User talk:Mr. Billion

Random Comments, Thoughts, And Other Stuff

Here's some things I've been thinking about. Leave a reply or comment on these ramblings if you feel so inclined.

• Observations on the 7 July London bombings article: A pattern emerged in the way the article developed. A few hours after the article began, it had reached about two thousand edits. Now, less than 24 hours later, the number is much, much higher. This is similar to the way the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake article grew. The influx of editors brought a lot of vandalism, so much so that the article had to be locked a few times. The page's information was duplicated in the article so many times that it almost froze your browser just looking at the page. Later, on the Talk page, a multi-kilobyte argument broke out over a quibble about a single word. One editor decided to quit Wikipedia entirely because of it. Rather childish. (He came back. They always come back.) Within the space of a few hours, the uncontrollable vandalism and the argument had both subsided, and in less than a day the article had grown to a point where it's comparable to the already-noted 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake article. I guess this is the beginning of the life cycle of a Wikipedia article on a stunning disaster.

The other thing that struck me is the way that certain disasters are given different priorities and levels of attention in different media forums or outlets. Systemic bias shifts a society's overall focus of attention and valuation of different events.

The 9/11 attacks, for instance, received a vastly disproportionate amount of media coverage as compared to similar or worse disasters outside of the United States and its immediate sphere of societal consciousness. Although they were obviously very dramatic, what really made them an event so prominent in people's minds that it is often said that they "changed everything" is their location. Because the quadruple hijackings of September 11, 2001 happened in the United States, they are important to the United States media, the most influential media in the world. This series of hijackings will go down in history, whereas the quadruple hijackings of the "Black September in Jordan" during September 6-12, 1970 ([1]) are almost entirely forgotten. American media magnified the 2001 event's importance. The attack certainly was a tragedy, but compare its coverage to that of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Whereas the quake and its tsunami killed upwards of 240,000 people, the hijackings killed a little less than 3,000 people. Both are positively horrible, but one is objectively worse than the other. One event took 1.25% the number of lives of the other. Yet for the 9/11 attacks, many television stations' usual programming was canceled for days in favor of news coverage on the attacks and related topics. I recall people outside of the United States complaining about their television programming having been overridden in this way. The coverage was intense and prolonged for the attacks, whereas the tsunami was just another news item (albeit a significant one).

Similarly, the 7 July attacks in London have been given somewhat disproportionate attention. Whereas the London attacks may have killed about 50 people, the Madrid attacks killed nearly 200. If I've counted right, the article on the Madrid bombings of March 2004 garnered about 577 edits in its first 24 hours (and one minute). The London bombings article isn't even 24 hours old yet. As I write this about 23 hours in, it has 2,810 edits (4.87 times more).

Of course, another factor to take into account regarding the difference in Wikipedia activity for the two disasters is that Wikipedia has grown noticeably in the amount of traffic it gets and its number of users since March 2004. In March 2004 English Wikipedia had about 220,000 articles; today it has about 625,750 (2.84 times larger). Active users on English Wikipedia in March 2004 numbered 2736; in May 2005, 8777 (3.2 times larger). Even taking the growth into account, the London activity is disproportionately larger. (The traffic growth is certainly also a factor to take into account, but I don't have specific figures on that.) The English-speaking media will likely cover the London bombings as extensively as the Madrid bombings, if not more so. This attack, being closer to the largest media nexus (English-speaking, often Internet-savvy people; the attack hit the country that is home to the BBC, and so on) will naturally seem large. Other instances of disproportionality: the Department of Homeland Security did not change the terror alert color in response to the Madrid bombings. Slashdot's discussion on the London event has more than 3,100 comments, while as near as I can tell, the Madrid bombings didn't even warrant a post. Also largely overlooked by Western media and governments: the September 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis. About 330 people died, half of them children, when Chechen separatists siezed the school and held the people inside hostage for 52 hours. This was a clear instance of terrorism, but it garnered relatively little attention in part because the Chechnya conflict is seen as a regional concern unrelated to America's "war on terror" (although lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta al Sayed originally meant to wage his jihad there, indicating that this conflict is at least related). It's also because, again, Chechnya is outside the heavy concentration of people with blogs and cameraphones and the like. American media's portrayals of the London attacks was far more dramatized. FOX News was asking the following day, "what ramifications does this have for the war on terrorism?" Some good video clips of the dramatic style adopted by major news programs to report on the attacks can be found on this clip of the the parody news program The Daily Show. CNN took a poll asking viewers if they were worried about a similar attack in the U.S. (62 percent worried, 32 percent not). MSNBC: "Who's at risk, and how prepared are we? ...Are we next in America? ...Can we prevent a subway or bus attack in the US?" CNN: "How safe are we in America? ...You have to wonder, will we ever truly feel safe again?"

