User talk:Quuxplusone/Archive1

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Welcome!

Greetings, and welcome to Wikipedia! Noticed you touching up P.D.Q. Bach—a favorite of mine. Looks like some nice work so far; glad to see you around!

Here are some pages you might want to visit:

• Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset: A simple overview of the guidelines of the Wikipedia community.
• Wikipedia:How to edit a page: Everything you ever really wanted to know about formatting and markup, but were afraid to ask.
• Wikipedia:Manual of style: Now that you know how to edit a page, how should you write in it?
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: ...and what shouldn't you write in it?
• Wikipedia:Sandbox: Here's the place to do editing tests without worrying about messing anything up.
• Wikipedia:Glossary: Words specific to Wikipedia and wiki culture (for example, the tendency to stick "wiki" in front of everything!) and frequently used abbreviations that you might encounter.
• Wikipedia:FAQ: Questions and answers about various topics, including technical aspects, copyright, and a general overview of the project.
• Wikipedia:Help desk: Got a question not answered in any of the help materials, or just can't find it (understandable, even for someone who's been around a while)? Ask it here!
• Wikipedia:Village pump: Want to see what's going on around Wikipedia? Here's where people are talking.
• Wikipedia:Community Portal: Just about anything else you as a Wikipedia editor might want to find is linked from here.

Finally, if you haven't already, feel free to sign your name to the Wikipedia:New user log and add yourself to the various listings of Wikipedia:Wikipedians! Also, remember to sign your name on Talk pages (but not articles) with "~~~~" to leave your signature and a timestamp. Thanks for your contributions so far, and happy editing! Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:46, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deltohedron vs. trapezohedron

I think your last revision of Deltohedron is not correct. Deltohedron is more general term than trapezohedron. Note that the dual of trapoezohedron is an antiprism. Also the term trapoezohedron is misleading. Tomo 23:06, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

True. Reverted. --Quuxplusone 20:46, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Copyleft versus the search engine

<<in case anyone wants to comment>>

Qwghlm

<<in case anyone wants to comment>>

Sri Aurobindo

You need to explain why you put a POV tag on the Sri Aurobindo article. Please do this on the discussion page for that article. Thanks. --goethean ॐ 18:39, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Roger Price

Your dab on Roger Price (TV) on You Can't Do That on Television is correct (he's the same Roger Price as The Tomorrow People and other Thames TV shows). -- Kaszeta 03:22, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Byline

Thanks for the article. I once created tiny stub but nobody added anything into it so it was deleted eventually. Its good real article was written after all. Pavel Vozenilek 22:49, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:(disambiguation)

Template:(disambiguation) is very similar to the existing, more widely used, and much easier to type Template:Disambig, but serves a different purpose. It's for disambiguation pages that aren't ambiguous. Josh Parris ✉ 01:26, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That might be interesting, but it's not true. Before I changed all the references, Template:(disambiguation) had been used for dab pages without (disambiguation) in their titles; and Template:Disambig is certainly being used for dozens, if not hundreds, of dab pages with (disambiguation) in their titles. (Pick a place to continue this discussion if you want to: my talk page or yours. I've added yours to my watchlist for the next week or so.) --Quuxplusone 01:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) is a fairly new guideline you might be interested in. Josh Parris ✉ 03:08, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

English words of Greek origin

Why have you moved this to List of English words of Greek origin, given that it doesn't contain a list (indeed it used to have a list, but the list was deleted, on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a dictionary? Please move it back again. rossb 21:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

For consistency with all the other articles named "List of English words foo", and specifically for consistency with all the other articles named "List of English words of foo origin". I was looking at What links here:Template:Wiktionarycat. If you really think asymmetry is less ugly than calling the article "List of...", then I won't stop your renaming it back; I never revert twice. But I really think it's better to keep all the "English words of x origin" together in one consistent namespace. (I've also renamed several stubs created by User:Uncle G, even though they don't contain any content, let alone lists! E.g. List of English words of Punjabi origin.) --Quuxplusone 21:20, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Year of birth missing

I think you should rename this Category:Unknown births to conform to the style we now use (i.e. Category:2003 births. Interesting idea... part of me really likes it, part of me thinks it might get VfDed. gren 02:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Copied comment & discussion to Category talk:Year of birth missing. --Quuxplusone 08:15, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Young's Literal Translation

{{christianity-stub}} was removed. I (the person who expanded this article from a stubby-stub to a slightly-longer-stub by adding the minor info on tenses and the Genesis excerpt) think that's an error, because despite the length of the article, it doesn't really say very much about Young, his translation, his reasons for making the translation, the idiosyncrasies of phrasing in the translation, and so on. Keeping the categorized stub notice makes it much more likely that someone who knows about this topic will expand the article to a useful size. Stub removal reverted. --Quuxplusone 1 July 2005 01:08 (UTC)

