User talk:AllyUnion/Archive8

Star Trek
I'm not sure whether you're going to read this reply if you have indeed quit, but I thought I'd reply anyway to your points regarding the Star Trek article: 1. Comprehensiveness issues. Unfortunately this level of detail simply cannot be accommodated in Wikipedia's 32K limit. That's why issues like Star Trek vs. Star Wars need to have their own articles. This was a bone of contention for me regarding the failed feature nomination for James Bond. Once we included everything that people wanted, the article was more than 50K and that was before images were added; we had to cut it back to 32K and the nomination failed. This is a failing of Wikipedia, I'm afraid. I personally would like to see entire sets of articles nominated as feature articles. The Star Trek articles - of which there are probably hundreds - and the dozens of James Bond articles I have personally worked on add up to far more than the single overview article. Maybe this is why most feature articles are on simple, single-subject topics. In terms of other matters in this section, no Wikipedia article is stable, especially one dealing with a current issue. Star Trek, IMO, comes to an end as a viable franchise on May 13, 2005 when Enterprise ends. So the article should stabilize in due course after that date; the only alternative is locking the article. As far as the well-written issue, there is always room for improvement, but you'll always end up with newbies and those whose English skills are lacking wanting to contribute. 2. Uncontroversial. I hardly call the Voyager POV issue controversial. And if you check the recent edit, it has been resolved to my satisfaction anyway. 3. Images. Cutting down the Enterprise section added quite a bit of free K. I'm sure image tags don't take up much space and the images themselves don't add to the amount of K on a page, so I can't see any reason why you can't. I did note, however, some concern noted regarding copyright. But if the images fit the Wikipedia policy, go for it. 4. Heading reorganization. There can be some subheads added, certainly. Feel free. 5. Reference. Again, feel free to add. But Wikipedia is not a book - we don't need bibliographies with every article. In the case of Star Trek, it would need an article on its own and I bet there is one.

Anyway, hopefully your stress meter isn't an indication that you're gone for good, as you do have good ideas for the main Trek article. Cheers! 23skidoo 03:58, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Followup. Welcome back! Just a further point to the above, if you want an example of an article where instability and controversy go hand in hand, check out the revert war that has been raging over at Star Trek: Enterprise for days now. Compared to that, the main Star Trek article has been quiet! ;-) 23skidoo 16:40, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I really wish you hadn't nominated it for removal as a featured article. Who really cares? Personally I think you should have "been bold" and tried to fix the thing rather than just do something that is going to get people upset. Plus there is an "anti-Star Trek" agenda by some people here - who would like to see all Trek articles removed - and I feel something like this just gives them ammunition. 23skidoo 14:21, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stressed
Wow, you must be really stressed lately. I'd like to point you to the new stressbusters association which was formed recently. I hope you'll consider returning. I hate to lose another good admin. Feel free to contact me if you need to talk.

The block log seems to indicate you've taken a wikiholiday. Enjoy it! Mgm|(talk) 12:05, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I too hope you're not gone indefinitely, but are merely on a Wikibreak. You've done a lot of great work here. Jayjg (talk) 14:40, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think your presence here is valuable, and I hope you'll be able to lose your stress and find that wiki'ing is fun once more. Hope to see you soon! Radiant! 19:14, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the others - take a wikiholiday, and come back refreshed. &rarr;Raul654 20:24, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

