User talk:Danakil

Welcome! Glad to have you contributing here. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 02:20, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Fortran 2 Moving pages 3 Template:List of programming languages 4 Function-level Programming 5 Programming languages 6 Programming language articles 7 Category:Compiled programming languages 8 'programming language' classifier 9 'Competing' BASIC categories? 10 'programming language' classifier 11 Rlab 12 NGL 13 weltanschauung map 14 Most likely, Malintzin's mother tongue was nahuatl 15 Article renaming? 16 fundamental terms - task process etc 17 Editor Extraordinaire 17.1 Main Page 17.2 Data Management Wiki Committee 18 Article Licensing 19 Copyright Violation 20 Source for interesting observation 21 Von Neumann programming languages 22 Agora Programming Language

Fortran

Hiya. I noticed you changed "Fortran" to "FORTRAN" in Template:List of programming languages. However the Fortran article actually gives the correct capitalisation as "Fortran" (see User talk:Wernher), so you may want to change this back. Thanks — Kate | Talk 18:56, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

• I'll change it back, but I must confess that it looks awkward to me to have both 'Fortran' and 'ALGOL' side by side...and the ALGOL site suggests keeping the capitalized version of the name. Thanks for pointing this out to me. --Danakil

Well... as I understand it (which isn't all that well, since I don't know as much about either of these languages as I should...) they were both originally capitalised (ALGOL & FORTRAN), but Fortran's name later changed to the new version, whereas the no-longer-developed ALGOL hasn't. So it does look a bit strange, but is actually correct. — Kate | Talk 19:28, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

Moving pages

Please do not copy and paste text to "move" it from one article title to another. Use the "move page" feature to change an article's title (look at the bar of options at each article and you'll find it). If you need a redirect deleted for a move, let an admin (like me) know. -- Infrogmation 05:37, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• OK. Let me take this opportunity to clarify another doubt:

What should be the standard for naming cities in, say, Mexico? I saw both a 'Tampico' page and a 'Tampico (Mexico)' page. I don't think either one is the right approach: there is also 'Tampico, Illinois', for example (Reagan was born there); and there are several cities in Mexico with the same name but in a different State. See also the 'Altamira' page. So, shouldn't a pattern like Cityname, Statename apply? or is there already a different standard way of doing this?

Thanks for pointing out to me the right way to do a move. I hadn't thought about the perjudicial effects, in terms of page history, of doing what I was doing instead of using move.

--Danakil

With Mexican cities, I think we're tending towards leaving articles at the city name only where there is no disambiguation needed and apending the state name where it is. This seems to be more a case of what editors wound up doing than any established standard. There are certainly some cases where we can and should be clearer. -- Infrogmation 04:56, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Template:List of programming languages

Hiya. The thing about the new format is that it has the same problem as the old one, except more so: it's too large. It distracts from the actual article, and honestly I don't think the list is useful in this form however it's formatted. Listing every language is clearly not feasible, listing only some not only causes arguments as to what should be listed, and including even a reasonable subset makes it cramped, to say the least. I'd rather leave it as it is (in the unconspicuous version) for now, and try to achieve consensus on a new, two-tier layout ASAP. — Kate | Talk 19:27, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)

I agree that a list of programming languages is useful. That's why we're working on a reasonable way to present this list in the articles (cf Template talk:List of programming languages). — Kate | Talk 19:42, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)

Function-level Programming

You are right, I'll rework the translation. Thanks. --Ascánder 18:29, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Programming languages

Hi, I was wondering why you removed 'Category:Programming languages' from all lists of programming languages? Yet you left 'Category:Esoteric programming languages' in the List of esoteric programming languages article. Was that by mistake?-) ZeroOne 12:42, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hi,ZeroOne. I decided not to touch the subcategories, since by their own nature, they give rise to lists of programming languages (say, the LISP subcategory -> list of Lisp-related prog langs, and so on). Perhaps we should make an attempt to standardize on the subcategory naming convention, though. The other possible way to use the Category/subcategory hierarchy would be to use the subcategories to actually hold the links to their languages, rather than the Prog Lang category; but this approach has many disadvantages IMO: languages could end up in both the category and subcategory, and there would be no equivalent to the current de facto alphabetical list produced by the category (in fact, if we stick to a consistent interpretation of the category elements, we don't need the List of Prog Langs in Alphabetical Order article any more). Furthermore, if a consensus is reached on how to use the subcategories, we might end up not needing the List of Categorical prog langs article either. One more thing... I did remove HQ9plus as a programming language, but left it as an esoteric one, on the grounds that since it is easier to come up with a valid new esoteric language than with a full-blown language entry, eventually we would end up with a Prog Langs category with an overwhelming majority of esoteric mini-langs over the real langs. Please let me know what you think. Have a good day. danakil