It's not a stub => I have removed the stub tag. Your special pleading noted: do not misuse stub tags. Just about every page in Wikipedia needs expanding. There's nothing special about Young's literal translation. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Spaces between sentences

I thought this note under "editing style" on your user page was a little peculiar, first because I'm an American and was taught to put two spaces (the one-space style is called "frenchspacing" in LaTeX), but also because it doesn't make any difference how many spaces you put there in Wiki markup; it renders the same either way. --Trovatore 07:31, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

You've basically hit on the reason I do it, even though you (probably) don't realize it — if it renders the same either way, then what's the point of wasting one byte per sentence on Wikipedia's servers? For similar reasons, I prefer headings to be written ==Foo bar== instead of == Foo bar ==, with no following blank line. The output is no different, but the input is in a nice standard format that doesn't waste space on disk or on the screen.

P.S.: \frenchspacing in (La)TeX is slightly different, in that it affects the output and not the input. (Wikipedians' editing styles affect the input and not the output.) Also, the default "non-French" TeX spacing doesn't put two spaces after a period — it puts one big space that is normally quite a bit narrower than two interword spaces put together. --Quuxplusone 16:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Elimination

Hello! The merge idea sounds great. I thought there might have been more diverse ways to play that game, already documented here. If i come back, and someone hasn't already done it, i'll take a hack at it.

peace,

shuffdog 06:09, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Benjamin Tyler Henry and the Henry rifle

I meant to create a second article about the rifle. But, before I could do that you added info to Mr. Henry's bio. I moved the information about the rifle to the Henry Rifle page. I just have not had time to type up my article yet. Please add to each article if you can. Both articles need more info. But I wanted the article about the man to be about "man" and the article about the rifle to be about the "rifle". WikiDon 01:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

• Sir, should it not be "the Henry Rifle?. The word rifle should be upper case, it is part of the name. Like: the State of Indiana, the Woolworth Building, the Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, etc.? WikiDon 04:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Nope. I'll admit I'm more conservative in this respect than some Wikipedian communities; I prefer to write of fox terriers and Sacagawea dollars, for example, where the dog-breeding community prefers to write of Fox Terriers and the coin collectors seem to be split over Sacagawea Dollar.¹ But in this case, a quick look at Category:Rifles should make the consensus pretty clear. Guns aren't proper nouns. The exception is when you are really talking about a proper name for a gun; for example, Big Bertha or Brown Bess.

1. (which I may move to Sacagawea dollar shortly, to fit the Franklin half dollar/Kennedy half dollar/Susan B. Anthony dollar pattern)

--Quuxplusone 16:26, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Quux

So, your username makes me curious. Are you in any way related to Guy Steele (the Great Quux)? Your name has an obvious interpretation, but I have no idea if that was intended. Noel (talk) 04:35, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

PS: I don't usually check other User_talk: pages (so that I don't have to monitor a whole long list of User_Talk: pages - one for each person with whom I am having a "conversation"), so please leave any messages for me on my talk page (above); if you leave a message for me here I probably will not see it. I know not everyone uses this style (they would rather keep all the text of a thread in one place), but I simply can't monitor all the User_talk: pages I leave messages on. Thanks!

Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern

Can I send the transaltion to you?? Jorgenpfhartogs 13:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

→ Sure, you can send me the translations (of those Dutch articles, I presume?). My normal response would be "well, why don't you just revise Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern yourself?", but reading this talk page I guess I see why. :) You can use User talk:Quuxplusone/Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern as a scratch page if you like. --Quuxplusone 21:09, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello Quuxplusone, should you still be interested, I have completed the article on Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern. Regards, Bessel Dekker 21:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Speedy tagging

Please do not use speedy tags on articles which clearly do not meet the criteria, such as Jason's Gem. Kappa 11:49, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I only now noticed the discussion going on a week ago at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages), but I want you to know that if you ever revisit the issue, please drop me a note on my user talk page. I am in agreement that there should be no hard restriction against multiple wikilinks within a line. I find it appalling that there are people systematically going through Wikipedia removing links on disambiguation articles by citing the current guideline as absolute law. I think that boldfacing the primary term sufficiently distinguishes it from the rest of the line that there is no reason that other words within the line cannot be linked. —Lowellian (reply) 01:34, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Editing glitch

Hi, any clues as to what happened to cause this editing glitch, which lost a whole bunch of edits to RfD? Your edit just before that one worked fine. Any idea what happened? Noel (talk) 01:40, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I dunno. My connection's been slow and I've been seeing a lot of the "Wikipedia is temporarily down, see #wikimedia for details" message tonight; maybe if you click "Save" and/or "Refresh" enough times, weird stuff happens. I'll try to fix the damage to RfD, unless it's already been fixed by the time I get there. :( --Quuxplusone 01:45, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Not to worry; if that happens, back up to the previous screen (this works best if you clicked on "Show Preview" first), and then click on "Page History", and you can see if your edit actually 'took', even though you got an error message (which, for me, it usually did, about 85% of the time). Noel (talk) 01:55, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay, all better. Looks like the only thing that actually went missing was one comment by User:Jnc that shortly thereafter got deleted along with the whole vote (result inconclusive), and my own RfD on Utopia (Novel). --Quuxplusone 01:52, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Frederic Clements

I've added some material on Frederic Clements. My German is very very rusty so I used Altavista Babelfish to do the translation, and left out bits that I thought might be dodgy. I also did a bit of research elsewhere on the web. The article could still do with a fair bit of work, given Clements' importance to ecology, but you might want to take a look. - SP-KP 16:54, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 09:37, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Forensic

Why was it "changed back"?

