User talk:Avalon/Archive 2

CAoW
Since you are listed as a Roman Catholic, I figured I'd send you this. Catholic Alliance of wikipedia has been nominated for Deletion. Please vote and/or tell other people to vote to keep this organization on wikipedia. --Shanedidona 01:29, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

userboxes
Hi - thanks for you message. The page you refer to has userboxes laid out in three columns, and this is purely down to the templates being listed one after another in the text. Now that you mention it, that page should really follow the standard format of a wikitable... such as Userboxes/Sports/Football. I see you have the userbox on your user page anyway... has your question been answered? Let me know if you'd like any more info. Deano (Talk) 12:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom Vote
Hi Avalon,

As per your opposition vote to my ArbCom candidacy due to the lack of questions, I've elaborated on my statement and explanation at the questions page. I welcome any further questions to be asked to clarify any of your doubts, and let me know on my talkpage if it's urgent. Thank you for your interest! :)

- Best regards, Mailer Diablo 02:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:AFL
Hi, you say you're a fan of Australian football, well I suggest you take a look at WikiProject AFL. Cheers, Rogerthat 03:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Re Royce Hart, yep, that's the sort of thing WP:AFL is looking for. Good work mate, Rogerthat 09:27, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Çağlar
Please don't remove the wikify template without doing the required work. --Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης ) 22:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that that's a decision that can be left to the person patrolling the "to be wikified" category; someone might feel able to to basic wikification before the article is copy-edited (and that might help the person who copy-edits). If the work needs doing, the template should be added; what order the work is done in is left open. --Mel Etitis  ( Μελ Ετητης ) 12:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Changing the names of articles
You need to click on "Move" and enter the new name &mdash; see Help:Moving a page for full instructions. I've moved Gosford house to Gosford House, so the links will all work now. Cheers. Proteus (Talk) 23:17, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Baron Dynevor
I've often left the article where it is, noted the alternative spelling, and created a redirect. See Earl of Clanricarde for an example of this can get ugly! Mackensen (talk) 22:20, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Page name for temperature articles
To avoid flip-flopping between 'degree Fahrenheit' and 'Fahrenheit' or 'degree Celsius' and 'Celsius', I propose that we have a discussion on which we want. I see you have contributed on units of measurement, please express your opinion at Talk:Units of measurement. Thanks. bobblewik 22:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Userbox
I note your reaction to the loss of the anti-gender-neutral language userbox - Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/Grammar.

Do you intend to list it at Deletion review/Userbox debates? Avalon 05:39, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. Just thought I'd let you know I listed the box. --Roofus 07:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Charles Arthur Uryan Rhys, 8th Baron Dynevor
You ask why I changed OBE to link to Order of the British Empire. Quite simply, OBE is a disambiguation page and, while it would be obvious to most users that the correct reference is to the honour rather than to "out of body experience" or the Ottawa Board of Education, it is better that the link goes direct to the correct page rather than through a disambiguation page like this.--George Burgess 10:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. It was of course supposed to be a pipe (now fixed). I was having some problems with my connection last night (hence 2 closely spaced edits when there should have been just one) and I did not notice that the | was missing--George Burgess 15:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Father Samuel and Your Userboxes
I left a note on the page talk as well as User:Williamwilliam's talk page for verification. The thirteen colonies userbox is hilarious, as well as anytime someone uses "miffed" :) TKE 01:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Two questions answered
Thanks for alerting me to that - I've answered the questions to the best of my ability. David | Talk 13:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Alex Douglas-Hamilton
Hi, I'm pretty sure Alexander Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale was born in 1976, not 1978 as in the article. Could you check your source on this? Cheers, JackyR | Talk 21:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * (I never know where to respond, on your talk page, or mine, so I've replied in both places.)
 * Hello, My source is The Peerage which itself cites;
 * Mosley, Charles (ed.) Peerage and Baronetage, 106th edition Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 1999), volume 1, page 1281.


