This is an archive of past discussions with User:SMcCandlish. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Sincerest apologies, I must've hit the bold button by accident. I in no way meant to vandalize or experiment with the article.--NPswimdude50022:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Kinda what I guessed, which is why I used Test1 (the mildest) and commented WP:AGF-wise that I figured it was probably just a slip-up, not an intentional goofing. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ
Sankyu beddy mush! If you have any favorite pages that aren't in it, feel free to add them, of course. I do think it might be a good idea to keep the pool line from wrapping at sane window widths though. Or, contrariwise maybe we should just expand the thing silly. Kind of a tossup. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ23:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Eventually there will be many more article. I think its good to list most, but maybe deference should be given to two factors: complete articles and how far along articles are. What I mean is, cowboy pool is not nearly as prominent as other games, but it's a complete article; Bank pool is far more prominent but it's far from complete; both deserve a place. But where an article is obscure and incomplete, maybe it should not be included? What do you think? Anyway, for artistic, I fixed the link and think it would be better under the full name, but doing so makes it wrap--once we get a few more articles, it won't look stupid on the next line. Once we have many, maybe the text size can be reduced? By the way, I'm going to be writing finger billiards over the next few days (weeks?); we'll see.--Fuhghettaboutit23:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
That all sounds emminently sensible. PS: WRT finger billiards/hand pool, I know that Shamos covered it in semi-depth in one of his BD columns, I think some time ca. 2002-4, but it could have been much older (I subscribe myself, but I also bought a pack of 1980s issues off of eBay at one point...
Re. your comment at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 2#Category:Canadian historical figures as to my signature height. I'm not certain what the problem is—do you mean the height of the physical letters? I don't think that they are very much higher than is usual. Do you perhaps refer to my habit of including a clear line between my comment and the signature? (As I will now proceed to illustrate :) )
Not higher than is usual? You're using 18px type, which on my monitor is rendered at about 18-20 point type! It causes the line spacing to look funny, and is very distracting otherwise (not as bad as <blink> would be, of course, but still... Just asking for some moderation. I use a custom sig too, so I'm not trying to say don't customize. Images were banned from sigs for pretty much the same reason. Don't give them a reason to ban something else. >;-) PS: Using pixel sizes in fonts in web pages is generally a deprecated practice; use relative instead. Try something like "font-size:120%" (please, not 150, 200, etc.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ16:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
PS: Same goes for the 14px; try 100% or 110% at most. It is presently rendering roughly twice the size of other text on the page (on my system; for others it may well even be worse, since I don't have a particularly high screen resolution!) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ16:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I've fiddled about with it a little—how does it look now?
Better, thank you. The "damr" part, though in a WP-unique font, is about the same height as the default WP typeface, and the big X is still kinda big, but it and the superscripted "talk" seem to be about the same height as any superscript would be, so it won't mess with vertical line spacing all that much. Gracias. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'd go too far with that. At least the Biblical polygamists cat. seems to have merit, since it's of limited scope, 100% verifiable, and NPOV, in that it's not trying to label living people by their sexual practices. The ones for doing the latter, though, I can't see any encyclopedically valid reason to keep them, any more than a "Canadians who go down" or "Chinese people fond of transvestites" cat. May say as much over at CfD, if the debate looks like it needs more input. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Re:List of WPA World Nine-ball Champions
Per your edit summary question - Since the girls' and boys' junior champions are decided at the same tournament, I kept them together. More of a stylistic choice, since I don't think there needs to be two separate tables for the junior champs. --cholmes75(chit chat)21:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah! Just for my own edification, can you tell me which is which? I don't think any of the players listed are notable enough to have articles (yet?), and some of the names seem ambiguous enough or just too foreign for me to be certain my interpretation is correct. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
PS: Please join WikiProject Cue sports! We could use someone of your attention to detail and obvious love of the game to help improve the pool articles. The WProj is coming along nicely as far as organization and resources go, we just don't have enough hands on deck. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for upgrading my comment. "However, Godwin's Law can itself also be abused, as a distraction or diversion, to fallaciously miscast an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparison it made were actually appropriate." Excellent! 01:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Glad you liked it. I saw the your point clearly, just wanted it to be made a bit more encyclopedically. Someone who prefers Yankee grammar will probably revert my subjunctive to a "was" though. ;-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ03:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Just visited your User Page ... WoW! Well done. I learned alot about Wiki. I borrowed my new favorite box! Can you tell me where to find the boxes for how many countries we've visited? Thanks. Ilena21:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
We've started a participation drive for the remainder of February. If you can, please help clear the backlog by adopting the following goals each week:
I am curious to know if you would find the administrative tools of use. I was scanning the "Administrator hopefuls" category and your name came up as one I recognized from a recent edit; I've looked over some, though not all, of your contribution history and nothing so far presents any problem. You would be my first nominee, so if you are waiting for someone specifically/more experienced, that's fine as well. Of course if you're not interested any longer, that is your prerogative.. please let me know here or on my talk page when you get a chance. -- nae'blis16:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, actually, I've just been waiting for someone to do the nomination; I know some nominate themselves, but that seemed a little tacky to me (kind of like writing an article about oneself, heh). As you can probably tell from my edit history, to the extent that I am not working on actual article content (mostly in the WP:CUE realm, or discussing guideline text or template functions, I do endless gnome tasks like typo fixing, flagging POV issues, reverting vandalism, and so forth. I think both that this is good adminish stuff to be doing, and that admin status would help me do a lot of it more effectively. :-)
The admin tools, I suspect, would be of great help, especially if they can be used (as I suspect from a lot of the admin edit summaries and patterns I see) to make identical edits to a list of articles, and the like. Right now I'm manually tagging a bunch of articles with DEFAULTSORT, the "Chinese name" template, and other geeky things, and it's very time consuming.