This is how I decided to add information in here: I was looking for what forensic means, as I dont't have english as my native language. After searching a lot, I got to see that was its definition.

The change I've made is just because if that was in there it would have been much easier for me. I just wanted it to be that easy for the next person.

Now, why would Quuxplusone change it back to a simple and complicated redirection, while it was providing more information AND the link to the other defitinition as well?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask that. I'm just not sure what's the best thing to do here. But I don't feel like that "update" from Quuxplusone actually helped at all.

I'm not trying to start a fight here, I just want to learn about the rules of wikipedia since I'm still a newbie here.

I believe it would be better, for any term that has no information on it, to provide at least a phrase of definition whenever it's possible. It seens to me much better than a simple redirection, specially if it's not exactly a synonim. That's just about what links are meant for. --Cawas 06:49, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe all that's missing is to add something like this:

Be aware that forensic is not forensics, just like fly is not flys.

Please, follow to forensics for more detailed information.

--Cawas 06:54, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not Wiktionary. It's an encyclopedia. There's nothing encyclopedic to say about the word "forensic," but there is a lot of encyclopedic information to provide about forensics. What's more, Wikipedia is hypertext. This means that words should generally be redirected to their most common uses — as in "U.S." redirecting to United States, or "women" redirecting to woman, or "forensic" (as in "forensic science") redirecting to forensics.

As for your proposed "forensic is not forensics" page, that's what Wikipedia calls a "disambiguation page." It's a page used to disambiguate between multiple subjects with the same or similar names. But in this case, there's only one subject — forensics! So no disambiguation is needed, and thus no disambiguation page is needed. A simple redirect to the existing article on forensics is enough. --Quuxplusone 05:30, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I was actually looking into that issue, about being encyclopedia not dictionary... There's also a solution for that on wikipedia itself. I personally dislike that separation between encyclopedia and dictionary. Regardless, what someone wants to find when looking for a word is information. Be it a simple definition, be it a complex history. The name for that problem in wikipedia I found by accident, while looking for some Red Hat Linux information. It is a stub. Maybe the best thing to do about forensic would be just classifying it as a stub, since forensic is not, by any chance, similar to forensics. It might be deprecated, but I still could find at least one place that I had to look for its meaning to understand the message I've read. I can't recall where it was any longer.

I really don't see any reason to remove relevant information from here. If it's not the right place for definitions, if it's not even a stub, at very least that disambiguation page could link to wikitionary for forensic and another link to forensics with a brief explanation that they're not the same thing. Women is just plural for woman. US is just abbreviation for United States. That's so easy to explain, and I still think it wouldn't hurt even then to have a different page for women and woman. Call it as you want, be it a disambiguation, be it stub, be it a new term, but put in the little information and links wouldn't hurt anyone. If wikitionary and wikipedia are related, why not link each other?

Don't confuse yourself with redirect and link. Link adds information (at very least, the link itself is informational), redirection doesn't. To me redirect is good only for two things: A. while there is nobody willing to add information; B. if it really means the exact samething (can't think of an example, but I can imagine it's possible to exist).

I don't want to, at this point on my life, to look for more information for forensic. Maybe there isn't. If I don't know, it does qualify as a stub until someone who knows could go there and change from stub to disambiguation. But the information that I've put in there is relevant and if you read it you'll see that forensic is about as different from forensics as fly is from flys. They're just different words that sounds alike and look alike with only one letter that's widely used in English to "build" different words, if you look at it in an analytic way (which is defined as Analytic proposition).

I think the s definition is still incomplete...

Maybe you find it hard to understand because you probably have English as native and your whole life you never heard about forensic being different from forensics, but it just is.

And if any conclusion we can take out of this conversation, I think it should be under talk:forensic. This could easily become a FAQ, we'd just need to change all the words. But the meaning out of this, is certainly a FAQ.

As a side note, amazingly enough, there is not a single reference for flys as being a verb construction from to fly. Almost as hard to believe, there is no To Fly verb definition as well.