What can I say? Systemic bias exists in every system. Maybe if Sudan had its own Hollywood or internationally-recognized news network like CNN, the slaughter in Darfur wouldn't be so easily forgotten. Interestingly, we may see a media influence slightly altering the Western sphere of awareness in the future if Al-Jazeera enters the English-language market as they apparently intend to do next year.

• • Other notes on the attacks: British Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said that although a national UK ID card wouldn't have done anything to stop the attacks, he still thinks they're a darn good idea. Britain is already the most heavily-surveilled nation on Earth ("The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day" by Britain's nearly 3 million surveillance cameras [2]) and may well become even more so as a result of reactions (or overreactions) to terrorism. It has also been proposed that, since "devastating attacks can make it very difficult to identify bodies," RFID chips being implanted into individuals would be worth it to make it easier to identify somebody who is killed and mangled by terrorists or some other accident. What a spectacularly bad idea.

• The article on thou, and the related discussion, is awesome. English really could use an accepted second-person plural. Like Y'all, except that nobody accepts that as being "correct English." And maybe a few other alterations, like a non-gender-specific pronoun. "I didn't realize that e was being serious."

• What projects have been undertaken, or might be undertaken, to create a flawless version of Wikipedia? Of course, Wikipedia always strives for perfection, but what I mean is a "professional" (or at least vandalism-free) stable version.

It would only be feasible to tackle this article-by-article. Maybe a feature could be added so that a limited (but large) number of selected, trusted users (like admins, or a new and less exclusive group of 'sub-admins') could go through and choose to mark one particular version of an article as "safe." On the front page, rather than just offering the one option of the single most recent version, there could also be the option to download only those articles marked as "good," so that rather than necessarily downloading the most recent version, which could very well contain a very long history of blanked articles and such, it would be possible to get a much smaller file with just a single, good version of each article. Just the information you want without all the article history and vandalized versions and so on.

Or there might be a default always-there boilerplate on every page (Like the Disclaimer; or maybe this would be added to the disclaimer. Either way, it would need to be more prominent) that would allow you to choose to see the "safe" version, containing a disclaimer that announces that by the very nature of Wikipedia, the latest version might be vandalized, so users might compare the latest edit to the "safe" version. The main problem is marking all those versions safe in a trustworthy way. Maybe it would be a community effort as previously described, or maybe some eccentric and philanthropic millionaire might splurge a little on hiring professionals in a variety of languages and topics to do "professional" editing, with the stipulation that their work is under the GFDL. Or, as Larry Sanger suggests, it might be done in collaboration with volunteer college professors. If it were a community effort, a scoring system similar to Slashdot's might be used. There might be a karma system for users and a quality control voting/scoring system for selected article versions.

We could be sure to keep the safe versions up-to-date by creating an automated voting system to allow registered users to change which version is called the "safe" one. It would take maybe five or ten or so votes to update it. Non-registered users would be unable to vote. That's not much of a restriction, though, so maybe (like a similar suggestion from before) there could be some classification for trusted users whose votes would carry more weight than ordinary registered users, also to be chosen through voting by trusted users. The original trusted users would be chosen by admins.

Another idea: Suppose some recognized publication, say, Wired Magazine, for whatever reason, were to reprint a Wikipedia article. They would very certainly fact-check the article and screen for other errors. In this way, the edition of the article they published could be known to be "safe." Although this isn't likely to be a widespread practice.

Just some thoughts.

Actually, come to think of it: The "stable version" possibility is already fulfilled, at least for a very small fraction of articles, with Spoken articles. Since it takes a lot of effort to create and upload a spoken version of an article, those who do will generally put a lot of effort into ironing out the article's flaws before reading the article out loud and then uploading it. Also because of the effort required, vandalism is so far either extremely rare or nonexistent in spoken articles.

Note from later: Looks like ol' Jimmy's taking steps in this direction.

• To those who voted for Bush: God damn it, you idiots.

