User talk:Bryan Derksen

Use this link to add a new topic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Bryan_Derksen&action=edit&section=new)

Old User talk

/Archive 1 - 15 Aug 2002
/Archive 2 - 21 Dec 2002
/Archive 3 - 22 Nov 2003
/Archive 4 - 4 Feb 2004
/Archive 5 - 28 Feb 2004
/Archive 6 - 3 Apr 2004
/Archive 7 - 11 Jul 2004
/Archive 8 - 1 Oct 2004
/Archive 9 - 1 Jan 2005
/Archive 10 - 7 Apr 2005

Current User talk - add new comments to the bottom

Red Dwarf

Go for it!

Just wanted you to know I'm watching.

I won't intervene again. Unless I feel like it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk

Heh. Mostly done already, just need to save Red Dwarf characters and then tidy up some of the internal links left over. I believe in the "be bold" thing. :) Bryan 22:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm a little puzzled about that revert, could you explain what your motivation was over on the article talk? Bryan 22:35, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Star Control tables

Thanks for your help with the Star Control race articles; I'm quite new with tables, and your changes improved the end result considerably.

No problem, glad to help. :) Feel free to tinker with Template:Infobox_Star_Control_race some more if you want to add more information or fiddle with the formatting, I did a whole bunch of things unilaterally so I fully expect others to make changes to it. Bryan 19:43, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category Metabolism

Hi Bryan_Derksen, I have noticed that you have removed Category:Metabolism from articles that are already in the subcategory Category:Photosynthesis. I don't see this as a problem, see Wikipedia:Categorization#Categories_form_a_graph.2C_not_a_tree. It is useful to have all Metabolism related topic in one category. Category:Photosynthesis contains articles that have nothing to do with Metabolism. Cacycle 20:46, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, Wikipedia:Categorization#Creating subcategories says "In the "vertical" dimension, you should probably be more frugal. A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in." If Category:Photosynthesis contains articles that have nothing to do with Category:Metabolism, then perhaps it shouldn't be a subcategory of it? Bryan 21:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The contents of Category:Photosynthesis do not have to be a subset of the parent Category:Metabolism. As I said, its not a strictly hierarchically tree, its more like a semantic net that should mainly aid the users in finding articles. Photosynthesis is clearly related to Metabolism and several articles belong to both categories while others belong only to one. I still think it is a good idea to have all Metabolism articles together in Category:Metabolism and at the same time to keep Category:Photosynthesis as a subcategory of Category:Metabolism. Cacycle 21:44, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It appears we have a difference in our interpretation of the philosophy of subcategorization, then. I've had a look through the articles currently in category:photosynthesis and didn't spot any that looked like they didn't also belong in category:metabolism (category:phototrophs didn't, but I've now reversed the direction of the relationship between those two categories), so I don't know which articles you're referring to as not fitting into the "subset" pattern. Based on the articles we're currently arguing about, though, perhaps it might help if there was a Category:Metabolic pathways subcategory to category:metabolism? That way things like "Calvin cycle" would go in there but things like "thylakoid" wouldn't, and it could be a subcategory of Category:Chemical reactions as well. Bryan 21:57, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

List of Pharaohs

I just wanted to thank you for cleaning up and wikifying the tables at List of Pharaohs - it has been on my "todo" list for ages, but I have been all out of round tuits. Thanks! -- ALoan (Talk) 15:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. :) I've written a macro for my favourite text editor (Ultra Edit) that does most of the work wikifying tables with a series of automatic search and replaces, leaving only a little hand-tidying to do afterward. Are there any other big table-wikification jobs you've been putting off that I could run through my machine? Bryan 15:27, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Re: VFD

Thanks for posting the articles on VFD, I didn't know we also had to put them there directly.--Zxcvbnm 20:30, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. They'll get full attention now, and when the voting period is up an admin who's into doing housekeeping will know to delete them (or not, as the vote decides :). Bryan 23:37, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Req. for your work on Sony v Universal

I think Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios could make a great featured article. It doesn't quite meet the requirements yet, but it could with a little work. In light of the debates and cases about digital piracy and the obligations of hardware/software creators, the affirmation/modification/elimination of the Sony precedent is a key issue for the future of information technology.

