User talk:Andrewa

G'day! This is Andrew Alder's user talk page, you knew that. Welcome! If you have a suggestion for an article you think I might particularly help with, please add it here, above the first horizontal line. Give as much or as little detail as seems good to you, but do give a link to it! Any other comments wherever you feel they belong, but the bottom of the page is conventional for new topics.

Archives of this page

Wow. This page has now again grown to 30k, and there are some things there that I want to remember but a great lot that I don't expect to grow any more so despite earlier comments I'm now going to simply archive a great slab of it. If you want to continue any of those discussions, do so on this page please and link to the item in the archive. Andrewa 21:41, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And wow again... now to 40k. See user talk:andrewa/archive2. Andrewa 01:32, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And again... see user talk:andrewa/archive3, user talk:andrewa/archive5. Andrewa 05:44, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

User talk:andrewa/archive4 is dedicated to Return of the Time Cube. Andrewa 18:35, 28 May 2004 (UTC) This continues in User talk:andrewa/archive6 along with other issues. Andrewa 19:39, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

ImpalerBugz Here

Hi Andrewa. Thanks for your messages. I stopped at "J" because I had to stop Wikipedianing. Please move it out of the deletion page as I will complete it. Thanks! --ImpalerBugz 09:49, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As of

In User talk:Branddobbe#As of 2004 I wrote:

I have reinstated this redirect on American English. Please see Talk:As of 2004 and Wikipedia talk:As of for reasons. Andrewa 12:23, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I understand the purpose of having the phrase "as of 2004" in the article, but removing a link to 2004 and replacing it with a link that redirects to 2004 seems backwards. I don't see a clear reason to link specifically to "As of 2004". I thought the general policy was to avoid redirects wherever possible. -Branddobbe 20:48, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)

Did you read the links I provided? I think they explain the reasons. The first one is very short and I thought it was clear. Andrewa 14:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Regarding my vote in Category Eating Behaviors

Whats wrong with my vote? Why ignore it? Do you think that I have to sign my votes with my key in order to be legal ones? Faethon12 17:54, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ignoring it was just a suggestion. I think it's a very good one, and I think you agree. As to what is a legal vote, it really depends on the rules. You write your own, and imply in them that you won't be bound by any others. There are some logical consequences to this. Andrewa 18:16, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Humphrey: I've just got to get the Prime Minister to see that abolishing the Education Department is a bad idea.

Arnold: It's actually a very good idea. It just mustn't happen.

- Yes, Prime Minister, The National Education Service, January 21, 1988 (text from memory so probably not word perfect).

I am about to define a rule about the validity of my votes. Are only the votes of FaethonX valid ones, where X is the maximum X? Are only the signed by my public key votes valid? Or all votes of all FaethonX accounts are valid with the condition to have their passwords unlocked and set to the default FaethonX password? I would appreciate your opinion about that Andrewa Faethon22 20:49, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, none of these are valid. Like most computer systems, Wikipedia has accountability based on a password system. Since you have deliberately invalidated this accountability in the case of own userids, votes cast (and all other actions taken) under these userids have minimal standing. Andrewa 00:09, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Wikiportal

I noticed you've done some work on Mathematics articles. I wanted to point out to you the new Mathematics Wikiportal- more specifically, to the Mathematics Collaboration of the Week page. I'm looking for any math-related stubs or non-existant articles that you would like to see on Wikipedia. Additionally, I wondered if you'd be willing to help out on some of the Collaboration of the Week pages.

I encourage you to vote on the current Collaboration of the Week, because I'm very interested in which articles you think need to be written or added to, and because I understand that I cannot do the enormous amount of work required on some of the Math stubs alone. I'm asking for your help, and also your critiques on the way the portal is set up.

Please direct all comments to my user-talk page, the Math Wikiportal talk page, or the Math Collaboration of the Week talk page. Thanks a lot for your support! ral315 02:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Bootstrapping Wikivarsity

Hi I have some comments about Bootstrapping Wikivarsity.

Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity)

I would like to know what you feel about it :) SudarshanP 12:46, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please check my reply...(Bootstrapping Wikivarsity)

Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:Some_ideas_about_Wikiversity) I've replied to your comments. SudarshanP 05:19, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I noticed ur response and responded further... Did u have a look at that? Or maybe I am missin something...

SudarshanP 16:44, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've been trying to look at it for a while but there seem to be performance problems with Wikibooks. They may be related to my browser, I have tried to interest the developers in making Wikipedia a little more robust in this regard but there seems not to be a great deal of interest. Andrewa 19:50, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

{Sigh) Yes, basically someone has changed the default skin so that Win98 systems can't use it for the moment. I've now put in my standard workaround and it's working again for me, but pity about anyone who doesn't have access to a non-Win98 system to set up a CSS override, or doesn't know how to. Andrewa 23:51, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Greetings and some replies

I just saw your replies on User talk:Ral315. From your later comments, I realized you are a more reasonable person than what I thought at the beginning. I made some blunders too. But to put it short, let me suggest some small things which you should not say. Look at the following.

