User talk:Arwel Parry/archive 5

Bad maps
Your help and common sense is needed. User:Kelisi, has been producing some maps and trying to replace the CIA maps for several Caribbean and South American countries. In my opinion these new maps (which have more detail than the CIA maps) are vastly inferior. They use garish colours, terrible decorative fonts, use a horribly large pixel size and are generally ugly and crowded, and look terribly amateurish and like they were produced on a Commodore 64 or something. Here is a list of maps he has produced. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=Kelisi&hideminor=0&namespace=6. Perhaps the worst example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Brazilmap.gif. Bizarrly these maps seems to have support from a few people who have been trying to push through their inclusion on several pages. Please see talk:Panama and talk:Honduras. Jooler 09:10, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Images and media for deletion votes

 * I am contacting people who previously helped to vote to delete a generally objectionable photograph by a vote of 88 to 21, and who might be unaware that immediately after that image was voted to be deleted someone posted another which was very similar in content. My objections to this, and the previous image that was voted to be deleted might be based upon reasons far different from any that you have, but I do object to it, and consider the posting of such images to be acts of asinine stupidity, which burdens the project and its major educational aims in ways that they should not be burdened, and can be extremely detrimental to the acceptance and growth of WIkipedia's use and influence. Thus far those who I believe to be in the extreme minority of Wikipedians who would like to include these images, many who have been channeled to the voting page from the article with which it is associated have dominated the voting, 23 to 12 (as of the time that I composed this message). I would like to be somewhat instrumental in shedding a bit more light upon the issue, and if possible, helping to turn the tide against its inclusion. It might also be necessary to begin making an effort to establish an explicit Wikipedia policy against explicite photographic depictions of humans engaged in erotic, auto-erotic, or quasi-erotic activities. To my limited knowledge such images have not been accepted as appropriate anywhere else within this project, and frankly I can agree with those who are casually labeled prudes for opposing their inclusion, that they should not be. Vitally important information that might be unwelcome by some is one thing that should never be deleted, but un-needed images that can eventually prevent or impede many thousands or millions of people from gaining access to the great mass of truly important information that Wikipedia provides is quite another matter. There are vitally important distinctions to be made. Whatever your reasons, or final decisions upon the matter, I am appealing for more input on the voting that is occurring at Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_deletion. ~ Achilles † 21:39, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I have already voted on this issue. -- Arwel 22:03, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of which, I noticed your comments. The vandalism issues should be greatly resolved (on all wikis) because of the recent bugfix that disables image redirects. (See my sandbox for a demonstration, or lack thereof :). I know that the vandalism has died down greatly on en:, and I suspect (and hope) that the same has occurred at cy: and the other, smaller wikis. T IMBO  ( T A L K )  23:06, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

more cats (meeow!)
I notice you've recently been adding clubs like Glentoran and Aberdeen to Category:United Soccer Association teams - I must admit I have never heard of this organisation, and I wonder if something is wrong, since that category is itself included in Category:United States soccer clubs, so obviously something is amiss somewhere! -- Arwel 01:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * The United Soccer Association was a league, sanctioned by FIFA, played during the summer months in America. Instead of setting up their own teams, existing teams from around the world were paid to play under different names. E.g. Glentoran F.C. as the Detroit Cougars. Bornintheguz 17:26, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pope Benedict Page
I honestly don't know what to put down, I just wanted to mark the page since lamers keep on altering it in inappropriat ways. Sorry.

pope template
There is a disagreement over the form of template to be used for popes. One user designed what I think was an extremely clean, visually attractive layout. One or two others replaced it with the standard and IMHO decidedly inferior version. IMHO we should be using the new version as a replacement standard, not using the inferior standard as the one to use. I have asked people to vote on the issue on Template talk:Infobox pope. Your opinions would be welcomed. Fear ÉIREANN 23:02, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

