User talk:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters/Archive18

Cyde's tool page

I just wanted to let you know that I've re-added a somewhat toned down version of the Harvard Refs warning to Cyde's ref converter subpage, even though I don't believe it's appropriate for other users to come along and plant rules on another user's subpage that he uses for guideliens for using his tool, I think suggesting guidelines as such is fine, and I'm sure Cyde will either keep it, or remove it if he feels it is innapropriate (something that you and Francis have told me since the beginning), hopefully he'll keep it though since I do agree to getting consensus to change if there's a standard for a set of articles or for a knowledge set, and also for inquiring before changing if consensus is unkown. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 17:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Censorship

In the comment in which you describe yourself as a free speech absolutist (which comment you properly framed by noting the general irrelevance of one's personal views apropos of government censorship to our project here, intimating, I think, that proposals for the censoring of sundry topics on Wikipedia [e.g., Wikiethics or WP:NOT EVIL] are inherently unworkable, in view of their basis in independent subjective determinations, the imposition of which on the encyclopedia would surely prove deleterious vis-à-vis the continued verifability and neutrality of the project), you noted that the reductio examples offered, intended to demonstrate that certainly there are tropes one would surely censor, were, in fact, examples of speech the censorship of which you would not support. Irrespective of my strident support for your views in this regard, I was altogether happy to see your objection to the premise on which the argument being made was ostensibly to rest; so often when presented with what others might view as extreme examples of prospective extensions of a given policy, those who would otherwise defend, say, free speech are left to argue that they of course oppose a given extension, whereupon they permit further assaults against those rights they essay discursively to protect. On several occasions here, I have delighted in suggesting that reductios others offer are not, in fact, absurd, if only because I am truly a stickler for logical and intellectual consistency (better, I think, to be thought amoral or insane than to be thought intellectually infirm). In any case, the fashion in which you responded was first-rate; continue fighting the good fight... Joe 20:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Though I'm technically on wikibreak (removed my entire watchlist) to de-stress, I really am delighted by both the content and the circumlocution of your comment. I needed the smile that loquacious adoration brings. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Proves I'm from Montana

Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three, I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be. This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red. My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life, My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife. To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy, I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad, And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad. For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.

Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run, And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son. My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue, Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild, And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild, For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa! --MONGO 03:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Co written in 1948 by Moe Jaffe and Dwight Latham. An oldie but a goodie. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 04:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Test

I saw that Gray Wolf was just converted to cite.php.....if you were interested in a test article for citation tool, maybe that one will do, but it doesn't have a lot of citations (only 13).--MONGO 07:14, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Quick check with http://gnosis.cx/cgi-bin/check_refs.py?pageName=Gray+Wolf+&action=Analyze shows that only unnamed refrences are used. So problems with ref name conflicts. Please feel free encouraged to try Citation Tool for any article you notice are using m:Cite.php. I mentioned my background process of checking random pages. It looks like about 1/100 pages use the markup; but most that do either never use the 'name=' attribute, and/or make very minimal use of footnotes. The problems are really only problems for large complex articles. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 07:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The tool now does both automated recommendations where problems can be solved unambiguously, and also lets a user direct the usage to resolve ambiguities. I applied the tool to the first few real articles (I had been playing a lot with the test articles in user space... reverting and fixing various times without affecting articlespace). I'm happy enough now to recommend it's usage "live".

Quietly gathering strength

Care to sign these? : User:Revolución/Statement against Jimbocracy, User:The Ungovernable Force/manifesto Cheers! -- max rspct leave a message 16:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Conditional support noted. LotLE×talk 18:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Are my comments/votes to be interpreted as conditional? And not wholly supportive of statement and manifesto? If so i will have to remove the comments.. Or are u looking at the others? --- max rspct leave a message 23:17, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

No, no... I meant that my support was conditional. Other than Marx' (well, maybe Breton's), I'm not so big on manifestos. FWIW, I don't really get the Randian connection with Wales' behavior; I know he's said that he believes that crazy stuff, but the specific (moderate) flaws he's shown of late don't seem to relate to that one way or the other. LotLE×talk 00:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Jeez.. James Randi too?? -- max rspct leave a message 00:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Collapse of the World Trade Center

I converted this article to Cite.php, but my references are not templated...just spelled out as if they didn't use wiki formatting...does this matter as far as the use of the citation tool, or do you think i should be continuing to use templates in the references rahter than writing them out as i did? Check the edit this page window on a few cites and you'll see what I did.--MONGO 04:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

My particular tool doesn't pay any attention to what's in the content of <ref> tags. Just to named vs. unnamed and "has content" vs. "no content". As a general thing, citation templates have all the advantages that you know about. But you can always do it incrementally. Converting to Cite.php w/ free-form references doesn't stop you from later making citation templates, even one at a time. Actually, if I do some more on it, I may choose to identify good candidates for "Harvardization" by where citation templates are used.

Some of the advantages of citation templates may be out in the future. For example, if you wanted to find every time a book by "David Mongo" was cited, it would be a bit hard to do with free-form text search. If you knew, in contrast, that all those cases started with {{cite book|lastname=Mongo|firstname=David...}}, it would be more straightforward... or not even just started exactly with that, but had the fields in whatever order. Of course, that's what's possible, not what actually exists in software right now.