Anyway, I appreciate your interest and faith. Where do we go from here? I know there is a page about the admin nomination process that I need to go re-read... As I recall there's a template that is customary to fill out, too, about one's Wikipedian activities, and so forth. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ16:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the repetitive edits are probably being done through something AutoWikiBrowser, which is a program you may find useful (I haven't myself signed up for it yet). Administrative tools simplify things like reverting vandalism through use of the automatic rollback button (one click/pageload, not three), seeing when a page has been deleted before when tagging it for speedy deletion, and allowing edits of protected pages in certain circumstances. Other than that, it will complicate and hassle your life here at Wikipedia, not simplify things. ;)
I'm a bit of a WikiGnome too, so I'll have to take a day or two to review your contributions a bit more before I'm quite ready. When I have, I'll drop you a note and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/SMcCandlish will turn blue (that's where you'll answer questions/brag about yourself, and then the RFA will start). In the meantime, I suggest you read through the guide for RFA candidates and keep doing what you're doing! -- nae'blis16:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm familiar with the rollback thing; there was actually a .js script that simulated its workings for non-admins, but it quit working last week. I only used it a couple of times, because I preferred to write personal notes on the offending user's Talk page, after adding a Welcome3 if it was missing, that sort of thing. Anyway, thanks for the references and such; will look them over tomorrow (need to finish my latest wave of WP geeking, do some offline chores, and then practice and go to an eight-ball league match tonight, so today is pretty much accounted for already. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ17:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
When you awaken, please find that the link above has turned blue. There are four questions for you to answer before we officially start the clock/link it to the main page, but let me know if you have any questions/clarifications on what I've written so far. -- nae'blis16:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi! You may recognize me from the pool glossary. I'm just continuing the discussion about linguistics from one of the threads there because it's a subject I'm interested in and it would be good to talk to someone who knows more about it than me. Yeah there's no doubting there are distinctly defined uses for argot, jargon and patois as the core senses of each term from a linguistic perspective, and perhaps such distinctions are necessary in this area of study. I was just saying that they are used interchangeably in the real world, and any good dictionary (e.g. the Oxford English Dictionary) will recognize this, giving similar subsenses to each entry. As a trained linguist I'm sure you'll appreciate the evolution of lexicography towards a reflection of ever-changing word uses through tools such as corpora (e.g. the British National Corpus) as opposed to the old rigid way of telling people "this is how to use this word". Doubtless there is a responsibility for reference texts to recognize correct/chief spellings, etc., and keep things like HIV and AIDS clearly defined (which is more to do with misunderstanding than shared use of terms with similar definitions, as a virus and a disease are inherently different things). It's a moot point on the other discussion page so I thought I'd respond to you directly, it would be nice to hear your thoughts on this. Kris11:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the terms are used imprecisely by many people, but not that they are synonymous except to certain individuals. Even in general usage, terms like slang, jargon, argot, patois, creole, etc. have at least shades of different meaning. Slang implies pop-culture or (negatively) "street" usage. Jargon implies technical or other term-of-art or (negatively) technobabble. Argot isn't a word most people use, and I couldn't really hazard a guess as to what people mean by it when they use it if they don't have a linguistic background; thinking back on some usages I've seen of this word in fiction, I believe the authors meant the same thing as "jargon" but not "slang". Patois to most people (on my half of the Pond) means English modified by French as in many Carribean countries, and creole (to the extent it doesn't refer to a long-standing mulatto subculture of Lousiana) means a mishmash of English and usually French but any other language really, such that it isn't really intelligible to English speakers even if they recognize some words. And so on. I'm sure the British general usage of some of these words is different than the American, but my point was that even in Britain, I'd bet there are meaning differences between them. In linguistics, the terms have precise meanings; for instance there is an objectively defined difference between a creole and a patois. And since the original discussion was about language, I don't see why not to use these narrower senses. Similarly, if I we'd been talking about legal terms of art like estoppel and pro per, I wouldn't call that "legal slang" but "legal jargon", even if the difference might be lost on some people. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ19:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
"Similarly, if I we'd been talking about legal terms of art like estoppel and pro per, I wouldn't call that "legal slang" but "legal jargon", even if the difference might be lost on some people." Agree completely. Thank you. Ilena19:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
OK well I never mentioned slang as a synonym, that still has a distinct enough use in British diction. We seem to be echoing the same sentiments as before so at the risk of going round in circles I'll quote the Oxford English Dictionary definitions to hopefully clarify my British perspective:
argot /ˈɑːgəʊ/ noun [mass noun] the jargon or slang of a particular group or class: teenage argot.
jargon /ˈdʒɑːg(ə)n/ noun [mass noun] special words or expressions used by a particular profession or group that are difficult for others to understand: legal jargon.
lingo noun the vocabulary or jargon of a particular subject or group of people.
patois /ˈpatwɑː/ noun (pl. same /-wɑːz/) the jargon or informal speech used by a particular social group: the raunchy patois of inner-city kids.
