User talk:Hayford Peirce
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Hello Hayford, welcome to Wikipedia. You might like to start by reading the tutorial and introducing yourself at the new users page. I noticed Wikipedia has an article on you. You might want to check out the Wikipedia:Auto-biography page and be aware that some Wikipedians take a dim view of people writing about areas they are too personally involved with, so you may want to take this into account before editing the article about yourself, or your own works. If you have any questions, you can ask at the help desk or on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian. :) Angela. 20:51, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
A quick hint. Can you make it explicit that fictional characters are fictional characters please? Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:53, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Geez, I thought I had. But I'll check again on this.Hayford Peirce 20:55, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- OKay, no problem, I wasn't trying to bite you - what I have done though is listed Hayford Peirce for cleanup. You can write your own autobiography in you user area at User:Hayford Peirce, but generally it is regarded as poor form to write your own autobiography (see Wikipedia:autobiography); I think you merit inclusion, but that article is far too long and contains far too much irrelevant information. Hope that helps, ask me if you have any questions.
Cheers, Dunc_Harris|☺ 21:00, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Sure, I'll clean it up, no hoohah, cobber. Just as a general idea, what's a maximum number of words for a minor writer like me?Hayford Peirce 21:20, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hi Hayford. Wikipedia isn't running out of space, so there is no limit to how big or small an article can be. It is a general rule that articles shouldn't exceed 32k in size, because some older browsers cannot edit a page larger than 32k. If I were you I would ignore the suggestion that the article on you is too long. BTW Napoleon Disentimed is one of my favourite books I've read it several times, I remember laughing out when the real Napoleon croaks. From time to time I have wondered whether you published any books after Phylum Monsters, but I have to admit that I seldom read Sf/Fantasy anymore and I haven't looked out for your name for quite a while. Mintguy (T) 22:19, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hi Mintguy, Thanks for the kind words! I've already cut my article drastically -- maybe later I can go back and fill in a little bit. It's very hard to know precisely what to put in or not when writing about oneself, so an autobio either tends to be a little too short or much too long! But I *do* think that Wikipedia ought to be encouraging living people to writing about themselves in a substantial way, however, even though this may seem like vanity to others. For instance, right now, the American author Allen Drury, who wrote the famous (and wonderful) Advise and Consent and a *ton* of other books only has a 1-line entry about him. He died a year or so ago at age 90, more or less. It would be nice if someone like him had written several thousand (or more) words about his career, as seen by himself. Now that perspective is lost forever. I think that most people who actually *have* a career, or achievements, worthy of writing about will tend to be over-diffident about themselves if anything. I think that the "vanity" factor that a lot of Wikians worry about is overstated.
Glad to hear that you liked Napoleon. I wrote a sequel that was paid for both by Tor in the U.S. and Bantam in England -- then never published by them. Tor had decided that my books weren't making enough money, grrrrrr. Anyway, it finally got published a year or so ago, after having been published in Germany years ago. If you go to this Amazon site where all of my books are listed you'll see that I wrote a comment about each. "Burr" is actually about my favorite book, by the way -- I hope that someday you might enjoy reading it!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/24T8V2KW0SB5T/qid%3D994444296/sr%3D5-3/ref%3Dlm%5Fb%5F1/104-4034002-4119945 Hayford Peirce 22:39, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Hello, and welcome. Could you clarify your addition to Wikipedia:How to use tables regarding column width? I presume you are referring to the limitations on what table elements can be used, in particular the fact that the colgroup and col elements are not supported in wikitext. It is possible to specify a fixed column width using the width attribute of the td or th elements, however:
| A cell of width 200 | A cell of width 100 | A cell of width 50 |
|---|---|---|
| Some additional text to fill the first column | Some additional text to fill the second column | Some additional text to fill the third column |
Here (at least in my browser, Mozilla Firefox) the longer lines are wrapped to within the specified width. A column width is probably determined by the largest cell for which an explicit width is given, or, if no explicit widths are given, according to the amount of content in the cells. Images can force a cell to be the width of the image, but text can wrap. Anyhow, in an indirect way, it is possible to specify column width. The same also works in the new table syntax. I think this should be clarified somewhat on Wikipedia:How to use tables. Cheers! -- Wapcaplet 03:51, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
p.s. - I just saw your note on the talk page that you were having troubles with column width on Professional Tennis Championships. I'd be glad to help! Let me know what adjustments you were trying to make and I'll see what I can do. -- Wapcaplet 03:58, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Well, I'm glad to know that it can be done -- but I still don't see how! Well, now that I'm writing this, I see above what your codes apparently are -- I'll grab one and take it over to the article and see what happens....
- It sure ain't intuitive, though....
