User talk:Ningauble/Archive 2

Final discussion for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:

1. Proposal to Close This RfC
2. Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Your opinion on this is welcome. Okip 03:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

TL;DR. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you actually research claims you make in deletion of material before acting?

The Richard Hamming quotes have been well known (and multiply sourced) for decades. Even before he died. 70.109.180.109 (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I will discuss at Talk:Richard Hamming in a little while. The bottom line is that many "well known" quotes and attributions are misquotes. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:33, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

re. QOTD bot

First, I have performed my first trial run, and you can add back {{QOTD}} on your user page. Second, I feel like Quotebot is a good name for the bot to get the QOTD. —I-20the highway 19:45, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

New messages at Wikipedia talk:Bots/Requests for approval/Wikiquote importer. For your information I will restate that I have reverted to the pre-rename state with the bot name corrected. —I-20the highway 17:04, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for resuscitating {{QOTD}}, I am sure many folks will find it useful. I will not be using it myself, because I do not like to include the accompanying images. The old DottyQuoteBot tried to break out the plain text of the quote and citation from the rest of the markup but, unfortunately, it did not work consistently.[1] You may want to update Template:QOTD/doc in this regard, and to indicate which bot currently updates the template. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

So, when will you be nominating Franklin Coverup Hoax for deletion?

I see you have taken a principled stand against exploiting the Wikipedia search hinting engine to push a POV.[2] When will you be nominating Franklin Coverup Hoax, which pops up whenever you type Franklin Coverup into the Wikipedia search box?

Jeremystalked_{(law 296)} 19:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There is not much point in canvassing for a discussion that is already closed. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:49, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Editor Trends Study

Dear Ningauble,

About 3 weeks ago, you commented on the Editor Trends Study page and I am hoping that you are still interested in this project. We made some progress with writing Editor Trends Study/Software to conduct the analyzes. Currently, we are looking for some people that would enjoy help debugging / improving this tool. If you are interested then please let me know.

Best, Diederik Drdee (talk) 21:25, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Regretfully, my programming experience, and expertise with analytical database software, does not extend to Python or MongoDB, so I would be of little help in debugging. At any rate, it is rather unlikely that I should be installing such software on my own personal system. I wish you well in your project of correlating retention trends with editor tenure. ~ Ningauble (talk) 23:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Colour blind

Good point about Excel's default colours. They should be access-friendly. Too late to do anything now. Which colours would be good priorities in a graph? Tony (talk) 11:16, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Virtually any color scheme will look incongruous in some situations. The point of the adage, "the fault lies in default," is not that the default is badly designed, but that defaults are made to be overridden when they don't suit the situation. (In situations like the case in point, a pie chart with few wedges, I like to use a monochrome scheme, i.e. the same hue with differing brightness, because it avoids cuing unintended psychological or cultural significance.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's a pity to dispense with colours, because they are so effective for those who are not colour-blind. But I suspect there are kinder colours for those people. Tony (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I confess that my view is colored by a recent career in corporate business intelligence. I used to coach staff to "resist the urge to use every crayon in the box." Adding a little color to a boardroom presentation is a good thing but, like adding comic relief, too much is distracting and can give the wrong impression. For anyone who is interested, I highly recommend The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) by Edward Tufte. One of his central tenets is don't let the presentation get in the way of the information. Some argue that he takes it too far, but he does point in the right direction. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Nasreddin

Thanks for catching and fixing the error I made with the non-Latin scripts in Nasreddin. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 22:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I watchlisted the page when I created the corresponding article at Wikiquote. I like the collection of (sourced!) quotes on your user page. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:15, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Notification: changes to "Mark my edits as minor by default" preference

Hello there. This is an automated message to tell you about the gradual phasing out of the preference entitled "Mark all edits minor by default", which you currently have (or very recently had) enabled.

