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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 176.251.39.51 (talk) at 10:25, 25 February 2014 (→Remove link from Flappy Bird: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


Sean Lock

  • Why did you delete the referenced ammendment to Sean Lock's page about his first appearence on TV - on STV's Funny Farm? It's 100% true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.16.222.205 (talk • contribs) 18:45, 30 November 2013‎

Reference Errors on 12 February

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Copy Editing

Dear McGeddon,

Thanks for answering! So many reversions of my copy-edits remain unexplained that your message makes me smile. :)

-- From your edit history it looks like some of your edits are causing problems when you're copyediting a reasonably well-written article which lies outside your area of expertise - fixing obviously ungrammatical sentences is fine and useful work, and there's a lot of Wikipedia that needs it, but when you simplify a technical detail for what you perceive as readability, there's a real danger that you'll change its meaning and detract from the article. --

You may have misinterpreted my copy-edit: some words and ideas are implicit and therefore omittable. E.g., in the sentence "Platform A can support up to 10 tons" prepositional phrase "up to" can be omitted because unless Platform A can support only 10 tons (this detail should have been mentioned) then it also can support less than 10 tons. I rarely intentionally simplify technical detail because it rarely exceeds encyclopedic depth; most of my simplifications instead are unintentional, and I apologize for having made them. :(

-- Checking your most recent edit, you correctly fix the ungrammatical "smaller and unique in shape over the other ESPs", but stray beyond mere copyediting by removing details both intentionally (the fact that ESPAD's attachment is "unlike ESP-1" is lost, as is the detail that ESP-1 was carried "into orbit" by a Cargo Carrier) and accidentally ("The Unity Module it like ESP-1" seems to be missing some words, and no longer refers to the platform's power source). (I'm assuming that these changes in detail were unintentional, since you described it as just copyediting - if you know about ESPs and were making corrections, removing details is obviously fine!) --

Continuing my example, if "Unlike Platform A, Platform B can support 20 tons" follows the first sentence, then "Unlike Platform A" can be deleted because unless Platform A's ability to support 20 tons was absurdly unmentioned, readers can infer the dissimilarity between the platforms' load capacity. "into orbit" can be deleted because the Cargo Carrier would nowhere else carry the ESP-1; analagously, writing "I with my shoe stepped onto the street" would be wordy because readers would assume that I wore shoes. Whereas I blush at my grammatical accidents. >_<

-- Perhaps it's worth you focusing more on fixing flat-out bad grammar and typos, and being careful when touching content which is already accurate and grammatically correct, and merely inelegant? --

I carefully copy edit that content. Tangentially, I likewise copy-edit many other works and thereabout receive almost no complaints.

-Duxwing — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duxwing (talk • contribs) 01:56, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]


-- Thanks for the response. I'm not sure I see your point about "inferring dissimilarities" - if the article doesn't mention Platform A's load capacity, but mentions that of Platform B, there's nothing to suggest to the reader that the two load capacities are explicitly different. Platform A's capacity may simply be unknown. Similarly, although a reader who knows what an Integrated Cargo Carrier is will understand that whatever it carried must have been carried "into orbit", a reader unfamiliar with the technology wouldn't be able to infer this without clicking through to read a second article. There's no harm in including such small details if they help the reader to understand the subject; a word in a sentence might be "implicit and therefore omittable" to an expert, but Wikipedia readers are not all experts. --

The article mentions both platforms' load capacities without saying that one exceeds the other or that platform A cannot hold 20 tons: any layperson would understand that 20 tons are more than 10 tons and therefore that Platfrom B can bear more weight than platform A. A reader unfamiliar with space technology would think that the Cargo Carrier is a spacecraft because all surrounding context describes space.

-- You say "I likewise copy-edit many other works and thereabout receive almost no complaints" - eight editors taking the time to leave a message on your talk page with concerns about your copyediting style over the past year is a significant amount. And even just glancing at your most recent edits from the past week, you have four different editors reverting your copyedits with concerns over accuracy or style ("edit mostly obscured meaning", "rvt to version before copy-edit - much clearer", "Sorry, but copyediting also needs to preserve subject accuracy", "Previous version had better grammar and spelling"). There is clearly some kind of problem here! What do you think this difference of opinion is down to, and how do you think it can be avoided? --

These other works are not on Wikipedia but on Wikihow, too many specialized Wikis to count, scores of pages of fiction from many authors, technical documentation, and GUI text. My edits thereto are almost always liked; whereas my edits to Wikipedia usually get mixed reception, and today an angry mob of editors has suddenly reverted all my recent edits. >_< However much I err, I wonder whether word's spreading has caused this sudden reversion increase.

