User talk:Mav

User Talk for maveric149

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If you've been frequenting the RecentChanges page, you might already expect that I am a Wikipediholic -- yep, I admit it (score = 82).
Problem now is, sleeping has switched from a full (i.e. normal) to part time occupation.... oh well - you only live once, there's plenty of time to rest later...

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Older messages are in talk archive 1, talk archive 2 and talk archive 3, talk archive 4, talk archive 5, talk archive 6, talk archive 7, talk archive 8, talk archive 9, talk archive 10, talk archive 11, talk archive 12, talk archive 13

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TraxPlayer Thanks for the nice welcome.

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Thanks for the kind words, Mav. But I won't be a great admin here other than by complaining. I am already a "great" admin (by complaining as well...) on fr. I only wish to take care of my "own" (sort of...) business here without bothering others all the time :-) User:anthere

Complaining is important too. :-) And when I say "great" I mean "will not abuse Admin powers and is likely to use them for good - if so compelled by the moment."--mav

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President of the United States of America has president and first lady capitalised throughout the text. None of these words is a proper noun, none are capitalised in my dictionaries, first lady isn't (as far as I know) even an official position, and in this context they are not even referring to particular individuals.

Since that article has an exclusively American context, nobody is likely to object to changing to American lower case style. I can't see why you don't sort articles like that out before starting (again) on more contentious areas.

"Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises" has sold 5,000,000 plus (including the USA) and is hardly a specialist book. The point of capitals is not to confer spurious official status; it is, outside the USA, a normal convention. WDP capitalises alternative names too. The list in Dolphin is identical to WDP.

I was tempted back to doing something on Dolphins by seeing the new articles, but I obviously made an error doing so. jimfbleak 06:59 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You keep saying that the upstyle of all animal common names is common outside of the states and yet have not compiled a list of citations nearly equivalent to Ec's which indicates this is so. I wish it were possible to use capitals for species names but we cannot so long as that is counter to common English grammar (lacking any standards body saying otherwise as well). And the capitalization used in the above articles is OK for two reasons: "President" in this context refers to an official title the "President of the United States" -- same with the quasi-official First Lady/First Lady of the United States. If the common noun "president" used in a non-specific context then I would expect lowercase. Same for "first lady." --mav

Sorry Mav, I'm with Jim on this one (though I agree with what you say on First Lady/first lady!). I don't think users of American english realise just how much their attitude towards capitalisation infuriates the hell out of non-Americans. I and another European both worked on an article some weeks ago. It was finished only a couple of minutes when a possé of American-english users swarmed in and tore it to shreds, lowercasing things that we had been taught since we were five year olds should be uppercased. By that point both of us were on the brink of screaming fuck wikipedia and quitting completely (as I know some people have done over this very issue. One American in particular has driven people away with his 'everything in lowercase' fucking up of articles. He even suggested Prime minister at one stage somewhere!). If American english-users keep up with their 'we are right. You have to prove up wrong' tone there won't be any non-Americans on wiki. People are annoyed enough at how the big publishing houses are now opting to issue books worldwide in American-english because it is cheaper than doing separate print-runs in AE and BE, without then being told 'oh but look this major book doesn't capitalise'. Of course it doesn't capitalise, the publishers have chosen AE to the fury of native non-AE users. FearÉIREANN 08:25 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

As I said I would like to capitalize common names of species but I need to see a fair amount of evidence to support this as a rule of grammar. At this point I am not acting on anything ; I am hoping that the capitalizers will either accept the great deal of evidence put forward by Ec to support downstyle (cites from both sides of the pond) or for the capitalizers to compile a similar amount of evidence to support their claims. They already did this with the birds and I am happy to concede that it is OK to capitalize bird names so long as lowercased redirects are provided (we are only talking about 10,000 or so articles so it is reasonable to assume we can have redirects for every one). And if the general trend is to go toward the down style - even with European publishers then doesn't that just indicate that the language as a whole is evolving? Why should we not also follow this trend? --mav

