User talk:Aris Katsaris

Image:Ukraine ElectionsMap Nov2004.png

Good work. It would habe been easier with this: Missing image
Map_of_Ukraine_political_simple_blank.png

but I've beet too late, sorry. --Steschke 20:34, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

European Union Project

You might be interested in the European Union project. Parmaestro 06:55, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

Hi. You've helped with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax, so I thought it worth alerting you to the latest and greatest of Wikipedia fixing project, User:Yann/Untagged Images, which is seeking to put copyright tags on all of the untagged images. There are probably, oh, thirty thousand or so to do (he said, reaching into the air for a large figure). But hey: they're images ... you'll get to see lots of random pretty pictures. That must be better than looking for at at and the the, non? You know you'll love it. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. – Ram-Man ^{(comment (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Ram-Man&action=edit&section=new)) (talk)}[[]] 14:40, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Python code to generate the figure!!!

Please take a look at Image_talk:EUpopGNPmap.png#Python_code_to_generate_the_figure.21.21.21. – Kaihsu 15:04, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

===Modern Greek===

Issues arrising over at Modern Greek. Check the history to see what i mean... I swear man, people just can't handle the truth at times...

Project2501a 19:46, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Literature Collaboration of the Week

Patrida, I'm rallying up support for Alexandros Papadiamantis in Wikipedia:Literature Collaboration of the Week. So, go vote! :D

Project2501a 16:26, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

EU Structure History

Hey there, I was wondering if you had a blank version of Image:EU Structure History.png lying around somewhere? I intend to make a Icelandic version of it and was hoping to skip the stage of erasing the English text myself. --Biekko 17:47, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Emailed. Aris Katsaris 05:03, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you --Biekko 13:25, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Belgian referendum

Hey Aris, I recently amended the Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe page since Belgium doesn't hold a referendum anymore ( http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=18219 ), I'm not able to modify the image though. Because I saw that you made the image the best thing to do in my opinion is contact you. Could you modify the image for me (us)?

Done. Aris Katsaris 01:38, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

European Constitution

Hello. As you seemed quite annoyed by my split-off of this article it might be worth weighing in on the discussions at Talk:Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe before Randywombat goes ahead with his plans for a more extensive restructuring involving several further split-offs. — Trilobite (Talk) 21:56, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I was going to add the parliament votes but you're faster than me. :) Parmaestro 06:33, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Javier Solana article changes

I felt like reverting what you've changed but decided not to when I discovered that you appear to be a legimate Wikipedia contributor.

If you haven't worked out already - and I suspect you haven't - this particular article is currently a hot topic. One particular user (Cumbey) has been making edits that other users (myself and Squeakbox) find to be totally spurious and not encyclopedic at all. There now seems to be a major war on this article, and Squeakbox and myself are in the process of convincing administrators to ban Cumbey and the other various sockpuppets or else protect the page from further edits.

Squeakbox has spent a great deal of time fighting for this article's veracity. By coming in and swearing at him and criticizing his work you may appear to be on the side of the vandals. I'm hoping you aren't, and that your comments came from lack of knowledge. By all means contribute to the article, but be aware that it is hot. --One Salient Oversight 06:38, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Squeakbox may have meant well but he removed relevant quotes and pieces of information, without challenging their accuracy as far as I understand. I have no intention of restoring or defending any of the nutty Christian-fundamentalist pieces about the Antichrist and crap like that, but I will indeed restore factual quotes containing true sources that gives us an impression of what levels of power Solana held at each time of his life. Aris Katsaris 06:43, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

And as a sidenote, I helped build and structure the article back in its very beginning, before any of the Antichrist crap were first added to it -- I then withdrew largely from Wikipedia participation for some months, and only today saw how downhill the Solana article had gone in my absense. Aris Katsaris 06:47, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Sqeakbox admits he may have made mistakes. He's just been run ragged trying to work with the Fundies. I'm very glad to know that you have greater knowledge about the article in question and I will look forward to your changes. Naturally these may be vandalised and I will do my best to make sure things are kept on the level. Welcome back to Wikipedia! --One Salient Oversight 07:19, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought you were a bit hard on me but do strongly welcome your contributions to Javier Solana. I have done the best I can, always trying to keep the article balanced while removing the crude anti-EU Solana is the Antichrist rant that was in there (product over process). It is a much better article than the one I found at the end of last month, and I certainly agree that bits that were deleted can be reinserted. I trust you to do so without thinking about the Beast, something some users are unfortunatekly incapable of. I am doing my best in very trying circumstances, trying to get more info about his time in Spain, and about his anti-NATO stance. Best wishes, and please do come back, --SqueakBox 21:30, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Barcelona Conference