FYI - I really liked the new Pope Infobox so I have proposed that it be used for all religious leades on Infobox policy. There have been no objections so far (since Friday). If that continues I plan on helping to update the articles for the new Infobox. If you have comments, concerns please discuss there Trödel| talk 17:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Michael Howard
Yes, my reasoning in reverting was that while the anon was correct, the point is a technical and a very temporary one. My thought was that once the General Election was concluded we could go through and fix all the relevant articles. Mackensen (talk) 17:36, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Rail
Hey there, I randomly came across your page while looking through recent changes (I think you had just edited Wales) and noticed that you worked for British rail through privatization. I'm a transportation reporter here across the pond, one of the things I focus on is rail -- Amtrak etc -- and I'd love to pick your brain sometime about what you thought about privatization and how it's worked out there. It'd be nice to be able to get a real view of the way things worked out there from someone who isn't a politician with an axe to grind. Nothing official-like, just interested to chat between rail wonks. Drop me a note or email sometime (katefan0 at gmail dot com). · Katefan0(scribble) 21:56, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Scottish Legal Tender
Thought you might be interested to know there's a few notes on the issue of Scottish legal tender on Talk:Pound sterling now; you seem to be right about pennies being legal up to 20p, according to the best legal reference I could dig up at short notice. (I'll try and chase up the actual references sometime in the next couple of weeks, and finally have something solid to rely on). Since it's possible SPICe was right after all, as the reference is a bit old, I've switched to an example using silver rather than pennies for the "up to X amount" note.

But, dear God, it's convoluted. There's the intriguing footnote that Bank of England notes are legal tender in Scotland - it just happens that they don't issue any in the right denominations to be legal tender... there seems to be some phobia of solid rules on this topic. Shimgray 01:57, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Please Help
Salaam

I am having trouble with several of the administrators who have been deleting my article about my country (Winkaland). They are calling it "Patent Nonsense" and saying that I am schizophrenic. My article does not violate the policy which I read about Patent Nonsense. It is clear, lucid and I truly believe it would make sense to a person reading it. Obviously it discusses a country and it's monarch. I haven't even had time to address the delicate political situation with Iran and Armenia because they keep destroying my article! I admit there are very few articles on the internet about my country but that is because it is very remote and very poor and Iran and Armenia are do not recognize it (but the parthians did) so they are saying that because I do not have any evidence so it doesn't exist so I am schizophrenic. The policy I read said that there is some sort of tribunal to decide but the admin is very hostile and I became angry and their antagonizing and so we are not on good terms so I don't think I will be given a fair opportunity to challenge their application of the policy. Please help me any way you can if you have time. - Also one of their gang made some sexist demeaning remarks calling me "cute" - this was in response to my posting of a "nonsense" on his user talk page because of his arbitrary posting on mine and deletion of my challenge on the discussion page - but I was very insulted and asked for an apology and none was recieved, if you could do anything to help I would very much appreciate it. Thanks!

Wasalaam - Alveena

Heads up
might want to check out User:Arwel --Dryazan 00:29, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! - Alveena

Manchester United/History of Manchester United
Hi,

I noticed you'd been working on Man United-related pages and could do with your opinion on something.

The history section was split out of the page last year (I think) but someone then wrote another history section in the main page. Both pages are now well over the recommended maximum size for a Wikipedia article, and it's getting to the stage where I suspect people are editing them without reading them all the way through (which would explain why the Glazer takeover is mentioned twice in Manchester United, in roughly the same amount of detail each time.

So, my idea is to create new pages for different eras in United's history, merge the relevant bits of Alex Ferguson, History of Manchester United and the History section of Manchester United into each new page and put summaries of each new page on Manchester United, with comments asking people not to make the summaries too long. The new articles would have titles like:


 * Manchester United pre-1945
 * Manchester United 1945-1968
 * Manchester United 1968-1986
 * Manchester United 1986-present

I think something like this is necessary to keep the pages manageable, but obviously don't want to make such big changes to other people's work without hearing what people think first. Please let me know what you think, at the Manchester United talk page.