--Cawas 14:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought you didn't want to start an argument...? Anyway, see Talk:Forensic. For several definitions of "fly," see wikt:fly and wikt:flies and wikt:flying. I'm not going to debate with you any more, but I do think that you ought to think more carefully about why so many English-speakers disagree with your analysis of the nuances of English usage. :) --Quuxplusone 21:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I was caught in the moment. o_O Is it ok to use weird smiley faces? I actually like to debate, I didn't want to flame. But it's also ok to not debate. :) Thanks for putting and end in here. I think I could hurt myself! XD

And you're right, sometimes I should just be quiet. I just tried to write way more than this subjected should sustain, and I couldn't explain myself on the several aspects neither get this talk done. I could use more poking.

Anyway, I've just added to Talk:Forensic as well. I'm aware of definitions of fly, I am unaware of proper ways to conjugate verbs once in a while.

Now, you just left me one doubt and, please, don't take this as a challenge or something: Which "many English-speakers" are disagreeing? I mean, I though it were just two of us talking, I couldn't read any different opinion. I would love to if there is at least one. People are afraid to tell the truth to the face, but I love the day after they do it... I'm trying to learn how to love the same minute as well. :P

--Cawas 07:26, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Wear Sunscreen

quoted: 2005-10-07 01:35:28 Quuxplusone m (copyedit, cat Memetics (am i appropriate or not?))

By the way, thanks for your contribution over there. :)

How can I link to the revision better than doing this? http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wear_Sunscreen&oldid=24952487

--Cawas 16:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Style issues

Hi. I picked up on the style changes you made to the Streak (moth) article. I agree with most of the changes you have made (I do tend to overcapitalize at times!) but I have rebolded so it reads the streak rather than the streak. British moth common names have a rather archaic charm and the definite article is often part of the actual common name. As for capitalizing the common name.....I realize this is a sensitive issue to many people and I have left this one in lc but I will continue to capitalize common names for species in future articles as all British reference works (without exception as far as I have seen) do the same. I suppose its just what I'm used to but it just "looks right" to me. It is not a massive issue for me however and I have no desire to wage a transatlatic style war! Richard Barlow 09:23, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed a lot of people capitalizing animal names, plant names, and random geographical terms, but mostly only on Wikipedia. I assumed it was mostly the effect of nature guidebooks, which tend to have pictures or photos captioned with "Purple Loosestrife" or what-have-you — perhaps leading some readers to write about "fields full of Purple Loosestrife." However, such usage is clearly wrong in most cases. (Did Robert Frost write about Birch Trees?) I guess with the Narnia movie coming out, at least there's a popular justification for writing of Wolves and Beavers. ;)

Glad to hear there won't be a style war. I admit having no familiarity with British moth names, so while I naively would put "the streak" in the same category as "the grey wolf", I'm not conceited enough to change it back. :) --Quuxplusone 03:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Hello and thankyou for your courteous response - some people here get really hot under the collar about this issue:) To be honest with you "fields full of Purple Loosestrife" looks OK to me! I see no reason why the name of a species should not be considered a proper name. Besides it always seems to me to be the best way to disambiguate between, say, Common Gull as in Larus canus and common gull as in any gull there are lots of:) Richard Barlow 16:15, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Quoting style...

You comment on your user page that "Naturally, I won't edit an article solely to change its spacing or quotation style"... If by "quoting style" you mean "logical" vs. "aesthetic" punctuation in quotations, note that the MoS actually covers this. Also note that in cases where both UKisms and USisms are equally "valid" (afterwards vs. afterward, say), it's not unknown for people to get hot and bothered about flipping between the two... Alai 18:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

LaTeXifing

Hi. I saw you converting html to LaTeX in places. That's good overall, although HTML formulas are considered acceptable also, per the math style manual. And just a remark, also per that style manual, it is good to not have formulas as PNG images, if inline with text. So in that case HTML may be a better choice. Just thought I would let you know. You can reply here, on your talk page, if you have comments. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

At least on Firefox on Windows, the HTML ∫ symbol looks ridiculously small and similar to an f. And I'm not sure, but I would expect that text-based browsers would handle the ALT text on LaTeX images better than they'd handle lots of HTML entities and subscripts (e.g., "\int f_n(t)\,dt" versus "&int; f<sub>n</sub>(t) dt"). Anyway, enough LaTeX-boosting. :) Point is, I don't think the MoS's three rationales for avoiding LaTeX apply to the Riemann integral page: the LaTeX integral sign is easier to read than HTML; two more images on an image-heavy page don't much matter; and as I said, HTML isn't particularly good at integrals, or easy on text-only browsers. For things like "x+1", on the other hand, I would never consider LaTeX superior to HTML. --Quuxplusone 16:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the html integral sucks. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

see my talk 212.143.17.66 212.143.17.66 15:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC) 15:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC) thanks

{{cfr}}

I removed your {{cfr}} from Category:Year of death missing, after seeing that you'd proposed both C:YOBM and C:YODM for renaming, and then apparently changed your mind and removed the notice from C:YOBM (but not C:YODM). For what it's worth, I would have strongly opposed such a move anyway; if someone's year of death is truly "unknown," that person probably belongs in Category:Disappeared people anyway. The implication is that the date is known (to somebody, anyway), but "missing" from our encyclopedia. If that sounds modest, well, it is! :) --Quuxplusone 00:26, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

...which is exactly why I withdrew my proposal. Apologies, though, for overlooking the {{cfr}} at Category:Year of death missing and thanks for sorting it out!  Best wishes, David Kernow 00:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Comic Operas vs Operettas

Quux, I have altered the G&S opera pages to consistently refer to their works as Comic Operas. I noticed that you reverted some of them. Rather than get into an edit war, I wanted to explain where I am coming from.