I am sad to see that you've joined the ranks of the missing. gK &iquest;? 20:27, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To cheer you up: The Sandbot appears to be functioning flawlessly; thanks for doing that for me. -Litefantastic 00:31, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Germany unprotected
I noticed while following links (from the Vfd for Federal Republic of Germany) that User:Heimdal had edited his page to announce he was leaving Wikipedia. I haven't really been following the edit war at Germany at all and am not judging which side was responsible (or both), but if one side has left Wikipedia then perhaps it is safe to tentatively unprotect the page. Obviously, if a fresh edit war flares up then it probably ought to be reprotected. -- Curps 06:40, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VFD into a list of day links
As per discussion on Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion, I'll be making WP:VFD into a list of day links probably during the day (UTC) on Sunday 13 March 2005. Votes for deletion (full list) (or WP:VFDF) will be the full list with all day pages transcluded for a multi-megabyte monster page. I've left notes on Wikipedia talk:Bots and User talk:AllyUnion about the change - David Gerard 09:40, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposed bot for genera and species
I happened to see your proposal on the talk pages of User:Circeus. I don't know if this is such a good idea. There must be millions of them. The real problem is that each year many species and genera, even whole families, are renamed or reclassified. This would mean that Wikipedia would get stuck with a great number of names which are no longer accepted names. Nobody is able to control such a large number of out-of-date data. The editors of the Tree of Life project are grappling with this problem on the basis of genus per genus as we advance. There is enough work left for the next couple of decades, even if our number increases considerably. On the other hand, your other proposal to take photos at the university garden is excellent. I work on the botany pages and I know how hard it is sometimes to obtain the right photo. We have to rely most of the time on www.plants.usda.gov where the majority of the photos has a non-commercial restriction. Therefore, go ahead, take the pictures and put them in the Commons. A few recommendations : note the scientific name and take photos of the flower, the leaves, and the habit of the plant. Macro photos would also be very welcome. I wish we could find more photographic enthusiasts on all continents. Only then our photographic database would be truly cosmopolitan. Any questions or proposals, just contact me. JoJan 13:49, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * It's certainly not difficult to browse through category:Plants to find non-illustrated ones, or ones would could use better pitures, however, I think a plant bot should also alter existing articles:

Circeus 15:22, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) by implementing the Taxobox markup, if possible at all.
 * 2) By generating a classification tree whenever there is not already one (again, if at all possible)
 * 3) By sorting individual species into a "plants by classification" category within cat:plant, which would duplicate the species' classification.

Argentine Currency Board
Hi, Ally -- on 4th March I noticed that you are registered on the history page of Argentine Currency Board as having removed the VfD notice -- but it is still there. Slip of the finger perhaps? HowardB 09:41, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

pdfs.
I've found a GPL prog that'll convert pdfs to html, will have to go home to do it though, I'll see what that churns out. The problem is that the names are all backwards so I need to do some fiddling with them to turn them the right way round and add. We'll see. I have other things that I should be doing... Dunc|&#9786; 19:33, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VFD to day links
The point is what's at the official deletions page, Votes for deletion, and the shortcut, WP:VFD. At present that's a page heading towards 1.5 megabytes just of HTML, which causes sizable usability problems when that's the default. I was letting you know for the purpose of not fouling up the bot - but the default page as is is getting beyond being humanly usable - David Gerard 20:22, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Although now someone's strenuously objecting, so I'll leave it. Ah well :-) - David Gerard 23:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Votes for deletion/Old/To close
I'm not sure that Votes for deletion/Old/To close is such a good idea; it adds another step to the closing process, for no benefit that I can immediately see. If the intent is to quickly get a list of discussions that still need to be closed, this can be accomplished with putting a  into your css, which will hide closed discussions. (This is especially easy with Opera, since it can be toggled on and off with one key; I haven't used Firefox for about six months, though I seem to recall it has similar functionality.) If it's meant to help keep track of discussions closed by non-administrators (especially relevant at the moment - I've noticed several discussions closed with the edit summary "consensus to DELETE; admin: please delete" over the past few days), it's already in the instructions to doublecheck all discussions for a day before removing it from /Old. Are there any benefits to the extra step that I'm missing? &mdash;Korath (Talk) 00:28, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Also, as long as I'm here, could I trouble you to tweak Vfdbot to add a or something similar to the previous day's page when updating the list of days currently transcluded into WP:VFD? I catch two or three vfds a week being added to the first day listed on vfd instead of the current day, and sometimes two or three a day where they're added to yesterday's page just after midnight UTC. The latter aren't a problem if they're missed (and I don't bother to correct them even when I see them), but the former certainly are. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 00:28, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old/To close
There's no immediate need to update it actually. You could put a notice saying that this page may be out of date, and may be useful. It's not required for anyone to strike out or anything. But I thought it would be a nice thing to have. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:54, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll tweak VFD Bot later. I'm kind of suppose to be studying for my finals. ^^;;; Do me a favor and post in the talk page for WP:BOTS to make sure it gets approval. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:55, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Will do. Korath (Talk) 01:26, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