On 13 March 2011, this preference was hidden from the user preferences screen as part of efforts to prevent its accidental misuse (consensus discussion). This had the effect of locking users in to their existing preference, which, in your case, was true. To complete the process, your preference will automatically be changed to false in the next few days. This does not require any intervention on your part and you will still be able to manually mark your edits as being minor in the usual way.

For established users such as yourself there is a workaround available involving custom JavaScript. With the script in place, you can continue with this functionality indefinitely (its use is governed by WP:MINOR). If you have any problems, feel free to drop me a note.

Thank you for your understanding and happy editing :) Editing on behalf of User:Jarry1250, LivingBot (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Lists of Dungeons & Dragons monsters

I have noticed that some time has passed since the AFD discussion for this article was completed. Since that time, it appears that very little has happened to satisfy one of the main reasons it was submitted for deletion, that is there are few or no third party sources covering the material within the lists on that page, or if there is(and I am unable to find it) it has continued to remain unreferenced. I wanted to get your opinion, since you were involved in the original discussion and since you are a more experienced editor, as to whether or not a second AFD discussion might be warranted for these lists. I would appreciate any advice you could give me. Lord Arador (talk) 20:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not have any constructive suggestions for this situation. My conception of encyclopedic coverage is entirely different from the special interest group that has rated this a "high importance" article. ~ Ningauble (talk) 00:55, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delores Chamblin (Duncan)

Editing is not complete. I am wikifying as suggested Afridel (talk) 22:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I assume this communication relates to my participation at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delores Chamblin (Duncan), and I added a heading for this thread accordingly.

I said nothing about wikifying the article, which is a minor matter that is not important to the deletion discussion. What is important for the decision there is to show that the subject satisfies the General Notability guideline and/or the guideline for Creative professionals. This may be done by providing Inline citations to reliable sources that support specific statements in the article indicating the subject meets those guidelines. ~ Ningauble (talk) 23:35, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Delores Chamblin (Duncan) was requested deleted because it is ambiguous. That name came up automatically even though I did not intend for it to be the title. I am new to Wikipedia and learning how it works. That is the reason I requested it deleted because I wanted to change the title to one that made sense. Afridel (talk) 22:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

It was deleted pursuant to the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Delores Chamblin (Duncan) for the reasons given there, not because you requested to remove it in favor of a different name. The name of the article does not matter: you were advised about the situation by Anthony Bradbury on your talk page. What matters is the subject and content of the article, which the deletion discussion determined is not appropriate for Wikipedia. ~ Ningauble (talk) 23:08, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Before creating I read a lot of articles on Wikipedia from contributors. Based on the reasoning it appears as if many of them have been overlooked. I will continue to learn more. Its an interesting concept, but can be confusing. Afridel (talk) 00:24, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Many articles have indeed been overlooked. There are millions of pages in Wikipedia, and more are added every day, so the work is never done. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:08, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Can we talk

Hi - Can we talk about this sometime? I'm actually very interested in finding some sort of middle ground between the kind of article Martin seems to want and the kind of article Nijdam (who's not allowed to edit on this topic for a while) seems to want. I think I've been arguing for a compromise, but Martin keeps casting me as the bad guy who won't budge. My counterpoints to your points were not meant to imply my stance is it's my way or the highway (which, AFAICT, actually is Martin's stance), but rather meant more along the lines of "I think I see where you're going with this, but there might be some problems". -- Rick Block (talk) 00:26, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Considering your criticisms and the caveats raised by Richard and Martin, even in agreeing with the general idea, I have concluded that there are indeed "some problems" with how I was going about this. I do believe that structuring the article in a way that takes cognizance of fundamentally different approaches to the problem could serve both to improve clarity for the widest possible audience and to simultaneously give each its due in a non-prejudicial way that expressly acknowledges its merit. Unfortunately, in attempting to differentiate fundamental approaches in the simplest possible way, I arrived at a distinction that is too abstract to be used effectively. As all puzzle-lovers know, simplicity can be deceptive. If you have any thoughts about salvaging something of the general idea, perhaps by drawing the distinction differently, I would welcome them. ~ Ningauble (talk) 11:58, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Back when the solution section was originally split into "simple solutions" and "conditional solutions", one of the suggestions was dividing the solutions by the result they show - i.e. "is always switching better" or "is switching always better" (archived here). Reading the comments again, they seem more about the specific content of the sections rather than the overall idea. As is usual for this article, rocks were thrown and the idea dropped. I think this may perhaps be a more objective division than the one you were suggesting, but creates exactly the same division of solutions. Thoughts? -- Rick Block (talk) 15:07, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Although it was offered in the spirit of explaining and motivating a conditional analysis, that characterization seems to me more a matter of interpreting the meaning of probability in general, rather than approaches to MHP per se. The article talk page has entertained a lot of discussion about interpretations of probability, but I think it best not to open that can of worms in the article. Unfortunately, my attempt to frame a distinction in terms of properties of MHP, independent of such schools of thought, was foreseeably doomed because ontology and epistemology are inextricably intertwined. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

You don't see a sharp distinction between solutions that contrast the results of always switching versus always staying (regardless of what the host does) and solutions that address the probabilities in some exemplary case? This distinction really has nothing to do with the meaning of probability, i.e. this distinction exists in any reasonable probability framework, certainly it exists in both frequentist and subjectivist interpretations. Moreover, this distinction doesn't require any OR whatsoever as it is explicitly addressed in multiple reliable sources. The detailed discussion about this distinction certainly belongs later in the article, but using it as a basis to simply present the two different approaches (without favoring one over the other) seems quite justifiable. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:41, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a difference of analytical approach, but I do not see it as a difference in what the results show. Speaking in terms of the outcomes for different players bears a strong resemblance to explaining the technique of analyzing probability in a particular case by hypothesizing a population from which it is selected. I don't think this is something that needs to be brought out explicitly unless one is discussing the finer points of probability interpretations. Although such explanation has been used with reference to MHP in the course of explaining conditional probability, I think replacing "which door do you want to choose" with "which player do you want to be" is a multiplication of entities that is not necessary for understanding "simple" approaches to MHP, and such multiplication is infelicitous for presenting "simple" solutions as simple.

The way this has been expressed in terms of disregarding what the host does strikes me as troublesome, and may explain some of the rock throwing, because it can be taken to suggest that "simple" solutions fail to take cognizance of available information rather than, say, indicating that they can be seen as taking cognizance of the symmetry indicated by the host's impartiality.

If I may digress, it may be illuminating to contrast MHP with Bertrand's box paradox. For pedagogical purposes, Bertrand's box has a very good structure for motivating conditional probability because, regardless of the analytical framework used, there is really no way to derive a satisfactory answer without multiplying out the choice of box and the choice of coin because there are no exploitable symmetries. MHP provides a good way to motivate conditional probability in a different way: if one breaks the symmetry by allowing the host's choice to be non-uniform then it shows the power of conditional probability to give a more general, parametric result. (Not to mention that, for motivating students, Mr. Hall has a much higher "Q" than Mr. Bertrand.) Even though it is not the "standard" MHP, the variant host behavior is very illuminating, multiple pedagogical sources use it this way, and I think it merits prominent coverage after the "simple" treatment.

I hope this side discussion is helpful, but I am not sure my perspective is shedding much new light. Do you think we can unearth anything that would move the main discussion forward? ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:45, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Editors Survey (Nov 2011): Your feedback is welcome!

Thanks for your feedback on the previous iteration of the Editor Survey. The latest iteration of the survey questionnaire is available at Wikipedia Editors Survey November 2011 and we would appreciate your feedback.Ayushk (talk) 00:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

DYK for The Design of Everyday Things

Gosh. You're totally right about the hook. I fixed the article and wrote a replacement hook. --Pnm (talk) 19:59, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

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