I changed my mind about this delete notice, persuaded by you and Kevintoronto. There is now a clear majority to keep. Do you know if I can remove the delete notice myself (not an admin)? i am not going to put anything about it in the Solana article right now, but do feel free to do so.--SqueakBox 01:36, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

If I remember correctly from when I participated in the deletion processes, don't remove the delete notice, an admin will remove it after the request runs its course. No need to worry about it. Aris Katsaris 02:06, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Jacek

HELLO Aris Katsaris! sORRY THAT I WRITE THERE BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE I SHOULD! MY NAME IS JACEK!I AM FROM POLAND.SO I DONT KNOW GOOG ENGLICH. I FOUND SOME INFORMATIONS ABOUT RECOGNITION OF SAME SEX PARTNERSHIPS IN COUNTRIES WHITCH HAD BEEN NO LISTED IN CIVIL UNIONS ARTICLE. SO I EXPENDEDTHIS ARTICLE.YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATIONS ABOUT IT IN DISCUSSION IN SAME SEX MARRIAGE PAGE AT THE END!I WAS NOT SINGED THERE.THERE ARE SOME PAGES WHERE YOU CAN FIND THOSE INFORMATIONS WITCH I EXTENDED. AND THE POINT IS THAT YOU CAN CORRECT YOUR MAP ABOUT SAME SEX MARRIAGES-CIVIL UNIONS. TO COMPLITE TE ARTICLE. THANKS. AND SEE YOU SOON. JACK.

Gay rights worldwide

I noticed that you had modified a map concerning the legal status of gays and gay unions worldwide here, on the commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Laws_on_homosexuality.PNG). Would you mind updating it, now that California has civil unions? I know that you'll have to update it soon for Canada anyway, but it's nice to be current. See Same sex marriage for more info. Thank you for your time -- if you can't do it, I'll ask someone else with more expertise editing images than I! --Zantastik 06:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've made ready such a map showing California having civil union, but I can't find the Wikipedia article mentioning California having such. Same-sex marriage in California talks about marriage instead, not civil unions. And then there's the confusing "domestic partnership" issue. In general the articles are a mess, confusing and unclear: I have no idea if civil unions exist in California, But if you want me I'll send you the map via email and you can upload it if you think it accurate on your own responsibility. Aris Katsaris 16:06, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Colour revolution

Hi Aris, I notice that you recently created Colour revolution, which seems to cover basically the same topic as the article I started at Liberal revolutionary movements in post-communist Eastern Europe. If you don't mind, I am going to try to merge them under your title (obviously mine was just descriptive because I hadn't heard of a common name).--Pharos 02:26, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't mind at all. :-) Aris Katsaris 14:18, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Kyrgyzia

This is a good example of how the NPOV rule leads us into falsifying the truth. Everyone knows that the CIS is just a branch office of the Russian Foreign Ministry and that the CIS "observers" in Kyrgyzia were merely Putin agents, but there is no "NPOV" of saying this. Adam 06:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed -- frustrating isn't it? However I think in the long term, an insistence of strict factuality does much more good than bad to truth. The mere claim that CIS is controlled by Russia (even though I consider it 100% true) one can ignore as bias, or even worse use to justify similarly unsubstantiated claims of foreign control in other pages (regardless of the inaccuracy of *those* claims). But I give a link that goes to a list of factual events showing the nature of such "CIS observations missions". Such facts are less ignorable and more indisputable, and anyone that's not intentionally blind can see the truth. Aris Katsaris 06:47, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Three-letter templates