There are other specific definitions for the terms but those are the relevant subsenses and core senses of each for this discussion. So it would seem that us laypersons of Britain have used them interchangeably enough to influence the OED to define the terms with sufficient overlap to actually be recognizably interchangeable. The situation must be different in the US, a common problem and the source of much debate in Wikipedia as I know you will appreciate! The initial premiss for my mentioning it on the pool glossary discussion page was that there's no need to strictly label the language there in particular, with it not being all that relevant to the original discussion although I did find it interesting. Just for the record, I'm a scientist by trade and I love strict definitions, if it were up to me I'd define everything precisely with at least different shades of meaning for near-synonyms as you do, just have to accept that that's not the way things are any more though I suppose.
Take-home points for me: these terms do have distinct definitions in the appropriate circles; in the real world they're all usable in similar scenarios, and such subsenses of the terms are creeping into official usage; I wish it were different and agree with your perspective on keeping them separate. Kris10:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure the OED is particularly helpful here, as it is very slow-moving, and often imprecise, being more concerned (from what I can tell) with describing casual usage than precision usage (and yes, I do have it; micro-print edition; I'd love to have the full-size version, but I don't have that kind of money laying around. Heh.) Anyway, I do get your point that there is overlap in genera parlance. From the OED perspective, there "isn't" any difference at all between these words other than "jargon" never refers to slang. I think a lot of people would have problems with these definitions.
Anyway, to get back to your real point, if these terms are used more interchangeably in the UK than they are in the US, there is no harm at all in making them more specific/accurate to Yankee (virtual) ears, since there won't be any effect at all on British ones, if you see what I mean. I think this is especially true in the case of that article because most of the terms are jargon rather than slang (some are of course slangish — "action", "velcro", etc. — but they're in the minority"). And it's not that the OED-based usage of argot/patois/lingo would be wrong from an OED-based perspective, simply vague (the meaning of all three words in the the OED is basically "slang or jargon". :-) Anyway, glad we're not really arguing. Heh.
You have the Compact Oxford English Dictionary? Cool, so do I, small world – I suspect we probably belong to a small fraternity. Those definitions are from the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which is more up to date but still slow and yes, definitely more a general language usage lexicon than one providing technical terminology. I'd love the gilded, leather-bound, 21-volume beast as well but am probably poorer than you (palaeontology PhDs don't pay too well) so I'd have to go on Countdown and get lucky. I don't use my micro-print version that much because the light in my magnifying glass burnt out and I don't want to develop a strabismus. Kris16:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I think your changing of the template {{Vietnamese name}} rendered it useless. Like East Asian practice, the family name is given first, but unlike East Asian practice, the given name is the primary form of address. Vietnamese is written with the Latin alphabet, so there's no need to "transliterate" it. The purpose of the template was to explain to a Western reader why the person in the article is not referred to by their family name but by their given name, and discourage them from attempting to "fix" it (The Ngo Dinh Diem and Vo Nguyen Giap articles had that problem many times before the template was put up). A template that focuses exclusively on the family name is misleading, if not plain wrong for Vietnamese names. DHN20:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not entirely following you.
The template's language was when I got there (and now is again) ungrammatical/illogical.
It is equally helpful to readers to tell them that a V. name more correctly spelled with diacritics is often transliterated without them, and what the correct form really is, as to tell them that it is customary to use the given name when referring to someone.
I suspect you may not know what is quite meant by "transliterate" and "Latin alphabet". The uniquely diacritically-marked characters used in Vietnamese when written properly are emphatically not letters in the Latin Alphabet, or even in any of the ISO character sets for European more broadly. They are modifications of them, yes, but that's beside the point. Much of Cyrillic is also a modification of the Latin alphabet, but that doesn't make them Latin alphabet characters.
I think all of this begs a question: It is questionable that following Vietnamese preference/custom for using given names instead of family names is appropriate at all in an English-language encyclopedia. It is customary, very broadly, in Russia to call people named Dmitri by the name Dima; it is more than a nickname, but a custom strongly embedded into daily language. I don't think that Russian biography articles should use this custom, though. Just a similar (to me) example.