That is missing the point. Academics, researchers, local publishing houses etc use European standard capitalisation. Some of the biggest publishers (who have in the last decade due to the removal of the legal protections offered to local publishers to stop them being swallowed up by American multinationals, have been taking over native publishing houses) for reasons that have nothing to do with grammar or spelling and everything to do with producing one print run rather than two and so have more money for themselves, have chosen to the fury of academics, researchers, teachers, local publishing houses and the general publishing houses to force American english standards (in some cases even spelling) on the rest of the world. This has led some academics to quit writing for these publishing houses (I know three alone who have walked and a fourth who is threatening to sue a major publisher on this issue). It is openly being described as American linguistic imperialism. For wiki to decide that because multi-national publishers have been trying to force American english on the rest of the world, it should follow their efforts and ignore the rest of the world is perverse. Put bluntly, there efforts are seen as amounting to a statement of "It is cheaper for us to do one print run, and so sell the same book in America and elsewhere, than to have to produce a version in British english for Britain, Ireland, Europe, Austral-asia, and an American english version for America. We are so dominant that we are going to simply use American english, and there is fuck all you can do about it because we are so big we now control the market." Wiki should have nothing to do with such an attitude. FearÉIREANN 21:04 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That still begs the question on whether or not it is in fact correct grammar in any English dialect to capitalize species names. I have yet to see any substantive proof for this assertion (believe me I would welcome such proof so that we could have a consistent naming convention for all species). --mav

One of the arguments for lower case was that dictionaries and encyclopedias always use lower case. The point I was making with the President example is that real life usage, even in the Wikipedia, does not conform to dictionary rules, which only capitalise genuine proper nouns.

I would accept that lower case is not restricted to the US, but it is certainly more common. I searched Google for {gray whale org.uk} (American species, American spelling, with the org.uk to weed out many US-based sites), and the majority of the responses capitalised as Gray Whale. This cannot be decribed as a specialist source.

I really can't understand why you, Fred and Ec are prepared to cause so much grief over this issue in an area in which you otherwise appear to have little interest. jimfbleak 08:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Little interest? I am very interested in making sure Wikipedia follows correct rules of grammar. The whole point of our naming conventions is to make sure we encourage page titles that would be grammatically correct in a sentence - as is. That way all somebody has to do to make a link is tack on a couple brackets on both sides of a term. Clean and natural. I am also very interested in the subject of biology - so much so I got a degree in it. --mav

Argh, I started this new bout with my dolphin query, didn't I? I think I stated my opinion on the mailing list that I think that for common nouns we should call things whatever the largest number of people expect them to be called. Or something like that. Well, that's what I'm saying now, anyway... I capitalised the dolphin names only because I looked up information on them with Google, and the pages I found capitalised the names. I didn't do a full statistical analysis, though, so I still don't know what the most common usage is for those particular animals. But aardvark is still spelt with a lower-case "a" in most pages, so I still think we should talk about "the aardvark", rather than "the Aardvark"... -- Oliver P. 09:31 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Wow, Mav. Great pixs! FearÉIREANN 03:43 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! :) --mav

Mav. I found following message on my talk page (why me?). As a Brit I don't know is it makes any sense, so I'll leave it to you. jimfbleak 07:47 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• Sir, can you please move Washington, DC into the District of Columbia, the name Washington, DC is not the legal name of this federal district, The City of Washington in technicially located in the District of Columbia. The way it is set up right now District of Columbia goes to Washington, DC it should be the reverse. Thank you kindly for your attention.