Gilbert and Sullivan always referred to their works as operas, usually preceded by an adjective, such as "comic." When Gilbert published collected volumes of his operas, he called them Original Comic Operas. When Thomas Dunhill published an assessment of Sullivan's stage works in 1928, he titled the book Sullivan's Comic Operas: A Critical Appreciation.

Indeed, in the vast literature that has been written about the G&S works, they are nearly always referred to as operas. I won't say that nobody has called them operettas, but it isn't common. Indeed, it would be ironic to refer to them as operettas, as Gilbert & Sullivan considered themselves to be creating a new style of light opera for English tastes that was distancing itself from Continental operetta.

The present Wikipedia article on comic opera attempts to limit the concept to 18th Italy, suggesting it is a misnomer to apply the term to G&S. There are many problems with this article. Comic opera, like most musical genres, has been reinterpreted and given new meanings in other countries and eras where it has been practiced and refined. You wouldn't refuse to call Wagner's works operas, just because his concept of the term isn't the same as Monteverdi's. You wouldn't deny Mahler the right to call his works "symphonies," just because his concept of the symphony isn't the same as Haydn's.

We should respect the creators by describing their works as they preferred. Gilbert & Sullivan were closer in time to 18th century Italy than we are, and presumably had very good reasons for choosing the terminology that they did. I think that anyone who would choose to argue otherwise has a pretty heavy burden to carry.

On a related topic, I want to thank you for your project to "wikisource" the librettos. Marc Shepherd 22:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I recall a previous change-revert cycle on some of the operettas (sometime around May 2005, maybe?). The argument at that time was to the effect that opera refers to long works in which all the words are sung or recited; by that measure, only Princess Ida could be considered an opera, comic or otherwise. (Okay, and maybe Trial by Jury, but it's shorter than I'd call an "opera.") On the other hand, Wikipedia defines operetta as something very similar to G&S. As you point out, the Wikipedia article on comic opera confines itself mainly to 18th-century Italian comic opera, which is quite unlike G&S — so that particular wikilinking of the phrase "comic opera" is inappropriate, whether or not you think the phrase itself appropriate. If there were an article on English operetta, maybe I'd suggest that, based on the content of the Operetta article.

I agree that "lyric opera" is a term often used with respect to G&S; I disagree that the Savoy Operas are rarely called "operettas." When I was Wikisourcing the works, I was consulting Asimov's Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan, and I'm fairly sure he calls them operettas. As I understand it, operetta refers to medium-length works in which much of the speaking is singing, but there are stretches of dialogue. I'd lump Offenbach in with G&S as operetta, but don't hold me to that. :) And FWIW, I can believe that Sullivan wanted his works known as "operas," but that doesn't mean they are operas! :)

Anyway, bottom line, I feel strongly that the link to the unrelated article on comic opera is inappropriate, and the link to the article on operetta — whose first paragraph excellently describes G&S — is eminently appropriate. I hope I've made my line of reasoning clearer.

On a related topic, I haven't found the time to do any Wikisourcing, G&S or otherwise, since this summer. :( Maybe next summer I'll add some more. --Quuxplusone 04:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Quux, thanks for the response. When I get around to it, I'll provide some references. (Asimov isn't very reliable.) I'll also repair the comic opera article, which is simply wrong. I do agree with you that if someone follows the "comic opera" link from a G&S page, they would be perplexed, since that article as now written seems to exclude G&S.

There are many misconceptions in the definition of "opera." Quite a few works with extensive spoken dialogue are agreed by just about everyone to be operas, such as Mozart's The Magic Flute and Beethoven's Fidelio. My point about G&S was not merely that Sullivan fancied himself to be writing a species of opera, but that Gilbert did too, that all of their contemporaries thought so, and that the works have been so described by most writers since then.

