User talk:Taxman

Note: In order to keep a coherent conversation, I'll usually respond only here to comments unless you request me to do otherwise. Thank you, and happy wikiing.

For older discussion see: Archive1, Archive2, Archive3

GFDL noncompliance

Neither Yahoo nor Google had a place in the form to put contact info. I believe I included my email in the optional note for Google, but forgot to do so for Yahoo. Yahoo would have no way of contacting me; Google might, if they bother reading the note. I have not heard from Google though.

The thing to do is check to see if the searches still work. If so, Google and Yahoo have not taken any immediate action. Isomorphic 05:20, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Looking for help on a major wiki project

I was wondering if you'd be interesting in helping out with www.Knowmore.org, a corporation search wiki we're trying to get off the ground. It's been heavily customized and is designed to help responsible consumers enter any product or company name and immediatly find information about that co. Let me know if you're interested! aim: knowmoreorg or bernard@knowmore.org

Maybe. Depends on the license. A creative commons or GFDL license that ensures the data would remain free would be a key requirement for me to contribute anything. In general, a consumer reports type database could be practical to have, but I can't see it being successful. Who knows. I'll check it out if I have a chance. - Taxman 23:03, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

Inline citations

Please see Wikipedia talk:What is a featured article#Inline citations. --mav

FAC Questions

I have some questions relating to the FAC. One, how long does a article stay on there? Two, once it is archived, who makes the decision to make the article featured. Third, will I be notified of the article's status? Thanks. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 03:59, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Cricket....references once again

Coming back to references on the cricket page... What we have done is add a website which mentions the official laws and regulations of cricket. On the cricket page we have interpreted the laws from the legalese jargon into a simple and fluid prose. At the same time we have detailed sites which point to the explanation of the sport. There aren't any statistics on the page nor are there any controversial topics to really be referencing. While having references for an article is a good thing to have, some pages can do with minimal references... such as sports, which have a high visibility on wikipedia and thus have long removed any incorrect matter through the wiki process. I hope this satisfies your mission for the reference criteria. =Nichalp (Talk)= 18:57, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Military history of Puerto Rico

First of all let me thank you for your comments on the article in FAC. See, I was totally clueless as to what the inline reference was until you made me courious. I realized that you were right. You know live is a continuous learning process. I added my references and I truly hope that you now approve of the article. Take care, Tony the Marine

RFA

To let you know, I have replied to Raul's concerns on my RFA. ✏ OvenFresh ² 18:33, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Diamond

Your talk about "repeated insults" is crap and you know it. Please withdraw your unwarranted personal attack on me immediately. Tannin 19:45, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Uh, no, it's pretty clear from the talk page you've levelled a number of insults at the Diamond page, in a number of separate edits, and I even quoted them for you. If you don't think "mish-mash", "mockery", "scars of subdivision", "hacked about" etc. are insults, I'm not sure what I can help you with. You probably just don't like that I'm calling you out for being off base. As previously mentioned, you could have said the same thing with much less venom, and been more effective. Those insults support a claim of rudeness pretty well I'd say. I've been known to be wrong before though - Taxman ^{Talk 19:59, May 28, 2005 (UTC)}

You are flat-out wrong. An "insult" is directed at a person. At no time have I insulted you, or any other contrbutor to this page. Please remove your groundless accusations. Tannin 21:17, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

That would be a rather strange reading of the meaning of the word insult, many of the definitions do not require the insult being levelled directly at a person. Besides, clearly many of your descriptions of the page's writing and editing could be considered as insults to the page authors too. Think of "mockery" and "hacked about", can't you see how that is basically saying the authors have no talent and no ability to write a FA? The authors are human too, and have feelings, and have worked very hard on that article. I suggest you re-read all of your comments, as if you were not involved at all, as if you didn't write them. Or try reading them as if they were directed at a page you wrote. Based on how little tolerance you have for my comments about your writing, I'd be surprised if you couldn't see how harsh and innapropriate your comments were. Or saddenned, because if you couldn't see how harsh and innapropriate your comments were at all, that would mean you have a complete lack of ability to empathize and understand how your writing comes across to others. I suppose that is possible, but I doubt it, so like I said take a step back and think about how your comments have come across. Further, you've still made no effort to offer specifics on what can be improved on the Diamond page itself, which if you were actually trying to help anything, you would be doing instead of spending more time discussing your past criticisms of the article. - Taxman ^{Talk 11:44, May 29, 2005 (UTC)}