Done. --mav

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But the shawm was a Renaissance oboe! -- Oliver P. 07:50 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Anytime a stub is so small that the only info in it can be obtained from an article linking to it then it is of no practical use. Simply saying that a shawm is an oboe is like only saying iron is an element or almost as bad as only saying Dallas, Texas is a city in Texas. If you would like to write a stub using complete sentences and give at least a little bit more info then please do so. --mav

Sorry... I'm in my paranoid all-the-sysops-are-abusing-their-powers mood today. I think I'd best be off now, before I fall out with everyone. Nice pictures, by the way. :) -- Oliver P. 08:21 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

No apology needed. People like you need to be a bit paranoid to keep real abuses from happening in the first place. Thanks for the photo compliment. :) --mav

Hypenated words are lower case if they describe the bird, eg Red-necked Phalarope, Red-backed Shrike. Increasingly hyphens are being used (where they would not have been in the past) to clarify taxonomic groups; these are always capitalised in species, eg Wilson's Storm-Petrel.

I hadn't finished the palm thrushes, a friend arrived unexpectedly, so we had a coffee in the sun in the garden (I've obviously failed to completely destroy my social life!), I'll have a look now. jimfbleak 09:08 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Mea culpa; when I created these articles, I formed the group names as I normally do, by copying from the species list, but this time forgot to lowercase. I've moved the pages, so the Saxicolini should be correct now. I've be trying to sort the Corvidae and Turdidae into some sort of logical arrangement. I'm not totally happy with Turdidae still, but at least it's comprehensive, and can wait until another day for more tinkering. jimfbleak

You are the expert on when and when not to capitalize bird names so I leave that into your most capable hands (just make redirects where appropriate :) --mav

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How do you find the new users? Ilyanep

There is a query that Admins can do but what I do is open up new users' user pages one by one as I see them in RC. Then when I have so many user pages open (usually about 50) that my computer starts to slow down I go ahead and greet each of those users and close the corresponding windows. --mav

So it's almost impossible to find many new users unless you're a sysop. --Ilyanep

How did you get that idea? The way I do it does not require Admin abilities. Just a lot of ram and an OS that can handle having scores of webpages open at once (Linux). --mav

YEah, but an admin can do query while a use has to go through the recent changes, in which half of the pages have been added. BTW, you should use a tabbed browser if you do that, try Mozilla (I'm not sure if it works on linux though). --- Ilyanep (never mind what I said...I meant it's harder that way)

I try to stay away from the queries becasue they slow down the server and give way too many results that then have to be pre-processed before they are used (the queries give plain text results - no links). That is far more work than just clicking the mouse wheel down to open a user page into a new window. Konqueror is a tabbed browser. I just have a certain work-flow that doesn't use tabs yet. It might save some RAM so I'll see if it works but many of the things I do do really need separate windows. --mav

Thanx. BTW, I advise archiving now... --Ilyanep

Argh! I just did a day or two ago. --mav

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Hi Mav, I just had a look at you great pictures of the anti-living valley. I wish, I could be there one day to see this, the images are just unbeleavable! I was just wondering, why they are in no order, one over the other, some here, some there, or is it just my MS Internetexplorer mixing it all up? Fantasy 21:05 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't know what you mean by "anti-living valley" though.... They are in alphabetical order in the wiki text but they will look different in different browsers and different screen sizes. --mav

Sorry, I like to use different words for the same thing (Death Valley = anti-living valley... ;-) Regarding the fotos: on Mozilla it seems to work, but on the Internetexplorer i have to scroll 5 times to the left to see some of the images and some are even one hiding part of the other image. It was just to let you know, but it's not so important. Have fun, Fantasy 06:36 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Sorry, Mav, for being a little late in the lower-case discussion of species names, hope you haven't closed it yet. I am looking at Trees of Britain and Europe and just looking at two species Heldreich's Maple Acer heldreichii and (no common name) A. trautvetteri are mentioned on one page, exactly as shown. Collins Pocket Guide, Trees of Britain & Northern Europe does exactly the same. Stearn's Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners too spells specific names in lower case. It certainly bears out your case. Dieter Simon 23:36 16 Jun 2003 (UTC) Perhaps I should say the common name of the species does appear in capital letters but the scientific name appears in lower case Dieter Simon

