User talk:Alex Holowczak

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Harry Potter

I didn't write that lol. Check the history.. I thought you did! I was gonna say...

--LibLord 21:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

oi! don't delete the harry potter bit! it's true! you wouldn't know, you'd left the school... we had to help them make spell books and wizard cloaks! and there were harry potter print offs all around the rooms.

--LibLord 22:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

lol nope i'm not joking.. i'd actually like the school's page to be good. i just deleted the school song. or at least, wrote a paragraph about it and put the lyrics on a separate page. i thought it was crowding the place up too much, especially considering no one would read it.

Me? I used to go to 5 Ways. Not anymore though.

I just decided to spruce it up a little. And the origonal article had several spelling mistakes in it. So I gave it an air that would not attract Wikipedia Mod Attention

KEFW chess

Hey, check the latest edits to the Five Ways article. Someone called RobertGale added some stuff about sex offenders (which I deleted) but also something to the chess section. It sounds like it should be deleted, but I didn't want to look like I was being too territorial over the article, so can you check it out and delete if necessary? I mean, there might be some truth in it. 'Alex "checkmate" Holowczak', lol... LibLord 12:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Alex Holowczak, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!

LibLord 21:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

School

Interesting way of telling me: OK I'll bring it in 1st day. -- Casmith 789 16:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ArmchairGM

A tag has been placed on ArmchairGM, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article seems to be blatant advertising which only promotes a company, product, group or service and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the general criteria for speedy deletion, particularly item 11, as well as the guidelines on spam.

If you can indicate why the subject of this article is not blatant advertising, you may contest the tagging. To do this, please add {{hangon}} on the top of the page and leave a note on the article's talk page explaining your position. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would help make it encyclopedic, as well as adding any citations from reliable sources to ensure that the article will be verifiable. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Mhking 14:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In its present form, the article reads like an ad for a non-notable website. To be honest, I can't see where the article should stay in any form. If it fails on Speedy Delete, I'll be nominating it for a standard AfD, as a non-notable subject. --Mhking 14:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If there were reason for it to stay (as I said, I don't see it that way), certainly empirical outside sources would have be referenced in order to establish notability. --Mhking 15:12, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting pages that you created yourself

If you create a page yourself, and there are no content edits to it by other people, you can request deletion of the page using {{db-author}}. (If other people have edited, and it's an article, AfD (which is specifically for articles) is probably a better process to use than MfD (for userpages, portals, project pages, help pages, Talk pages, and anything that doesn't fit into the other processes).) Hope that helps! --ais523 15:33, 28 March 2007 (U T C)

Re: source

Hello Alex. Are you new to WP:MOTOR? New or otherwise, welcome anyway! Thanks very much for that source, but I personally don't work on that subject. I'm more about junior formulae, like F3 and FBMW. Nice of you to think that I co-ordinate the project, but really, I am just one of its most active (and pro-active) members. If were you, I would post a note about that source on the project talk page. Give it a general title and everyone can add useful sources of their own. I have one or two that I can list. Regards, Adrian M. H. 16:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

British drivers in IRL

Although the British flag would seem a more feasible option, having seen live coverage from ESPN of previous IRL races, they do in fact show the individual country, e.g. Franchitti with the Scottish flag. I prefer the individual country flags instead of the UK one. I don't remember using the UK flag for Wheldon, I just changed the distance for the race on Sunday. Cs-wolves 17:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your GA nomination of King Edward VI Five Ways

The article King Edward VI Five Ways you nominated as a good article has failed , see Talk:King Edward VI Five Ways for reasons why the nomination failed. If or when these points have been taken care of, you may apply for a new nomination of said article. If you oppose this decision, you may ask for a reassessment. Noetic Sage 23:10, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Response to post on my talk page: The article needs a lot of work. As far as references, go through and pretend you know nothing about the school. Which statements might be controversial? Which claims might be disputed? Did you quote anything? All of these need references. I'll try to add some citation tags to help you out. There should be at least one reference per paragraph generally. Also, some sections are completely lacking wikilinks. Check out the manual of style to give you a better idea of how to use these. Basically, read through as if you knew nothing about the school and what words, people, or places would you want to know more information about? They should all be wikilinked. I think that will give you a good start. For other suggestions, check out the good article criteria and make sure the article covers every single criterion. If you don't know what things like the lead are, click the wikilinks and learn more. Regarding what's missing from the article, upon quick glance I notice no history section (which is absolutely necessary) and nothing about budgeting or finances. Take a look at some other GA-class school articles and see how they do things. That should help. Let me know if you have any other questions. —Noetic Sage 20:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speedway Tables

Hello. Thanks for your help !! I have a copy of most of the tables, it is literally just finding the time to do the pages. I will gladly help you with them. What I will do is work backwards from 2007, if you work from the early years we can meet in the middle. If you copy the 2007 page I made as a template, we could crack this (quite) quickly.