FAC

Please comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Starfleet ranks and insignia. I'm particularly worried that the article goes into more detail than almost all readers would be interested in reading (not going into so much detail is a FAC criteria). Thus longer sections should be summarized and the detail spun off into daughter articles, allowing readers to zoom to that level of detail if they so choose. --mav 16:23, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates

Thanks for your very kind comment on List of cultural references in The Cantos. Filiocht | Blarneyman 07:44, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

I think we agree on one big thing, better wikipedia articles; we just see different ways to get there. It has long been a source of regret to me that we have clashed so often over so little. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:09, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

That works both ways; but then we all learn a lot more from intelligent disagreement than from unthinking agreement, and you're definitely the former. Filiocht | Blarneyman 13:50, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your vote, and also thanks for your championing of references

Hey Taxman, thanks for your kind words, and vote in support of my admin nomination. I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for all your good work to improve the verifiability of Wikipedia by working for more and better source citation and references. Verifiability, in my opinion is the most important issue facing Wikipedia, so thanks again. Paul August ☎ 16:47, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Taxman

Thanks for your support on my Adminship request.

User:Bank of Wikipedia

Have you looked in on this? Some interesting stuff going on with the Bank's rules that may interest you. Should you decide to open an account (free coin of cource) please mention my name (for the bounty of cource) ;-) hydnjo talk 19:39, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your case changes in EB2004 page 24

After a typically deferential discussion on Wikipedia talk:2004 Encyclopedia topics, the participants agreed that we would not "fix" the cases of the articles in the list, but we should create a WP article with the WP-standard case, and make a redirect from the capitalized version in the EB list. We even do this for outrageous word-orders and words with missing diacritics. It has a small upside and no downside. I think most of us have been carrying that out. I don't want to revert your changes, though, in case you have been aware of a different discussion? David Brooks 22:59, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply.

I guess it just seems a red link that follows the naming conventions is more useful than one that doesn't.

Good point, but I've automated that process; see User:DavidBrooks/sandbox/EBfruit

Or are we assuming everyone that creates links from there will check the naming conventions too?

Yes we are. It's a pretty conscientious (but far too small) team. David Brooks 23:22, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RFC

An important policy discussion has started concerning ways in which our content-related polices, such as NPOV, No original research and Cite sources could be better enforced. I've made a proposal to give the Arbitration Committee the ability to consult Wikipedia users who are knowledgeable in subject-areas that apply to cases before them. Such consultation is needed due to the fact that the ArbCom does not by itself have the requisite knowledge to easily tell what is NPOV, original research, or a fringe idea in every field. Please read my proposal at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RFC#Alternate solution #9 by mav. Content subcommittee and comment. Thank you! --mav 02:41, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Request for references - history of computing hardware

You said " please leave me a message when a few references have been added "

I added a list of 14 books I've used, mainly for information I've put on the pages for particular early computers.

Diesel fuel

I saw your post on the Wikiprojects-Chemistry page. It sounds like I might be able to help a little bit with your diesel fuel project. Are you in the process of expanding those articles? --HappyCamper 17:24, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well the primary goal was to satisfy my curiosity :). I don't mind helping to expand them, but my chemistry knowledge is probably too low to help much. As I said I can't find any good sources I can comprehend. Ideally, though yes, we would have all the same info for the cycloalkanes and components of diesel as we do for the straight chain alkanes. - Taxman ^{Talk 17:44, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)}

Heat of fusion...Let's take a block of ice as an example. You place it on a pan, and heat it up gently. In ideal conditions, when ice just begins to melt, the temperature of the ice and the water that has melted is 0 degrees Celsius. The ice and water will stay at 0 Celsius until the entire block of ice melts. The amount of energy you added to make the ice go about this transformation is the heat of fusion. Alternatively, if you were now to take that pan of water and placed it back in the freezer, the amount of energy you need to remove to make it all back to ice is also the heat of fusion. Of course, the sign of the energy would be different. So heat of fusion is a measure of how much energy difference is between the solid state and liquid state of a substance at it's melting/freezing point.