Actually that argues the case for the capitalizers sicne we use the common names whenever they are available. Thanks for the cite - at least several more will be needed to demonstrate that the up-style is OK for us to use. --mav

This is the last time I will come back, I promise :-). Flora Britannica on p223 has Broad-leaved everlasting-pea, L(athyrus) latifolius; Two-flowered everlasting-pea or Tangier pea, L. grandiflora; Norfolk everlasting-pea, L. heterophyllus; Sweet pea, L. odoratus and garden pea, Pisum sativum, all in one para, exactly as shown. A rather quirky compilation, but there it is. Trouble is as most of them appear at the beginning of sentences the generic names all appear in capitals. Hope it helps Dieter Simon

Hi Mav, I don't know how much you know about copyright law but I've been looking at some of the images Joe Canuck has downloaded and I think we may have a problem. The ones I looked at are of sports stars. In some cases he claims fair use but without indicating where they came from (so no credit can be given). In most cases he gives no clue as to where they came from at all. A lot of them are shots of, say Steffi Graf during a tennis match. From what I know, all such shots would be the copyright property of a news agency, but most of his images have no info whatsoever, a small number have fair use - no idea of who took the shot, where they took the shot, whether copyright had been waved, etc.

I have left two messages on his page. The first one politely explained the reason why we needed to know the origins of photos. He didn't reply, just deleted it, the way he had deleted other people's requests. (Classic DW stuff!) I left a stronger second one, stating that unless he can supply some information about the photos they will have to be removed from articles and listed for deletion. Maybe that might make him take some notice though I severely doubt it. Any observations? FearÉIREANN 03:45 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You did what I was going to do anyway. JC needs to understand that he cannot claim fair use without at least stating where he got the image. --mav

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Mav, I left you a comment at Zoe. I was not talking about you. But I think I messed the bottom of the page :-((( User:anthere

note that you will only find it in the history. When user talk pages get too long, my comments are usually censored (reverted). I think that is poor practice because I justified my yesterday comment there, and now all what is left in that discussion is you mentionning I am dishonnest when I was NOT dishonnest. Would you be ever so kind to fix my comments please ? I personally think it is dishonest to remove someone explaination when they are said to perhaps be dishonnest. I don't want it to stay that way. User:anthere

I didn't remove anything. I reverted a version of my Talk page which didn't have the bottom of it deleted by your lossy editor. -- Zoe

and while reverting, you removed my comments... yes. ant

So what? It's my Talk page, I can do what I damn well please with it. -- Zoe

Ok. Mav, you will find my comment in the Zoe talk history.

I think discussion such as the one yesterday should not be moved to user talk page, as they can conveniently censor these discussions to suit their own purpose. Ant

You're determined to try to make me look bad and to put the worst face on every g*ddamn thing I do, aren't you? If YOU had not messed up the page, *I* would not have done anything to it. I reverted it because of what YOU did, not because of what you said. I don't believe in modifying Talk pages, though there are many many people who do so. I was only fixing what YOU messed up. Your comments got dropped in the process. But of course, that wouldn't suit your interpretation of me being an evil person, would it? -- Zoe

Oh for crying out loud, would you both STOP IT! Zoe - if you had archived your page that would not have happened. So it is partly your fault. Anth, if you find that your browser is cutting off the end of her page, cancel out of the page, or go into the Page History and revert to the previous version.

But I can't Jt. That is the whole point ! I can't edit a page too long. In this case, it was written 31 ko, so I thought I could add a dozen words (normally, it cuts at 32 ko). But apparently it cut nevertheless :-(( ant

Sounds like a case of Internet Exploreritus, the most damned disease on the net. Dr. JT's remedy - bin explorer. Get Safari. Far far better. IE is pure and total crap. FearÉIREANN 06:46 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Zoe had to do that to get back the end of her page, and that involved reverting to the version before your comments. In cutting her page like that it is partly your fault too. Zoe was not censoring Anthere, Anthere was not trying to screw up Zoe's pages. You both just fucked up at the same time. Now will you both fuck off and stop this clowning around. You are acting like Brittany and Christina at the MTV awards.