I think the citation templates can even look better within text flow, since they let you insert newlines, e.g.:

In the first few months after the attacks, most representatives from these professions 
who gave statements to media outlets lauded the "performance" of the Twin Towers, 
suggesting that loss of life could have been far worse if design and construction 
of the buildings had been of lesser quality. Radical design decisions made by the 
WTC team were compared to more time-tested [[skyscraper]] designs. A report entitled 
"World Trade Center Building Performance Study"<ref>{{cite book
 | editor=Therese McAllister
 | date=May
 | year=2002
 | title=World Trade Center Building Performance Study
 | publisher=[[Federal Emergency Management Agency|FEMA]]/[[American Society of Civil Engineers|ASCE]]
 | volume=report 403 
 | url=http://www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm www.fema.gov
}}</ref> issued by the [[Federal Emergency Management Agency]] (FEMA) in May 2002, 
pronounced the WTC design fundamentally safe and attributed the collapse wholly to 
extraordinary factors beyond the control of the builders.

YMMV, but I find it visually easier to tell where the main text starts back up again for this look than when the reference flows without linebreaks.

Actually, these references seem like a great candidate for Harvardization, if you ask me. I feel like that style gives an article a more serious feel. But I'm not involved in that article (except, I think, once making a comment supportive of you on the talk page). LotLE×talk 04:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all that. Glacier National Park (US) also is template-less in the text...I was trying to get away from templates per se...not sure all the reasons why, just old fashioned I guess. My accomplice over at the Glacier NP article stated he wasn't going to force the issue about templating the citations, but my guess is at Peer review or in FAC they will demand it. I was also looking at Geology of the Capitol Reef area which seems to utilize another format, I haven't figured it out yet, but it works. Maveric149 is the main contributor there and he is one of our preeminent Wikipedians. I noticed he used the multiple style, but it shows up strangely in the notes section, whereby I prefer full citation being visible. Many of his refs within the article though consume very little space in the editing window and that was my biggest gripe about cite.php...I remember when I first started here, editing was difficult enough and I for one still prefer to make editing easy for newbies, not harder...whether we use the templates or the inline written out style, it still distracts a lot from the editing abilities of newbies...but maybe I am simply lousy with this stuff...I truly am not a computer expert.--MONGO 05:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. I don't like the cluttered up editing window either. The Geology of the Capitol Reef area article finds a compromise I've seen used a few places (mostly pointed out in the discussion at Wikipedia:Footnotes or somewhere like that. The inline form is brief, but doesn't actually link to the full cite, merely describe it in a manner like Harvard references. I'm not entirely crazy about that style since it takes one hyperlink followed by another conceptual jump. But it is pretty simple to do inline. The ref templates really aren't so bad, especially in the simplest form. LotLE×talk 05:29, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Gotcha...I guess I'll rethink the Collapse article, but no time to do all that now...I am prettu busy most of the rest of this week, so I probably won't get into it now. I'll have a look through at the footnotes pages but I think the examples could be vastly better demonstrated for some people like myself.--MONGO 10:11, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Check this one out...Chew Valley Lake, uses format kinda like Harvard, minmizing text in editing window yet, end up as numers.--MONGO 04:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hidden block for refs

You can get the effect of what you asked for here by using this syntax:

<div style='visibility:hidden'>
 <ref name=alpha>Alpha, Bob.  ''Cool article on topic''</ref>
 <ref name=beta>Beta, Sally. ''Sally weighs in''.  Note that Dr. Beta revises 
 this analysis in ''Later work''</ref>
 <ref name=gamma>Gamma, Yuri. ''Yet another one''</ref>
</div>

I think this is a very cool idea by the way. I think putting all the reference information inline in the article text makes the text very hard to read and edit. --Doradus 15:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I was so hopeful at your note... unfortunately, the invisible division still occupies space, creating ugly and mysterious vertical spacing. So it's not quite there. LotLE×talk 16:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Bah. I guess what's really needed is for the php to allow references to go into the <references> tag at the bottom, or in the <ref> tag inline, at the editor's discretion. Would that be good? --Doradus 18:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed that would be very good! I'm not sure I'm quite willing to hop into the development of MediaWiki though (nor even sure exactly where developers of it hang out). I actually do have the requisite skills to do that sort of thing, but I'm not sure I'm willing to devote the requisite time... especially having spent longer than my rose-tinted-glasses delusion indicated about how easy Citation Tool would be to write (FWIW, Citation Tool will still be useful, even if m:Cite.php is improved to allow optional refs-at-end... particular editors might not use that option). LotLE×talk 18:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Trying it out

Let's put the example at /Hidden refs.

Maybe using Template:echo?