Thanks, Cantthinkofagoodname 10:54, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

ok
I know so little about him I was just going on what was in the entry before thats all sorry for any harm that was caused. 24.250.217.87 21:06, 29 May 2005 (UTC) above comment was by me 578 (Yes?) 21:06, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Michael Howard
20:40, 1 Jun 2005 131.111.8.102 (Michael Howard is very smarmy)

You do realise that I never edited anything, and that you simply reverted nothing. I simply wished to address the fact that Michael Howard is in fact very smarmy, despite the fact also that I'm a passionate conservative!
 * If it pleases you to think so.... Funny how my revert changed the picture and formatting back to how it should have been, though! One would have thought Cambridge students were brighter than to make cock-ups like that. -- Arwel 21:47, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

VFD
Just letting you know about Votes for deletion/HYP (universities) 2. If you have an opinion, please vote. I am notifying people who have been active on either side of the debate. &mdash;Lowellian (talk) 23:51, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

Opinion
Your opinions are earnestly sought on |Template for deletion:Crowns. To put it simply, there were various lists on crowns and state symbols buried on files, hardly touched, and full of unwritten articles. I created a series of I'd say thirty articles on crowns, types of crowns, crown jewels etc, at considerable time and effort. I created a provisional template to link the articles together, which I planned, once I had all the information in place, to separate into a series of templates as there was too much information for one large one.

SimonP, who has been waging war on templates for ages (usually as a minority of one, through he usually forces his opinion on pages - such as his deletions of the Template:Commonwealth Realms from articles on Commonwealth Realms - by wearing people down on the issue) nominated the template for deletion. While some users have praised the template for creating a workable themed group with a visual unity via the template, a couple of people are determined to delete the template and use their beloved, hideously ugly, lists, the same lists that had proved to be a dead end for all these articles before.

The antics of SimonP makes me wonder why bother doing any serious work here, when all one get is attempts by a small number of people to replace professionally laid out information by visually unattractive, frequently complicated and because of the ease of edits, perrennially inaccurate long lists. I would very much like to hear your views on the matter on the TfD page linked above. Fear ÉIREANN (talk) 21:40, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Images of notes
Hi Arwel (bore da?), thanks for your response on the Talk:British banknotes page. Has there been a big discussion somewhere about the use of images of British banknotes, because I would imagine pictures of currency to be a fairly strong contender to be fair use. I did notice there's also no images of coins, either; presumably the same situation exists? Proto 14:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Proto. It's "P'nawn da" at that time of day!. We used to have (over a year ago) a large picture of the Series D £1 note on British banknotes (provided by me), then someone stupidly went and asked the Bank of England if we could put pictures of their notes on the site and they explicitly said "no" - so it had to go. For the series E notes, the BoE has for the first time stuck a © symbol on all their notes, so we can't just rip them off either. -- Arwel 21:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Booooo to the Bank of England. Diolch yn fawr. Proto 10:59, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

History of rail transport in Great Britain
Thankyou, Arwel, for your comment on my talk page and your kind remark - I have just seen it. I have in mind now the addition of a separate heading Electrification of the railways (or some such title) since I have noticed that this is only mentioned en passant - and there is also no main article on it. There was one - Suburban electrification of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway - a very poor one which I have rewritten, but that is all. Many station/line articles mention electrification, but none to pull them all together. It is a big project, so will take a while. Peter Shearan 08:19, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Trident Television
Hi Arwel

I've spoken to Shelagh Graham, daughter of the late JP Graham, the company secretary of Tyne Tees and later Trident Television.

She reports that Anglia was never the third prong (with TTT and YTV). The third prong was always the company's "other interests" - a zoo and later the Playboy brand in the UK!

She thinks people think Anglia was the third prong to be because of Trident Anglia, their joint sales company in the US.