Since you've worked on the article in the past, feel free to take another look to bring it "up to code" for a nomination. Feco 21:02, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

All I did was categorize it, I've no knowledge about this particular case and doubt I could contribute much else. Bryan 22:44, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Air Florida Flight 90

Thanks for your efforts to improve the articles on Air Florida Flight 90 and the related articles. When writing, I tend to not have a big plan when I start. The smaller articles on the individuals were done a little later, and its hard for me to condense and consolidate. Your efforts will help keep the stories from being so repetitive and boring that the content would be lost to a new reader. I was nearby working with cold-related transportation problems on the day this event occurred, so to put it graciously, I am a little less than totally objective. Good Work and again, my thanks. Mark in Richmond. Vaoverland 17:07, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Weird...

Remember those Vfd pages you put there on the 11th? I checked and they are still there even though they voted to delete....--Zxcvbnm 02:56, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The April 11th VfD page has been moved to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old, which is where pages go to die. At some point in the near future an admin will visit those VfDs and implement the consensus for each one, keep or delete. Since this is done manually by a completely volunteer labor force the exact timing will vary. In theory I could go do it myself, since I'm an admin, but this is an area of Wikipedia I'm not familiar with and I don't want to study the various guidelines and procedures in detail just for a handful of deletions like this. April 11 is currently about halfway down the list on /Old, I presume it'll be processed when it gets near the bottom. That looks to be in about six days, assuming the current list size represents an equilibrium. Bryan 03:40, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll do the two pages where the VfDs resulted in unanimous "delete"s, I don't expect there'll be much complication or controversy there. :) Bryan 03:42, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Shanghai architecture

While one might think that this is now a nice gallery, you have in fact reduced the images to such a tiny (literally postage stamp) size, that now to get any reasonable impression one must click on the images, upping the navigation chore. Note that the preceding gallery was a floating gallery, constructed with no small effort and thought, designed to display on a wide range of window widths, showing each in a reasonable size (not requiring further navigation) and for all screens designed to preserve a good layout. Please comment on your thoughts here. Leonard G. 03:02, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

The thumbnail images are tiny, yes, but that's the point. They're still large enough that one can see what's pictured, but if you want to see them in all their glory you click on them. The current total size of the gallery thumbnails is 93054 bytes, originally they were 146895 bytes - this is a significant saving in download time for dial-up users, though the page is still very graphic-heavy and could use more trimming. Frankly, I'm not fond of having image galleries embedded in articles like this at all - I'd much rather see that real estate used by a textual description of Shanghai's architecture, with descriptions of historical trends, famous buildings and architects, etc., with the images serving to illustrate and elaborate rather than being the entire meat of the section. Just looking at these seven images doesn't really tell me much about Shanghai's architecture as a whole - certainly not as much as 93 kilobytes of text would. Finally, the gallery markup is easier to maintain as new images and new features are added in the future. With the images explicitly marked as a gallery like this, there are many things that browsers and other software could potentially do with it - customized layout, for example. The gallery markup is still a relatively new Wikipedia feature, Wikipedia talk:Gallery has some discussion on what's being done with it. Bryan 03:34, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I see your point on the bandwidth issue - but don't dial ups disable auto image downloads in their browsers (maybe that is a bit advanced)? Perhaps I will move the old gallery code to a new article not intended for direct search (e.g. Shanghai architecture image gallery but accessible via a "view gallery" link in that part. This is not ideal of course since this would require double entry maintenance, but the gallery has only had one addition by another since I created it in mid 2004. On the other hand, rather than double maintenance it could become a much richer image source than the primary article. As far as images are concerned I think of WP as a multimedia source. The bandwidth problem in the US is ultimately a short term issue currently stemming from (rational) corporate decision making (neither cable nor telephony see an upside interest in Korean-style high speed internet as this would undercut their current business models) compounded by a lack of appropriate national policy. Leonard G. 14:54, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