However, I really do not at all want to argue with you about this. If you think that the articles should use the Vietnamese custom, and that articles need to be templated in such as way to prevent reversal of it, I really don't have anything against that other than not entirely agreeing with it. I do feel strongly that the Vietnamese name templates mustalso serve the same function as the Chinese, Japanese and Korean ones. Given how few articles there are that would be affected, the change would be trivial. I think it could be done in about 5 minutes. Including fixing the grammar, here's my take, please let me know what you think:
This is a Vietnamese name; the family name is {{{1}}}, but is sometimes transliterated as {{{2}}}. According to Vietnamese custom, this person properly should be referred to by the given name {{{3}}}.
Plus a merge of the documentation, of course. If you prefer "personal name" instead of "given name", no objection from me.
I think this would satisfy both our needs, and I'll happily update all the articles myself unless you want to do it.
PS: I'm sorry that my edits messed up your system. The wording of the original template wasn't very clear, and it's usage as you intended it seemed mistaken, but I know see clearly what you were getting at. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ21:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I think this is an acceptable compromise. I don't have time to implement the changes right now so if you can please change it. Thanks. DHN21:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
BTW: I have no problem with putting Vietnamese names in Western order, but that's not the practice. Even in formal situations, Vietnamese people are referred to by their given name (the prime minister of Vietnam is uniformly referred to as Mr. Dung, not Mr. Nguyen), part of the reason is because of this. Thanks. DHN21:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Noted, but I don't want to monkey in any way with the ordering of the names in the articles, just explain which the family name is (mostly for use with regard to sports biographies and such; lists of players in tournaments will be alphabetized by family name, whatever order it appears in and whatever local custom might be in the nation of the player's origin). :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ21:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
In case there was any misunderstanding, I wasn't trying to impose a non-English way of referring to people in an English-language article, it's already the case in English (for example, see [2]). My purpose in creating the template was merely to explain why it was so. That's why the template was not included in articles about people whose names are already Westernized, such as Hong Tran, Van Tran, or Van Tuong Nguyen. DHN21:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the template should be included for Vietnamese who have their names in Westernized order, or who have a non-Vietnamese given name. This is done for the Chinese name entries. Making the second part of the template optional (i.e. not including a given name) will solve this. Does anyone know how to alter the template to do this? Badagnani21:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I think between the two of them we've got it covered. NB: I don't actually very often see the Chinese name, etc., templates used on articles in which the family name doesn't appear first. But it's not a big deal to me either way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ22:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Templates and all articles connected them have been updated (and many more tagged to use them). A copy of the above discussion has been added to the main template's talk page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ05:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
– Template documentation seems to please everyone fine as it stands now in 2010.
Thanks for the reply. I think when I clicked on the template it only brought me to the image, and not the description and talk pages. The link is back now. The template's been around for 10 months or so, and I'm surprised I'm only seeing it for the first time. I was a bit doubtful about it, because I can see some users pasting it in to guillotine an argument - but it's only an indicator with nothing final about it.--Shtove11:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Guillotine usage should be reverted and criticized. I think the template itself should be udpated with a note that such use would be abuse. I think it does already say that if anyone thinks a tagged topic is not resolved they should just remove the tag. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]?17:31, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! HagermanBot01:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Eh, please fix your bot to not leave messages like this on non-IP user talk pages that have existed more than a month. We all forget to type ~~~~ every now and then but don't need "welcome, newbie" messages about it. [comment ported to bot controller's talk page of course.]— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ03:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think it's a great bot when it comes to fixing what it fixes; it would just be coolio if was a little more clever when it came to tagging user talk pages with this notice, is all. I'm glad that it will fix it if I forget to leave a sig; what why I didn't opt out. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ20:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
<bow> Thanks! Nice to see someone noticed. I'm only about 1/3 done with the massive cleanup/tagging effort, but it proceeds apace. I've been interrupted by a rather unexpected RfA nomination, which I'm working on tonite. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Want to know how good our articles are? The assessment department is working on rating the quality of every biography article in Wikipedia.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask another fellow member, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome! We look forward to seeing you around! Mocko1322:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Both versons have been posted as deletedpages, and the site's founder does not endorse the site being referenced here, so I'm dropping out of the DRV bid. Sorry if i was misleading. Jeff Defender23:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
That's up to you; I have no interest in that article at all, positive or negative, only in disruptive behavior to promote the site here, and even more disruptive behavior against well-sourced articles on notable topics. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ01:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