- And I typed in a message at what I presume is your talk page when I clicked on Wapcaplet....
- All the best,
- HayfordHayford Peirce 04:14, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Having done many years of web development, I understand and can sympathize with your frustration! Unfortunately, it's not terribly easy to force a particular appearance in an HTML document; the end result is often quite different from browser to browser, and from user to user depending on their font preferences and available screen space. I have already touched up the Tennis Championships article, removing the superfluous fourth column and converting to the newer table syntax (which I think you will agree is considerably easier to read and edit). The current version looks fairly good in my browser; I would suggest, if you are looking for a specific column width, to try something like the following in the first row (after the heading) of the table:
| width="100" | [[1934]] || width="200" | [[Ellsworth Vines]] (United States) || width="200" | [[Hans Nusslein]] (Germany)
(replacing the widths with those you prefer). If absolute values do not give you the desired results, you can specify widths as a percentage of the entire table, i.e. width="25%". Tweak them a bit, and use the "Show preview" button to see how it will look. I hope this helps! -- Wapcaplet 04:21, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I think that we were both tweaking it at the same time! Right now I think that it looks great! I think that I set the columns at 50, 225, and 225....
As you say, the Web is a strange and mysterious thing!
Many thanks again for your invaluable help, I really appreciate it!Hayford Peirce 04:25, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
| Contents |
Tables (still)
I've tidied up Professional Tennis Championships still further, using the Mediawiki standards (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table). I've found that tables are a pain in the neck, as well. A couple of further points:
- It seems to be Wikipedia policy that plurals are not used as titles of Wikipedia articles, and so Professional Tennis Championship may be preferred. In which case, the plural could be made into a redirect (using #REDIRECT [[Professional Tennis Championship]]). When you create a link to the main article, you would create it like this "[[Professional Tennis Championship]]s", but it gets displayed with the 's' highlighted as if it were a part of the wikilink.
- Discussions with other users are usually carried out on their Talk pages, so when you get to a User's page, you should look for the 'Discuss this page' link, and make your comments there.
(Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs. :-) ) Happy editing! Noisy 09:52, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Thanks
Thanks for your compliment about my very minor edit at A Canticle for Leibowitz. :-) I just read it for the first time last week (after seeing it recommended by Eamon Duffy, of all people), and enjoyed it thoroughly, laughing of course as others noted, but also being on the verge of tears at the end (hence my desire to describe the novel as something other than comedy). Glad to know authors in the field share my impression. :-) I hope you're enjoying your time here -- keep up the good work! Jwrosenzweig 19:38, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
John O'Hara; a) nice, b) NPOV?
I like the improvements you're making in the John O'Hara article.
When writing about an author, one wants to include, and I think it is appropriate and important to include, well-accepted consensus judgments about the person's life and works, when they can be buttressed by facts in a reasonably objective way. I feel strongly that encyclopedia articles should not be lifeless, safe, Gradgrind-facts-facts-facts. But whenever possible, the buttressing facts should be mentioned, and the judgments should be stated as "X said Y about Z," where X is recognizable to the reader as someone who ought to know.
To your comment about the epitaph, "it is a remarkable statement," I can only say, "Indeed!" When I added the note about his epitaph, I was strongly tempted to comment on it... "in a literally monumental piece of egotism, his epitaph, written by himself, says..." But I didn't want to present my own opinion, so I just gave the facts without comment, leaving readers to make their own judgement. Actually, now that I think about it, I think perhaps Brendan Gill says something about this in "Here at the New Yorker," I'll have to look and see whether there's something usable there.
Similarly, the paragraph about his snobbery, his prickliness and difficulty, and envy of people who had gone to Ivy League schools, is important and I think factual, but should be buttressed--if preferable, by replacing it by quotations from biographers or obituaries or whatever.
Just my $0.02. [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:32, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
How about a list of notable O'Hara stories?
Just to make your task harder...
By the way, I'm sure there were many more published story collections than are now listed. For example, wasn't there one called "The horse knows the way" or something like that? And "The hat on the bed?" Two things to try in assembling a list: look him up in abebooks, the used-book dealers' site, http://www.abebooks.com. And, of course, library catalogs, many of which are available online, one being http://www.mln.lib.ma.us/ which is of no significance other than being the local library network's combined catalog.
Anyway, rather like Jack London, O'Hara was probably at his best in his short stories, and an ideal article would probably list some of them by name... [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 19:56, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I know what you mean. I haven't read any O'Hara in some time, and, as a matter of fact, not one single solitary story comes to mind. However, several of the chapters of Pal Joey, which are really short stories, do. Oddly enough, my favorite O'Hara novels are The Big Laugh and The Instrument. Oh, and Pal Joey.