• Interesting firsts in television: The first electronically-transmitted TV picture was an image of a dollar sign, transmitted by 21-year-old Philo Farnsworth in 1927 (according to this textbook, Media & Culture 2005 Update). That's rather telling. According to the same source, the first music video on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star. Also telling. I wish I could see either of these. I wonder if Farnsworth's $ image was preserved.

• Idea: Wikipedia entries on languages should have some standard recorded statement in those languages attached to them in Wikimedia, just so that readers can hear what a statement in a particular language sounds like. Something simple, like "Hello, this is the [English, French, Arabic, whatever] language," along with a textual translation that explains exactly what the phrase is saying. Maybe Arabic grammar is structured so that the precise translation of the phrase "this is the Arabic language" makes no sense. Maybe to get across the same idea you say "I am speaking Arabic" or something else instead. The textual explanation would describe what grammatical differences there are between English (or whatever language the Wikipedia entry is in) and the language that is the subject of the article. Just to help get a feel for the language and note some of their features. The articles on Middle English and other English versions all have quotes from the same passage in the New Testament to show how the language changed over time. This idea would be sort of like that.

• Wikipedia's co-founder, Larry Sanger, has written some very salient criticisms of Wikipedia, and I cannot fathom why they're not linked in Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great. I'm adding them now. [EDIT: Actually, it's mentioned there and in the more formal Criticism of Wikipedia. Still, these criticisms should be more prominently noted, considering their source.

• "The Most Trusted Name in X", "The X You Can Trust" ... You don't have to actually be trustworthy. Just claim that people trust you, and if you repeat it enough, some people will believe you. Since advertising is a method for changing people's minds without rational argument, advertisers advertising trust for a client is disturbing.

• On a related note, the most depressingly obtuse advertising slogan I've ever heard is "inspiration comes standard." Its vapidity brings Brave New World to mind.

• "Wikipedia publishes 500,000th English article". Excellent. I've wondered, though: How many of those "articles" are nothing but redirects or other non-informational pages? Answer: None. What's considered an article is anything in the Article namespace (not user pages and not non-editable pages like the Front one) that (apparently) lacks the text "#REDIRECT [[article]]" and contains at least one wikilink. So this is an admirable accomplishment. I wonder how long it will take for the German or Japanese Wikipedia to reach this mark. Due to the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of English-speaking Wikipedians (Wikkans?), the English Wikipedia is fast outstripping the others. This leads into the following topic:

• The future of Wikipedia. I've talked a little about this on Wikipedia talk:Pushing to 1.0. As time goes on, the number of editors to wikipedia will expand exponentially. For the forseeable next few years, anyway. We can expect that next year there will be more users and editors than there have been this year, and 2007 will likely have even more than that. But what about ten years from now? I anticipate that Wikipedia will have expanded and altered itself dramatically by that point. It will likely have been featured prominently in a major American news publication, possibly hitting the front page of Time or Wired magazines (If it hasn't already... Wired did a detailed story on Wikipedia in March '05, but I don't know if that mentioned on the cover). I know it's already been covered several times by several different news organizations, but the coverage will likely grow with time. There will also likely be major changes to the software and shifts in Wikimedia's organizational structure. All this is fairly obvious.

But fifty or a hundred years from now, almost nothing can be taken for granted. Will Wikipedia or the various Wikimedia projects still be around? Will they dwindle to obscurity, or will they merge and become a sound basis for education for entire societies? Or will it simply remain a relatively minor novelty? Somebody on the Pushing to 1.0 talk page wondered aloud whether Wikipedia's information could still be around after a major catastrophe or a very long stretch of time, and if any efforts had been made toward ensuring that it could. A few people told him it was a silly idea and seemed to imply that it's not worth thinking about, but I think it is. Wikipedia is a splendid project, and longevity for the works of its thousands of contributors is a natural wish. KEO is a project that I think could be emulated. Apparently the KEO team has data disks that can hold enormous quantities of information and can last for thousands of years. If that's true, then backing up Wikimedia on some of these would be ideal.

• Right now (July 3, 2005 circa 12:30 PM Central) we've got 618,925 articles. Unless I added it up wrong (365+365+366+365+16+28+31+30+31+30+3 = 1630), Wikipedia is 1,630 days old. So that's about 380 articles a day. With 381,075 articles to go, at this rate we'll hit a million articles in another 1,002.8 days.

Wikipedia shot up to 618,968 articles since I started writing this.

