User talk:Jeffq

Contents

1 Hello 2 RE: Price elasticity of supply 3 RE: Public domain 4 RE: Fictional music groups 5 Kudos 6 fast work on typos 7 Co-writing 8 The 1990's thing 9 Joy to the World! 10 Ta! 11 listdev 12 List of fictional music groups 13 Redbone fix 14 Serial comma 15 Manual of Style apostrophe changes 16 The the 17 Capitalisation in songs 18 The Humungous Image Tagging Project 19 Article Licensing 20 Off the net for a while 21 Place-name songs 21.1 Geoname songs reorganisation project 22 Global English 23 Baen Free Library 24 Reduced activity 25 History of Russia 26 Jeffq - cool photo 27 More on VfD 28 Ammolite vandalism 29 Re "completely useless" - NOT! 30 Secret plan 31 Spelling Standardization 32 Monk 33 Semicolon in Crow T. Robot 34 Serial comma 35 Thanks for the notice 36 Apologies 37 Sadness

Hello

Hi there. Welcome to Wikipedia! I see you've been around a while. If you want, drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log to introduce yourself.

If you need editing help, visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page. For format questions, visit our manual of style. You can use the Show preview button before you save, to make sure your edits do what you intended.

You can sign your name on talk pages by using " ~~~ " for your username and " ~~~~ " for your username and a timestamp.

Some time when you're bored, you can read through our policies and guidelines. If you made any edits before you got an account, you might be interested in assigning those to your username.

If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. You can also drop me a question on my talk page.

Happy editing, Isomorphic 20:28, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

RE: Price elasticity of supply

Thank you for drawing attention to the mistakes in my article on price elasticity of supply (I say "my", but it was in fact mainly copied from the article on price elasticity of demand, and incomplete editing caused the errors). The errors have now been corrected. Gingekerr 16:08, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

RE: Public domain

I came to this page hoping to find an explicit statement correcting a common misconception that public domain means anything that's freely available in the public — i.e., posted on the Internet. While the existing text is useful and necessary as an encyclopedia entry, I would like to see a concise statement in this article that makes it clear that this is not true, in order to educate ordinary people with Internet-time attention spans. Any suggestions on how to do this within the existing text? -- Jeff Q 04:30, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

That's a common misconception?? The internet was not widely known to the lay public until the early '90s! Obviously people talked about the public domain, by that name, before that time. What did people laboring under that misconception think it meant then? Michael Hardy 23:30, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, the current common misconception that "Internet-posted" means "public domain" is obviously relatively new. I'm sure there are many other misconceptions that are much older and continue to this day. However, the ability for anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer to confuse this issue is, in my opinion, a much greater threat that older ones that involved hardcopy publishing and analog media copying.

Usually I am bold about adding text that I request, but I paused on this one because this article clearly discusses the overall legal issues of public domain and copyrights. Michael Hardy has a valid concern about the larger view, and it wasn't immediately clear to me how and where to add such a concise statement without interrupting the flow. I'll ponder some more and give it a try shortly. -- Jeff Q 11:37, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I've added a section on Public domain and the Internet to the Public domain article. Hopefully that's a start. -- Jeff Q 19:20, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

RE: Fictional music groups

Thanks...I'll fix that link next time I update my page (although I guess it will work as a redirect anyway). Adam Bishop 17:55, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Kudos

Nice job on The Roches. Jgm 13:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

fast work on typos

Thanks for the interest in correcting typos (you fixed one in the EGD article I wrote). People around here are just so helpful and like to pitch in. Kd4ttc 00:46, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Co-writing

User:Ilyanep/Watch lists a few articles I want to research or 'work on otherly' ... find some article that needs to be completely written, and see if you see one that you'd like to help me write (I guess I just need the motivation). If not...suggest one for me yourself. Ilyanep (Talk) 01:56, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The 1990's thing

Yes, 1990s is the correct way to refer to the decade. (I used to go around replacing 1990's with 1990s a lot more when the search engine worked, although I still do it in spot cases.) You're actually the second or third person to think from my description that I was doing it the other way around, so I guess I worded it poorly. :) - Hephaestos|§ 15:43, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Joy to the World!

