User talk:JCarriker/Archive1

Portuguese Language/ wiki

eheh! Nope, but you made some normal mistakes that English speakers do: We have two verbs "to Be" not one, go to the Portuguese wiki, I've putted a tip in your "página de usuário". As for time, I've few now, but soon, I'll have extra time, due to hollidays. weeeeeeee..... The difficulty in Portuguese is the grammar (even for us), but you can use a simple grammar and will be understand. Força!! More tips soon. I've found cool info about Mirandese in the Portuguese wiki, the Spanish guys that speak a similar "dialect" will get excited. Thx for the help! ;) -Pedro 02:41, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Taipei

Please don't add the list of Taipei's sister cities to dozens of cities around the world. When you open an encyclopedia article on San Francisco (or on a few dozen other cities you modified), do you expect to find there a list of the sister cities of... Taipei? Of course not. If anything, on the San Francisco there should be a list of sister cities of San Francisco (Taipei being one of which), but certainly not the list of sister cities of Taipei. I started reverting all those pages you stuck a TaipeiSC on, but it's a lot of work. It would be great if you could help me and revert the rest of the pages. Thanks. Nyh 07:47, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I saw your message. Still, I think you are getting this wrong. Why does a person open the article of San Francisco? To find about San Francisco. In the article about San Francisco, you might be interested in seeing a list or box of sister cities of San Fracisco, and perhaps even to read that "Taipei is the most important sister city because ...", perhaps even with a link to a page about "Tapei's sister cities". But a reader of such article will certainly not be interested to read the entire list of sister cities of one of the sister cities in San Francisco, on the main article, in a big colorful box. This box is even more out of place and even rediculous on small stub pages of one of those other cities - where the Taipei box looks more like vandalism (to advertise a completely irrelevant list of pages) than anything else. I hope that you'd consider reverting the rest of the pages yourself, because I'm tired of doing it myself. But even if neither of us revert them, I'm sure other people will soon do because, frankly, a person looking for the "Los Angeles" is not, and will never be, looking for information about the list of sister cities of Taipei. Nyh 07:46, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry I was part of your decision to take a holiday from Wikipedia. I hope that when you return, you consider making less "automatic" changes to pages. By "automatic" changes to pages I mean changing 30 pages in the same way, without really considering how this change will impact the usability of each article (will a person looking for information on Pretoria, which is what I was looking for, will be helped by a list of Taipei's sister cities)? And thanks for the English lesson. "Come on" is not derogetory (in my English), but rather an exlamation of disbelief, as in "do you really believe that someone who came looking for Pretoria information will use this list?". My disbelief stands - I do not believe it is useful, and I'm surprised that you did. It doesn't mean you're an idiot, or anything of this sort :) I find that edits get least reverted if you take an article that is genuinely missing some information, and add that missing information. Adding information which is considered by many irrelevant to the article is a sure way to get your edits reverted, whether you considert this justified or not. In the mean time, enjoy your holiday! Nyh 15:43, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ok. thx I was going to advize you. I dont know if Nzenga was the Ngola that was first friend of the Portuguese (thus Portugal give that name to the country), it was a man, but since in the article states that she prefered to be treated as a man. After that, he rebeled after Portuguese incursions in Angola. -Pedro 09:23, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I beleive that you are correct that her brother was the one who was the first freind to the Portuguese. Nzinga did not care for either Portugal or Kongo and seemed to have viewed them as threats. However their just aren't enough English language sources on her, so I can't be sure.

I understand what you are trying to do by pointing out that Nzinga was not the first Ngola that Portugal dealt with. However toked is not a word, the prooper word is took. It is one of those weird English words that has forms that don't follow the normal grammatical rules. The word derivation is a form of the word derive- meaning to origininate. Why did you replace the word derivation either it or the phrase the orgin of have the most closest meaning to what was done. In English to use the verb took as a reference to a name in English, usually applies to a person decideding to chage ther own name. For example: Nzinga took the name Dona Ana de Souza.

