User talk:Amalas/Archive 8

Wikicode and SFD grief
Nice formatting of your barnstars, which I've somewhat plagiarised; never used the "preview" button so many times in my life...

Now, apologies for dredging it up again, as I can tell you're not mad-keen to get involved at any level, but I've been thinking about how (and whether) to close the latest iteration of the "mainland China" saga, and you seem to be the only other person involved in closing SFD currently. (Obviously as nominator I'd ideally have nothing to do with closing it, but I think "ideally" sailed some time ago on this one.) Bearing in mind the lack of conclusive support for the nomination, and the "vote patterns" in favour of the "status quo ante bellum", as IN would say, the best I can think of is to declare the template move "no consensus", to delete the now-empty category on that basis (and for the want of any other plan to make things consistent with the permies), and to refer the whole thing to WP:DRV for review of said actions. Objections, comments, sympathy? Alai 01:44, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I've long since formed the impression that no-one ever writes "completely original" wikicode, it just sorts of accretes from various directions...

I hadn't noticed the Wikibreak notice until just now, so additional apologies on that score. I'd largely agree with you on the templates (though most of the ROC ones seem to be at "Taiwan", so it might be considerable trouble to change those... those I suppose "considerable trouble" is a given, for any course of action (or none)). On the hierarchy, note that Hong Kong and Macau are part of the PRC (post-'97, but weren't pre-), which is where the trouble starts. The "Instantnood camp" want to have "mainland China" categories (and if they can't have categories, have stub categories regardless) to denote the PRC as it was pre-'97, i.e. PRC - (Hong Kong and Macau), to wit the entity that competes in the Olympic games as "China", etc; the "Schmucky camp" want to have no such categories, on the grounds of it not being an official subdivision and/or an official term for that region. Also note that for some permcat trees, we have a "X in/of China" but no "X in/of the People's Republic of China"; for some, it's the reverse;  for others, there's both. For "geography", there's a, and a , but nothing by way of "mainland China" equivalents. Alai 19:51, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

"Mainland China" isn't so much historical, as a term of disputed "officialness", to describe a de facto present political status (the provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities ruled "directly" by the PRC, as opposed to the SARs annexed a decade ago, which have a different status). I mention the permcats not to bemoan them (well, only in part) as to mention what the state of play is, if we're attempting to follow them in scope. Alai 20:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

"Mainland China" excludes Macau (which is likely to be upmerged in a number of cases) and Hong Kong (which would be either upmerged or a subcat of a PRC type. It's be a bit like creating a (stub or otherwise) category for "Mainland United States", "Lower 48 States", "Contiguous United States" ten years after a politically controversial annexation of Hawaii and Alaska, in which they retained their own currencies, passports and Olympic teams, but where said 48 states were not formally designated as any of those, and were in theory just "48 of the the 50 first order divisions".  If that's not too contrived or too woolly an analogy.  On reflection, I might leave the SFD open until this DRV is concluded, since it in theory might somewhat address the "consistency with the permcats" issue.  If anyone else closes it in the meantime, then so be it. Alai 02:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you mean Alaska and Hawaii kept their currencies, passports and Olympic teams in the first ten years after attaining statehood? - Privacy 08:41, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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'rename to "American hip hop group stubs"'?
I hate to quibble yet more, and I'm obviously of a declared position on this one, but isn't that more like "unanimity on renaming the 'hiphop' to 'hip hop', and complete lack of consensus on 'United States' vs. 'American'"? If we're going to flip between the numerous "American" and "United States" stub cats, (likewise the many "British" or "United Kingdom" cases), the job queue could be full for quite some time to come... Alai 04:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Happy wikiday!
Just noticed your announcement at the top of the page - happy wiki-birthday! Grutness...wha?  23:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