Dunno these ones.

There are enough vandals out there to be fought. Will the two of you stop cat-fighting and go out and fight the Michaels and DWs of this world, not each other. OK? These tantrums all this pointscoring is becoming tedious.

Sorry Mav, BTW, for highjacking your page like that. But I have been watching these two fighting for weeks and it like watching slow motion sumo wrestling and its getting on my nerves and everyone else's. I am really fed up with all of this. And now I am going to friggin' bed. Oiche Mháith FearÉIREANN 05:59 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Women fights. The worse. :-) Good night. Ant

I never said anthere did it on purpose. I do not think she did it on purpose. As I said, it was her lossy editor that was the problem. However, from the time I stopped working on Wikipedia last night until the time that I came back this evening, my Talk page more than doubled because of all of the information that was cut and pasted from the Votes for Deletion page. It is NOT my fault that the page got so big, it was the move from VfD. -- Zoe

Fair point, Zoe. I guess we are are a little tense. Anyway, look on the bright side, GrahamN has made a complete ejjit of himself in what he said. And most people understand what you did, why you did it and that even if they disagree don't see you are some sysop vandal. You know, you and Ant should be working together. You both are capable, committed wikipedians. And if you were, you'd terrify the bejaysus out of the DW's of this world. OK. Better stop. We can't have Mav doing two archives in one day. :-) Get some sleep, both of you (Ant and Zoe), heck Mav too. I'm about to. (I only got up 7 hours ago for a few minutes. I currently have the flu - the real flu. I'm so high on drugs I could fly to work, if I was going to work. So as dawn breaks on another sunny day, and I break into a sweat through typing (no joke!) it is time to crawl off to bed and sleep for another 15 hours! Take care and lol to all three of you. FearÉIREANN 06:46 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Calm down you two. Neither of you are "evil" or at all bad people so please stop. :-) --mav

It looks like Zoe archived the page so the issue is moot. I understand though and take back my observation. --mav

If you understand, that is fine. Ant

I'm afraid Joe Canuck is ignoring appeals on the photo issue. (So DWesque!) He deletes anything I say, deleted stuff from Camembert, deleted stuff by Martin but I think Martin put it back again. JC has made it clear he wants no discussion of the issue on his page (and any discussion will be deleted) as he thinks it has nothing to do with him. I have put a note on Jimbo's page but I wouldn't be surprised if that is deleted too when JC sees it. I guess there is no option left but to remove his images from his articles and list them on the VfD page. Re-the growing suspicion that he is DW/Black Widow, how should that be handled and who should make the judgement call? Ths similarities in contribitions, tone, attitude, behaviour re images etc are striking. What are the odds on someone coming to wiki who shared all the characteristics of DW/Black Widow yet who isn't DW/BW. In addition when Cam challenged him as to whether he was DW he immediately went ballistic. The thing is, as a supposed new user, he should not have known who DW was. Yet his response suggested he knew and didn't like the mention, which was damned suspicious. FearÉIREANN 00:26 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yep - it is time for VfD. --mav

Hi mav,

Thanks for the welcome. I think wikipedia is a great idea and I intend to help out by contributing here and there. I am all for free and open content.

I live in Melbourne, Australia.

DavidZuccaro

No problem. I hope you like the place. --mav

regarding my message to you this morning, you might find something that was placed on my page . . . interesting. FearÉIREANN 01:03 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Adam is hopeless. Sigh. --mav

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Thanks for the welcome. I hope I am putting this on the right side of the page.