-JCarriker 16:16, Jun 9, 2004 (UTC)

May I ask why you "feel like a second class citizen" at Wikipedia? We aren't utopia here, but we try to at least live up to our award of "best community" (Webby). --Menchi 22:20, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Certainly you may ask. I don't expect utopia and I do feel that wikipedia is worthy of it's webby, I voted for it. I upset over several things. The reason I feel like a second class citizen is that many wikipedians assume the worst about me. WikiProject U.S. Regions approved a proposal to add the prefix American before U.S. Region names that are not Census Bureau Regions. Several weeks after the proposal was approved I began implementing the proposal. The first article was New England, the move was criticized I can live with that. However several wikipedians accused me of acting unilaterally and posted orders such as Don't move pages with out discussion. I don't appreciate being issued orders anyway, but when I informed the users that I did not act unilaterally only one was conciliatory an acknowledged that there assumption about me was wrong.

I recently made a very bad edit after a week of nightly severe storms that disrupted my sleep patterns. Controversy about the edits, corresponded with time I had already scheduled for a wikiholiday to meditate on my concern of a lack of use of wikiquette in edit summaries. I ended my holiday prematurely to deal with the articles. I agreed to remove my edits from the pages that had not since been reverted. I used the what links here page to find the article that still linked there. I found out that it had been posted at vfd and no one had even taken the time to tell me. This hurt me very deeply, not only because the message box that I had created was relevant to at least one article but because it showed a lack of confidence in my intentions. It seems that all of the time and effort I have spent on wikipedia over the past year was worthless; the user who posted it, who is a very respected member of the community didn't even try to contact me, as if the edit I made was first offense vandalism who's creator does not deserve even the opportunity to be reasoned with.

Other things have bothered me but they are thing I can live with. I have monitored as wikipedians who had only been at wikipedia a matter of months were granted sysop privileges after making hundred of minor edits, while I tried to write entire passages, many times entire articles in one edit so the page history wouldn’t be clogged. I have had patronizing and derogatory comments made in edit summaries, in at least one early case by a user who didn’t even understand the subject they were writing about. As I have said probably three times now I can handle that, I had scheduled a wikiholiday to deal with it.

I have made significant contributions to many Ancient Egyptian biographies, including the succession table in the pharaoh biographies, I have spent a large amount of time working with others to fairly and accurately portray U.S. regions, and I have selected several articles about generally ignored topics to work on with the aim of getting them featured status, Marshall, Texas has already made. it. None of this seems to matter, only the bad accomplishments ever seem to much recognition.

This is why I feel like a second class citizen, against the suggestions of wikiquette, many users assume the worst about me. I don’t want to leave wikipedia, but I no longer feel like I am truly a part of the community. I have tried to give back to the community, public service is in my nature, I recently joined the association of advocates, and especially through WikiProject U.S. Regions. I have almost left wikipedia, two times once was shortly after my arrival and due to my ignorance of how wikipedia functioned. The second time was after the incident over New England but Theresa knott and Acegikmo1 convinced me other wise. I don’t want to leave wikipedia but I don’t see how I can continue to contribute here if I am not a respected member of the community and subject to basic courtesy. When and if I feel comfortable here again I will repost my personal information.

Thanks you for your concern and I apologize if this has adversely effected your mood.

JCarriker 01:40, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Benvindo à nossa wikipédia!

you said "mas eu sou disposto aprender". In Portuguese we have two verbs "to be" Ser (used for an unchangble feature) Estar (changeble feature)

this is the best way that I can explain this.

If you want to learn -> it changes -> use: Estar -> Eu estou

If you are tall -> it doesnt change (normally LOL) -> use: ser -> Eu sou

Benvindo à nossa wikipédia! -PedroPVZ 02:07, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Kind words

Thanks for your kind words. I really appreciate it. Much better to hear than how people seriously believed that I was my evil umlauted impersonator. :)

The name-stealing indvidual has actually tried this trick several times (as RíckK, RìckK, RïckK, Maximus·Rex, Jíang, and RickK·). Maximus Rex 08:59, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

TaipeiSC

>Why did you not post your concerns on the TaipeiSC discussion page or try to contact me before went to vfd?

This was an obvious case for removal and did not require discssion. I did not see controversy in deleting this. Moving directly to vfd, IMO, would speed up the process.

>Why have you not posted the vfd notice on the template page?

That would cause a vfd notice to show up at every article the template was posted on and mislead people. We should probably create a notice especially designed for templates though.

>Also why have you edited several of my previous contributions? Is this a coincidence?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. If you're thinking that I'm purposely following you around, then be assured that I am not monitoring your edits on purpose. Cheers, Jiang 23:12, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I left a comment at Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy#Listing_templates_for_deletion.--Jiang 23:44, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks.