Very Cool

User talk:Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters/Hidden refs is pretty neat...can you implement it somewhere? I dunno...maybe use it at /Shoshone National Forest for a few examples...my computer ignorance may not be able to figure it out. I am now seeing about 6 different styles of referencing and am almost about to simply adopt the Harvard style and simply stick wiht that. But hidden is nifty...let's see it in action, not need to do an entire article, just a half dozen references in one shoule be example enough...thanks!--MONGO 20:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

That link on shoshone is pretty neat...it works...it is different seeing the references first in the editing window...that may throw folks...also, each cited reference has an "a" and "b", but the "a" leads back to the beginning of the article, otherwise, I like it. You put a lot of work into this...what's next, aside from a tweak...can we get the references at the end of the article and eliminate the a and b, aside from when the reference is used multiple times...not to be picky...just helping you tweak it...that was a lot of work...I truly appreciate it.--MONGO 01:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, doing the rest, the stuff that would make it genuinely desirable, requires changes to m:Cite.php itself. It wasn't all that much work to try out... I copied the wikitext to my text editor, and did a bit or moderately intelligent search-and-replace for most of the change. I'm not really thrilled by the result. I don't hate it; but I also don't love it (for the same reasons you mention above). If you'd like to copy it to the article, cool... but I didn't do so myself since I haven't been active in that article. LotLE×talk 01:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Not that others opinions are paramount, but how about we (you) present it at Footnotes or somewhere and see if we can get some feedback...maybe we could Rfc the style and see if we can get some helpful comments...--MONGO 01:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and :[1]--MONGO 02:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories

Hi -

I have nominated the category Category:Jewish_mathematicians for deletion. You can see some reasons at Category_talk:Jewish_mathematicians. What do you think? Your input will be appreciated. Hasdrubal 23:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

If their being seen as Jewish or Gentile was at all relevant to the way their lives were led, this fact can be mentioned in the text of the biographies; in fact, it often is. What we have here is an attempt to flag all mathematicians, including living ones, as being one or the other.

Also - surely most of the discussion in the past was about lists, rather than categories? Hasdrubal 02:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

For that matter - the way that Grothendieck and his parents were seen by the Nazis was obviously relevant to Grothendieck's early childhood. (His father was deported and killed.) Yet Grothendieck seems not to have made the cut. Hasdrubal 02:43, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know who Grothendieck is. I have done a bit of graduate mathematics, but I'm not a professional mathematician. I suppose I'll check right now. I agree that categories and list sometimes have poor evidentiary standards... but when I clicked on a half dozen or so of the names in the Jewish mathematicians category, they all seemed to support the category membership within the article. Certainly, if any individual name seems unsupported, you should remove the category membership. LotLE×talk 02:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Grothendieck, writer of EGA and SGA, and mathematical superstar of the twentieth century. (By the way, he is listed in the category of "French mathematicians", even though he was and may still be stateless. Nobody would dream of removing him - and this shows how the current category is different from other ones - not that the other ones aren't questionable in some ways.) By the way, there is no category for "Muslim mathematicians"; see the talk page. Hasdrubal 03:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

You are purporting that Category:Muslim mathematicians does not exist?! Not sure what to make of that. I did read about Grothendiek just now. The lead to his article sure does have a bit too many superlatives and hyperboles in it, no? Obviously, I have no opinion on whether he should or shouldn't be in the "French mathematician" category, but the category isn't any more or less good because of his inclusion or exclusion. It's just a factual detail to determine. And yeah, categories should say a bit about what criteria they use for membership, but "needs improvement" is a long way from "unsalvageable". Anyway, I'm going to give up on this schtick... you seem to have some sort of chip on your shoulder which really doesn't interest me. I won't cry over its loss if the category is deleted, but I've cast my vote as "keep", which seems right. LotLE×talk 03:14, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I could not find the category "Muslim mathematicians" on my first try, for whatever odd reason. Thanks for pointing it out. It has a grand total of one (1) member. I will now propose it for deletion.

As for Grothendieck: I have nothing to do with the superlatives, but they do not deviate from popular mathematical opinion much.

I had no intention to offend you, and will not reply to your personal comment, which, in any case, I am unable to decode. Hasdrubal 03:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not a question of the esteem Grothendiek is held in, but of encyclopedic tone. For example, the articles on Cantor and Hilbert don't have this sort of exuberant tone to them. Erdos doesn't really either. OTOH, the one on Gauss has rather a bit of that. However, I'm not really going to change any of them, since I don't have any special knowledge to work on those bios. LotLE×talk 03:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Very well - in any case, as I said, I did not write that article. To make a final comment: yes, it does seem to me that the presence of Grothendieck among "French mathematicians" makes this into a category that might perhaps have some redeeming value - namely, as a descriptor of the French mathematical community. The phrase "French mathematical community" can be misleading at times, but it can be taken to refer to something actually existing: styles of mathematics tend to clump geographically, or used to; moreover, academic institutions, and their effects on academic life, often vary less within a country than from country to country. If Grothendieck were removed from "French mathematicians" on the account of his not being a Frenchman (according to X or Y, or the French state, or Grothendieck himself), then the category would have changed meaning, and I would certainly vote for its deletion.