Incidentally, Princess Ida is a work with detached numbers and spoken dialogue, just like all of the other G&S pieces (except for Trial by Jury). Marc Shepherd 12:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you're right about Ida. I had momentarily gotten the idea that Princess Ida had all its dialogue in recitative, but really it was just spoken blank verse. (I still disagree with you about the "comic opera–operetta" issue. Maybe you can make enough changes to the comic opera article to make a link worthwhile, though.) --Quuxplusone 15:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I've revised the comic opera page. I hope it makes clear the more-or-less continuous and unbroken chain that leads from opera buffa in 18th-century Italy to Savoy Opera in Victorian England. Marc Shepherd 19:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Just to stick in my 2 cents here on a minor issue, I agree that Asimov is not a useful source. Asimov (whom I knew personally) was a G&S fan, not a scholar. As he admitted himself, because of his excellent relationship with his publisher, for whom he had made millions of dollars during an extraordinarily productive career, his publisher had agreed, by this stage in his career as a writer, to publish anything he submitted. Isaac was fulfilling a fantasy of his to write a G&S book. But it is full of his opinions and speculations about the operas as a boy from Brooklyn who liked the operas a lot, not as a G&S scholar. He repeats many claims made by older sources without verifying them. Hope this helps. --Ssilvers 22:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Did you know? {{prod}} can have a parameter.

Hello there. You have proposed the article Maxim (saying) for deletion without providing a reason why in the {{prod}} template. You may be interested to know that you can add your reasoning like that: {{prod|Add reason for deletion here}}. This will make your reasoning show up in the article's deletion notice. It will also aid other users in considering your suggestion on the Proposed Deletions log. See also: How to propose deletion of an article. Sandstein 21:27, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

re: Sinaltrainal v. Coca-Cola

I just started writing this article less than an hour ago. Hopefully the introduction I just added explains what the case is. I don't know if you are in the process of doing this, but in the furture, please comment on the talk page about clean ups, and what needs to be done. Please tell me what you think of the new edits, I will continue to work on it. Thanks. Travb 03:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the suggestions, I corrected spelling errors, added more info. What do you think now? You are a tough guy to please, but that is great, cause it makes the article infinitely better.Travb 04:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Placement of quotation marks

I saw your copyedit to Hearing (law), in which you moved a period inside the quotation marks. This presumably reflects your preference for "American-style" typography. That isn't consistent with the Manual of Style, though:

With quotation marks we split the difference between American and British usage. Though not a rigid rule, we use the "double quotes" for most quotations—they are easier to read on the screen—and use 'single quotes' for nesting quotations, that is, "quotations 'within' quotations".

. . . .

When punctuating quoted passages, include the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation mark is part of the quotation ("logical" quotations). When using "scare quotes", the comma always goes outside. (from Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation marks)

So the Brits have to put up with our double quotation marks, and we have to put up with their typography. Unlike spelling differences, it doesn't depend on whether the subject of the article is American or British. That's why I reverted.

Incidentally, I noticed that you also removed initial capitals from piped links. That does no harm, but it isn't necessary. Whether you write [[Hearing (law)|hearing]] or [[hearing (law)|hearing]], it will appear the same way to the reader and will link to the same page, so you might as well not take the time to change it.

I do, however, agree with you about however. JamesMLane t c 23:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that part of the MoS; thanks for pointing it out. (I had moved the period inside, American-style, not just because I prefer American style, but because that article is primarily concerned with U.S. law at the moment. But if the MoS says otherwise, out goes the period — and that rule of mine!) Presumably, then, the second comma in

In Goldberg, the goal of a speedy decision was held to "justify the limitation of the pre-termination hearing to minimum procedural safeguards," which included . . .

would have to go outside the quotation marks as well.

Incidentally, I often remove initial capitals from piped links, change [[hearing (law)|hearing]] to hearing (law)|]], change two spaces to one, and make other "invisible" edits, just because I think it makes the source code of the article look cleaner. The less invisible cruft we write, the less invisible cruft editors have to wade through to locate that one typo in the middle of paragraph seven. :) --Quuxplusone 16:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Saints Wikiproject

I noted that you have been contributing to articles about saints. I invite you to join the WikiProject Saints. You can sign up on the page and add the following userbox to your user page.

This user is a member of the Saints WikiProject.

I also invite you to join the discussion on prayers and infoboxes here: Prayers_are_NPOV.

Thanks! --evrik 14:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

RE: Reefer Madness Gallery

Hmmm. For some reason, the gallery does not display properly in IE7 and most of the time does not display properly in IE6, but it does display right in Firefox. Crazy!!!

Perhaps we should put something like "This gallery displays best in Mozilla Firefox"? Or perhaps add a template similar to that to all galleries?

P.H. - Kyoukan, UASC 17:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Xor swap algorithm

Thanks for your recent cleanup, yes my previous attempt was far too long and didn't make much sense.

I've tried reducing what I wanted to say to a single paragraph just now. If you'd like to look over it, feel free. I feel it is important to get across that the XOR swap really doesn't help with optimising compilers, as often after running the various optimisation algorithms, the relation between "real" registers and memory locations and the C/C++/whatever variables is remote at best. The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mrjeff at 17:38, 8 May 2006.