I think the main reason that we need lists of programming languages is because an article does not exist for each and every language yet. Thus the categories can't create automatic lists that would be complete. Neither can categories organize the languages in a chronological order etc. The problem of languages falling under their specific category and/or the main category is real, though. How would it be decided what languages should have their own sub categories? Etc etc... Maybe we could even setup a new Wikiproject in order to get some standards on programming languages and also get new articles written about as many new languages as possible. Let me know what you think. -ZeroOne 20:51, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(Btw, I'm moving this thread from my talk page to here. I think it would be logical for the conversation to take place in one Talk-page only and that is the talk-page where the initial message is posted. Maybe you should copy here your replies about those other subjects below, too. -ZeroOne 22:13, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC))

Programming language articles

You're making a gigantic mess of things by renaming all the programming language articles. There is simply no need to do it; for all but a handful, the name is completely unambiguous. Also, the names are actually "BLISS" etc, not "BLISS programming language"; it's like titling an article "Albert Einstein Homo sapiens", when there's never been anyone who's had that as a name. Why not add some content to language articles, instead of making more pointless work for everybody? Stan 20:56, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Danakil, please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages). -- nknight 21:09, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

These affect me (and others) by taking up time changing all the links that are now redirects - it's useless busy work that takes precious time away from content and fact-checking. These days, if I move something, I'll go back and edit some or all of the references myself, so as not to put more work on other people - putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak. There's also the aspect of having to explain to newbies how the articles are named opposite to the existing convention, fixing clumsy cut-n-paste attempts to undo the move, etc. Why didn't you just create redirs from the longer forms, as per the longstanding rule? Stan 21:39, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

One more thing - I see you're relatively new here, and by mostly creating new articles (which is great!), you probably haven't stepped on any toes so far. In general, when things look disorganized, it's worthwhile to stop a moment and ask why, instead of assuming all the long-time editors don't know what they're doing. This is partly my fault actually, because at one point I was going to add the redirs from "X programming language", which would reduced the temptation to move articles, but got distracted and forgot. It never hurts to post a couple "this is terrible, I'm going to do something about it!" notes on relevant talk pages and wait a day or two; if someone cares, they'll let you know. By doing a whole bunch of moves, unannounced, on a subject for which policy already exists, you're just about guaranteed to annoy lots of people, most of whom haven't yet logged in to see what's happened. You haven't done anything that's not fixable, and I expect a number of people will take that on over the next week - unless of course you do some fast talking on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) and win everybody over to your view before they start reverting. :-) Stan 21:57, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Please don't make any more changes regarding programming language articles! If you disagree with the policy, get the policy changed, don't just ignore it - admins can and will revert all your stuff en masse if they think you're wilfully going against settled policy. It's a Sunday afternoon, the sh*t will hit the fan tomorrow most likely, so my advice is to cool it on the link tinkering for now, and make your case on the policy page. Stan 22:02, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category:Compiled programming languages

C++ is not a compiled programming language, since there are at least 2 interpreters available for the language. If you mean "languages which can be compiled," I'm really not sure this is a useful distinctian (nearly all languages can be both compiled and interpreted). — Kate | Talk 13:12, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

• You're correct. I created the Compiled subcategory because of the existing Interpreted subcategory, but I should have removed the other one instead (it only has one language in it, and not a canonical one). I'll remove the Compiled/Interpreted distinction. —danakil
  • Ah, I see - yeah, it's probably best to get rid of both. There's a page somewhere explaining this (e.g. why we don't describe Java as a 'bytecode' language), but I forget where exactly... — Kate | Talk 15:08, 2004 Aug 18 (UTC)

• • Maybe, interpreted programming language? which I tried to clarify this sort of confusion. -- Taku

• • • What part of "best to get rid of both" did you fail to understand, Taku? —danakil 06:17, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hey Danakil. Please go and add your vote here Categories for deletion#Programming languages then. Cheers. --ZeroOne 18:53, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

'programming language' classifier

Hi. I noticed you reverted some of the prog lang names, and I was wondering if you had read the ongoing discussions regarding the naming of programming languages and, if so, I would be interested to know what you think about the following issues:

if there is a shorcut from, say, 'Sather' AND 'Sather (programming language)' to 'Sather programming language', then what are the disadvantages of having a homogenized programming language nomenclature, where all the base articles have the 'programming language' classifier?

what do you think about the impact of non-uniform naming in the perceived quality of the product?

what's your position on the very large number of current dangling references caused by the fact that some languages are called 'X' and some others 'X programming language' and it is apparently quite difficult to remember which is which?