Now I am going to bed. Please accept my apologies if my description of Grothendieck came across as an accusation of mathematical ignorance. Hasdrubal 03:35, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Cuba

Hi Lulu, your involvement on the Cuba page so far has been very constructive. It may help to know that we are working on a study of all the contentious issues, which should provide answers (with numerous relevant sources) to many of the questions surrounding the page. Due to the distinct nature of Cuba's position in the world, and the demographic of wikipedia, this page is prone to dispute from many sides. The aim of this project is to act as a reference guide, so users new to the page would not have to rehash old arguments (such as the Socialist republic etc) and could make informed judgments as to whether they wish to continue contesting content on the page. In an ideal future, one will be able to respond to requests for citations by simply referring to this study, saving everyone a bit of time and patience. --Zleitzen 13:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if it might not be a good idea to try to transition to more formal referencing, using either Harvard references or m:Cite.php style. Adding what seemed like a tedious request to prove Cuba is a socialist republic made me think that more detailed footnotes could help. For one thing, rather than several links, there could just be one superscript to a footnote that contained the several supporting sources, perhaps with a few words of annotation outside the main flow. LotLE×talk 15:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good idea, Lulu. Since I've been involved with this page users have had to deal with endless repetitive requests. I welcome any steps to curb this.--Zleitzen 15:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice work on the references. [2] They are easy to find and provide a good balance. --Uncle Ed 19:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks muchly. I've been considering using this "hybrid style" in a live article, but needed to play around with some markup details to get it reasonable unobtrusive, and not change page appearance. I'd be reluctant to do it in a page that had nothing before the lead section... but since the Cuba article already has a mass of information in the infobox and templates, there's no huge harm in adding a bit more at top for references, IMO. LotLE×talk 19:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Developers

User:Brion VIBBER is a safe bet to try and email, or leave a comment on his talk page...also move your idea through Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) and see if you get any response there. I like the newest version you've come up with, only, the rferences at the beginning of the article may hamper the progress...unless I am mistaken and this can be moved. Sure, try it on Shoshone if you wish and I'll check back in later on and see what's brewing.--MONGO 20:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

In looking over your newest citation style...it's growing on me. I guess if we could have a notice above the editing window for folks to scroll down for the main text or some further differentation in the editing window itself that may help those unfamiliar with it. But minimizing space in the editing window taken up with links to or the entire reference would be a big improvement, and if nothing else, you're really close...any word back from the developers yet or at the village pump?--MONGO 01:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I got drawn into cleaning up Cuba (which has some really good editors along with the expected ideologues). It did not use formal references/footnote at all, so I decided to use my new "hybrid style" there. I'll do the transition with Shoshone too, soon (maybe tonight). With Cuba, it's an incremental thing, which should be gentle. Some is adding brand new footnotes where none existed, some other parts will be converting plain links to footnotes (perhaps with annotations, but at least with complete citation details). But that can happen bit-by-bit though.

I figured out that the right place to get the change is probably over at bugzilla.wikimedia. So I've filed a bug report there (along with the fix). Hopefuly it will be implemented at some point. If it is, that lets us later move the hidden refs from the beginning of an article to a lower section... which will be simple, since no changes will be needed to the reference format, just a simple move of the text. LotLE×talk 02:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I see...help yourself to Shoshone...not that you needed my permission. I can deal with the refs at the beginning, but think like a traditionalist and would prefer them at the end...either way, it's better than cite.php Thanks for doing all that work, I sure as hell couldn't have.--MONGO 05:01, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Not bad...at Shoshone...I like the comment at the top of the editing window...not that anyone is going to, but the "a" and "b" are interesting in the saved version...clicking a takes one to the top of the article, but b takes one to the fotnote...not that anyone is going to link backwards I think...so long as it works clicking the footnote and that takes one to the reference, and it does this, plus the ref is almost as small as ref|note was...looks decent...I appreciate all that.--MONGO 07:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Cuba

Just wanted to apologise for coming across as shrill in that edit summary yesterday. I am making a gallery of images I think should be in the article, if you want to take a peek Talk:Cuba/Images. Myciconia 20:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate your good work; and I quite agree that the article could be brightened up by a judicious use of images. I think you might have noted the comparison with United States. I actually thing the US goes a bit overboard on images, but there's certainly room for a middle ground of adding another half dozen tasteful images to illustrate Cuba. LotLE×talk 20:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Alert. Do not respond or rise to El Jigue, he has just returned from a long block.--Zleitzen 15:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Tell me more (in email if you prefer). What's the story with this editor? I'm assuming from your warning that s/he has been disruptive in some way, but that leaves a lot of different possibilities. LotLE×talk 16:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

User User:205.240.227.15 aka "El Jigue" (block log:[3]) is a long time editor on Cuban articles and appears to be passionately concerned about the representation of Cuba. The most recent block was initiated for "exhausting the communities patience". That ban was for a month and it appears that his unblocking is slightly premature. See the foot of this page [4]. That link may give you a better idea of how this fits in within the nature of this long dispute, which is primarily Bruce/myself in dispute with Adam Carr/172. There are many other supporting characters and layered manoeuvrings behind the scenes and it's almost a full time job keeping up with it! --Zleitzen 17:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've tried to maintain sanity on a few contentious pages, and wind up finding it just too exhausting after a while. I commend you and several other editors on the Cuba article for being remarkably level-headed and committed to NPOV. It seems to have removed a lot of the partisanship since Adam Carr went on Wikibreak (which is coincidentally about the same time I started looking at the article... actually, I looked because 172 posted a message on a talk page of someone else I chat with [apparently on a bunch of talk pages). From the couple comments I saw added to the talk page, "El Jique" indeed seems a bit off... there was some non sequitor about how the question of including the Che mural was eclipsed by some alleged incorrect date in the article. Obviously, if a date is wrong, it should be fixed; but there doesn't seem to be any connection. LotLE×talk 17:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry too much about the wording details of the human rights section Lulu, I'm compiling a full study of available neutral sources and it'll all be reworked in due course. --Zleitzen 19:29, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