Thanks! I've done another "cleanup," again reducing your contribution even further. ;) I do think the optimizing-compiler aspect is very important. Contrariwise, I actually don't think the article should have that section on which processors have XCHG instructions — but I can't think of anywhere else to put it, so it's stuck there, for the time being!  --Quuxplusone 22:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I really have to learn to start signing things :) Yes you are right, the article as a whole seems too long for what it is trying to say. We'll wait and see. Mrjeff 23:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

dab link in Vacuum flask

Why subst it? DMacks 15:05, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Top-of-page dablinks (in this case previously templated with {{for}}) are generally substed, not templated. Possible reasons include: efficiency (it's inefficient to invoke the template-including code when you don't need to?), ease of editing (why use an obscure template name instead of a sentence everyone can read in the source?), and just plain Occam's Razor — there's no need for the template, so I'd argue it really shouldn't exist at all. The only reason for the template to exist is to be substed by editors who can't remember that "indent and italicize" is the rule for dablinks. And, I suppose, to automatically generate categories full of properly dabbed pages; but what we really want is a category of improperly dabbed pages for fixing!

I see now that there's a whole hodgepodge of similarly redundant dablink templates, including but not limited to {{for}}, {{otheruses}}, {{This article is about}}, {{distinguish}}, {{redirect1}}, and {{about}}. I object philosophically to all of them, but I don't have the inclination right now to go on a crusade against them.

(If the point of the dablink templates was originally "standardization", I hope you agree that it's utterly failed in that aim. It seems like every possible wording of the dab text now has its own template: "For other uses, see...", "This article is about...", "For other uses of the term, see...", and so on. All the template orgy has done is make the Wikipedia server less efficient, because it has to be including templates all the time.) --Quuxplusone 17:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Comb sort

you're right... it doesnt work in some pathological cases... i ran a comparison test between it and a mergesort algo... i found it doesnt work sometimes... i'll fix it. Pulveriser 09:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I've fixed it... See Talk:Comb sort Pulveriser 09:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Cursive Script Image Request

I've taken care of your request here. -- G.S.K.Lee 07:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

G&S song parody site links

Hello.

Why did you remove the external links that I just put in to the song parody site? There are dozens of G&S song parodies there, and I thought it was a useful link to add to the operas where there are songs on the list from that opera? I've put them back. Please discuss this with me if you have an objection to these links, since I think they're an interesting link for readers. Thanks. BTW, thanks for the Mikado edits. We've been doing a lot of work on the W. S. Gilbert article, if you want to check it out. -- Ssilvers 00:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

My objection to that link is that it's linkspam. Someone's collection of G&S parodies is not relevant to an encyclopedia article on The Gondoliers, or to an encyclopedia article on The Mikado, or.... However, it would be relevant if Wikipedia had an article on "Gilbert and Sullivan song parodies" (which we probably don't; I didn't check). It might even be relevant to the Patter song article, which briefly discusses G&S parodies, although the "AmIRight" collection seems to include a lot of songs that aren't patter songs.

I admit that I'm slightly biased by the incredibly poor quality of some of those parodies. And also by the fact that you spammed that same link onto like seven or eight pages in one day. My bias is moderated by the observation that you have done a lot of decent work on Wikipedia's G&S articles... but that doesn't justify linkspam.

In short: That link might interest some people, in which case they can Google "G&S parody songs" and find it right away, without help from you or me. Meanwhile, people who want encyclopedic information about the Savoy Operas can visit Wikipedia! --Quuxplusone 02:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know who put these parodies together, or if they're any good or not (parodies usually aren't), but a lot of people who are interested in G&S love parodies (I don't!). One little link seems a lot less intrusive in each of these articles than all the stupid trivia under "cultural influence" in a lot of the G&S articles. I have only added this link to the particular articles where there are relevant parodies in the list, so I don't think it's "linkspam". I suppose there could be an article on parodies, and then we could blue link to it, but why bother, when one little link, that identifies clearly what it is, gives people who are interested the option to access these parodies. -- Ssilvers 03:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

People who are interested in G&S also often enjoy listening to MIDI files of G&S works. Should we put a link to a collection of MIDI files in the "External links" section of every single G&S-themed article on Wikipedia? Spam is spam. Please don't do it. (Remember, Google is a search engine. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.) --Quuxplusone 03:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

OK. I disagree with you. This is not linkspam. And yes, nearly all of the G&S articles have links to websites that do contain Midi files (usually the G&S Archive). A great feature of Wikipedia is that we can gather relevant "external links" so that reader's don't have to go around Googling every little thing. They can come to Wikipedia articles for a one-stop article about the subject they are interested in with appropriate links that they might be interested in. I have made thousands of edits to the G&S-related articles on Wikipedia and created something approaching 100 new articles in the WP:G&S project, so unless you have a better way to give readers easy access to relevant parodies, I don't see why you want to lecture me, call me a spammer (quite offensive of you), and tell me what to do. -- Ssilvers 03:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

*sigh*   Spam is spam. If you don't want to be "called a spammer," you should stop doing it. --Quuxplusone 03:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

re: Category:Date of birth missing

Good evening. Per the discussion about privacy concerns expressed at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Privacy of birthdays, date of birth should generally not be added to the biographies of living non-public or semi-public figures. So far, that policy has been interpreted fairly strictly with a pretty high bar being set for the definition of "public figures" who are assumed to have given up their rights to privacy.