For your three-letter country templates, why not follow ISO 3166-1? -- Curps 03:51, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would make sense to use a standard, wouldn't it? :-) The process started out a bit unorganized, first someone did only the EU nations (at which point there wasn't much confusion), then we continued with the whole of Europe, now proceeding to the whole world. As I was creating templates I thought of using the first three letters except it such cases where confusion could arise at which point I switched at some other standard like IOC or ISO or FIFA, whatever seemed more natural and intuitive to me. That was a bad tactic probably. Aris Katsaris

I've renamed all the ones I could find, except "UK" ("GBR" redirects here, but maybe we should switch that) and "INDIA" (because "IND" is already taken). -- Curps 04:23, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ugh. Some of those are *so* counter-intuitive. Who remembers that CHE means Switzerland? Who'll remember what DZA means? It's okay to *create* templates based on those codes, but it was probably unnessary to replace all the alternate templates (like ALG for Algeria) from the actual pages. I am afraid you may have made the editing of the pages more difficult, with needlessly difficult-to-read codes.... Do please remember that we must also think of the human factor, not standardize for standardization's sake. Aris Katsaris 04:51, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

On second thought it'll probably not be too much of a problem. The counterintuitive case are probably not that many as I had first thought... Still I definitely preferred CRO instead of HRV. :-) Aris Katsaris 04:56, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I think we have to go with the standard, everywhere. Otherwise we have to guess what abbreviation was chosen; this way everyone can just look it up at ISO 3166-1. There are two alternatives:

Use the TWO-letter country abbreviations, which many people are more familiar with than the three-letter ones, because of their use in domain names
Use unabbreviated names: Template:CROATIA, Template:ALGERIA and so forth.

The worst thing is to just invent our own non-standard "standard". -- Curps 05:22, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You are probably right about the need for a standard (as long as that's reasonable -- remember that there'll always be exceptions e.g. with the need for different GBR and UK template, because the name "Great Britain" is still used in Olympics and so forth). Still I'd argue against reducing the templates to two letters. It'll probably be more incomprehensible then, and even less easy to decipher. Aris Katsaris 06:10, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

After thinking it over, I think Template:CROATIA, Template:ALGERIA, etc. might be the best solution. A little more typing, but much less error-prone, and no lookup is necessary. It's probably important to make it foolproof, because any fool can edit any article on Wikipedia. Conversions like Croatia → Template:CROATIA could even be automated in some text editors. And the problem with IND not being available for INDIA is solved as well. What do you think? -- Curps 06:13, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The above also works for cases like Template:SCOTLAND, where there is no ISO 3166-1 code, but it still competes in sports as a separate entity. Same for Template:PUERTO RICO, which has its own Olympic team, or Template:CHINESE TAIPEI, which is the name Taiwan competes under at the Olympics (with a separate flag). Picking a three-letter abbreviation for "Chinese Taipei" is rather non-obvious, after all. In some cases, we might want flags of sub-national entities, like Template:QUEBEC, which is a separate part of the Francophonie, or templates for the French and Flemish parts of Belgium, which are also represented separately in some international institutions. I think the spell-it-out solution gives maximum flexibility. -- Curps 06:23, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hey now, let's not take credit for the India one, that was my idea. And Scotland already exists: Template:SCO and Quebec Template:QC. I really think the IOC codes are the less confusing, and was moving the ones I could find to their IOC codes. Earl Andrew 06:32, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having to choose between ISO and IOC codes, I think I'll also pick IOC -- which are slightly better known anyway since they appear in sports events, besides being a bit more intuitive. But I think that the spelling idea also has significant merits. Aris Katsaris 06:38, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

The longer names reduce slightly the value of the template in reducing size, but I guess that's indeed compensated more than enough because of the clarity. But not full full names -- I'd *definitely* wouldn't want to have to type Template:PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA or Template:DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO. As a rule of thumb I suggest that any words before the primary name should be reduced to single letters i.e: Template:PR CHINA, Template:DR CONGO, Template:E TIMOR, Template:N KOREA. Also countries and entities well known by their initials, let them remain initials: Template:USA, Template:UK, Template:EU. Aris Katsaris 06:34, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

I'm a bit busy Sunday, so I won't be able to participate today much more in further discussions, but if you will try to widen the circle of debaters, by bringing in some of the people that participated in the template making-and-moving, or making some comments on the talk-pages of those articles with the widest use of such templates, that might be good -- let's bring in more opinions in this issue and widen the circle of discussion. Aris Katsaris 06:34, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Eugh! Too long names. Let's stick with simple 3 letter codes, anything else defeats the purpose. - Earl Andrew 06:42, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Too long?? Well, remember, the places we'd be typing in {{PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA}} are simply the places where [[People's Republic of China]] existed previously! So it's the exact same amount of typing, just uppercased and with curly braces instead of brackets. So the full templates should definitely be created, though abbreviations of various sorts could be created as redirects to them.

