User talk:Touretzky

Welcome!

Hello Touretzky, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
How to edit a page
Editing, policy, conduct, and structure tutorial
Picture tutorial
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If you're ready for the complete list of Wikipedia documentation, there's also Wikipedia:Topical index.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --MarkSweep 20:55, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific director?

"David S. Touretzky is scientific director of the Computer Science Department and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at the Carnegie Mellon University." - Gopublic Transmedia[1] --AI 02:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me for posting that quote with stating why. Since you apparently claim to be David Touretzky, what can you say about this quote that states that you are the scientific director? --AI 01:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks for improving the reference to the DeCSS case in the David S. Touretzky article. BTW, as I'm sure you are aware, if you want people to be sure you are David Touretzky, you just need to add a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Touretzky to http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/addresses.html saying something like: "this is my Wikipedia account". ;-) JesseW 01:43, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion about linking from my address page. But I don't think anyone seriously questions my identity. -- Touretzky 04:04, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia policies and guidelines are set up so any tight connection between usernames and real people should not be necessary, so unless you are making edits that would only be acceptable if the real David Touretzky made them, it shouldn't be necessary. The only thing like that that comes to mind are if you wanted to add a picture or essay from your site to Wikipedia; someone would probably ask for such a link back as proof that the material was added legally. Otherwise, no worries. ;-) JesseW 05:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That reminds me, we could use a picture for the DST article. It would have to be licensed under the GFDL though, which means anyone (and that means anyone) can use it for any purpose with minimial restrictions. --MarkSweep 05:50, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There's a better picture of me on my home page, but I don't wish to license it under the GFDL. I wouldn't object to an unlicensed "fair use" by Wikipedia, though. -- Touretzky 17:30, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, much better. I've uploaded that instead and used it in the article. We'll sort out the "fair use" claim on the article talk page. --MarkSweep 18:20, 5 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, as you may have already seen for yourself, not everyone is acting reasonably all of the time, and online identity is a tricky concept in and of itself. Ultimately it doesn't matter who's behind each account, as long as they contribute in a constructive and civil manner. Thanks for your corrections, they are a welcome departure from the usual editing practices on this article. --MarkSweep 05:47, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Photo

Please upload a photo to Wikipedia. For now I have used the photo from RFW. --AI 08:43, 4 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Autobiography

The participation of editors in articles of which they are the subjects is strongly discouraged at Wikipedia. The general feeling of the community is that autobiographical editing, derisively known as "vanity", is difficult to do properly. "Properly", in this context, means that the edits are based on verifiable sources, and conform to a neutral point of view. It is not impossible for a person to write an NPOV article about themselves that relies solely on external sources, and I am not accusing you of any improper edits (in truth, I haven't read over all of your contributions). However, my unsolicited advice to you is to avoid editing David S. Touretzky. If there are important errors or omissions, please let us know on the article talk page or by contacting other editors directly. There must be hundreds of topics other than yourself in which you are expert, and I urge you to contribute to (or create) articles on them instead. Wikipedia is a wonderful project and we need good editors to participate in order to make it a success. It'd be great if you were one. Thanks for contributing. -Willmcw 09:00, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

In this case, your contributions have been very helpful. What is strongly discouraged are those very common situations where people create vanity articles about themselves with not even an attempt at modesty. This is not one of those situations: the DST article was created by someone else and has seen edits that got important facts wrong, for whatever reasons. Thanks for setting us straight. Cheers, --MarkSweep ✍ 09:11, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both of you for keeping the article factually correct and NPOV. I would be perfectly happy to go through life without a Wikipedia biography, but acknowledging that this is not my decision to make, I sincerely appreciate your efforts. --Touretzky 14:45, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Birthday year

1952? I subjected 18 from the year you got your B.A. Of source, I should have tried 22. Closer to the truth, I would expect. -- Pinktulip 00:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You criticism if fair enough, but I imagine that I am not far off. My main goal was to add the "Living people" category onto the article, which, I hope, you do not also consider to be a wild guess. -- Pinktulip 04:02, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]