What about the bandwidth problem in Africa, though? Anyway, splitting off a separate "gallery" article might be a good idea, it'd satisfy me and there are other articles that have such things. But if what you're interested in is a multimedia source rather than an encyclopedia article, perhaps Wikimedia Commons would be more suited to the task? The Commons is specifically intended for that purpose, whereas the multimedia content on Wikipedia is there only to serve its goal as an encyclopedia. Bryan 15:44, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll do that - I have several other articles that can use this treatment also - I'll implement your method and link to mine in these also. With regards to Africa: since they will likely be going to wireless mesh network architecture owing to a "clean slate" infrastructure it would not surprise me if their per-household bandwidth exceeded ours within the next decade. I'll put this discussion into the relevant part of my user talk for reference. Best wishes, Leonard G. 17:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

rec.sport.pro-wrestling

Why do you claim the article is using the wrong template and has the wrong title? It has existed in this format since its inception and has been edited by other admins before and none of them have made mention of what you claim. Just curious. TruthCrusader

I didn't claim the article was using the wrong template, I just said the name of the template I was adding was Template:wrongtitle - it's what's generating that standardized notice that's currently at the top of the article. As for what's wrong about the title, it's a capitalization issue; Wikipedia's software automatically capitalizes the first letter of an article's title and there's currently no way to override that. So the article is named "Rec.sport.pro-wrestling", when in actuality the newsgroup is "rec.sport.pro-wrestling". This problem is more obvious with articles like iPod, which winds up as "IPod". Check out Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) for more details. Hopefully at some point in the future a version of Wikimedia will come along that allows for lower-cased first letters, at which time having this article labelled like this will make it easy to find everything that needs fixing. Bryan 08:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Ah ok I understand now. Thanks for explaining it to me. I'm a bit protective of that entry, as it is under near constant attack by trolls.

TruthCrusader

radio show about Wikipedia

Hi Bryan

My name is Robin Amer and I’m a producer for a new public radio show called Open Source, which you can check out at www.radioopensource.org. We’re doing a show on Wikipedia this week and I would love to talk to you about your involvement with the site. If you are interested, please give me a call at 617-497-8096, or email me at robinamer@riseup.net and send me your email.

Thanks so much.

Best, Robin Amer www.radioopensource.org

Image deletion

Deleting that is not a problem; thanks for letting me know. --SPUI (talk) 19:17, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Language in article on Chesapeake Bay

Hello Bryan Derksen,

I am not a native English speaker. I love Wikipedia, of course! I want to know how one can get feed back on language quality.

There is a very interesting article on "Chesapeake Bay". I saw your name on the history list.

The article has this sentence which I consider correct but very odd and hard to read:

In the 1970s, the Chesapeake Bay contained one of the planet's first identified marine dead zones, where hypoxic waters were so depleted in oxygen they were unable to support life, identified when massive fish kills resulted.

Would it be better to separate the two "stories" like this:

In the 1970s, the Chesapeake Bay contained one of the planet's firstly identified marine dead zones, where hypoxic waters are so depleted in oxygen that they are unable to support life. The resulting massive fish kills spurred public concern.

(or: ... massive fish kills attracted attention.)

Regards/Donald Axel Mail: Donald"commercial-at-sign"d-axel.dk

Isotope map

"On a related note that might prove useful for your project, I've recently been considering creating an entirely new version of the isotope and periodic table charts using Wikipedia's EasyTimeline plug-in. This should in theory allow the creation of "thumbnail" chart images..."