 * Of course, it may be wrong. Do you have any clarification? Avalon 21:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, responded on my talk page after getting stuffed in the great General Tojo block (you don't want to know)... *sigh* JackyR | Talk 02:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Answers
To your first question - you can't do that. You can italicize titles within the text, but not in an article title. For your second question, I believe &lt;blockquote&gt; will do that. Adam Bishop 00:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Alternative enumerations
I remember wondering about that myself more than a year ago, and to this date, I haven't come across any Wiki code that would do that. Of course, this might just mean that I'm not as informed about this. Have you tried asking on the help desk lately? --HappyCamper 03:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I've asked your question at two different places... - let's see if anything interesting comes of it :-) --HappyCamper 03:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Text size problem
Hi. Have you checked the "text size" setting in your internet browser? It's quite easy to change this accidentially. For instance, in Internet Explorer you can change the text size setting by holding Ctrl down while you roll your mouse's scroll wheel. In Internet Explorer, go View - Text Size and select "Medium". I'm not sure what to do in other browsers, though.

If that doesn't fix your problem, try clearing you cache, as you may have a corrupted version of the site's CSS file. Hold down Ctrl on your heyboard and click "refresh" or "reload" when you're viewing a Wikipedia page.

I hope this has been of help. - Mark 13:33, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Briley brothers article
Found your edits to Briley brothers helpful, since I hardly knew where to start with that article. I'm not familiar either with the case or with the American justice system. Thanks. Itsmejudith 07:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Jack Mckelvey
Hi Avalon, thanks for getting to this so quickly and wikifying it. Only five hours from me slapping the tag on it to you helping fix it up - a pretty good rate!

Cheers,

Lankiveil 08:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

River Cottage
Well thats TV for you... i mean to be truly honest as far as i know he didnt actually stay in the original cottage as much as the show would have you belived... it was used more as a set the a family home.. He has raised his family in Dorset but i think they have been at the house/farm a lot longer than you'd think. For the most part Hugh appeared at the cottage only for filming purpouses and left the rest of the maintainence to be done by his lackys. The same can be said for his RCHQ (which was originally my families Dairy Farm) though he would appear for some filming and at occasional events for the most part it was his set of cooks, groundkeepers, and stockmen that kept the thing running (even i looked after the polytunnels and the animals, and i also did parking at the events) --- Paulley 11:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Kokkhars and Gakhars
Hi there - I see you've been working on wikifying the Kokkhars page in the last few days. I've suggested that it would make more sense to just redirect this page to Gakhars -- any thoughts? Please see Talk:Kokkhars if you would like to chime in. Thanks for your help! Tim Pierce 16:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

List of Spanish political parties
Hi - didn't mean to cause any offence with my edits to List of registered political parties in Spain by geographic location. Removed the italics from the party names as although they are in Spanish they are official organisation names and as such for me that trumps the italics - took my lead from other pages including List of political parties in Spain - which could probably do with harmonising/merging with the other article (?). Where the dates are concerned I was preparing them to be tagged (I lost the will to live halfway through - and was intending to get back to it) according to what I understood of WP:DATE. I've now just read the section on ISO date formats - but personally I still prefer the 'standard' date format as this will allow unregistered users to see it in a more familiar date form (but that's my preference and I know rules aren't hard and fast). Out of interest, what criteria are you using to trim the list down? Madmedea 19:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Tried to figure out the puzzle of the foreign political party italics and from hunting around the rest of wiki - every page seems to have a different take on it. I'm easy either way! Yes those damn August 2006 articles - I noticed somebody else was attempting to hack away at them.... lost the will to live there as well and moved on to September! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Madmedea (talk • contribs) 19:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

Your edit to Sources Chrétiennes
Hi. I notice that in your edit to this article, you made a link to the page entitled "Lyons". This is a disambiguation page, and contains lots of people/places/companies which all share that name. Which one are you talking about? Please replace this link to direct to the appropriate article. For more information see WP:DPL Klower 06:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