Have you seen the speedway fan user box that is on my page ? Hammer1980·^talk 14:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are not sure of a team name, give me a shout. I am will probably be able to remember.Hammer1980·^talk 14:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Was making it as we spoke ! Take a look. YOur page Looks OK to me. Long Eaton may have been called Archers at the time but I will change it if needs be.Hammer1980·^talk 14:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Elite format

I think its mentioned on the motorcycle speedway page. The average calculation certainly is. The best person to ask about the Polish league is User:Radzinski. Hammer1980·^talk 21:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Billiards project invite

Great job so far on World Professional Billiards Championship! If you plan to create/edit more articles in this topic area, you may with to join the Cue sports WikiProject, which has a lot of resources. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I replied to you on my talk page at the message you left there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 15:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Top Gear test track

Hey Alex, I just wanted to say 'Good work' on the TG track page, a fascinating addition to Wikipedia.
I admit to concern over the legal status of the graphic, which is great, but that will be deleted in a few days if you don't amend the copyright license. If the image goes, the article will lose much of its appeal, so we should try to keep it. I may be able to help you with that: the first step is finding out where you got it from. You can reply right here, or on my talk page. Thanks. ↔ Dennywuh (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first image, of the surrounding area, I don't see us being able to salvage. It's from Google Maps, Google Earth or similar, and you admitted as much when you uploaded it, so it's not going to last long. Google is very protective of its copyrights. I'm more interested in the second one, the layout of the track. Following your suggestion I checked the Sonydrone.Wordpress.com page, where they say they got it from the Top Gear page, where in fact it is, here. From the text on that page I deduce they got it originally from Sony, as part of the Gran Turismo 5 game.

That makes things very difficult, so much so I'm afraid there's not much we can do about it, the image is going to be deleted next Tuesday. This is Wikipedia's policy on the matter:

Images and photographs, like written works, are subject to copyright. Someone holds the copyright unless they have been explicitly placed in the public domain. Images on the internet need to be licensed directly from the copyright holder or someone able to license on their behalf. In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow a photograph to be used.

Image description pages must be tagged with a special tag to indicate the legal status of the images, as described at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Untagged or incorrectly-tagged images will be deleted.

Pity, because it's a great addition to a page that won't be much without it.

Regarding your additional points, the same image being in both places is unusual, I can only assume it's a cache problem. Let me have a closer look. Do you have Google Earth on your system? ↔ Dennywuh (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've done some changes to the article (the track is 1.75 miles [2.81 km] long) and refreshed both the image and the page cache, but both pics are still the same. Weird. If you have GE click this link: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=71551 It'll take you straight to the track and place a map of the circuit over the runways so you can follow it exactly.

Sorry about the pics, but Wikipedia is a harsh mistress that way. ↔ Dennywuh (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea the re-drawing the image yourself, kudos to you for that. Try and base it on Google Earth or Google Maps instead of the layout in the uploaded pic, as it's slightly unrealistic. Also, Wikipedia favours vector graphics over bitmaps, if at all possible. Let me know when you have it. Peace. ↔ Dennywuh (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I took the liberty of creating a new track map, showing the runways, taxiways and aprons, in addition to the circuit. I only replaced the image in the infobox. — Mustang_DVS (talk|contribs) 05:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

you

i can't believe you were on wikipedia on christmas day. also, did you really nominate the KEFW article as a "good article"? you could have just asked me if you wanted someone to tell you how lame it is! LibLord 18:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did You Know?

....that I nominated the expanded Top Gear Test Track article, which you created, for possible inclusion on did You Know? I think you should deserve a DYK banner nod. --293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 21:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Wheeldon

It said...

"mr wheeldon is a smelly bum face, who has a moustach like adolf hitler"

Not very helpful content SGGH ^speak! 22:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE: KEFW

I've reverted again, if the user continues to vandalise you can always report them to WP:AIV, thanks for notifying me anyway. AndreNatas (talk) 18:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

King Edward VI Five Ways

I have removed what appeared to be the main destructive edit, you can do this yourself by looking ate the articles history page and clicking the 'Undo' link next to an edit or by clicking on the 'last' link to see the changes made, there is then an undo link on the right. --Nate1481(^t/_c) 13:21, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

KEFW old edwardians

Re your question on whether I have a reference for the old edwardians that I added (Ben Wright, Paul Ready, Imran Khan), you will need to check the school records. There is no record of students who attended the school available online.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Getafix (talk • contribs) 21:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion of The Green Bus