By the same token, we should not be adding Category:Date of birth missing to articles unless we have made the case that the person meets the "public figures" threshold. Otherwise, we're just baiting new users into adding content even though the community has already said that we shouldn't include that particular data point. Category:Year of birth missing is okay but the exact date is often not. Thanks for your help. Rossami (talk) 19:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

 

You vandalized a page

You removed the C++ code from the Template Method Pattern page. That's the code I've written. You removed it for your own insights only, without discussing it first. By leaving the Java code intact you implicitly use that as some standard to communicate with. Furthermore, you didn't notify me. You didn't change the code, you completely removed it! I'm not amused by your style. Please leave the code alone and discuss matters first before you destroy other's people work. My time is limited but as soon as I have the time I'll restore the C++ code. Next time I consider you a vandal. Completely removing code just because you have your very own insights doesn't make you any better. Vladimir Bosnjak 23:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

(Vladimir is talking about the article Template method pattern. See Talk:Template method pattern.) --Quuxplusone 23:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Mediation -- Template method pattern

You were named as a respondent in a mediation created on the cabal Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-12-07 Template Method Pattern. This is a voluntary, informal, mediation process, do you consent to proceeding with me acting as the mediator? Alan.ca 08:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, go ahead. I think User:Vladimir Bosnjak is being pretty weird about the whole thing; if he thought his code was really indispensable to the page, he was free to add it back and wait for someone else to delete it. I'm going to try not to waste a lot of time dealing with him. But if you can make him happy, please do! --Quuxplusone 19:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ANSI C

Why do you insist on reverting changes of "xe" which is non-standard English to much more neutral "he or she"? I am referring to these edits: [1] and [2]. And please note that your edit summaries "rv vandal" and "rv test" are entirely inapproproate and come very much close to vandalism themselves. There was no "vandalism" and no "test" on the part of the anomimous user whose edits you have reverted. The fact that the page in question is an archived AfD page does not mean that we should tolerate non-standard and politically charged English. -- 131.111.8.103 21:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Archived pages must not be changed. Comments by users other than yourself must not be changed. Please do not change other people's comments, or archived pages. I left comments on your Talk page after the last time, but I see you've switched IP addresses, so maybe you didn't see them. Have you considered getting a Wikipedia user account? --Quuxplusone 21:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you think white people should be allowed to vote?

If you do, send me 500$ on your PayPal account, thank you for your time. --71.246.98.182 03:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Playstation 3

You deleted the category of Video Game Console from Playstation 3 and blamed a user EJBanks as a vandal. Explain yourself, or it will be changed back, and you are found to be vandalizing and using a banned user to make it seem different. However a simple explanation will do.--WhereAmI 02:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Do to the fact the category is under deletion notice, it can be taken from the PS3 page. But I am still curious at what you meant by the EJBanks mark?--WhereAmI 03:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not explaining more clearly. User:Fatone411 is a User:EJBanks sockpuppet. EJBanks has, as you say, been banned. (And now so has Fatone411, I see.) --Quuxplusone 03:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

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Pixrat.com AfD

Hey, just to let you know, if an article's already been nominated for deletion before, as you did with Pixrat.com, you need to create any subsquent nominations on a separate page, not the same page as the previous nomination. I've moved the current Pixrat.com to discussion to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pixrat.com (2nd nomination), but in the future, you can create such new AfDs either with the Afdx template, or just add "(2nd nomination)" (or whatever number nomination it may be) along with the article title in the standard AfD template. NeoChaosX (talk, walk) 07:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio on Macropædia list of articles?

Hi Q, thanks for your copyvio alert of the List of 2007 Macropædia articles. I'm not a lawyer, so we should all seek better advice, but I think that it's OK, since they're drawn from the Tables of Contents. Amazon.com and many libraries have traditionally offered the TOC's without fear of copyvio, and I have been assuming that we may as well. I would like to keep the lists, since it is the most direct way of explaining what the Macropædia covers and how that has changed over the past twenty years; but we should definitely figure out what is most correct legally. I replied on the 2007 Talk page as well. Thanks for your help! Willow 22:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Please review my update to Newline

Hello. Some days ago, I added a mnemonic to an existing note on the C-style hexadecimal code for CR-LF in Newline. You flagged it with {{fact}} ... and I agree that it appeared to make an unverifiable claim: namely, it seemed to imply that it is widely used, when (to my knowledge) it is not. I've since revised the statement to reflect that it is not widely used, and I was hoping to get your opinion on the new version. I also added a note to the article's Talk page, which you might like to review, explaining why I included it in more detail. Please let me know what you think. Thanks. BlueGuy213 05:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)