you entered your email address. If that doesn't work, you might try your likely passwords. -Walter Siegmund (talk) 18:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Harvard-Westlake

What evidence are you using for putting Harvard-Westlake as a "defunct military school?" Kiwidude 23:03, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Harvard Military School redirects to Harvard-Westlake School, so I presume they are the same institution, or at least that the latter is a descendant of the former. If you know this not to be the case, then please delete both the category link and the redirect page. —Psychonaut 23:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
I'don't believe that's the case.Kiwidude 23:14, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps you should ask whoever created the redirect. Perhaps they have information that we don't. —Psychonaut 23:27, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Harvard-Westlake was originally two separate schools, and Harvard School for Boys was founded as a military school in 1900.[2]+[3] Let me know if you need more info! jengod 07:26, 7 November 2005 (UTC)