-JCarriker 00:55, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Re:vandalism

I do not have the authority alone to ban. I have the capacity to block (usually for 24 hours, but up to one month at a time if it's a recurring vandal), but standard procedure is to give out warnings first unless the vandalism is rapid and current. When I see vandalism occur, I (personally) just skip the warning and hit the block button. Since there's only one edit in the history and it happened 1.5 hours before my warning, a 24-hour block doesn't accomplish much. The IP is no longer editing here to be stopped. We're more interested in preserving the article than retribution since the IP is probably just trolling. --Jiang 07:34, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Copyrighted Images

I really don't know enough about the subject to be sure. I think that you can't claim copyright for a photo of a painting, so a postcard of an older photo would not AFAIK be copyrighted. However like I said I don't know for sure. Since the web site is an .edu site it looks to me like they would probably give you permission to use the image anyway if you ask. We have a boilerplate request for permission here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission#Informal_.28images.29_.2APROPOSED.2A) that you may want to adapt. theresa knott 10:31, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Section editing

I've seen regular references to apparent bugs in section editing, enough to discourage me from using it myself. You might as well report it as a bug, even though the Marshall history doesn't look like it will have any useful data - but perhaps you could report your sequence of actions in detail, in the hopes that would help the developers figure what's wrong with the code. Stan 05:37, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"all text bold"? That sounds pretty scary. Everything looks completely normal on my Mozilla running on Panther. Stan 05:57, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't actually know very much about the software's workings, don't even know how to start debugging the kind of problem you're seeing - all I can suggest is clearing the cache. It looks like meta:MediaWiki_feature_request_and_bug_report_discussion is the place to go. Stan 06:36, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Heh, my stack of unread books is growing rather than shrinking, so Cicero will have to wait! Been working through Gentry's work on agaves, Brown's history of Madagascar, a book on entomological techniques with cool diagrams of bug houses :-), etc. Stan 14:28, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Adminship

I'd certainly support you, and actually now that you mention it I think I'll save you the trouble and nominate you myself. You're a great contributor from everything I've seen. - Hephaestos|§ 02:00, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks now copy and paste revert Guancao's talk back to what it sould be

Request for AMA assistance

We have received an anonymous request for AMA assistance from an IP address, I have directed that individual to contact me if they wish not to create a Wikipedia account. If you are interested in helping please let me know and if I hear from this individual I will try and put you in contact. See Wikipedia:AMA Requests for Assistance. Thank you. — © Alex756 03:05, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

JC, thanks for your comment on my talk page about that annoymous user. I must point out that not everyone who approaches us is going to be asking for mediation or arbitration, they may just need some explanations. This user was asking for help from an advocate. What kind of help this anonymous person was asking for is not clear, but if he (or she) wants the help of an advocate, even just to explain the system to him, I think that is within our balliwick. I think the overarching goal of AMA members is to help an individual understand the system, not to necessarily "represent" them in an official capacity, but also to lend a guiding hand, communicate with them and try to explain the system to them. Even if someone comes to us with what looks to be an accuracy problem they deserve our help in undstanding what kind of situation they are in. We do not refuse to help someone because they are confused? That would defeat the purpose of our organization, wouldn't it? — © Alex756 00:45, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Your "read this before posting" note

The reason I object to it is because the sort of perosn who is likely to say something rude on this page is likely to not bother reading it, or to out and out ignore it. So IMO the only people likely to read it are the people who wouldn't violate it in the first place. If I didn't already know you, and I saw the notice I would probably feel as if I had to walk on eggshells :-( If I were you I'd shorten it considerably. theresa knott 10:46, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(later) Jay I've been way to bold and just gone ahead and edited your message. I know this is a bloody cheek but it's the easiest way to show you how i would improve it. If you don't like it just revert me. theresa knott 12:20, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re:Template: Texas