your notes on Small and Large Scales
I was surprised to see an Australian contribution to the talk on million / thousand million / milliard debate in the Talk page for the “Long and Short Scales” entry, and further surprised to see that some Australians long for the days of yore when “milliard” held sway. I added two contributions there which I have appended here “for your perusal” as I believe it is proper to say. I too am an Australian, and while not a Monarchist, I am not particularly anxious to see the Queen go, as I believe that the ascension of Charles and Camilla will accomplish that in due course. Neither I am particularly a Yankophile, although I do find it puzzling when sentiments like yours concerning allegedly slavish adherence to American trends are broached. We are, it appears to be solely slavish to British customs and traditions. The notion that Australia is simply incapable of generating custom or tradition of its own is so pravalent that most of Australian cultural life outside of sport is effectively paralysed. As a small example, consider some idiomatic names for currency before 1966, Prior to that time, Australians happily spoke of a tray (for a threepence), a zac (for a sixpence), a bob (for a shilling), and a quid (for a pound)- even if all these were imported British idiom. Decimal currency was introduced in Australia in 1966, and 41 years later there is not a single familiar term for any of the new coins or notes. Why not? Because Australians have been taught that unless we are TOLD what to say or do by or overseas betters, then we would simply be “up ourselves” if we were to invent words, or phrases.

American culture has to its credit Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickensen, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville and many others, who cannot be matched by any Australian writers. This fact alone renders it risible that we are exhorted to turn away from American custom. We could do well to learn from American manners and mores concerning invention on every level. Here's an example of what I am driving at. Contrary to popular opinion, the term ketchup or ketsup is not a stupid American whimsical name for tomato “sauce”. Ketchup comes from the East Indies, as the Indonesian sound of the word would suggest. It was a spicy condiment that gained currency in the Old Dart. The popularity of the new world fruit the tomato, soon meant it became an ingredient in these traditional condiments, and thus: “tomato ketchup”. As you see, the term has a long, interesting and immaculate pedigree. On the other hand, “tomato sauce” has the characteristic Australian hestitancy to ever come up with a new word for a new thing, lest someone tell us to “pull our head in”. “Sauce” covers a large and ambiguous field. It could concievably refer to a paste, a puree, or a number of other sauces. Yet the simple and practical use of the word ketchup brought howls of dismay from those who thought we were “slavishly following” American foolishness. The same goes for “French Fries”, which true-blue Aussies must patriotically avoid. Indeed, we are expected to keep referring to “chips”. That would be fine, except the same word is used for what otherwise are called “crisps”. Then, in order to avoid the “french fry”, and in order not to appear like a “galah” in coining a new word, we must rely on “hot chips” and “cold chips”, which must certainly go some way to displaying the lack of daring and imagination that so afflicts our culture.

A patriotic Australian friend of mine, who is also gifted musically, recently told me he had always been puzzled as to what happened to musical culture in Australia. In the maligned nation of the US, they invented Jazz, Country and Western, Tin Pan Alley, Soul, Gospel, Bluegrass, Rock and Roll etc. New variants keep emerging: Disco, Rap, Hip Hop... Now, whatever happened to Australian music? There is just a giant gaping hole there. And yet a significant portion of our early white residents were Irish convicts, and Ireland is renowned for its folk music. I would venture to say that what happened to this strain of potential culture is what happened to just about everything else in Australian history. The pursuance of such a musical tradition might be seen to remind us of our convict heritage,and so was quickly and forcibly buried. In fact, instead of trying to build a new and vigorous culture on our British roots, the call came that we should be “more British than the British”. This can best be seen in the University of Sydney' s motto: “Sidere mens eadem mutato”: or “the same knowledge under a different Heavans”, a notion so lacking in ambition or gumption that its pursual would have meant that no new knowledge from research or otherwise could ever come into being, as it would not then he the “same knowledge” as that of the parent country. I do not know if there has been much study of pre-Federation Australia, but it appears to me that there was a radical and innovative element to it – and with quite some sympathy for the American Revolutionary experience, their Bill of Rights, and their passion for democracy. All this was largely smothered with the advent of Federation, when a fully lickspittle adoration of all things British came into force. It had that special feature of all reactionary colonial outposts of imperial powers. The colony began to believe that the Mother Country was the absolute epitome of all virtues, and any deviance from them was at best churlish, at worst, treacherous. As such, Australians would be standing up for the National Anthem (not our own of course) in cinemas across the land, even when the practice had, somewhat embarrassingly, been discontinued in the Mother Country.