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Category:Republic of China university stubs SFD
I have quickly glanced through the votes and comments. Seems like nobody agreed with merging into Category:China university stubs. Many voted for keep, but no one agreed with the merge with the China Category except the nominator himself and Alai. - Privacy 07:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes people agreed with keeping the template. But as I read it only the nominator himself and Alai agreed with merging the category with China. - Privacy 19:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry. Are you referring to the wrong discussion? - Privacy 19:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I was referring to the closing of the SFD of Category:Republic of China university stubs. - Privacy 19:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * But nobody except Alai agreed with the nominator's choice to upmerge to China. - Privacy 19:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I cited the naming conventions too. And I was of the opinion that Caerwine interpreted and applied the naming conventions wrongly. The naming conventions provide that "Mainland China" should be used if it is more appropriate than "China". This is exactly the case of the China university stub category, which had always been about institutions in Mainland China. What I suggested was to keep the scope, but to describe its scope in a better way (for example, but not limited to, renaming or rewriting the introduction) to reflect what it had been about. - Privacy 20:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Seems like the two discussions are providing conflicting outcome. But neither is binding on the other. The outcome with the discussion on China university stubs does not and should not affect how should the outcome with Republic of China university stubs be interpreted.


 * Furthermore, don't ignore the two or three keep votes at Republic of China university stubs which did not indicate if they agree with upmerge or not. In any case, the discussion is clearly producing a "no consensus" outcome. - Privacy 21:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes the discussion is closed. I don't think there is any reason to re-open the discussion or to re-discuss. It is because the problem is the way you closed it. The discussion produced a "no consensus" result. There is not even a plurality who support to up-merge to China. But you interpreted the result incorrectly. - Privacy 07:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Canada vs. Canadian
I'd like to close this disucssion soon, so I can archive the whole day. From what I can see, all you guys are doing is arguing. Is there anything we can do to come up with an agreeable solution, both for this discussion and for the long term? Please respond in the SFD discussion. ~ Amalas rawr  =^_^=  15:45, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what to add at this point. (I'd have closed it as a rename long ago, were I not the nominator (not to mention one of the disputants).)  I thought we'd some measure of consensus in the recent past for the renaming of "stub grammatical" categories, but evidently straying into -geo- territory has re-awakened opposition to same.  I may factor those out for separate consideration in future.  Alai 16:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you hadn't mentioned your preference to that effect: had you done so, I'd instead have closed it long since as a NC (in that otherwise similar hypothetical circumstance).  I'm sure everyone (or at least, the three usual suspects that traditionally break 2:1 in some permutation on almost any given naming issue) would agree with the "athletes" cat (I was only looking at the top-level subcats).  You're right, though, we should try to establish a general principle to follow here;  I was toying with starting a talk-page discussion on "what do we mean by 'following the permcat'?", with a view to guideline-ising it if there's consensus.  But as there's unlikely to be, and as it's essentially the same three-cornered argument, I didn't immediately find the willpower to do so.  Alai 16:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I've done pretty much what I can. I suggested a consistent compromise position that followed the permcats - using "nation X stubs" where the permcats are "X of/in nation" and "national X stubs" where the permcats are "national X", and using this as a standard for all stub types, but this apparently wasn't acceptable to some, although for the life of me I don't understand why. Neither was the logical idea of simply using the permcat names followed by the word "stubs" ("not grammatical" say the same objecters). In some cases, though, the permcats use the "of/in nation" for a very good reason. I certainly disagree with the suggestion raised in the SFD that the easy ones should be at national X and the harder ones at nation X - that seems to me ridiculous. And I certainly don't accept that this should be renamed - there was no consensus to do so at SFD, and if it is renamed then I shall bring it back there since it seems to me that to rename it would go against the tenet that"no consensus = no change" usually used at xfd pages. Or perhaps I should bring Dominica geography stubs, Dominican Republic geography stubs, Democratic Republic of the Congo geography stubs and Republic of Congo geography stubs to SFD, since both of the former pair should then be at "Dominican geography stubs", and the latter pair should both be at "Congolese geography stubs". Other than re-suggesting my initial compromise, in the hope that Alai and others will have another think about it, I can't think of where to go from here. Grutness...wha?  22:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * You wrote: This is why you guys drive me crazy. You and Alai are going to go back on forth on this until the end of time. Hopefully you've read some of my conversation with Alai, so you can see some more of my opinions on this. Do you think a subpage devoted to this sort of discussion, with the hopes of gaining some sort of official guideline would be productive? Arguing about this at every other SFD doesn't seem like the thing to do either.
 * I agree, arguing about it does no good at all, which is why I offered the compromise which seems to me to be a perfectly logical way of doing things, avoiding the adjectival form only where it is also avoided in the permcats. I just don't understand why Alai in particular prefers to support a method which does not parallel the permcat names in any way and will frequently lead to mass confusion. And yes, I read your conversation with Alai about it, and I agree that if the permcat is Cat:Canadian athletes, then the stub cat should be Cat:Canadian athlete stubs - in fact, that is exactly what my compromise position suggests. It's only those cases where the permcat is "X of/in Foo" that there's any real problem. Here, there are often speciofoc reasons why the permcat has not been names "Fooian X", so changing the stub cats to "Fooian X stubs" would be distinctly counterproductive. As I said above, ideally, they would be at "X of/in Foo stubs", but Alai claims that this exact paralleling of the permcat name is too ungrammatical to be used. Using "Foo X stubs" on those and only those cases makes sense so as to avoid the problems that those specific categories have with "Fooian" and also to avoid the non-grammatical exact parallels. Grutness...wha?  03:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