Note from later:

13 July 2005, 4:04 PM: 634,188

14 July 2005, 4:04 PM: 635,670

The average rate of addition through the encyclopedia's history is 380 articles per day, but that's misleading because the number of new articles per day is increasing steadily. You shouldn't use the overall rate of growth throughout its history, you should use the current rate of growth. The current rate is a whopping 1,482 new articles over the most recent 24-hour period as of time of writing. At this rate, English Wikipedia will gain the 364,330 new articles it needs to hit the one million mark in 245.8 days (On the evening of Friday, March 17, 2006). But even this isn't accurate, because the rate of growth is itself growing (from a few articles a day a few years ago to almost a thousand and a half today.) I'm not sure where to get numbers for that, though.

The English Wikipedia will hit one million articles in either February or March of next year. Maybe earlier. As you read this, English Wikipedia has 6,930,571 articles.

At around 2:02 AM Central on Thursday, August 4, 2005, Wikipedia had 666,666 articles.

• This is a very cool method for seeing the progression of a Wikipedia article over time and keeping track of its individual editors.

• Things Wikipedia could use:
  • A better way of viewing Article Histories. Something modeled on this would be cool for understanding trends and differences, but aside from that we need at least a way of moving through an article's history other than 500 at a time. Many articles have thousands of revisions and so it takes a while to move through them 500 at a time. Particularly if one has a slow connection. A count of the number of versions the article has, and the ability to just jump straight to Version 1 or 676 or 2151 or whatever would be excellent. Here is an interesting tool to that effect.
  • A way to search article histories to find the first appearance of a piece of text in an article. This would be especially useful for finding out who added something on, say, a Talk page. Talk pages can get almost irreparably cluttered if they're not watched closely.
  • A method of automatically sorting information on pages of lists according to different criteria. I'm not sure how it would be implemented, but it sure would be useful.
  • Automatic cross-project unification. Instead of needing to have the text {{Wikiquote}} added to a page to see Wikiquote's article on the same subject, the software would be changed to automatically check for other articles of the same name in other Wikimedia projects, and then provide links either in a sidebar (like the "what links here" link in the Toolbox) or in a single box for all the projects. For Cat, there would automatically be a link to the Wikispecies entry, Wikimedia Commons' Felis silvestris catus (redirected from "Cat"), Wikiquote's Cats, and any other project's page on cats. This, I think, would be a great benefit to Wikipedia and its sister projects. Actually, especially its sister projects, since Wikipedia gets a lot more traffic than, say, Wiktionary. "Cat" already has links for Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote, but as of this writing has nothing for Wikispecies.
  • More rigid Talk pages. The unlimited editability of Talk pages is nice, but with an influx of new users who don't know how to keep their messages identifiably separate from others', or with malicious vandals, or even with simple mistakes, Talk pages can become cluttered very easily. People not signing their posts, or intentionally signing as somebody else just to confuse everybody, duplications, putting words in other people's mouths by inserting new text into their messages--all these are problems I've seen with Talk pages. It works fine when everybody is good-natured and familiar with Wiki styles, but that is only the case some of the time. I don't have any really specific ideas for exactly how rigidity would work, I'm just noting that automatic structuring of some sort would be nice. Maybe to prevent putting words in other editors' mouths, for instance, only the editor who put up his message would be able to edit his message. (That'd be a radical change). Of course, structure would place limitations on the things that conversers could do on Talk pages, so a good balance of structure and freedom would have to be found in this, as in everything else. The example just given would be too restrictive, since then anybody could post garbage and it would be unremoveable.

The current method works fine most of the time, but popularity in a talk page can bring so many editors and so many changes of uneven quality that bad edits slip through. If certain kinds of flaws don't get reverted or fixed quickly, they can become almost permanent fixtures.

• • Change the code so that the quote format you get when you precede a line of text with a space doesn't break the margins so easily.
  • Wikipedia could use a brief message on all Talk pages that urges users to sign their messages, and shows them how. There's currently such a message every time you edit a page, but it's hidden in a lot of other text that at most people probably don't bother to read.

• Wikimedia editors can and should be encouraged through recognition. If I have the chance to do so publicly and at all meaningfully, I'll recognize and praise people who have begun and significantly written Wikibooks or added original photography or other work to Wikimedia Commons. One such person is User:Geocachernemesis, who deserves accolades for his excellent photography.