Hi. Noticed your comments and made a couple of changes to this stub. See my response to you at Talk:Joy to the World Cheers! Quill 05:44, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing the loose ends in "Joy to the World"! I've despaired of ever getting resolution on them. ☺ — Jeff Q 10:12, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ta!

Thanks for the support on the Wikipedia:Sound issue. I think sanity will reign in the end, but I'm not going to get to obsessive about it. --Zarni02 01:52, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Looks like a Wiki-God has decided the sound issues. Not sure how this works, but I guess thats why they are gods (I think Aevar is a Wiki-God too!) Looks like anything goes, which after all of the discussions seems a bit of a shame but is pragmatic. --Zarni02 10:23, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

listdev

I saw that you removed the {{listdev}} tag from List of songs whose title includes personal names. I had added that tag because it is clearly not a complete list, but of course it never will be complete. Is that why you did so? You appear to have vastly more experience on Wikipedia, so I would appreciate your specific opinion on the use of this tag, especially since I contribute to a dozen or so such lists (having created half of them myself) and want to keep in line with good Wiki practices. Thank you. — Jeff Q 04:42, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, the reason I deleted it is because EVERY article on Wikipedia is pretty much unfinished. There's really nothing complete on the entire encyclopedia. In fact, that gives me an idea -- I'm going to list the listdev template for deletion. RickK 04:44, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Got your reply about Wikipedia's essential unfinishedness and the consequent pointlessness of {{listdev}}. For the most part, I agree, but I would point out that there are some lists that are sufficiently small that they could be completed; e.g., web-safe colors and area codes in the North American Numbering Plan. I don't know how many of these kinds of lists exist in Wikipedia, and some of them may not stay complete over time, but it seems the tag may have some utility. Perhaps it would be better to add some usage guidelines for it. — Jeff Q 04:59, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I've listed it on the Votes for deletion page. If you think it should be kept, you might go there and list (heh) your arguments for keeping it. RickK 05:02, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

List of fictional music groups

Hey, Jeff, your recent addition to List of fictional music groups has incorporated several non-viewable special characters. Can you fix that? RickK 23:10, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

I pasted a replacement for the TOC into the top of the article, but somehow the first two sections of entries got some (but not all) of their hyphens and apostrophes replaced with question marks (which only made it look like they were special characters). I don't know what could have happened. I used the standard Wiki edit window to do the paste. If I had somehow pasted over the relevant text, that wouldn't have replaced only certain characters. Oh, well. Whatever happened, I've fixed it. — Jeff Q 01:24, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sometimes the workings of Wikipedia are mysterious beyond understanding. :) RickK 04:06, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Redbone fix

Thank you very much for untangling the Redbone problem. From your comment on Talk:Redbone, I gather that Redbone (ethnicity)'s talk page failed to move with the page itself, which I hadn't noticed. (I could swear I had the "Move talk page" box checked. Oh, well.) I've updated all the links to point to "Redbone (ethnicity)" or Redbone (band). — Jeff Q 23:42, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, the talk page did move with it. The comment I added was just because I didn't want the redirect staying there. Angela. 01:03, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Serial comma

You may wish to make your opinion known in a very close poll about reversing the rules on serial comma in the Wikipedia Style Manual at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal 2 (A). Jallan 21:17, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Manual of Style apostrophe changes

Maurreen, I'm curious why you changed several occurrences of "straight" apostrophes to the so-called "curved" version in someone else's Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style postings (but not globally across the page), perhaps ironically in defiance the Manual of Style itself (8.1.1, Use straight quotation marks and apostrophes). I can't quite see the purpose of it. — Jeff Q 23:47, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You say I changed apostrophes or quote marks in other people's postings. I plead ignorance. The only thing I can think of is that sometimes I write in Word and copy stuff back and forth and don't often notice the apostrophe or quote style. Maurreen 04:55, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm talking about your edit at 00:06, 9 Nov 2004[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style&diff=7247271&oldid=7246672), the first of five consecutive edits you made on that page. It seemed unusual also because you had taken care to add summaries to each of the other four edits. Perhaps it was an accidental premature save? (I'm afraid I do this on occasion myself.) If so, I can switch the apostrophes back, unless you or someone else beats me to it. — Jeff Q 05:08, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I fixed them all. And I like your user page. Maurreen 05:28, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The the