So I see the point here is whether the notibility is subjective on both pages in question, I see. I salted (but not protected) all known versions of GR.net. Although I hoped for a better outcome, the webmaster told people not to attempt recreation, so count me out as well. NoInsurance (chat?) 11:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Sarcastic commentary like that is uncalled for. You are really actually beginning to disturb me, in that you are evidently an admin, but do not seem to understand WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:AGF, WP:VANDAL, WP:SOCK, and other core, basic guidelines used in AfD and elsewhere. Notabilty does not mean "I have heard of it", "I think it is important" or "I like it". Please actually read and understand these guidelines. There is nothing subjective about the primary notability criterion (PNC), that a subject be featured in multiple, independent, reliable sources. If the problem is simply that you haven't read WP:N in a long time, please do so. It has changed radically since Nov. 2006, to fix subjectivity and interpretability problems. While WP:N is not perfect yet, it works, but you seem to be operating on an early-2006 or earlier watery understanding of what "notability" means on Wikipedia - "fame, importance and/or popularity". Please see dead proposals at Wikipedia:Notability/Historical; all of those wishy-washy concepts have been laid to rest. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ19:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Marking this resolved, since the immediate issue went away. I'm still pissed that this sock/meat puppet and related sock/meat puppet managed to thoroughly sabotage my RfA, but oh well; I guess that's price some of us have to pay for vigilant vandalism, spam and NFT fighting, and defending notable articles against WP:POINT meritless vengeance AfDs by sockpuppets. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ08:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Page Fix
Resolved
Yes it helped, as the page was a bit sloppy. I am working with AxG on a major overhaul. but that helped to clean things up for th time being! Thanks!!!--Vox Rationis01:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Glad to hear it. :-) One thing I do in this vein is remember a "typical" tag of this sort, and simply copy-paste it from the original article, which I keep open in another window. I use Talk:Marlon Manalo for this purpose, for sportspeople, and paste in the WPBIO banner from there, but remove the attention needed parameter if the article is not flagged with any dispute tags. I find that pretty expedient. I'm sure others use a text file with commonly-used snippets like that, or a macro. Any method works, as long as there's a method. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ06:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I copy and paste tags usually, to save time as well. Also: a comment about your comment about mini-games. A mini-game is a small game in a video game. Mario Party is a good example of a video game with lots of mini-games. A mini-game is also known as a party game. Alot of the time mini games/party games can be played with several people at once. The whole arguement is basically over listcruft, and how mass lists of games (or even lists of examples) shouldn't be listed. RobJ198106:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I get it. "Easter egg games", in other words. Pretty old concept, actually. I remember playing ASCII-art IBM PC adventure games that had them in it. There was one goofy space adventure one, where they only way to get on to the rest of the game was to cheat at gambling. You had to gamble on this very poor-odds slot machine, with something like only $10, and save if you won and reload from savegame if you lost, and keep doing this for hours and hours until you had the $10,000 or so required to buy the spaceship you needed. It was memorable. Not sure it was notable though. >;-) PS: I'm kvetching at the guy doing rampant experimentation with the {{FindSources}} template. Perhaps it will stabilize. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ06:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
User Talk:Wakemp
Resolved
I have repeated asked nicely for this page not to be reverted. It was deleted with Admin approval. I left for a reason and I do not want the page recreated. Please refer to WP:VAN , Talk page vandalism “The above rules do not apply to a user's own talk page, where this policy does not itself prohibit the removal and archival of comments at the user's discretion.“. Further edits will result in Vandalism warnings being posted on your talk page Wakemp00:57, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Why does it even matter if you are apparently "gone" from Wikipedia? I think you are making a big deal out of nothing Wakemp. RobJ198101:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
OK. Nothing you were indicating appeared to be an invocation of M:Right to vanish until this very moment, and per the very WP:VAN you cite, you appeared to be simply removing warnings, which is often resisted. So, I guess, uh good bye and good luck whatever you are doing elsewhere. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ03:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the way the FA/GA levels tie in with WikiProject assessments has always been a somewhat strange point. In any case, I suspect leaving off the text will work just as well in practice; it's not like we have hordes of people trying to stick FA-Class assessments on random articles and such. Kirill Lokshin02:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
More power to you. I'm pretty nit-picky, but I prefer to expend my energies on sorting rather than guidelines, so I'll be happy to look on. I was just tired of the whole go-round, and I hope everyone can Get On With It now. <g> Cheers, Her Pegship (tis herself)23:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Me too. Moved for likewise closure of the related SfD, mostly on policy grounds this time, as WSS/NG does not in fact contradict the proposal at all. I think NG can be cleaned up rather easily. No time for it tonite, but maybe in the next couple of days I'll toss up a draft at NG/Draft or something. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Cue Sports/Billiards Article improvements
Resolved
I just wanted to say thanks so much for all that you've done over the past months on the (now) Cue sport page. It has changed drastically and in a good way! The plethora of information was very unorganized before and now that there are templates and resolutions of different discussions all over the place, it makes it a much easier environment to develop for other WP contributors. Thanks so much again, and if I knew where to find those barn stars, I'd give one to you! --68.239.240.14404:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I removed your proposed deletion of thagomizer as, well, I objected. Considering that the information was both referenced and intersting, not vanity or nonsence (as well as quite well liked) it isn't suitable for proposed deletion. If you feel it should be deleted I suggest that you nominate it at AFD. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk01:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