I'm interested in knowing what you think about these issues. Have a good day. —danakil

I have no preference in naming programming language articles. Since we have not yet to reach the consensus to put a programming language suffix to all of the articles, so I made reversion. Once we have reached a new naming convention, I am happy to put a programming language suffix. -- Taku 11:30, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

• OK. So, since you have no preference, we can discount your vote on the issue, correct? And, since you did not comment on my questions, you have nothing to say about them either, correct? —danakil

I don't vote and like I said, I don't want to make comments on those issues, though I have my opinion. I just hate that articles title are put out of line. Please feel free to make a change in the naming convention. -- Taku 11:52, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Technically, Taku is within his rights to change things to conform to an existing standard, but it's not very politic of him to do so; if we decide to change, then it's still more meaningless work to change everything once again. Unfortunately, it's all too common for editors to edit first and talk second, eh? Stan 06:06, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I made a mistake and proceeded to correct it. Taku's behaviour is in a completely different league, Stan. Please see my recent comments to User:Infrogmation regarding this issue. And, regarding whether or not Takus is technically correct... well, your opinion is compromised due to the fact that you already have a strong point of view on this precise issue, a point of view that does not seem neccessarily shared by all other editors or even sysops. —danakil 06:09, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What did you think I was going to do, block Taku's IP for the crime of enforcing current policy? You should know by now that there aren't really any options in between letting everybody do anything they want, and either protecting pages from all edits or blocking people from all editing. Taku's practice is not a good one, and it's not the first time he's done it, but only the Arbitration Committee can deal out punishments, and I doubt they'll want to bother in this case (feel free to submit it though). In any case, you get a plus sign by your name for restraining yourself when asked, which people will remember later when you need it, and Taku gets yet another minus sign, which people also remember when evaluating his edits. Stan 21:29, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

'Competing' BASIC categories?

Hi, I noticed the new 'BASIC dialects' category (thanks; it was long overdue), but also a 'BASIC language family' category -- is the latter one to be deleted? I guess the 'dialects' category is the most suitable, or what? --Wernher 01:55, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(ps: please feel free to reply below, right here on this page; that makes the thread much easier to follow!) --Wernher :-)

• Hi, Wernher. The intention is for Category:Programming language families to correspond to what has recently been suggested in Talk:Programming language (i.e., C family of languages, etc.) while Category:Programming language dialects to list in one place all the dialects of programming languages that Wikipedia knows but that are not referenced centrally anywhere (i.e., the BASIC dialects are in the BASIC page, some LISP dialects in the Lisp prog lang page and some others in the Common Lisp page, etc.). Regarding APL, for example: APL/360, Sharp APL, Dyalog APL would all go to the dialects category, while K, J, NGL, Nial, A+ would all go to the families category. I'm interested in what you think about this and all else about categorization. —danakil

Thanks for the clarification. I fully agree on the categorization scheme suggested in your outline above. I should of course have thought more deeply about the distinction between p.l. dialects and p.l. family members. Anyway, I've now done a little bit of p.l. category work myself re these cats, by adding OPL to the 'BASIC p.l. family', and moved Integer BASIC from that cat to the 'BASIC dialects' one. --Wernher 02:15, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

'programming language' classifier

Thanks for your message. This isn't a field where I am personally knowledgeable, and for more detailed help you might wish to find an administrator who is more familiar with the subject (has one edited any of the articles in question?). I'll just say that I agree that if there is conflict about the classification and ongoing discussion, it is indeed wrong for one editor to make major unilateral changes not generaly accepted by the others interested. It's also inappropriate to make a habit of moving articles without being willing to do the work of taking care of the redirects. Beyond that, I can offer to help revert something that causes a particular mess, or protect a page if it gets to the point of an edit war. If necessary, take your concerns to somewhere like Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Best wishes, -- Infrogmation 17:39, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I added the section Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Danakil at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment. Hope you will defend yourself. -- Taku 03:16, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