Thank you for fixing the actual "the the" error in the Prince of Space episode in List of MST3K episodes, and for not fixing the cited error in Attack of the the Eye Creatures. I commend these efforts — as long as they're not automated — and will continue to remove such typos whenever I find them as well. — Jeff Q 20:38, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not automated, though starting to glaze over. I do fear that someone else, next time, will not spot the nature of the citation. Ho hum. Yes, join us in fixing the the and suchlike. best wishes --Tagishsimon (talk)

Capitalisation in songs

Thank you for being the only person (so far) to register opinions on my proposed changes to List of songs whose title includes geographical names. Seeing as how you have two perspectives that I don't have on the issue of capitalization in song titles (i.e., coming from a British background and performing in real bands), I'd like to get more information on your statement that full capitalization "isn't song industry practice - at least not in publishing". As suggested (at least partly) in the cited discussion Talk:List of songs whose title includes personal names#Capitalization, my information comes from my huge music library (i.e., album covers and liner notes on released recordings) and online (e.g., AMG) and library (e.g., Library of Congress) research on songs, all from American sources. Are things different in the Commonwealth? Are you referring specifically to publishing of catalogs or indices of songs, or is there more to it? I'm not wedded to the idea of full-capitalization, and expect not to perform that particular surgery on the list based on your statement, but I'd like to take advantage of your different perspective to learn more about this subject. Thanks again. — Jeff Q 07:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Jeff,

My experience comes from working in bands too, and from registering songs with APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association). They ask songwriters to only capitalise the first word of songs and any proper nouns, or to use capitals only. I haven't thought to check my whole album collection (it would take a while - 2000 CDs), but the handful I looked at at random seem to have no set pattern. The other thing is that I'm almost certain that we're supposed to use APA guidelines in Wikipedia with references, and they clearly stipulate only capitalising the first word and any proper nouns. I'd have thought it would make sense to do the same with songs. [[User:Grutness|Grutness ^talk Missing image
Grutness.jpg
]

] 09:46, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply on your experiences. (Your CD collection is about 30% larger than mine.) You said you noticed no pattern, but is there perhaps the same pattern I've seen in American CDs (that I mention in the above "Capitalization" link) — that most CDs practice one of three patterns, none of which follow APA guidelines: all uppercase, all lowercase, or all capitalized? There are certainly exceptions to that pattern set, as I also noted in the cited discussion, but this seems like solid practice on album printing, at least in the U.S.

Also, can you recall where Wikipedia says anything about using APA guidelines? I haven't found anything from my initial searching. From what I've seen, Wikipedia has no policy on song titles, only an inferred one from Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Album titles and band names, which follows the more cumbersome and poorly understood "Capitalize everything except articles, prepositions, and conjunctions" rule, which has many uncited exceptions. (That's precisely why I advocate full capitalization, which is the closest thing to industry practice that people are likely to do correctly.) At the very least, policy seems to favor non-APA capitalization for artistic work titles in everything except possibly classical music, whose policy has an entire article to itself.

I had no idea that you were referring to the American Psychological Association until I'd tracked down the APA style article, which suggests a scholarly bent not necessarily shared by Wikipedia and, as far as I've seen, not cited as a Wikipedia source for style information. I do notice that this appears to be the style used for Wikipedia article titles, although I found no explanation of where that came from. It also appears to be what American libraries use in creating indices of titles, not only for songs but for any indexed material. (Thanks for letting me know what to call that!)

If you get a chance, could you let me know (A) if your CD collection shows the same patterns as mine does, and (B) if you know where the APA style is cited in Wikipedia style guidelines. (Oh, and sorry about the rude American spelling of "capitalization" in this section title. I'm delighted that I now have the British version in the one on my page. ☺) Thanks again! — Jeff Q 11:16, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All upper, all lower, random letter in upper case, all first letters capitalised, or only first letter of song title capitalised. The first example I found of the last type was the songs on the album Now that?s what I call quite good, by the Housemartins, an English band. It does look like there are a few more cases with all words with first letter capitalised though.