Obviously a problem exists! I just don't know what it is because however many messages I send to reverting editors, almost no-one detailedly explains why my editing is bad. :( What I see as horridly tangled and wordy they see as elegant, causing many conflicts. Nimbus227 has greatly helped me, from examples deriving principles and telling me that I am not copy-editing but stylistically rewriting articles. These principles and that detail are important. :)

This difference of opinion may boil down to some grammatical differences:

I write: [Subject] [preposition] [adverb] [indirect object] [verb] [direct object] Most people write: [Subject] [indirect object] [verb] [adverb] [direct object] [preposition]

The latter order confuses me because it violates the English principle of writing description before objects and jumbles the sentence's structure. For example of my point of view consider the first stanza of "Men of Harlech":

"Tongues of fire on Idris flaring / news of foemen near declaring / to heroic deeds of daring / call you Harlech men" makes sense to me because the passage's most important parts--"Tongues of fire," "news," "heroic," and "Harlech"--are first. If ignoring rhyme scheme the passage were, "Tongues of fire flaring on Idris / news of foemen declaring near / call you Harlech men / to heroic deeds of daring" the passage would baffle listeners and not climax on the poem's focus: "heroic deeds of daring". Granted poetic poetic license authors can violate this rule; e.g., "Misty Mountains Cold"

"The pines were roaring o-o-on the height. / The winds were moaning i-i-in the night. / The fire was red. It flaming spread. / The trees like torches blazed with light."

Repeatedly panning readers' imaginations from subject ("pines," "winds," "fire," "trees") to field ("height," "night," "spread," and "light") creates an epic scene that seems un-Wikipedian--not least because the entire poem biasedly tells the story of Smaug's unprovokedly and dastardly attacking the dwarves' mountain hall rather than as a fiasco of greed, cultural myopia, and failed interspecial relations. :D

Perhaps I should sometimes write prepositions after verbs. What do you think?

If to age is to callous over one's sympathy, then I shall remain a I child forever. (talk) 20:40, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--

I intend a neutral, concise, and logical style: I said that putting prepositions before verbs seems more logical and Wikipedian whereas putting verbs before prepositions seems more confusing and poetic, and I exemplified this point by comparing Harlech Men and Misty Mountains only because the former uses my style whereas the latter does not. :) Also, Men of Harlech would not sadden Welshmen because the song recounts a Welsh victory.

If to age is to callous over one's sympathy, then I shall remain a I child forever. (talk) 20:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Errors on 19 February

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Global Metropolises Category vs Largest Cities by Population

Hey there, McGeddon. I am currently creating the Global Metropolises category & the Largest Cities by Population (Globally) category. I'm not desperately attached to keeping both categories, but I do think there is a subtle distinction. At this point, my plan is to add the 100 largest cities to each category but I think that as other's contribute to the categories they may grow to contain different datasets/cities and certainly people will find each caytegory for different reasons, from different searches on the search engine. I was inspired to create these categories because I was frustrated by how regionally atomized information was on the cities category page, and it seems to labor intensive to me to constantly edit and update pages like the "World's largest cities, since the same cities are usually going to appear on the list, but they are constantly changing ranks with each other. Does that make sense? Why do you want to delete the Global Metropolises category?— Preceding unsigned comment added by ThomasMikael (talk • contribs) 17:15, 20 February 2014‎

Susanna Reid

Hi, why was the link about Susanna Reid named 81st Most Desirable Woman in the World inappropriate? AskMen is a leading men's online lifestyle publication. Thanks. Simona. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smohan23 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jeeves & Bertie Wooster

I made similar edits today (changing "Bertie" to "Wooster" where appropriate) to two different articles, and received very different responses. When I changed 16 occurrences in P. G. Wodehouse, you reverted me, but when I changed 34 occurrences in Jeeves, I received a Thank you notification from User:Wikipeterproject, who claims to be a veteran editor with 9000 edits (not that that makes him unassailably correct, but since I think he's done more edits than you and I combined, he probably knows the house style, even though neither you nor I have found anything definitive on the subject of naming conventions for fictional names).

So I thought I would explain to you why I made the changes.

I do agree that, superficially, it feels odd to us in the 21st century, to speak of fictional characters by their surnames but, firstly it is what I have found in many other articles, and secondly I believe it is the only NPOV solution in this case.

I disagree with your suggestion that the "Jeeves and Wooster" books (as I believe they are always formally called, rather than "Jeeves and Bertie"), generally refer to Bertie Wooster as "Bertie" rather than "Wooster". I don't think you are comparing like with like. Obviously, Wooster's family, and sometimes his friends, call him "Bertie", just as Reginald Jeeves' friends call him "Reggie". But in a semi-formal situation, he is referred to as "Bertie Wooster", and in a formal situation as "Wooster".