This way there's no guesswork at all: the template name is just the uppercased version of the template text. So for Chinese Taipei and French community of Belgium, we automatically know what to use. -- Curps 06:44, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The purpose of this template in the first place is to have shorter names. And why did you go about deleting all the re-directs? - Earl Andrew 06:52, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I didn't delete all the redirects, just the ones that Aris Katsaris had very recently created and were never used anywhere yet. The ones like Template:CRO are all still there. -- Curps 06:54, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please, don't delete another person's work without such deletion passing through regular Wikipedian deletion-process. And which templates did you delete, if I may ask? Aris Katsaris 07:10, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

Oops, OK, I'll restore them. One question about "SLO" though... do you really want this to exist and point to Slovenia, given the ambiguity with Slovakia? Same thing with "CHI" pointing to Chile, given ambiguity with China. -- Curps 07:18, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

All deleted templates are undeleted now. -- Curps 07:27, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

SLO wasn't my own creation, that was User:Parmaestro's. And no, I probably don't consider its existence a good idea. Once we've come to a consensus what we'll do about all this matter, some of the ambiguous redirecting templates should probably go to the page of redirects for deletion or something. As for CHI, which I created, I had thought I had removed that one myself -- perhaps I made a gaffe and only thought I had deleted it. Aris Katsaris 07:32, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

There's also NGR for Nigeria, which is ambiguous with Niger. The list I deleted (and now restored) is:

PHI (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:PHL')
OMA (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:OMN')
NGR (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:NGA')
NEP (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:NPL')
MAW (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:MWI')
ANG (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:AGO')
INA (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:IDN')
IRI (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:IRN')
CHI (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:CHL')
BRN (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:BHR')
ROC-TW (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:TWN')
FIJ (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:FJI')
URU (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:URY')
KUW (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:KWT')
KSA (unused; content was: '#redirect Template:SAU')
UAE-List (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:ARE')
KYR (unused; content was: '#REDIRECT Template:KGZ')

By the way, the usual place to announce new templates is Wikipedia:Village pump (news). At some point it might be a good idea to gather consensus about the use of these templates there. -- Curps 07:39, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you should have deleted none of these. The purpose of templates is ease, and I'm gonna want a NEP even if there exists a NPL, and a KUW even if there exist a KWT. The existence of these never hurt noone. I'm not gonna force anyone to remember to use one specific code just because I personally prefer it. I'm not gonna force someone to use the hard to remember AGO if ANG can only mean Angola. I'm not gonna force someone to choose ISO over IOC. Thanks for restoring these.

I think one of the problems plaguing this discussions is that both of you seem to believe we only need to have a 1-to-1 link between templates and countries. Not so. I want PRC to intuitively indicate People's Republic of China, and I'd prefer CHN to be the simpler "China" instead. I want my TWN to say Taiwan, and I want by ROC to say Republic of China. I want my Holy See to be different than my Vatican. I want my GBR to be different than my UK.

I'm going back to thinking that my way had been the best, except in the cases where confusion may exist (e.g. about what BEL or SLO or MAL could mean). When the idea of standardization means making things more difficult than they had been, it's time to ditch standardization. As long as a template won't be confusing or misleading in meaning by having it, it's good to have whether as a redirect or in it's own right. Instead of forcing people to memorize the ISO, IOC or FIFA codes, they'll have good chances of hitting the right code by just randomly guessing and if they make a mistake to have a good way of guessing the correct answer the second time. And besides I'm gonna build a page, which will mention all possible codes and templates referring to these nations. I'll keep on creating the missing codes, and then start using them. Cheers and thanks for your contributions and assistance. Aris Katsaris 20:28, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