As to APA style, good question. I?m sure I read it somewhere in here, but maybe it was my imagination - the only place I?ve turned it up tonight while trying to find where I saw it was as a general comment in Wikipedia: Cite sources. And the American spelling?:) No problem - sorry for the ?correction?! We use Brit spelling for most things here in New Zealand, but accept American spellings a little. [[User:Grutness|Grutness ^talk Missing image
Grutness.jpg
]

] 12:08, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The Humungous Image Tagging Project

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

Article Licensing

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

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

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

Option 1

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

{{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)

Off the net for a while

I'm experiencing severe problems with my computer equipment. I expect to be doing only minimal work on Wikipedia and Wikiquote for the next few weeks. — Jeff Q 18:50, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm back on the air, quicker than I thought. — Jeff Q 19:55, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Place-name songs

Hi Jeff - I've got a suggestion about the List of songs whose title includes geographical names - thought I'd ask you what you think before suggesting it to everyone on that page, since you're a leading organiser of that page. Would it be worthwhile linking not only the name of the group, but also the place? So, for instance, the first exact A is listed as "Abergavenny" by Marty Wilde. It's currently linked to Marty Wilde, but could also be linked to the article on Abergavenny. Worth doing? [[User:Grutness|Grutness ^hello? Missing image
Grutness.jpg
]

] 06:25, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This has been discussed on the various song-list talk pages in the past. The general consensus has typically been to create links for songs only when the song itself has an article, for three basic reasons:

1. Hyperlinks should link to the most specific thing described by the link. This would favor linking to articles on the songs themselves. (This is the strongest reason, since an increasing number of songs do have pages, and it would be confusing not to know whether the link would take you to a song or a place until you followed it.)
2. Creating links for each geographical name, when each line has a geographical name, would be massive overkill, and maintaining a subset (say, only the first occurrence) would be a significant effort. (On the other hand, most of the discussions occurred before the lists were grouped by names rather than titles, so first-only is more logical and easier to maintain than it once was.)
3. Some believe that all these links would make the pages looks rather messy.

That said, there is still merit to the idea. I would suggest that you give everyone a few days to get used to the new organization (which I hope to have finished within a day or two), then go ahead and make your proposal. It doesn't seem to have been discussed yet on the geo names page, and it's worth considering. — Jeff Q 07:34, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(from Talk:List of songs whose title includes geographical names)

Thryduulf, please don't insert your comments into my long postings, as it can lead to lengthy, confusing context interruptions. (Consider what would happen if we started several discussions inside each of the various points you raise in the above long section, with successive responses to each other. ☺) — Jeff Q 15:00, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC).

my apologies for doing this. I've done a lot of rearanging and reformating for the new talk page (User talk:Thryduulf/Geonamesongs) so it hopefully shouldn't be a problem there. It also means this comment would be out of place, but as I think it would be rude to just delete it I've moved it here. Thryduulf 17:31, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Geoname songs reorganisation project

I understand fully. Personal matters are far more important than wikipedia. Thryduulf 18:19, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Global English

Hi, Jeff. You might be interested in the International English article. Jallan has done good work and research there. Maurreen 05:41, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Baen Free Library

The Baen Free Library isn't violating copywrite. All the books are there with the permission of their copywrite-holders.

"Baen Books is now making available ? for free ? a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online ? no conditions, no strings attached. ... Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. ...

This will be a place where any author can, at their own personal discretion, put up online for free any book published by Baen that they so desire. There is absolutely no "pressure" involved." www.baen.com/library/

—wwoods 22

39, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for the error. I confused this link with one from the Wikiquote David Weber page that had posted Honor Harrington CD images online. Sloppy of me. I've restored the BFL link to the Honor Harrington article. — Jeff Q 00:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reduced activity

I'll probably be doing only minor corrections and edits for the foreseeable future, until the severe response problems with the Wikipedia and Wikiquote servers is fixed. — Jeff Q 14:38, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty much back now, although I'm only contributing sporadically, more due to time issues than Wiki issues. — Jeff Q 03:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

History of Russia

I apologise for my part in the dispute; my intention certainly was not to insult you. I hope we can both put this behind us. Warmest regards --Neutrality^talk

Jeffq - cool photo

I like your user photo - very cool Brookie 18:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More on VfD