See [5] for further information.--Zleitzen 03:27, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

that is not pov material, you don't even know what that means. Everything has a pov, wiki doesnt allow you to present it in pov fashion but does not disallow the inclusion of articles or opinions with NPOV. Get it right or get out. But stop the censorship. (Gibby 03:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC))

Hidden references

As I said on the footnotes page, I really like the hidden style. I appreciated your implementation of it. I was hoping that you knew whether there was development going on to implement it such that the references can be placed at the bottom of the page, as well. Are the proper people involved in the discussion? InvictaHOG 03:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't think I've quite managed to figure out who the "proper people" are. Do you know. I provided the actual patch to Cite.php and everything. I understand that it should really be examined and tested by a MediaWiki developer, but it's only a few lines and pretty straightforward. I don't know the process involved though. I really hope now that the change is implemented, since that would let us more the hidden reference blocks to a more appropriate "Footnotes" section, while still letting us group them together (when desired by article editors)... if you feel like fanning any flames about this change, please, please, please... LotLE×talk 03:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll add a comment to the bugzilla and point them to the footnotes page InvictaHOG 03:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. LotLE×talk 03:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you

Thanks for your note. I really hope that our occasional head-butting serves a greater good and we can raise the quality of that article. --Mcmachete 18:34, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Unblocked

You weren't even notified you'd been blocked, and by an editor that you have had disagreements with...as a return to me, stay away from the Cuba article for at least two days. Go over and copyedit Glacier National Park (US) or something...but don't vote on it...just help us make it better.--MONGO 04:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. The whole "block with a vendetta, don't bother to notify" thing by Cyde is definitely way uncool. I'll take your sage advice on Cuba (it's protected anyway; which is probably good). And try to even do something good at Glacier National Park (US). All the best, LotLE×talk 05:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Try now.--MONGO 05:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Nope... still not happening. LotLE×talk 05:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Try it now? I'll have to go offline for an hour and a half in 5 minutes--MONGO 05:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeech...I must be at least one third of the three stooges tonight...maybe I qualify as all three of them...oh well, if this still isn't it, I'll fix it in 90 minutes.--MONGO 05:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

OK... 90 minutes it is :-). Do you want to be Moe or Curly? I appreciate the effort though. LotLE×talk 05:37, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Holy mackeral...(had to say something corny)...I have blocked you and the IP for 15 minutes...do not edit anything in that time....I'll check back in later.--MONGO 05:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Reblocked

I've reblocked you for the original length of the block. Despite Cyde's involvement, you did violate 3RR, and it's still a valid block. Regards, Ral315 (talk) 06:17, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Huh? The original block should have expired before now. Being blocked indefinitely because of Cyde's misbehavior seems awfully wrong to me. LotLE×talk 06:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The original block was until 08:47 UTC. My block on you expires at 08:44 UTC. Ral315 (talk) 06:30, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, OK... I got timezones confused I think. The block was showing as until 4:47 when I looked, but I guess my preferences are showing it as my timezone. In any case, that's fine for me not to edit until tomorrow.

As I have mentioned, I realized I had got carried away on reverting the POV-mongering (7RR) by User:KDRGibby and User:Drogo Underburrow. When I realized I passed the 3RR limit, I emailed User:MONGO to tell him that in the interest of procedural fairness, he should place a 3RR block on me (this was before Drogo Underburrow filed a 3RR on me that was actually incorrect, having claimed several unrelated edits as reversions; but if the report had been more accurate, there was a 3RR in there).

However, the rather drastic misbehavior by Cyde is a concern to me:

1. Cyde has previously engaged in aggressive personal attacks on me on unrelated matters, and should recuse himself from this particular block. Moreover, he had not been following 3RR reports, but simply noticed my name, and saw an opportunity to "get even" for an earlier RfC against him.
2. Cyde blocked me, User:Zleitzen and User:Myciconia, all without giving any notice of the block on our talk pages.
3. Cyde blocked Zleitzen entirely for editing in the same "direction" I had, even though Zleitzen absolutely did not violate 3RR.
4. Cyde refused to block Drogo Underburrow who had violated 3RR on the same page (but in the opposite direction as Zleitzen, Myciconia and I, even after being notified of the inconsistency.

Overall, it's obvious that Cyde is using blocks out of a vendetta and in contempt of 3RR guidelines. This sort of misuse of administrative powers have been pretty much a uniform habit by Cyde. LotLE×talk 06:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I do follow 3RR reports and I also follow Cuba, but nice assumption of bad faith there. --Cyde Weys 06:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Foreswear

Do you really really promise to be good? Since blocks aren't punative, Ral315 could probably be convinced to lift the block if you say you'll stay away from Cuba. Like you did above, I mean, but say it three times fast while standing on one foot. - brenneman^{L} 06:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

No cuba, no cuba, no cuba (fast enough)? LotLE×talk 06:51, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh... FWIW, MONGO never actually succeeded in unblocking me. Each time I tried editing after he tried to do it, I got a message about my IP address being autoblocked. Not sure if that's because of some behind-the-scenes "hack" by Cyde or just an ordinary glitch. Given the rather aggressive "rogue" thing by Cyde, one starts to suspect trickery. LotLE×talk 06:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