I have better things to do than playing teen fights with you. — danakil 03:26, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Happy and honored to join prog lang. :) AdmN 22:33, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Rlab

Thanks for cleaning up Rlab, I've been meaning to do that for months.-gadfium 01:41, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Glad to be of help. —danakil 01:46, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

NGL

Don't even think of undoing another TLA disambig page again - deleting other people's additions like that is called vandalism around here, and can get you banned. Stan 17:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I won't. But if any vandalism has been done around here, it has been done by you. A good sysop must show neutrality and wisdom. —danakil 17:47, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Ah, but I haven't deleted anybody's content, and added some in the process, plus discovered that UnrealScript had been dup'ed without anybody noticing previously. (It would have been noticed had people been following the encyclopedia-wide rules.) Ironically, the reason I added other meanings to NGL was so that some other editor wouldn't come along, see just a redir, and move "NGL programming language" to "NGL". Stan 18:15, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Hi, D; Hmm. I'm not sure Stan wouldn't talk me out of my position (if you have correctly described his position), so don't count me on your side yet. But IMO that's less important than helping you get on an even keel re relating to your colleagues here.

I bring that up immediately bcz another disapproved behavior here (at least in the case of creating articles, and IMO the same principles should apply to editing) is what i would call "ironic editing": making an edit "just to demonstrate a point". The usual case is A disapproves of the retention of an article that B favored, and A writes an analogous article that A expects B to favor deletion of. The problem is that A has now written an article that A believes should be deleted, "to make a point". Don't (as you already have) get yourself into the postion where you can't or don't want to defend your own work.

I'll look at the situation with the NGL you've mentioned, that User:Stan Shebs objected to, and see whether the issue is as narrow as you've said, and if so try to explore his reasoning. In the meantime, please try to stay out of trouble. Without trying to be sarcastic, are you sure your time wouldn't, for the moment, be better spent learning the local culture, including but not limited to WP policies, rather than editing for the moment?

Full disclosure: i'm another admin (or "sysop"), which is (a) no big deal, there are over 300 of us, and (b) no assurance that i'll sympathize more with him than you (e.g., we don't all know each other; 10 or 20 votes is a typical number to approve a new one; there are a lot of things not specifically covered by written policies; etc.). I just don't want you to feel i led you down the garden path by not mentioning it.

--Jerzy(t) 04:16, 2004 Aug 26 (UTC)

• • Thanks, Jerzy. Commenting on your points:

I do not recall having described Stan's position, as far as I can see, I limited myself to offering links to the relevant discussions.

I am not counting you on my side, as I don't want to have a "side". I only asked you if you would consider doing with the NGL article the same thing you had just done with the TRAC one.

I am not here to socialize, but nevertheless, I have remained cool and respectful while a couple of others haven't (see User:Stan Shebs first comment to me, above on this page, he hadn't even taken care of checking out whether or not I had written any content articles). Outside of those two people, the interaction with my Wikipedian colleagues has been very rewarding.

No. I have not gotten myself into the position where I can't/don't-want-to defend my own work: the edit I made to the TRAC article is perfectly valid under the light of my reasoning that there should always be a disambig page for prog lang names that refers to the base article named along the [LangName programming language]] pattern. The only thing left to do was to immediately create one of the other 'TRAC' articles. So I stand behind my actions.

Thanks for the time you take to look upon the situation. Of course I know there is no assurance. And, in fact, the NGL article issue is not a big deal at all, rather, the problem I see is that sysops are supposed to show more tactful/neutral behaviour than the one I've been experimenting.

I am not looking for trouble.

No. I had already read most of the documents you mention before I joined Wikipedia as a named member. Besides, I believe I am making a significant number of positive contributions in the area of programming languages and, also, in that of the mesoamerican natural languages. It is not a month that I've begun to edit, and I'm currently ranked 618. Plus I have created a good number of prog lang related articles and practically re-built the Category:Programming languages.

Don't worry about me feeling let down: I won't. I'am aware of the rights/limitations of sysops.