Clipdude 01:11 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome - and this is the right spot. :) --mav

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Yo. could you delete mise en scene, move mise-en-scene to mise en scene, and undelete mise en scene? At least, that's the way I remember it working to keep the history intact? I'll merge the two if you don't want to do it, but I think the bits are fairly self-explanatory. Thanks. Koyaanis Qatsi 01:16 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Done. --mav

HI Mav, I've put all that I can of Joe Canuck's jpgs on the VfD file. I was only able to go back through his last 500 edits (aaagh!). Some I think are OK (book covers, album covers) but everything else has IMHO severe questions as to its copyright status. I removed the images from the pages, put a note on the talk page and a note on the image page. Knowing Joe's liking for removing unwanted information, I thought it better to protect the image pages so that the statement that there was a suspected copyright breach, the images would be deleted in a week unless there copyright status was clarified and in the meantime do not reinsert them, could not be removed as I have no doubt would be Joe's first move. I expect when he sees the removal he will go ballistic, leave legal threats on my talk page and try to reinsert all the images if he can. He seems to think that legally he has no responsibility for clarifying copyright if it is not explicitly stated. I also put detailed explanation on the VfD page of the background so that no-one is in any doubt as to why this action was taken. If you think it too long, feel free to cut, cut, cut. And now, finally to bed. BTW I see you read what was left on my page. My suspicions groweth! (like my tiredness!) Oiche Mhaith FearÉIREANN 03:44 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Mav, I think you need to take a look at the user page and talk page of User:Pizza Puzzle. It is rather strange. FearÉIREANN 03:16 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Boy - I wish etiquette would allow me to say what I'm thinking right now. Gesh. How juvenile - even for Adam. --mav

I was actually thinking it looks like "unattended terminal syndrome." Roommate or something. Hephaestos

If you want a laugh, take a look at Joe Canuck's comments IN BOLD TYPE on the VfD page regarding his images being listed for deletion. As Chandler from Friends might say, "could he be more DW? :-) FearÉIREANN 03:52 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Any particular reason you do not want the links on the main page to describe the actual event? It seems to me that having brief descriptions is more useful than having general links when reading about historical anniversaries. It often annoyed me that I had to search a 10k+ article for the relevant date by hand because the main page gives no info about what actually happened. And a short summary like "Rosenbergs execution" doesn't take more space than "Ethel and Julius Rosenberg". --Eloquence 09:41 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Mainly because a non-Admin on the talk page of the Main Page complained. I prefer the simple approach but I also see your point and won't get into an edit war over it. --mav

Mav, Joe Canuck has attempted to reinstert the potentially copyright images onto the pages from which those images were removed. Users have had to revert his changes. I am now in the process of temporarily protecting the pages as he no doubt will keep doing this. An examination of his editing style leaves no doubt but that he is indeed DW. (Like DW, for example, he refuses to state nationality, refuses to instert birth and death information on the opening line, etc, removing it if it is already there.) In addition he has been exceptionally abusive to users (see Votes for Deletion page). In the circumstances, given his abuse, his constant installation of images that may be copyright, and the overwhelming evidence that he is clearly DW, I have requested that Jimbo immediately ban this user. FearÉIREANN 18:18 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

His actions are not good. He needs to at least provide sources for the "fair use" images and willfully going against WikiStyle is not at all a nice thing. We have conventions for a reason and intentionally going against community agreed-upon ways of doing things is a violation of etiquette. --mav

Also some other evidence i have notice which i asked him on his talk page:

<START QUOTE> Joe, I am starting to believe you are a reincarnation of a banned user. There is one thing that makes me believe this:

1. You seem to know your way around Wikipedia quite well for a new user.

-fonzy

If I am a banned user, please provide your proof. Wikipedia.org will not tolerate harassment or false accusations from anyone. Joe Canuck 18:00 20 Jun 2003 (UTC) <END QUOTE>