There's no hack that allows that. MONGO just couldn't figure out which autoblock to remove. In any event, I've removed the block, and you should be able to edit now, with the assurance that you won't edit Cuba. Ral315 (talk) 06:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Veering

Hey, here comes a pseudo lecture/quasi statement of concern:
It's pretty safe to include you (with myself) in the Category:Wikipedians who are sometimes blunt beyond what's civil. Sadly you appear to be veering beyond the lush green pastures of simple crankiness into the thorny wastes of personal attacks. I'm not making a statement here about the source of your concerns, just the way that you're expressing them. If there are things that you think need some airing, drop a note on my talk.
brenneman^{L} 07:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Pretty good category, I concur. However, I do not believe I have ever engaged in personal attack, just simple crankiness. Cyde's behavior really has been pretty consistently and dramatically awful. Is that what you're talking about, btw, my unhappiness with Cyde? There might be more of an argument that I neared such thorny wastes over at the Cuba thing itself, though I think not even there. LotLE×talk 07:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

• No, I think you were fine with Cuba, better than fine I think you've been doing a great job there and I always respect someone who can say mea culpa and move on when they have a slip.
• I did say "veering" but I suppose I could have said "edging up on" or "approaching." I'd encourage slightly more dispassionate language with regards to Cyde, that's all. The more civily and cooly a complaint is made (and the more crisply the evidence is presented) the more likely something is to be done about it.

brenneman^{L} 07:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, sure. But if you go to visit the Grand Canyon, the best view is standing near the edge, no? You might get vertigo, but you don't really get the experience without the proximity :-). LotLE×talk 07:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's been interesting....I think it is almost time for Aaron and I to go pester Tony Sidaway.--MONGO 08:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Ward Churchill misconduct allegations summary

Hi Lulu, I'll defer to your judgment on the issue. Thanks for your hard work in the face of POV editing. :) - N1h1l 18:53, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

No, you are wrong. The change was valid and appropriate. Also, your comments about my edits are way off the mark. I'm only focusing on the slanderous/libelous comments of Churchill toward other professors who happen to disagree with him. I believe from your comments that you want to work with Lulu to simply find a way to stop my editing. Churchill has been found by a committee at the University of Colorado to have engaged in serious research misconduct and the quotes that I am attempting to remove are focused on his personal attacks on these good professors. You have not attempted to discuss the topic with me directly, but rather you have recruiter Lulu to work with you to shut me down. I have commented on the talk page and neither you or Lulu have attempted to have a discussion with me even though I have asked both of you (anyone) to discuss the topic and I have not had any response. You have already decided that my good faith efforts to edit the document are "vandalism" as you state right here. You are not editing in good faith. Why have you decided that only you and Lulu are allowed to make edits to the article? And why have you decided to leave in Churchill's personal attacks on other professors? That is not the way that Wikipedia is suppose to work. It is supposed to be a colaborative effort but from the actions of you and Lulu it is clear that together you both have decided to just ignore my comments on the Talk Page and just reverse anything that I do and then, instead of debating and discussing the topice with me, you just state that if I don't agree with you then my work in just "vandalism." Please edit in good faith, based upon your discussion with Lulu above it is clear to me that you aren't. --- --70.114.205.215 22:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC) ---

Yes I am eagerly watching the article and discussion. The crooked timber post is interesting. I am keen to get familiar with sources for online academic writings (dissertations, doctorates etc) on this and related topics (and in general).. the web is fragmented and I am boggled by Uni websites. Any suggestions on this would be welcome. <<yes this looks like my 'counterparts'will leap on this; there is always room 4 improvement and i don't have academic keys etc>> max rspct leave a message 23:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I, unfortunately, have not had a reliable internet connection and so my editting has been quite limited. I will, hopefully, be more involved starting next week. Thanks for your diligence w/ regards to the Churchill article... sorry I have not been more consistent in my contribution. - N1h1l 16:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Hidden refs

Any word back on the hidden references?...maybe if myself and a few others that seem to like your style chime in, we can get the developers to work out the kinks and that way we can move the refs to the bottom of the article...otherwise I like it a lot more than having the entire ref in the article text...I weas working on the Glacier article a couple days ago, and found the text references I used there to be "in the way"...so I wonder how baffling it may appear to newbies...I even tried to reduce the space it takes up by not using the cite templates within the article text, even though I know this is not preferred.--MONGO 19:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I think some chiming in to the developers would help. My bug and patch have been registered, and someone even noted that my patch would fix another reported bug too (it's really the same issue, but someone else independently filed it; though theirs lacked the patch). It's probably mostly a question of getting the regular developers to take the patch off the back burner, I haven't seen any objection to it... but there are hundreds of other open bugs competing for attention. LotLE×talk 19:57, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, waht bug report is it...I will chime in there tonight and you may want to also ask others that have stated they like your cite style to chime in as well...strength in numbers--MONGO 20:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5885

In looking over this bug report, my concern was the development of the hidden style, and just getting it to be at the end of the article instead of at the beginning...but the way it is now is livable, so long as the boilerplate to scroll down as I added is present...the bug report I see seems to be more about multiple uses of the same references...that's beyond where I am at this point...I just redundantly reuse the same reference if needed...I dunno..that Harv style looks like the best one...but your hidden style would be my choice for all but the most detailed of articles simply because it is the easiest...--MONGO 02:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah... but this change handles that too. We can already to the hidden refs; if we combine that with letting non-first refs contain the content, between the two things we get what we're looking for. However, along the way, the change would allow some unrelated improvements in flexibility of reference definition. LotLE×talk 04:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