Also, remember that we are referring to books set in a time 60 - 100 years ago, when conventions were different and classism was rampant in the UK (as were racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance). We should not therefore be blindly following the terminology in the book within our commentaries -- that style, while excellent for humorous writing of the period, would not have been considered "encyclopaedic" then, let alone now.

It seems right to list out the conventions of those times, which were, if I remember what I was taught (please someone correct me if I am wrong):

  • older family members address or refer to younger relations as First-name, often with a diminutive, (+ Surname if ambiguous), eg Reggie (Jeeves) or Bertie (Wooster)
  • younger family members address or refer to their parents and grandparents as Mr/Mrs (First-name if ambiguous +) Surname, eg Mr Jeeves or Mr Wooster (I really can't imagine addressing my parents as Mr/Mrs Enginear, but I know that they were taught to address their own parents in that way when they were young, at least if others were present)
  • younger family members address or refer to their aunts/uncles as Aunt/Uncle First-name (+ Surname if ambiguous), eg Aunt Dahlia, or Aunt Dahlia Travers, if there were several Aunt Dahlias
  • equals in the middle or upper classes (and all their subdivisions) address or refer to each other by surname only, unless either family or very friendly (even when I was at school, we did that, and some still addressed me in that way at university, though I did not reciprocate, except occasionally in jest or for irony) -- interestingly, Bertie Wooster and his friends generally avoid the issue by using nicknames, but otherwise, as far as I recall, they used surnames
  • equals in the working class (and all its subdivisions) tend to address or refer to each other by First names with diminuitives if friendly, or otherwise as Mr/Mrs Surname, eg Reggie or Mr Jeeves
  • masters/mistresses address or refer to junior servants as formal First-name (as previously they had addressed or referred to slaves), eg when Jeeves was a page-boy, he would have been addressed as Reginald (but perhaps I've mis-remembered, or else US usage was different, because the slave in Huckleberry Finn is "Jim", not "James")
  • masters/mistresses address or refer to senior servants as Surname, eg Jeeves or Spode
  • servants refer to the patriarch/matriarch as Mr/Mrs xxx (assuming he/she's not a knight/dame or a lord/lady), eg Mrs Travers (Aunt Dahlia)
  • servants refer to sons/daughters of the patriarch/matriarch as Mr/Mrs/Master/Miss First-name Surname, eg (when his parents were alive) Master Bertram (definitely not Bertie, even when he was a baby), or Master Bertram Wooster

Although is seems Bertie Wooster is an orphan, he is of an age where most people would still have at least one living parent, so the readers (assumed by the author to be middle or upper class -- remember most of the books pre-date Lady Chatterley's Lover and the infamous "Would you let your servants read this book?") are encouraged to think of him as "cousin/nephew Bertie" while the valet, however clever, is still "Jeeves". If Wodehouse had been writing for the servant class, he would have spoken of Mr Wooster and Reggie, and he would have avoided many of the lèse-majesté issues as being not suitable for servants to read.

Obviously, if Wooster was reading about himself in an encyclopaedia, he would expect to see himself mentioned first as "Bertram Wilberforce Wooster", or possibly "Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster", and thereafter as "Wooster". We do indeed start his article in that way, but we then proceed to refer to him as "Bertie" throughout, which would horrify him -- it's one thing for a reader/cousin/uncle/aunt to refer to him as "Bertie", but certainly not a formal publication.

But is that really the point?

For me, my skin crawls when I read "Jeeves and Bertie" because it perpetuates class prejudice. The two men are named in different formats because of their different circumstances -- because we are encouraged to think of "Bertie" as a young relative, while "Jeeves" is a non-person, no longer the chattel that he would have been 200 years earlier (or little over 100 years earlier in the USA) but still someone so far beneath us that we can never be on first-name terms.

Let's compare briefly with Huckleberry Finn -- and I do this without in any way disrespecting the much more serious issues dealt with by Mark Twain (it is thought that "Jim the runaway slave" is based on the slave whose bloated body Mark Twain had discovered as a boy -- the runaway had drowned while trying to escape from bounty-hunters; the author kept returning to the manuscript, modifying it for years before he finally released it; it is thought that he wanted to make it a darker tale, but his instincts told him that without the happy ending he finally added, the Northern US public would not accept it. But even though, by the time he was writing it, slavery had been abolished, so what he wrote was no longer illegal, the Ku Klux Klan were already lynching white integrationists, so it was risky to make it too happy).

