User talk:RexxS

Please feel free to leave messages, comments, etc. here for me. I'll do my best to reply to you.

WP:SCUBA Newsletter Issue #1

Welcome Since this is the first issue of the WP:SCUBA Newsletter, I wanted to take a moment to welcome you as a charter member. We are starting a project with the goal of organizing an enormous amount of information, but as participation in WP:SCUBA expands, so will our editing power through collaboration. Please feel free to invite other interested Wikipedians to join our project.

Categorization of WP:SCUBA Articles I believe that we need to adopt a categorization system to begin organizing these articles. Some categories exist, such as Category:Diving equipment, and can be utilized. The end goal should be to have a set of general categories (less than ten I would hope) that can be used to categorize ALL articles that fall under the scope of this project. Subcategories can then be utilized where needed. This will also help us identify where work needs to be done to further the WikiProject as a whole. Please post comments at the bottom of this page and let me know what you think.

Article rating for WP:SCUBA As you are hopefully aware, we place the {{WPSCUBA}} template on the talk page of any article that falls within the scope of WP:SCUBA. It is a standard practice to use the Project Template to rate articles as stub, start, B, GA, A, etc. I invite you to research what is involved in setting up a rating and reporting system for WP:SCUBA as we currently do not rate our articles. This will help us identify the most important articles to our cause, and easily see which articles need the most work. Please feel free to post any questions on my talk page.

YMCA SCUBA It has been my personal goal to start creating articles to cover all of the major scuba diver certification agencies, and categorize them as Category:Diver training agency. On the List of diver training organizations YMCA SCUBA links to YMCA (diving organization), which then redirects to YMCA. The problem is that the YMCA article doesn't discuss their recreational diving program anywhere. I would like to start a separate YMCA Scuba article using the information on their Official Site, and fix the redirect at YMCA (diving organization) to point to the new article. I invite you to post your thoughts and opinions on these actions on my talk page.

Isobaric counterdiffusion

Hi RexxS, Your comment in Decompression (diving): "But there's another mechanism at work that confounds that simple explanation. The solubility of nitrogen is 150% that of helium in water and 450% that of helium in lipids. This means that despite the different diffusion rates, an isobaric He -> N2 switch can temporarily increase the *total* inert gas load beyond the critical level and produce bubbles. You have to remember in mixed-gas diving that it's the total gas load that counts. There's a worked example at http://www.scubaengineer.com/isobaric_counter_diffusion.htm - not a great source (!) but there's little doubt that the effect is observed regularly. Delete me when finished :) "

I have a problem with using this part of the reference as I don't follow the argument. That means I can't paraphrase an explanation. I don't see the relevance of the differences in solubility in different tissue types. the only way I could see this working is if the same physical tissue has a different time constant for ingassing vs outgassing or for the different gases, which, though quite plausible, is not mentioned in the text as far as I can see, so would constitute OR, synthesis or speculation. The example appears to be assuming instantaneous equilibration for a start, and secondly, the calculated values are both saturation values at that pressure, and therefore unlikely to cause bubble formation. Thirdly, they appear to be amounts, not partial pressures/tensions. Unless I am seriously misanderstanding the logic, there isnt any. Cheers, Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, as Gene once said to me, we don't understand the actual mechanism of any type of DCS, we just know that it's something to do with bubbles. Explanations are all speculation, it's just that the commoner types have had more speculation about them. Here's what I think we know about ICD:

• The symptoms of ICD when switching from a helium-rich, nitrogen-lean mix to a helium-lean, nitrogen-rich mix during a deco stop are well reported.
• It's often manifested in the inner ear - vertigo, nausea, vomiting.
• Its onset is quick.

Taking the last two together points to a fast-tissue hit. The differential diffusion rates of He and N2 can't explain this. However, blood actually does equilibrate almost instantaneously (within seconds) when passing through the lungs, and that's why I quoted the solubilities: nitrogen is somewhere between 150% and 450% more soluble in blood and fast tissues than helium. So if we arrive a medium-deep deco stop on a helium-rich mixture, we will be almost at a critical level of saturation for helium, and it takes something in the order of minutes to unload the controlling tissue sufficiently to ascend as far as the next stop. However, after the gas switch, the helium is coming out of the slower tissues into the faster tissues, while nitrogen is loading the blood and then the fast tissues in the time it takes blood to move from the lungs to the ear (in particular). The amount of nitrogen able to be dissolved into the tissue will be greater than the amount of helium able to be dissolved by a factor of possibly as much as 4. The point where the ICD occurs in this scenario seems to occur when the total inert gas load exceeds a critical value - and it does. I mean that if a tissue can dissolve x amount of helium in the absence of other gases, it can only dissolve less than x in the presence of other inert gases; they interact and many of our theoretical models don't take this into account properly. Stephen Burton's calculation is indeed simplified, but as long as the time taken to saturate the blood with the nitrogen in the lungs is rather less than the time it takes for slower tissues surrounding the ear to lose helium into it, the total gas loading to the ear will increase in the way he states.