A Favor

Hi, since you are actually quite adept at philosophy, I was wondering if you could read and critique my rant on my userpage if you have time[6]. If not that's ok, but I would really like some input. Oh, and the Edward Abbey quote on your userpage is great. The Ungovernable Force 20:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Functional programming

Seems we're just getting in each other's way in trying to get the leader for Functional programming back into shape after User:Ideogram's deletions — I will stop working on it until you're done, to avoid edit conflicts (of which I've already hit several). --Allan McInnes (talk) 01:19, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Apartheid AFD

You may also want to see the AFD at Apartheid (disambiguation)Homey 23:12, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

{{ref}} and {{note}}

It is important to keep a cool head, especially when responding to comments against you or your edits. Personal attacks and disruptive comments only escalate a situation; please keep calm and remember that action can be taken against other parties if necessary. Attacking another user back can only satisfy trolls or anger contributors and leads to general bad feeling. Please try to remain civil with your comments. Thanks! Will (^E_@) T 21:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure which comment you are referring to, but the disruption by Cyde has been a longstanding and frequent problem, and has already been subject to RfC's (that didn't really amount to much, since RfC's rarely do). LotLE×talk 22:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Calling a well established user a vandal is not a light statement. Just a friendly reminder. -- Drini 22:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Hey man, I'm deeply opposed to Cite.php in its currently form, however acting up the outrage is not going to help here. I've changed the note to something that more reflects the situation as it stands. I'd encourage you to take a look and either change it, or suggest improvements on the talk page.

Did your patch for Cite.php ever get accepted? I spoke to Avar who said he'd try it out. I think Cyde is honestly trying to help the Wikipedia here, so accusing him of vandalism is not constructive, although I would be interested in looking at the RfC's I expect they will be full of boisterous comments and not sane discussion.

It is quite tiring constantly having people coming along and changing reference styles on you, but just switch back and try and live with it for the moment, with any luck a better solution will come along. Regards - FrancisTyers 23:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks FrancisTyers. I confess that Cyde's rogueness has gotten under my skin with annoyance. Your wording improvements are wonderful, and present the situation fairly. If you'd do the same over at {{note}} (verbatim, presumably), that would be way cool. I'm not even "deeply opposed" to Cite.php, even without its desired improvements; I just don't like an admin adding false claims about "deprecated" status of things that he declares unilaterally, and despite frequent complaints.

I don't know what's happening with the patch. It was assigned, and some comments even noted that it also solves the problem listed in another bug report. But it seems to be on the back-burner among actual MediaWiki developers. No one has reported a problem with the fix, but no one seems to have done anything with it either. If you are in touch with the software people and want to give them a little nudge, that would also be way cool. LotLE×talk 23:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes

I see that. Cyde does much good, but he sure seems hell bent on ensuring cite.php replaces everything else....and there is the attitude problem, which seems to have abated some lately. I see User:FrancisTyers put a boilerplate on each template page that I can live with. Most of the work I have been doing uses the cite.php style, as I do find it okay...but it is not as good as your style. What is the latest on that...I have not altered it's use on the Shoshone article.--MONGO 00:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

opinions solicited on programming language

I would welcome your input on improving programming language. Ideogram 22:33, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

BTW you don't have to limit your input to the current controversy, if you are interested in other issues as well. Ideogram 01:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Our experience over functional programming was unpleasant, but I am very grateful for your participation in programming language. Ideogram 03:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Luce Irigaray

Please do not label as "spacing" edits involving the removal of whole paragraphs like this:

Irigaray was strongly criticised by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in Intellectual Impostures for arguing that E=mc² is a "sexed equation" (because it privileges the speed of light) and arguing that fluid mechanics has been neglected by "masculine" science because it prefers to deal with "masculine" rigid objects rather than "feminine" fluids [7].

This might be embarrassing to Irigaray fans, but quite appropriate for an encyclopedia.Sir Paul 00:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Your Re-Organization of AfD Discussion

Just a note to say I really like how you reorganized the discussion on the AfD for How NOT to steal a SideKick 2. Looks like a lot of work was done. Frankly, I didn't realize what was to follow when I listed that one for nomination! Agent 86 17:58, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It's somewhat unorthodox to reorganize in that manner, but I think it's useful in this case. This seems different than those AfD's where many outright sockpuppet voters appear, and generally a closing admin makes the count of that. That is, I don't think all those keep voters are sockpuppets: I think they're primarily people who saw the article topic elsewhere, and being unfamiliar with Wikipedia conventions honestly believed an outside vote was appropriate and desirable. Of course, those new editors might make a comment that is persuasive (probably not, but give it the benefit of the doubt), so I was careful to preserve all such votes, just move them slightly. LotLE×talk 18:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Unorthodox, but good thinking outside the box! Agent 86 18:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't say "keep voter" as Afd is not a vote. --Cyde↔Weys 16:58, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you honestly not know the meaning of "vote", or are you just trying to annoy me for its own sake? My American Heritage Unabridged dict defines:

vote. (1)(a) A formal expression of preference for a candidate for office or for a proposed resolution of an issue. (b) A means by which such a preference is made known, such as a raised hand or a marked ballot.