I should not be misunderstood as denigrating the values of the British Way. I do however, think that the kind of loyalty that you show towards it goes beyond anything reasonable and useful. It is boundless and partisan support which has no question at all about the value of ANY aspect of British history or tradition, and allows for so very little indigenous development of our own culture. It is precisely this attitude that saw children of my generation being taught that Australian history outside of its glorious compliance to British demands at Galipolli, were affairs best forgotten, that Australian letters and poetry were intrinsically inferior to anything written in the Old Dart. Gradually, Australia became a sleepwalker, uninterested in itself, scared to look at itself, snobbish about its English antecedents and ashamed of ones that weren't. Have you ever thought how it came to be that the U.S. has 50 states all with wonderful names, and yet most of ours are named after points of the compass?

Lastly, might I say that I am astounded as to how you could possibly imagine that an Imperial Federation of Britain could ever have been possible. Even today, Australia, and I imagine I speak for you as well, do not in any real sense feel themselves to be part of a British Commonwealth. Of course, we don't mind thrashing them at the Commonwealth Games, but apart from that, the less we have to do with them the better. Australians do NOT regard themselves as being in the same boat as the Indians and the Africans. They see themselves as whites who are literally the sons and daughters of pioneers and even convicts. Most of the others are members via the historical fact that they were defeated by a foreign invader, and then colonised. On top of this insuperable fact, you might give thought to the fact that Australia's population is the merest fraction of that of the African and Indian Commonwealth components. India has a BILLION (or thousand million as I imagine you would put it) people by itself. We have 20 million. Our voice would simply be drowned out. Myles325a 12:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

(Below is a note I made earlier today, and another follows this one.)

I know Wikipedia follows a non-partisan policy with regard to spelling and word-usage, but there comes a time when excessive loyalty to this principle can become a fetish and a burden, and such is the case here. There is such a thing as the natural atrophy of usage where customs, experience and new needs combine to favour some usages over others. In such cases, some variants become first “rare”, then “obsolete', then “archaic”. Over time, the “American” use of million, billion and so on, has comprehensively displaced the notion of “milliard” and “billiard”, the latter often not even included in many dictionaries. There is an excellent reason for this, whose meaning has exercised me of late, but wherefore I know not. I began to notice that there are numerous instances where the “American billion” makes itself useful, but comparatively few (outside of astronomy) where the old “English billion” does so, although I am not quite sure why. The Earth's population is about 6 billion for example, and having to say 6 thousand million is a nuisance. The populations of China and India are both about a billion (US). Virtually every numerous aspect of Planet Earth can conveniently be expressed in US billions and (occasionally) trillions. Had the English / French system prevailed, and considering that milliard never took off, there would be no new word to deal with numbers between a million and 999 thousand million, a silly state of affairs. I would be intersted to hear any views about why so many parameters can employ US billions, from social and economic and financial studies (one can have US “billionaires” but hardly English ones for example), and the natural sciences, and so few are amenable to the English billion and its offshoots.

Please, let a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand thoughts contend on Wikipedia, but let's not flog a dead horse. Some things are better left to rest in peace. Myles325a 12:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)



For a subject as well-masticated as this one, it is surprising that an important detail has not been more adequately dealt with. Experiment: go and ask a naïve subject: “Which is bigger, an American Billion or an English Billion?” If they reply correctly that the English one is, then ask them “By how much?” You will probably find that most people don't know. In fact, from my experience, most people, hearing the phonemic set “illions”, just assume that the amounts are very large, but there is not much to be made of it. In fact, an English Billion is a THOUSAND TIMES larger than the one adopted by her erstwhile colony. That would throw anybody's paperwork out. The gap grows more immense as the numbers become larger. The English Trillion is a full MILLION times larger than that of the US. And so it goes, the discrepancy between the English and American variants grows exponentially as the hierarchy ascends. This fact is the most salient in the whole discussion, and while it is implicit in the material included in the table, it would be illuminating to add a column on the far right which would spell out the scope of this progression

Myles325a 12:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)