That's fine; I put prod on it to see if anyone cared about it enough to save it within a week. I'm not opposed to the article sufficiently to AfD it, though I think it dreadfully needs to be moved to the correct term and rewritten to be a serious article instead of a Gary Larson fan piece. I'm sure others will figure that out too, and deal with it (I've done nothing but gnoming all day long, so I'm not inclined to tackle it myself. Tired! :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ01:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that, as the article states, the word has become "part of the serious scientific literature".[3] (link from Palaeos.com, technical). There's no other term for it (the spines are highly modified osteoderms and the tail itself is composed of caudal vertebrae, but I've never seen a word for the whole unit outside of "Thagomizer", and the paleontologists on the Dinosaur Mailing List use it amongst themselves). Best wishes, Firsfron of Ronchester02:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the science needs to be ramped up and the emphasis on the cartoon reduced. Regretably I'm a ornithologist not a paleontologist, but I'll try and do some research and improve it. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk06:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'm more bewildered than skeptical at this point. It's as if there were no scientific word for "head", only for "eyes" and "cheeks" and... <fzzt spark pop> ..does not compute...DOES NOT COMPUTE <BANG!> But I'll take your majority words for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ07:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Heh. Thge thing about science is that there are multiple words. Probably more than one for thagomizer. BTW I don't want you to think that I said that you acted wrongly for nominating thagomizer the way you did, as you said you did it right, I just wanted to explain my reasoning when I removed the tag. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk08:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder. I'm normally more diligent about providing some sort of summary, but I've gotten a little lazy in not providing one when I change one letter for spelling or punctuation or something like that. That said, I'll make a better effort to get back in that habit. 70.145.159.1218:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Noted. Replied in the negatory. What you are proposing is simply not done. It is not fair to other editors to destroy their edit history on an article just because your version is purportedly (and in this case clearly and actually) better. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ07:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
There is only one real revision. The others are just maintenance tags or pointers to the new article. What about fairness to the contributers to the new article? —Dgiestc07:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
The fact that there is one real revision is the end of the story. I have no idea what you are talking about with "fairness to the contributors to the new article"; your revision of merging the article in will be in the history. If you are talking about revisions by yourself in your sandbox, no one at all, anywhere, period on WP cares. If you mean revisions by other people to the version in your sandbox, and you think someone may care, which is quite possible, then you need to do a merge proposal, so that the edit histories are merged, by the admin who closes the merge proposal. Another route would be to AfD or SD the original stub as worthless (an iffy proposition) and then create a new article (which can raise people's hackles.) Regardless, what you have is definitely not an uncontroversial move proposal. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ08:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Why are you making such a big deal of this? It should have been a simple case of replacing a stub with a real article but you're wasting both our time. Yes, I know all about AfD and proposed mergers, but it seems a huge waste of time to preserve a single line which has been entirely superseded by the new article. WP:IAR exists precisely to keep the rules from preventing people from making common-sense improvements. —Dgiestc08:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm making a "big deal" out of this because what you are trying to do is wrong. This is emphatically not how we replace stubs with larger articles around here; and you are unintentionally or otherwise misusing Requested moves's "speedy" process. The real question is why are you making a big deal out of it instead of following long-standing consensus procedures? My ability to WP:AGF is getting a bit strained here. Your interest in appearing (falsely) to be the original creator of the article on Wikipedia is beginning to look rather too high. Just get over it. I worked on Three-ball for months only to have someone create a very lacking stub a day before I was going to go "live" with it, and this hasn't harmed me or anyone else in any way. So it goes in a place where anyone can edit virtually anything at any time. Anyway, I don't see any point to us having the same argument in two different places. You don't need to have usertalk debates with everyone who disagrees with you in XfD processes; those forums are already forums, for a reason. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ08:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I never claimed to be the creator of the new article. I'm simply arguing that it makes sense to short-circuit "process" when it provides no real benefit. While WP:IAR is not a license to do anything, don't forget, it is a pillar. —Dgiestc08:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Process provides benefit here - honestly preserving one or more other editor's work, which you are, in my view, unbelievely and inexplicably devaluing. If you are not willing to follow process, you're not in a position to wave it at other people. And please read it more closely before you do. WP:IAR can be invoked when process is getting in the way of making Wikipedia a better encyclopedia; this is so not the case with regard to Wikipedia:Requested moves here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ08:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Sigh. We're not getting anywhere. I will WP:AGF that you just have a more stringent interpretation of when to follow policy if you will AGF that I was simply trying to save effort on what looked like a simple move of a new contributers article. Truce? —Dgiestc08:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Here we go again then. I've tried to be as civil with you as possible (while still being firm), but you're pushing my limits with your false claim that I supported yoru AfD action, which I specifically said would be a poor idea because it was unlikely to succeed and would not be received very well. Whatever. You're digging yourself into this hole, and there's nothing I can do about it at this point. I've opposed your AfD on procedural grounds again. T a k e i t t o P M . — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ12:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