We do have problems from time to time with people thinking they own pieces of Wikipedia, and being upset at others wanting to do things differently. Perhaps this is the real agenda here.

and

And over the years, whenever I've taken the trouble to identify the people I thought would be interested in something and give them each a personal heads-up on it, I've only ever had thanks. But within Wikipedia there are many sub-communities, and this one seems not to like it. I've noted that now, and I'm sure you have too. I'm not convinced it's representative of the whole of Wikipedia, or even the Maths community, but certainly take it as applying to the more active members of this Wikiproject.

(and some others)

Things like that are probably well meant, but they imply that people who do not agree with you are not reasonable, they have an agenda, and is pointless to talk to them. And in the second paragraph, you generalized from me being bad to offending the whole math community here.

I don't think you meant to say that, but again, be more careful with what you say. I wish you good luck. Oleg Alexandrov 05:45, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure how or even whether to reply to this. You are correct that I didn't mean to say that, but what is more important, I didn't say it.

Be more careful what you say? I wish I could believe that you will heed your own advice, but while you confess to blunders above you continue to make baseless and inaccurate criticisms of others, partly at least to justify your earlier criticisms.

Where to from here? Andrewa 03:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

PS And it would be good if you archive your page. Is big, and hard to scroll through. Oleg Alexandrov

Good point. Done. Andrewa 03:21, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dunno if this is a little late, but...

Welcome to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Sydney! - Ta bu shi da yu 01:31, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New Mathematics Project Participants List

Hi Andrew.

In case you didn't follow the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#Reformat of Participants list, I'm writing to you to let you know that I've converted the "WikiProject Mathematics Participants List" into a table. It is now alphabetical, includes links to the participant's talk page and contribution list, and has a field for "Areas of Interest". Since your name is on the list, I thought you might want to check and/or update your entry.

Regards, Paul August ☎ 21:44, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

I see you've got religion!

Hallo, Andrew! I just bumped into your new user page over at Religion Wiki. I can see a lot of potential in it, but it's only just taking off now. You can find me at User:Garzo here, or Wikicities:c:religion:User:Garzo. I hope to see you around in both places. Gareth Hughes 12:43, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Andrew. I've replied to your message here. Angela . 23:41, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Wikirhyme

Do you think wikirhyme needs to be separate from Wiktionary? I would imagine it ought to be a subproject there. Angela . 03:55, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

It could work either way.

Advantages I see of doing it in Wiktionary:

Existing base of editors.
Existing administration, documentation etc. (e.g. I'm still a bit vague as to how namespaces should work in Wikicities).
Wikilinks to lexical content (and in particular definitions) would be useful if they were internal Wikilinks, while my guess is that in Wikirhyme as currently described, they would be more trouble than they were worth.

Advantages I see in doing it in Wikicities:

Doing it in in Wiktionary requires an expansion of the scope and purpose of Wiktionary, not a great one perhaps but one that would need to be approved by the existing community. There's bound to be someone who wants to oppose it, or worse, to have it done their way despite having no interest in supporting this particular subproject by their own hard work! It happens all the time in Wikipedia, it's not a great annoyance to me but I suspect it's a factor that alienates some other potential contributors. In Wikicities, the only people involved would be those actually interested in the project. This is a much better atmosphere in which to work out the inevitable teething problems.
Some people may be very interested in working on a focussed rhyming dictionary, but unexcited about doing it as a part of the Wiktionary project (and there's at least one of these: Me! I tried Wiktionary, but it just didn't grab me at all). If there are a significant number of them, it might actually be an advantage to have it separate in order to attract contributors.
The culture of Wikicities just seemed a better fit, I don't really know why.
There are some quite tricky issues involved, to the point that I feel that the existing goals of Wiktionary could be impeded by doing the rhyming stuff, or alternatively the rhyming stuff made a lot more difficult by needing to fit into the lexical framework. The guidelines I've already written are bad enough, just imagine trying to integrate them into the Wiktionary documentation.

If somebody else wants to set up a rhyming dictionary subproject in Wiktionary, I'll possibly support it and probably use it, and of course without any further permission they can already use the material from my user subpage under the GFDL (I suspect some users don't realise that). I think it would be a great resource either way once it got going.

But I can't see myself proposing it as a Wiktionary subproject at this stage, while (obviously) I think I might be interested in doing the hard work required to set up a separate project. This is a direct consequence of my current belief that it will be a lot more work to set it up in Wiktionary, so if that concern can be addressed I may well change my mind.

Further comments welcome! I put it up mainly to make it a bit easier to edit, it may not ever be proposed, or at least not by me. There is a lot of work involved either way, and the existing free online rhyming dictionaries and portals do a reasonable job already. Andrewa 04:45, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've asked GerardM about this since he's planning an "ultimate Wiktionary", which will already broaden the scope of the current Wiktionary since it will include all languages. It might be worthwhile asking others in the Wiktionary community about this as well. Angela . 15:57, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it would certainly be good to float it with others more involved at Wiktionary. I guess I've felt that Wiktionary was a bit minimalist, when compared to the venerable OED. If I were promoting a Wiki dictionary, I'd want lots of external links to usages of the words on the web, similar in concept to the many quotes in the OED. (It's bizarre that the OED was a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, work, considering the use that the now-disgraced prescriptive schools of linguistics have made of it and subsequent dictionaries!) It would be so easy to do, but it doesn't seem to be the agenda of the community there. So, I didn't hold a lot of hope that they'd want to enlarge the scope.