Concerning the cartoon character list VfD, isn't 9 of 15 votes for deletion (60%) less than the required 70% for consensus? I'm not especially concerned about this list (even though I voted to keep it), and won't miss it now that it's gone, but this strikes me as encouraging the "simple majority consensus" argument that I've seen misused elsewhere. — Jeff Q 07:16, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My judgement calls are based on how far apart the delete and keep votes are. If they are even, one vote apart, I tend to call it no consensus. If it is 2 votes apart, it depends on the situation. If it is 3 or more, then I consider it as consensus to whatever is leading. The deletion process doesn't mention any set percentage of how much a vote is necessary in order to delete it. If there were a percentage, we might have a lot of junk articles around... because then a strong consensus would be required to delete any article... -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:32, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the quick reply! I'm not sure I agree with such slim margins, but I'm certain I don't have your experience with such judgment calls, and I'm a believer in not being straitjacketed by numbers and immutable policies. I bow to your greater wisdom. ☺ — Jeff Q 07:40, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No problem. You'd have to consider that the English Wikipedia is very large, and we try to keep junk out of the system. If you were unhappy with the decision, there is always WP:VFU. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:44, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You'd also have to consider, if we didn't have slim margins, a lot of articles would have to go through renomination process, especially when you can clearly see a need for deletion. Although I disagree with your particular list, I didn't vote on it, therefore I have to be non-biased when going through these deletions. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:47, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ammolite vandalism

You're doing a great job fending off vandalism to this page. I was about to revert User:Tma 88 when you did, and so I posted the standard warning on his or her talk page anyway. I'll keep an eye on them for the next little while.-gadfium 01:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wasn't the only one reverting, either. Paxsimius, Michael Hardy, and Spencer195 got their shots in as well. I had more difficulty not interfering with their reversions than actually undoing the damage. Guess the Wiki model works pretty well. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 01:24, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As a general rule, "Act like an administrator, so long as you don't claim falsely to be one."-gadfium 04:32, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re "completely useless" - NOT!

Hey Jeffq

I disagree with your comment "I'm a completely useless member of society."

I'm still prepping up my page, and I saw your quotes/humor, and was thus inspired to start my own set of quotes. :')

Plus I'm sure many of us Wiko's might form some kind of "completely useless" community, so... opportunity for usefulness? ;')

Later

Bwefler 3Mar2005_22:55MST|4Mar2005_05:55UTC

Secret plan

Well, I'm waiting for the Commons to implement their Big Plan for merging articles and categories. (Read over this and/or this for the relevant debate, and what I say next will make more sense.) Currently we have a clear consensus that it should be done, but we have no assurance from developers that it actually will be done. If Wikimedia can't (or won't) make the requested changes on Commons, then there's no point in me requesting changes on Wiktionary. And if they will, I'd prefer to wait until it happens before I fully announce my secret plan, so people will be able to see parts of it working and won't argue that it could never work.

So I'm thinking about proposing something like that on Wiktionary, only more so. I'm hoping to allow a single quote to be listed in several groups (e.g. quotes by Shakespeare, quotes by Hamlet, quotes about suicide, and quotes that are cliche for "To be or not to be - that is the question") without having to type in the same quote in all four pages. I'm also hoping that other projects could link to, or include, a single quote (not just all quotes by or about someone or something), and that quote could be modified in a single place, like a template. But I'll withhold the details for now. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 19:48, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

I was a bit confused about your references to Wiktionary, as I was asking about your "Crazy idea" as shown on Wikiquote. (I can't help wondering if it's related to your cool but disconcerting cross-linking of your Talk page(s) between Wikis.) On Wikiquote, I had wondered if you were thinking along the lines that I have — that it would be useful to be able to treat each individual quote as a data unit. I was thinking more in terms of providing a quote-serving capability (as has been asked about, and which issue has also come up in the context of handling Wikipedia song-list elements), but like you, I've also fretted about the excessive effort needed to maintain quotes that appear in multiple articles.

Thanks for the pointers to the Commons discussions. I found the vote rather confusing, as it assumes a considerable amount of previous experience on this issue, but your introduction in your proposal made it much clearer. I'm a bit concerned about the tail wagging the dog there. Commons pages do seem more logically suited as Categories, but that's only true because of the nature of the Commons, and isn't true for every other Wiki I've worked on. Changing the software to accomodate a single project seems outrageous to this relatively inexperienced Wikian. (E.g., wouldn't it be more reasonable to provide a capability for Commons' Search to automatically prefix "Category:" for Commons?) But intuitively, it also seems to me that making Category pages just like article pages might be akin to object-oriented languages treating their own innards as objects, which conceptually strikes me as a Good Thing. I must resign myself to being too ignorant for now to join the discussion.