Those are the two main senses in which an AfD is a vote, and its voters are voters. And naturally, they are the first-listed senses. Obviously, an AfD is not a vote decided by simple numeric majority (nor specific supermajority), nor is it an anonymous vote. The word "duh" comes to mind here. LotLE×talk 17:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

European Graduate School

I have nothing to do with this school, I am just tired of seeing it polluting all biographies as I made clear on the deletion page. It's not just Zizek, I've seen it everywhere! At first, I had the same attitude as you, and was quite surprised to see someone removed it under the pretext it was "spam". I've understood it since. The problem is not the EGS article in itself (who cares?), it's that the EGS is spreading itself all over Wikipedia. That's called advertising. Regards, Santa Sangre 21:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, OK... but you'll do better to tone down your comments. I agree that it seems like some fan of the school has gone overboard in adding links and mentions of EGS, but your edit comments that have an overly excited tone tend to put off editors like me who have no stake in the school (positive or negative). It seems like the affiliation is worth passing mention in any biography of a visiting faculty member (along with whatever other schools they might have taught at), but certainly doesn't merit any more than such passing mention... well, unless someone was founder of EGS or something (didn't I see some mention of Lyotard being involved in it's founding? Or am I misremembering?) LotLE×talk 21:16, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah... and you actually nominated the EGS article for deletion, right?! That's just silly, and probably WP:POINT. I mean, if some fanboy of Yale or the New School started adding gratuitous mentions of the school all over articles, would you nominate those for AfD too? Or even stipulating that EGS is less good than those I mention, would you do so for Holyoke Community College (or some other school of secondary or tertiary stature; that one happens to be near me). LotLE×talk 21:20, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

nitty gritty on Ward Churchill

I haven't really got involved in digestion of the report etc as I ha' similar stuff in my real world. I wasn't kidding about the bio. Glad to help.. even if so small. -- max rspct leave a message 19:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Gelernter

I thought I'd put this here rather than clutter up the bursting talk:PL page with more digression. Gelernter is mostly known in CS circles for inventing the Linda system, a paradigm for parallel programming that can be grafted onto any programming language. I should have remembered that you aren't into parallel programming. Gelernter is known to the general public for being one of the targets of the Unabomber. Ideogram 20:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, interesting. A funny (and alarming) way to gain general-purpose fame. I take it he came out of the targetting relatively well, since you talk about him in present tense. I guess I'll go look at his article now. All the best, LotLE×talk 20:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

He lost sizeable chunks of one of his hands. He could have been decapitated. Ideogram 20:11, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I read his article right after I wrote. I saw he "sustained permanent damage to his right hand and eye". Which is obviously a bummer. But still better than being, y'know, dead, or brain-damaged. I don't know much anything about parallel programming, though I've certainly heard of Linda.

I also looked around, following your comment, at the articles on HP calculators, reverse polish, and the like. I'm pretty confident now that those calculators are in fact not Turing-complete (even if you were to lift the arbitrary limits about program size and the like). Everything I can see suggests they have stored programs, registers, and stacks, but that's basically the definition of a push-down automaton. Even an infinite stack is strictly weaker computationally than a Turing-style tape (but generalized recursion gets you an equivalence; the RPN calculators seem not to have that). I also started to wonder about stack-based Forth. A glance at the article reminded me of why it's Turing-complete: you can define indefinitely many new words, which effectively act as a random-access storage mechanism which is equivalent to a tape. That might be the answer for Postscript too; I think it has a "define" type command. LotLE×talk 20:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It's quite easy to refer to arbitrary memory locations in Forth, and access disk. It's not emphasized because it's considered bad style. I suppose Postscript has something similar.

I hope you recognize that the Turing-completeness of HP calculators is not really relevant to our PL debate, since they are really an "edge case" and my position is primarily based on verifiability, not truth. Ideogram 20:28, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The HP calculators are definitely an edge case, though they one such edge among many others. I still haven't the foggiest idea what point you think you're making by frequently repeating the "verifiability not truth" policy. None of the discussion so far seems to have anything to do with that. There are lots of other WP policies that have equally little to do with the specific phrasing issue in scoping programming languages. Obviously, I endorse all the policies that happen to be irrelevant to the discussion. LotLE×talk 20:37, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh and even without memory access, Forth has two stacks, which makes it Turing-complete. I think Postscript can have arbitrarily many stacks. Ideogram 20:29, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

verifiability, not truth

Now I've done it. Oh well, better here than talk:PL I guess.

I don't understand why this point is so difficult. We as non-expert editors of an encyclopedia are not here to think for ourselves (that borders on OR) but simply to report what our sources say. If we make a statement -- any statement -- that we can't back up with a citation we will never get FA status. Believe me, I've been there.

From what I can tell, I've been working on WP a lot longer than you have, on a lot more articles, including writing a FA article (as one of a small number of main contributors). So I'd say I've been there.

Most of the discussion misses my point because we are vainly trying to reason out the truth for ourselves. The point of verifiability is that we don't have to think -- that's not our job -- we let smarter people think for us and report what they say.

I think Stephen B Streater understands my point, but his comment was a bit cryptic. I think if you ask a wider audience it is more likely someone will understand -- perhaps we should take it to the Village Pump. Ideogram 20:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)