User:Tim Starling's bot moved all the templates from the MediaWiki namespace to the Template namespace, but did not move the corresponding talk page. The page is still at MediaWiki talk:Texas. Perhaps you can do us a favor and remind him one more time to have these moved since he seems to have ignored my last request at User talk:Tim Starling. Or maybe a request at the Wikipedia:Village pump or #wikipedia will go less unoticed. Feel free to go ahead and manually move the texas page though. Cheers, Jiang 03:36, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What is the proposal? I made a complaint on the Mediawiki page am interested in having it reduced or removed. --Jiang 03:52, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with the plan. I posted it at Template talk:Texas. I would have begun a split a while ago if there hadn't been so many of them. --Jiang 04:11, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It looks like a significant improvement to me. Go for it! Given how many counties there are, I'm inclined to replace the counties box with a categories tag or link to List of Texas counties. However, the first order of business should be to reduce the current texas template to the counties and make a separate one for the regions/metro areas. --Jiang 04:42, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It will be more efficient to add Category:Texas counties to articles while removing the temp. --Jiang 05:56, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ive started. --Jiang 06:01, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Great Mosque of Djenné

It's great that you got permission from Andy Gilham, and recruited him as well. As for the other picture , who did you ask? (Was it Dr. Gregory Mann or someone else?). I'd give them another week or so, but then if it were me i think I'd just upload the phto anyway. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for more info, plus at the bottom of the page is a list of people who you can contact who probably know a lot more than I do about it. As for the article itself, give me a few days to properly review it, I'm snowed under at the moment :-) theresa knott 14:33, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

Congratulations! You are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages such as the Main Page. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. Good luck. Angela. 00:04, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

More cheeky editing

Sorry to butt in, but I edited your welcome message ("if I insulted you're mother" -> "if I insulted your mother"). I'm not sure whether it was a deliberate joke on your part. Lisa Paul 01:05, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC) ... [update: I also altered your German welcome very slightly.]

Mr. Treason

Mr. Treason, as he has been dubbed because he is anonymous, uses every address in the 205.188.116.* range. It's a block of AOL proxy servers. I've decided to try the "ignore the troll and revert his changes, and he'll go away" tactic for the time being. -- Cyrius|✎ 05:20, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, the IPs probably shouldn't be blocked, since we might whack a legitimate AOL user, should one turn out to exist. Snowspinner 05:32, Jul 8, 2004 (UTC)

Vilnius

I think that you probably should not protect the article yourself, since you've been involved in the dispute. (I, too, have been involved, although only slightly - I could probably get away with protecting, although I'd rather not. Personally, I always prefer not protecting, when possible, since protection often just freezes disputes in place while ruining any momentum towards solving them. But since nobody seems to be talking on the talk page, who knows? john k 17:31, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

user page unprotected

I have unprotected your user page along with several other user pages that do not have a history of vandalism. Policy (talk) does not permit user pages to be protected unless a history of vandalism justifies protection. UninvitedCompany 20:00, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I apologize for overlooking the presence of vandalism in your user page history. I did note your reversion of an edit in your page history but did not review its content. Since your user page was not listed at Wikipedia:Protected page, I did not know when or why it was protected. As you may have surmised, I have been doing some cleanup of pages whose protection is stale. You may wish to list your user page on Wikipedia:Protected page, as others have, to make that more clear so there is no misunderstanding during future such cleanup.

Finally, while policy is unclear, I do not believe that page protection is the best response to individual acts of vandalism. My own user page has been the target of similar vandalism and I merely reverted. But, I leave this up to you and do not plan to pursue it further. I do realize the trouble we have with blocking AOL users and have suggested that AOL-specific technical measures be employed to deal with such problems, but that's another matter.

Best regards

UninvitedCompany 15:59, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ŭalabio

       ¡Hello!

¿How fare you?

WikiLove jumped out at me.

Let us begin at the beginning:

Months ago, at different times, I started Intact Day and Genital Integrity. Denni☯ listed both within in minutes of each other on votes for deletion. I inquired into why. I got this:

¿What do you have against Genital Integrity and Intact Day?

Nothing, except the high-pitched shrieking of those who believe that having one's foreskin removed is like having one's brain removed.

--

Denni☯ 23:21, 2004 Aug 1 (UTC)

I believe that Denni☯ has an axe to grind. I would like something done about Denni☯.

About the articles, Denni☯ seems to have people voting in blocks to delete them. I am not unreasonable:

I offered to concede Intact Day for keeping Genital Integrity as long as Intact Day stays of July 1. Denni☯ continues with this Kangaroocourt.

It is damned irregular for two unoffensive pages, about the same subject, without complaints, created at different times to both come up for deletion simultaneously. Considering his reason as to why he listed them, it is clear that this is unfair.

¿Could you please help?