Anyway, thanks for the info. — Jeff Q (talk) 22:15, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whoops! I meant Wikiquote, not Wiktionary. I had "lapses in the synapses" there for a sec. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 23:55, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling Standardization

I want to thank you for debating ME and not my caste. Some of the response I got made me see how elitist this website is. — Juppiter 04:54, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's so much elitism as it is impatience with rehashing old controversies with no likely conclusion. People tend to get vituperous and preachy (as even I must confess to) when they have to reiterate arguments they've made dozens of times before. It doesn't help when people use words calculated to get a rise out of opponents, like cultural imperalism, egocentric, and caste. We're all human, after all. Just today, I read an amusing Dilbert, in which the prototypical geek has something relevant to say:

Dilbert: People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred.

I would add to that that, in this age of attack journalism, a calm argument for one side can look like mincing resignation. I mourn the loss of rational debate. — Jeff Q (talk) 06:29, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Monk

Thanks for the help with List of Monk episodes -- Blizzard1 23:12, 28 Mar 2005

Semicolon in Crow T. Robot

The semicolon was inserted by the anon into the Crow T. Robot article because in HTML/XML/SGML, an ampersand and a semicolon delimit the code for a special character. For example typing é makes a "é" character. Typing cliché makes "cliché" appear. If you just type clich&eacute without the semicolon then it will appear as "clich&eacute" in the document. That's how it looked before the semicolon was added to the Crow article, and how it looks now that you've reverted it. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 13:42, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for my foolish oversight. I only looked at the difference between the two (without HTML rendering) and failed to notice that the é was not terminated properly. Considering the effort I put into ensuring that I was on solid grammatical grounds, my error is even more embarrassing. I've restored the semicolon. — Jeff Q (talk) 17:31, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Serial comma

Hello. In the past, you've spoken in favor of the serial comma in the WP Manual of Style. Currently, two or three users have been taking out all guidance on that in favor of a statement that the MoS takes no position. They've said they reached a consensus on the talk page. Would you care to comment there? Jonathunder 22:05, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

Your comments are well done. Maurreen 07:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Maurreen. I thought they might have been somewhat overcooked myself. But I find useful discussion on this subject quite rare, and I long for a happy medium. ☺ I admire your patience and persistence in working on this meal prepared by far too many cooks. Jeff Q (talk) 08:01, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Jeff, you are kind. My attitude is similar to yours. Between some problems with the social aspects of Wikipedia and other factors, I've been spending less time on Wikipedia and more time on a Wikicity about journalism (http://journalism.wikicities.com/). You're invited to drop by if you ever feel like it. Maurreen 08:16, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice

Darn, I thought I registered my name on all the projects :).

Please do leave wikiquote:User:Netoholic blocked until I can get a developer to give me the account. -- Netoholic @ 22:11, 2005 May 25 (UTC)

I've now gotten access to wikiquote:User:Netoholic, so please unblock it. Thanks for the heads up. -- Netoholic @ 19:49, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Done by me. jni 08:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Apologies

Reading the information you linked to me, I apologize for the additional work I created. I will take better care in the future. LordBleen 00:34, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Sadness

Hi, Jeff! I was sad to see your vote re: whedon-spoiler, but happy to see you here in general. MosheZadka 17:10, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your statement in your vote that a template for spoilers is useful, just not that we need a specific one for the Whedonverse. RoboAction created a bunch of genre-specific stub templates for Wikiquote, which makes sense because people might want to monitor only certain genres to focus their editing work. But I just can't see any purpose to collecting a list of Joss Whedon pages that include spoilers. Dragons flight's argument that it does no harm but provides an opportunity for navigation (which is redundant, given standard navigational elements that make sense, like Categories and ordinary internal links) strikes me as using a screwdriver as a hammer and seems more likely to be an ex post facto justification of something that is "cute". (I agree that it is cute.) The standard spoiler templates suffice and don't add complexity where none is needed. — Jeff Q (talk) 20:35, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)