Discussion

Welcome!

Hi Mr. Billion! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

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Happy editing!

Thanks for writing the article on Carlos Mayans. Check back there to see the changes I made to see how the formatting should be. Look at the help pages if you need help. Welcome to Wikipedia! - Mattingly23 02:34, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Thanks for correcting the grammar mistakes in the articles you visited. Stargoat 03:43, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Hi Mr Billion, thanks for making that fix on the bio of Hassan al Turabi -- the chronology of how the various parties in Sudan morph is complex. Also, I wonder if you might be interested in a Wikiproject on Sudan I have started up. There is a lot of interesting stuff which is missing.

Regards, --babbage 23:21, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for the fixes on my "User Page". Now for the serious stuff. Can you spare a million? (smile). User:Marine 69-71

Sure thing. :) Mr. Billion 05:31, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Seems like I just added myself in the "thanks for correcting my page" part of your site! :) Poli 06:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Heh, cool. You're welcome. Mr. Billion 06:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Current events

It is unacceptable to change a statistic when the article that is referenced doesn't match that statistic. If the User wants to change the external reference to one which matches that statistic, then I won't change it. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? RickK 05:17, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

And checking the statistic would take about as much effort as changing it back, which is why I checked it and then provided a new link and new statistic. [Message edited later to sound less irritable.] Mr. Billion 04:41, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dick Cheney revert

Hi Mr. Billion,

Regarding your revert of 66.36.147.147's edit on the Dick Cheney page, I performed a quick fact check, and it appears that this event is true. Please refer to the following articles:

• Washington Post
• CNN

I will revert back to 66.36.147.147's version, but I thought I'd drop you this message to explain my revert.

Thanks, and please keep up with keeping an eye of possible vandalism! --Deathphoenix 05:04, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, it appears as if you are aware of the facts, but choose to leave it out anyways. I agree with your assessment, unless this event becomes more notable. --Deathphoenix 05:06, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Image:AliOthmanTaha.jpg

Thank you for uploading Image:AliOthmanTaha.jpg. Please leave a note on that page about the source of the image because of copyright law. Thank you. --Ellmist 06:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done. Mr. Billion 21:36, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Billion

I've posted the following on WP:HD and am giving you a heads-up because of your interest in this article.

==Mohammed Atta==

The first two lines in this article seem to be edited properly but don't render correctly. I've given a go at fixing it (using "Show preview") but can't get it to come out right. hydnjo talk 20:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It seems that the problem is only there when a user has date format as seen on my sig. The problem goes away when the format is MM DD YYYY. I just thought I was going nuts because I could't find anything wrong with the markup. Sorry for the bother. hydnjo talk 21:04, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks. Mr. Billion 21:23, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Second Person Plural

BTW, I thought that the definitive plural was "All y'all" ; ) hydnjo talk 22:03, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

My reasoning is that I've sometimes been addressed in the singular "Y'all come back now Y'hear" (when alone) and sometimes in the plural "See Y'all later" (when in a group). So it seems that "Y'all" may be just as ambiguous as "You". However, I've never heard "All y'all" used in a singular context. ; ) hydnjo talk 23:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Huh, true. Good point. Mr. Billion 04:37, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix on my front page - I hope we run into each other again. hydnjo talk 01:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fix link

No Problem, I saw the red link and didn't think that was what you intended. hydnjo talk 03:25, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bridge (Instrument)

Hey, thanks for the edits to the above article (they're good!) and for the random hi on my user page!! Selphie 09:26, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) **

Talk:9/11_domestic_conspiracy_theory#Title vote (various_options)

There's a discussion and vote going on about the use of the term "conspiracy theory" in the title of this (and other) articles. I thought you might want to put in your 2 cents worth and/or vote. Jayjg ^(talk) 15:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Daytime Emmys

I just want to note that many of those soap operas are not just aired in America, but around the world (see The Bold and the Beautiful). I won't fight you on your deletion of the notice, but I think you're making a very big mistake. IMO, we're covering more trivial things on Current events, but you don't see me deleting them. Mike H 19:37, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, it's back in. Mr. Billion 20:28, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Alexander the Great

Thanks for helping out on Alexander the Great. It's a never-ending battle against Greek, Macedonian, Albanian and Persian nationalists, and pro- and anti-gay partisans. Lectiodifficilior 21:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure thing, no prob. Mr. Billion 21:10, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re: Edit/delete conflict