I think you'd have to say I am not a fan of New Yorker stories. I disliked every Salinger short story I've ever slogged my way through. Some of the Dorothy Parker stories are good, though.
I'm a fan of Jack London, which probably tells you something about my tastes... [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:51, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"To Light a Match????!!!!" You mean, of course, "To Build a Fire." A good example of a case where the best-known work is actually, in fact, one of the best and reasonably representative of the author's work. However... I think my personal favorite Jack London story is Samuel, which still sends shivers down my spine. "Moon-Face" to me bears comparison with Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart." You might take a look at an anthology of Jack London stories the next time you're in the library. Although as I say "To Build a Fire" is pretty representative and if it didn't rate more than a shrug, the rest probably won't either. Are you aware that Jack London wrote a goodly number of stories and novels which would probably be classified today as science-fiction or fantasy, had the terms existed today? And Orwell's biographers acknowledge The Iron Heel as one of the influences on Nineteen Eighty-Four. But I am letting my enthusiasm run away with me. [[User:Dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:10, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Modern Library 100
It would appear that an anon 64.228.30.118 must have made it his business to systematically add a line to the article for every book appearing on the Modern Library's list or lists, and it would appear that Simonides is now on a personal crusade to eradicate them all. I think both maneuvers were annoying and stupid. The descriptions 64.228.30.118 used do seem to me to be a bit overly promotional for the Modern Library. But the Modern Library is a pretty distinguished publishing house and their opinion is worth something, I think, and as you noted it's a pretty good list and there aren't a lot of better ones around.
I do happen to be a sysop, by the way but am not sure how far I want to go on this. 1) Sysops are not supposed to protect pages if they are personally involved in a dispute about them and maybe I'm starting to be involved; 2) I don't really think it's all that important; 3) There's a proposal to include the books in a category, a relatively new feature of Wikipedia, which would result in their all being clearly identifiable and listed without including any actual text in the article itself, and that might be a good compromise; 4) I don't have any feeling yet for whether or not it's possible to work with Simonides on this issue.
Unfortunately O'Hara suffers from the problem other authors have suffered from--big popular successes tend to get snubbed by the literary establishment and thus tend to get underrated, and his charming personality probably didn't help.
I do feel strongly that the mention of Appointment in Samarra's being on the Modern Library list should not be removed until and unless someone comes with a better, succinct, objective, neutral indicator of its importance. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:34, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Re Simonides.
(Incidentally, be aware that anyone can read what's on this page...)
I don't know exactly how to deal with this sort of thing, but it's not rare on Wikipedia. I haven't had much experience with it, I'm glad to say. If you encounter someone energetic and unreasonable, any sort of resolution is lengthy and problematical. Wikipedia doesn't have any good answer to the problems of bad behavior. In theory there are various procedures; as you've seen you can ask a sysop to protect a page, there are procedures for arbitration and mediation and so forth, but as nearly as I can tell, like lawsuits in real life, they're long, arduous, not very satisfactory, and not to be engaged in lightly. A determined and unreasonable person can simply impose their will for a very, very, very long time, and the ultimate effect of this on Wikipedia is yet to be determined.
So, speaking solely for myself:
Eventually, I'll ask 172, who protected the page, what to do next. You can do so now if you're in more of a hurry than I am. I agree that it doesn't appear that the discussion on the talk page is reaching any resolution yet.
Point number 1: I have to keep firmly focussed on the fact that a) fortunately this is a point I don't care deeply about, and I must not let myself get trapped into thinking I care deeply about it. Simonides has a point. Simply letting him have his way is a perfectly viable option. I care about whether Wikipedia articles are good, and I enjoy writing articles. There are plenty of ways I do this that don't involve inserting mentions of whether a book is on the Modern Library 100 list. I must not going to let myself get distracted by what I think of Simonides' behavior.
If the outcome is that Simonides simply wins on this point because he's willing to spend more of his personal time and psychic energy on it than I am, well, OK. I think he's wrong that the articles are better with the Modern Library mentions removed, but I can't say I think they're much worse.
What I will do when somebody behaves in the same way on a matter that I think is really important is a separate matter; I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, not before.
One option about what to do with the John O'Hara page is: nothing at all. Let it stay protected indefinitely. It's an OK article. No reason why it can't stay like it is for six months or a year. If I think of new things to write about John O'Hara I'll assemble them on the John O'Hara talk page or in my own user space. If I want to add something I'll ask Simonides for permission (yes) to unprotect the page for the purpose of adding that specific material. If he says no I'll just keep assembling it on the Talk page. Yes, I'll be keeping my eye open for relevant material on the importance of "Appointment in Samarra." Not that I really liked that book myself.