I assume it's the same sort of effect that we observe when first giving 100% O2 to a casualty with joint pains; it's often reported that the symptoms transiently worsen before improving.

Nevertheless, I do accept that the mechanism I'm describing is not well described in the good quality sources. The best is by David Doolette and Simon Mitchell. I see that the full text is now available at http://jap.physiology.org/content/94/6/2145.long so it's probably worth reading that in full, as you may find it matches my commentary sufficiently well for you to be able to write something for the article. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 18:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Doolette and Mitchell make much more sense. A model doesn't have to be true, but it should be plausible and give plausible results. If it is just a curve fit or a kludge it is fine to say so, but not good to pretend it is something else. Anyway, I have put in a bit from D&M, and the Burton advice, as that is claimed to be effective in practice, but I am not going to try to explain how he gets it as it looks to me like he has left something out.

Is there anything else you can spot that is missing from the article, or anything that needs more explanation? I never know just how much explanation is necessary, and it is less work to underdo it and wait for someone to ask for more. Some nice photos would be great, but I don't have any. However if there is any reasonable graphic that would help I can have a go at it. Cheers, Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 20:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiAudit

Hi RexxS,

I thought you might be interested to know about Wikipedia:WikiAudit. It's a new tool for finding out stuff about IP addresses in ranges, from the maker of STiki.

Yaris678 (talk) 21:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Hey Yaris - good to see you again yesterday and sorry I didn't find more time to chat. I had a look at that tool and it certainly seems useful for examining IP contributions, so I'll get a copy for future use. Thanks --RexxS (talk) 17:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability of Don Shirley (diver)

Hi RexxS, Could you take a look at Don Shirley (diver). I dont think notability has been established, but another user does. Also there is a provocative quote from the only secondary source and I am unsure of how to deal with it. Cheers, Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, sorry I've not replied sooner, but I've been taking a three week wiki-break as I was feeling rather jaded with the place, and I've found that a short break helps to revive my enthusiasm. I've done a little clean-up at Don Shirley and commented on the talk page. In brief, I think that an argument could be made for the notability either way, and more sources are really needed. The purpose of the tag is to attract other editors, so if nobody else shows up to add to the discussion, I'd recommend removing it after a while, but you should use your own judgement on that. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 17:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiMeet

Evening! Pleasure to see you again today, here's the link if you need it - User:SalopianJames/Sandbox/Central A-class proposal. SalopianJames (talk) 20:35, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

What? Meeting in real-life to embiggen the wiki?

• User talk:Alarbus#Idea

You might be interested in this idea by Maunus. Alarbus (talk) 04:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Hehe - I already have the T-shirt for the idea, but it's well worthwhile pursuing. The concept of spreading existing A-class expertise to multiple other wikiprojects makes eminent sense, and ought to help fill that gap between GA and FA while hopefully reducing the load on FA reviewers by having much better prepared articles nominated. I'm on a busy schedule of wiki-meets (as you can see below). Maybe I should make a userbox something like this:

This user believes that meeting other editors in the flesh makes it far less likely that they will be treated like a pile of dogshit online.

Any takers? --RexxS (talk) 17:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

hlist

Good to met you - twice! - this weekend. I've only now made the connection between you and hlist implementation. Had I realised, I would have bought you a pint! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

We'll meet up again soon; I'm sure of that - maybe m:Meetup/Monmouth/1? or the next Coventry? I'll make sure I get to buy you a pint as well ;) Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan FLC

Hi RexxS - I think that all of your comments at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan/archive1 have been addressed. Would you mind returning to see if you have further comments? Thank you, Dana boomer (talk) 18:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Dana, thanks for the reminder, and sorry I've been on wikibreak for the last few weeks. I'm really pleased with how you and TRM have worked together to improve the accessibility of the article, and I'm sure that visually-impaired visitors will have a much better experience there as a result. I've added a note of my support to the FLC. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Faryl at WP:FAC

Hi RexxS. In my "spare time" I'm going through FACs trying to ensure that any ACCESS and technical issues that are commonplace at FLC are noted. I was wondering what you felt about the "track listing" table in the subject article? I'm not asking you to comment on the FAC unless you're happy to do so, but I see a number of albums at FAC and wanted to get some good advice on how their templates align with ACCESS. Hope you're well, all the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 17:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi TRM. Sorry I've been away from editing for a short while. You're absolutely right to raise those concerns, and I've left a couple of comments at the WP:Featured article candidates/Faryl/archive1. Unfortunately it will require modifications to the {{tracklist}} template to update it to our current standards, and I'm wary about alienating the regulars at FAC because of perceptions of "accessibility hurdles" that take time to adjust to - you know that better than I do! It is worth regularly reminding folks, though, that the visually-impaired in particular can benefit from incorporating accessibility best practice. Keep up the great work! --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi RexxS, no worries, hope you're well. Thanks for taking the time out to check the table, I'm doing what I can at FLC (we seem quite good at most access issues there now!) and suddenly noted the plethora of FACs that pass with tables, lists etc that all need work in that area. Also, thanks for revisiting the Michigan FLC, once we got past that tricky coding thing, it all went swimmingly! Cheers for now (and expect more pleas in due course!!) The Rambling Man (talk) 19:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Just a note