See Flag templates entry below. Aliases supported. (SEWilco)

List of political parties in Fiji

THANK YOU for cleaning up the introduction to the List of political parties in Fiji. One well-meaning but over-pedantic user has been working his way through every "political parties" article he can find and adding that rather superfluous preface defining what a "political party" is. He adds a similar one to every article about elections that he can find, trying to define what an "election" is, as if readers of Wikipedia wouldn't know. Having said that, he is an otherwise valuable contributor who actually does quite a lot of useful work, which is why I've avoided clashing with him by reverting all these superfluous insertions. Nevertheless, I'm glad you've done that here. Hopefully, enough other users will clean up the rest! David Cannon 13:14, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are welcome -- but I have to say that if you'd noticed what he was doing for a while now, then it'd have probably been better if you'd talked it with him in his talk page, rather than let the problem escalate. Cheers. Aris Katsaris 13:30, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

And thanks for cleaning up List of political parties in Canada and Elections in Canada. I'll keep my eye out for similar pedantry. Kevintoronto 15:26, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Flag templates

Discussion moved from Wikipedia:Village_pump_(news)#Flag_templates to Template talk:Flag. Template:Country (SEWilco 19:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Largest urban areas of the European Union

You reverted my change ("* Figures for urban areas in the United Kingdom use a 50 meters definition, not 200.") using a summary of "Since "Western Europe" is wobbly concept, and suddenly including it here strikes of arbitrariness, I'm pulling a rabbit out of the hat and using EFTA instead." which bears no reference to the actual change made, (and is the same summary as the previous change you made which actually documents the change). Was this accidental or malicious? Either way I've added it back in. -- Joolz 15:22, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Accidental, obviously. There was some kind of computer glitch and I had to resubmit my edit, (not knowing it had already been accepted by the system). Ended up accidentally overwriting yours, which had been submitted just minutes before. Aris Katsaris 15:32, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

That's fine then :) I've had to resubmit my edits sometimes too, even though they'd already been accepted. -- Joolz 15:46, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Union of Russia and Belarus

Building castles in the sand? You are doing a great job, man! I think you should consider playing DnD too. You have great potential. --rydel 20:53, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. I didn't create the article of Union of Russia and Belarus, I only made a map for it and made some minor other edits. Aris Katsaris 21:17, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I was sort of kidding, it was just a vitriolic remark regarding your work and efforts on articles about Union of Russia and Belarus and CIS. I think you are building castles in the sand, and you could invest your time on other more real political articles in WP. Just my IMHO, of course. --rydel 21:29, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, given how I've written articles on online comics like Fans! that you've probably never heard of, I'm sure wasting my time writing articles about international organizations, given how we'll have forgotten all about them in a handful decades. How does the article on color revolutions look to you? Is that "real" enough for you? I'm sure that's also an insignificant topic, having caused the collapse of only three governments so far.

I think that the Post-Soviet space (an article I've largely helped create from scratch btw) is the place where history is currently taking place. The CIS by itself is not the important thing, the Union of Russia and Belarus is not the main thing, the SCO is not the main thing. Being informed about the alliances of the region however -- that's the main thing. And it'll be the main thing *even* if history passes over the regions and collapses all said organizations. (Then it'll be a piece of history which will be worth knowing.) And the only way I know of detailing all these alliances in a factual neutral-point-of-view manner is by writing about the unions and organizations that express them. Or are you ready to delete all the historical articles also, e.g. Roman Empire, Soviet Union, etc. Castles in the sand, all of them?

Which issues do you consider to be "real" political articles, btw? Either way, I think you should reorder *your* priorities. You should be able to find something more productive than bother people that contribute too much to Wikipedia. Aris Katsaris 22:33, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I did not mean to bother you. The problem with your approach is that you still view Post-Soviet space as one entity. This fundamental flaw of your approach is at the very heart of this problem. I can assure you that Belarusans have very little in common with Kirghiz people, and they are as far away as United Kingdom is from Ethiopia. Yet you still want to put as all together into one box. --rydel 22:43, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

All these countries have the basic commonality of having relatively recently been Soviet Republics. This means they inherited many of the same issues and problems, including their youth as independent self-governing nations, and the element of Russian influence. Monitoring their progress as a group, and describing both their differences and their similarities is not a fool's errand. The Baltic states are the only ones that have broken so cleanly away from the rest of the former Soviet Union that you'd be troubled to find common elements between them and the CIS states.