Point number 2: Dealing with this probably involves changing Simonides' opinion and behavior. Too bad, because that doesn't appear as if that's going to be easy to do. He removed a Modern Library statement from the Jack London page. I replaced it with citations of two other "best of" lists and he promptly removed both of them, saying basically that he didn't like those lists either.
You may regard this as caving in, but I prefer to think of it as being very, very, very patient. I like cooperating with people and watching articles grow collaboratively, and I'm good at that. I don't like politics and power struggles, and I'm bad at that. One way I cope with this is by seeking opportunities for the former and avoiding the latter. Wikipedia has 300,000 articles, I ought to be able to do quite a bit without ever colliding with Simonides.
John O'Hara page proposal
What do you think of this proposal? (Leave comments there). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:20, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Plunk plunk vs. boom chicka boom
I've always heard the characteristic Luther Perkins / Tennessee Two sound described as "boom chicka boom," rather than "plunk plunk." As Cash even put out an album with the title Boom Chicka Boom, I reckon that might be more appropriate than "plunk plunk." This is splitting hairs, but I think it's important, given that the phrase appears in the overview paragraph.
Karl Ward 16:20, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
O'Hara, etc.
My "E-mail this user" link works, or should work, anyway, if you wish to exchange email addresses.
I've now gotten the bit in my teeth re O'Hara, and have gotten two biographies (Woolf's and, um, um, um, the other one) out of the library, and the Kazin book coming via interlibrary loan. The first goodie that jumped off the page at me is that when Steinbeck won the Nobel prize, O'Hara sent him a congratulatory message--exact wording is in the book--but, approximately, "There is only one other writer to whom the awarding of the prize would have pleased me more." Will use it to replace the current vague sentence about his yearning for the Nobel. Oh, it also mentions that he begged a Random House editor to lend him some matchbooks from some exclusive New York club that O'Hara didn't belong to; O'Hara wanted to leave them around his house to impress people. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 16:31, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Zoophilia vs. Bestiality
Since you seem to be wondering why I've been changing the wording on several articles - it's all about NPOV. "Zoophilia" is a neutral word, while "bestiality" is not; you don't call gay people "fags", either, for example (or at least not in Wikipedia articles). -- Schnee 00:54, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Napoleon Disentimed
I wasn't aware that Napoleon Disentimed was on VFD and got deleted. I'm going to list it on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion, what else was deleted? Mintguy (T) 08:58, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Hi Mintguy, thanks for reverting that stuff. I dunno what got Wily so obsessed with poor little me. I should have fought at least the Napoleon deletion, I suppose, but decided to let it go. If you put it up for undeletion this time I'll mention the fact it was published in the U.S. by a major publisher, in the U.K. by a major publisher, in Italy ditto, in Germany ditto, and in Russia ditto. I dunno what more one wants for inclusion, short of being a best-seller. In any case, he also undeleted my novel Blood on the Hibiscus and short articles about two series characters, Commissaire Tama and Joe Caneili. Also a mention in the Bangor, Maine, article about famous Bangorians -- geez, aside from Stephen King, Hannibal Hamblin, Bill Cohen, my uncle, and me, who the hell is from Bangor? And finally a comment by me in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress article (Heinlein's book), in which Heinlein said it was his best book. This annoys me: when I first wrote the comment someone deleted it on the grounds that there was no verification. Then when I put my own name in in order to provide verification this character deletes it on the grounds that it's a vanity plug for me -- it was a bit of info about Heinlein, nothing more. If anyone else in WP knew Heinlein and wants to put in a direct comment from him, let them do so.... In any case, thanks for the interest and all the best, Hayford Peirce 16:35, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion. Mintguy (T) 21:34, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Nice edit on Barry Bonds. Bbpen 13:51, 10 Sep 2004 (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§ion=new)| talk)
Redirects galore
Hello 'Hayford.' Please don't turn nonexistant articles into redirects to another somewhat related article just because you don't like red links. I'm refering to the many redirects you've made of nonexistant articles of tennis players to Professional Tennis Championships. Red links are ugly, but useful, because they tell the community which articles need to be created. —Cantus…☎ 03:07, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
Redirects/articles
Hi, regarding your comment at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Hans Nusslein: what I gather you meant is that you still wanted the Hans Nusslein article to contain a link to Professional Tennis Championships, is that correct? Each article page can be either a redirect, or an article, but not both, so leaving the redirect thingy there is not an option. I tweaked the text slightly to include a link to the PTA article. Noel (talk) 05:02, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I just want to affirm what the last two entries said. A redirect page is nothing but a page that automatically sends you drectly to another page. There can be nothing else on the page. Also you should only use a redirect when the only place that a subject is covered is on the redirected page, because the redirect can send someone only to one specific page. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to walk through it with you. DS1953 15:58, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)