Re: VfD bot
Thanks for botting the header. Radiant! 09:49, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

My adminship
Jason, I thank you for your gifts. They will be a light for me in dark places. &mdash; Knowledge Seeker &#2470; 09:05, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Autofellatio
You are my hero, thank you for descending into the murky world of gay porn to rid us of the notorious Autofellatio.jpg. I would award you with the purple heart for the mental scars you have doubtlessly carried away from that enterprise, but as that seems too US-centric, how about I award you with something more useful, should you ever find yourself in a similar situation again. dab (&#5839;) 18:13, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment revote's Amendment 2.2
While I appreciate your view of a need for an amendment of this sort, it shouldn't be pitched on a page which has been designated for voting and not for new proposals, and where time limits and quorum requirements apply. It also necessiates that previous voters return to keep track of the vote to potentially vote on late additions to the proposal such as this one. As such, I have removed the proposal; I direct you (and other supporters of this proposal) to Arbitration policy/Proposals which is being used to hold new proposals while this vote is underway. Thanks. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 18:20, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

Those images
Sorry dude, I tried and it looks like my stitching software is fairly braindead. I can't get a better stitch than the one you've already got! Oh, incidently - thanks for the kind words :) I'll miss you guys. - Ta bu shi da yu 21:53, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun
Hey there,i'm just swinging by to say that i am so glad someone has decided to fire up wikifun again! when i first created the page i didn't really think it would take off quite like it did, and when it did i just didn't have time to keep up with it at work so i handed it off. it will be interesting to see how many will get involved in the future. can you think of any good places to advertise? drop me a line anytime. --Larsie 02:55, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Autofellatio.jpg
Hello AllyUnion, I wonder if you'd be so kind as to restore Image:Autofellatio.jpg. The copyright questions about it are exactly the same as were raised in its previous stint at copyright problems. It appears that the image you've found is the exact same as the one found by User:Cantus, albeit cropped and larger. I would like to dredge up the previous discussion from the history, but I keep getting error messages at the moment. Cheers, T IMBO  ( T A L K )  06:43, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh OK – I got it off a mirror and reuploaded it, so no worries. T IMBO  ( T A L K )  07:59, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image:Chicago Skyline at Sunset.jpg
Stitched per your request. This image is slightly lower resolution than Image:Chicago Skyline at Sunset.png. Were the pre-stitched files you uploaded the same ones used to make the .png panorama? Duk 10:10, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, its more grainy than your .png version. I stitched it at full resolution, but it still ends up with fewer pixels than the png version. I'll tinker some more.


 * If you want to give it a try, I used Autostitch (www.autostitch.net). It's a free download. (I also tried Panorama Tools (software) with Emblend, same results). Duk 10:43, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Very Nice! (Commons upload). The .jpg I uploaded earlier has been deleted. Duk 13:58, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WP:AN header/footer
Hey, great idea! I love it! (I'm just jealous that I never thought of it! :-) Noel (talk) 14:31, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VfD update
Heh, I was considering asking you if I screwed something up when doing it by hand. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:55, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Highway1
I've deleted two extremely obnoxious personal attacks from this guy, I've explained to him three times what he needs to do to get past the copyvio thing, and all he's interested in doing is calling names and reverting the copyvio. If he wants to cooperate and be civil, then I will be, too, but if he wants to make unilateral reverts of the copyvio boilerplate, then he gets blocked. RickK 22:07, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

See, and  RickK 22:22, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

Even when I'm being nice, I'm attacked, so why should I even bother? RickK 22:45, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)

Wikifun
I'd love to host the next competition :D. I just hope that no one answers the question correctly by then (I'm pretty glad that FreplySpang got 14 right, so im still in the lead). BTW, do you know how long time should there be until the next round? Gkhan 23:55, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)