PS: WP:PM is almost invariably faster than WP:AFD, especially when there's a bunch of support and no opposition. Again, I'll be happy to be one of the first supporters. I want you to understand that there is no personal component to this, and I'm not "out to get you" or any such nonsense (BTW, I think your article is quite good.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ12:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I interpreted this comment as you suggesting it was OK to AfD it. If I misinterpreted you, I'm sorry. Since you care so strongly about merging, how about you list it at proposed mergers and I'll withdraw the AfD. —Dgiestc15:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
When you do the WP:RM you may need to ask for a WP:SPLICE as part of the merge, or it might get merged as one new edit, losing the edit history stuff you are trying to preserve. Actually you can probably just do this in WP:SPLICE itself, since the actual content side of the merge would only be opposed by a total nutter! And again, let me know and I'll go support it. I think your article is vastly better, and as Fughettaboutit said, it's a good WP:DYK candidate. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ22:30, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I appear to have left you 'hanging' in a number of fora for some time: sorry about that. I've been distracted by some "RL" matters of late, and truth to tell, several on-wiki issues are getting disproportionately stressing, and a mini-break from them has been no bad thing. I'll try and return to them as soon as possible, though. Talking of which... as you were generous enough to agree with me (not to say the MoS) on punctuation style issues, if you have a moment, perhaps you might drop in on Talk:Harold Pinter, and try to explain, where I'm evidently failing, to one editor in particular why insisting on a US-specific style, on an article about a UK writer, no less -- isn't such a great idea. (My not-so-subtle idea here being, that an intervention from a US editor might be more clearly seen as an argument for style consisency, rather than an anti-US (or is it anti-humanities?) style putsch.) Alai21:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
No problem. I had to move internationally and cross-continent not long ago. RL happens! Also understand the disproportionately stressing bit (I got a surprise RfA nom, which went south very quickly after one opposer blatantly lied, and a couple of others opposed based on factually incorrect but emotionally string-plucking "evidence", including a convincing sounding sockpuppet out for vengeance, with the result that I went from about 21/2/2 to 30/19/1 in the matter of a few hours. Heh. I didn't expect to pass, because I'm too abrasive for some people, but I'd rather be rejected on a factual basis!) Sorry if I have been abrasive. I've found SfD and WSS/P to be incredibly frustrating, to the point that I was about a hair's breadth away from invoking WP:IAR for the first time, ever. But all this stressiness got me to (literally) just go look in the mirror and say "is that stuff why you are at WP? Is this worth your time? In 100 years will anyone care?", after I'd written a rant intended for WP/WSS's talk page. Then I came back and did the WSS/NC overhaul instead. :-) Will look in on the Pinter argument. There's pretty clear policy stuff to cite on this - UK subject presumbly original started by UK people, don't Yankeeize. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ21:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Helping out with the Unassessed Wikipedia Biographies
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Seeing that you are an active member of the WikiBiography Project, I was wondering if you would help lend a hand in helping us clear out the amount of [unassessed articles] tagged with {{WPBiography}}. Many of them are of stub and start class, but a few are of B or A caliber. Getting a simple assessment rating can help us start moving many of these biographies to a higher quality article. Thank you! --Ozgod22:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Whew. This is where I get confused here on Wiki. There is another blog entry there -- Zonk (2007-02-17). Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat. can't-the-nazis-stay-out-of-just-one-internet-argument. Slashdot.org.-- Is this one okay to stay? I'd like to see them both myself. I love this article and want it to be more expansive. Thanks ... you're doing a great job there. Ilena(chat)22:55, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Couldn't say. Slashdot isn't really a blog, it's something else, and it's very notable. I'm not sure that use of GL on slashdot is particularly notable though. But that entry in the article has survived for a long time, so I guess no one has a problem with it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ22:59, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Anything in particular you want my input on? The debate seems pretty well in hand to me; you've made the clear point that the template shouldn't be used for names like "Richard Chan", nor when the article itself already makes it clear what the surnames is. Seems like not really much of a big deal. Niohe doens't like it, but...oh well. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ04:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
My current dispute is with Badagnani, who wants this template used on every single ethnic Chinese person. I'm having an edit war over it.--Jiang05:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Thankyou for your input. I now realise how the phrase is not a Neoglism. Please accept my apologies and my assurances that my intentions were in good faith. I am only dedicated to the truth and justice of all mankind. If you have any ideas on how I can improve this article I am more than willing to take onboard ideas. :) Prester John08:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Um, no, I used a standard user-warning template (#3 in a series, because I see you already have first and second warnings above my post within the last few days). That template warns that adding gunk to articles may be considered vandalism. It doesn't say you're a vandal, it indicates that people are likely to interpret your actions as vandalistic. This is because the latest action was in series with other actions already flagged as transgressive (I think one was blanking an article, and the other was engaging in a personal attack (see WP:NPA), if I recall correctly. These templates are "form letters", and don't indicate much in the way of personal feeling about the matter (indeed, their purpose is precisely that they don't.) In my case, I usually follow them with some more detailed explanation of the issue (which is where the note about your phrase not actually being a neologism came from; it is not part of the form template). If you look at the source code, you can see where the template ends and my personal comment begins; the template ends with a <!-- comment --> identifying the template. Hope that helps. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ09:20, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Further information on Spinks
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If you will email me (through Wikipedia) a real email address, I can shoot you pdf copies of archived (subscription only) New York Times articles on Spinks (can't send attachments through Wikipedia mail).--Fuhghettaboutit14:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