His tone is interesting; I don't ever recall Jimbo ever giving him the authority to speak for Wikipedia. --mav

o just found out he can no longer talk about the "owners of wikipedia.org" as the Wikipedia foundation ahs been set up. [1]

Yes I know - Jimbo already contacted me about transfering Wikimedia.org and Wiktionary.org to the Foundation. It's great! --mav

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Mav, User:Kils, a former sysop, keeps adding himself to Wikipedia:Administrators as "science editor" (previously he called himself "senior editor"). Could you protect an earlier revision of the page without that label for the time being? I don't want to do it myself because that might be interpreted as abuse. --Eloquence 19:17 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'll give SoftSecurity one more chance and then I'll protect the page. --mav

Hm. Now he changed it to "(only adding, moving and suggesting)" which doesn't make much sense to me. Is this "OK" in your eyes? If not I'll revert and protect. --mav

Doesn't make sense to me either, but that's what it was before. So that's OK IMHO. Let's hope he doesn't pull another one, but I won't hold my breath.--Eloquence 20:00 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

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Thankyou for supporting me, by the way. Funny how my application got a font size bigger somehow... كسيپ Cyp 08:23 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You are welcome! I changed the font size because I could barely read the text before. :) --mav

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Mav, has there been any decision on the Crown Copyright waiver issue, and whether text that has been released under the waiver can legally be used in the Wikipedia? David Newton 16:17 BST 21 Jun 2003

It cannot be used in Wikipedia but a user is going to write and ask permission for us to use Crown Copyright text under terms of the GNU FDL. --mav

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Not a big issue, but is there actually a preferred style for the English/scientific name combination? (I saw your minor edit to Green-winged Teal. Most of my books don't punctuate, and just put eg European Starling Sturnus vulgaris. I've tended to put in a comma recently especially in long species list, because it is more readable, eg European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris, but I notice, especially outside the bird articles, that some people use parentheses, as you did, eg European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). jimfbleak 16:31 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Answer is on your talk page. --mav

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Mav, I am sympathetic to the changes in Race, although I have no objection to your (or 168's) reverts. I made another revert and a long comment on the talk page for the new contributor. I focussed on process rather than content and hope it is a constructive intervention. Please tell me if I am missing or misunderstanding your concerns, or not getting what has been going on there, Slrubenstein

I was mostly concerned with process too. The new user was erasing neutrally-presented POV with his own different POV. Both should be in the article and both should be presented in a neutral mannor. --mav

• talk moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

Mav, there is an ongoing problem with Eamon de Valera. A new user who does not use a usernic just number, has been adding in highly POV additions. I have spent ages lately (as has Mintguy and Jim Regan) removing and reverting these additions and telling the user over and over and over again to stop POVing the article and to read the naming conventions before changing things and breaking links all over the place. The same user has also POVed other articles on Ireland, their contributions in every case being deeply anti-Irish nationalist. Yet other contributions by them elsewhere have been superb. A second IP was also being used to add in POV additions, as was one name to which no personal details were ever added. Now another IP has been used to add in yet more POV stuff. I don't know if it is all the same person. If their contributions were consistently POV then a case could be made that they are simply vandalising Irish-related sites on wiki. But because to paraphrase a nursery rhyme when describing the contributions, "when they are good they are very very good, when they are bad they are horrid, banning would be unfair, but short of banning, what else can one do to stop this person or persons from constantly doctoring information on these sites, adding in text with some words IN CAPITALS? The irony they clearly do know a lot about Irish history. All too often they just seem incapable of expressing it in an NPOV manner, and while just occasionally they listen to advice and stop doing one thing, they then turn up doing another, equally POV thing, some of which has been outrageously over the top. This has gone on since the 4th of June.

--- Hey Mav, a quick question: is there a compelling reason to keep Wikipedia and Wiktionary and the wiki textbook site and any other sites in separate domains, as opposed to grouping them all as subdomains within one larger site, such as Wikimedia ?