A tag has been placed on The Green Bus requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a company or corporation, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for companies and corporations.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. TrulyBlue (talk) 11:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alex, if there are no links elsewhere, then it is unlikely the article would meet our notability criteria for corporations (see here for the criteria). In order to meet our verifiability requirements, an article must be reliably sourced; that is, it must not use itself as a reference - it must use reliable, published, third-party sources. fish&karate 11:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And no, WP:CSD#A7 states "If controversial, as with schools, list the article at Articles for deletion instead." It does not say "school-related". fish&karate 11:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what I was writing when fish&karate made their contribution: The notability guideline for companies and corporations applies here because The Green Bus is a bus company. Therefore it should be the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources before there's an article. Sorry if this sounds terse, but I see this as a cut-and-dried application of the notability guidelines. I notice that in the meantime someone has deleted the page, presumably in agreement with me. Regards, TrulyBlue (talk) 11:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was me. fish&karate 12:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How many sources are required? More than none (which is what it had). "Multiple" is usually given as the requirement (ie, more than one). fish&karate 12:05, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Referring to your question on my talk page, I think the notability criteria that we've been linking to has the necessary detail. please see the first section after the introduction which basically says that most independent sources are acceptable, and gives a list of exceptions where the coverage might be deemed trivial. regards TrulyBlue (talk) 12:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright violation warning

It looks like you may have added copyrighted material to Wikipedia, at History of English billiards. Please do not add such material without permission from the copyright holder. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions will be deleted. You may use external websites as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. That entire article was simply a copy-paste from some else's blog, namely this page. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you look here, you can see that was the stage of the article on 3 September 2008, at 22:48. Conversely, this blog was written on 22 October, 2008. All of my editing was done long before then, I haven't touched the page since 2 December, 2007. This proves that the blog was a copy of the wikipedia article, not me copying from the blog. Notice also from the history that I did the article in several edits, spaced out over an hour or so. If I was copying and pasting from the blog, why wouldn't I have done it all in one go?

I therefore deplore your sentiment of me using "copyrighted" material, and would like you to reinstate the article, and remove the tag from my talk page, as I have not used copyright material. I used the book as a source, as quoted in the article.

Written on SMcCandlish's talk page. He got the wrong end of the stick, and failed to compare the dates of the two articles, as outlined above.

Alex Holowczak (talk) 13:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct, on the most insignificant fact of the issue. You did not rip off that blog. You and the blogger both ripped off, in many cases word-for-word, paragraph for paragraph, Clive Everton's The History of Snooker and Billiards (1986) or its earlier incarnation as The Story of Billiards and Snooker (1979). I have both of them on hand in hardcopy. You barely changed any of the wording at all, even keeping some of his unusual colloquialisms. The even more frustrating things are that English billiards already existed and did not have a "History" section, and that about 80% of the material you "borrowed" for that article actually pertained more to Cue sports, Cue stick, Billiard table and Billiard ball, and was not specific to English billiards at all, making the History of English billiards article rather doubly pointless. Unfortunately, I merged your plagiarized material into all of these articles before I realized they were blatant copyright violations. After the fact, I have (so far) spent 6+ hours rewriting this material to get around the WP:COPYVIO issues, but it still needs work. I think if Clive himself saw these articles he'd say "Cor! Someone rippped off my book's first chapter!"

So, I'm not happy either. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I'm sure you'll want to express one, but I'm not really interested in debating this at all. While I am not a lawyer myself, I worked with Internet-specialist intellectual property attorneys for nine years straight, so I can tell you with zero doubt that slightly rewording the prose from four straight pages in a copyrighted book for a Web-based article is definitely a copyright violation, as a "derivative work". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:32, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the history, your reason for deleting the article is that it is a direct copy of the blog, and absolutely nothing to do with the original book. The article had just got to the billiards bit, but then I somewhat stopped writing it. It would have gone on to mention the evolution of the game through the Lindrum era etc., making it more "to the point". Looking around the Cue sports article and its subbranches, you appear to have a platform to insert things from the book that you deem required. But why didn't you express your concern about it's point before merging it all? As for actually copyrighting the material initially, it was a year or more ago; I put it down to the naivety of not being fully aware of the concept of copywriting material; I shall take your word that it was a bit too much like the book. Alex Holowczak (talk) 08:43, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I already noted, the original source of the copyrighted material isn't really of any importance; the issue was that it was a copyvio at all. Actually getting into the history of English billiards proper would be great; this should probably happen at English billiards#History unless and until such time that the main article becomes so huge that it needs to be split (e.g., about the size of Snooker). I merged the material without saying anything about the copyvio issue because it wasn't clear at that time that it was a copyvio. All four articles will need further rewriting to resolve that issue. It's not that we can't use the facts Everton presents, we just can't use his wording or minor modifications of his wording, except in brief direct quotations. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

This changed how someone died. WP:RS are needed, in my opinion. -Shootbamboo (talk) 01:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I understand. I say put what you said on on my talk page, on the article talk page, and hopefully it will get sorted out. Thanks. -Shootbamboo (talk) 23:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ArmchairGM listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect ArmchairGM. Since you had some involvement with the ArmchairGM redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Steel1943 (talk) 22:08, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]