Well, I took your advice and began implementing the map here. I'm only using a three color code right now because there a contention at Wikipedia:WikiProject Isotopes that we put aside figuring out a color code standarization until we get the meat and potatos of the project completed. If you would like to help out with anything feel free, I just thought you'd like to be aware of my progress with EasyTimeline. I wish there was a way to have a superscript so 3He could be ³He but alas there doesn't seem to be a way. Oh, well. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 02:13, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, awesome. Often for me the hardest part of these sorts of projects is just getting started. I'll poke around in the code and gear up to start helping out later tonight. :) Bryan 02:16, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your opinion

Hi Bryan, an incident has occured in the article Werewolf (see Talk:Werewolf, Full Moon section). Back on 23:59 Sep 19, 2002, you wrote the sentence that is now at issue, a sentence which seemed to strongly suggest that the idea of the full moon being involved in werewolf transformations does not occur in pre-modern lore (not whether it was a prevalent notion or not). This is repeated in a number of references. Yet, I found a medieval author, Gervase of Tilbury, who wrote otherwise. So I edited the sentence, and replaced it with a new one. User:DreamGuy seems to have a problem with this edit, I was wondering if you'd care to weigh in or propose a compromise. I'm not, contrary to what the said User thinks, implying that the full moon was a prevalent notion, only that it indeed occured prior to modern times. Thanks. Also, I think it should be dealt with upfront in the opening paragraph, since it is such a prevalent notion. Decius 03:01, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In the edit you're referring to all I did was change "berserks" to "berserkers". Perhaps you're thinking of the edit from August 20 [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Werewolf&diff=204148&oldid=165534), which was by an anonymous editor? I did do a lot of work on the article back in that timeframe, but it was mostly just integrating the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article on werewolves into this one. I'm afraid I don't really know much about the details of the historical legends surrounding them. I'll take a look at what's being discussed, though, just to see if an outside view will help. Bryan 03:31, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Bryan, I'll check the history again. Decius 03:45, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You're right, sorry about that. But the current issue could use another outside opinion, especially one that has a history with the article. Decius 03:47, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your article

On digital rights management is very helpful.

Thanks. I can't really claim much credit for it, though; I wrote the initial article almost three years ago and since then so many changes and additions have been made by other editors that there's only a handful of lines that are still the same. :) Bryan 06:04, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Brief improvements to rec.music.phish article

Thanks very much, Bryan, for noticing our little article and adding the naming/tech limitations notice to it. have a great day. --128.151.46.60 13:06, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cricket subcategories

Please leave the cricket subcategories category alone - you are creating a lot of additional work for me and other editors who add cricket subcategories - it'll take twice as long to do everything (at least) if you move this category to the talk page!!! jguk 07:31, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How long, exactly, does it take you to add a category to the "cricket subcategories" category? Even if it takes you a full minute for some reason, that's twelve extra minutes over the past four months. This argument is a complete non-starter as far as I'm concerned. Bryan 08:18, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Lists of Mega Man characters

That was my mistake, of depopulating. I was indirectly informed awhile back that the category discussions were not so much a vote as a discussion, as I remarked on a similiar situation. It seemed it wasn't a harmful or rash move to depopulate and and recat, until after I was done, and reconsidered my decision to do so. I was awaiting the outcome, as some of the obvious cat entries have little discussion, and just need to be depopulated. I was gone all day, and came back to even more dismay to see the consensus was for keeping. I should have at leasted researched, what seemed at the time a logical choice. I was planning on reversing my edits after seeing the current discussion. I admit it was premature and have to be more considerate in the future. <>Who ?¿? 04:36, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please vote

Hi, thanks for keeping tabs on the Time Cube article. Please vote at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/211.28.*.*. —Sean κ. + 16:14, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Existence of God merger

I'm attempting to develop a consensus in favor of merging the Arguments against the existence of God and the Arguments for the existence of God articles. A beta version of the resulting article is available at Existence of God. To date, there seems to be consensus in favor of this merger on the "for" talk page, I'm now trying to get a consensus together on the "against" talk page. Please visit Talk:Arguments against the existence of God to weigh in. I'm copy-and-pasting this message to everybody who has contributed to that talk page. crazyeddie 05:43, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Bryan_Derksen"