I confess to not being sure what to believe - it strikes me as more likely that Anglia was to be a prong; but this is evidence (almost) from the horse's mouth.

What do you reckon?

Redvers 08:41, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Oooh! Interesting question. I've just done a Google, and found this which seem to imply in the section "The easy ride and the hard fall" that Anglia was intended to merge with YTV and TTT, though I must admit that several of the other links I've found seem to back up Ms Graham's view. I won't object if you take out the reference to Anglia - I think "Trident Anglia" has muddied the waters a bit. The problem with doing Google searches these days is that so many of the results are mirrors of Wikipedia! (even something called biologydaily.com!). -- Arwel 12:29, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've made the change, plus added some items suggested by Marknew in the mark-up. Let me know your opinions (if you have any!)

Ta

Redvers 21:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Clarification on German spelling
I noticed your comment on User talk:128.205.163.96 in which you metion that ß is no longer recognized as official in German, and I felt the need to correct your misapprehension. In fact, the recent changes in German spelling did not eliminate ß, but merely limit the circumstances in which it appears, namely after long vowels and dipthongs, but never in between two vowels of equal stress or following a short vowel. So for instance, der Fuß is correct but der Fluß is now incorrect (although still used as the reforms are of mixed popularity; the few major papers to officially switch over have - to the best of my knowledge - changed their minds).

As a result, große is perfectly correct in German (see de:Friedrich II. (Preußen)). I do agree that using special German characters in the English wikipedia should be minimized, but I got the impression you may have been misled on the German spelling reform. --Laura Scudder | Talk 08:25, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. -- Arwel 10:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Poll
There is a poll in the talk page of the Macedonian Slavs article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonian_Slavs#The_poll

Some people are lobbying for changing the article's name to Macedonian without any qualifier. As it seems, a number of these people come from the Macedonian/Macedonian Slav wikipedia project. It seemed only fair to attract the attention of people possibly from the other side of the story .I hope that this message is of interest to you, if not please accept my apologies.

Azerbaijan vs. Azerbaidzhan
The correct spelling is Azerbaidzhan. It is spelled this way in my passport. Google gives about 19,700 results. Also the main encyclopedias give this spelling... Musah 22:50, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

History of the English penny
Hi there -

I added the formerFA template because we are cleaning up the WP:FARC archives, moving all pages to transcluded subpages. Adding either formerFA or FARCfailed to the talk pages of the relevant articles should make it easier to find old FARC discussions, whether a page loses its "featured" or not. There is some discussion in Wikipedia talk:Featured article removal candidates.

The discussion of this article dates back to July 2004 and was previously in an old FARC archive page (Featured article removal candidates/archive/March to July 2004) but now in its own subpage, Featured article removal candidates/History of the English penny. The discussion was pretty much unanimous for removal of featured status. From the article's talk page history, the featured template was not removed for some reason until September 2004. It is not listed in Featured articles.

Thanks for the message: I have fixed the template to point to the subpage now rather than the general archive. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:46, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Champions League stuff
Hmm... I'll have to check out your sandbox article soon! BTW, the only thing I know about that club you asked about is that they're from Belarus, which you probably figured out for yourself.  Dale Arnett 20:01, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:UK Wikipedians
Hi, just to let you know that the list of UK participants at the UK notice board was getting rather long, so I have replaced it with the above category. I was about to add it to your user page but saw that it is protected against editing, so I'll leave it to you to add yourself. -- Francs2000 | Talk 30 June 2005 18:46 (UTC)

British county names (again)
A year or so ago you kindly helped out with developing a policy on this. It's all going pear-shaped and I, for one, would be grateful if you'd take another look. I've raised an RfC or you can go straight to the Project's talk page. Thanks. Chris Jefferies 7 July 2005 15:51 (UTC)

Text conversion of football squads
I forget which user's IP address it is which was doing this - but I'm reverting all the changes he/she made. You are right in saying that it looks grotesque on the screen, and since this was done without any consultation with any users or even with the brain of the IP user involved, I feel it only right to revert the changes.