I really enjoyed talking with you today, and all the others whose Wikipedia names I will inevitably forget, so apologies to them, but my memory for names is frankly crap. I was made to feel really welcome, something I didn't expect. Malleus Fatuorum 20:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It was a real pleasure chatting with you (and Iridescent – two of my five heroes in one day!).

I can confirm to any talk-page watchers that Malleus is even more entertaining in real life than on wiki, as well as being simultaneously jovial and thoughtful – a rare combination indeed.

Malleus, I look forward immensely to meeting you again soon. If I could somehow arrange to meet up with Bishonen, Giano and Geogre, that would the gig of a lifetime. Back to reality, see if you can persuade Parrot to make a meeting – we're plotting to arrange a wikimeet somewhere in the Nottingham – Sheffield – Leeds triangle in the near future if that's any more convenient for him. Cheers, --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Pictures of aquatic life

Hey Rexx Just finished a week of diving in Zanzibar and got some great pictures. Are these sorts of images needed on Wikipedia do you know? I am not sure the official names of everything I say. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I hope you had a really great time, James. Do upload them to Commons if you're happy to release them under CC 3.0. There are other editors who will identify species, so don't worry about that, and you can always drop a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life to let them know.

By the way, I spoke to Sharkli at the recent Coventry meetup and I'm looking forward to meeting you in Coventry at the end of August! --RexxS (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Great should be fun. Any good diving around your area? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:55, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

No. Just a couple of cold, murky quarries that we use for training. All the real diving takes place at the coast. Coincidentally, Coventry is generally reckoned to be the place in the UK furthest from any coast. --RexxS (talk) 18:34, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

MonmouthpediA

Brilliant. See you at the board meeting. Anyone is welcome at our meetings. Also you offered help with MonmouthpediA .... we can use all the help we can muster. This is going to be an amazingly important project.... but we have set high targets and help is important now - I'll email. Victuallers (talk) 10:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

But anyone reading this..... Monmouthpedia is going to be very exciting. Get involved (cos your mum is going to read about it).

Red cat to blue cat

I was slightly afraid of this when I linked to it. I fear that by bluelinking that category, you will soon bring the hounds of hell down upon it. When it was redlinked, it wasn't really a category, and no one could complain.

And yes, I wish Geogre would come back too. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:41, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

To further explain, because I probably wasn't clear: I have seen CFD's on user categories before, where once it was voted to be deleted, users were forced, on threat of blocking, to remove the redlinked category from their user page as well. In other words, if it gets CFD'd, I can't go back to the way it was. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I seem to spend enough of my time defending little personal things that are important to me that I reckon I'm up for defending the odd category. In any case, there's no point in being half-hearted about it – I want to see all Wikipedians in that category and a good fight would be great publicity. If we could just tell Bish and Giano how much they are appreciated, it might just be enough to coax them back. I live in hope. --RexxS (talk) 22:52, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

T-RexxS no Bishzilla, but T-RexxS good anyway. Hell hounds bad. OK, me wait, see what happen. --Floquenstein's monster (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

row scopes

Hi Rexx, got a quick question about rowscopes. Nebula Award for Best Novel is currently at FLC here. The user has included the row scopes but he has used colour to obscure the shading of the column that occurs when they are used. Was wondering if this ok and if it has any effect on the accessibility of the table, cheers. NapHit (talk) 22:43, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it won't affect the accessibility for screen readers, etc. in the slightest. They would never see those colours anyway, and all of the information in the table is available in text or by accessible symbols. What PresN has done is to disguise the row headers to look like normal data cells, in a similar way to what "plainrowheaders" does, but resetting the background colour as well. It's a lot of effort for a merely decorative visual effect, but that doesn't matter much if it means we get accessible tables without alienating those who set such great store in appearances.

More importantly, I should say that for a screen reader, the best row header would of course be the title of the novel, as the year doesn't uniquely identify which row the reader is on - and that's the whole point of bothering to mark up row headers. Oh well, hope that helps, --RexxS (talk) 23:06, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for your input Rexx, much appreciated. NapHit (talk) 11:34, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

HI, Rexx; all done except for the thanks. Take care.

Buck 12:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC)