User talk:(

Welcome to Wikipedia, "(". May I call you Ell Paren? Or would you prefer Frowning Smiley? ^_^ --Uncle Ed
 * Could be smiling from the other side. Anyway, welcome.  (-:  --Koyaanis Qatsi


 * Thanks, but I am no new user, I have simply lacked a user id recently - User:Ell Paren.

Hello there! Interesting user name - At first I thought it was some type of database error. Have fun! --mav


 * I wanted to be @, like the hero in nethack, but the database would not take it.

Hello erm "open bracket" - fonzy

Welcome Here. I am Youssef, a student from Belgium. I use to be on the French wiki. I am also interested in Mexico and economy. -- Youssefsan

Hi. I like the work you are doing on prime ministers, etc. Deb 12:07 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)


 * I only wanted to sort out the articles linked from William Hobson (Lord Normanby, Lord Auckland). I'm not sure why I did the others ;-)

Hey...are you planning to do a reorganisation of the Iraq invasion pages? Creating a stub US-led invasion page isn't a good idea, IMO, the discussion on the US Invasion page was about RENAMING that page US-led invasion... --AW


 * I disagree, the existing page is full of outdated material. There needs to be space for the actual events of the invasion ( 17:54 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)


 * Good morning (, hope you're happy with the way I split up the old invasion page...let me know. --AW


 * I think it is a good start. The list of see-also articles at the end of US invasion of Iraq could be moved into an introduction, and the article should still be renamed.

Hi! I've checked with political science textbooks, election manuals and various websites and the vast majority capitalise Single Transferable Vote where it refers to the name of the electoral system rather than simply talking about the methodology and what a single transferable vote is. I've put a list of some of the many websites that capitalise the title on the talk page - it includes everything from formal discussion groups to the BBC, pages on the system itself to sites on the Irish and Maltese electoral systems that use STV. As the evidence is overwhelming (indeed another wiki page mentioning STV in lower case stands out like a sore thumb surrounded by sites all with the term capitalised!) I renamed the page to the capitalised name version. It seems the logical thing to do. :) STÓD/ÉÍRE 03:08 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Actually it is not trivial. Getting titles right is the first most basic requirement of a sourcebook. If wiki wrote about 'president bush' rather than 'President Bush', france rather than 'France' or 'Great britain' rather than 'Great Britain' it would look to anyone consulting it to be a semi-illiterate, unreliable sourcebook. The first task of any publication is to get the spelling right, the second the correct capitalisation. If they are wrong, people instinctively ask - how can I trust its articles if it can't even get the title right?

As to STV, if the article read

''A single transferable vote is a vote that is transferred between candidates in elections. Many electoral systems provide for the use of a single transferable vote to enable a voter to have maximum influence in the outcome of an election in a district or constituency''

then one would not use capitalisation, because you are simply talking in general non-specific terms about a broad topic. But if you are talking about the form voting system, it requires capitalisation to indicate clearly to readers that what you are talking about is a formal name, not a generalised method. So STV in those contacts is capitalised just as George Bush is capitalised, Prince Charles is capitalised, etc. You can write about a president, but a specific office or person requires capitalisation, eg. the President, President of the United States, President of Ireland, Queen of the United Kingdom. But if you were talking about a united kingdom (ie., an unnamed kingdom that is united), not the United Kingdom, you should not capitalise.


 * I admit I'm getting confused about this issue (noun has some discussion). Should file transfer protocol and world wide web be capitalised in the middle of sentence?  How about severe acute respiratory syndrome (the WHO capitalised it, but I've seen it lower-case elsewhere, presumably under publisher house-style rules)?  Really this is so trivial, I would like a rule that can be applied in all cases rather than have to argue about each case individually.  The rule I'm applying for now is that if it's not obviously a proper noun, it gets lower-cased.  ( 17:29 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * I should add: proper nouns always get an initial capital letter. The problem is to decide which nouns are proper. ( 17:38 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

The severe acute respiratory syndrome, meaning the specific name of an illness should be capitalised, such as with Aids, etc But if you are talking about a severe acutre respiratory syndrome, it shouldn't. As to seeing it capitalised in some places and not in others, it depends on whether it is being used generally or specifically. Some people, even when dealing with the specific illness, fail to capitalise, to the fury of english language experts. The whole point about capitalisation is that it is intended to help readers know whether the words are specific to a person/office/illness/voting system/general etc. Not capitalising what should be capitalised is all too often pure laziness or ignorance of the rules, which reflects rather badly on the standard of english language teaching.

Publishing house rules differ, depending on the market a book is aimed for. A serious academic textbook is expected to have its capitalisation 100% right, just as it is expected to have grammar 100% correct. Novels and less academic books sometimes are more flexible, but it is the reader that loses out. Capitalisation is not intended to be a pointless set of rules, but rules that help the reader know the importance of certain words in a text. A good rule of thumb is whether a term is preceded by a definite or indefinite article; the or a. So etc etc. I hope that clarifies the situation a bit. STÓD/ÉÍRE 19:07 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)
 * a president of the United States
 * The President of the United States
 * a pope
 * The Pope
 * a queen of England
 * The Queen of England
 * a single transferable vote (general)
 * The Single Transferable Vote (STV) (specific voting system)


 * Thanks, your explanation is interesting. But in the way that you are referring to the President, couldn't I equally well refer to the Pen sitting on my Desk?  This degree of capitalisation seems excessive. ( 19:52 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

No. The President is a title. A pen is an object. Capitalisation only occurs for names, whether it is of a person, an office, an institution, a voting system, etc. A pen is not a name. Now if you call it Jeremy then it would require capitalisation, maybe even as 'Jeremy the Pen'. But pen itself is just a term to refer to an object. It isn't the same as George Bush (even if more intelligent - opps. My dislike of 'Shrub' is coming out again!), Queen Elizabeth, Garret FitzGerald, etc And no, the rules are the elementary building blocks of a language, as fundamental as wiki rules about how to lay out a page, how to state dates, etc. Not adhering to them creates more problems than it solves. Properly applied, the use of appropriate capitals should make it easy for a reader at a glance to answer the basic questions 'who? what? where?' because the important names, locations, etc would stand out through the use of capitals. They are as basic as full stops. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:56 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, but why is "single transferable vote" a name while "pen" is not? ( 21:08 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

Because Single Transferable Vote is the name of a voting system, just as Proportional Representation is the name of an electoral system, John Paul II is the name of a man, Daily Telegraph is the name of a newspaper, Washington, DC the name of a city, Iraq the name of a state. A pen is simply a pen. It is not a name, it is simply an object, like a shoe, a watch, a moustache, etc. A river is simply a river. But the Liffey is the name of a river so always has a capital letter. A clock is merely a clock. But Big Ben is the name of a clock. It is the fundamental rule of grammar. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:35 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)


 * This seems to be getting into philosophy and the name article is no help at all. We could just as well say molecular biology is the name of a branch of biology and so should always be capitalised.


 * I'm resorting to a web search to try to resolve this. A good one from http://www.jimwegryn.com/names/What%20is%20a%20name.htm:


 * "A proper name is a noun used in a non-universal function, with or without recognizable current lexical value, of which the potential meaning coincides with and never exceeds its actual meaning, and which is attached as a label to one animate being or an inanimate object (or to more than one in the case of collective names) for the purpose of specific distinction from among a number of like or in some respects similar beings or objects that are either in no manner distinguished from another or, for our interest, not sufficiently distinguished."

That is what I said. A non-universal function means something which has a narrow, specific meaning. Pope John Paul is an example. It refers to a specific individual, not all men. Single Transferable Vote is another example. It refers to a specific defined voting system. Liffey refers to a specific river, whereas river doesn't. In contrast pen has no non-universal function, it has a broad, undefined meaning that covers a wide range of writing objects, whereas 'Jeremy the Pen' refers to one specific pen not all pens. Re-molecular biology, if the term is used in the specific non universal sense, yes of course it is capitalised. If if is used in a broad undefined manner, it isn't. It is perfectly straightforward and obvious. A proper noun is capitalised. A proper noun is a item-specific noun that has a limited meaning. So a queen isn't specific. Queen Elizabeth is capitalised because it is specific. When you use single transferable vote in the non-specific sense to talk in broad general terms about voting, it isn't capitalised. When, as in the wiki article, it is specific, as in the formal name of a formally and narrowly defined voting system, it is always capitalised. I fail to understand what you are having a problem with here. It is quite clear and obvious.

Or it would if it was taught properly at school, which it isn't unfortunately. It doesn't help if we get something as staightforward as Single Transferable Vote wrong in the title. If everyone followed the basic rules of grammar, the meanings would be patiently obvious. What a proper noun is would be patently obvious. But by hap-hazardly on wiki and elsewhere not bothering with grammatical rules, we have confusion, with people not knowing what is capitalised and what isn't and something as clear cut as the name of a formal, clearly defined voting system produces widespread confusion. STÓD/ÉÍRE 23:11 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

You might be interested to know (then again you might not), that I've kicked of a Wikiproject page at WikiProject Peerage, so discussion can be lumped together in one place :). Mintguy 10:26, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Strong_pale_ale. I'd appreciate your remarks. Stewartadcock 18:44, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Use of "(" as User Name
Can I recommend a name change? Your user name is very short, hard to click on, and a bit of a nuisance, frankly. May I suggest a few possible alternatives? "open paren", "paren", "right paren", "unhappy face", etc. ;-)  Daniel Quinlan 23:24, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)


 * bah, I am honing your clicking skills. Consider it a challenge.  I doubt whether many people want to click on me anyway ( 23:43, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Hey, good thing you didn't pick a dot (.) or something Dori 23:47, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)


 * Hmm, that would have been good, but I like the bracket. For anybody visiting my page frequently (who wouldn't?) I suggest creating a bookmark in the browser or making it the default startup page.  ( 08:34, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your choice of user name is an abuse of the system bcz it is hard to recognize as a user name. Please change to something with some pronouncable letters in it. --Jerzy 00:01, 2004 Jan 22 (UTC)


 * No, I am abused by the system, not the other way around. My first username stopped working when the software changed.  I didn't really want it so I edited under IP addresses for a long time.  But then I could not move pages and was getting complaints on Talk pages about my lack of username.  So I chose something minimal and trivial, "@", which was not accepted by the system, leading to this name instead.  I think it's a bit late to start complaining about it now (in any case somebody else would probably grab the name if I vacated it).  ( 09:25, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Whatever problems you had with the system are no excuse for ignoring the clear instructions given when you take on a user name, to choose something with letters in it. Others have changed name without problems, as you should. --Jerzy 23:23, 2004 Feb 4 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what instructions you are referring to. But to me it's too trivial to argue about, if people find this user name so intolerable, then fine, I'll stop using it.  I'll create a new user name the next time I want to edit something.  ( 00:14, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

diel
I've put in a brief article to explain diel for you (and all the other people who would be baffled, too) seglea 10:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Thanks ( 10:23, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Where are you
Where's the paren? Dori | Talk 05:56, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * quote from his final edit: "I'm not sure what instructions you are referring to. But to me it's too trivial to argue about, if people find this user name so intolerable, then fine, I'll stop using it. I'll create a new user name the next time I want to edit something." Ashibaka (tock) 01:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm still here, if you know where to look ;) ( (talk) 02:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

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

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{&#123;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 multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
 * {&#123;DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:
 * {&#123;DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{&#123;DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{&#123;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| talk)


 * I place all of my contributions in the public domain, in the unlikely case that it matters. Since my user page has been deleted, I'll have to put the template here, instead (I noticed this many years ago, but only just noticed that I can still actually log in to this account. I thought it had been banned). ( (talk) 02:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I *was* banned, but later unbanned ;) - Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive198


 * "Nothing wrong with the username" :o ( (talk) 02:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)


 * User:Pzrmd is my hero for requesting my unblocking. For the record, I'd never heard of them until reading that conversation. ( (talk) 03:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs
Hello (! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot alerting you that 1 of the articles that you created  is tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the unreferencedBLP tag. Here is the article:

Thanks!--DASHBot (talk) 05:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Surya Bahadur Thapa -

AfD nomination of ABC islands (Lesser Antilles)
An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is ABC islands (Lesser Antilles). We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Articles for deletion/ABC islands (Lesser Antilles). Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thunderbirds listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Thunderbirds. Since you had some involvement with the Thunderbirds redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). C T J F 8 3 22:50, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Martini (cocktail) for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Martini (cocktail) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Martini (cocktail) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Grand-Duc (talk) 16:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Marcelo Tosatti for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Marcelo Tosatti is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Marcelo Tosatti until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Black Kite (talk) 20:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)