But if you think that such an article shouldn't exist, you're free to nominate it at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. Aris Katsaris 22:55, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Why? It's a good, informative article. --rydel 23:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

*rolls eyes*. I don't think we're communicating properly. I thought you'd implied its existence was "fundamentally flawed" given how I supposedly wanted to put totally disparate countries in one box. Aris Katsaris 23:16, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

The information there (on Post-Soviet space page) to the best of my knowledge seems to be correct and good. Though, for example, I have some small things I don't like: Poland is mentioned as an "occupier". FYI, Belarus/Lithuania land was an equal member of that union. It was a a totally peaceful union of two states. And even creeping Polonization was never forced, it was happening as a natural process. I did not propose to delete any pages, you have lead the discussion in a different direction. I only wanted to say one thing (and I did say it. Maybe I didn't formulate myself clearly enough): you are focusing on pages like Union of Russia and Belarus and CIS and from reading those pages one might think it's some really cool organizations with bright future. As a person who lived in Belarus and very closely followed the news I would like to tell you that this is simply not true. --rydel 00:16, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that all these organizations are alliances of tyrannies, whose future will *hopefully* be brief -- something I'm also hoping for the reigns of Lukashenko and Putin. These are things I'm *hoping*, but I have no way of estimating. I don't know what is there in the article that you perceive as "coolness". If you have any way of improving the quality of the articles, please do contribute to them. I thank you for mentioning flaws concerning the mention of Poland for example -- that part was written by someone else, and I'll think of ways to improve it. Aris Katsaris 00:24, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Post-Soviet States

Well I for one applaud your work, even though you're not doing it for applause (which I also applause.)

Juppiter 00:26, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! :-) Aris Katsaris 01:08, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Editing

Thanks for the advice on editing. I will try to write something in the cases you are talking about. I don't think there is any attempt to take credit for anything in this type of project though. My understanding is that reproduction from the europa site is permissible with the appropriate references to the source. So the problem is that the source should be referenced, isn't that correct? Parmaestro 09:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

COTW Project

You voted for Decolonization, this week's Collaboration of the week. Please come and help it become a featured-standard article.

Eurozone

I tried updating Eurozone2004.png but apparently I'm not doing something correctly. Parmaestro 02:14, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually I'm seeing it as indeed updated. The problem seems to be that your own computer hasn't loaded the new version, probably because the old one is still in your cache. If you're using Internet explorer, try pressing Ctrl+F5, which reloads the images. Aris Katsaris 02:37, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Departure

Too bad that you are out of touch for the next year. There was a redirect I wanted to ask you about. I hope all is well.

Decolonization edit

From your (Revision as of 10:39, 4 May 2005) edit comment (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Decolonization&diff=prev&oldid=13223062):

"Removing USSR bullshit..."

Please see:

I would have preferred a "See talk." Thanks anyway. —thames 16:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Apologies. I should be politer in my edit summaries. Aris Katsaris 16:10, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I wrote a paragraph on the talk page. I didn't realize that there was previous discussion of the USSR. —thames 16:33, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Template Use

As I usually agree with almost all your decisions? I'm curious about your opinion of template use. I don't find it particularly hard to edit templates. It seems to me that when you have a dozen or so articles with identical text and especially where this text will be needed to edited in the future because of upcoming changes that it makes sense to have one template that can be edited/updated/corrected as necessary rather than making the identical edits/corrections/updates to a dozen or more texts. Wouldn't you agree ? Parmaestro 11:36, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Templates are usually good to use, but always in places where the text will *necessarily* be identical. Where it is *good* that it should be identical. This case however is different -- the initial paragraphs of each article should be individual to that article, and if anything these templates worsen and make permanent what was already a not-very-nice redundancy and repetition. Moreover large templates must make themselves obvious as templates: As Wikipedia:Template_namespace says: "Templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace". Aris Katsaris 11:42, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

We seem to be in agreement than about te use of templates. I completely agree with you about the EU-10 template. The only apparent difference we might have is in the application to this specific series of articles. The initial paragraphs in these articles all include an introduction about the euro before discussing the items that specific to the article. Should those introductary paragraphs be deleted and just start with those items that are individual to tha article ? If not and if we are still going to include the same introductory paragraphs, we'd be better off with the template. Or maybe you have a better solution than these two ideas.