I hope this is okay with you - I can understand if I get bombarded with criticism. I can take it. -whimper- I suppose. Bobo192 | Edits


 * Hehe. Now to check that whoever it was that changed them in the first place hasn't just gone and reverted them back..! Thanks for your support. Bobo192 | Edits

Fulham F.C. and more on text conversion
How do you feel now on the matter? I've just been requested reasons for my removing of text boxes by A.K.A.47 and now I don't know where I stand on the matter. Which version would you prefer? Bobo192 | Edits


 * Agreed. Naturally where we don't need flags (such as national teams), sometimes bolded role letters is a nice neat solution, but both being used is indeed slightly over the top in my opinion, and besides, you are right, FW or F for forward should be used instead. Thank you. Bobo192 | Edits

Nassar image
I got this picture from a website listing the most wanted terrorists. I'm sure that people are free to reproduce it, as that would be helping to catch the terrorists. However, I don't know exactly what license I would be able to use it under... Thanks for the warning though.Heraclius 00:58, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Barnstar
I hereby award you this barnstar for you excellent work in creating spoken Wikipedia articles. Your pace is steady and your tone is light. Your accent, besides being useful for pronouncing Welsh words, also brings character to the 'pedia. I hope you make many more. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 15:48, July 19, 2005 (UTC)


 * Hey! Thanks :) -- Arwel 17:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Elizabeth II renaming (round XXXIV)
You may have noticed *mega sigh* that yet another user has dragged up the lets rename Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom farce, only 9 days after the last vote ended. I have proposed instead this vote on Talk:Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom page:

That Wikipedia stop wasting time on endless revoting on this goddamned issue and ban votes on this issue from this page for at least six months.

Hopefully this will put this nonsense to bed for at least 6 months. Your (hopefully final) vote would be welcome. Fear ÉIREANN \(caint) 21:02, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet
Arwel,

If you get a chance, could you keep an eye out for a sockpuppet from Canberra (almost certainly the banned user Skyring who is targeting royal articles and the Bob Geldof article for reversions. He has been mounting a stalking campaign against me (that is why he was banned.) I've been blocking his sockpuppets all right. He is bound to come back for the umpteenth time tonight. He is particularly targeting George VI of the United Kingdom, Bob Geldof and some other articles because I edited them lately. I'm going to protect the above two but he is bound to try other royal articles now.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Fear ÉIREANN \(caint) 00:05, 20 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I'll just fire up my copy of CDVF for 45 minutes or so before bed... -- Arwel 00:08, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Alexandra whatsit
Your opinion would be appreciated in the vote I've started at Talk:Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse. Deb 22:35, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm honestly in two minds on this one. Alexandra Fyodorovna is undoubtedly the name she's best known as, but "of Hesse"? I have to admit that when I saw "Alix of Hesse" I thought "who's she?", so I think I'd better sit this one out, sorry. -- Arwel 23:52, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

21 July 2005 London explosions
I blocked the vandal who was causing the problems at 21 July 2005 London explosions (69.134.118.200). I think you can basically just revert to the 17:04, 21 July 2005 version. Thue | talk 15:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think I managed to get back to a sensible version. It's unprotected now anyway. Are you sure it was vandalism and not just the section duplication bug when there's lots of simulataneous edits? -- Arwel 15:29, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure; All the users edits were duplications of material, in between other forms of vandalism. An incomplete survey gave me the impression that that user was the sole cause of the duplication (he did it again after it was fixed). Thue | talk 15:35, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject Football
I noticed you've made a lot of edits to football articles and wondered if you'd like to join WikiProject Football. It's still new and there isn't a lot happening yet, but we're hoping to get things like a football collaboration of the (week/fortnight/whatever) going soon.

CTOAGN 19:07, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi
Hi ! Nice to meet you. But I don't think we ever met on fr: or en:... --Pontauxchats 07:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)