Thanks again for your kind attention. Have a good day. — danakil 05:04, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

BTW, it's not the case that I "hadn't even taken care of checking out whether or not I had written any content articles" - I always look over an editor's efforts before commenting to them. I will admit that I was rather irritated at the time, and my remark about creating article content was unnecessarily snarky, sorry. Stan 06:11, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Apology accepted. Thanks for commenting on this. As you probably do yourself, I have no other intent here than to contribute to the Wikipedia to the utmost of my abilities. — danakil 06:21, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

weltanschauung map

Hi danakil,

It is possible to give legends for the image of the weltanschauung map. I think a bitmap image could be made, and text could be added through the text box. Not sure whether it would work, but I hope it does. I tried to do it but dont know how to add small type fonts. could you please tell me or try it yourself. besides if there is no other problem with the article then please remove the cleanup tag. Robin klein 14:41, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Most likely, Malintzin's mother tongue was nahuatl

Hi, Danakil: Concerning the nahuatl language article, I agree with the changes that you have made. However, there is enough historical evidence to assert that most likely (it´s risky to say surely) Malintzin's mother tongue was nahuatl. All witness or contemporary historians say that she was the daughter of the 'Tlatoani' of a town (Paynala or Paynalla, near Coatzacoalcos, for Bernal Díaz del Castillo; Viluta, in Jalisco, for Francisco López de Gómara) within the aztec empire and most likely nahuatl speaking, and that she was sold as a slave to a Tabasco 'cacique', maya speakers, after a rather bizarre story, and finally given as a present to Cortés. Most modern historians have doubts about the whole tale (too similar to a chavalry novel -conquistadores loved them!- or to a Biblical story) but accept that Malintzin was of aztec origin. It is difficult to imagine a very young slave of a maya town speaking nahuatl as a second language, so proficiently... A classical reference in English is Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico. The story of 'Doña Marina' is told in book 2, chapter V.Vivero 02:45, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• You're correct. Nevertheless, the real extent of the use of Nahuatl as an ubiquituous lingua franca along the whole of Mesoamerica is being seriously re-appreciated as of late (in the sense that it has probably been significantly underappreciated). In any case, the article is about Nahuatl language, and only mentions Malintzin in passing, and even that is done only in the context of her pre-contact bilingualism. Perhaps the paragraph you wrote above should be added to the Malintzin article? Thanks for your comment. — danakil 02:52, Aug 29, 2004 (UTC)

Article renaming?

Why are you renaming articles, e.g. bzip2 to bzip2 (algorithm)? The latter form should only be used when there exist more than one thing called bzip2 so there's a need to disambiguate. Fredrik | talk 10:34, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• I was careful to correct all double redirects and you still have the previous way of referring to the article (bzip2), so you can keep working as if nothing had happened. Thus, the only way things change is that now there is an extra field, the classifier "(algorithm)", on the title area (very much like other encyclopaedias do it). On the plus side, now we can have a way to automatically distinguish bettween algorithms and other things on lists of articles. Also, this way we are better prepared to distinguish between the algorithms, the corresponding file formats, and the actual applications that implement them. — danakil 10:39, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

If you believe the Wikipedia naming convention should be changed, then you must get others to agree with your idea. Put it up for discussion on Wikipedia:Village Pump and/or Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. I happen to disagree with it. Unless you can get a majority support for this, they articles will have to be moved back, sorry. Fredrik | talk 10:58, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Hi, Fredrik:
  • I have indeed read Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and all related info I have been able to find. My opinion (which is shared by at least a few other wikipedians who have expressed themselves on the issue after carefully informing themselves about it) is that the current naming conventions are not clear nor precise nor exhaustive (notice that I am not saying that I disagree with them, that's something else) and thus leave a lot of elbow room for interpretation (and with it, unfortunately, subjective disagreement), which is what you and I are doing now.
  • The particular interpretation you seem to adhere to is: "unless in need of a disambiguating page, all articles must be named in the shortest form possible, removing any classifiers."
  • The particular interpretation I adhere to is: "it is not required to use a classifier in the article's name unless there is a need for disambiguation page."
  • As per your suggestion to bring this topic up for discussion on naming conventions... it has been already done by me and a few other wikipedians in relation to the Programming Language articles, and I am convinced that it won't take us anywhere again for the following reason:
    • Really understanding the implications of this issue takes some reading and some thinking. Not many are willing to do that, whereas many are willing to just express themselves right on the spot when they first happen to stumble on a discussion. The result is that, just like you yourself did above, nobody ever addresses the points we bring to the discussion but, rather, confine themselves to a letany of "this is the naming convention, unless we say that it is not, then that's what we do".
  • So... if seeing the text '(algorithm)' to the right of bzip2 bothers you that much (even though thats what you will pretty much find out everywhere else where encyclopaedic content is listed)... go ahead and feel free to make "bzip2" the main article and "bzip2 (algorithm)" a redirect to it. For you it will certainly make no much difference, except that you will be able to "enforce the manual of style", and for many of us.. the issue will be that we can't distinguish between algorithms, software, and file formats while scanning long lists of articles, and will continue to make many false clicks. I am not ready to go through this issue all over again... so do what you think is what's correct in the spirit of the community that created such a wonderful idea as the Wikipedia. Have a nice day, — danakil 19:04, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Classification by category is a job for the category system. As for distinguishing between things on lists of articles -- where would this be a problem? For the plain "see also"-kind of lists, the answer is that they are an inherently poor way to link to related things -- much better to provide some text. Instead of listing a bunch of file formats by article name, write a little about them and why they're relevant to the subject, or sort them under subheadings.