As for a list of melting/boiling points for common alkane compounds, you can usually find these in general chemistry textbooks. The standardized texts tend to be very technical and research oriented. If you like, I can send you a pdf of something which you might find useful, although I don't know how to attach files through Wikipedia mail. I'll try and find a good list for you to start with - the one I have right now is more than 10 pages, and maybe only 20 lines would be of interest to you. Maybe send me an e-mail and we can go from there? --HappyCamper 00:37, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Request for References - Irish Houses of Parliament

I haven't taken a prominent part in writing this but I have added two useful references to this featured article. There are probably others, especially about the architectural aspects of the topic. David | Talk 13:40, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your support

Thank you for supporting my candidacy for administrator. Kelly Martin 14:44, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

FARC proposal

Nichalp has expressed his approval of a compromise solution that I proposed that is similar to a suggestion made by Piotrus. Please comment if you have the chance. Thanks. --Spangineer (háblame) 18:26, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

Diesel

I can't remember what I was doing with that article. Had something to do with moving the page history. Do what you think is best. :) --mav 02:16, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

MARMOT

The RFC against User:MARMOT has been created. As per our previous discussion, if you would be so kind as to certify it and move it from "proposed" to "approved", I would appreciate it. Thanks. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 00:56, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

I suppose I should tell you where you could find said RFC. It is located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/MARMOT. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 00:57, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think we've got no choice but to send this thing to ArbCom. It's a cookie-cutter example of a ban, and I hate to have to give ArbCom a rather pointless case, but it's looking like this is what we are going to be forced to do, anyway. Your thoughts? Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 18:27, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I said on the RFC page. No sense wasting any more time. The RFC just basically accomplished gathering the original evidence and his behavior there makes it even more clear. - Taxman ^{Talk 18:31, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
Alrighty; can I chat with you on IRC? I'll be just a moment; I'm in Windows right now (was playing Battlefield 1942) but this is more important; I'm switching to Linux right now. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 18:33, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)}

That's fine; I'm going to create the ArbCom page now. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 18:37, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Okay; the RFAr has been created. You may find it here. Please provide a response (500 words or less) in the appropriate area. Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 19:10, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Galileo Galilei, references

I recently came back to the Galileo article after a long hiatus and found your note about the project to improve references. I completely agree that it's not well documented, particularly for a featured article on a controversial subject. I have little time currently to devote to improving it, but I intend to hack away.

I have some difficulty, though, deciding on the appropriate level of references to achieve checkability without undue pedantry or clutter. Looking at the page for Project Fact and Reference Check, I saw that the J. S.Bach article was a special target in May, and Egyptian pyramids before that; so I looked at them for examples of good practice. It hasn't helped me much. The footnotes seem, frankly, rather spotty, with a note for something as widely known and uncontroversial as Bach's birthday, but considerable gaps elsewhere (e.g., construction techniques for the pyramids).

If there are a couple of articles that people on the project see as exemplary, I'd appreciate hearing of them, either on my Talk page or on that of the article.

BTW, in-line superscript numbered footnotes seem to be favored. While I admire the elegance of the templates that generate these, I'm dubious of their value when there may be multiple references to different pages in a book: one would get into a two-step process to track down what the actual reference is, and ibid.s and op. cit.s don't always work well. (Perhaps good examples would convince me.) --Dandrake 01:20, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an ideal system yet, as it hasn't reached a high enough priority for someone to write the code for it. The manually number footnote systems allow multiple references to the same book and allows page numbers I believe, so that might work for you. Also, you may want to check out the invisible note system as a way to have the notes not clutter up the text, but still contain all the information you want. Since there is not ideal system that meets everyone's needs, any system that does what you want is acceptable. Anything is better than nothing. As for what level of checkability, I would say just prioritize the article/subject from two standpoints: most important to the topic, and most contentious. Start with the highest priority facts and find the highest quality references for them, and work down. Twenty plus or more would eventually be great, but a start is better than none. Thank you for you interest and efforts. - Taxman ^{Talk 11:52, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)}

krill

hallo taxman! thank you for the help 62 is right - Uwe Kils Missing image
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14:38, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