Oh, that's okay; happens all the time. I do wish there were an edit/delete conflict warning, something along the lines of "The article you are editing has been deleted. Are you sure you want to re-submit it?" But in the grand scheme of wiki things, it's a minor annoyance. Thanks for your note; I've deleted it again. -- Hadal 03:52, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sudanese localities with massacres

Mr. Billion,

How should articles on minor localities with human rights violations in the recent past be structured effectively? Sarcelles 21:28, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Could you clarify? Exactly which localities, which articles, and so on? Mr. Billion 01:58, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mr. Billion,

What I am talking about are localities important for the Darfur conflict. Kind regards Sarcelles 10:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Saddam

One change you made to the article on Saddam Hussein was incorrect. Saddam is his family name, not Hussein. So it is correct to write "Saddam's government" and incorrect to write "Hussein's government". The latter is the equivalent of writing "George's administration" when you mean "Bush's administration". For some reason (and which made it an international laughing stock, ridiculed in the media the world over) the US media insisted on using Hussein as a family in the Second Gulf War, whereas in the First Gulf War they correctly used Saddam. One theory was that research suggested that American viewers were confused as to why the second name, the surname in the West, wasn't being used. Rather than tell the readers that in Iraq the personal name comes last, they preferred to get it wrong rather than take the time to explain that Iraqi names are constructed differently to western names.

Whatever about their reasons for dumbing down on accuracy, as an encyclopaedia Wikipedia cannot do that and has to get it right. It was discussed at length here. Hence Saddam, not Hussein is used, correctly, as the family name. FearÉIREANNFile:Ireland flag large.png\^(talk) 01:59, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK. Mr. Billion 02:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

9/11 rumors

Of course there's discussion - we shouldn't delete an article without that. Please see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Rumors about the September 11, 2001 attacks. Also you might be interested in the guide to the deletion process. Yours, Radiant_>|< 20:54, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Ah. Right, then. Mr. Billion 21:08, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for minor spelling correction ("pastime") on my user page. --Anonymous editor 22:25, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Mr. Billion 23:19, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I thought I'd piggyback on Anonymous editor's thank you for correcting a couple spelling mistakes on my page! And while I'm at it another thank you for reminding me about those wonderful games, I hadn't visited them in a long time! Rx StrangeLove 7 July 2005 02:05 (UTC)

Cheers! Mr. Billion 7 July 2005 02:15 (UTC)

NexusTK article

I see you're embroiled in an edit war with User:24.167.132.98 in the article Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds. You keep inserting text about your problems with "Marama" and some other players. That's not encyclopedic and it doesn't belong here. Also, falsely accusing another editor of vandalism is a serious offense. Please stop. Please work out your problems within the game, on a related message board, or with the help of game operators. Thanks, --Mr. Billion 07:48, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Read the talk page contained on the article. Teram9 07:54, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC

I have done so, and it is clear that your long complaint about one particular player is relevant mainly to you. As such, it does not belong on Wikipedia. Mr. Billion 08:09, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You might want to go further back in the history record and see who originally deleted what I had added back based on what was on the history page. That was my first attempt to restore what the user deleted. Teram9 08:13, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The dispute

It's not the dispute I mind. It's the way it was carried out. I don't care that others disagree with me. I do care that Wikipedians regularly and without protest go about settling disputes in the exact opposite of the way they are supposed to. Maybe I was wrong. That's not what this is about. Thanks for the message though, I appreciate it. — Phil Welch 8 July 2005 03:05 (UTC)

About Ariel Sharon

THere are people who calls Saddam "the butcher of Baghdad". I think you can search it in google. I think itws very Anti NPOV and being fair, that Ariel Sharon who was balmed, even not in a court, for indirect responsibility for only one of bigger slaughterings in Lebanon (There were also American and European forces who saw slaughterings in Lebanon and other places in the world and did nothing), in which there were hundreds of victims, would be called a "war criminal" and "butcher"- while Saddam who has a direct responsibility for Murdering millions of people wouldnwt be presented in openness as a "butcher" and "war criminal". If you don't delete the terrible words about Sharon, you are a Muslem-Arabic-leftist encyclopedia and not NOPV one.Amirpedia 07:48, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Saw your note about deleting some fresh troll posts on this subject. Thank you. Have been putting up with these guys for twenty years and they never seem to tire, LOL They keep us busy deleting them from our own Board as well. Like I told Fire Star. I would really like to close this topic and just put up a simple, protected, first page that doesn't call me a fake. Have gone through all this weeek battling these guys in the hopes of demonstrating I am the injured party and how the trolls operate to to character assassinate me. I appreciate your help and ask if we can move on to that next step of a fair and balanced entry in Wikipedia. Have a good day. --Ashida Kim