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Thanks
Thank you. Vaniac 20:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Please semi protect a stub
Hi Amalas

It looks like some anons are targetting Tech-company-stub to make it display ads for obscure companies. Would you mind semi-protecting it so we can get rid of this nonsense? Regards. Valentinian T / C 18:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Valentinian T / C 18:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Cateory discussion
The template looks good - I'd put it at all the ones you list, plus WP:SFD and its talk page, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories) and Naming conventions (categories), and possibly WP:CFD and its talk page. Grutness...wha?  20:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Copying from Grutness' talk page so all the pages are in one place
 * WikiProject Stub sorting
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting
 * WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines
 * WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types
 * Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types

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Wikifun
Round 14 is starting just about now. --Spondoolicks 16:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

China stuff
Good luck! Alas, it's not as if things are getting any clearer over time, since the IN camp are attempting a fightback on the "mainland" terminology in the permcats. At least the number of articles affected directly is fairly low, since there's only a few non-province-sorted articles left. Now the small matter of what to do with all the other "China-" templates... Alai 17:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Mainland China company stubs
I see three keep and two delete votes. Counting the nomination too, it is a three to three tie. - Privacy 17:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a democracy. There may appear to be little concensus in terms of votes alone, but the points raised in support of each vote counts as much, if not more. A whole bunch of sockpuppet suspects engaging in vote staking activities may become counter-productive, as the above shows. I, for one, salutes Amalas for his utmost bravery in closing a couple of these cases!--Huaiwei 23:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't mention it, and my deepest apologies, Ma'am! ;)--Huaiwei 16:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to the answer at my talk page. - Privacy 21:28, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are at least five. Which one? ;)--Huaiwei 23:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

AWB edits
I noticed in this edit that you were replacing with  ; however, it seems that the old stub was just deleted. I checked a few other articles from your contributions list, and they were all ok, except for the change you made to List of sensors, which was right after the Register transfer level edit I linked to above. The edits before and after those are ok, so, I don't know what's going on. I fixed those two articles, but, you may want to verify that none of the other edits were broken. Regards. Neier 23:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. I first thought maybe AWB was playing "stub sensor" on the articles, because it is fairly lengthy for a stub; but, the list was short, so I discarded that explanation.  The expandlist completely slipped my mind.  Thanks for the follow-up. Neier 09:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Area
Thanks for your assistance, it seems to be sorted now. I had already managed to resolve the squasyness (see this to see what it was like previously). — superbfc  [  talk  |  cont  ] — 16:22, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Complex systems
Thank you for your contribution to the complex system article in the past. Currently there is a Call for Deletion for the associated Category:Complex systems covering this interdisplinary scientific field. If you would like to contribute to the discussion, you would be very welcome. Please do this soon if possible since the discussion period is very short. Thank you for your interest if you can contribute. Regards, Jonathan Bowen 15:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)