John Milius NPOV

thanks for the advice. i actually removed the questionable pov once and the original editor reverted them but i think after i put up the npov template he realized his error. original quotes are logged in the talk page and history if you're interested. -Seasee

response from London

Uwe wants to share this with you (from his talk page):

Hello Kils

Just would like to state that i have very much enjoyed being involved in a project of this nature. To see the speed of co-operation between various people was (Uwe, Lupo and Salleman and all others) fantastic. It was a complete buzz to go off researching about a scientific subject and coming to some understanding and appreciation of a creature that i would have no knowledge or interest in otherwise. I would like to say that it takes a damn good teacher to get others interested in what they teach and i for one, if only in a rudimentary and general way have found the subject of Krill and sorrounding issues of ecology and environment fascinating. I think that says a lot about your willingness to let others participate in something which you obviously have great knowledge in and could easily have been a lot less humble with. At some point i will put up some informtion on my home page so at least people know a little more about me. Am going to try to extend the article on Ice-algae so any info you may have would be good. I hope the article on Antartic Krill gets featured as i think it is now very good.

Wikiversity sounds like a good idea but will need more time to go through the proposal (not too sure what help i could be).

Once again thanks Uwe! Yakuzai 22:50, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

that feels good

Uwe Kils Missing image
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02:51, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

IRC

I'm on IRC at the moment. Would you be able to come on? Linuxbeak | Talk | Desk 22:09, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

No sorry. It's fairly rare that I'm available to do that. Weekends and late nights are it. - Taxman ^{Talk 22:15, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)}

Antarctic krill

hallo Taxman! is the article ok now? if you have some more suggestions we will work on it ;-) Uwe Kils Missing image
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00:33, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Adminship nomination offer

Thank you for your offer to nominate me for admin status, I accept. I hope I am able to live up to the trust you are showing me. --Allen3 ^talk 01:19, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

De-adminning.

I agree that all those problems would plague any system of de-adminning. And it's rare that there's an admin who acts badly enough to need it. It probably wouldn't hurt if there were a temporary deadminning for those who do wrong -- where they have clearly breached policy, but yes, I agree that it would be open slather and we'd end up seeing hundreds of hours spent on fighting over whether this or that admin broke this or that rule. It's bad enough as it is with RfCs and arbitration. However, I thought Sam Spade's suggestion had some merit (you don't often find yourself writing that!). The downside is that it would formalise elevation to adminship as a popularity contest, but let's face it, it pretty much is. If it were "no big deal", Eequor would be a shoo-in. Grace Note 03:42, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No Eequor would not be a shoe in. It appears you were not around when all the behavior that has made everyone so angry occurred. To an extent the adminship process is about popularity, but for the greater part it is about selecting trusted members of the community. - Taxman ^{Talk 12:27, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)}

Taxman: I just happened to notice your comments on Gracenote's talk page - "If you have a magic system to avoid enough problems that it would be worth the cost let me know." Quite frankly, the best system I can think of to avoid all the problems you mentioned is the one used in Guanaco's case, where the arbcom required him to reapply for his admin powers. Because the arbcom filters out the frivolous requests, it avoids all of the problems you described, while still giving the community the final say in the matter. But as far as having everyone reapply every year, it's a nonstarter - there's simply too many admins (just under 500 -- roughly 10x as many as when I started) and it would be *terribly* suspectible to sockpuppetry, and it is guarenteed to lead to hard feelings (just think of the ensuing circus if RickK or Snowspinner would have to reapply). →Raul654 08:02, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, my comments were mostly an exercise for the reader to demonstrate that while having a good system would be great, there probably aren't any that are worth the cost. The one used for Guanaco worked fine, pissed off a few people for sure, but did work. The only issue with that system is that would be very rare to happen which means there is no simple system to de-admin. As I've thought it out though, I do think that is likely the only way that wouldn't be a disaster, as Sam's proposal certainly would. - Taxman ^{Talk 12:27, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)}

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