Feel free to refer others to my user subpage at Wikicities, and/or to here. Interested in all comments. I wasn't ready to promote the page, but obviously as soon as it goes up, people are invited to read and edit it! Andrewa 17:41, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In principle there is no reason why it cannot be included in wiktionary nor why it cannot be included in the Ultimate Wiktionary. There are good reasons why you want this. Given the current ambitions of the UW we do not have time/money/resources to include it. It needs some seperate work and to include it you need some time and attention. When we have our basic functionality, it is relatively easy to include it. What I would want is the ability to include or exclude it using options in the user preferences.

A similar idea would be to include puzzle dictionary defenitions, this could be treated in a similar fashion.

So, the answer is yes, I would like it. But not just yet. GerardM (copied here from an email to Angela with Gerard's permission)

issues about school articles

In November 2003, there was a VfD debate over Sunset High School (Portland). The debate was archived under Talk:Sunset High School (Portland). What to do with the article is still being contested and has been recently re-nominated for VfD at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Sunset High School (Portland).

I am writing to you because you have participated in such debates before. There still does not exist a wikipedia policy (as far as i can tell) over what to do in regards to articles about specific U.S. public school. My hope is that a real consensus can come out of the debate, and a real policy can take shape. Take part if you are so willing. Kingturtle 02:30, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done, or at least started. Good luck. Andrewa 13:48, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

VfD notice

Did you remove the VfD notice (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1-san&action=history) from 1-san? Why? Andrewa 15:21, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No — in fact I've just looked, and it's still there, with no edits since it was placed there. What made you think that it had been removed? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:27, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Curioser and curioser... to me the page history looks like this:

   * (cur) (last)  21:47, 23 Apr 2005 Master Thief Garrett
   * (cur) (last) 21:29, 23 Apr 2005 Mel Etitis (rm {{d}})
   * (cur) (last) 18:41, 23 Apr 2005 Master Thief Garrett
   * (cur) (last) 17:39, 23 Apr 2005 Gwalla

and when I follow the (last) link from what seems to be an update by you, it looks like a removal of an incorrect VfD tag. Andrewa 15:34, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see — no, it was the removal of an incorrect speedy delete tag. I recommended that he place it on VfD – which he did – and that's where we are now. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:39, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, that's a relief... my mistake. Welcome to the admin team, BTW. Andrewa 16:44, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On shades of dark green

You're quite right, of course, this was housekeeping that can be done outside the scope of VfD. Brunswick green -> British racing green. Thanks. Ben-w.

Re:User talk:194.83.77.2

Thanks for the kind words. Usually I just use the {{test}}-templates but seeing those self reverts convinced me that this one should get a customized message. Sjakkalle 07:44, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

VfD not 'intuitive', or is it me?

Hi, Andrew. I have just fouled up the submission of a VfD. What I thought I was doing was sending the image PFCamogie.jpg to the VfD process. That's after I put a much more sensibly sized and cropped version of the image at Pamela Fitzgerald. What I did was create an extraneous page that meant nothing, and sent that to the VfD. AARRGGHH!! I am NOT asking you to fix this. I'll let someone else do that, or ask for further help if it's not sorted out in the next 24 hours. Peter Ellis 03:41, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

MWOT

Good idea, I like it. R adiant _* 08:17, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

disrupting wikipedia policy vote

You voted once for the policy at Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Despite a 75% support that vote was rejected by the minority. A new vote has been called with a two week limit at Wikipedia talk:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Please take a moment to participate. Thanks. - Tεx τ urε 17:00, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Merge vs. cut-and-paste

Firstly, thank you for your welcome and polite reply on my talk page to my ??? in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Shakespeare Discussion Groups.

I believe I understand all the terms you used but did not understand the meaning of the sentence: Merge as we use the term here means including cut-and-paste text moves, which then gives GFDL problems unless a redirect is kept to preserve the edit history, and this redir would be useless.

After taking some time to carefully read this sentence again, however, I believe I understand some of your meaning.

Would it not be appropriate and correct, though, to preserve the edit history of who added those Shakespeare discussion group links and if someone, per chance, was looking for an article on Shakespeare discussion groups, a redirect to where they might be found seems helpful.

Cheers, DoubleBlue (Talk) 14:17, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Transition metal

I have just come across your comments on this article. Basically, you're right, and thanks for the edits, which did indeed improve on the previous versions. To answer your specific questions:

The definition of a transition metal is still controversial, dispite IUPAC guidelines. The article is still not completely internally consistant, and I shall try to get round that without offending any of the (many) opposing camps!
There are four periods of transition metals in total, whatever definition you choose, but all elements of the fourth period are radioactive and most do not have any substantial chemistry.

Thanks again for spotting this article and for doing what you could to improve it. Physchim62 21:40, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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