Jim comes through as the real hero, the only adult main character, who in the end is prepared to face death, or worse being sold to a bad slave-owner, rather than leave an injured Huck. Huckleberry Finn is like a Shakespearian fool. Someone who, by his position (still a child, largely self-taught, alienated from society and with little moral guidance) is permitted to say the things that, if he was an adult, would have led to him being lynched as a "nigger-lover". Tom Sawyer is a selfish dilettante who thinks it's all a game -- he's the same age as Huck but has never had to fend for himself and is immature -- he knows that Jim's owner has freed him, but he doesn't tell anyone because that would spoil the fun -- the fun of Jim and Huck risking their lives and being shot at. Meanwhile, Tom knows deep down that, because he's from a good family, he'll be looked after, however the game ends. But yes, even in that story there is humour.

Compared with that, as Wodehouse said himself, the topics in the Jeeves and Wooster books are extremely light, and the humour predominates. But Wooster is a bit like Sawyer might have been, 10 years on. He is still a dilettante and still a bit selfish -- he doesn't realise it -- he speaks of "Never let a chum down" -- but Tom would have said that too. But actually, some of his actions, and those of his friends, prey on society. It's hilarious to read of, knowing that such stereotypes, if they ever existed, are now extinct, or at least, limited in numbers, eg members of the Bullingdon Club who somehow still get elected to high office in the UK. But it's only hilarious because Wodehouse has brought us on side, to smile at the idiocies of cousin Bertie. And, while he never has to put his life at risk like Jim, Reginald Jeeves is still the quiet fixer who arranges everything, even getting "our Bertie" out of prison when necessary.

I was born into a society where class prejudice was rampant. One of my grandmothers was a bigot, who sat in a restaurant disparaging the waiter as if he couldn't hear her. I made sure I never went out with her again. One Easter, as a child, I visited a friend whose parents moved to a seaside town. They would not let us go to the beach on Wednesday afternoons, because that was early closing day and "the tradespeople would be there". Their neighbours were a rich family who owned a large grocer's shop (the nearest we had to supermarkets in those days). To his mum's annoyance, my friend insisted on being friendly with the neighbour's children. One day, one of those children dared to use her toilet. As soon as he had gone, she was fussing round the toilet, spraying disinfectant all round it, complaining that "you never know what germs those types may have". I was invited to visit them again, but I made my excuses and didn't go.

Just as with racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance, I have tried hard to distance myself from class discrimination, and it hurts me when I see it perpetuated in Wikipedia, which should be NPOV. Yes, the Jeeves and Wooster books are hilarious, but they are "of their time". Just as I would not call someone a nigger on the excuse that that word peppers Huckleberry Finn, so I do not use different conventions for naming servants and masters, just because it is the (historically correct) usage in Wodehouse's books. Nor should Wikipedia.

So am I being oversensitive? Is there some reason I have missed why we should allow class-prejudice in our commentary of the books? 'pedia is not my home wiki, and I do not want to be drawn into a long discussion. I shall therefore back out for the present, and leave it to you to decide. At present, P. G. Wodehouse is reverted to its original style, ie Bertie...Bertie...Jeeves and Bertie...Bertie...Jeeves and Bertie. So if you think I am wrong, it can be left for the moment, but if the consensus is that I am right, it will need to be re-reverted. I hope to be back on the site in a few days, to see what has happened. Enginear (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I feel that "Wooster" is appropriate, at least when referenced alongside Jeeves, given that the pair are commonly referenced that way (for example in the BBC series Jeeves and Wooster. It is otherwise not uncommon in Wikipedia to refer to fictional characters by their given name, and this is the case throughout the Bertie Wooster article. I don't think that one can or should read a class prejudice into any of this. Wikipeterproject (talk) 14:32, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a neutral bystander, but I think Enginear makes some compelling points. Vttale (talk) 15:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Willis Tower edit

Hello there. I think what I wrote in the Willis tower article was neutral. You see I didn't make anything up, all of those statements are from proper websites written by professionals. It is not me who said those things, these statements are found in proper university websites:

So as you can see what I wrote about Khan are all from those websites written by professional engineers. thank you. --Aalaan (talk) 16:29, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Twenty Questions Page

Dear McGeddon,

Some external links did removed by you, but you should consider that the links are subject of the page! nadafy.com is an academic project in machine learning field, its similar 20Q.net in the skin but different in algorithm and code behind. The project need to be played to get more feedback from its functionality ratio during times to analyse learning rate per decision. Do you want to delete it?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.98.110.228 (talk • contribs) 09:06, 25 February 2014‎

Hi can you please put the link back because there is nowhere to actually play the game online and I thought this was a great resource for that purpose.

Tom

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