Since I added the templates to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion it'd be better if we took the discussion there, if you will. Feel free to move both my comments and yours there, if you want to, or I can do it, if you have no objections. I think that the introductory paragraphs should be as small as possible, and the relevant information in them (and part of it *is* relevant, e.g. when talking about the other side that is in common) perhaps combined with the rest of the text. Turning it into a template makes this introduction permanent however in a way that I don't think it should be made. Moreover, the specific content of the template was itself lacking, as it actually *enlarged* the repeated non-specific information in them, e.g. by adding mention of the circulation dates that hadn't existed formerly. The content of the templates ended up speaking about the whole of the Eurozone, even adding mention about Kosovo or Montenegro!! Egads. But as I said it's more than the specific content that bothered me, it was the nature of the templates themselves. That's why I didn't just edit them but tfd them instead. Aris Katsaris 12:09, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with what you are saying. I've already replaced the template with text for EU 10. This template is not in use anywhere now. Although I agree with you that one is not interested in Andorra when reading an article about Belgian coins, I think it is germane to talk about where the euro is a currency which is why the article starts out with saying that it used in the twelve Eurozone member states. I think it's particluarly relevant when there are euro coins from the Vatican, San Marino and Monaco. I agree with you that introductory paragraph should be as short as possible. Are you saying that even if the text is identical, it's better not to use a template even though it means that all the articles would have to be edited separately? Parmaestro 12:20, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

It's a judgement call which I'm afraid I don't have the time to analyze much further right this moment. I'm moving this discussion to the relevant section of Templates for deletion, so that others can enter the argument also. Let's only add further comments there. Aris Katsaris 12:33, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Coins

I've created this.

Template:EU coins-2

I think it is short, nice and is clearly a template and not text. Let me know if you think this can replace the old one. Thanks. Parmaestro 14:14, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I think it's intrusive, and goes against the typical Wikipedia style of how to begin an article. Also, for clarity's and simplicity's sake, and also because they serve different purposes, I think that the two templates (the background text and the menu on the right) should be discrete, and not contained one in the other. Aris Katsaris 15:58, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Confederation Clutter

Ah, now I see. Yes, ticks and X's would probably have been nice, but it just displayed weird looking question marks, and I couldn't figure out why anyone would want these... I use an up-to-date system which usually has no problem with unicode characters, but I guess this just didn't work. Fawcett5 21:32, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey, that looks pretty good now. The only comment I have about it now is that the ticks and checks make the text unnecessary — if it were up to me I would ditch the text "yes" and "no". Fawcett5 01:39, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Boilerplate text

I've been persuaded by your arguments and agree that the boilerplate template was a bad idea. I believe the problem arrived because the articles had the same boilerplate introductory text which is itself a bad idea. I think the text explaining the euro coins in general should remain in the euro coins article and the specific state coins should reference that article for people interested in what the coins have in common.

I've made some changes to German euro coins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_euro_coins

Let me know what you think. I propose to make this type of change for all the other euro coin articles. Parmaestro 10:26, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Image:Missionary Sex Position-small.png

Heyas, I was just wandering by an image that I saw you posted and was wondering what the theory behind having Image:Missionary Sex Position-small.png is? Is there a reason why we can't just specify the size of the larger photo in each article so that we don't have redundant images on the server? -SocratesJedi | Talk

Poll

There is a poll in the talk page of the English article of Macedonian Slavs here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonian_Slavs#The_poll

Some people are lobbying for changing the article's name to Macedonian without any qualifier. As it seems, a number of these people come from the Macedonian/Macedonian Slav wikipedia project. It seemed only fair to attract the attention of people possibly from the other side of the story. I hope that this message is of interest to you, if not please accept my apologies. Dstork 02:01, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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