That IP address' insistence on trying to turn "G- d-" into an ersatz "redundant" expression, is enough to make one want to invoke it. Wahkeenah01:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The guy's point is that "damn" means eternal punishment and that invoking God's name is redundant because only God can assign eternal punishment. However, he's got the etymology wrong, as the word is Latin and presumably precedes Christianity's official status in the Roman Empire. In summary, he's got it wrong. My guess is he just likes seeing it in print. Wahkeenah01:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I'm with you on this. I'm filing a 3RR. I have relatives like this. They won't let anyone say "gee dee" in their presence, and want to lecture everyone on taking the Lord's name in vain and so on. This is just another opportunity for thumper here to dissuade people from using the phrase; as such it is a WP:POINT and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX as well as WP:3RR violation. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ01:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for reminding me that I'm at my own 3RR limit. :) FYI, obviously I don't like putting it in print, but that's just my choice. Wahkeenah01:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I tend not to myself, since I know it offends some people. This guy, though, seems to be offended by it and doing it himself because he thinks it serves a discouraging purpose by putting it into this article. Just my theory though. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ01:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
My theory is a little more basic, but I don't want to say anything that could be interpreted as a personal attack. Hey, a personal attack on an IP address... is that a redundancy? Not, that's an oxymoron. Ironically. Wahkeenah02:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
HELLO! I am the one who keeps insisting on making the "God Damn" entry. My entry has become long winded based on your (both of yours, actually) insistance that my entry is non-factual. I have cited a dictionary entry based solely on your statement that the word "damn" does not mean "to be condemned by God," when, in fact it does. As an atheist, you can rest assured that I am not offended by this phrase. Who the fuck are you to determine that because you can't figure out the definition of a word when it is provided to you, that my entry is incorrect? The fact that you retracted or edited my entry 3 times does not make it incorrect. It means that you have been an idiot 3 times. YOU are the one guilty of vandalizing my entry by removing it without a valid reason. The fact that you have relatives that do not like the term God Damn for religious reasons is not relevent to this topic, and your argument concerning the entymology is fallacious. Does any ever say "Steve Damn" or "That stupid fuck SMcCandlish Damn"? No, they do not, beacuse to the followers of modern mythology (i.e. Christianity), the only thing capable of damning is God, hence the phrase "God damn" is redundant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.69.167 (talk • contribs)
All of this has already been addressed. (no, it hasn't...you fail to address ALL of relevent points) Neither your preferred definition nor any definition result in a redundancy (actually, yes they do). But if you want to propose addition of this entry on the article's talk page, I'm sure a consensus will be reached about it one way or another (by the rest of the idiots here). PS: Your apparent assumption that everyone in the world is a Christian is self-evidently false. (Read my entry closely and coherently...I never claimed that). The several million practicing Pagans (several million?????), not to mention Buddhists, etc., etc., would disagree with you on this stuff, as has everyone to comment on it so far. (both people) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ04:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I am not an atheist. I was for awhile, but I gave it up: No holidays! Meanwhile, your own "entymology" has a few bugs in it. Wahkeenah03:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey, that reminds me... I don't know about the "Steve Damn" part, but I recall a line from Rocky Horror: "Dammit, Janet!" Janet must be God. No, it's only Susan Sarandon. Close enough. :) Wahkeenah03:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, that is just an example of someone using the expression in a non-redundent manner. It happens so infrequently that you were able to cite it as an example. Congratulations, you get a cookie. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.105.69.167 (talk) 05:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC).
Please stop using my talk page as a place for your personal rants. I suggest you use your user page to write an essay or something. Since IP address users cannot create new pages (unless policy changed recently), I've created your (blank) user page for you. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ05:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Hard to believe since I ordered it on sunday and chose the standard shipping option, but the book just arrived. Haven't studied it greatly as yet but as for differences, first, it has push out nine ball rules which are hard to come by, and lists all three cushion champions back to Leon Magnus in 1896 and the same for 18.1, 18.2 and other variations of balkline and lists some game I've never heard of called "one-and-nine ball pocket billiards" and so on.--Fuhghettaboutit23:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Wild. I didn't get mine yet. I wonder if it will have all the same stuff (mine's 1 year later than yours, I think). Makes me wonder what a really old one would have in it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]ツ00:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikiproject Biography March 2007 Newsletter
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The March 2007 issue of the Biography WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. Mocko1322:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
OK, sorry. I thought that Irish standard pool and english 8-ball are the same, looking at the pictures. Aren't they? Can you explain me the difference between these two billiard games? Thanks for information, Maciek1721:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
They are very, very similar, which is why Irish standard pool has been slated for merging into blackball (pool). Irish standard pool is not quite the same as UK-rules eight-ball (blackball) - different enough that the interwiki is misinformation - but similar enough that the articles can be merged, and handled with simply an "Irish variation" section, if you see what I mean. Dealing with all of that has not been among the highest priorities on my WP to-do list, but it will be taken care of eventually. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib]?21:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
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