I just noticed somebody altering the text of a message that you wrote on your Talk page, and maliciously or confrontationally changing another editor's message is a no-no. The IP was the same as one that had been vandalizing other articles, and its Contributions page led me to your Talk page. I don't know anything about this other issue, but if you are the "injured party," then good luck to you. Regards, Mr. Billion 16:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

I didn't notice that Scientology stuff. Thank you for removing it. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Mr. Billion 03:07, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Featured picture - comments requested

My photo of the bust of Antinous, currently under comment for featured picture

[3] I'm nominating one of my photos for 'featured picture'. Voting isn't for two days, but I'd appreciate your comments if you feel to add them. -- RyanFreisling @ 16:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

New Information about Kola Boof

Dear Mr. Billion,

There are quite a few NEW facts about Kola Boof, sir--and following them, I have a request for you.

(1) At the Funeral of Sudan's John Garang, Ms. Boof's poem "Choll APieth" was used to memorialize him---which attests to her importance as one of Sudan's top writers.

Link: http://newsblaze.com/story/20050805222214nnnn.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Story.html

2nd Link: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/449408

For obvious reasons, the Arab government in Sudan is never going to Back or Support Ms. Boof.

(2) Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli, the owner of "La Maison Arabe" (his estate in Medina, Morocco where Bin Laden kept Ms. Boof) told the U.S. State Department in 2003 that Kola Boof lived at his estate for 6 months with Osama Bin laden. He confirmed this for FOX NEWS, whose fact-checkers then allowed FOX NEWS to interview and confirm Ms. Boof's relationship with Bin laden on national Television. Video Footage of that interview is available online by watching the Documentary that was made about Kola Boof earlier this year.

LINK: http://doorofkush.50megs.com/about.html

(3) As Kola Boof points out in the documentary----she was FORCED to reveal her connection to Mr. Bin Laden, because it was feared that she herself was a "terrorist" and the U.S. GOVERNMENT was threatening to revoke her citizenship if she didn't tell everything.

She says emphatically that she was ashamed of her ties and tried to deny it--but once the story got out, the PRESS was unkind to her, mainly because they had never heard of the Sudanese writer before and because---she was Black and Non Muslim, totally OPPOSITE what you would expect his mistress to look like. Ms. Boof's connection to Mr. Bin Laden has since been proven by not only Prince Fabrizio Ruspoli but by the Foreign Affairs Office of LIBYAN LEADER Moamar Khadafi (where Kola Boof worked as "Naima Kitar" in the 1990's) and by the Staff workers at "La Maison Arabe".

It is now 2005, and the only dispute to Ms. Boof's disclosure, comes from Arab Muslims who detest her "OTHER" politics which mainly have to do with Darfur and Women's Rights in Muslim countries.

Lastly---because of the negative connotation in which you entered Ms. Boof's name, I am requesting that you REMOVE her name from any mention with Osama Bin Laden's. The way you presented her is very offensive and unfair. If you have a problem with my request, then please email me at DOOR OF KUSH BOOKS AND MUSIC.

Thank you

NAFISA GOMA staff@doorofkushbooks.com

I didn't add her name, I just edited somebody else's addition to make it sound less credulous. The person who added it was User:24.156.76.251. But this is a wiki, which means you don't have to ask other people to edit things; you can do it yourself quite easily. If you see something incorrect, go ahead and fix it. Just maintain a neutral point of view. --Mr. Billion 20:37, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Synergetics

May I draw your attention to this article, now in AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Synergetics, thanks. Alf ^melmac 20:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Saddam and AQ

Hi - there's a vote going on at Talk:Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that you may be interested in.--csloat 06:22, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Strange redirect

Cumbey no longer works here. You could leave a message at her blog, SqueakBox 19:33, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Strange redirect, SqueakBox 19:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Military history of Sudan

Since the Collaboration of the Week folks are known for preferring Military Histories of countries, I nominated Military history of Sudan. It has been six days since then, and I have only received one more vote. Unless I get one more vote supporting this nomination, it will be closed tomorrow. Please add your support at WP:COTW/Military history of Sudan. Also see WP:COTW/Languages of Sudan. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-7 14:55

zombies: 'medically indistinguishable from death'..