What about the programming languages articles names? "ABC programming language" is only used over "ABC" if there's something else called "ABC", if that's what you're referring to. Fredrik | talk 17:37, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

fundamental terms - task process etc

I see that you have removed the Category:Computing from some fundamental terms. If you have a design in mind, perhaps you can tell us something about it. Ancheta Wis 10:52, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Hi, Ancheta. You're right they are fundamental terms. The idea is to extract the computer-science specific versions out of the general articles, and have those included in Cat Computing. The CS-specific ones will point out to the more general terms. And the more general ones will work also (as they are doing now) as a disambig page with main content, though without multiple specific contents other than the main (generic process, generic task). I intend to do that in the next few hours. What do you think? — danakil 18:40, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)
• If the disambiguation page points to the original using pages, and if the wiki-linked computing-specific terminology sits on the disambiguation page inside of a sentence, instead of a simple 'see "computing-specific term"' then you have added value. But if the "computing-specific term" loses its place in the disambiguation page, which is how the innovators of the term thought of the concept, then history and etymology are lost. Especially for the word 'task', which arose in the mini-computer world, independently of the word 'process' which seems to be the unix term for the same thing, that nuance is important. It is the link between the real-time OS's like VRTX, pSOS, RDOS and the multi-processing unix picture. I would appreciate it if that is not lost during the deconstruction of the 'task' and 'process' disambiguation pages. It occurred 10-15 years before the PC wave. Ancheta Wis 00:16, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• I think I understand what you mean. I'll take a shot at it, and I will appreciate any corrections you make to it, until we obtain something that you are comfortable with. Thanks. — danakil 00:32, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Editor Extraordinaire

Danakil of the Wikipedians, I hearby promote you to the rank of Editor Extraordinaire, with all the privileges and responsibilities it entails. :)

These are your ASCII chevrons: <<<<+>

func(talk) 23:59, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Main Page

Thank you, Danakil! I think I'm going to keep myself at Buck Newbie for a while, although Warrant Newbie sounds a lot cooler. :) func(talk) 02:40, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Data Management Wiki Committee

Thank you for your contribution to one, or more, articles that are now organized under Data management.

Because of your previous intrest, you are recieving an invitation to become a founding member of the Data Management Wiki Committee.

The members, of course, will form and solidify the purpose, rules, officers, etc. but my idea (to kick things off) is to establish a group of us who will take responsiblity to see that the ideas of Data management are promoted and well represented in Wikipedia articles.

If you are willing to join the committee, please go to Category_talk:Data_management and indicate your acceptance of this invitation by placing your three tilde characters in the list.

KeyStroke 01:26, 2004 Sep 25 (UTC)

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:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

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:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

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)}[[]] 15:36, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

User 134.155.68.246 claims to be the author of a C++ implementation of the Quicksort algorithm which you added to that article. He has removed the code already, so nothing more needs to be done if it is, in fact, a violation. I don't think we even need a C++ implementation, but I just wanted to inform you of the situation. Intangir 00:53, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Source for interesting observation

Dear Danakil:

In Agglutinative language you wrote:

there seems to exist a preferred evolutionary direction from agglutinative synthetic languages to fusional synthetic languages, and then to non-synthetic languages, which in their turn evolve again into agglutinative synthetic languages.

This is fascinating to me since I've been hoping to write a master's thesis on a similar topic. Do you have a source for this evolutionary observation? Do you know any more about it? Even a book reference would be welcome...

Thanks, Steverapaport 21:34, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Von Neumann programming languages

Having just hit this article as a Random page, I just wanted to praise its succinct lucidity. Good job. --Theo (Talk) 21:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agora Programming Language

I noticed you authored the article on Agora. Can you tell me how you encountered this language? Wouter Lievens 14:31, 18 May 2005 (UTC)