Indeed! I got that from the wikipedia article on Fugu.

I understand that the Ethnobotanist Wade suspected this was the case when he was contracted to discover the zombification formula (I understand the hope was that it would be of use on long spacefligths).

If you look into the literature on organism death, the only full proof of medical death is putrefaction.

All other techniques, ranging from a mirror fogging when placed at the mouth, to EEG or ECG activity, can be fooled by unusually low metabolic states.

If I were a medical researcher in Japan, I would be quite interested in taking EEG readings from any apparent Fugu fatalities.

There would be ample scope for such activity, as Fugu fatalites are left waiting by thier (pyres?) for 3 days before immolation, as a safeguard against misdiagnosis of death.

Fascinating.

And central to understanding the zombification process.

cheers

jmullee@yahoo.com

I still seriously doubt it. A good heart monitor can detect even a weakly beating heart.

I think it's very unlikely that low metabolism can fool an electroencephalogram. If there has been a reliably documented case of this happening, I'd like to see it. I'm skeptical that there is any such thing as a "zombification" process. --Mr. Billion 01:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

what was so ""poorly done" about the edit?

You didn't improve it, you reverted to the inferior edit. The way it is now, people don't know there was a 1996 Fatwa. The way it reads now, it seems as if the U.S. declared war on Osama befor he decalred war on us! Switch it back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.114.77.59 (talk • contribs) 23:08, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Userpage

Hi, I just noticed that your userpage looks like it's formatted to show black text on a black background. Did you do that on purpose? --Mr. Billion 05:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it was not done on purpose. It seems as if there was some drainage caused by the poor fromatting ect. Anyway, Its all worked now...I hope. Journalist (talk · contribs)

SFF Link

I deleted the SFF foundation link from the Science_fiction article not because it looked like an advertisement, but because the SFF page looked like nothing more than an opportunity to donate money. The fact that it is a .org domain shouldn't be an all-access pass.

I have revisited the site, and I see they have some minimal amount of news and events of local interest. It still looks like a facade for fund-raising rather than a real organization.

What is your connection with SFF? Please explain why this link would be of interest to users reading the Science_fiction article. I'm fairly open-minded. KennyLucius 19:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm the SFF co-founder and current manager of Public Relations and fundraising on the web.

Why do you assume I have a connection to SFF? My connection is the same as yours: I saw their site.

The link doesn't look to me like it qualifies as spam, since they don't get any money from advertising impressions when you click it, and the Donations button is only one of several. (I clicked around a bit and found that there are ads on the site, but they're in the Search page and not the front page.)

Now that you've gotten me to look at it again a bit more closely, though, the site doesn't look like it has much content and the organization doesn't look like it's particularly influential or noteworthy. The link doesn't meet the requirements to be called spam. But I won't object if you remove the link again since, as you've suggested, there's not much of interest there. --Mr. Billion 07:05, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I assumed you were connected because you restored the link. It's difficult to assume altruism or a love of justice in today's world, if you know what I mean.

Money isn't the only goal of spam--a link in Wikipedia is picked up by Google from Wikipedia and dozens of sites that mirror Wiki content, increasing the PageRank of the linked page. I don't think that Max rspct, who added the link, is spreading that link all over Wikipedia, so perhaps I was inaccurate to call it spam. I was hoping that Max rspct would comment on its deletion and defend it.

Would you give me your opinion of another link? The Science_fiction article gets more than it's share of external links, and the last link on the list goes to a Chassidic religious site. The page has what appears to be some Jewish spiritual stories that are technically fantasy, but are being called Sci-Fi. What do you think of that link being on the Sci-Fi article? KennyLucius 15:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Houri

Why did you delete the following facts I added to the article on houris:

It should be pointed out that the above quote regarding the promise of '72 wives' in paradise is hearsay thrice removed and does not exist in the Qur'an. Nor is it accepted as an authentic hadith by the foremost scholar and compiler of hadiths, Imam Bukhari.

Contained therein are no opinions, only facts. AymanG 12:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.133.55 (talk • contribs) 10:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Watch

Is this sockpuppet the only account by Daniel Brandt?? 23:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)